Midnight & Magic: Midnight Rising Series, #3

By Amanda Kimberley

Sometimes Christmas Really is All About the Cookie!

Camden Connel never has time for women. His days are all about the US and his nights are all about Japan's stock markets. As a CEO on Wallstreet and working with the world's most prominent investors, his sole focus is his clients. Besides, women only see him as a piece of meat, which is ironic since he's a vampire. 

One of the celebrity rags crowned him as America's most eligible bad boy bachelor. And now, because of that and his failed attempt at settling down, he has an even harder time relating to women, especially when he first meets Cassidy.

Cassidy Christianson has horrible luck! She has a failed marriage and career because her ex cheated on her last Christmas and blackballed her in the interior design world! Cassidy made a pact to swear off of men, but she still needed to work, and Camden Connel was the only one willing to give her an interview. Out of options, she takes the offered position. Her holiday-hating new boss wants her to create the Christmas party of the decade as her first assignment. No pressure! 

Stressed after he shoots down idea after idea, she wanders into a local bar for a liquid lunch. She pours her heart out to Ginger, a bartender with the most beautiful elf costume and perfect prosthetic ears Cassidy has ever seen. 

Ginger hands her a special Christmas card, and within it is a gift of gumption. According to the card, she has the next 24 hours to be as daring as she needs to be to get her boss to listen to her. Can she pull off an ugly sweater competition so she doesn't have to go to another party in high heels? And more importantly, will she convince Camden that the bond they feel is true?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Amanda Kimberley
• Release date: Dec 9, 2022
• ISBN: 9798215842768

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 & Magic

Midnight & Magic

MIDNIGHT RISING SERIES

BOOK THREE

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, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

For my Family

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Before You Go…

About Author Amanda Kimberley

Also by Amanda Kimberley

If You Liked Midnight & Memories You Might Like…

Laying Claim to the Lion

Laying Claim to the Lion

Acknowledgments

About Midnight & Magic

Sometimes Christmas Really is All About the Cookie!

Camden Connel never has time for women. His days are all about the US and his nights are all about Japan’s stock markets. As a CEO on Wallstreet and working with the world’s most prominent investors, his sole focus is his clients. Besides, women only see him as a piece of meat, which is ironic since he’s a vampire. 

One of the celebrity rags crowned him as America’s most eligible bad boy bachelor. And now, because of that and his failed attempt at settling down, he has an even harder time relating to women, especially when he first meets Cassidy.

Cassidy Christianson has horrible luck! She has a failed marriage and career because her ex cheated on her last Christmas and blackballed her in the interior design world! Cassidy made a pact to swear off of men, but she still needed to work, and Camden Connel was the only one willing to give her an interview. Out of options, she takes the offered position. Her holiday-hating new boss wants her to create the Christmas party of the decade as her first assignment. No pressure! 

Stressed after he shoots down idea after idea, she wanders into a local bar for a liquid lunch. She pours her heart out to Ginger, a bartender with the most beautiful elf costume and perfect prosthetic ears Cassidy has ever seen. 

Ginger hands her a special Christmas card, and within it is a gift of gumption. According to the card, she has the next 24 hours to be as daring as she needs to be to get her boss to listen to her. Can she pull off an ugly sweater competition so she doesn’t have to go to another party in high heels? And more importantly, will she convince Camden that the bond they feel is true?

Chapter One

She read the letter stuck to her door, Please take further notice that within fourteen (14) days after service of this notice, you are hereby required to pay the above-listed amount in full or quit the subject premises. The letter, of course, droned on from there, but she didn’t need to read the damned thing any further. It was an eviction letter, and she didn’t have a way to fight it. Sadly, now she had a choice: spend her last two grand on her shoebox rental studio, or eat.

She opened her door, placed her handbag, keys, and eviction letter on the console table, and looked up in the mirror. Her eyes appeared to be sunken in, and the bags around her eyes had bags, too. Sure, she was Italian, and the dark circles were hereditary, but the bags weren’t—not even for a vampire, but the stress she was under made her look less than her best. However, that was fine because they offset the double chin, which seemed to form the minute she hit 30. At least now she could lose the proverbial Freshman 15 she never seemed to get rid of throughout college. Not eating would do that to a person. Of course, then she’d have an additional problem—loose-fitting jeans. Who needs anything to wear but sweatpants—right?

Might as well pay the rent because salad is on sale. She said to herself with a sigh.

She had about $40 left from her 401K; the negligible amount would suffice for a few cans of vegetable soup or even a little tempeh. Not that she was planning on going vegetarian—or worse—vegan. But at least her food would be substantially less without the high price of meat tacked onto the bill. But seriously? Who besides celebs and models leaves meat out of their diet because bacon—you know?

She decided she’d go to the store tomorrow after her job interview. This interview will be her last hope of landing a job before the heat and electricity bills become due. She didn’t think finding a job would have been this hard. She lived and breathed what she did for a living, and no one did the job like her. All her paying clients loved her flair for home interior design. But her ex-husband made sure she became blackballed by all the other designers looking for assistants.

Sure, she might find some sympathetic human to work for as a personal assistant. Still, after reading her resume and seeing she was part owner of a successful design firm, they placed said resume into the proverbial slush pile. She’d be highly overqualified, and no one would ever hire her for a starting position this late in her life. Plus, the pay cut would be drastic.

She liked humans; they seemed to be wonderfully unique creatures in her experience dealing with them, but as a vampire, it proved challenging to work with them. They were just too temperamental, especially if they didn’t have coffee. Plus? Her ex demeaned her by cheating and blackballing her before the divorce. So why stoop even lower and work with humans? It just wasn’t what vampires did if they could avoid it.

Camden Connell was an extremely successful business mogul on Wall Street, and he was in search of a personal secretary. Now that Cassidy had officially graduated from college, again, she thought that her business degree and working for one of the most successful vampires in New York City would be a decent fit for her new lease on life. She wasn’t exactly keen on the fact of working for the man. He was temperamental on his good days and downright mean on any other day.

But Cassidy needed to put her thoughts aside so they wouldn’t interfere with this chance at a paying job, not now, because her time had completely run out on her. And as if by luck, the personal secretary who is currently employed by him decided to retire. When Cassidy’s resume came across the PA’s desk, she instantly recognized the name. Cheryl was one of Cassidy’s best customers when she was a designer. Cheryl loved Casiddy’s work so much that Cassidy wound up redesigning the woman’s entire apartment. She had told Cassidy in confidence that she had put in a good word for her with the boss, and Cassidy prayed that the good luck that seemed to happen would go as far as her landing the job.

Chapter Two