A woman tries to hide from an abusive ex-boyfriend who uses black magic to stalk her.
Ramon (Ray) Chavez, a 33 year old farmer from the Rio Grande Valley doesn’t believe in visions or omens or the mysticism of his Mexican/Indian heritage. When he’s awakened by the spirit of this great-grandmother with a message that something is coming, Ray passes it off as a bad dream. But he may just reconsider his position when he finds Lexie Solis stranded on the edge of town, in search of a new life. Ray feels an instant attraction, as well as a connection, to the skittish young woman, and he pursues a relationship with her. But what Lexie doesn’t tell Ray or his family, is that she is on the run from an abusive ex-boyfriend and he may be more powerful than even she wants to believe. When Lexie is assaulted by an unseen force, they learn that the man she is hiding from is a master of the dark arts and his obsession with Lexie goes beyond his need to control her; he wants to possess her soul as well. As their past lives parallel, Lexie’s only hope for salvation is in Ray’s hands. But can he accept his destiny in time to save the woman he loves as well as his own life?
Excerpt
Sylvia dropped onto the kitchen chair and scowled at her brother. She’d rushed straight from work after her grandmother called and told her about their new visitor. She couldn’t help but wonder if it were the same visitor her cards had been warning her about for the past week and even after she voiced this concern Ray still had the nerve to patronize her.
“She’s not some stray puppy you picked up from the side of the road, Ray,” she said. “I’m just saying you don’t know anything about her.”
Ray leaned against the counter, crossing his legs at the ankles, and sent her a crooked grin. “Damn. And I was really looking forward to teaching her a few tricks.”
“Stop thinking with your glands and think with your head, Big Brother,” Sylvia snapped.
“I’ve been thinking with my glands since I was fourteen. It’s a hard habit to break.”
Sylvia curled her lip at him and turned to her grandmother for support. She had sensed a mal puesta in the young woman and performed a limpia to heal her. It was a ritual they often worked for the families in town who came to see them about their curses. The inflicted would lie on a small cot and her grandmother would wave an egg over them, chanting a series of novenas.
She did this same cleansing on the young woman in Ray’s old bedroom. When she finished she took the egg and cracked it into a glass of salt water. The egg sizzled and cooked, curling its way to the surface like a snake trying to escape the flames of hell.
“Abuela, tell him,” Sylvia said. “You saw what happened to the egg. There was something bad inside that girl and who’s to say it won’t be back?” She shot a pointed look at her brother. “I just don’t think we should trust her.”
When Sophie Bayles inadvertently ruins a young man’s chance for employment, she sets out to find him a new position. Even though he doesn’t want her to.
Sylvia Masters, a hot fifty-two year old widow and CEO of her husbands company is challenged by her own instincts, family and friends when the Lieutenant investigating the murder of her ex-fiancee ask her to dinner. After a tumultuous beginning, the
