Refracted Crystal: Diamonds and Desire (34 page)

“Ever the businessman,” Kris said, snuggling her head closer to his chest. She too watched the vessel as it sailed away: she knew just how much of Daniel’s future hopes rested in that ship as well as her and their daughter.

“Do you remember why I asked you to call it Braganza?” she said, quietly.

He nodded. “Your safe word.”

She squeezed him gently. “Yes, back in the days when I needed some protection from you.”

“I can’t actually remember the last time you used it,” he said, thoughtfully.

“I can’t remember the last time you did something I didn’t like,” she replied. “No, that name’s not there for me. It’s for the people of Lisbon. I know what Daniel Stone would have done to a place like this at one time. I’m hoping that every time Daniel Logan sees that name he’ll remember to exercise some restraint.”

As she lifted her face towards him, he gazed down at her silently for a few moments. His hazel eyes, so strange and asymmetrical with one pupil dilated, always fascinated her. There were worlds in those eyes, and for a moment he looked so sad and serious that she thought her heart would burst. He nodded, without speaking and returned his attention to the distant ship.

At last she squeezed him harder round the waist then raised her hands to Sofia, tickling her daughter until the young girl laughed and squealed. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s get this young lady back to her nanny, then we can enjoy the afternoon together.”

“We should really find somewhere else,” he told her, letting her take Sofia from his arms. “I don’t think I intended that apartment of yours in Alfama for a family.”

“Neither of us did,” she agreed. “But I like it. There’s no rush, is there? I mean, we have the rest of our lives to try everything, don’t we?” For a second, her voice contained a seed of hesitation, of doubt. Daniel glanced at her, a little sharply. Don’t
be
pathetic, his eyes seemed to warn for a second but almost immediately they warned.

“
Okay
,” he said with a growl as he pinched her buttocks once more. “Let’s go make babies.”

“Is that all I am to you?” she asked in mock despair. “Your broodmare?”

“Actually,” he replied, letting his arm move across her shoulder and Sofia as he pulled them both gently into him, “much as I love our sweet baby, it’s the practice that I look forward to most.”

As he spoke and bent his head to hers, their lips meeting and the soft, warm creatures of their mouths joining blissfully, his eyes glittered and shone, brighter for a moment than the sun that
shone
like a crystal, whole and complete in the sky.

M. J. Lawless

The
first
part of the Crystal Fragments trilogy.

What was broken can be made whole.

Somewhere along the way, Kris Avelar’s life has taken a wrong turn. The promises she made to herself as a young artist have all been unfulfilled and, after yet another disastrous love affair, she has run away to find herself, and perhaps her ability to create, in isolation far from the city.

Her desire to be alone, however, is nothing compared to that of the stranger she meets: Daniel Logan. Tall, handsome, but also scarred by more than the marks which line his face, his attempts to push her away only inspire her to greater curiosity about him - a curiosity that will lead to dark and forbidden desires as she enters his private world.

When he suddenly disappears she is left feeling that perhaps she is destined to always be alone. Then she discovers that Daniel Logan is also the urbane, charming founder of Stone Enterprises - and that his own plans for this young woman will involve her complete submission to all of his appetites and ardour.

M. J. Lawless

The second part of the Crystal Fragments trilogy.

Jealousy is a dangerous addiction.

After the torrid beginning of their affair, Kris Avelar has achieved a degree of freedom that will allow her not merely to withstand the demands of her lover, Daniel Stone, but also rise up to the challenges that they place upon her body and soul. If he is her demon lover
—
a troubled, wealthy man with his own dark secrets
—
then she is an artist who can transform those secrets into something brilliant, shining and beautiful.

But if Kris is the most perfect lover that Daniel has known since the death of his wife, she is not the first. And so, when she encounters the lawyer, Maria Gosselin, she understands for the first time just how all-consuming her jealousy can be, especially when when Maria makes it clear that she believes there is unfinished business between her and the rich founder of Stone Enterprises.

Seeking at first only to understand more about Daniel’s past, and to uncover the motives behind Maria’s actions, Kris begins to pursue the woman. It comes as a shock to her, then, to discover that her own attraction to this strong, clever rival threatens to overwhelm her own senses
—
and that Maria is more than happy to use this to get everything that she wants, even if it means destroying whatever fragile happiness Kris and Daniel have achieved.

M. J. Lawless

The new novel by M. J. Lawless to be published Spring 2013.

For even the longest summer must come to an end.

At the beginning of the long, hot summer of 1976, two young boys—Jake and Mark—are riding out into the fields that lie beyond the small mining town which is all they have known for their brief lives. The eldest of the two, Jake, wishes to show his brother something of the innocent pleasure that he has begun to discover in the wider world.

For their young mother, Kitty, such pleasures are tinged with the bitterest experience that for one of them this may be the last summer that he will ever know. As doctors struggle to combat the disease that also took Mark’s father, so Kitty also struggles as a single woman to raise her children in a provincial town where the close embrace of a community also represses all her desires to better herself.

For Doctor Reuben Heppner, the struggle to cure a young boy is a means to leave behind the messy chaos of his own divorce and redeem himself, but
with Kitty Donahue he also starts to believe that her happiness will be the key to both their salvation. And yet as the summer burns on so tempers and desires begin to blaze with a heat that threatens to destroy everything.

To be published in Spring 2013.