Magic and Moonlight
Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G9CYJKN1/
Synopsis
There is magic in the Moonstone necklace Jenny wears… if she will only believe it.
It will take a gorgeous man who is also a werewolf to point this out, and make Jenny believe in Miracles.
Excerpt
Jenny fingered the stone pendant in her pocket absently. As her fingers met with the smooth, almost translucent surface and she thought about the man’s eyes, a sudden flash of light lit up the area around her, changing morning filtered sunlight to the brightness of mid-day for two seconds, maybe more. Brighter than a camera’s flash attachment, the momentary illumination blinded Jenny, and she had to blink slowly to get her vision back. Jenny turned to her friends intending to ask them what the flare of light was… and found herself alone.
“Okay. Not funny. Come out,” she called.
There was no reply and no sound of feet moving in another direction. Among the brush, so high up in the mountains, she’d have heard a pin drop. Hell, she heard her own sharp intake of breath and spun around in a full circle searching for her friends.
“Really. Not funny,” she shouted.
A Warning Chill
Despite the summer warmth in Arizona and the distance they had hiked so far, a chill cooled the back of her neck. Jenny shivered and again touched the pendant she had stuffed in her pocket for comfort.
When she looked up again, the strange man with the dark hair was standing where shadows met with the morning light. Jenny was shocked to see him. The moment was awkward. Silence seemed to go on forever.
“I’ve misplaced my friends,” Jenny finally said as a hysterical laugh threatened to work its way up her throat. This guy could be anybody. He might be a criminal or worse, and she was now alone on a rocky hillside about a mile from their rented cabin.
“Well, I’ll be going,” Jenny added without moving or taking her eyes from the guy’s murky outline beneath the kind of sparse desert trees that clung to the hillside for dear life and hid his face from view.
“Yes. That’s best.” He spoke in a mesmerizingly deep and masculine voice with no breathing deficit in it, but that produced a deficit in hers.
“Okay,” Jenny said without setting a foot on the downward path she had just climbed. Instead, she asked curiously, “Why is it best?”
It actually was a trait of hers to stand up to a challenge.
The stranger took a moment to reply. “Haven’t you heard this is a dangerous mountain?”
Jenny smiled. “Danger? That’s not on my map.”
She wondered if the guy was serious.
“Have a good day,” she then offered, and backed away from where the man stood, afraid to turn her back with him so close, which she supposed was actually quite dangerous on two fronts: slipping on the steep trail, and continuing to face a man she didn’t know in a lonely location.
The stranger said nothing in reply.
Alone
Overcome with a sense of abandonment, Jenny finally spun around and trotted down the path, refusing to give the man the satisfaction of slowing to glance behind her. She moved as fast as the narrow trail allowed, and slipped twice on the steeper slopes until she was able to see the roof of the cabin some time later. Completely winded, and with a stitch in her side, she slid on a loose patch of scrabble and landed on her backside with a view of the cabin’s chimney and the dusty front yard.
“Damn.”
Getting up slowly, she brushed off her pants. “Dangerous, huh? Maybe you’re the danger,” she said aloud to no one.
Speaking to herself was another habit she’d fallen into.
“Danger? Maybe so,” the stranger said from behind her, and a ripple of fear shot through Jenny from head to toe.