Listed: Volume IV Page 9
Paul swallowed hard. “She’s going to die.”
“We all have our trials. What matters is what we do with them.”
This conversation had played out exactly as Paul had known it would. He wasn’t even angry. The faint hope had been doomed from the start. “So you won’t help?”
“I can’t help. I’m not the monster you think I am. I didn’t do this.” The words were almost convincing.
“I don’t believe you.”
His father shrugged. “You’re still young, and you still live your life looking for dragons to slay. It doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes the world is just brutal. For no particular reason. Without anybody to blame.”
Paul stared blindly and couldn’t move, couldn’t speak.
It felt like his father had just signed Emily’s death warrant.
When Paul was thirteen and his parents were headed for divorce, he’d been both devastated and furious one night at seeing his mother cry.
His father had told him to toughen up.
Not long ago, Paul had believed himself to be tough.
He stood up. So abruptly his chair tipped backwards and hit the floor with a loud clatter.
His father smiled faintly. “I guess this is goodbye then. Give my best to your pretty wife.”
Despite everything else, those last words managed to hurt Paul.
He turned to leave. He wasn’t going to say anything more. He wouldn’t give his father the satisfaction of seeing him made even more vulnerable.
Paul only made it a couple of steps before he stopped and glanced back. “Why does it always have to be a war between us?”
Something changed on his father’s face. Not any sort of softening, but he looked older than he should have. And so, so tired.
Then Vincent Marino asked a final question, one that needed no answer. “When is life anything else?”
Publishing Schedule
Listed is completed and will be published in six volumes on the following schedule. Each volume is roughly 28,000-35,000 words (around 90-120 pages). Beginning in Volume III, it will include adult sex scenes.
Volume I: February 8, 2013 (with free promotion days)
Volume II: February 15, 2013 (with free promotion days)
Volume III: February 22, 2013 (with free promotion days)
Volume IV: March 1, 2013
Volume V: March 8, 2013
Volume VI: March 15, 2013
About the Author
Noelle handwrote her first romance novel in a spiral-bound notebook when she was twelve, and she hasn’t stopped writing since. She has lived in eight different states and currently resides in Virginia, where she teaches English, reads any book she can get her hands on, and offers tribute to a very spoiled cocker spaniel.
She loves travel, art, history, and ice cream. After spending far too many years of her life in graduate school, she has decided to reorient her priorities and focus on writing contemporary romances. For more information, please check out her website: noelle-adams.com