Read Queen of Hearts: (Family Stone #6 Shelley) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense) Online
Authors: Lisa Hughey
Tags: #romantic suspense
Queen of Hearts: (Family Stone #6 Shelley) (Family Stone Romantic Suspense) (17 page)
“While I applaud your creative thinking and optimism, I’m not going to put you in any more danger today.” She pressed a soft kiss to his lips, and savored the sweet, tender, loving embrace.
“There’s always tomorrow.”
“And the day after that.” She rested her head on his chest and listened to his steady heartbeat. Contentment settled over her. She said firmly, “Tonight we’ll use the opportunity to talk.”
She bussed his forehead with a kiss and gave thanks that his reaction time was faster than Kandi’s trigger finger. The Universe wouldn’t have been so cruel as to give her Ric and then take him away. She needed to grab hold of every moment. No regrets. She might not be quite ready to use the word love but he should know how she felt. She inhaled, counted her blessings and made a life-changing admission. “I’m crazy about you too.”
Ric’s smile took her breath away. He squeezed her against his chest, his embrace sexy and comforting at the same time.
“Since I can’t rock your world with mind-blowing sex,” he paused.
Shelley waited, wondering what he’d say next. Anticipation shimmered in the air.
“I need a new nickname.”
Shelley sat straight up and stared at him.
That’s
what he wanted to talk about? He’d lost his mind. “You want to figure it out
now
?”
“Got to get it nailed down before NLBP sticks.”
Shelley shuddered at the fact that he was no longer Bulletproof.
“I was thinking…K.O.S.H.”
Ric’s steady, calm heartbeat was suddenly super-charged and going a million beats a second. “KOSH?”
“King of Shelley’s Heart.” He carefully placed her palm over his thundering heart. “After all, you’re the Queen of
my
Heart.”
With that declaration, he managed to rock her world anyway.
***
Stay tuned for the stunning conclusion to the Family Stone saga. Get ready for Jack and Bliss’s wedding and John’s story in Cold As Stone coming early 2015.
Thank you so much for reading Shelley and Ric’s story! I hope you enjoyed reading Queen of Hearts as much as I loved writing this book. If you did enjoy this book, below are a few ways you can help a writer out!!
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Lisa’s Latest News
Books by Lisa Hughey
Black Cipher Files Romantic Suspense
The Encounter, A Prequel to Blowback
**These books are also available in paperback from Amazon.com
The Seven
Archangel Zach…Coming Soon
Snow Creek Christmas
Love on Main Street: A Snow Creek Christmas – 7 Author anthology
One Silent Night
(from Love on Main Street)
Miracle on Main Street
(standalone novella)
Family Stone Romantic Suspense
Stone Cold Heart, (Jess, Family Stone #1)
Carved in Stone (Connor, Family Stone #2)
Heart of Stone (Riley, Family Stone #3)
Still the One (Jack, Family Stone #4)
Jar of Hearts (Keisha & Shane, Family Stone #5)
Queen of Hearts (Shelley, Family Stone #6)
Cold as Stone (John, Family Stone #7)…Coming Soon
About Lisa
USA Today Bestselling Author Lisa Hughey has been writing romance since the fourth grade, which was also about the time she began her love affair with spies. Harriet and Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys later gave way to James Bond and Lara Croft and Jason Bourne. Exploring the complex nature of a profession that requires subterfuge and lies fascinates her. She loves combining her two passions into fiction. As evidenced by her Black Cipher Files series.
Archangel Rafe was her first foray into the paranormal but after spending time in the Angelic Realm, it won't be her last. At their heart, the Seven novels are about the dynamics of family relationships. But the really hot Archangels don't hurt.
And recently she's been immersed in the Stone Family novellas, stories about a blended family of brothers and a sister who have a lot more in common than they realize. But of course she couldn't just write about family and romance. There are complex plots, bad guys, and suspense too.
Lisa loves to hear from readers and has various places you can connect with her, although, shh, Twitter is her favorite.
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Another Group Website, Sexy Scribbles
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Dedication
I loved writing Shelley’s book. From the moment she appeared on the page in Jess’s book, I started thinking about her. About all her sacrifices and the things she endured to make sure her kids were launched into the world successfully.
The traditional romance usually features characters in their mid to late twenties, sometimes early thirties. The construct behind that makes sense. It’s a time when men and women are ready to settle down and potentially have children. It’s logical.
But what about all those women out there who didn’t get their happily ever after when they were younger? Women and men don’t shrivel up and die after age thirty-five so why should romance characters? I loved that both Shelley and Ric had some mileage on them but were still open to the possibility of love. I hope you did too.
Acknowledgments
I’m pretty lucky to have a talented group of writers as my work support system. Thanks to the Pens Fatales for our random email exchanges on everything from business to personal and happy to snarky.
Thanks to AC James for all sorts of things…far too many to name. It’s amazing how much one simple email changed my business life. I’ve learned a lot and had tons of fun.
Huge thanks to Adrienne Bell and LGC Smith for our weekly meetings.
Ginormous thanks to Cecilia Gray for our weekend writing marathons and always, always sharing your business knowledge with me.
As always, thanks to Kim and Jennifer at The Killion Group for everything! Thanks to Amy Atwell at AuthorEMS for dealing with the challenges of uploading to the more difficult vendors.
I am blessed to have you all in my life!
Family Stone Romantic Suspense series
Stone Cold Heart
:
Jess Stone, former FBI sniper, always felt like the kid who looked in the candy store window but could never afford to go in. But on a humanitarian mission to aid an earthquake ravaged country, finally she finds a place where she fits, in Colin Davies' arms, and working for Global Humanitarian Relief, her big brother's company. But can the former SAS thaw Jess's stone cold heart?
Carved in Stone:
Connor Stone has always been odd man out in his family. Not the oldest, not the most charming, he'd had a lock on the youngest until another half-sibling came to live with them, so he raised hell in his youth. Con knows now the only way to redeem himself is with deeds, not words and sets out to prove once and for all he is worthy of the Stone family. When his older brother asks him to take care of business, Con finally will have redemption he craves. Except when Ava Sanchez, his brother's assistant, is threatened, he must choose between saving the girl or protecting his family. Will his choice bring him love or break his heart?
Heart of Stone:
Riley Stone is the handsome brother, the charming one. Everyone who meets him compares him to his father, which in his mind is not a compliment. But he's never met a woman he couldn't charm, until he meets Di, an acerbic, smart-mouthed, passionate activist who has no time for him or his charm. On the run, in the midst of danger, the blistering passion they share explodes. Can these two opposites find common ground, or will Di smash Riley's stone heart?
Still the One:
Jack Stone, former Navy SEAL, and oldest Stone sibling is determined to keep his family strong. Family is everything. So he starts Global Humanitarian Relief and Stone Consulting to do some good and keep his family together. But when he has to team up with his old flame, Bliss, on a missing persons case, an evil threatens him, his family and the one woman he could never forget and doesn't want to let go. Can these two former lovers put aside past hurts and heal their hearts?
Jar of Hearts
:
Prickly Keisha Johnson has the hots for Shane Washington. But she’s not about to reveal her inner soft heart to the player pilot and open herself up to hurt, until a favor to their boss sends them undercover and under the covers. Can she trust his sensual attention or will he shatter her fragile heart?
Excerpt from Stone Cold Heart
Family Stone #1 Jess
In the early evening dusk, Jess Stone lay on her stomach in the twenty foot high rubble of a demolished church, underneath a black and gray city-scape tarp intended to camouflage her position. A sharp-edged chunk of debris dug into her lower rib cage, the scope of the Remington M24 cool and familiar against her face.
Her standard uniform of jeans, running shoes, and plain black t-shirt rendered her just another anonymous and transient relief worker...which she was actually. A black baseball cap hid her distinctive multi-hued blonde hair. The paper mask kept out the contaminated dust from the destroyed buildings but did little to stem the overwhelming stench of decaying bodies.
Tanks rumbled through the destroyed coastal town, their public address system blasting warnings for citizens to stay in their homes, curfew was in effect. The threat was a joke. Ninety percent of the people in the town didn't have homes left. Those who did were terrified to go back inside. In the fetid, humidity choked air, the tent cities erected in the parks and on the beach were seething masses of the injured and shock struck.
The substandard construction in the small country had never been enough to withstand the angry might of Mother Nature. Buildings had toppled like a stack of Tinkertoys, and left crumbling cement walls with twisted rebar poking out of the jagged ruins like a skeletal hand.
Trapped in the concrete pieces that littered the ground, the heat from the tropical day seared through her thin sturdy clothing. The stank of the raw sewage that ran in rivulets through the streets overpowered the salt-laden breeze off the ocean. People, covered with the grit of pulverized buildings and humans, shuffled along with blank vacant stares. Two weeks after the quake, still in shock, their lives decimated first by nature and then kicked and beaten by the ineffectiveness of a flawed relief system. Hundreds of humanitarian agencies had descended on the population duplicating efforts and yet completely missing the need in other areas. The government was ostensibly trying to coordinate the effort, however the mass chaos was undeniable.
Through the Leupold Ultra M3 fixed power sight, she tracked the movements of Henri LeRoy, leader of this tiny island nation, violator of human rights and dignity, and all around poor excuse for a human being.
Sickness roiled in her stomach. The power bar she’d eaten for breakfast threatened to add to the rubble pile as she tried to figure out how in the hell she'd ended up here. Back behind a sniper rifle with the power over life and death trembling in the muscles of her right trigger finger.
Dammit. When she'd decided to take control of her life and quit the FBI, she hadn't wanted to do this anymore.
She'd wanted to be a simple relief worker. She'd wanted to connect with her family, brothers and mother.
But that bitch, fate, had slapped her upside the head and now here she was, where she'd sworn she never wanted to be again. Looking through the scope of a high-powered rifle, with a crystal clear head shot and a murky sense of right and wrong.
With little fanfare, she could blast LeRoy's brain matter all over the silk-covered walls and the antique Louis the XIV scrolled chairs in the receiving room of his ridiculously elegant weekend mansion which, since built properly, had sustained minimal damage. Her muscles twitched with the knowledge and acceptance that with one slow slide of her finger, the despotic, amoral leader would be history.
Jess didn't want to kill him, didn't want to be directly responsible for another death. She didn't want this choice. She’d given up this kind of life. She'd left the FBI after a series of high stress cases to get away from the doubt and guilt that had crippled her. To make her own decisions about right and wrong rather than carry out the commands of her bosses.
But if Henri LeRoy lived, chances were astronomical that many other citizens would die.
And yeah, she'd probably been manipulated into this. Actually no probably about it. Assassination had not been listed as one of her duties when she'd joined Global Humanitarian Relief. Damn her brother anyway.