Storiebook Charm (A Spellbound Novel 1) Read online

  Then Delaney returns to San Julio, and the past comes rushing back… along with the silent echoes of that night so long ago. Livestock are dying. Some say coyote, but others whisper another darker word. Chupacabra. Bloodsucker.

  The past hasn’t disappeared – nor has the instinctive desire that snaps and crackles between Delaney and Vic. And as those emotions ignite, so does the evil that hibernated for the last twelve years. The evil that waited for Delaney to return to San Julio… and to Vic Vargas.

  National Bestselling author Melissa Bourbon brings a dark twist to a Latin-American urban legend guaranteed to keep you up into the wee hours. With riveting suspense, a sigh-worthy romance with a heart-stopping hero, beautiful writing, and characters that jump off the page, this thrilling romantic suspense novel will have you believing in things that go bump in the night.

  Silent Obsession

  Johanna Rios is a woman whose past has come back to haunt her.

  The ghost of la Llorona is said to haunt the riverbanks, always searching for her drowned child. She also haunts high school teacher Johanna Rios, whose own mother believed so deeply in the legend she tried to drown her daughters. And now the ghost has become real, a young woman murdered, and the safe world Jo created is falling apart.

  Since returning home from his last tour of duty to become a school principal, Ray Vargas has fought his attraction for his employee, the sensual woman who’d once been the girl next door. But the Llorona Killer will not stop until he claims his final victim—Johanna—and Ray will do anything to protect the woman he’s come to love.

  With a serial killer out to prove the curse is real, will Ray and Johanna’s future be drowned in the ghostly waters of the past? Or will the power of their love give them the strength to stop a killer…and heal their wounded hearts…?

  Read Deadly Legends with Kindle Unlimited.

  Keep going for to read a sample of Living the Vida Lola.

  Living the Vida Lola, book one in the Lola Cruz Mystery Series

  Prologue

  When I was fourteen years old, I snapped pictures of Jack Callaghan doing the horizontal salsa in the backseat of a car with Greta Pritchard.

  That’s when I knew for sure I’d grow up to be a private eye.

  I’d stooped to low levels in order to spy on him: disguising myself as a substitute custodian and pushing a mop cart into the boys’ locker room as the team dressed for baseball practice; borrowing my uncle’s car and following Jack at a safe distance as he went to work at the music store where he gave guitar lessons; and even calling him up, pretending to be a girl he knew, and making a fake date with him at an outdoor café.

  I had one goal: to surveil and take photos of Jack for my own personal enjoyment.

  It had taken a month of steadfast determination, and at least four rolls of film, before I’d captured images of Jack that were still burned into my memory: him, messing around—no, having sex—with Greta while he was supposedly dating Laura something-or-other. My mother called him un mujeriego—a player. I didn’t care. I just wanted him to do to me what he’d done to Greta.

  Back in high school, Jack and my brother, Antonio, made their way through the cheerleaders, then the Future Female Leaders of America. But Jack didn’t give me, little Lola Cruz, the time of day.

  “I’ll never get to do that with him!” I’d wailed to my sister, Gracie, when I showed her the pictures I had of him and Greta.

  She’d looked longingly at the photos. “Yeah,” she sighed heavily. “But at least you can look at him whenever you want and imagine.” Then she got serious. “And, more importantly, you discovered what you’re good at. Now you won’t be stuck working at Abuelita’s for the rest of your life.”

  Gracie was right. If it hadn’t been for my relentless pursuit of Jack Callaghan, I might never have discovered my proclivity for surveillance and undercover work.

  My favorite picture of Jack, taken that fateful night, still had a place in my dresser drawer, fifteen years later. He stood bare-chested, his business with Greta done, a look of contentment on his face. The edge of his mouth lifted in the smallest smile. He was just seventeen years old, and his smoky blue eyes seemed trained directly on me, as if he were staring straight through the shrubs to where I was hidden.

  I was pretty sure Jack Callaghan didn’t know I’d been a teenage stalker, and even though I still had a secret longing to feel him pressed against me, my embarrassment at invading his privacy and my anger that I’d never be anything more to him than Antonio’s little sister had kept me far, far away from him. I avoided him at all costs so that I wouldn’t break down and confess in a moment of guilty Catholic repentance.

  I’d been in and out of relationships, but those old photos of Jack reminded me of what I’d lost, even though I’d never had it. Or him. He was still my favorite fantasy, as well as a reminder of how I’d gotten to where I was now.

  Still, while Jack—and his untamed libido—had never given me an orgasm (well, at least not person-to-person), he had done something earthmoving for me. I was Dolores Cruz, aka Lola, PI. Thanks to him, I’d answered my calling.

  Chapter 1

  Caliente. Hotter than hell. There’s no other way to describe Sacramento summers. I checked my reflection in the window as I approached Camacho and Associates, the small PI firm where I worked. I frowned and flicked at a stringy strand of hair. What the hell. Being a black belt in kung fu did not, apparently, prevent me from completely wilting. Nothing—not my ability to kick ass or even my eighty-five-dollar coppery salon highlights—could withstand triple-digit valley temperatures. And it was barely ten in the morning.

  An alarm beeped as I opened the front door. Inside the office, I wiped the dust from a leaf of the sad little artificial palm that sat on the floor against the wall. It looked shabby, which was no small feat for a plant that didn’t need sun, water, or tender love and care. After four years, I would have thought my ritualistic token of attention would spruce it up.

  It hadn’t.

  I waved to the camera that was mounted in the ceiling corner. It was no secret that my arrival had been monitored. Neil Lashby was the video go-to guy of the operation. He owned more cameras than I did Victoria’s Secret lingerie. Sorta frightening when you thought about it.

  I walked through the lobby—which really wasn’t a lobby—and passed into the main conference room. Reilly Fuller, our six-hour-a-day secretary and a full-fledged—not to mention full-figured—J. Lo wannabe, had a little table in one corner of the conference room where she spent her time typing reports, transcribing tapes, filing, and doing whatever other menial jobs the associates handed her. Being a licensed PI, I was above her on the food chain. But I liked to type my own reports and do my own filing, and as a result, she liked me. Important, since Neil Lashby, one of the agency’s associates, was a nonverbal, ex-football player, ex-cop Neanderthal-type PI; Sadie Metcalf, the second associate, was hot and cold toward me and I hadn’t yet figured out a rhyme or reason to her temperature changes; and the boss, Manny Camacho, was, well, he was just plain dangerous—hot in a dark, sinister, attractive-to-every-woman-with-a-pulse kind of way.

  Reilly was a good ally.

  I raised a questioning eyebrow at her as I passed her desk—as much a reaction to her newly dyed blue hair as to get the scoop on the new case we were meeting about. “Hey, Reilly.”

  She did a complicated maneuver at me with her own mousy brown brows and mouthed something. I peered at her, but try as I might, I couldn’t decipher her silent words.

  She bugged her eyes, clamped her mouth shut, and went back to her computer when Manny walked out of his private office. He approached the conference table, a brown file folder clutched to his side. His mouth was drawn into its typical tight line, his square jaw interrupted by a slight vertical cleft. Manny’s crew cut hair was the color of dark roast coffee, which pretty much described his personality, too. He wasn’t quite bitter, but he wasn’t smooth either. Even the scalp that showed through his close-
cut hair was burnished. He was intense and needed a bit of cream to mellow the flavor. Unfortunately, he and his cream had divorced.

  And that’s all I knew about his personal life.

  The associates had already gathered around the conference table. “Morning,” I said, nodding to all two of them.

  He checked his watch. “Cutting it close, Dolores.” His deep voice held the hint of an accent. The way he said my name—low, gravelly long o and rolling r—made my legs wobble. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would sound like if he called me Lola instead.

  Breathing deeply and pushing the wayward thought away, I mustered a smile and glanced at the wall clock. The minute hand clicked up to ten o’clock. I felt my eyebrows pull together, and I pressed my fingers to my forehead to smooth the creases away. “Right on time, actually.”

  His jaw was set, and I could tell he was clenching his teeth, holding his tension deep in his bones. He held out a file folder to me. Something about me bugged him—I just didn’t know what.

  I took the folder from his grasp and slipped into a vacant chair at the conference table. Truth was, I didn’t really want to know.

  Sadie sat directly across from me. As usual, her strawberry blonde hair was styled to perfection, a precise work of casual messiness. “Dolores,” she said. “You really should arrive a few minutes early for meetings.”

  Okay, so today was a cold day for Sadie. God, she acted like she owned the place. Why did Manny put up with it? I flashed her an eat shit smile and then opened my file folder.

  The agency’s standard information sheet was secured to the folder with metal prongs. I looked at the photo that was clipped to the top and ticked my observations off in my head. Female, mid to late forties, dark brown hair with a tuft of gray springing from her temple, deep eye sockets with nearly translucent irises that hinted at the color of sand, full pink lips, pale skin. Despite her tired look, she was still stunning. Exotic.

  Manny sat down and slid a pile of papers to the center of the table. I snatched the last sheet from the table as he said, “Missing person.”

  I shifted my focus back to the file folder.

  “Emily Diggs, age forty-two, mother of three: daughter Allison, twenty-one years; son, Garrett, eighteen; son, Sean, six. Last seen on the morning of August twenty-third.”

  My heart thumped. A missing mother. Getting emotionally involved in a case was Manny’s number-one taboo. It was also the first rule I always broke. After five seconds, this woman was just Emily, no last name needed. Her haunting face burned behind my eyelids. READ MORE…

  Find Melissa Online

  VISIT Melissa’s website

  http://melissabourbon.com

  JOIN her online book club at

  https://www.facebook.com/groups/BookWarriors/

  FOLLOW her on Facebook at

  facebook.com/AuthorMelissaBourbon.WinnieArcher

  About the Author

  Melissa Bourbon Ramirez is the national bestselling author of seventeen mystery books, including the Lola Cruz Mysteries, A Magical Dressmaking Mystery series, and the Bread Shop Mysteries, written as Winnie Archer. She is a former middle school English teacher who gave up the classroom in order to live in her imagination full time. Melissa, a California native who has lived in Texas and Colorado, now calls the southeast home. She hikes, practices yoga, cooks, and is slowly but surely discovering all the great restaurants in the Carolinas. Since four of her five amazing kids are living their lives, scattered throughout the country, her dogs, Bean, the pug, Dobby, the chug, and Jasper, a cattle dog/lab keep her company while she writes. Melissa lives in North Carolina with her educator husband, Carlos, and their youngest son. She is beyond fortunate to be living the life of her dreams.