Lucifer's Lover Read online

  Lucifer’s Lover

  by

  Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Lindsay is determined to outshine her mother's illustrious career. As head of marketing for the exclusive Freeman Hotel, in the rarefied mountains of northern Washington, Lindsay grapples with her rival—the charming newcomer, Lucifer Furey Pierse.

  No one knows much about Luke except that he could turn murder into a comedy routine, that he likes classy women and is oddly drawn to the prickly, definitely not-interested Lindsay.

  It starts with a bet that goes horribly wrong. If Lyndsay wins, then Luke leaves town—forever. If Luke wins, he gets a date with Lyndsay. But when Luke wins and Lindsay is forced to pay the price, she learns more about Lucifer than she thought existed, and the date kick-starts a bitter-sweet journey as they learn why they are the people they have become. Life hands them an unexpected twist they must deal with...one that tests both of them to limits.

  Other books by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Eyes of a Stranger

  Chronicles of the Lost Years

  Case of the Reluctant Agent

  Dare to Return

  Diana by the Moon

  Forbidden

  Red Leopard

  Solstice Surrender

  Heart of Vengeance

  Dangerous Beauty

  Silent Knight

  Black Heart

  Thief in the Night

  Masquerade’s Mate

  Cameo Role

  Ningaloo Nights

  Betting With Lucifer

  Dead Double

  Dead Again

  Blue Knight

  Blood Knot

  Fatal Wild Child

  Bannockburn Binding

  The Royal Talisman

  Writing as Teal Ceagh

  Beth’s Acceptance

  Mia’s Return

  Sera’s Gift

  Eva’s Last Dance

  Carson’s Night

  Kiss Across Time

  Beauty’s Beasts

  Destiny’s Trinity

  Kiss Across Swords

  Writing as Anastasia Black

  Forbidden

  Dangerous Beauty

  See http://TracyCooperPosey.com for details on each title.

  Lucifer’s Lover

  by

  Tracy Cooper-Posey

  A Stories Rule Publication

  STORIES RULE PUBLICATIONS

  A sole proprietorship owned and operated

  by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  This is an original publication of Tracy Cooper-Posey

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Copyright © 2012 by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Text design by Tracy Cooper-Posey

  Cover design by Dar Albert

  Wicked Smart Designs

  http://wickedsmartdesigns.com

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  SECOND EDITION: January 2012

  ISBN 978-0-9879068-7-8

  Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  Lucifer’s Lover /Tracy Cooper-Posey—2nd Ed.

  Romance—Fiction

  Home Is Where The Heart Is

  Lucifer’s Lover took a long time to grow up and find a home—much like the character Luke in the book...as you’re about to discover for yourself.

  With the exception of three of my titles, I have always published electronically. Lucifer’s Lover was one of my earlier releases, in 2005, with a company that published both electronically and in hardcover, an odd combination. But it does mean I can truthfully say I’ve been published in hardcover—a rare resume entry for popular fiction authors. The publisher, however, wasn’t a romance specialty publisher, and the electronic rights were subsidiary for them. I wasn’t happy with my sales despite my best marketing efforts, and we mutually decided to withdraw the book from sale.

  I heard rumours that Ellora’s Cave were going to start up a new non-erotic brand and eventually, Cerridwen Press came into being. As I was already heavily publishing with them on the erotic romance side, under my name and the Teal Ceagh pen name, it seemed natural to start re-releasing my non-erotic titles, too. Ellora’s Cave objected to the name, Lucifer’s Lover, because it was too close to several of their erotic romance titles already in print, so Lucifer’s Lover was retitled Betting With Lucifer and published in December, 2009.

  Unfortunately, sales still didn’t soar, even though I garnered glowing reviews all over the place once again.

  After a couple of years languishing in ebook only, the title was pulled and rights returned to me.

  My quest to find a final, permanent home for Lucifer’s Lover ended with J.A. Konrath and the evolution of indie publishing, and here you, the reader, and I, the author, meet, with no middleman —no publisher between us. Cool, huh?

  This ends up being where Lucifer’s Lover will take up residence for the rest of its natural life: My special Author’s Edition.

  Covers Can Make You Crazy

  Book covers are an interesting part of the publishing business, especially for authors. Readers love them. They sell books by helping the reader pick it up and look through it. One of the most interesting covers out I remember was Laurell K. Hamilton book, with the torso wrapped in a leather corset. That’s all you see, but it’s so highly suggestive of the contents that it makes you want to read the book just on the cover alone.

  So it would be fair to say that covers can be important, right?

  It might surprise you to know that with traditional publishers, authors have no say in their covers. Good, bad, or downright awful, the author must simply clamp her jaw together. If she’s smart, she’ll smile widely and exclaim, “How lovely!”

  Sometimes you just can’t manage that, though. One of the most famous really bad covers in recent history is the one with the heroine with three arms — Christina Dodd’s book, Castles in the Air. Christina didn’t stay silent about that one. She turned what has to be a true cover disaster into a marketing bonanza. I’d love to know how many copies of that book she sold based on the cover alone. The book has been re-released now, under a new name...and a different cover.

  All About Romance reviews covers, too, and have a Worse Cover award every year. Scrolling through these is like watching an accident happen. You can’t look away despite your horror and despair.

  Contractually, authors have no input into their covers. All decisions are left with the marketing department in consultation with the editor. You do get to fill in a cover questionnaire, and depending on how thorough the questionnaire is, how detailed you make your answers, and if the art department reads it, you stand a good chance of the cover coming out looking like it has something to do with the story inside.

  I’m exaggerating a bit to make my point. Although it sounds like an odd process, the building of covers for novels works very well most of the time. Marketing departments do actually know what they’re doing.

  Sometimes an author can very tactfully point out a mistake, after the cover is done (”he’s supposed to have blond hair, not black”.) This happened with one of my covers; The Case of the Reluctant Agent. If the reader had read the first book of the pair, Chronicles of the Lost Years, the cover on Case of the Reluctant Agent gav
e away whodunit. That’s not something you want in a mystery, so I did try politely to point this out. The marketing department told me that they had decided to leave the cover as is. So Agent went out into the world with its secret revealed on the cover, and I held my breath and hoped that readers wouldn’t notice. So far I haven’t had any grumpy fan mail about it.

  However, occasionally, if they have a very good relationship with their editor and the publisher in general, an author can have more than minimal approval of the cover. The cover for the original edition of Lucifer’s Lover came about this way.

  My son needed to design a commercial graphic for a graphic arts course he was completing, and he offered to design a cover for me, for Lucifer’s Lover, which had just been sold to Archebooks. I gave him the synopsis, he asked me a few questions about what I had envisioned for a cover, and went away. The cover he came up with was simple, delightful and perfect for the book. It said it all, and I was over the moon about it. I was so thrilled, in fact, that I sent a copy to my editor, and very politely asked what they thought about it.

  They thought it was fabulous, too, and it was shipped off to the art department, pronto. Then came the bad news; the image my son had used had limited copyright, and couldn’t be used for commercial purposes. But the art department liked the cover so much, that they built a similar cover, using commercial images.

  For this second edition, I turned to Dar Albert, who does all my independently published book covers. I’ve raved about Dar and her god-like abilities to read my mind elsewhere (in The Royal Talisman, for instance), so I will simply say I handed over the information about Lucifer’s Lover this time, knowing I would get a stunning cover. I also handed over my son’s 100%-awarded art school cover, too. The results of any input I give Dar are always interesting. You’re holding those results in your hand(s).

  (An original version of this essay first appeared on Stories Rule in June 2, 2007. This version has been updated and extended.)

  To Terry:

  After all, you got 100% for the cover.

  Acknowledgements

  Dar, always. You know why.

  Chapter One

  Lindsay knew she was the only marketing manager in history who fought off nausea every time she called a department meeting to order. She wasn’t naturally people-oriented the way her staff was, so leading a room full of extroverts kept her adrenaline pumping like Old Faithful.

  And then there was Luke Pierse, on top of that.

  She always came out of these meetings with spaghetti knees and an antacid habit that made Woody Allen look cool and collected.

  As she tried to settle into this month’s meeting, she told herself the worst was over. She was here, the meeting was rolling. Just tough it out for a little longer, then she could flee back to her office and wish for the millionth time she had not been so genetically cursed when it came to dealing with people, or that she had spent at least some time during her school years learning how to get along with others, instead of burying her nose in textbooks.

  She surreptitiously wiped her hand on her skirt to dry the moist palm. Tim, her assistant, held out a clean handkerchief to her, underneath the tabletop so no one else could see it.

  She took it and squeezed his wrist as a silent thank you. His gaze flickered in her direction, before returning to the other end of the table, where one of the salespeople was giving his report. Tim had gone through school with her, had been her next door neighbor since preschool and was still a steadfast, understanding friend. He knew how these events made her guts roil and her brow sweat. He also understood that the rest of the world was never to know the truth.

  The salesman sat down. Her turn. Everyone was looking at her.

  Her heart thudding, she tucked Tim’s handkerchief back into his waiting hand and put her palms flat on the folder in front of her. She straightened her spine, to look as in-control as possible.

  “It was a bad month,” she told them, keeping her voice low so it wouldn’t tremble. “You’re all aware of this and you’ve all just heard each others’ summaries about the troubles we’re having.”

  Everyone nodded slightly. Agreeing. Except for Luke Pierse. He sat at the far corner of the long table, leaning well back. He was watching her, the black eyes almost drilling through her.

  As always, she wondered if he could see past her bluff and knew of the wholesale sickness that wrenched at her. Of course, he would feel no such qualms about leading these people. He never felt qualms about anything. Or did he?

  She just didn’t know Pierse well enough, despite the fact that he’d been working for her for two years.

  She pulled her gaze to the middle of the table, avoiding meeting anyone’s eyes. “Worse, this month is the third consecutive month our figures have been down,” she added.

  “Figures are down everywhere, boss.” Luke’s tone was reasonable and his expression unreadable.

  For an endless moment, Lindsay stared at him, wondering how she was supposed to answer that.

  The problem with Luke was that he wasn’t good looking enough, she decided. The dark, dark hair that wasn’t quite a perfect pitch-black, for instance. It was a deep shade of brown, which cast subtle highlights in sunlight and contrasted with the thick dark mass beneath to create an interesting affect.

  The face wasn’t precisely perfect. His jaw was solid instead of refined and there was a dimple on the chin that wasn’t quite symmetrical. And too, there was a barely visible scar—a tiny one—on the corner of his jaw, that always made her wonder how he’d got it.

  His teeth were wonderfully white—she knew that from watching him throw his head back and laugh. Usually at her expense. But the teeth weren’t totally straight. No braces had ever smoothed them out to bland perfection. His hands were large and useful, the wrists strong with muscle but the fingers were unexpectedly long, like a sensitive artist’s hands.

  And the eyes… She’d learned his black eyes gave away nothing. They danced all too often with amusement, humor, or mischief but rarely anything else. Except that on the odd occasion when she’d come upon him quietly, she had caught an expression that was almost contemplative and far away. On those few times she had assumed he’d been thinking about his beloved New York.

  All in all, the little imperfections gave him an intangible sense of character. It hinted of a past. And that was just the problem. If he had been model-perfect, if he had the immaculate grooming and plastic perfection of the oily, endlessly charming salesman, she might have been able to dismiss his presence from her mind and from her office.

  He was a brilliant marketing man, though.

  And now he was challenging her again. As usual, Lindsay couldn’t think of a response that would put him back in his place, or ruffle his composure even just a little bit.

  She glanced away from Luke, letting her gaze fall to the manila folder beneath her palms that held the summary of monthly figures. That gave her the answer she needed.

  She looked Luke in the eye. “Figures are down everywhere,” she agreed and paused minutely. “Including yours.”

  She reached quickly for the folder that Tim was patiently holding, trying to stall the response she knew Luke would shoot back. But it wasn’t quite fast enough for her to miss seeing Luke’s jaw begin to descend, the eyes to widen.

  She lifted the bright red folder so everyone could see it. “Now, Vince Gormley has agreed that figures have been lousy for a while because of the unseasonable weather but we’re coming up on Christmas and the snow has come in just fine. Recalcitrant weather won’t do as an excuse anymore.”

  Alexander, the third best salesman in the marketing team, shook his head. “It’s not just the weather. Ever since the Sherbourne Hotel added that convention center, they’ve been killing us.”

  “They’ve been marketing pretty heavily,” Timothy added. “They’re all over the internet.”

  Lindsay shook her head. “That’s no excuse. Competition is the name of the game. That’s why we have jobs in th
e first place. That’s why marketing was invented.”

  “I heard Edison invented it to keep himself occupied on long journeys.” It was Luke’s voice. Of course it would be Luke, she thought grimly.

  There were grins and muffled laughs around the table but they quickly died. Luke looked in Lindsay’s direction and shrugged. “Well, who’d want to do it anywhere else except on a slow boat to China?”

  She ignored him because she couldn’t think of a decent answer. Even if she’d had ten minutes to find one, she wouldn’t. Luke had rattled her. Again. Mentally, she sighed. How did he leave her speechless so damn easily? What was it about him that aggravated her, every time he opened his mouth?

  Lindsay chose not to respond. Instead, she pushed the red file out into the middle of the table. “I heard on the grapevine the other day that the Washington State Medical Association is shopping around for a new AGM location. They love holding the AGM here in Deerfoot Falls but they’re unhappy with the Sherbourne Hotel. They feel it’s too commercial.”

  She watched the realization move around the table like a wave of warm air.

  “We could steal one of Sherbourne’s richest accounts from them,” Alexander murmured, with an eager expression.

  “Yes, we could,” Lindsay agreed, lifting her voice a little over the murmurs and comments around the table. “We’re supposed to bring in business for the hotel but we seem to have lost sight of that basic fact. This should serve as an overdue reminder.”