Showing results by narrator "Shirl Rae" in All Categories

Mirror, mirror, who's the fairest of them all? I still cringe when I hear that line. A fairy tale that had girls pretending they were the fairest, the most beautiful, and the most entitled. A fairy tale most couldn't grow out of turned my haunted childhood memories into a living nightmare. Girls who grew up believing that pile of garbage became the meanest of all mean girls. And those mean girls were right. It was a line meant for all the beautiful people in the world, and I knew the answer would never be me.

Layton Morris and his brother Mike grew up not knowing what it would be like to live in a normal home. With no running water or electricity in their home and no parents around to protect them, they quickly learned how to survive and depend only on each other. When a tragic accident took Mike away from Layton and the only other person that he ever let into his heart walked away from him, leaving his heart shattered, Layton focused all of his time and energy into the ranch he and his brother dreamed of.

My biological clock just exploded. Eighteen months. That's how long I have to make a baby happen before it becomes one more broken dream. Fate has a sick sense of humor, though. Its name is Hayden Shaw. Yes, the Hayden Shaw. Billionaire developer, scandalously gorgeous, his hard-headed ego only eclipsed by his enormous...reputation. He needs a bride to fool the world. I need a baby. It's simple business. Strictly professional.

"You can either choose love or you can choose hate, because where one lives, the other will die." Kidnapped a day short of her twenty-fourth birthday, Skye Sedgewick struggles to uncover her captor's motives. Damian Caballero is not only impossible to read, but also dark, troubled, and unflinchingly brutal. For twenty-one days, Skye holds on. But on Day Twenty-Two, she yearns for the sweet slumber of death. Because on Day Twenty-Two, Skye realizes that her only way out means certain death for one of the two men she loves.

Navy SEAL Maverick Hart has everything. Women want him. Grown men idolize him. The job, the glory - it's all his. Not because it's handed to him but because he works hard for it. The second his sights lock on something, he owns it-or destroys it. Windsor Forbes only takes calculated risks in her profession and in her personal life. After being left at the altar by the only person she's ever loved, the very last thing she's looking for is a relationship - especially the insane brand an arrogant Navy SEAL is offering.

On the eve of her 18th birthday, Nora Leston meets Julian Esguerra, and her life changes forever. Stolen away to a private island, she finds herself at the mercy of a powerful, dangerous man whose touch makes her burn...a man whose obsession with her knows no bounds.

Madeleine Becker's parents died when she was ten years old. Ripped from her home and everything that she has ever loved, she is forced to start all over again. The only way for her to move on is to build walls around her heart and keep everyone at a safe distance. Her logic: she can't get hurt if she doesn't fall in love.That theory is blown to pieces when she meets Reid Connely during her freshman year at college. He is gorgeous and darkly mysterious.

Once upon a cold, dark night, a Russian killer stole me from an alley. I’m dangerous, but he is lethal. I escaped once. He won’t let me do it twice. The revenge is his. The betrayal is mine. But so are the lies to protect the ones I love. We’re cut from the same twisted cloth. Both merciless. Both damaged. In his embrace, I find hell and heaven, his cruelly tender touch destroying and uplifting me at once. They say a cat has nine lives, but an assassin has just one. And Yan Ivanov now owns mine.

Forced to join a secret intelligence agency at a young age, Russian interpreter/spy Yulia Tzakova is no stranger to dangerous men. But she's never known one as ruthless and compelling as Lucas Kent. The hard-edged mercenary frightens her, yet she's drawn to him - a man she has no choice but to betray.

Have you ever felt like you were living your life for a future that was predetermined? Like there was some bigger picture you just prayed you would someday see clearly? That picture has been crystal clear to me since I was old enough to recognize it for just what it was. Or, I should say, recognize him for who he was.

Fifteen years ago, Celeste was eighteen, in love, and on the honor roll. Then she got pregnant. Now, a widow and a single mom, she does her best to give her daughter, Sabrina, a good life. But something is missing in her world. Or someone. Back when he taught her math, Celeste didn't have a crush on Mr. Travis, but that doesn't mean she's not hot for teacher now or able to ignore her rampant fantasies.

Courtney Will always dreamed of finding her Prince Charming and living happily ever after. However, her dreams were shattered one fateful night when her prince turned out to be her worst nightmare. Reed Moore's past filled his world with guilt and anger. Then, a mistake in college deepened these feelings. Fearing he will one day repeat his father's mistakes with the woman he loves, Reed has vowed to never give his heart to anyone.

Kindergarten teacher Jenna Justice has lived her life by the book - right school, right career, right image. Too bad the townsfolk of Diamond, Kansas, have a hard time forgetting that she wasn't born on the right side of the tracks. The only way J. J. can land her dream job is to keep her wild side buried and her reputation clean. But when she finds herself in another town, one without prying eyes, she allows herself one fantasy-filled night with her best friend's bad boy brother.

He was just a hookup. I wasn't supposed to see him again. He wasn't supposed to be my boss. Or Dad's new business partner. We weren't supposed to keep doing this, night after sheet-clenching, heart-pounding, lip-biting night.

Once, Lucus Shaw was my everything. First kiss. First surrender. First man to promise me a ring, children, a life together. I remember his rogue smirk, his soul stinging kiss, the blistering words that always made him a little dangerous. I gave him my body for one insatiable night. He gave me secrets, heartbreak, and hatred. Friends to lovers to mortal enemies. Our tragic destiny. But I survived. Adapted. Moved on. Fate doesn't care. Luke's back, and I have to pretend we still have a Cinderella romance to save my career.

Captor and captive. Lovers. Soul mates. We're all that and more. We thought we were past the worst of it. We thought we finally had a chance. We thought wrong. We're Nora and Julian, and this is our story.

I never thought this could happen to me. I never imagined one chance meeting on the eve of my eighteenth birthday could change my life so completely. Now I belong to him. To Julian. To a man who is as ruthless as he is beautiful - a man whose touch makes me burn. A man whose tenderness I find more devastating than his cruelty.

Nate: It's nearly impossible to be surrounded by love but not understand it. My parents, my sister, and just about everyone around us has no trouble accepting that love. To give your trust to someone else and believe they would die before hurting you. I've witnessed it - I've seen the power of it - but I've also seen the pain. Because for me, I've only loved someone I could never have, and my biggest fear is that by giving her my love, all I would do is ruin her.

I'm starting to want them both, not just my protector... the villain as well. After an eviction notice and one too many apple martinis, I wake, stripped bare and alone in a cell. No, wait, not alone. My evil garbage fire ex, Andrew, who suggested he'd let me stay with him "for a price" is here, too. He's the whole reason I lost my job. My head is throbbing, my vision fuzzy.

Army combat veteran and registered nurse Erin Olszewski's most deeply held values were put to the test when she arrived as a travel nurse at Elmhurst Hospital in the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic. After serving in Iraq, she was back on the front lines - and this time, she found, the situation was even worse. Rooms were filthy, nurses were lax with sanitation measures, and hospital-acquired cases of COVID-19 were spreading like wildfire.