But always being there for others can’t give Johanna everything she needs—it can’t give her Reeve Hartt.Reeve is fierce, beautiful, wounded, elusive; a flame that draws Johanna’s fluttering moth. Johanna is determined to get her, against all advice, and to help her, against all reason. But love isn’t always reasonable, right?In the precarious place where attraction and need collide, a teenager experiences the dark side of a first love, and struggles to find her way into a new light.

    When Neela seeks an emotional connection, Jordan tries to distract her from the darkness of her past with the only thing she has to offer—sex.Neela is struggling to keep her job in an administration that no longer supports her vision while also caring for her aging mother and researching a cure for her mother’s disease. The last thing she needs is a detached, risk-taking police officer looking over her shoulder.

    As Tala’s wedding day approaches, simmering tensions come to boiling point and the pressure mounts for Tala to be true to herself.Moving between the vast enclaves of Middle Eastern high society and the stunning backdrop of London’s West End, I Can’t Think Straight explores the clashes between East and West, love and marriage, conventions and individuality, creating a humorous and tender story of unexpected love and unusual freedoms.

    The trauma of Sydney's dark childhood is something she would do anything to forget. Now only nineteen, she's trying to start over with a new life and a new name, but you can't escape the past...Caroline is the most stunning woman Sydney has ever seen. Every night, Sydney hears her singing from her apartment window, and every night, Sydney's heart aches with something indescribable. When Caroline offers singing lessons, Sydney jumps at the chance to be in the captivating woman's presence...but her desire for Caroline can't be hidden. And Caroline is over twice her age. Through Caroline's gentle instruction, Sydney finds her voice again. The broken girl feels like she's starting to mend. But her infatuation with Caroline is reaching a fevered pitch...Will Sydney lose everything if Caroline finds out the girl is in love with her?Provocative, passionate and achingly raw, THE LONGING, the latest romance from best-selling author Bridget Essex, explores the unbreakable human heart in a love story that you'll never forget.59,500 words

    Now weary of living overseas for one consulting project after another, she’s glad to have two months back in Leland to relax with her aging parents.When she catches a glimpse of her high school friend Justine in the doorway of her elegant home, she is surprised by the warm, famiiar feelings stirred within.Justine Hall made different choices, returning to Leland after college to marry and raise two children. Now divorced, she walks a fine line between sanity and hell, struggling to reconcile the sexuality she can no longer deny with the expectations of motherhood and mores in a small town.

    the grandeur of Ayers Rock... legendary Alice Springs... the Great Barrier Reef... the primal beauty of Cape Tribulation…Two women, from different continents, with different values, collide with spectacular results... UNDER THE SOUTHERN CROSS.American Lee Paynter has built her Small travel agency into an international tour company. Brash, confident, openly lesbian, her great love is her business. Women? They're to enjoy and let go.Alexandra Findlay is pursuing a career in Australian tourism with quiet focus and determination, convinced that her career is the best she can hope for in her arid, closeted emotional existence.Now Alex has been assigned to accompany Lee on the American woman's visit Down Under, to win Lee's company over to Australian tourism. Suddenly Alex's quiet life explodes... And Lee is challenged by a woman unlike any she has ever known.

    She doesn't believe in anything much. Except that people can't be trusted -- certainly not anyone she's ever met. But Jamie knows some things. From experience. She knows if she died, nobody would give a damn. Nobody would even notice. She knows the better she can fight, the safer she'll be. That's why she can't resist the sleek, dark lethality of the weapon -- and the recruiter's promise that yes, if she's strong enough, good enough, she'll get to fire that weapon in combat. She doesn't care about the uniform. And screw the pretend-camaraderie. Only Safe matters -- and if she can do combat, then maybe she can fight her way to Safe. Jamie expects a grueling fight that she might lose. What she never expects is to win love.

    Born in Norway into the failed marriage between a Scandinavian diplomat and an American businessman, she now makes Atlanta her home, luxuriating in the lush heat and brashness of the New South. She glides easily between the world of silken elegance and that of sleaze and sudden savagery, equally at home in both; functional, deadly, and temporarily quiescent, like a folded razor.On a humid April evening between storms, out walking just to stay sharp, she turns a corner and collides with a running woman, Catching the scent of clean, rain-soaked hair, Aud nods and silently tells the stranger Today, you are lucky, and moves on—when behind her house explodes, incinerating its sole occupant, a renowned art historian. When Aud turns back, the woman is gone.

    Now, having made a breakthrough discovery at her biotech company, she finds her business a target for industrial espionage and a hostile takeover. She needs an expert to watch her back and spy on her enemies, which is how she finds herself in a bizarre nightclub trying to hire a woman with a flogger in one hand, a camera in the other, and a pair of corseted twins fondling her body.Penn Harte makes her living the way lots of former CIA agents do, selling her unusual skills to the highest bidder. Lately she's also been doing her best friend Lila a favor by helping out in Lila’s upscale fetish club. When Unity approaches Penn with an offer to work for her, Penn can’t believe her luck – she’s already been hired by Unity’s biggest enemy, who wants a blackmail tape. Penn figures she’ll have Unity, the perfect subject for seduction, on film in a compromising position within days. The problem is, Penn doesn’t know if she can see Unity as just another job.Power, passion, sex, and danger drive a high stakes plot in this gripping erotic romance.

    When she is put in charge of the new mounted division, dissension in the ranks seems to guarantee the program’s failure. Rachel asks an old college acquaintance to help her train the horses and their riders before they make their public debut amid the fireworks and crowds on the Fourth of July.Callan Lanford doesn’t play by the rules. She invents her own. The scion of a polo-playing dynasty, Cal has been riding since before she could walk, and she scores both on and off the field with equal ease. But she isn’t prepared for the emotional ride she takes as Rachel forces her to confront her achievement-oriented family’s rejection. Cal’s attraction to Rachel grows, but both their future together and the future of the mounted unit are uncertain, plagued by “accidents” and threats.As Rachel and Cal battle a corrupt politician’s greed in the face of mounting danger, can their love prevail?

    Her brave quest to retrieve her stolen locket brings her into close contact with the thieves and their dashing and fearless masked leader, Len Hawkins. But there is more to Len than meets the eye. Beneath the robber’s mask lies a woman who, in her heart, is not really so very different from Lucia.As their unlikely love grows against the backdrop of the poverty and violent protest of Regency England, Lucia learns how much more there is to the world than her upbringing has taught her. Len flirts with death every day, and eventually, an attempt at exacting revenge on her cruel father threatens to snatch her from Lucia’s arms.Will Len survive her encounter with death and avoid the retribution of the agents of justice? And can respectable gentlewoman Lucia love Len enough to sacrifice everything she knows?

    After all, Caitlin was only a twelve-year-old girl when Natalie was already dead and gone. But they did meet, and it was that dramatic encounter in the house at the end of the street that changed their lives forever. The moment was so powerful, so important, that it drew Caitlin, now a renowned novelist, back to her hometown twenty years later to seek out Natalie’s ghost. Taking up refuge in the dark, broken house, Caitlin believes that getting back to her roots and to the bottom of her experience with the ghost will somehow help heal the wounds her life has brought her.Against the backdrop of a Victorian mansion, a story unlike any other unfolds between Caitlin and Natalie, and leaves them with one lingering question: even if love is enough to bridge the gap between life and death, is it enough to keep a ghost from passing on?

    For Chris, love, compassion, and trust are critical. In their absence, Chris has turned to her dog and her horse for the emotional fulfillment she craves. Then along comes Mary Jo Cavanaugh. Fresh out of veterinary school, Mary Jo inadvertently antagonizes Chris with her overconfident assumptions about how to care for animals. She comes to learn that Chris's practical experience provides both a wealth of knowledge and a friendship unlike any she's ever known.The carefully built walls around Chris's heart begin to crumble as she acknowledges the unfamiliar feelings evoked by being with Mary Jo. Just as she believes she's found the happiness that had always eluded her, someone from Chris's past comes back into her life, intent on winning Chris's affections, no matter what the cost.Can the love between Chris and Mary Jo survive so that they can share A Kiss Before Dawn?

    But when she orders French fries from the flirtatious Hot Dog on a Stick Chick, she gets more than deep-fried potatoes. Abbey tries to ignore the weird, happy feeling in her gut, but that proves to be as impossible as avoiding the very insistent (and—rumor has it—very lesbian) players on Gila High’s girls’ basketball team. They want freakishly long-legged Abbey to try out, and Abbey doesn’t hate the idea. But Kate made Abbey pinky swear to avoid basketball and to keep away from the you-know-who girls on the team.Sometimes promises can’t be kept. And sometimes girls in uniform are impossible to resist.

    But Corey's life is turned upside down when a car accident tragically claims Judy's life. Two years later, still broken and reeling from her painful loss, Corey moves from her home in Lansing, Michigan, to Grand Lake, Colorado. There, she hopes to begin healing.Erin Flannery and her Aunt Tess are co-owners of Grand Lake's Rainbow Lodge. Erin questions Tess's immediate hiring of Corey as the lodge's new maintenance worker-but then it takes a lot for a woman to earn Erin's trust. Afraid to put her heart on the line after her partner's betrayal five years before, Erin is not ready for any long-term commitment and covers her pain with meaningless one-night stands.Although Corey and Erin start out on shaky ground, as the summer months go by their friendship slowly grows into something more. Will Corey take a leap of faith and allow love to enter her heart again? And will Erin stop running long enough to trust a woman who seems almost too good to be true?Against the backdrop of the magnificent Rocky Mountains, Corey and Erin must decide: will they let fear rule their lives-or will they simply let go and dance another dance with love.