Love’s Curse

Part of the upcoming My Bloody Valentine Collection

Love can never die.

Emma intends to spend another Valentine’s day with the dead Egyptian princess—same as every year. But her world of mummies and museums is hurled into chaos when a man, who looks like if sex was a librarian, walks into it.

Tarek is fascinated with Emma’s research into the famous heartbroken princess mummy and she wishes he’d be fascinated with her too. Dismissing the hottest doctor she’s ever seen, when the power’s cut on a stormy February fourteenth night.

Emma catches Tarek standing before the mummy’s sarcophagus after closing and fearing she’d been tricked by a thief, confronts him. As her hand touches his, a curse millennia in the making begins, and the heartbroken princess rises from her tomb.

In this heart racing story of love, betrayal, and death two people will find themselves trying to defy history and come together with the help of a goddess of love. Can their love defy death itself?

Excerpt from Love’s Curse

Emma stumbled into the Egypt room less like a sneaky detective ready to roundhouse kick the burglar and more like the dope who died the first ten minutes into the movie. She didn’t realize her mistake until her flashlight illuminated the perfect lapel of the man standing before the mummy. Tarek didn’t turn to her—didn’t even seem to sense her. One hand held a lighter up high, the flame strained to breaking. In the other, he held his cane not to steady himself.

No, he strained it back like a batter prepared to smash the next pitch. Her heart slowed as three thoughts raced through her brain. One, did Tarek destroy the electrical grid? Two, was he some sort of international cat burglar? The last involved how he’d look in the requisite black leather.

Some combo of the blush from her libidinous thoughts and fearing for her job sent Emma rushing for him. “What are you doing?” she shouted, reaching to grab at either his arm or the cane. Tarek turned, causing her to miss both. Instead, she knocked into his hand holding the lighter.

Her fingers, rather than grab his wrist and pin it back, wiggled between his and—for reasons Emma could never explain—they entwined his hand in hers. Pinning him tight in her hold, she pulled Tarek to her. Or maybe he did it? All she knew was that one second she was straining to knock him away, and the next she could count the amber flecks in his eyes.

“What are you…?”

A crack ripped through the air. The force deafened Emma, pain contorting her face. Tarek’s twisted too, but even as they raced to try to cover their bleeding ears, their hands remained bound together. She tried to fight this attack, her vision swimming with the fallen lighter’s flame. It flickered on the tile like the canary in the coal mine, when a hot breeze snuffed it out.

Emma flew through the air. A massive force punched into her back, tossing her like a plastic bottle against the far wall. Her spine bounded into the edge of the display, jolting her nerves and causing her hands to open. She knew the flashlight fell, but she couldn’t hear it. She couldn’t hear anything, not even the pounding of her heart.

Only the red emergency lights lit the room she’d once considered a sanctuary. Instead of the calm recreation of a dig site in the Theban tomb, she stared at a battle zone. The cute pyramid bench was shattered in half, the plastic shell ripped into one long piece and flung through the air. Steel bars lay not just on the ground but plunged into the exhibit behind her and the ceiling.

What the hell was that? Did Tarek have a grenade? Shit, how close did she just come to dying?

What if I’m dead?

Flexing her hand sent a massive pain bouncing up her fingers into her arm. But she felt that, and she could at least move. So she wasn’t paralyzed. That had to be useful. Now what?

Call nine-one-one, idiot. Or Gus. Anyone to arrest this international jewel thief. Twisting to the side, Emma managed to get a foot under her and was about to rise when something beat her to the punch.

The grenade had ripped a hole clear through the barrier around the mummy but hadn’t scratched the sarcophagus. No, it must have done damage. With a pain only an historian could know, Emma watched the millennia-year-old lid slide off the mummy. When it struck the tile, it shattered into dust, clogging the red air above.

No! Her body wanted her to run to it, to see if she could somehow fix the unfixable with a bit of tape or glue. But a sound froze her. Not a gun being cocked. Not Tarek pulling out a grappling hook and making his getaway.

It was a low, guttural moan. Something she’d only heard in her nightmares. A sound that to her ears was the final gasp of the dead.

The mummy got up.