Ruby: A Reverse Harem Romance (Jewels Cafe Book 6) Read online

  I messed up my Christmas miracle.

  That’s a big no-no for an angel. My boss shrunk my wings as a consequence. But did he have to make them so small? They’re the size of baby cupid wings for cloud’s sake!

  That’s why I’ve been hiding out on earth, in the small town of Silver Springs—feeding my shoe obsession and trying to understand humans so I can magic up a winning miracle this year.

  But humans are impossible to understand. They wear shoes that hurt their feet. They want you to smile at strangers but not too wide or you look crazy. They claim their brains fart—that’s not even physically possible!

  I need to understand people so I can get my wings back.

  But one enchanted pumpkin spice latte later … my plans start to go to hell in a hand-basket.

  I meet Parker Blue, and thanks to the latte, I can see he’s my soulmate. And he’s a demon.

  An angel can’t be soulmates with a demon! That’s impossible!

  But that impossibility doesn’t even compare to what happens next.

  Parker brings me home to figure out this mess and I find out he’s not my only soulmate. His roommates, two hot computer nerds, drop their jaws when they see me.

  Will I get to fulfill my Christmas miracle or decide heaven can wait?

  Note: This is a paranormal reverse harem romance intended for adult audiences. It’s a romance with an HEA and no cliffhanger. It’s the sixth book in the Jewels Cafe series.

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

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  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

  Afterword

  Read Other Jewels Cafe Books

  Amethyst Preview

  Signup for My Newsletter

  Acknowledgments

  More Books

  Connect and Get Sneak Peeks

  About Me

  Copyright © 2019 Ann Denton

  1st Edition

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

  Le Rue Publishing

  320 South Boston Avenue, Suite 1030

  Tulsa, OK 74103

  www.LeRuePublishing.com

  ISBN: 978-1-951714-99-4

  To All the Angels Living in Sin…

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  Chapter 1

  Ruby

  “I fucking hate you!” Holly screamed at me before she stormed out of the store for the second time this week.

  “Hate? Hate? Hold on, let me grab my dictionary for that one.” Gah! English. It was the hardest language ever—and I’d learned thirty-five so far, mostly aquatic dialects (which were basically gargling with different intonations).

  I flitted over to the cash register in my shoe shop, half-flying, half-skipping because I couldn’t let Holly see my wings. I had to hide them with magic.

  Holly had said that word with such intensity. It had to be a good one. I dug through the piles of receipts to find the well-worn book that I always kept on-hand at work. But Holly didn’t wait for me to look up the word hate—a word I’d never heard before.

  Instead, her blonde, teenage ponytail disappeared out the front door and around the corner of Main Street into the sunset.

  I found my dictionary and made my way over to the white leather chairs in the center of my show room. I didn’t have any customers today anyway, so I sat down in one of the chairs people normally used to try on shoes and looked up the word. Hat: A shaped covering for the head worn for warmth… that didn’t sound right. How could Holly hat me? Ugh. Was this one of those annoying words like knife? With all those letters that didn’t need to be there?

  I leaned over to the Alexa that Holly had installed for me. “Hey, Alexa, what’s hate?”

  Alexa responded with: “Hate: intense, passionate dislike.”

  Could people dislike angels? I looked up at the ceiling. I mean, was He gonna let Holly get away with that?

  Nothing happened. So, apparently, the answer was yes. People could hate angels.

  “Really?” I asked the ceiling. All I’d asked her to do was take out the trash after our newest shoe delivery. But Holly had teared up, her blue eyes welling, before she screamed that word hate and stomped out. Did trash make her sad? Was it a phobia? Or were those angry tears? I’d read about those. Angry-crying was a thing.

  I sighed. There were just too many options. Humans cried when they were happy, sad, even angry. How were you supposed to tell?

  And nothing in Harmony’s Guide to Humans said anything about humans hating trash.

  I pulled off my flats and dug my toes into my plush white rug in the middle of my showroom for a second. I had white couches and chairs for customers who tried on the shoes I sourced from around the world. Behind me, on the white wall, adorable little shoe display cubbies were lit with the light from heaven—electricity was far too expensive since I only sold shoes every few days. Next to me, a cardboard tower of brand-new shoe boxes stood like little presents just waiting to be opened. How could anyone be mad in here? Or feel hate?

  It shouldn’t be possible, I thought, before opening up a couple of new shoe boxes and pulling out the softest shoes I could find. I caressed them before I slipped them onto my feet. They were Tree Loungers and the box said their color was fog, though, having been raised in the clouds, I considered myself an expert on condensation. This was more of a sooty ash color. The manufacturers got it wrong. As humans so often did.

  I took a test step off my rug and onto the hard cement floor to try out my newest product. I leaned over to look at them as I walked. Decent. Not cloud-level comfort, that was certain, but the shoes had arch support and no heel. I had to flutter my wings a bit to keep from tunking over face first, because this gravity stuff was a total downer. Earth had far more gravity than heaven or any of the planets I’d been stationed on before.

  I didn’t get how other angels did it. I’d been here just over a year and the balance thing still got to me. I’d petitioned for smaller boobs, thinking the frontal weight might be causing the issue, but the Mortal Bodies Commission was all wrapped up in some hearing because someone added a tentacle where they weren’t supposed to. So, who knew when I’d hear back about the boob reduction.

  I sighed, stopped walking, and stared at the trash bag in front of me. My thoughts went back to Holly. She’d been fine three minutes ago. I squinted at the trash bag, trying to decide if it looked like some evil earth creature and that’s why Holly had gone bonkers. I crouched in front of the bag and poked at it. To me, it just looked lik
e a shiny boulder. But maybe she had a fear of boulders?

  “Hey Alexa, are people scared of rocks?”

  Alexa started to list off types of rocks, completely ignoring my question.

  Suddenly, a ball of light appeared in front of me, hovering just at eye level. I squinted, blinded by the intensity of the bright white orb. It was like a miniature sun, only lacking the heat. "Stars, Gunther! Do you have to be so bright?"

  My supervisor’s laugh drifted over me. But he dimmed a little as he bounced up and down in front of me. "It’s the fastest way to show up on this planet," he replied.

  I fought against rolling my eyes. A witch named Amethyst had taught me that habit—humans did it to show they were annoyed. But I didn't think my supervisor would appreciate it. So, I smiled instead. “How can I help you?”

  “Just checking in on your progress. Miracle by Christmas still on track?” Gunther asked.

  “The girl’s working here,” I responded with a noncommittal shrug. Creating this store and then convincing the teenager she needed a job here had taken three months. But changing her rotten attitude? Helping her regain the faith? It was mid-November. The chances of me pulling this off by Christmas hovered somewhere between the chance of being struck by lightning and the chance of winning the lottery—which according to the guy at the gas station who explained the ticket to me, was none. “I could really use a better guide on human emotions—” Because they make no thundering sense!

  A scroll shot out of the ball of light and smacked me in the chest. “Ow!”

  I rubbed at the sore spot as I bent to pick the scroll up off the floor. I nearly fell but tossed my wings out to help regain my balance. The scroll was thick, probably a foot in circumference. I peeled it open and read, “Harmony’s Guide to Humans: The Teenage Years: An Instruction Manual.” I glazed over all the formal text to find the publication date. “1745.” I sighed. “Why haven’t we updated this thing?”

  Gunther’s orb of light bounced up off the ceiling and then off the floor before floating aimlessly around my shoe shop. “Red tape. It takes the Committee on Humanity centuries to approve updates. Just know, the dueling section is definitely obsolete. The guide to marriage is only applicable in some countries. But the section on STDs? You’re gonna want to check that out.”

  “Well, the Committee might want to get a move on. The other guide I’ve been using obviously didn’t work out.”

  A snort came from the ball of light, and little sparks shot out across the room.

  “Look, Gunther, we all know that last year … didn’t go well.” That was the understatement of the year. Last Christmas, my attempt at a miracle had been a disaster. A disaster that had made me the laughingstock of heaven.

  I fingered my little wings. They’d been shrunk into tiny, two-feather horrors as a consequence of my failure to pull off a miracle for George Barley. They could hardly be called wings anymore. They looked awful, like baby cupid wings, but didn’t even work as well as those. I glanced over at my boss, who was lazily spinning in midair, changing colors like some DJ party light. “Don’t you think I could transfer back to the warrior division?” I crossed my fingers as I asked.

  Those were the good days. You saw a demon, you killed it. Or you helped your warriors—aka the good guys—kill the demon’s warriors—aka the bad guys. It was all very cut and dry. Good and evil. Alive and dead.

  This miracle stuff was the pits. Humans were so emotional. About everything. Even trash, apparently.

  Gunther made his edges waver. “No can do. Everyone has to do a miracle rotation. Cheer up, kid. You’ve only got ninety-nine years to go!”

  I swallowed a groan as Gunther circled me.

  “Unless you mess up again, of course,” he added. “Three strikes and you’re done.”

  My stomach curdled like cottage cheese—that disgusting substance Holly constantly shoved down her throat that looked like clotted alien jizz.

  “I’m gonna send you a mentor, someone to help you out,” his voice wrapped around me.

  His words were supposed to be comforting but panic shot down my spine. I didn’t want a mentor. I didn’t need someone breathing down my neck, telling me how to put one foot in front of the other. I’d made one mistake, for cloud’s sake! “What I need is a better guide to humans.”

  “You’re getting a personal guide.”

  “But—”

  “No buts. You know the three strikes rule. You’ve had one. The second isn’t looking good. I don’t want you to get it. Because angels who get a second strike nearly always get a third.”

  I swallowed hard. “Yeah,” I said quietly. And if I got a third … I’d get transferred. Downstairs. As in … I’d have to live in the nether regions. I shuddered. I did not want to become a demon. That was the worst fate an angel could have. To be sent to the dark side.

  “Now, go find your target and get a move on. Your mentor will get here tomorrow. Peace out!” Gunther chuckled as his ball of light shrunk to a pinprick and then popped into nothingness.

  Great. Just great. I have an impossible mission and now a mentor to hide from.

  In heaven, a mentor was the equivalent of what Amethyst called a micro-manager, a control freak, like her ex. Angels had great intentions. Always. But execution … yeah, sometimes we weren’t the best at that. Probably because we were so rolled up in rules, and our lack of free will and all. Sometimes being an angel felt like tiptoeing through the fog over thorny thistles. One wrong step and wham! Your poor toesies were ripped to shreds. Mentors meant double the rules. Double the tiptoeing. I had a new word for how I felt about mentors: hate.

  I shook my head as I set the scroll down on the ground and took out the garbage myself, rounding the brick corner of my building and mulling over Holly and her insane teenage mood swings. The Committee on Humanity always insisted that emotions were what made humans special. Holly’s older sister had taught me the word “special” could have multiple meanings. It made me wonder if the committee was using the other definition. Because Holly was a whack job.

  I blew a raspberry at the trash bag, grumbling, “Warrior angels have it so easy.” I stared at the black plastic and reminisced wistfully about my days in sector seventeen, on the various planets there. Back when my wings were the size of my entire body.

  I glanced around the alley. No humans were around. There was only a cute little bunny shifter hopping around a couple doors down. But supernaturals were all aware of one another. They knew I existed. So I didn’t have to pretend to be human around them. Thank goodness. I used my wings to hover so I could throw the bag full of cardboard into the giant green dumpster. But my ridiculous wings were far too small for my body weight unless I flapped at awful hummingbird speeds. What should have been a hover was more of an awkward, prolonged jump. When I landed, my foot touched a puddle of goop. Nasty, sticky brown goop that smelled like sewage.

  Thunderheads! That was the second pair of shoes I’d ruined this week!

  I stomped back to my shop and tossed out the shoes. I went to the bathroom in the back and cleaned my feet, grumpy that Holly hadn’t done her job, grumpy about my dirty foot, grumpy that I was getting a mentor and had another century to go in the miracle division. A century on earth! How was I ever gonna stand it?

  Killing bad guys! Easy peasy. But how the bad place was I supposed to take someone who’d lost faith and restore it? You’d think appearing to them would do it. Poof. I’m an angel. Angels exist. God exists. Believe! Be good!

  But no. Humans were so stubbornly illogical. They adored things that made zero sense at all. Like kittens. “Hello, small furry creature who cannot stand the sight of me. I’m going to embrace and caress you against your will.” WHAT? The Earthly Critter Committee kept advising God to give cats bigger claws in order to protect themselves against this atrocity, but he hadn’t consented yet. For some reason, he found humanity’s logical fallacies amusing. And humans lived with emotions going haywire. Just like Holly.

  I kicked
the new scroll, watching it unravel until it met my shaggy white rug. I wouldn’t find anything useful in there; no women’s rights, Instagram selfies, or blenders—which I had completely thought were the devil’s evil invention until Holly introduced me to a smoothie. Mixed berry with energy infusion—now that’s angelic inspiration at work, right there.

  My stomach grumbled. That was the one good part about becoming corporeal over the past year. Eating.

  I made myself a smoothie and locked up The Perfect Fit early. It wasn’t like I had customers anyway. I made my way to the graveyard as darkness fell, determined to find Holly’s big sister. I’d have her help me get a plan together for this miracle before my mentor showed up tomorrow and started trying to boss me around. Operation Miracle ASAP was about to commence.

  The cemetery gate creaked as I pushed it open.

  "Those hooligans are at it again!" Muriel whooshed toward me; her ghostly, semi-transparent face contorted in fury as her giant old-fashioned plumed hat flew off her head. She pointed a gnarled, accusing finger back behind the big crypt. Silver Springs Cemetery wasn’t that big, because the town wasn’t that big. There was only one crypt; it belonged to the ice-cream barons of upstate New York, the Weatherhouser family.