Showing results by narrator "Melissa Melissa Moran" in All Categories

This is the Chicago series finale: a collection of four short stories about each featured couple in the Chicago series. The events take place after each story's respective epilogue.

As a nymph living in exile among humans, Clio has picked up all sorts of unique survival skills. But pilfering magic from the Underworld's deadliest spell weavers? Not so much. Unfortunately, that's exactly what she has to do to earn a ticket back home. Conning her way into the Underworld may have gone pretty well, but now she's got a new problem. His name is Lyre, and he's a sinfully alluring incubus, a skilled spell weaver, and the only thing standing between her and stealing some damn magic.

With her career as a Los Angeles event planner imploding after a tabloid blowup, Morgan Ross isn't headed home for the holidays so much as in strategic retreat. Breathtaking mountain vistas, quirky townsfolk, and charming small businesses aside, her hometown on Fern Falls is built of one heartbreak on top of another. Take her one-time best friend turned crush, Rachel Reed. The memory of their perfect, doomed first kiss is still fresh. Way fresher than the freezing mud Morgan ends up sprawled in on her very first day back, only to be hauled out via Rachel's sexy new lumberjane muscles.

Forensic psychologist and single mother Ann Bailey has joined forces with Montana Highway Patrol officer Bryce McCabe. An expert in untangling the motives of depraved minds, Ann is tasked to help solve the mystery of two murdered women doused with gasoline and set aflame. It’s not hard for Ann to be reminded of the charismatic Elijah Weston, who served a decade in prison for arson - a crime that nearly cost Ann her life. Elijah may have been exonerated, but the connection to these rage killings is impossible for Ann to ignore.

Allie Sutton just got a new job. Not one she wants, and definitely not one she's prepared for. She hadn't seen her dad in years, so the last thing she expects upon his sudden death is to inherit the thing he loved more than anything (or anyone)...the professional football team he owned for the last 20 years. Luke Pierson does not want a new boss. What he wants is to be a good father to his daughter, the best quarterback possible for his teammates. What he doesn't need is a blonde bombshell ruining the team's chances at another championship.

The unique weekend-long event—a combination of a live-action role playing game and a theatrical production—draws competitors from all the neighboring towns, including Pine Hills' own Krissy and Rita. Although the actors, clues, and performances are spread across the community, somehow Krissy's team lands at the one location with an actual body . . . Police immediately call-off the competition while they conduct a real murder investigation, but soon it's clear some folks are playing by their own set of rules.

At sixteen, Sadie Young had a brush with death, and as a result she became more sensitive to the supernatural. Rather than embrace this gift, she spent years running from it, and from the darkness that once preyed upon her. Now twenty-five and working as a librarian, Sadie is called upon by a desperate family friend to look into a strange series of events. A teenaged girl has entered a reputedly haunted house in town and has gone mad. Committed, the girl attempts suicide and claims to be terrorized at all hours by a horrific specter known as "Mother Maggot."

Montana Banks has returned to Wild River, Alaska, for a fresh start. Adventure has always been in her blood, but while an injury leaves her unable to participate in her favorite extreme sports, Montana settles for teaching base-jumping classes at her friend’s tour company. Settling in has been almost too easy: a great job, her family’s acceptance, and her own apartment — right next door to straitlaced police officer Eddie Sanders.

What's it like to be a monster in a town full of monsters, who don't know you're a monster? Complicated and a little scary, but doable. What's it like to be the girl who can't die - that everyone seems to always want to kill? Frustrating as hell. What's it like to accidentally raise a psychotic alpha vampire everyone fears, who drops a lot of bodies on his first day out as a gift for your troubles? Terrifying, if I'm being honest. I really don't know how this stuff keeps happening to me.

Jolie has settled into life in Jinla with her four guards at her side. She couldn't be happier, but happiness is often fleeting. When the Sirens return to Jinla, they turn Jolie's life upside down. Now, she's forced to leave her guards behind and travel to the undersea realm of Atlantis, where things are not as they seem. Her survival is at risk, as well as the lives of her friends. She doesn't want to sacrifice so much, but how can she refuse when she's Atlantis' only hope?

Cold. Dangerous. Always in control. It's a reputation I worked hard to establish, and it has brought me more wealth, more power, more everything. As the king, the responsibility for the city's underground weighs heavily on my shoulders. It's been my only focus, my only concern. Then I met my obsession: Allie Bancroft. I live in a dangerous world, so she thinks I want to lock her away in a gilded cage. But I want to set her free. I want to make her my queen - as long as she follows my rules.

Unemployed university professor Tyler Marsh is pounding the pavement looking for a job. After a year of rejections based on her over-qualification, she's dumbed down her resume in a desperate attempt to get her foot in the door somewhere—anywhere. Chief Innovation Officer and wounded veteran Georgie DiNamico doesn't want an assistant or anyone else bothering her. But when Tyler's resume lands on her desk, along with a company background check listing the advanced degrees she omitted, Georgie sees an opportunity to add a researcher to her R&D team.

Ragnarök is here. The end of the world is eating away at Asgard as well as the human world until there is nothing left but ice and darkness. I'm supposed to stop it - it's my literal fate, thanks to a meddling Norn and an MIA prophet. Me, and the five alpha gods destined to claim me as theirs.

The Shadow demon nearly took everything from Dynalya Astron, and it would soon return for more. When she discovers a way to fight back, she must go on a perilous journey and risk it all for those she holds dear. Along the way, she meets Cassiel, a Celestial Prince with magic blood and wings as black as his heart. He wants nothing to do with Dyna until he learns she could lead him to a place he has been searching for all his life.

As if a run-in with an old flame and a failed marriage proposal weren't enough to horrify Krissy for one night, a woman is found strangled to death in a room filled with ominous jack-o'-lanterns. All signs suggest a crime of passion - but when the hostess's jewelry disappears, malevolent intentions seem way more likely.

After becoming an inadvertent viral sensation - and losing her job and her girlfriend as a result - Phoebe Shaw retreats to Vermont. Renovating her late grandmother's cabin into a vacation rental seems like the perfect way to lie low for a while. But the last person she expects to encounter on the property is the woman whose kiss was her teenage sexual awakening...and whom she's never quite forgotten.

The moment everything changed didn't happen in that cliche rockets-red-glare kind of way, it happened in the form of a waking nightmare. I caught my husband, my high-school sweetheart, the father of my children, balls deep in a sordid affair. That was when I gave up on men and love. I didn't count on the NHL's golden boy, the beautiful, arrogant Cooper Stone, turning my life and my hockey rink upside down. We're from different worlds and places in our lives, but when our hearts collided, something so wrong and different turned into something so right.

When Sun Lin’s old school friend Mack Remington shows up unexpectedly, she’s both surprised and suspicious. But when she learns he was attacked by members of the North Korean Regime, and the possibility they are seeking revenge against her mother for defecting years ago, Sun can’t ignore Mack’s dire warning.

Sydney is full of coffeeshops, but none as exciting, and full of drama, as the Pink Bean. First meet Micky, a newly divorced mother of two, who in No Strings Attached is claiming her independence by taking a job at the Pink Bean and exploring a new side to herself. Next up are Kristin and Sheryl, the owners of the Pink Bean. Beneath the Surface will take you back in time to follow their journey and discover the origin story of Sydney's pinkest coffee shop.

Aldo Moretta has always been the hero. The strongest, the fastest, the bravest. He fought for his country and built a thriving business in his hometown. With friends and family never more than a few blocks away, there was just one thing he was missing. The right girl. She’d fallen for the wrong guy. The bad guy. But now that she’s finally free, Aldo isn’t going to miss his second chance. Not until his last deployment goes horribly wrong. He was prepared to give his life, but he wasn’t ready for an injury that takes a piece of him. How can he be her hero now?