Midlife Shift and Shenanigans: Paranormal Women’s Fiction Romance (Cougars and Cauldrons, Book 3)

Midlife Shift and Shenanigans Paranormal Women’s Fiction Romance Jennifer L. Hart Elements Unleashed Copyright © 2023 by Jennifer L. Hart Edited by Grammar rulz A-Z Cover designed by Getcovers.com All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Created with Vellum Contents Trigger Warning 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 Epilogue Note From the Author Coming in June Coming in August Also by Jennifer L. Hart This one is for the reviewers. Your words keep me going. Thank you. Trigger Warning Trigger warning for sensitive readers: This book includes a character’s suicide. I have tried my best to handle the situation with love and respect but if that subject is too much for you, you might want to skip this book. Love and light, Jennifer L. Hart. Chapter 1 Sam The sea breeze blew the hair off my sweaty face. I leaned heavily on the carved walking stick Mathis had made for me as I took in the outdoor dining area. “It’s glorious, Damien. Really.” The shifter grinned down at me. “Thanks to you.” “I had very little to do with it.” He made a dismissive sound. “Only funded the majority of it. Helped me make the place handicap accessible and fill out mountains of paperwork. Order new everything from the pots and pans in the kitchen to the window treatments in the dining room...Do I need to keep going?” “It has been a busy couple of months, hasn’t it?” I smiled and took a deep lungful of ocean air. Busy was putting it lightly. Being a witch and working a few focus spells to keep the general contractor and his crew on task so we could open at the end of the summer created more work for everyone. Not a day went by that we didn’t have twenty decisions to make. Things that needed to be ordered, and installed, have time to cure or dry. It was an overwhelming project. Just what I’d needed. Damien placed a light touch on my shoulder. “Seriously Sam, I couldn’t have done it without you.” His words filled me with the same sort of warm pleasure I experienced whenever Damien looked at me. Or touched me. It wasn’t just because he was an attractive man in his early fifties, though the silver wings in his dark hair and the laugh lines that surrounded his piercing baby blues didn’t hurt his case. Nor was it the heat that radiated off of a dominant mountain lion shifter in waves that were hotter than the Carolina sun in August. Damien was one of the most dominant shifters in the pack, second only to our son, John. While I appreciated all those things about him, it was the idea that my contribution was truly valued. It warmed something within me, something that had been cold and lifeless a year ago before I’d come back to the Outer Banks. It was nice to be respected. To feel useful. It had been too long since I’d thrown myself into a project and had something to show for it. Even though Multiple Sclerosis limited my participation in some tasks, Damien never once complained when I’d had to punk out due to fatigue or numbness. He didn’t get on my case when brain fog devoured my to-do list and I had to ask him to repeat things over and over again. He understood and accepted my limitations. Accepted me. “Sam,” he murmured in that tone. The one that told me he wasn’t thinking of me as his business partner or the mother of his son. No, that deep, rich rumble was like an underwater earthquake. It meant Damien was thinking about me as his mate. He wanted to do something to remind me about our more intimate connection. Something that would have me naked and panting in minutes. I took a careful step away and put distance between our bodies. The same way I had done all summer. I heard him sigh, a regretful sound that I felt reverberate in my soul. I wanted to be intimate with Damien. Desperately. After years of believing that my sexuality had dried up, he’d brought it roaring back to life and I craved having that connection once more. It helped me recapture something about myself that I thought had been lost forever. The distance stemmed from my nervousness because Damien wasn’t the only shifter who had bonded with me. Mathis had been there too, on that magical night of reawakening. Just thinking about it made my blood boil. And they wanted more, both of them. A hell of a lot more. And at some point when I wasn’t looking, the two of them had decided to share me. Not just in terms of my affection either. My time was divided up between the two of them like pieces of pizza. When Damien was in the kitchen working on a meal, Mathis would drag me outside to get some vitamin D. When Mathis went on patrol, Damien sat me down for a game of go fish. They were almost as demanding as my high-spirited corgis. I’d given into the shifters—once. When things were out of control and emotions were running high, I’d thrown caution to the wind and embraced both men and their claims on my body and soul. For one amazing night, I had been theirs. The remembered intensity still gave me hot flashes. But what sort of life could the three of us really have together? Most days I barely had enough oomph to manage one relationship, never mind two.