The 2014 R.L. Mathewson Chronicle Collection

The 2014 R.L. Mathewson Chronicle Collection

by

R.L. Mathewson

Other titles by R.L. Mathewson
:

The Pyte/Sentinel Series:

Tall, Dark & Lonely

Without Regret

Tall, Dark & Heartless

Tall, Silent & Lethal

The Hollywood Hearts Series:

A Humble Heart

A Reclusive Heart

The Neighbor from Hell Series:

Playing for Keeps

Perfection

Checkmate

Truce: The Historic Neighbor from Hell

The EMS Series:

Sudden Response

The Cursed Hearts Series:

Black Heart

Nonfiction Titles:

How to Write, Publish and All That Good Stuff…

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations and events described in this novel are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

Edited by R.L. Mathewson and Jessica Atchison

Cover designed by Rochelle McGrath

The 2014 R.L. Mathewson Chronicle Collection © Rerum Industries, Inc. 2014. All rights Reserved.

e-book ISBN: 978-0-9885732-4-6

This book is dedicated to my children of course, but it’s also dedicated to the readers who have stuck by me, encouraged me and entertained me. Thank you so much for everything you’ve done for me and my family.

This book is a collection of the Chronicles that can be found at
www.Rlmathewson.com
. Every week I post a Chronicle or an excerpt to keep readers entertained and up to date about their favorite characters.

The R.L. Mathewson Chronicles

The Beginning

Boston, MA

           
“Why the hell are we at a chocolate buffet for this meeting?” Ephraim demanded as he pushed away his empty plate and leaned back in his chair. He threw his arm around his mate’s shoulders as the woman in question looked wistfully around the large private banquet room filled with every type of chocolate imaginable.

            “Because this is where R.L. asked us to meet her,” Nick said on a tired sigh as he was once again forced to wrap his arms around his wife’s waist and pull the cute little thing with a serious sugar addiction back onto his lap before she attacked the chocolate fondue fountain, again.

            As Jason sat there, nibbling on a chocolate-coated strawberry that he’d swiped off Trevor’s plate, he couldn’t help but wonder if Jamie was a long lost Bradford. One look at the large plate of food that her husband had ordered and pleaded with her to eat before she went on a sugar binge quickly killed that theory. The woman seemed to only care about sweets while Bradfords could, and would, eat anything.

            Then again, she’d fit in rather nicely with the shifter and Sentinel sitting across from him, fighting over the last slice of chocolate pudding cake, Jason mused as he gestured to the abandoned lunch plate. Nick gave him a reluctant nod before focusing all of his attention back on the woman now pouting in his arms.

            “You greedy bastard!” Trevor hissed with a murderous glare as he shook out his hand, no doubt trying to work the out the sting, courtesy of the metal spoon that Jason had been forced to whack against the back of Trevor’s hand when the bastard had made a move to steal the plate of food from him.

            Ignoring him, Jason picked up the plate overflowing with turkey, and the works, and placed it in front of him. As much as he loved a good dessert, he loved a good meal more.

            “You could share!” the greedy bastard snapped.

            “No,” he said with a heavy sigh, making sure to sound saddened by the fact that he wasn’t about to share. “I really couldn’t,” he added, before he took the first bite of turkey and practically groaned in ecstasy.

            “Don’t even think about it,” Zoe said in a harsh whisper to her husband when Trevor made a move to stand up, making Jason chuckle as he tore into the large buttery biscuit.

            “But-”

            “You promised R.L. that you wouldn’t get us kicked out,” Zoe reminded the greedy bastard as Jason made a show of taking a large bite of the delicious buttery morsel.

            Judging by the murderous glare that Trevor was sending his way, he knew that his cousin was tempted to jump over the table and beat the shit out of him, but Trevor knew better than to piss R.L. off. She might be laid back and easy going, but she had a low tolerance for assholes who came between her and chocolate, especially a chocolate buffet.

            “Speaking of R.L.,” Eric said as he placed a plate overflowing with chocolate puddings and pies in front of his wife Joe, “where is she?”

            “The last time I saw her, she was in the hallway talking with Tristan and Caine,” Connor said, not bothering to look up from his computer screen as Rory pointed out something that sounded like a design flaw to him.

            “Was Shayne with him?” Jason asked, wondering if they’d be able to fit in a quick game tonight before he took his little grasshopper out for dinner.

            “No,” Rory said, shaking her head absently as she pointed something else out to her husband, “I think he’s home with the rest of their brothers looking after Marty.”

            “Is she still having problems with morning sickness?” Zoe asked, slapping her husband’s hand away from her plate.

            “Yes, but that’s not the problem,” Rory answered, adding, “they’re having a problem with spirits again,” before anyone could ask.

            Kale gave a snort of amusement as he tried to swipe a bite of cake from Izzy’s plate. “That’s a pretty fucked up series.”

            “Tell me about it,” Jason said, chuckling in agreement along with most of the men at the table.

            “I don’t know why she bothered writing anything else,” Chris said before adding the one thing that was guaranteed to piss off every character at the table, “she should have just stuck with the Sentinel/Pyte series.”

            “Oh, because writing about Pytes, vampires and shifters that lick their own asses are somehow better than ghosts?” Trevor asked, not even bothering to hide his snort of disbelief.

            “I don’t lick my own ass, you bastard!” Kale snapped.

            “At least our series is more original than a bunch of guys with a food addiction,” Ephraim said as he pointedly looked at the large empty plate in front of Jason.

            “It’s a medical condition, you bastard!” Jason snapped back, sick of these cocky bastards knocking his love of food.

            “It’s annoying,” Eric said, sounding irritated as his wife simply muttered something and pulled out a well worn paperback book right about the time the rest of the women at the table pulled out their books and iPads, apparently determined to ignore the men at the table.

            “Stay the hell out of this,
EMS boy
,” Trevor practically sneered, getting into the argument that occurred every time they had one of these meetings.

            “Blow me,” Eric said, giving him the finger.

            “Puhlease,” Trevor said, shaking his head in disgust, “like you could get someone like me.”

            “Isn’t R.L. planning on killing you off in the next book?” Nick, a natural instigator, asked.

            Trevor’s gasp of outrage had Jason rolling his eyes. “That’s a lie! She would never kill me off. I’m the most popular character!”

            “In your dreams,” Chris said, gesturing between his father and himself. “We are.”

            Jason didn’t even bothering arguing since he really didn’t care. The only thing that he cared about right now was grabbing a bowl of that decadent chocolate mousse, whisking his wife upstairs and licking every drop off her body. Then he would-

            “Please tell me that you’re not having this argument again,” a familiar voice with a slight Boston accent said, drawing his attention away from the chocolate mousse and onto the woman that was responsible for bringing him together with his little grasshopper, something that he would be eternally grateful for.

            “How are the kids?” he asked as he stood up and pulled the much shorter woman into his arms for a hug.

            “They’re good,” R.L. said, returning the hug before she pulled away and gave Haley a hug.

            Jason sat down and watched as R.L. went around the table, greeting all of the characters that she’d created and loved. When she came to Kale, the shifter picked her up, gave her a big hug as he whispered something in her ear that had her shaking her head with a smile. Grumbling something about a mate, Kale gestured for R.L. to take his seat and grabbed another chair to sit close to her while Caine and Tristan leaned back against the wall behind her, keeping a protective eye on everyone in the room.

            “I know that you all have things that you need to do, so I’m not going to waste your time with pleasantries,” R.L. said, getting to the point, which was definitely appreciated with this group. “I’ve decided to start something called,
The R.L. Mathewson Chronicles
on my blog.”

            “Are you writing an online novelette?” Nick, always the editor, asked with real interest.

            The look of disgust on R.L.’s face was priceless and if he wasn’t afraid that she’d get back at him in the next
Neighbor from Hell
novel, he would have teased her about it. “I don’t write novelettes.”

            “What do you have against novelettes?” Jaime asked, sounding curious.

            R.L. shrugged. “I have nothing against them personally. I just don’t like rushing a story. I like giving the characters a chance to develop. I’m not opposed to doing a collection of extended epilogues for characters that have already been established, but that’s probably it.”

            “Then what’s this chronicles project about?” Madison asked, shifting in her seat so that she could give R.L. her full attention.

            “Well,” R.L. said, sounding a little nervous, “I thought that I’d start handing over the reigns to my blog to all of you.”

            “To us?” he asked, sharing a confused look with Trevor.

            R.L. shrugged as she said, “I thought it would be more fun for the readers if they got a chance to see how everyone was doing and what was coming up through everyone here instead of me giving boring updates.”

            “How would we do that?” Eric asked, placing his hand over the large swell of Joe’s stomach.

            “I have a few ideas that I’d like to play around with,” R.L. said with that secretive smile that usually ended with one of them screwing up and making an ass out of themselves.

            “Do we have a choice?” Chris asked, looking a little nervous for a man trained to kill with his bare hands.

            “No,” R.L. said with a chuckle as she shook her head, “not really.”

            “That’s what I thought,” Chris said with a heavy sigh as he rubbed his hands down his face. “When do we start?”

            “Soon,” was all R.L. said as she stood up and headed for the door, leaving them all to wonder just how badly this was going to end for them.

A Neighbor From Hell Christmas

Part I

            “I thought they’d never fall asleep,” Haley mumbled into her pillow, too tired to turn her head so that Jason could hear her.

            “Tell me about it,” Jason said as he fell onto the bed beside her, sounding as exhausted as she felt.

            “Are they still here?” she whispered, afraid to raise her voice any higher out of fear that-

            “What the hell are you doing in there?” Trevor, a man that she normally loved, said, making her whimper as she hugged her pillow tightly. Her only hope was that he would just go away and take the rest of the Bradford clan with him.

            “Go away!” Jason snapped, sounding ready to kill his cousin, something that she would have normally tried to stop, but not tonight.

            Tonight she was exhausted, beyond exhausted actually. For the past three days she’d been cooking non-stop while taking care of her babies, cleaning the house, finishing last minute shopping, wrapping presents, and calling up all the other Bradford wives to coordinate the massive meal as well as the food donation that they were making to the soup kitchen on Christmas Eve. Thankfully everything had worked out perfectly.

            The kids had woken them up at five this morning and had been going ever since. After they’d cleaned up the mess the kids made opening their presents, they cooked breakfast and began prepping for lunch. Then they cooked lunch for thirty Bradfords, managed to grab a quick bite to eat before they had to clean up the mess, take all the kids outside to play with their new sleds and then came back to set up dessert, which was promptly followed by dinner for twenty Bradfords.

            After dinner, of course, came a second course of desserts, playing with the kids again, catching up on everything going on in the family, getting all the kids cleaned up, reading them a story and spending a good hour trying to get the kids to calm down long enough to fall asleep and ignore the fact that they had about ten of their cousins sleeping in their room with them and an insane amount of toys that were practically begging for their attention. Once the kids had begun to pass out one by one, they’d quietly tiptoed to their room, shut the door and dropped onto their bed, praying that the rest of their family wouldn’t notice their absence. Now they just wanted to pass out and stay that way until sometime tomorrow afternoon, preferably late afternoon.

            “What the hell are you doing?” Trevor demanded again, oblivious to the fact that he was seconds away from facing her fists of fury.

            “Having sex! Now fuck off so that we can finish!” Jason snapped.

            “Liar,” Trevor said, sounding close, really close for some reason.

            Praying that she was wrong, Haley started to turn over only to find herself being pushed to the side as Trevor climbed onto the bed between them. At that point she would have loved to have been able to beat him into submission, but she barely had enough energy to whimper and mutter pathetically as she automatically shifted closer to Trevor to make room for an embarrassed Zoe.

            “I’m really sorry about this,” Zoe said, looking just as exhausted as they were, which explained why she was climbing onto the bed next to her instead of dragging her husband out of their room by his ear.

            “Don’t worry about it,” Haley mumbled, used to the pain in the ass Bradford behavior by now. Gathering every last ounce of energy that she could find, she forced herself to sit up and crawl over the intruding bastard, making damn sure that her knees slammed into his ribs. Before she was even halfway over the bastard, Jason was reaching over and grabbing her. Within seconds, she was comfortably curled up by Jason’s side.