Maureen Atsali
ABOUT ME
ABOUT ME
STORY BY Maureen Atsali
Daddy's Coming Home For Christmas
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On Christmas Eve, six years ago, Rafael left me to take an internship abroad, not knowing I was pregnant with his child. I was alone, and desperate, but my best friend, his younger brother Gabe, offered to marry me, and give me and my child a home. Now Rafael is coming home.
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Good Men Are Like Unicorns
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"My grandmother always said that good men are like unicorns," my friend Dallas said, as she took another sip of the Whiskey Sour in her hand. "They are magical, mythical creatures that only exist in dreams and fairy tales." "Amen," I said in agreement, raising a cold, frosty daiquiri in salute. I was practically an expert. I had married my unicorn, my high school sweetheart, and after a short, disastrous marriage, I had divorced him to follow my own dreams. I could say with absolute certainty that unicorns were really arrogant, controlling ogres in disguise. Unicorns don't exist. Not for me anyway. But the chemistry, THAT was real. And when I met Japheth again after five years apart, the sparks were still there. One slightly tipsy moment of indiscretion landed me right back in the arms of my ex, who seemed bound and determined to prove that good men DO exist.
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Inseparable
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“Oh my god, they are so handsome!” “I heard they haven’t found their mates yet.” “Why couldn’t it be me?” Now I was even more curious. When they went out with the plates, I tiptoed up to the swinging door. While everyone was distracted by the servers, I pushed the door open just a crack and peeked through into the formal dining room. By bad luck, the two men in question had their backs to me. They sat straight and tall, one in a dark red shirt, one in a light blue shirt. The red shirt had long hair pulled back in a pony tale. The blue shirt had a short, deliberately messy style. I couldn’t tell much from the backs of them except they seemed well muscled. I was just about to back out of the door when I was hit with the most tantalizing odor. It overpowered the spicy scent of my jambalaya and made me almost dizzy… I tried to put a name to it… sandalwood, sweet cedar, and sex. Do I even know what sex smells like? I was frozen and couldn’t move from the door. At the same time, the two men stiffened in their chairs and seemed to be looking around in confusion. Luna looked around them and saw me in the door way. Her eyes burned like fire into my skull and I finally snapped out of the trance I was in and slipped back into the kitchen. I was never supposed to be seen in the dining room – so my indiscretion would no doubt earn me a belting later. I went back to the clean up with a heavy heart.
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Love in the Dark
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Everywhere it was the same. Disgruntled citizens were trying to start their cars to no avail. A few vehicles seemed to have died right in the street, barely even pulling off the road before they came to a complete stop. There was yelling and screeching from several apartment buildings, all of them crying over the same things. No heat. No hot water. No cellphones. No radio. He could practically feel the collective anxiety and anger rising around him. The little convenience store on the corner was open, with a sign taped to the door that read "CASH ONLY - CREDIT CARD MACHINE IS DOWN." Seth pushed his way in and picked up a package of donuts. Sadly, there was no coffee available here either, so he settled for a chocolate milk out of the cooler. "Hey Gary," he greeted the man behind the counter. "This is some shit, don't you think?" "Sure is," he rubbed a hand over his head as he counted out change to another customer. "I ain't never seen anything like this." "Me neither." I glanced around at the other customers milling around the store. I lowered my voice and leaned closer. "Listen, if people start acting weird, you better lock up and call it a day." Gary nodded. "Gotcha, Seth." Seth reached into his pocket for his wallet, but Gary waved him off. "It's on the house today." "Sure? Ok thanks man. Take care of yourself." I stepped out of the store, wondering if my presence in uniform would help keep people in line, or if I was making them more nervous. They shifted around me uneasily, making the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. When I got to the station, it was absolute chaos. There were dozens of people in the lobby, shouting complaints and demanding answers, while two officers at the desk helplessly tried to calm them. I stepped into the fray. "Hey, everyone stay calm!" I shouted. "There has been a power outage, and as of now, we are ALL completely in the dark. We do not know anything more than you do." The crowd dithered and moved around me like I wasn't even there. "If you are a person of authority, please step forward. Everyone else, please go home!" There was a lot of grumbling, but most of the people made their way toward the door. A couple of people stubbornly stayed, even though I doubted they were anyone important. I didn't recognize their faces. The two officers behind the desk visibly relaxed. "Thanks, man." Officer Lawrence breathed. "That was getting out of hand." "No kidding. What the hell is going on?" "Damned if we know anything," Officer Green said nervously, "The lights went out, and everything stopped working. The generator won't start, the radios aren't working, every phone in the place is dead, including the landlines. Laptops are dark. Cruisers won't start. All the units are dead in the water." I rubbed my hand over my face. "Who is here?" "Only us, McGreary, and a few guys from the night shift that couldn't get home." Lawrence checked his cellphone again, just to confirm that is really was off. "We figure everybody else is stranded at home. You must have walked in, huh?" "Yeah," I rubbed the back of my neck. I pulled the officers farther away from the people who were still milling in the lobby. "This is bad. Really bad. People are already on edge; I can feel it. One good spark, and this whole town is going to go up like a Roman candle." Green shook his head. "So what do we do?" "Who's the senior officer here now?" "I guess that's McGreary." Lawrence said. Lawrence was just a rookie; he'd been on the force less than a year. "Alright, I'm going to go talk to him. In the meantime, stay calm. Be gentle, but firm with everyone." As I was speaking two more women entered the lobby. "Encourage everyone to go home and wait for news there."
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Almost Stepbrothers
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Since my father died three years ago, my mother has bounced from one boyfriend to the next. When we moved in with Professor Williams, I didn't expect that his two full-grown sons still lived at home. Phoenix seems nice enough, but Jack really doesn't like me. He thinks my mother is a gold-digger, and I'm just her loser, tag-along daughter. I can hardly breathe when I'm around them, and since we live together, I can't escape from their heated stares.
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Borrowed Beauty
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What does it even feel like to be beautiful? My sister Renee is a beauty, for sure. Everybody knows it, and so does she. Did I fail to mention that Renee and I are, emphatically, NOT identical twins? We look nothing alike. She’s gorgeous, petite, delicate, and feminine. All she has to do is blink her big blue eyes, and the world falls at her feet. She is also a bit of a wild child. That is why Father had me chaperone Renee when she decided to head out to Prosperity Springs to meet up with the Salvador Twins. Unless…unless my father was trying to pass us off as a package deal? A two-for-one, twin-on-twin special. The idea made me throw up in my mouth a little bit. I wasn’t interested in finding a mate, or two, or five, or whatever. And those gorgeous guys wouldn’t be interested in Renee’s spare. It would just be an embarrassing situation for everyone involved. Why? Because I’m Olivia, the ugly sister. With Renee filling the center of a sex sandwich, it was pretty clear she didn’t need me around. Hell, even the Alpha had noticed how alluring she was. Of course, the alpha would be charmed by my sister. Of course, his eyes would become heated when they followed that plunging neckline down between her breasts. Every red-blooded man did, and behind his powerful alpha status, Josiah was still just a man. Heck, even hot-blooded women couldn’t avert their eyes from my sister. And I couldn’t avert my eyes from the Alpha.
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Defying the Alpha
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I propped myself up on one arm and looked down at Alpha Aiden. He was still pinned under my body on the floor, watching me with dark, hungry eyes. I licked my lips, which were already swollen from his kisses, and ran a hand through my tangled hair. Despite my mess, I felt beautiful. He made me feel beautiful and desired in ways that my husband, Ellis, never could. I didn't care that what we were doing was very, very wrong. ------ After losing his mate, Alpha Aiden is heartbroken, and on the edge of death, so he appoints his stepson Ellis to be the next leader of the Dark Rising pack. There is just one problem, Ellis is not exactly alpha material. To secure his place as leader of the pack, Ellis enters into an arranged mating with Cecelia Forge, the eldest daughter of the neighboring pack. A submissive Luna is what Ellis wants, but Cecelia is far from being a woman who simply takes orders. Promised to an alpha she has never met, only to discover that he is a fiercely ambitious man, Cecelia Forge finds herself a little too intrigued by the alpha's stepfather, Aiden. Even though he is barely a shadow of his former self, Cecelia cannot help but find Aiden entirely alluring. Will she jeopardize the allegiance that her marriage is meant for? Should she defy a man as dark and dangerous as Ellis? Can she overcome her forbidden desires?
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The Haunting of Westbane
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A group of friends bands together to create a paranormal investigation team in hopes of landing a series on a major network. A representative from the WIC Company approaches them with the opportunity to do an exclusive three-night investigation of their newly aquired property: The notorious Westbane Reformatory School, one of America's most haunted locations. There is an extra reward if the team can discover the whereabouts of a mysterious artifact that may have been lost on the property. Elijah thinks they've finally found their big break, until the lights go out, and the team finds themselves being drawn into the horror of Westbane. The ghost hunters have become the hunted, and not everyone will escape from Westbane alive.
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Eudora's Gift
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Book 1 in the Eudora Series Eudora has been living with her abusive, alcoholic uncle for as long as she can remember. She is bullied at school, and rejected in the community. Her only solace is in the woods, where the trees whisper to her and give her strength and comfort. But since she has turned 18 she has been having strange dreams, of an unfamiliar man in the forest. Her dreams turn into reality, when her substitute English teacher walks in to her life.
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Scorched
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LGBTQ I wasn’t going to admit it to anyone, not even to Molly, but I was one of those fangirls. Well, not a girl, but… I don’t know what it was about him. It was as if he was so much larger than life, that he had his own gravitational pull, and I had gotten sucked into it. That was the only explanation I had for my tendency to stare at him all the time. Sometimes, like right now, Jackson would look up like he felt me staring, and meet my eyes. He never said anything, he just stared back at me until I looked away, trying to pretend like I wasn’t a total weirdo. That’s the thing about Jackson. Even though he’s got this bad-boy rep, and he’s all dark and moody, he’s never been mean to me. I’ve never actually seen him be mean to anybody. That’s part of the appeal. He pulled off “Bad Boy” without being an asshole.
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