Karma: Laws of Life Collection

By Donna Mercer

“I am rubber, and you are glue, whatever you say bounces off of me and sticks to you.”

This little saying had proven to be right over and over again in Karma Martin’s life. She learned to go with the flow and let the universe deal with those around her who deserve it. This policy served her well until the night her car broke down on the side of a deserted mountain road, and she encountered Buck. Was the universe punishing her or rewarding her?

Buck Raleigh didn’t believe in anything that he couldn’t fix with his two hands or shoot with his gun. He didn’t believe in love at first sight nor did he believe in the mystic powers of the universe controlling his life. He had the nightmares to prove that people did bad things and that there was no cosmic scorekeeper to even things up. If there were then he would be able to get a decent night sleep. Cause and an effect, the story of his life.

Until a chance encounter on a dark mountain road showed him that Karma was a living, breathing force which was about to change his life.

****Laws of Life Collection | BWWM Romance | HEA ****

• Language: English
• Publisher: Donna Mercer
• Release date: Jun 7, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463405598

Donna Mercer

Hi Everyone and thank you for stopping by my page. A little bit about myself. I have been married for over 20 years which is totally amazing to members of my family who had a bet on my wedding day that it would not last beyond two years. Suckers!! I have two kids that have made it to the age of 18. Yeah me!! I have been writing all of my life, but have never shared any of my writing with anyone beyond my family. I wrote my first romance novel when I was in junior high school and gave it to my English teacher to read. She told me to stick with something I know. Ever since then I have kept my writing to myself. What changed? When my oldest was going to graduate from high school one of the things I did was to write a letter to her future self. I just wrote what I felt, but it was so liked by her teacher that she stated that I should become a writer. I decided to stop hiding my desire to write and to just go for it. So congrats on joining this adventure with me I am glad you are along for the ride.

Book preview

"Wooah.

We're half way there.

Woah-oh.

Living on a prayer.

Take my hand, and we'll make it, I swear.

Woah-oh.

Living on a prayer," Karma’s off-key singing echoed around her car, Betty Lou.

She didn’t care.

There was no one else in her car to hear her spontaneous tribute to Bon Jovi. It was a loss that the world might never recover from.

The late afternoon summer sunshine was quickly fading away, and soon the warmth of the day would give way to the chill of the cool mountain night. It didn’t matter what state she was in; she had learned through her travels that night time in the mountains was cold. She would need to find somewhere to stop for the night soon. Her meandering trip from California had taught her several things. The main one: only crazy people drove on unfamiliar mountain roads after dark and Karma was a lot of things, but crazy wasn’t one of them.

She had papers to prove it. Her mother had her tested by her New Age guru mentor. The only thing that Amelia Martin’s mentor was able to determine was that Karma was blessed by the mysterious forces of the universe.

Her parents thought her journey of self-discovery was a waste of time. At least her father did, her mother thought she should inhale some incense and take a spiritual journey through her mind, becoming one with the universe. She tried doing things their way. Go to college, start a career, settling down with a boyfriend, sipping gingerroot tea. All those things did was just highlight how miserable that lifestyle made her.

Now it was her turn to live her life the way she wanted to. She was on a journey of self-discovery to determine her place in the cosmos. Okay, maybe just her place here on planet Earth. Hell, she would settle for her place in the United States. She just knew that it wasn’t in San Diego, California, where her parents lived.

Technically speaking, even now she had no idea where she was. All she knew was that she was on some two-lane highway in the mountains of Colorado. Hell, she wasn’t even sure what set of mountains she was driving through. The one thing that Colorado had plenty of was mountains.

Big ones.

Little ones.

Ones she was lost in, but mountains.

All she did know was that she had been on this two-lane highway through several mountain towns. If the pattern held, she assumed that she was going to be coming up on another one soon. That was a good thing. She’d hate to be stuck trying to drive this winding road in the middle of the night.

She was on a voyage of self-discovery, not a journey to drive off the side of a mountain.

Karma’s singing abruptly stopped when a loud clicking sound came from her engine.

Oh, that doesn’t sound good at all. Karma could see one of those turnarounds up ahead that popped up every few miles on these winding roads, more importantly, it was free. She slowly pulled her Oldsmobile Aurora to the side, easing into the space to avoid oncoming traffic. The summer light was fading fast. She tightened her grip on the steering wheel while mumbling, Easy…easy…easy, under her breath as she coasted to a stop.

She got out of her car and went to lift the hood staring at the engine. Her eyes crossed as she stared at the wires. This happened every time she looked at a car engine. She remembered that ex she had. What was his name?

Ronnie?

Bobby?

Ricky?

Mike? That was it. His name was Mike. She started singing under her breath. "Cool it now

You got to cool it now

Ooooooh watch out

You're gonna lose control

Cool it now

You got to slow it down

Slow it down...

You're gonna fall in love," Karma started dancing as the lyrics to the New Edition song her mom would play when she was younger popped into her head.

She stood on the side of her car, elbows bent moving them stiffly up and down as she twisted her body making the moves of the Robot like she and her mother used to do when she was younger. She couldn’t fix anything mechanical as Mike quickly found out, but she sure could dance like a robot.

She turned back to her car as it gave a hissing pop and a loud clang emanated from it. She stood there staring at it contemplating her engine.

Hmm.

Isn’t that what mechanics did as they communed with the car’s engine to figure out what was going on? That is what her long ago ex, Mike did before he started moving wires and pulling dipsticks. She would probably be a lot more successful if she’d paid attention to Mike when he tried to teach her about her car beyond the ability to make sure there was gas in it.

Aren’t moments like this what triple AAA was for? Barista, waitress, maid, cook, dishwasher, and awesome karaoke singer, all professions she had been. Mechanic. Nope. Even worse, she wasn’t even slightly mechanically inclined.

Well her name wasn’t Karma for no reason. She just wondered what fabulous instance of life was catching up with her at this moment. Was it the time that she tried to bake cookies and added to much salt and baking soda? That had resulted in exploding cookies all over her mom’s oven. Or maybe it was the time she convinced her cousin to help her dye her hair purple, and it turned out an orangey-blonde.

She didn’t know for sure what moment in life brought her to this point, but it was occurring for a reason.

The pattern of bad luck engrained in her a strong capacity for going with the flow a long time ago. It also helped her to keep control of her temper. Life taught her, that if she kept a cool head, the universe had a way of working things out.

She continued to stare at the engine. She didn’t have a clue what to do. Fucking karma. Sometimes it had a way of coming around and biting her in her own ass. Maybe she should have taken Mike a little more seriously when he said that a little car knowledge would go a long way in life.

Karma, you’re such a dick! She yelled into the quickly falling darkness.

She didn’t clarify if she was yelling at the universe or herself. Keeping it neutral prevented something worse from coming back on her. Like an impromptu rock slide that would push her and her car off the side of the mountain. That was the thing about karma. She could be a cranky bitch.

She closed the hood of her car with a sigh. She was clueless as to what caused those strange sounds. She pulled out her cell phone — no bars. She pointed it up towards the sky to see if she could get a decent signal.

Fuck a duck, she forcibly shook her phone as she held it up. She turned her body in several directions trying to pick up a signal. Nothing was worse than being trapped on a mountain road with a broken-down car and no cell phone reception. That was just asking to be abducted by aliens or kidnapped by mountain men who haven't had a woman in years. But knowing her karma, the aliens would be gay and the mountain men suffering from erectile dysfunction or even worse the mountain men would be gay and the aliens suffering from erectile dysfunction.