Nightingale

  Excerpt from KARMA GIRL,

  Book One in the Bigtime paranormal romance series

  PART ONE—BEGINNINGS

  Chapter One

  My wedding day.

  It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life. A time of joy and celebration and new beginnings. The day every girl dreams of from the time she’s old enough to play dress-up in her mother’s clothes.

  It wasn’t that sort of day at all.

  I stalked up and down the narrow hotel room. My hellish high-heeled shoes poked holes in the thick carpet and rubbed hot blisters on my aching feet. My white tulle dress rustled with every step I took.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  I’d had the feeling for weeks now that something just wasn’t quite right between me and my fiancé, Matt Marion. He’d been distant lately, distracted. We’d been together more than two years now, and I loved Matt with all my heart. But his odd behavior was enough to make the most trusting woman suspicious. I’d asked Matt many times if anything was wrong, if he had cold feet and wanted to postpone the wedding, but he’d repeatedly assured me that everything was fine.

  Matt had been working lots of overtime at his construction job and had all sorts of unexplained bruises and scratches on his body. He’d blamed his frequent absences and injuries on work, but I couldn’t quite shake this cold sense of dread deep down in my stomach. Doubts whispered in my mind. I’d learned long ago to listen to my inner voice. Following my instincts was the reason I’d become the top investigative reporter at the Beginnings Bugle, the town newspaper.

  I wasn’t about to ignore my instincts now. I couldn’t get married with this doubt hanging over me. I had to ask Matt one more time what was bothering him.

  I grabbed my cell phone, slipped out of my hotel room, and made my way to the elevator. It had been Matt’s idea to get married at Forever Inn, the most romantic hotel in all of Beginnings, Tennessee. Weddings took place on a daily basis at the four-star hotel, so no one batted an eye when I crowded into the elevator in my billowing dress and sparkling diamond tiara.

  I rode up to the next floor and walked to Matt’s room. It was bad luck—bad karma—for the bride and groom to see each other before the wedding, but I had to talk to Matt. My inner voice wouldn’t shut up until I did.

  I raised my hand to knock. A low, muffled moan escaped through the thick wooden door. Was Matt hurt? I frowned and inserted my key card, the one I had in case of an emergency. The door opened, and I stepped inside.

  “Yes, Yes, YES!!!!” a woman screamed out from deeper in the room.

  Oh. That’s what that sound was. Someone was having a little afternoon delight. Good for them. I turned to give the enthusiastic couple their privacy when reality hit me.

  Why was someone having sex in Matt’s room? He should have been in there, getting ready for his wedding, which was only thirty minutes away. His wedding to me.

  I froze. A ball of ice formed in the pit of my stomach. I wasn’t going to like what I was about to see, I just knew it, but I couldn’t stop myself. I tiptoed to the doorframe, so that I remained hidden from view, and peeked into the bedroom.

  Karen Crush, my best friend since the fourth grade, was straddling Matt, my oh-so-faithful fiancé, who was perched on the edge of the bed. Karen’s pale-blue bridesmaid’s dress was bunched around her waist, exposing her lean legs. Matt’s pants pooled around his ankles. A lacy thong sat crumpled beside the bed, along with some other pieces of blue and red fabric.

  Karen flipped her black curls over her shoulder and threw her head back in pure bliss. The ecstatic look on Matt’s face told me he was thoroughly enjoying himself as well. The bastard.

  My world spun. Sharp pains pierced my chest, as though someone had stabbed me with a butcher knife. Twice. Hot tears welled up in my eyes and trickled down my face. My knees shook. My legs threatened to buckle. Now, I knew what had been so wrong. Why Matt had been so distant. This one moment, this horrible sight, made it all so clear. So painfully clear. Love, friendship, humanity in general. My faith in those was gone. Obliterated by the two people I loved most in the world.

  Matt and Karen expressed more cries of pleasure, oblivious to me. To my pain.

  The sounds shattered my heart into a thousand sharp, jagged pieces. Each one cut me like a razor. I wanted to run out the door, to cry my eyes out, to sob and scream until I was hoarse from both. But a flash of bright blue underneath Matt’s unbuttoned shirt caught my eye. I squinted through my cascading tears. It looked like ... spandex.

  Spandex?

  “Oooh, I love it when you kiss my neck like that.” A giggle escaped from Karen’s perfect, heart-shaped lips.

  I loved it when Matt kissed my neck like that too. Anger bubbled up in my chest like a volcano about to explode. I swiped away my hot tears and straightened my spine. I wasn’t going to run. Not from the two of them. Not until I had some answers.

  Karen ran her hands down Matt’s broad chest. Her long nails zipped along the fabric like scissors. She ripped his shirt open the rest of the way, revealing a blue spandex suit with a giant red M on the chest.

  My mouth dropped open.

  “Oh, baby. You drive me crazy!” Matt yanked Karen’s dress down to her waist, exposing a lingerie-like red bustier beneath. A yellow C stretched across her heaving chest.

  I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. But it was real—I would have known those costumes anywhere. Molten lava flowed through my veins, burning away everything but my all-consuming rage. My bubbling volcano of anger erupted with a scream of epic proportions. “Sonofabitch!”

  Matt and Karen froze. Their heads snapped around to the doorway. Matt swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. Karen’s eyes widened. For an instant, I wondered what they were more upset about—that someone had caught them cheating or discovered their other precious secret. I didn’t care either way. They’d both betrayed me.

  My anger roared back, stronger than before, and I marched into the room. My hands balled into fists. My body rattled with rage. Even my wedding dress twitched with fury.

  “Carmen! I … I can explain—”

  I threw up my hand, cutting off Matt’s pitiful attempt. “You’re the Machinator?”

  Matt sighed. He ran his fingers—the ones that weren’t latched on to my best friend’s exposed ass—through his blond hair. “I didn’t want you to find out this way, Carmen.”

  “Oh no? When were you going to tell me you’re Beginnings’ own personal superhero? After we said I do? Maybe on our first anniversary? Or perhaps when our kids were in college? Or maybe right after you told me about sleeping with my best friend. On our wedding day.”

  “It’s not his fault, Carmie,” Karen said, her brown eyes big and earnest. “He wanted to tell you. We both did. About everything.”

  Carmie? I glared at my former best friend. She still had the nerve to call me that childish nickname even when she had her legs wrapped around my fiancé like he was a race horse and she was a jockey. The bitch. I wanted to rip her limb from limb. After I finished with Matt. “And you’re his archenemy, Crusher? The ubervillain of Beginnings?”

  Karen nodded.

  I rubbed my fingers over my throbbing temples. It was all too much to take in.

  Sure, every town in the world had its own personal superhero, someone who showed up whenever the train ran off the tracks and wouldn’t stop. Or whenever there was a natural disaster that threatened to kill hundreds of people. Or even whenever little Timmy fell down a well and needed rescuing. Naturally, every town also had its own personal ubervillain, someone who wanted to rule supreme.

  Beginnings was no different. We had the Machinator, a man who could control mechanical objects with his mind. The town’s ubervillain was Crusher, a woman of unbelievable strength who could break metal bars with her teeth and crush diamonds in her hand. The two were constantly at odds, with Crusher continually coming up with some wild scheme to either (a) take over Beginnings, (b) kill the Machinator, or
(c) both. Usually, the Machinator would be put in grave danger before miraculously escaping to foil Crusher’s latest scheme. But Crusher always got away, or soon broke out of whatever high-security, supposedly inescapable ubervillain prison the authorities stuck her in. She’d come back to Beginnings, and the cycle would repeat itself, ad nauseam.

  And the whole time, I’d never known the two of them were my fiancé and my best friend.

  Never even suspected. Never had the slightest clue.

  I’d been such a complete, total fool.

  Some reporter I was. All the classic signs had been there. Matt’s many bruises and injuries, his late nights and odd hours. Karen’s long, strange absences from town and uncanny ability to open any jar, despite her petite size. The pieces clicked together in my mind like a jigsaw puzzle. The two of them must have spent hours laughing at my stupidity and nivet and trusting nature. When they weren’t having hot, superhero sex, that is.

  My fiancé and best friend were sleeping together and hiding their secret identities from me. I didn’t know which betrayal hurt worse. Or which made me angrier.

  “How long has this been going on? I would think given your ... extracurricular activities that sleeping together would be out of the question.” I spat out the words. They left a foul, bitter taste in my mouth.

  “Well, it’s actually a funny story.” Matt laughed in a vain effort to lighten the mood.

  I crossed my arms over my chest, and his half hearted chuckle died on his lips. Too bad he didn’t follow suit.

  “Anyway, we were down at the old abandoned mill a couple of months ago, doing the usual epic battle, you know, explosions and danger and stuff, when Crusher, er, Karen, reached out and grabbed me. All this radioactive waste was leaking everywhere, and it was making us both feel really strange, and we just sort of kissed and ...”

  His voice trailed off under my red-hot glare. If I had the ability to shoot lasers out of my eyes, the two of them would have been extra-crispy by now. Too bad I didn’t have my own superpower.

  Matt still sat on the bed, Karen straddling him. They made no move to disengage or hide their costumes. I knew at once they were actually relieved I had caught them, not only doing the nasty but exposing their secret identities. Relief filled their treacherous eyes, and tension oozed from their pores as if a weight had been lifted off their shoulders. They were happy they’d just ruined my life with their lies and deceit and betrayal. It made me ill.

  I took a step back. I had to get away from them. From both of them. My heart couldn’t take any more. I whirled around to dash out of the room.

  My high heels snagged on the thick carpet, and I went down in a pile of white tulle. My tiara slipped off my head and rolled across the floor, and my hair tumbled out of its pearl-studded clips. I struggled to stand, and my eyes fell on my cell phone, which I’d dropped, along with the key card. Hitting the floor had made the phone’s screen light up, showing the wallpaper picture of me with my arms around Matt, both of us smiling, both of us happy. At least, I had been happy—then.

  The volcano of anger inside me cooled and congealed into a large, black lump of hate. Matt and Karen had had their fun at my expense. Now, I was going to do something about it. Something to even the score. The pieces of my broken heart twisted in my chest. Something to hurt them like they’d hurt me. Only worse.

  I got to my feet, dusted myself off, and stalked over to my phone. Something crunched under the toes of my torturous shoes. I looked down. I’d just smashed my cubic zirconium tiara to bits. It, too, was fake, just like everything else in my life.

  I snatched the cell phone.

  “What are you doing?” Karen asked.

  “Just giving the two of you what you so richly deserve.” I squinted at the traitorous, spandex-wearing pair on the phone’s screen. “Say cheese.”

  #

  The next day, the headline in the Beginnings Bugle screamed MACHINATOR UNMASKED! CRUSHER UNCOVERED! IDENTITIES REVEALED! Find out the truth behind town’s superhero, villain. Story and photos by Carmen Cole.

  My story described in honest, if painful and humiliating detail, how I had uncovered the pair’s real identities. A photo of Karen and Matt, their spandex suits visible beneath their rumpled clothes, stretched across the front page of the newspaper. When they’d realized I was taking pictures of them, they’d tried to talk me out of it. Fools. They should have saved their breath. I would never listen to a word they said. Never again.

  When asking nicely hadn’t worked, Karen tried to yank the cell phone out of my hands and squeeze it to bits. But Matt, being the valiant, noble, oh-so-faithful superhero he was, intervened. As I’d coolly backed out of that hotel room, they were rolling around on the floor, punching and kicking each other. I wasn’t sure if they were fighting or engaged in some sort of kinky, rough form of foreplay. Perhaps it was all the same to the superhero-and-villain set.

  Not even stopping to change out of my wedding gown, I’d gone straight to the Bugle and told the editors what I had. It had been one of the most embarrassing, mortifying, downright degrading things I’d ever done, but I squared my shoulders and held my chin up. Page One had been cleared.

  I’d spent the rest of the day at the newspaper, digging up all the information I could on Matt and Karen, aka the Machinator and Crusher. Matt’s supposed accidents at work always occurred the day the Machinator engaged in some big battle. Karen’s long absences and sudden arrivals in town coincided perfectly with Crusher’s stints upstate. Dates, times, places, injuries. It was all there. How stupid, how blind I’d been. I was ashamed to call myself a journalist.

  When I didn’t show for the wedding ceremony, Matt’s mother called the paper. I told her everything.

  She didn’t speak for a moment. “What about the flowers? And all the food? Everything’s already been paid for. I can’t eat a hundred chickens by myself.”

  “Didn’t you hear me, Matilda? I just told you that your son is a superhero.”

  “Oh, I know that. Who do you think makes his costumes?”

  “And did you know about him and Karen too?”

  “My boy is special. He gets tons of fan mail. You didn’t think he’d be happy with just one woman, did you?”

  I hung up on the old bat. She’d never liked me anyway.

  An hour later, the local news blared onto the television set. Matt and Karen had made quite a mess at the Forever Inn, and part of the historic building had collapsed. Some things just aren’t made to last. Or to withstand a superhero-ubervillain battle. I sent a photographer to get pictures.

  A couple of friends called, trying to get me to calm down and give Matt a chance to explain. I told them to have fun eating Matilda’s precious, already-paid-for chicken and went back to work.

  The next morning, the Bugle sold out in minutes. The press guys came back in to print an extra 10,000 copies. Phones rang off the hook, as the wire services and national media picked up the story. The Bugle’s stock soared. Management had never been happier. As for Karen and Matt, the two of them vanished once the story broke. No one could find them, or their alter egos.

  I collected as many copies of the newspaper as I could and posted them all over my tiny cubicle. Everyone and his brother stopped by my desk to congratulate me on the big scoop. The publisher himself even came out of his office to give me an atta-girl speech. A few of the sports guys cracked jokes about how I’d gotten the story, but a heated look from me sent them scurrying for cover. I was in no mood to be made fun of.

  After spending almost twenty-four hours at the newspaper, I went home. I opened the door to my apartment, tossed my keys onto a nearby table, and flipped on the lights. Piles of cardboard boxes greeted me. After our honeymoon in Hawaii, I was supposed to move in with Matt, and most of my things already had been packed away.

  My thoughts turned to Matt. Where was he? Had he seen the story? Was he sorry he’d lied to me? Or was he with Karen? Picking up where they’d left off?

  Had he ever really lo
ved me?

  My eyes traced over the boxes. Hearts and silly cartoon figures wearing lacy veils and diamond rings decorated the cardboard. The jagged pieces of my heart scraped against each other. The wedding, the honeymoon, the happily ever after. All gone. A few tears leaked out of my eyes, but I smacked them away. I’d done my crying on the way to the newspaper. I wouldn’t do any more.

  I dug through one of the boxes, found some wrinkled sweats, and walked into the bedroom. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror over the dresser. My auburn hair stuck out at funny angles. Dark purple circles ringed my eyes. Pain and anger burned in the blue depths. I looked more than a little crazy. I felt that way too.

  To top it off, I still wore my wedding dress, although I’d chucked the unbearable shoes hours ago. I smoothed down the ruined gown. The wear and tear of the day had turned the snow-white fabric a bland beige. The diamond in my engagement ring sparkled in the dim light. I’d been so happy the night Matt had put it on my finger. So sure of my love for him, and his for me. Now the ring just reminded me of broken promises, shattered dreams, and my own blind stupidity.

  I yanked the ring off, marched over to the dresser, and pulled open a door on my jewelry box. I stared at the ring a moment, then stuffed it in the back of the drawer, and shut it. I turned a key, locking it away.

  I won’t be fooled again, I vowed. Not by anyone. Never again.

  Excerpt from HOT MAMA,

  Book Two in the Bigtime paranormal romance series

  PART ONE—WEDDING BELLS

  Chapter One

  My wedding day.

  It was supposed to be the happiest day of my life. A time of joy and celebration and new beginnings. The day every girl dreams of from the time she’s old enough to play dress-up in her mother’s clothes.

  It was exactly that sort of day.

  Joy. Hope. New beginnings.

  But it wasn’t mine.

  Carmen Cole twirled in front of the full-length mirror. Her white satin wedding dress swung out in an arc then gathered back in on itself. Thousands of crystals dotted the fitted bodice and full skirt, giving the dress a shimmering, ethereal air. A matching crystal necklace sparkled like a ring of stars around her neck.