• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 410 0

that nine-year-old Shauna Barnes had an acting career in her future. Everyone was gearing up for the play Dream Makers Drama Academy would be presenting next month, Charles Dickens’s classic A Christmas Carol. “Do you need me to stay behind and help you straighten things up?” Cindy Ruffin asked a short while later, after all the students had been dismissed and were rushing out the door. It hadn’t rained as Pam had predicted, but a light layer of snow flurries were coming down. “No, I’m fine,” she said smiling. Cindy had been a godsend. Her husband, Todd, had been a classmate of Pam’s and, like her, Todd had left Gamble for college. He’d played pro football until an injury ended his career. A few years ago, after Hurricane Katrina, Todd had decided to move his family from New Orleans and back to his hometown. Everyone in town was

Seven P am felt her stomach stir when she gazed up into Dillon’s eyes. She had ended up on her back between his firm thighs, with him towering over her. At that very moment she felt several things. Captured. Ensnarled. His. She forced the last from her mind immediately. How could a woman be engaged to one man and possessed by another? She didn’t want to be confused by anything now, and she certainly didn’t want to think about Fletcher. This was her time, this sensual interlude, her moment to seize something she might never have again. You give. I take. No regrets. And from the eyes bearing down on her and the arms locked on both sides of her, she had a feeling Dillon Westmoreland was more than ready to take everything she had to give. And there would be no time for regrets. He began lowering his head and she lifted hers upward to meet his mouth. The moment they touched, he began devouring her with a hunger and need that she felt all the way to her toes. He had kissed her greedily befor

Eight “W e don’t understand, Pammie. Why did Dillon stop coming for dinner?” Pam glanced across the dinner table at Nadia, knowing how her baby sister operated. Nadia would ply her with the same question until she got what she considered a satisfactory answer. Pam wasn’t sure that her response would be satisfactory, but judging by the three pairs of eyes staring at her, Nadia wasn’t the only one waiting to hear what she had to say. Pam could make it easy on herself and place the blame on the three of them by claiming they were the ones who’d scared him off, and that Dillon had been fully aware of their little matchmaking schemes at dinner and preferred to have no part of it. But telling her sisters that would not be the truth. Dillon had said on more than one occasion that he enjoyed her sisters’ company and that they reminded him of his female cousins back in Denver. He had taken their shenanigans in stride and hadn’t seemed bothered in the least. “Pammie?” Nadia’s soft voice pulled h

Nine “I want to know why you are marrying a man you don’t love,” Dillon said raspily, close to her ear. They lay locked in each other’s arms, their bodies entwined, drenched in sweat from the intensity of their lovemaking. The aftermath of pleasure was so profound they were still fighting to get their heart rates back to normal while they savored what had to have been passion of the most explosive kind. Dillon watched as her gaze widened at such a deliberate and bold question, and then his heart began pounding in his throat while he waited for her to respond. When she nervously licked her lips, he was tempted to lick right along with her but knew he had to hold back and listen to what she had to say. Tonight he wanted answers and wouldn’t be satisfied until he got them. And then, not surprisingly, fire crept into her eyes and she tilted her chin slightly. “You have no right to ask me that,” she said. A smile touched his lips. His woman was feisty when she needed to be and he liked that

Ten “P amela, I thought we agreed that you’d set a date for our wedding by the time I got back,” Fletcher said, sitting down to the dinner table with her and her sisters. He had called Sunday morning to say he would be arriving back in Gamble around