Showing results by narrator "Jill Smith" in All Categories

At the altar, I silently plead for someone to save me from a marriage I don’t want. And just my luck—nothing happens. Then, when the priest asks if anyone objects to this marriage, the church doors are thrown open, a tall, older man with ice-blue eyes and air of casual wealth and power, stalks in, and says, “I'm taking this.” He carries me out of the church over his shoulder. Kingpin Zane Bethnal might have saved me, but it turns out, I’m in his debt.

My one night stand? He’s sitting behind the headmaster’s desk. We met at a truck stop. The chemistry was immediate, and we both do something out of character: one night, no explanations. The next day, I arrive at my new private school. Now I’m the off-limits forbidden temptation Sebastian Craig can’t forget, and we both try our best to behave. It works for a few weeks… until our secret cravings come tumbling out in the library after hours. How will we keep our private connection hidden until the end of the term?

Hilarious and colorful episodes in the lives of families, many depicted from a kid's-eye-view, are the theme for this compilation. Being part of a family is often trying, and stranger than any fiction, but never dull and always worth it in the end. Join these very different families as they face the shrinking of parents, the pre-emptive guilt of First Confession, the secret worlds of children, and more!

I didn't know he has been watching me all this time. I had a plan to escape. Everything is going perfectly at my wedding rehearsal dinner until he turns up. The Kingpin. Twenty years older. Dark, dangerous, gorgeous. I was going to get out of this arranged marriage, but he steals me away. I want freedom. He wants me. We make a deal. If I can escape, he'll let me go. If I can't, I'll be his to do with as he likes for twenty-four hours. A thirty second head start and a key.

He was given another chance at life, and from the infinite possibilities available, he chose to come back as a mechanical man, a Metalman, named Repair. Repair has risked life and mechanical limb traveling through dungeon levels, fighting grotesque monsters, and even lost friends along the way. All to secure a chance to be a free citizen in this RPG fantasy world. Now, he has to train with strangers, and unless he can whip them into shape and develop magical technology, he'll have to endure a lifetime as someone else's property.

I locked myself in the bathroom when my date pulled out a knife. Then a tall dark rescuer crashed through the door and kidnapped me. I know it's risky, posting my darkest fantasies anonymously online. Especially when they start going viral. But how was I to know the first guy I've ever dated would turn out to be an obsessed stalker-fan? Although I write about wanting a man to force himself upon me, this reality isn't nearly as appealing. It's locked bathroom, panic texting, terrified-for-my-life.

It is hardly surprising Verity Lark can’t sleep at night with all the thoughts darting through her mind: her recent stay in Newgate, her debt to Colson Hardwicke, the horrible abuse suffered by the children at Fortescue’s that her reporting on the orphan asylum several years earlier had failed to uncover. And then of course there are the shooting lessons she has promised to give to the Duchess of Kesgrave. Verity has spent three months cruelly mocking the former spinster for her investigative pretensions, and now she is obligated to teach the woman how to fire a deadly weapon.

Verity Lark—England's most tenacious gossip, the London Daily Gazette's most dogged reporter—relishes a challenge, which is why she refuses Colson Hardwicke's offer of menial employment. If the infuriating scoundrel really needs the sister of a radical reformer to be distracted with girlish chitchat, he can bloody well erupt into giggles!

I’ve protected more princesses, celebrities, and billionaires than I could shake a bulletproof vest at. I’m ready to move onto less dramatic pastures: becoming the CEO of my own protection company. Until the Fairchilds ask me to personally oversee their little sister Jordan, who they’re desperate to reconnect with—and keep safe as she enters into their world.

Kelli is ready to make memories with her son in the house where she grew up. It needs a lot of work, but with the sunlight coming through the colorful stained-glass windows, she's confident she can do it. When she gets way over her head, she calls the people who she can rely on for anything. Eloise is only a week away from tying the knot, but she shows up at the house on Seabreeze Shore with sandpaper and her fiancé's power tools. They get to work, only to find Kelli's father's will underneath a floorboard. What's really in the will changes everything for Kelli and her mother.

Twenty-four-year-old Catherine Fellingham keeps a low profile - in society and in her family. A practical young woman, she leaves the spotlight to her beautiful younger sister and prefers quiet pursuits such as reading. But all that changes the moment she learns of her mother’s very excellent scheme to keep the family out of debtors’ prison. The scatter-brained Lady Fellingham has been selling commissions in the king’s army, and Catherine must shake off her indifference in order to save her family from a potentially ruinous scandal.

For six months we repeated this pattern, the attraction shimmering between us, hot and wrong. He kidnapped me. On a lonely night back at home, I wake to the stab of a needle. The last thing I remember is Mr Crosse shooting my attacker and scooping me up. When I come to, I'm trapped with him in his bedroom, and... Oh, ground swallow me I think I confessed my love while out-of-it. Now my ex's dad wont let me leave.

I have seventeen dollars to my name and a one-way bus ticket to my new college town—two months early. Oh, and the name of a man I’ve never met scrawled on a piece of paper. Henry Wilde, my mom's long-ago high school boyfriend. But when I show up on his doorstep, he has no idea that my mom said I could stay with him. And he only has one bed.

Professor Moriarty’s new client is the manager of a West End theater. He’s three weeks away from opening his Christmas pantomime, the expensive spectacle that pays for the rest of the year. But after months of freak accidents and spooky incidents, the cast and crew are convinced the show is cursed. Worse, he’s out of money, and the rent is due.

Now that my business is in the crosshairs of the SEC, I’ve got to watch my step, stay alert. So Jessa Walton’s incomparable hotness is a distressing distraction. Not to mention the knack she’s got for drawing me out of my shell. She doesn’t understand that the idea of us—together—has “NO!” written all over it. She wants all of me, but I don’t give that to anyone.

He was given another chance at life and from the infinite possibilities available he chose to come back as a mechanical man, a Metalman, named Repair. In book oone, Repair explored a new world, defeated deadly mutated dungeon monsters, overcame the opposition of the gnomes that revived him, and foiled the scheme to kill his best friend, a goblin named Greebo. Now, the Metalman will have to prove himself worthy of becoming the Gnome Research Institute’s champion, or he’ll spend the next decade as a virtual slave to them.

AJ Moore's life crumbled with the unexpected death of her beloved father and mentor. Her reporting career stalled, her love-life non-existent, and a family filled with more conflict than love, she relies on her best friend to survive cheerless days in the small town of Bayside, Oregon. When a 200-year-old ship materializes through the fog, inspiration strikes. AJ sets out to unravel its mystery, but her investigation is hampered by the ship's single passenger - the enigmatic sea captain.

Katelyn (Kat) Summers’ family has just moved to Webster, Massachusetts. It’s the day before her 12th birthday, and all Katelyn wants to do is go back home to Pennsylvania. That is until a 10-year-old boy named Neil Masters crashes into her bicycle. When Katelyn looks up from her position on the ground, she finds a hand stretched out to greet her. As she’s pulled to her feet, Katelyn meets with the inquisitive gaze of Sarah Masters. Within minutes, Katelyn will never think of any other place as home again.

Quitting my job right before Christmas wasn’t what I wanted, but what I wanted (my hot, older boss) wasn’t an option, either. Or so I thought, until he follows me to my family Christmas and doesn’t blink an eye when I panic and introduce him as my imaginary boyfriend. But “girlfriend” isn’t exactly what he wants to call me...

Robin Carter's life is less than stellar. All she has going for her are a minimum-wage job she hates, an uncanny ability to attract the biggest losers on her dating app, and a raccoon sitting in her kitchen sink eating her chips. So when she finds out she's inherited a bakery in a small Washington town, Robin thinks this might just be the fresh start she desperately needs. Upon her arrival, however, Robin finds out she's inherited more than just a small business: She's also got her mother's magical powers.