Oh... the age-old question. For romance readers anyway.
Which do you like, dear reader... Vampires, who illicit an orgasm from their heroine with a tiny prick from their fangs? Or Werewolves, who stalk their heroine and claim them with their scent?
When I first began writing romance I dipped into the paranormal with werewolves. Why? Because so many writers were dishing out heaping mounds of vampires and doing it so well I thought it would be a nice change to play with the four legged shifters instead.
My readers ask me if I'd ever write a vampire romance. To that I say not only will I, but I have. And someday...perhaps by next Halloween, you might even have a chance to read that book. The story where a woman wakes in a hospital half dead with no memory as to why she's there.
But that story is for another day.
How about Richard and Kate...have you met these two yet?
Embracing the Wolf
Chapter One
Kate scurried
around the worn out Formica counter with three bacon and egg breakfast
platters, two orders of wheat toast, and an English muffin, without butter, in
her arms. She stopped short in front of the pie case and the only thing that
registered in her brain at two in the morning was...
Why is a dog sitting in the middle of the
restaurant?
Then it seemed
all hell broke loose.
“Hit the
floor,” the voice behind the knit mask yelled from the cash register.
Kate stared,
not completely sure the man spoke to her.
“Hit the floor,
bitch!”
Her eyes
shifted to the customers who huddled behind their cushioned seats, eyes wide
with terror, then back to the man who yelled. She opened her mouth to talk when
the object in his hand leveled her way. “I said, hit the floor.”
Kate froze. The
deadly grey barrel of the pistol aimed directly at her face, slid fear deep
into her soul. The plates she held crashed to the floor, and she took one giant
step back.
Her only
thought was of Joey.
The gun she
focused on moved toward the register. The man hit the keys repeatedly but
nothing opened.
His eyes shot
her way. “Open it!”
Breath, coming
in short gasps that resonated all the way to San Bernardino County, rushed from
her lungs.
“Open it!”
Go along with him, and you’ll go home.
Alive!
“Hurry!” The
gun twitched, or maybe the man. She swallowed the lump in her throat and wiped
her damp palms over the polyester of her uniform skirt. Going against every
instinct known to man, she stepped over the broken dishes and closer to the
deadly weapon.
The gunman
jarred her shoulder with his freehand, waking her from her frozen state.
“Hurry.” His voice wavered. Either his patience grew thin, or he had some doubt
as to what he was doing.
Kate’s shaky
hand removed the key to the cash register from her pocket, dropped it into the
lock, and opened the drawer with a ding.
She removed the
twenties and tens and handed the cash to the thief standing over her.
“All of it!”
His putrid breath rushed past her nose with his command. He thrust the money in
a bag he drew from his pocket.
The animal at
his feet snarled, baring massive teeth.
The hair on the
back of her neck rose. Kate’s gaze focused on the ice blue eyes of the dog.
Although it didn’t look like a dog at all, more like a wolf, maybe.
“Hurry up.”
Reaching inside
the till, her fingers scrambled to remove the cash. She handed the masked man
every dollar and even grabbed the cash from under the drawer. “That’s all there
is,” she told him, cringing away from the gun.
“Don’t move,”
he ordered, backing out of the drab interior of the lobby without taking his
eyes off her.
As if in slow
motion, the side door to where the help took the dirty dishes opened, and Julio
stepped through not knowing a robbery was taking place.
The gunman
turned, Kate’s mind raced ahead. She thought of Julio’s four kids without their
father.
On reflex, Kate
pivoted, shoved the gunman away, and yelled a warning.
The explosion
of the gun permeated the silence of the room. Something hit her and spun her
around. Screams elevated over the blast.
Kate started to
fall and heard the glass from the pie case shattering before her world went
black.
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