Free Christmas At Thorncliff Towers by Marina Myles Page A

said with a smile.
    She laughed. “We may not celebrate the holiday, but the most incredible things seem to happen to us around this time of year.”
    He flung his eyes wide. “You’re right. It should be our anniversary, of sorts.” Pausing, he ran the tip of his finger over her lips. “What can I get you for Christmas, Karina Petri?”
    With a toss of her wild, black hair, she shook her head. “I already have the perfect gift.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE
    Do you think Karina Petri’s magic ring helped her gain Constantin Stoica’s love? Not a chance! Because the ring merely prompted his temporary transformation into a wolf, Constantin came to his senses on his own. Of course, Karina’s fiery ways didn’t make it easy for him!
    When I decided to base this novella on the Brothers Grimm’s Hansel and Gretel fairy tale, the dark and unsettling story inspired me to go outside my proverbial “character” box and create a femme fatale heroine. Karina Petri, who stirs up trouble without really trying, represents everything womanly, seductive, and mysterious. Her one weakness? Her true love’s touch.
    In continuing the Hansel and Gretel theme, it was fun making Constantin more scrumptious than any bonbon on the gingerbread house! (As these passionate Gypsies discovered, sometimes it’s rewarding to give into temptation!) Even more fun was straying from the classic fairy tale to make the witch the heroine of the story.
    For those readers who wrote to me wanting more of Draven and Isabella (my hero and heroine from Beauty and the Wolf , The Cursed Princes #1)—thank you! I had a ball giving you a glimpse at this couple’s first Christmas together . . . complete with holiday chaos, an intruding Gypsy, and a bewitching elixir. I didn’t think you’d expect anything less at Thorncliff Towers.
    Please look for Cinderella and the Ghost (The Cursed Princes #4), coming February 2015.

CINDERELLA AND THE GHOST
     
    A stroke of paint and a stroke of luck. Will
they come together to create magic at the
stroke of midnight?
     
    Please turn the page for a sneak peek at
Marina Myles’s twist on the world’s most
beloved fairy tale.
    1
    Present day
     
    A mong the inky midnight shadows, Jean-Daniel Girard, formerly the Viscount de Maincy, stirred inside his portrait. It was stifling inside the two-dimensional painting, but it wasn’t the stuffiness that made him want to escape. Instead, the profound sense of change Jean-Daniel felt inside his beloved home was prompting him to emerge tonight.
    Peering through the darkness, he materialized from the life-sized painting as easily as water flows from a faucet.
    Even though I’m dead, I usually come alive at night.
    He would have laughed aloud at the joke if he weren’t a ghost. That was the kind of man he’d been, over three hundred years ago. Blithe sense of humor. Carefree demeanor. Lover of life and all it had to offer.
    Now, of course, Girard was nothing more than a spirit doomed to haunt his former château. Since 1703, he’d been floating around the sprawling grounds and vast rooms of Château de Maincy. Trapped inside the perimeters of the dilapidated estate, he was the specter of a man who’d suffered a tragic death. And as a phantom, Jean-Daniel could hardly believe he’d been dead that long.
    At least I’ve had plenty of time to play my favorite game: hide-n-shriek.
    He laughed inwardly at that one. Who says you can’t take your sense of humor with you?
    Mouth quirking, he turned and looked back at his painted image . The so-called “masterpiece” showed him posed in front of Château de Maincy, garbed in early eighteenth-century attire. God. He hated the solemn expression plastered across his face.
    In his defense, who wouldn’t have dropped their smile after countless days of posing?
    As a strange ripple of energy filtered around the drawing room, he touched his powdered wig. Damn ugly thing. The only time he’d worn a periwig was when he sat for the