Is Running On Empty: A Wine Country Cold Case Novel Based On A True Story?

The woman standing there was nobody that Scars had ever laid eyes on before, but holy God, he knew her. He knew her on a cellular level. In his blood. In his bones. In his heart and in his cock. He’d dreamed about her and he’d waited for her. He’d been looking for her forever, and now here she was. ** Six years ago, Zoe Parish fled Denver after a brutal encounter with a motorcycle club man, swearing never to trust one again. Now a mother and desperate to help her oldest friend, she returns when Wolf Connor promises his club is out of the life and she’ll be safe. Back in Denver, Zoe keeps her guard up, especially around Scars, whose effect on her is far more unsettling than she wants to admit. Vic “Scars” Innis has spent twenty-two years loyal to the Road Devils, earning his place as Vice-President. He thought he was content, until he meets Zoe. From the first look, he knows she’s the missing piece, even if she despises everything he represents. As danger closes in and an enemy threatens to destroy their fragile peace – and take Zoe’s child – Scars and Zoe are forced to confront their pasts and each other. The question is whether their bond will make them stronger… or finally tear them apart for good.

On the Northwind Trail, just before sunrise, my flashlight cut across the inside of the SUV and landed on five lifeless bodies. My hands shook as I dialed 911. "Hello? I'm on Route 296, the Northwind Trail. Everyone in my car… is dead." The operator's voice was calm but quick. "Please confirm your location. Officers are on their way." My words dropped heavy and flat, like stones hitting the ground. "I'm on Route 296, about three miles east of the mountain pass. The plate number is NA318X. Five people inside the car are dead… and I'm the only one alive."

All 20 year old Holly ever wanted to do was escape the boring Colorado mountain town where she was born. However, when she arrived at college, she found herself having too many wild nights. Worse yet, she had one too many mornings of waking up in an unfamiliar bed, and she couldn't keep her scholarship. Now that's she's back in Conifer, she has no idea what she is going to do with her life and no hope for the future. Andrew's father died a couple years ago in an electrical accident, and while Andrew wants nothing more than to leave town, his mother's mental instability makes it impossible for him to go. He feels trapped in a no-win situation and his options are slipping away. When a mutual friend has a crisis, Holly comes up with a plan, a plan that will change all their lives for the better. She knows that, despite previously being burned, all it takes to start a fire is a spark. However, she realizes that once again, she may have stood too close to the flame, and the torch she carries for Andrew burns brighter than ever. Will Holly manage to rekindle old loves, or will the destructive fire in their hearts consume everything they hold dear?

Everyone knew Elio Carbone, Don of the Carbone family, was a cold-hearted womanizer. He had one rule: never sleep with the same woman twice. But for me, he broke it. The first day after our breakup, he stood outside the old Bianchi estate for a day and a night, his entire security detail in tow, just to win me back. The second day, he flew to Sicily and bought the deed to my family's ancestral estate at auction for triple its value, and had it delivered to me. The third day, he tattooed my favorite flower, the lily, over his heart. The tattoo artist said he refused any anesthetic and didn't make a sound. Later, at a banquet for the Five Families, in front of all the other Dons, he sliced his palm and made a blood oath. He swore loyalty only to Eleonora Bianchi for the rest of his life; if he broke his vow, he would pay with his life. After a year of his relentless pursuit, his devotion finally wore me down, and I agreed to take him back. I truly believed him then. That Elio truly loved me. Until one night. He took me to an underground racetrack to broker a deal with an ally. But in the roaring crowd, I saw a girl, trembling and crying, her clothes in tatters. Ava was shoved to the starting line. She was the wager for the death race. One look was all it took for Elio's face to darken. The next second, he dropped his hand from my waist and, without a word, walked toward the track entrance. I stood frozen, watching his back as he disappeared into the driver's seat of a modified sports car. I used to wake up crying, terrified he would lose his life in one of these reckless races. He had smashed his trophies, burned his marker for the illegal track, and sworn to God he would never again enter such a life-or-death gamble. My hand drifted to my stomach, covering the secret I hadn't yet had the chance to share. His blood oath was broken. And so was I.

Five years ago, Juliette Rowe stood alone at the altar, her dreams shattered as Damon Thorne, the ruthless billionaire she loved, vanished without a trace. Left heartbroken and pregnant, Juliette rebuilt her life in the shadows, raising their son with no word from the man who abandoned them. But fate has a cruel sense of timing. When a news report reveals that Damon has survived a near-fatal car crash and lost all memory of his past Juliette is thrust back into a world she swore to leave behind. To make matters worse, Damon is now engaged to a woman he doesn’t truly love and surrounded by a family determined to erase Juliette from his life forever. Haunted by dreams he can’t explain, Damon is drawn to Juliette — a woman his heart remembers even if his mind does not. But as old secrets surface and a dangerous truth behind his accident is uncovered, Juliette must make an impossible choice: Expose the past and risk everything… or protect her son from a lies-filled future. Love may be lost in memory, but never in the heart. Some memories fade but not true.

**Dangerous Addiction: The Woman He Couldn't Replace** Regina Kingston built her life with her own hands — a thriving architecture firm, a marriage she chose freely, a love she never stopped fighting for. But for three years, she has shared her husband with a ghost. Alexander Kingston is everything a woman could want on paper: billionaire, powerful, devastatingly controlled. What no one knows is that beneath the empire he built lies a grief he never buried — Rosalie Hart, his first love, dead in a fire six years ago, and somehow still occupying every locked door, every silence, every place in his heart Regina was never allowed to enter. On their anniversary, while Regina prepares a dinner he never comes home to eat, she overhears the truth she always feared: if Rosalie had lived, his life would have been different. Hers wouldn't have mattered at all. She signs the divorce papers that night. But before the ink even dries, an anonymous call and a chilling photograph shatter everything she thought she knew — Rosalie Hart may still be alive. Now Alexander has five days to prove that what he feels for Regina is real, not guilt, not habit, not a woman wearing someone else's shadow. As old wounds reopen and Evelyn Laurent — his childhood friend, devoted to him in ways he's never noticed — moves through the chaos with a calm too practiced to trust, Regina carries a secret of her own: she's pregnant, and she doesn't know if she'll have the chance to tell him before everything falls apart. Between a love fighting to be chosen and a past that refuses to stay dead, *Dangerous Addiction* asks the question every woman who has loved an unavailable man has asked herself: can you ever truly win against a ghost?