Midnight & Memories: Midnight Rising Series, #2

By Amanda Kimberley

The heart never forgets.

When Ridge Turner hit the friend request button, he had no idea he would come face to face with his past life lover. The old Chelsea Bennette accepted his dark side, but would the Poppy Lee of this life see him as a monster? His heart was willing to take the chance, but his head knew she should forget the vampire. 

Poppy Lee had just moved from the warm southern hospitality of Soddy Daisy, TN, to the bitter cold of New York City. Lonely, she took a chance by hitting the accept request button for her now client, billionaire Ridge Turner. Poppy knows mixing business and pleasure is dangerous territory. Growing riddled with dreams of a past life with him and plagued by a secret he keeps hidden, she wonders if she should resist the temptations building within her. The only problem is that Ridge Turner is hard to forget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda Kimberley
• Release date: Dec 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215870266

Amanda Kimberley

USA Today Best Selling and award-winning author Amanda Kimberley has written in various genres in the course of almost four decades. Her nonfiction blog, which focuses on the chronic disease fibromyalgia, has garnered recognition from various organizations, including Health Magazine. Naming her blog, Fibro and Fabulous, a top blog for fibro sufferers. Amanda has also written for medical magazines and sites like FM Aware, The National Fibromyalgia Association’s magazine, and ProHealth. When Kimberley is not writing nonfiction, she enjoys penning romance. Her first Furry United Coalition story, The Turtle and the Hare, earned the 2020 Summer Splash Book Awards of Ink and Scratches for Best Romance. Her Forever Series Books, Forever Friends, and Forever Bound were featured in 2015 and 2016 on the BookCountry website, a division of Penguin/Random House as editor’s picks. She has also been featured as a USA Today Happy Ever After Hot List Indie Author with Claiming My Valentine, a Best Poet of the 90’s ranking for an anthology, and has had a #1 PNR ranking with Immortal Hunger and Hearts Unleashed. Amanda Kimberley is a Connecticut native that now lives in the warmth of Northern Texas with her zoo consisting of her husky, tuxedo cat, mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, a tank of fish, two daughters, and a husband. When she is not writing you can find her cooking whole foods for her pack. She also enjoys reading, hiking, and gaming. Amanda Kimberley is a Connecticut native that now lives in the warmth of Northern Texas with her zoo consisting of her husky and cocker spaniel dogs, her tuxedo cat, two hamsters, a rabbit, a tank of fish, two daughters, and a husband. When she is not writing you can find her cooking whole foods for her pack. She also enjoys reading, hiking, and gaming.

Book preview

Midnight & Memories

Midnight & Memories

MIDNIGHT RISING SERIES

BOOK TWO

AMANDA KIMBERLEY

Copyright © 2020, 2022 by Amanda Kimberley

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems that are known now, or in the future without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For my husband and children

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Epilogue

Before You Go…

If You Liked Midnight & Memories You Might Like…

Loving the Alpha

Loving the Alpha Chapter One

Acknowledgments

About Amanda Kimberley

Also by Amanda Kimberley

About Midnight & Memories

The heart never forgets.

When Ridge Turner hit the friend request button, he had no idea he would come face to face with his past life lover. The old Chelsea Bennette accepted his dark side, but would the Poppy Lee of this life see him as a monster? His heart was willing to take the chance, but his head knew she should forget the vampire. 

Poppy Lee had just moved from the warm southern hospitality of Soddy Daisy, TN, to the bitter cold of New York City. Lonely, she took a chance by hitting the accept request button for her now client, billionaire Ridge Turner. Poppy knows mixing business and pleasure is dangerous territory. Growing riddled with dreams of a past life with him and plagued by a secret he keeps hidden, she wonders if she should resist the temptations building within her. The only problem is that Ridge Turner is hard to forget.

Chapter One

POPPY

Poppy had no idea what excited her about Ridge’s profile. But something made her want to accept a friend request after he joined her Titanic II Facebook Group. Usually, she didn’t accept friend requests from people in her group until they posted a couple of times. She wasn’t sure if he’d be a troll, a scammer, or worse—send a dick pic. Gross! Ridge was a complete stranger to her, but then again, so was 99.99% of New York. The only people she met since she moved here six months ago were the ones she paid rent to or worked for. 

She had no friends, which didn’t bother her for the first few months. Because memories of her rotten divorce and burying both her parents still loomed over her like it all happened yesterday. Having people in her life would have made things worse. It always did for stuff like that. The people in her town all felt sorry for her back home in Soddy Daisy, Tennessee. Sometimes that was a comfort. Most of the time, it wasn’t because their pitiful looks drove her crazy. And the other problem was her bitch of an ex stole from the people in town, too. The guilt made her fall deeper into a depression she didn’t feel she could recover from. 

She moved from her hometown of Soddy-Daisy, Tennessee, to escape her old life, and she figured New York City was the best place to not only get lost in. But also? She wanted to become invisible, blend into the proverbial woodwork at the local bars or walk the streets without someone staring at her. Especially when she was spending her first holidays without family. 

What she didn’t bank on with New York was the cold that had nothing to do with the weather. No one seemed friendly, and they all seemed to sport constipated looks on their faces whenever she wanted to give them a warm hello. She was from the south—what else would she do when she said hi to someone in the grocery store? 

She hadn’t realized how lonely her life became until she saw dots that signified Ridge was replying to her PM. It was a quick greeting that she had haphazardly written to him. Poppy had to find out if he was a psycho, and saying hello was the only way she knew how to figure that out. If he turned out to be a scammer, Poppy could block him from the group and the friendship before another keystroke happened on her part. What she didn’t expect from those three dots was her heart doing a somersault once the brief paragraph popped up on her screen.

Don’t get too excited, Poppy! He might be like the rest of the dark souls in this city—or worse!

She read the kind-hearted text. It was probably—no, it most certainly had been the sweetest gesture she had had from any native New Yorker since she got here. She wouldn’t believe he was from the city from the text, but she looked at his profile, and there it was. 

Hi Poppy! It is really nice to meet you! I was so happy to have come across your Titanic II group. I’ve been toying with the idea of purchasing a ticket for the maiden voyage for quite some time. 

Poppy smiled at the paragraph. It wasn’t overly personal, but it had exclamation points after her name and after the meet you. A typical Southerner would do that. Absolute proof this was the warmest greeting she had gotten since she moved here.

Crap! What should I respond with?

Poppy tapped her index finger on her chin for a few seconds and started typing.

I’m glad you are enjoying the group so far! Let me know if you have any questions while you peruse. 

There! That’s a suitable reply to him!

Her smile broadened at her quickness. But only for a few moments because she sees the dots on the PM again.

Actually, I do have a question…

Will this group have meetups before the maiden voyage? I’m kind of curious.

Poppy quirked an eyebrow at the question on her computer screen. It was a legitimate one to ask. Many of the Titanic II groups were doing meet and greets beforehand because that’s what they did with the first Titanic voyage. Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if his question was slightly loaded in a completely different direction, like boarding on a stalker-level direction. She quickly typed another reasonable answer that would nip anything crazy in the bud.

I haven’t thought about it because the departure is so far out, and my group is new. Perhaps when I get more group members, I’ll revisit this.

He began typing again, and Poppy assumed it was to persuade her to start a meetup.

Well, I’d really like to meet you, regardless. Is that a possibility? Name the place.

Poppy’s eyes widened. There was now no denying that this question was, in fact, a loaded one. Her heart dropped. Why did the first person she, for all intents and purposes, met in New York have to ask her out via Facebook?

I’m sorry, but I don’t meet up with people on the internet that I just said hi to fifteen minutes ago. 

Instead of hitting the shift key like she planned to--because she wanted to add something nicer. Something that would leave the door open to meeting Ridge in person if he didn’t turn out to be a creep online. Poppy wound up hitting the return key with her pinky instead. She instantly cupped her mouth in a desperate attempt to prevent herself from hyperventilating. If her mother were over her shoulder, Poppy would get the tongue lashing of the century from the woman who’d taught her never to be rude to anyone.

Jesus, Mary, and Joseph! Now he’s going to think I’m a psycho bitch! I need to fix this!

I mean—I’m sure you are nice and all! But can we get to know each other better before meeting IRL?

She tried to type it fast. And put in the exclamation point for good measure. Considering she was a journalist for a living in her sorted past, she took pride in being a pretty fast typist hovering at around 100 words a minute. But she wasn’t fast enough, and the words flashed in the bubble before hers stung her heart.

I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to sound stalkerish. I can leave you alone.

Fuck!

Poppy didn’t swear much. Only when she was only—never in public. According to her deceased mother, it