Semi sane, p.1
Semi-Sane, page 1
Semi-Sane
Harper Hall Investigations #5
Isabel Jordan
Copyright © 2017 by Isabel Jordan
All Rights Reserved.
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Cover Design by Dar Albert, Wicked Smart Designs
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No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form without written permission from the publisher. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and events are the product of the author’s twisted imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, places, organizations, or people (living or dead) is coincidental (and would be super-weird).
Created with Vellum
Contents
Praise For…
IMPORTANT MESSAGE
Books by Isabel Jordan
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
A personal note from Isabel
Acknowledgments
Books by Isabel Jordan
Sample of Semi-Obsessed
About the Author
Praise For…
Praise for the Harper Hall Investigations series
“Harper is a heroine you can get behind! She's witty, crazy, kick-ass, and amazing! Noah is my new book boyfriend! He's the bad boy we all want and your mom hates but then she falls in love with him, too!”
—Indy Book Fairy
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“Fresh and fun. Relaxed with a good dose of humor.”
—Lanie's Book Thoughts
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“Holy crap! That was awesome! More please!! Brilliantly funny, sexy, charming, and awesome.”
—Me, Myself & Books
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“If you are a fan of the Sookie Stackhouse books, Buffy the Vampire slayer, and the likes, you will enjoy this book a great deal.”
—The Book Disciple
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“Harper Hall is the best kind of heroine for me. She’s funny, snarky, can handle herself in a fight and never shies away from telling anyone what she’s thinking. Long-story-short, this series is worth a read. Just don’t read it in public because there are parts that are snort-laugh inducing (and no one looks hot while snort-laughing).”
—Knockin’ Books
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“If you love Charley Davison, True Blood or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, then you will definitely want to read this quirky vampire/paranormal series.”
—Literati Literature Lovers
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“I waited FOREVER for this book…at least it seemed that way. I couldn’t wait to read Mischa and Hunter’s story! True to the author’s form, I giggled my way through this story, when I wasn’t sighing over the leading man.”
—Author L.E. Wilson
IMPORTANT MESSAGE
If you didn’t purchase this book from a reputable book seller or download it through a legit library, it has been stolen. Book piracy is a crime, and many times, when you download from a book piracy site, those files have been corrupted and will give you the worst case of computer syphilis ever. And if you’re not worried about your computer (or, you know, being a thief) those sites are also known for loading files with malware that can steal your passwords and banking information. Long-story-short: only read this book legally—if not for me, then for the sake of your poor computer and all your innocent passwords. Thank you for your support and for helping to stop book pirates from ruining the industry for everyone.
Books by Isabel Jordan
Contemporary romance/romantic comedy
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You Complicate Me
You Wrecked Me
You Ruined Me
You Complicate Me series box set
The Has-Been and the Hot Mess
The Has-Been and the Hot Mistake
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Superhero romantic comedy
Caped and Dangerous
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Paranormal romance
The Harper Hall Investigations series reading order:
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Semi-Charmed
Semi-Human
Semi-Twisted
Semi-Broken
Semi-Sane
Semi-Obsessed
Semi-Magical
Semi-Fated
The Harper Hall Investigations series boxset
To all the ladies in my Bitch, Write Faster group. Without your support (and constant nagging), this book never would’ve been finished. I can’t thank you all enough!
Chapter One
As it turned out, Stockholm syndrome didn’t go away immediately after a daring rescue. Nope. Apparently, it could jump up and smack a victim in the face months later. Four months, three days, eight hours, and a handful of minutes, to be exact.
Not that she was counting.
Dr. Violet Marchand was somewhat of an expert on all things Stockholm syndrome for a couple of reasons. Number one, she was a psychiatrist. A damn good one, too. She even had the fancy diploma from Johns Hopkins to prove it. Not to mention she was one of the only therapists in the state of New York to earn a license to treat supernatural patients.
But that was a different story entirely.
The point was that she now had irrefutable, empirical evidence of the impact of Stockholm syndrome on the human body. Her body, specifically. Or, even more specifically, her nipples.
Because at that very moment, she stood in the doorway of her apartment, face to face—or, face to chest, she supposed, because he was really tall—with the man who’d taught her more about Stockholm syndrome than textbooks and years of clinical practice ever could.
Nikolai Aleyev, the man who’d stalked her, fake-dated her, drugged her, and kidnapped her, all to get close to one of her patients—who he intended to kill—was here in front of her. And after everything he’d done to her, her nipples were on high alert, practically saluting the man like a lowly private salutes a four-star general at West Point. Stockholm syndrome in action.
Stupid traitorous nipples.
Violet held up her phone, with one finger poised over the screen to call for help. “One wrong move and I hit this button, which will automatically call 911.”
The bastard had the nerve to smile at her as he held up his hands in supplication. “I mean you no harm, kotehok.”
Kotehok. Russian for kitten. She brutally tamped down the obnoxious, fluttery…Stockholm syndrome-y feelings the nickname set off in her stomach. She refused—absolutely refused—to fall for cutesy nicknames and that low, growly, sexy Russian accent of his.
Well, again, anyway.
And besides, she only had his word for it that kotehok meant kitten, anyway. She didn’t speak Russian. For all she knew, he was really calling her a simple-minded chump in that sexy accent.
Violet lowered the phone but kept it in her hand, just in case. “Who let you in the building, Nikolai?”
He leaned a shoulder against her doorjamb, not looking at all concerned that she had a twitchy 911 finger. “Small woman.” He held a hand up to indicate the woman in question had been about armpit height on him. “About sixty years old. Asked me if I was single. Wouldn’t let me in until I said yes.”
Violet suppressed a groan. Mrs. Copely. The woman was desperately looking for a man to marry her daughter and give her grandbabies. She would’ve let Ted Bundy into the building if she thought his sperm count was high enough.
And Nikolai Aleyev looked like every woman’s dream sperm donor.
Tall, dark, and dangerous, with chiseled bone structure, messy hair the color of melted dark chocolate, dark brows slashing over pale green eyes, a flawless olive complexion lily-white people like Violet would kill for…yep. The sperm bank—or Mrs. Copely’s daughter, for that matter—would probably kill to take a dip in Nikolai’s gene pool.
“What do you want?” she asked, ruthlessly dragging her attention away from thoughts of Nikolai’s presumably grade-A swimmers.
“I only want a few minutes of your time. Then I’ll leave you alone.” He glanced at the phone in her hand. “You don’t need that. I won’t hurt you.”
“Again,” she said quietly. “You won’t hurt me again.”
He winced, but held her gaze. “No. Never again.”
They both knew she wasn’t talking about hurt in the physical sense, either. He was too diabolical for that. During the whole kidnapping ordeal he’d been nothing but gentle with her. Tender, even. No, her scars from that night weren’t physical.
Emotional dings and bruises were another matter entirely.
There’d been a time with him, right before the kidnapping, when she’d been sure he was The One. She’d let her natural defenses down with him in ways she never had before. He’d seen more of her—the real her, not the serious, professional mask she usually let the world see—than anyone she’d ever known. She’d been within kissing distance of falling for him.
And damned if that thought didn’t remind her of the one and only kiss they’d shared. A kiss she’d initiated, of course—the best of her life. Which only deepened her humiliation where this man was concerned.
How utterly clueless and naïve she’d been to think he’d felt any of what she was feeling.
Violet stared at him for what felt like an eternity, searching for something, anything, that would tell her he was lying to her now. That he had some kind of new agenda. She found nothing. He sounded and looked totally sincere.
And that just pissed her off. Hating him would be so much easier if he was a lying bastard, incapable of empathy or love or any other messy human emotion.
She cleared her throat. “Talk fast. I have to get ready for work.”
If he was at all put off by her abrupt tone, his stoic facial expression certainly gave no indication. “I have a job in town, so I’ll be here in Whispering Hope at least for a few months. I wanted you to know so that if you saw me somewhere, you wouldn’t be caught unaware.”
Unaware? You mean, like I am now, as I stand here with nothing but a thin robe covering my flannel pajama pants with little light sabers all over them and the tank top with Yoda’s face and the words “There Is No Try” printed across my boobs?
She was about to inform him that the best way to avoid catching someone unaware was to call them before you showed up on their doorstep when a disturbing thought occurred to her. “What kind of job?” she asked, her tone ripe with suspicion. “You’re not—”
One dark brow rose. “Here to kill someone?” he finished her sentence for her in a tone drier than Death Valley sand. “No, Violet. The Council helped me get a construction job with a company downtown.”
She took a relieved breath, even though she logically knew the vampire Council wouldn’t let him pick up his life where Sentry left off. They wouldn’t have let him ever see the light of day again if they thought he was a danger to anyone.
He tipped his head down so he could look her straight in the eye and quietly said, “I’m not crazy, kotehok. I know what I did to you was wrong. I just didn’t know what else to do at the time.”
Violet wanted to ignore the stab of sympathy she felt for him. She really wanted to. But she just couldn’t. She knew too much about ex-Sentry employees—and about Nikolai specifically— not to sympathize with him, no matter what he’d done to her.
Back before vampires came out of the coffin, paranormal threats against human society were policed by Sentry, an organization with endlessly deep pockets and ties to every government in the world. Such threats were eliminated without prejudice.
All that ended when the vampires peeled back the curtain on their society, exposing Sentry in the process. The organization didn’t fare too well in the court of public opinion. The vampires had made sure of it.
When Sentry folded, thousands of people were out of work. People who’d been told they were heroes, helping to safeguard humanity, were suddenly hated for no other reason than their association with Sentry. That kind of thing tended to scar even the most resilient psyches, which was where Vi came in.
Most of her ex-Sentry patients hated themselves for what they’d been forced to do for their organization more than anyone else ever could. Nikolai wasn’t her patient, but she could easily see that he fell into that category.
Nikolai was a dhampyre, a genetically engineered vampire/human hybrid, and like her former patient, Seven, he’d been a cleaner for Sentry. As Seven had explained it to her, cleaners were essentially trained to kill anyone and anything that stood between them and whatever mission Sentry had assigned to them. If they resisted, they were sent for “reprogramming,” which was basically just a euphemism for months of solitary confinement, brainwashing, and torture.
Since the time his parents were murdered and he was sold to Sentry when he was only five years old, Nikolai had been sent for reprogramming four times. As far as she knew, no one else had ever been sent for reprogramming more than once.
Cleaners set about killing each other when Sentry folded, as they’d been trained to do. As far as anyone knew, Nikolai and Seven were the last of their kind. Thank God Seven had been able to reason with Nikolai, or else they’d probably both be dead now.
But not before he’d kidnapped Violet to get to Seven.
Logically, Violet knew not to doubt the Council’s judgment. They were all ancient vampires, with Hunter, her friend Mischa’s husband, being the oldest of all. Combined, they had thousands of years’ worth of wisdom under their belts. If they thought Nikolai wasn’t a danger to society, he most likely wasn’t.
But her not-so-logical heart still saw him for the predator he was. She wasn’t about to usher Nikolai back into her life with open arms (or legs, for that matter).
That kind of hurt and humiliation just wasn’t something she’d ever subject herself to again.
Mask of calm professionalism firmly back in place (even though her heart and stomach were warring for a spot in her throat), she said, “Thank you for telling me. Is that all?”
Something she couldn’t quite identify flashed in his eyes. Pain? Maybe a little regret? She wasn’t sure, and it was gone before she could make sense of it. “I also wanted to tell you that I’m sorry,” he said.
Violet crossed her arms over her chest, steeling herself against the sincerity in his tone, the warmth in his eyes. “For what? For fake dating me? Kidnapping me? Trying to kill one of my patients?”
Letting me kiss you? Kissing me back? Kissing me back so passionately it ruined me—ruined me, damn you—for all other kisses?
“All of it,” he murmured.
He leaned in a little closer and the heat of his body flowed over her skin, carrying with it his scent—laundry detergent, soap, and testosterone, she imagined. It was a scent that was all too familiar and entirely too pleasant for her peace of mind.
Danger, Will Robinson, her brain shouted. Step back!
Don’t be stupid, her body argued. Jump him!
Oblivious to her inner turmoil, he raised his eyes to hers and asked, “Do you ever think about…how things might have been between us if I hadn’t ruined everything?”
Violet blinked up at him. Well, that was a question she certainly hadn’t been expecting. “Do you?”
His gaze dropped to her mouth before lifting to her eyes once more. There was only an inch or so separating their bodies, their mouths, and from the hot, dark look he was currently pinning her with, he realized it, too.
“I think about it all the time,” he said, his voice even lower and raspier than usual. “It wasn’t all a lie, you know. I often wonder if you’d ever let me make it right.”
Sweet Christ, was he asking her to give him another chance? To…date him?
Her heart jumped up and down, squealing girlishly, while her brain reminded her what it felt like to be kidnapped and tied to a chair. And not even in the remotely fun and kinky way.
Stupid, stupid heart.
Violet cleared her throat again. “I don’t believe in looking backward,” she said in her best shrink voice. “There’s nothing for you to make right. I accept your apology.”
