WHAT’S NEXT FOR CARL TANNER?
Tanner, doing his best to keep a fragile, tumultuous romance on an even keel, returns in his next Omega assignment on the trail of a world-class scammer who may have gone lethal. Whose wife claims to be a woman who Tanner once knew very, very well. Do memories of past delights translate into present-day attraction? Here’s the first scene:
KILL OR QUIT
A Carl Tanner suspense-romance
Carl Tanner stepped back into the past on Madeira Beach, just a couple of blocks north of John’s Pass. He’d gone around the side of the small frame cottage, past the articulated tin Santa in a grass skirt, and down the narrow mulched path bordered by ranks of bromeliads.
The path opened into a large back yard, not a piece of grass visible. One hundred percent mulch. Above, palms and pines kept the space shaded from the fierce mid-day sun. It might be February, but Florida still steamed. He couldn’t see across the space for what hung there.
Bright fabric fluttered from a dozen lines rigged side-to-side on the fifty-foot lot. Just fabric, yards of it, sheer and not sheer, in a rainbow of colors. Tanner, in need of some beauty after his last job, stood and let the color and motion wash over him. A pair of sandal-clad feet trotted busily along one row, and he heard the feet’s owner chattering to someone in Spanish. The curse of Bluetooth: your kids could always find you when they ran out of money.
“Ola,” he called..
The feet changed direction and a short, curvaceous woman with long black braids popped out from between two rows. Her dress almost matched the fabric flapping around here. She smiled and her cheeks plumped.
“Si, señor?”
“Buenos dias, señorita. I’m looking for Jim Flannery, miss. Is he here?” No point anyone knowing he spoke the lingo.
“Señor Jim is not here. Sorry.” She’d spent a lot of time up in New Jersey. “But his wife’s in the cabin.” She motioned beyond the last of the lines. “Just knock and she’ll answer.”
He followed the pointing finger past the curtain of sapphire and indigo silk to a long, whitewashed, shed-roofed building whose front wall was a hodge-podge of salvaged wood-frame windows. Some were open, some fixed panes. The door was solid, with a shiny double lock. Silly, considering the windows. He smelled a faint chemical odor as the breeze brushed by. From inside came the strains of one of his least favorite pieces of music: Bolero.
A small sign hung on the hinge side of the door: Mariposa. A butterfly, done in foggy never-in-nature shades, was painted behind the letters.
He looked in. The wood-floored building was deeper than he’d figured, maybe twenty feet. Twenty by thirty-five, size of his apartment. What he could see of the back wall had only a few high narrow windows, leaving that area in relative gloom.
Long tables stretched side to side, an echo of the outside lines. Fabric hung from rods chained to the ceiling. Most of it was white or ivory, glimmering, swaying. He loved the sound and feel of silk. Unless it had been looped around his neck and pulled tight. There were hundreds of yards in there, he guessed. This was a serious operation, a big investment.
Bolero slogged on. He stopped nodding his head to it. Even very old habits died hard. At least he wasn’t fucking to it. Always drove him nuts when the music came before he did.
He discarded the memories and knocked.
“In a minute,” a woman shouted. “I’ve got my hands full!”
The hairs rose on the back of his neck. That voice. That smoky, sexy voice. Could it be Karen? The wild woman of his Bolero nightmares? He stared through a window, watching several figures moving in the interior, any clarity lost between layers of fabric.
“I'm coming!”
He’d heard those those two words before, under somewhat happier circumstances…
Could it be Karen? Hell, why not? The woman had always known where to find trouble. But hadn’t Karen died in an automobile accident over ten years ago?
Q: Why is there no more?
A: Because I haven’t written it yet.
I’m busy on The Man Who Hated Christmas, a real romance starring billionaire natural-food baron and Grinch-wannabe Lorne Foyle, and the kind-hearted, exhausted homeless shelter manager Mary Lynn Portman. Meet Fingers Nugent, eight year-old master pickpocket. And Cassandra Foyle, poor little rich girl. And Barney Heitz, who plays Santa Claus with a yarmulke. Get the whole story in mid-December, at Amazon.
BY SHAYLA McBRIDE
A is for AUTHOR, 333 Must-know Tips for Early Writers. A candid, not-very-reverent, non-fiction guide for new writers. Kick-start your career in genre fiction with this invaluable resource specifically designed to address basic questions and problems of novice fiction writers. Available in digital form; trade paperback through Amazon.
SONORA HEAT, the first Kyle Branson novella, suspense with not much romance. Branson, retired U. S. Army, works for a former CO’s security firm, doing what he does best: making things right. A simple, last-minute Mexico assignment is turned inside-out when an impetuous girl involves herself in Brandon’s anti-narco mission into the deadly Sonora Desert.
THE MAN WHO HATED CHRISTMAS, novella, a real holiday romance between a powerful man who’s shut his heart away and a determined woman with heart to spare. Due out mid-December 2018.
BARON’S GOLD, full-length novel, first in the Barons of Key West series. Available mid-2018. Meet the fun, feisty Barons, sixth-generation Conchs whose exploits, both horizontal and vertical, are the stuff of legend even on an island stuffed with legends. Charter boat captain Bo Baron, elder of the unruly clan, goes missing, and his kid brother Jake takes leave from the Navy to investigate. Margo Hollander, Bo’s girlfriend in their teens, returns to Key West to heal from a disastrous marriage. When the two meet after twenty years, will their decade age-difference matter? Sur out mid-2018.