To Have & To Hold

By Mackenzie Lucas

Sometimes what you see is not what you get . . .
American-born heiress Cate Cooper would never have believed her sexy, stalwart English husband Grayson could be a monster of epic proportions until he shifts into a fire-breathing dragon right in front of her eyes. After several near-miss encounters with the dragon who almost kills her, Cate traps the beast using her own magickal skills as a spellcaster and an enchanted chatelaine left to her by her grandparents. Her husband has one year to battle the dragon within before she gives up on him for good. Too bad her besieged heart doesn’t agree this is the best plan of action. Cate embarks on a journey of discovery where she must learn that sometimes what you see is not what you get and monsters come in far worse forms than fire-breathing dragons.

During the year Grayson Cooper is held captive, he fights for his life and his marriage while his best friend and legal partner, Michael James, moves in on his wife. According to the world, Grayson disappeared without a trace a year before, along with millions of dollars. Only Grayson and Cate know the truth of where he’s really been and the battle he’s waging. Grayson must earn back the love of his wife and win her trust again before a murderer who’s stalking her steals away everything he’s ever lived for and any hope they’ve ever had for a happy future together.

This is a sexy paranormal romance where rekindling passion takes on a whole new meaning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mackenzie Lucas
• Release date: Dec 14, 2012
• ISBN: 9781301789610

Mackenzie Lucas

Mackenzie Lucas is a lover of story in any form. She’s an avid reader of genre fiction; writes paranormal romance, contemporary romance, and erotica; watches The Arrow, Supernatural, Grimm, American Idol, The Voice, Ellen, Steve Harvey, Dr. Oz, anything Batman related, and every movie starring Johnny Depp; and listens to an eclectic mix of music that spans the range from pop/rock to country to gospel. She loves a good story whether it’s an erotic short, a full-length romance novel, or the narrative slice-of-life found in country music. In any story, emotional integrity and authenticity are most important to her as well as a big dose of romping hot sexual tension. She enjoys smart-mouthed, sexy heroes and heroines, and plot twists that surprise her, but most of all, she just wants to experience a satisfying emotional arc of a character falling in love and finding what he or she needs most in life.Mac is a small-town country girl turned world-traveler. She grew up in the Allegheny Mountains of Pennsylvania and she’s lived in Dublin, Ireland, within spitting distance of New York City in Long Island, and now the Washington, D.C. area. She obtained her undergraduate degree in English Literature from Dickinson College and received her M.F.A. in Writing Popular Fiction from Seton Hill University. She’s currently an author and writing coach, but her illustrious career has run the full spectrum, raising her from her middle-class roots into positions where she’s assisted and worked with political power-brokers and business leaders who have shaped countries and Fortune 500 companies. Through it all, she’s learned the value of hard work, tenacity, and authenticity. It doesn’t matter if you’re dealing with Jane Q. Supervisor at a down-and-dirty warehouse shipping company, the vice president of a national retail chain, the CEO of a small business influential in Africa, or the political advisor responsible for helping to shape party policy, in the end, it’s not power or influence that’s impressed her most, but authenticity and personal integrity.“You can tell a lot by the actions of a man or woman--how they treat others and how much they share of themselves in the process.” The stories that take us on that emotional journey--the quest for truth about ourselves--are the ones that impact us most and give us a glimpse of ourselves, but most of all, help us connect with others by tapping into those universal themes that makes us more human. So with Mackenzie Lucas--whether you’re reading her light paranormal romance, her small-town-based contemporary romance, or her steamin’ hawt erotica--you’ll always get a story about connectedness, community, and emotional authenticity, and, at its core, love. No, and it doesn’t hurt that all her heroes are panty-melting gorgeous alphas and all their sexy, sensually aware heroines know how to stand up to them, give no quarter, and love them just as they are.

Book preview

To Have & To Hold

Mackenzie Lucas

Copyright ©2012 by Mackenzie Lucas

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Cover Design: Robert Lyons/Roar Desygn/RoarDesygn.com

Cover Photographs: man ©Hot Damn Designs/The Killion Group/Kimberly Killion

dragon © 123RF/Fernando Cortes De Pablo

fire background © 123RF/shopartgallery.com

celtic dragon icons © 123RF/Fernando Cortes De Pablo

All rights reserved. This copy is intended for the original purchaser of this book. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without prior written permission from the author except by reviewers who may quote brief excerpts in connection with a review. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author's rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

This work is fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are totally fictitious. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

To my amazing, talented husband—this one’s for you. Love you, babe.

Chapter One

God, Cate. You really are the patron saint of lost causes, aren’t you?

Cate tried to pull free of Michael’s embrace. He brought her right hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles. He’d been a good friend to her over the past year, but not one she’d trusted with her secrets. He really didn’t know her at all. And he would never be more than a friend. When he tried to pull her closer, the floor above them rumbled as Cooper raged on the third level of the renovated Victorian she called home. Chills crawled up her neck. His cries sounded frenzied and wounded. Michael, maybe you should go.

I don’t know how you can live with that beast howling and snarling all day and night. I understand he’s a rescue dog. But, damn it, enough is enough.

She massaged her forehead, trying to ease the headache that always seemed to live just behind her eyes. You don’t understand him like I do. I really think you should go.

See, and that’s exactly what I mean. You’re too emotionally attached. You never should’ve named him after your husband. Ruddy hell, you go on and on about Cooper this and Cooper that. Cate, he’s a damned dog. He cupped her face. I’m worried about you. The blasted animal is always snarling and snapping up there. He’s dangerous.

An emotion she didn’t want to label flickered in his eyes. The intensity of it scared her. Made her want to burrow deep and hold on for her life or run screaming. She wasn’t sure which. Cate turned her cheek into his palm, enjoying his touch for a fleeting second before she pulled back.

Michael was handsome, charming, and usually kind to a fault, other than his vehemence about Coop. And she’d give him the benefit of the doubt on that last one because every time he got close, Cooper went ballistic--fighting to get free and bellowing at the top of his lungs. Coop’s screams could dampen the hottest of passions.

She had no clue what bothered the beast.

And she was quite certain Michael didn’t understand her coolness. Every other woman in his life threw themselves at him. She’d watched it happen too many times to count over the past year. His short-cropped blond hair, tropical blue eyes, and handsome good looks had won over every eligible woman in the isolated seaside village of Porthleven, and even a few English lasses who weren’t available. The wealthy solicitor visiting from London had set tongues wagging on more than one occasion.

It seemed appropriate to name him after my husband, she said.

Grayson Cooper would not be amused to know you’ve named that flea-bitten shag rug after him. Every time I stop by, he’s snarling and rattling his crate up there. And, yet, there you go defending him, thinking he’ll miraculously morph into a harmless lapdog.

He’s fine. Cooper settles down as soon as you leave. It was true. The beast stopped raging the moment Michael James drove away. Every single time. Coop had some sixth sense when it came to Michael’s visits, which had become more frequent and friendlier over the past six months. The moment the white Land Rover drove up the winding road from the village toward the house, Cooper would start to raise hell.

I don’t want to leave just because your dog has separation anxiety. Not this time. Please, Cate. Michael slid his hands to her hips and drew her against him. I want to stay. Overnight. I want to be more than your solicitor or a shoulder to cry on for my best friend’s grieving widow. It’s been a year. Let me stay. Please? His voice broke. Let me love you.

The hopeful look in his eyes made her want to cry.

Cate placed a hand in the middle of his muscled chest. He felt so damned good under her fingers. Hard, strong. Solid and dependable. She wanted so much to succumb to his dogged pursuit of her. But she couldn’t. She gave him a little push to put a few inches between them. He let go, his arms falling to his sides, his shoulders slumped. It took several moments before he looked up to consider her in silence, his chin angled. Hurt radiated from him.

And that made her feel like a total heel.

She turned her back on him and walked to the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the clifftop, then she paused to address him over her shoulder. Look, Michael. You know I can’t offer you anything more. I’ve been very clear with you all along. I’ve never, ever led you to believe there could be anything other than friendship between us. You’ve been my best friend this past year. I don’t know what I would have done without you. But I can’t give you what you want.

His cheeks flushed. And the blatantly wounded expression on his face squeezed something vulnerable inside her. She hated to hurt anyone, especially someone she cared about. But she’d never love him the way he needed. She’d never love anyone that way ever again.

She looked away and stared out the windows, a sudden chill ran through her. She hugged herself, rubbing her palms up and down her upper arms.

Cornwall in February was a bitch. High, frigid winds whipped water into frothy caps that raced along the turbulent oceanic horizon. Cold sea swells crashing against the monolithic sentinels on the strand below splattered water droplets against the glass. Gray flat-bottomed clouds threatening a storm slipped across the afternoon sky, leaching what warmth and light remained.

I’m still married, she said.

Yes, you’re married, but you’re not dead. He stood behind her now, hands resting on her shoulders. He tried to pull her back against him.

She resisted. I might as well be dead. You know I loved my husband.

It’s been a year, Cate. A long, dreadful year. I’ve given you all your legal options. You need to move on.

Not while there’s still a possibility that he’ll return to me.

Damn it. There you go again. Saint Cate. Give it up. Stop holding out hope for the nasty git. He’s gone. He’s never coming back. Don’t you see what he’s done? He stole from you. Faked his death and disappeared. The son-of-a-bitch embezzled from you because he was too weak-willed to divorce the American fortune he’d married. He’s off sipping mojitos on some tropical island in the South Seas, rolling in the millions of dollars he swindled from you. He turned her around to face him. While you sit here in this Godforsaken place with that mountain goat of a dog upstairs, pining away for him like a lovesick war widow. Get over it. Let me help you forget him.

I’ll never forget him. As if Cate ever could. A tear slipped down her cheek, blazing a hot trail straight to her battered heart. She didn’t need the fancy Oxford-trained solicitor who’d fallen in love with her to remind her that her husband had abandoned her. She knew exactly where the bastard was sleeping. What her husband drank. And that he wasn’t exactly rolling in money.

He was a monster. But not the kind anyone could imagine.

He hurt you. I saw the marks. The bruises. I don’t care if we did study law together and were once best mates. Grayson didn’t deserve you. Let me take care of you, Cate. Michael cupped her face and brushed his lips gently over hers. He ran his tongue over the part in her lips, coaxing her

Reviews for To Have & To Hold

[snarkymom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I received a copy of “To Have & To Hold” by Mackenzie Lucas to read in exchange for an HONEST review. This is a 90 page novella length story featuring magickal witches, mages and shapeshifting dragons, retailing at $2.99 (cha-ching!).Cate & Grayson have been married four years; the first two will idyllic until his 38th birthday when he unexpectedly changed into a dragon. Since his first shift was so late in life, he wasn’t trained to control his dragon and inadvertently hurt Cate. She, in turn, magickally locked him into the third level of their house to give him a year to get a grip. In the meantime, Grayson’s business partner & best friend, Michael, was hoping to start a relationship with Cate – at the same time he was embezzling from and besmirching Grayson’s name and reputation.For a novella, Mackenzie Lucas was able to put a lot of information into the story as she sets up the “mythology” of this dragon mage world. (I looked online at her website but didn’t see any “Coming Soon” mentions, so I don’t know if she’s going to follow-up by developing a series or not.) It was interesting to hear about dragon mage schools and their protocol for different scenarios (sorry – don’t want to risk any spoilers!) and it shows a great paranormal mindset and imagination!Since I am not a faithful peruser of dragon shapeshifter stories, I have to admit to having some confusion about some things (Hoards? Aren’t mages supposed to be the “bad” guys?) that actually made me wonder if this was part of a series that I had missed reading the “intro” style book. It’s not; it’s its own book – but parts of it made me feel as if I was coming in 2 minutes after a conversation had started, and I didn’t want to be embarrassed by asking what was being discussed. If you like the dragon shapeshifter genre, this was a really good romance, especially if you’re looking for a quick read & a standalone story. If you are looking for a SERIES featuring dragon shapeshifters, try out the G.A. Aiken – Dragon Kin series (there’s about 8 of ‘em at this count).