Twisted: Brides of the Kindred 23 Read online

  Twisted

  Brides of the Kindred #23

  Evangeline Anderson

  .

  * * * * *

  PUBLISHED BY:

  Evangeline Anderson

  Brides of the Kindred

  Copyright © 2019 by Evangeline Anderson

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com or Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  *Cover content is for illustrative purposes only. Any person depicted on the cover is a model*

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  Also by Evangeline Anderson

  Brides of the Kindred series (Sci-fi /Action-Adventure /Romance)

  Claimed (Also available in Audio)

  Hunted (Also available in Audio)

  Sought (Also Available in Audio)

  Found (Also Available in Audio )

  Revealed (Also Available in Audio)

  Pursued (Also Available in Audio)

  Exiled (Also Available in Audio)

  Shadowed (Also Available in Audio)

  Chained (Also Available in Audio)

  Divided (Coming soon to Audio)

  Devoured

  Enhanced

  Cursed

  Enslaved

  Targeted

  Forgotten

  Switched

  Uncharted

  Unbound

  Surrendered

  Vanished

  Imprisoned

  Twisted

  Decieved (coming soon)

  Kindred Tales series (side stories in the Brides of the Kindred which are outside the main story arc. These can be read as STAND ALONE novels.)

  Mastering the Mistress (Also available in Audio)

  Bonding with the Beast (Also available in Audio)

  Seeing with the Heart (Also available in Audio)

  Freeing the Prisoner (Also available in Audio)

  Healing the Broken (a Kindred Christmas novel) (Also available in Audio)

  Taming the Giant (Also available in Audio)

  Bridging the Distance

  Loving a Stranger

  Finding the Jewel

  Bonded by Accident

  Releasing the Dragon

  Sharing a Mate

  Instructing the Novice

  Awakened by the Giant

  Hitting the Target

  Handling the Hybrid (coming soon)

  Born to Darkness series (Paranormal/Action-Adventure/Romance)

  Crimson Debt (Also available in Audio)

  Scarlet Heat (Also available in Audio)

  Ruby Shadows (Also available in Audio)

  Cardinal Sins (Coming Soon)

  Dessert (short novella following Scarlet Heat) (Also in Audio)

  Alien Mate Index series (Sci-fi /Action-Adventure /Romance)

  Abducted (Also available in Print and Audio)

  Protected (Also available in Print and Audio)

  Descended (Also available in Print and Audio)

  Severed (Also available in Print and Audio )

  The Cougarville Series

  (Paranormal/Action-Adventure/Romance/)

  (Older woman/Younger Man)

  Buck Naked (Also available in Audio)

  Cougar Bait (Also available in Audio)

  Stone Cold Fox (Also available in Audio)

  Big Bad Wolf (coming soon)

  The Institute series (Daddy-Dom/Age Play Romance)

  The Institute: Daddy Issues(Also available in Audio)

  The Institute: Mishka's Spanking

  The CyBRG Files with Mina Carter

  (Sci-fi /Action-Adventure /Romance)

  Unit 77: Broken

  Unit 78: Bred

  The Swann Sisters Chronicles

  (Contemporary Fairy/Funny/ Fantasy/Romance)

  Wishful Thinking (Also available in Audio)

  Be Careful What You Wish For (Also available in Audio)

  Compendiums and Box Sets

  Brides of the Kindred Volume One

  Contains Claimed, Hunted, Sought and Found

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Two

  Contains Revealed, Pursued, and Exiled

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Three

  Contains Shadowed, Chained, and Divided

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Four

  Contains Devoured, Enhanced, and Cursed

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Five

  Contains Enslaved, Targeted, and Forgotten

  Brides of the Kindred Volume Six

  Contains Switched, Uncharted, and Unbound

  Kindred Tales Volume One

  Contains Mastering the Mistress, Bonding with the Beast, Seeing with the Heart

  Kindred Tales Volume Two

  Contains Freeing the Prisoner, Healing the Broken, Taming the Giant

  Kindred Tales Volume Three

  Contains Bridging the Distance, Loving a Stranger, Finding the Jewel

  Alien Mate Index Volume One

  Contains Abducted, Protected, Descended, and Severed

  Born to Darkness Box Set

  Contains Crimson Debt, Scarlet Heat, and Ruby Shadows

  *One Hot Halloween

  Contains Red and the Wolf, Gypsy Moon, and Taming the Beast

  *Have Yourself a Sexy Little Christmas

  Contains Kidnapped for Christmas, Cougar Christmas, and Seasons's Spankings

  *Bound and Determined

  Contains The Punishment of Nicolett and His Ward

  Stand Alone Novels

  (Sci-fi OR Paranormal Action-Adventure/Romance)

  Purity (Now available in Audio)

  Stress Relief

  The Last Man on Earth

  Anyone U Want

  Shadow Dreams

  Hunger Moon Rising

  Cougar Christmas

  Planet X (Also available in Audio)

  Deal with the Devil (Also available in Audio)

  The Sacrifice (Also available in Audio)

  Blood Kiss

  Take Two

  The Pleasure Palace

  The Last Man on Earth

  Blind Date with a Vampire

  Eyes Like a Wolf (Foster Brother romance)

  *Defiled

  *Ceremony of Three

  *Str8te Boys (M/M romance)

  * Forever Broken (M/M romance)

  * Red and the Wolf

  *Gypsy Moon

  *The Last Bite (M/M romance)

  *The Assignment (M/M romance)

  *Sex with Strangers

  *A Spanking for Valentine

  * denotes books that are only available at Evangeline's Aliens and Alphas Bookstore

  Naughty Tales (Short Reads to get you Hot and Bothered)

  *Sin Eater

  Confessions of a Lingerie Model

  When Mr. Black Comes Home

  Speeding Ticket

  *Putting on a Show

  YA Novels

  The Academy(Now available in Audio)

  Click HERE to join my audiobook newsletter.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter N
ine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Chapter Twenty-six

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  Vote for which book you want to read next!

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Evangeline Anderson

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  Chapter One

  Nicole Davis, (Nikki to her friends and family,) stood in the cold, frothy foam that rushed in over the hard-packed sand and looked out into the vast gray of the ocean and the pale blue of the sky beyond. It was her thirty-seventh birthday and her life felt like it was over. In fact, she was trying to think of a single reason not to keep walking…not to let those rolling waves she saw in the distance rush over her head and drag her under forever.

  Shouldn’t even be here. What am I doing at the beach instead of at work or attending one of the endless conferences at one of the boys’ schools?

  Right this minute she ought to be at Rosy Ray’s Realty (where we find you your forever home for less!) filing paperwork and taking calls for Missy Cannon, the realtor whose assistant she still was, despite the fact that she’d passed the Florida state licensing exam and had gotten her Real Estate License herself months before. And later she had to attend yet another 504 Plan meeting for her twins.

  Jacob and James had both been born with learning delays—probably because they’d had to come out really early due to complications in her pregnancy. At the time, Nikki had also been dealing with a toddler—three-year-old Jude—as well as the two preemies. Her husband, Gary, was at work all the time so he couldn’t help much at all—not that he wanted to. Gary had always been of the opinion that parenting was a womanly duty and had as little to do with it as possible. At the time, Nikki had felt like a single mother and it had been really overwhelming.

  Her life had gotten really crazy after the twins were born and somehow even twelve years later, the craziness had never quite dissipated—it just mutated into other forms of stress. People always told you, “Oh, don’t worry—it will get easier.” But it never did as far as Nikki could see. It just got worse.

  Maybe she was just feeling negative because of the awful day she’d had yesterday, she thought morosely. Maybe that was her problem…

  It had started with her finding a bottle of her mother-in-law’s pain pills in her teenager’s sock drawer when she was hunting for some pairs of spare socks for her twins, who were out of clean clothes again. They had some in the washer—which were unfortunately still wet because she’d fallen into an exhausted sleep before she could put them in the dryer the night before. So she’d been rooting around, hoping her fifteen year old might have some clean socks when she’d found the half-full bottle.

  Gary had been rushing out the door to the office, so she couldn’t enlist her husband’s help. Instead, she’d confronted Jude by herself and his answer had been…a shrug.

  “Look at me, young man! What are you doing with a bottle of your grandmother’s pain pills? Do you know what these are? They’re addictive! You could get hooked and ruin your life—how did they get here?” Nikki glared at her hulking fifteen-year-old who towered over her since his last growth spurt.

  Jude had shrugged sullenly again.

  “Dunno.”

  Nikki wanted to shake him. Where had her sweet, smart little boy gone to? The one who used to help her in the kitchen when she cooked and made the A honor roll consistently? Lately it seemed that Jude had drifted further and further away from her, becoming distant and sullen, and he’d been getting into trouble at school, too. His grades were dropping and he was cutting class all the time. Now she had to wonder if he had a drug problem on top of all that. What the hell was going on?

  But no matter how much she ranted and raved, he just stood there, refusing to answer, that same, angry scowl on his face as he silently glared at her from his newly superior height. It made Nikki crazy, but there was nothing she could do about it at that point. All three boys would be late to school if she kept on and anyway, she was getting nowhere with her sullen teen.

  “We’ll have a talk about this with your father tonight,” she told Jude and then shoved the pills in her purse and grabbed the socks for her twins.

  “Did not!”

  “Did too! Give it back!”

  “No! It’s mine now—I own it!”

  Sullen silence wasn’t a problem with Jacob and James and she had to break up a fight before she could make them finish getting dressed. Before having them, Nikki had heard so much about how twins were supposed to get along and have a special bond. But her boys fought like cats and dogs—maybe because they were fraternal twins instead of identical.

  James was fair with light brown hair and light eyes like her husband Gary and like Jude. Jacob, on the other hand, had inherited Nikki’s black hair and dark eyes.

  At twelve and a half and in sixth grade, both twins were firmly in their tweens, which meant that neither of them was sweet or cuddly anymore. They no longer wanted Nikki to read them bedtime stories and though the fact that she was always the homeroom mom had used to be a source of delight to them, now having her step foot in their school was the worst embarrassment imaginable.

  “Mom, do you have to come to our class every time you have a meeting in the office?” James had asked her just the week before. “None of the other parents come around like you do.”

  “Yeah, Mom—it’s embarrassing,” Jacob had chimed in. It was the one thing the two of them seemed to agree on—that the very sight of Nikki in their school was humiliating in the extreme. It made her feel like a trailing piece of toilet paper stuck to the bottom of a shoe. Though she knew it was normal—having already gone through it with Jude—it still hurt to go from being the greatest mom ever to something shameful that ought to be kept in the closet, hidden away out of sight.

  I’m there for you, Nikki felt like screaming. As the school got less funding, they were constantly trying to cut the twins’ speech and language services. Sometimes it felt like every week she had to go down to the counseling office and fight to make certain her kids got the help they needed to make it through middle school. And what was her reward? Tween scorn and ingratitude that almost stung more than Jude’s sullen teenage indifference.

  She had finally gotten all three boys packed off to school and gotten to work—five minutes late—to find that Missy Cannon (the realtor with a smile!) was waiting at her desk with a frown and a sheaf of paperwork.

  “Honestly, Nikki, I thought we agreed no more tardies,” she snipped, putting her free hand on her tiny, barely-there hip. “I’ve been waiting for you for the past thirty minutes to get started on these marketing plans. These listings aren’t going to sell themselves, you know.”

  Nikki thought about telling her to do her own paperwork. It was past time that she got out from under Missy’s shadow and started making her own sales. In fact, she had made a sale the day before—or she was fairly certain she had. The clients were supposed to be calling to say if they wanted to put a bid on the property she’d showed them and she was almost certain they would.

  But Missy was the lead realtor at Rosy Ray’s and she had the boss, Mr. Ray, wrapped around her petite, size-two finger. Missy was tiny, blonde and slim—unlike Nikki’s own plus-sized figure. She also flirted shamelessly with their boss and Nikki was under no illusions as to who would win a confrontation if she complained about the other woman.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, swallowing her irritation. “My boys were a pain today—you know how it is.”

  “Ye
s, I do but I try not to bring my home problems to work, Nikki.” Missy glared at her meaningfully. “How many times have you ever heard me use my sweet little Melinda as an excuse?”

  None, Nikki thought resentfully. Maybe because she’s an only child and you can afford a nanny to help raise her!

  But again she swallowed the words and simply took the sheaf of papers Missy was waving in her face.

  “I’m expecting a call from Amanda and Luke Travers later today,” she said, attempting to change the subject. “I showed them that property out on Lambright and I think they’re going to make an offer.”

  “Oh, they already did,” Missy said breezily. “They called not five minutes before you finally decided to sashay in this morning. I told them I would put in the offer and let them know what the seller said—no problem.”

  “But…” Nikki had worked hard to keep her voice even. “But that’s my sale. I found the listing, I did all the paperwork, and I showed them the property. You can’t just take over at the last minute!”

  “It’s hardly the last minute,” Missy objected airily. “There’s still a lot to be done. Besides, you’re still under me, remember? If you wanted to keep a sale to yourself, you should have made it to work on time.”

  “But I need that commission,” Nikki protested. “My car is on its last legs, Missy—I need to get new tires and a new—”

  “Sorry, not my problem! You should have been in on time,” Missy trilled, flashing her the big, fake smile she usually reserved for clients. “Of course, you can complain to Mr. Ray if you want to, but when he finds out you almost lost a sale because you were late to work, well…” She shook her head and clicked her tongue disapprovingly. “I think he’s more likely to thank me for saving the listing than get upset that I ‘stole’ it from you, don’t you?”

  Nikki’s hands had balled into fists but again, what could she do? Of course she wouldn’t have lost the sale—the call would have just gone to voice mail and she would have returned it the moment she got in. But she knew that Missy would make it sound like she was being sloppy and late and losing sales left and right. She’d be lucky to keep her job at all, let alone get back the lost sale after the manipulative little bitch got through telling the story her way.