Passions
Available on Audio!
Paranormal Romance
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Passions has been a stretch for me because I don’t particularly care for vampires and this will be the only novel I ever write where the main conflict includes a vampire. I have vampires featured in other books, but they aren’t in the lime light like Gavin is.
The inspiration for such a story came from some deep-rooted desire to be a full-time, stay at home writer. That, and I’d love to own a cabin out in the middle of the woods that I could spend the weekends in while I write away from the distractions. Not only that, but I had this creepy scene in my head of a girl sleeping and a man watching over her late at night. But, this wasn’t in a perverted way. He was protecting her as he had always done ever since she was a child. I expanded that idea and wondered “What if this guy was immortal some way, like a vampire, and he knew her because he lived in the attic or basement or something?” And there were planted the seeds that grew into this challenging novel. I hope I have done the two characters justice and not stepped on any toes of vampire lovers out there.
Excerpt from Chapter 1
Chloe was still sitting in her car fifteen minutes after pulling up the gravel drive. She stared out her windshield to the cabin before her, still in disbelief that she was actually here.
It seemed only a few days ago that she received the call from her aunt’s attorney when it actually had been over a month. Once the grief subsided from the news that her favorite – and only – aunt had passed away in her sleep, Chloe was thrown into a whirlwind of life changes. She regretted nothing regarding her decision to move into the cabin.
Along with a sizable trust fund that her aunt had been secretly stashing away into for decades, she received this cabin. It had to be at least a couple hundred years old but she could tell it had been renovated within the last few years. No doubt to accommodate tourists who wanted to rent out the cozy cabin for their vacations. When her aunt had been told she could no longer live by herself, she had moved into an assisted living home in Savannah while renting out her former home here in the Blue Ridge Mountains.
Chloe immediately told the real estate company that she had no intention of letting the home remain available for weekend getaways. They were also dismayed to hear of her aunt’s passing. She was a beloved woman in the small town of Carter Lake. Everyone knew her and the cabin well. It was old enough to be declared a historic landmark, but Chloe had other intentions for the home.
She took a deep breath and finally slid out of her silver sedan. Her stylish leather boots crunched against the gravel walkway as she made her way slowly towards the front steps. She had taken several trips to Carter Lake since the news about her aunt, but she had never stepped foot into the cabin. Her scouting trips had been consumed by settling affairs with the realtors and acquainting herself with the town a couple of miles away in the valley.
Carter Lake was a modest town with only one school, one grocery store, a bank, a few diners, a gas station, and city hall. The town had grown since she was a child, but not by much. The mere presence of an ATM was a major improvement.
The cabin was quaint, sitting upon a sloping hill that crested to the right of the house. The pathway had been leveled for the convenience of the temporary tenants, but Chloe remembered a time when she had a hard time keeping her balance while making the trip from the car to the porch. But that was many years ago.
Childhood images flashed in her mind of winter afternoons spent riding a plastic trash can lid from the front steps down to the creek that bordered the cabin’s property to the south. Her girlish squeals could probably be heard for miles around as she steered her makeshift toboggan around tall pines and fallen logs.
The porch had been reconstructed, the old squeaking floorboards replaced by new planks. A carved log railing with balusters now skirted the edge of the porch, where it used to be open years before, giving the cabin an even more rustic, homey feel.
Even the column supports for the second story had been replaced with brand new beams, free of carpenter bee holes and jagged cracks in the sides. The old rusted tin roof had been refreshed, too.
The second story edifice hadn’t changed much, still retaining the two dormers that jutted out from the upstairs bedrooms. However, Chloe knew that behind those lacy curtained windows would be a whole new interior, much different than what she knew before.
Such improvements were necessary for safety regulations, but a part of Chloe wished that everything could have remained the same; a little piece of her family’s heritage serving as a time capsule for her in this dismal hour of her life. Instead, there were only the memories of its former self to remind her of a time when she didn’t have to care about anything beyond having a good time.
Things had certainly changed since she last visited in her youth. But then again, Chloe had changed a lot, too.
She fished out a single brass key from her jean’s pocket and unlocked the front door. The lock was new, too, sparkling like it had been recently polished.
But she froze there, her hand gripping the cool golden knob. This shouldn’t have been so scary. Chloe had faced worse things. Why should this place, an icon of her childhood, prove so terrifying?
She steeled herself, squared her shoulders, and opened the door.
Her chest squeezed tight as her dark hazel eyes surveyed the inside.
Stepping into the living room, she breathed in the earthy scent of wood and musty furniture. One thing she was glad for was the fact that the cabin came fully furnished. This was a relief, because she would have hated to ship her apartment furniture from Atlanta. She doubted a moving truck, no matter how small, would have been able to traverse the miles of winding mountain roads to make it to the cabin.
Even she had a hard time making the trek in her car. She had made a mental note earlier that she would need to get a more efficient vehicle such as a jeep or truck to get up these steep, winding turns. The idea of her, a born and bred city girl, driving a truck made her shiver. What a change.
Light streamed in through the front windows, filtered only by the gauzy curtains that framed the panels. None of the furniture was the same. The couch was no longer the vintage sofa with coarse cushions, but a piece reminiscent of cabin life with a carved log frame, much like the balusters on the front porch, lacquered to a smooth finish.
The upholstery was a dark burgundy, almost brown hue, with a throw blanket draped over the back. It was woven, depicting a moose and its offspring in the early winter forest. Chloe recognized it as something anyone could buy from Wal-Mart, not the hand-sewn quilt that her aunt had cherished as a family heirloom.
Catty-corner from the sofa was a single armchair made in the same fashion, and both were pivoted around the fireplace, the focal point of the room. Only a coffee table separated them. Underneath the living room furniture was a thick rug spread over the hardwood floor. The patterns on the rug reminded Chloe of Native American art with their symmetrical shapes and vibrant colors.
The stone hearth of the fireplace was just as she remembered. At least one thing hadn’t changed. She used to spend hours sitting by the warm fire, listening to stories the adults shared and roasting marshmallows after supper.
Chloe’s eye was drawn to a corner stone on the hearth that was cracked down the center. The ghost of a smile passed over her lips as she remembered how it became chipped like that. She must have been only five years old at the time, playing with the fire poker while her mother and aunt were baking in the kitchen. Chloe, though a small child, got too rowdy in her pretend game and smacked the stone, causing it to split. Her mother was furious, but her sweet aunt only laughed. She could still hear that bubbly laugh echoing in her mind.
The same stones that made the hearth also decorated the flue, climbing up the wall to the ceiling. Just above the firebox opening was the hardwood mantle, decorated with a stock photo picture frame and a stuffed black bear in the corner.
Chloe noticed that the real estate company had failed to take most of their decorations, and she was fine with that. It made the place feel a little more like home and not as barren.
Her cell phone buzzed in her pocket, shattering the stillness inside the cabin with her violin concerto ringtone. Chloe jumped at the sudden noise and fished it out to see her mother’s smiling face on the screen. She bit her lips together, debating whether or not to tap the green button. If she did, it’d mean spending the next hour or two talking when she had a car to unload. Not only that, but she hadn’t told her mother about this huge decision.
“Sorry, mom,” she muttered. “I’m not ready to chat.”
She let the call go and ignored the voicemail notification. Her mother was probably just checking on her, wanting to know if she was all right after everything that happened in Atlanta. Chloe wasn’t ready to talk about that either. She needed to continue down memory lane for a little longer.
(End of Excerpt)