Free Read: Chapter Two of THE BEGINNING (Prequel to HOLD ON TO ME) Now Available!

Chapter Two of The Beginning, the prequel to my December release Hold On to Me, available exclusively to my newsletter group, is now live!

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I'm including a snippet of The Beginning for your reading pleasure.

The Beginning
A Prequel to Hold On to Me
Coming December 11, 2007 from Samhain Publishing

CHAPTER TWO

It was done.

She’d done it, he was gone, it was over.

There was nothing left.

On a chilly wind, night sounds drifted up from the courtyard. Caitlin Falconetti pulled her robe more closely about her. A hard knot tightened her throat, but really, no tears remained. There was simply…nothing.

She’d brought her things out to the balcony of the apartment she shared with Gina Bocaccio, her partner from the FBI, hoping to work, avoiding sleep, avoiding what waited for her when she closed her eyes. However, she couldn’t concentrate, could only keep reliving that final meeting in vivid, sickening detail. He’d looked like she’d kicked him, once the realization of what she was saying, what she was doing, finally sank in.

Her palms stung and she rubbed a finger over one of the raw half-moons there, where she’d curled her nails so tightly into her skin that one of them had drawn blood. She was grateful for the minor pain. It was bearable.

Somehow, she’d grown accustomed to empty. Empty had been when she was six, the year her mother died and her father had sent her to boarding school. Empty had been afterward, when the periodic visits with her grandparents hadn’t been enough, when she’d cried over returning to school, begging to be allowed to live with them, only to have her pleas smoothed over. Empty had been never quite being able to please her brother, never quite feeling that Vince’s love and approval were hers, sound and secure.

Empty had even been those months after Fuller’s vicious act, filled with loss and pain and grief.

Empty had been waiting for him to come home, trying to put what had happened into words.

She could live with empty. It just was, and she could go on from there.

With him gone and everything finally over...that was different, nothing.

But from nothing, she didn’t see anywhere to go.

**

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