Mixed Signals Read online

  Mixed Signals

  By Alyssa Cole

  Four years after the Flare, the world is finally starting to rebuild

  For Maggie Seong, that means leaving the safety of her family’s cabin for college. She won’t be alone, though—hunky former military cadet Edwin Hernandez, family friend and self-appointed Protector of Maggie’s Virtue, will be there. Maggie would much prefer that Edwin himself dispose of her “innocence,” but he’s already rejected her advances once, and a girl has her pride.

  Things look pretty bleak romance-wise until Maggie discovers that Devon, the pre-Flare internet boyfriend she’d assumed was dead, is not only alive but on campus. Despite the passage of time, their bond is strong, and they quickly pick up where they left off. Even as Devon aims for a chance at love IRL—everything Maggie thought she’d wanted—Edwin’s desire to protect her makes her question her heart.

  Maggie’s torn between the future she didn’t dare to hope for and the past she can’t let go of. And when a group of neo-Luddite terrorists threaten the campus, everyone’s loyalties will be tested. To ensure that the world doesn’t go back to the dark days following the Flare, Maggie might have to sacrifice it all.

  Book three of Off the Grid. Read Radio Silence and Signal Boost, available now!

  62,000 words

  Dear Reader,

  If you’re in North America, you’re heading in to that time of year when you grab a cup of hot apple cider, bundle up with a warm, fuzzy blanket and grab your phone or e-reader to snuggle down with a good book on your couch. This October, we have a few books that will make you want to do this every day. Go ahead and tell your day-job boss that you have a note from the editor excusing your absence.

  Don’t you just love Lauren Dane’s books and her feisty heroines? We do, too, and we’re excited for the next Goddess with a Blade paranormal romance installment, At Blade’s Edge. Rowan Summerwaite sneaks into London so she can begin to unravel just who and what is behind the rot within Hunter Corp. It’s not so much that someone ordered her assassination—people try to kill her all the time—but it’s the risks faced by those she cares for and the growing instability of relations between humans and Vampires that make her so angry.

  Joining Lauren on her release day is HelenKay Dimon and her next contemporary romance. Those who read Chain of Command (and if you didn’t, why not?) have been clamoring for this story. We fell in love with Jason and Molly as secondary characters and you’re going to adore following along with their love story in Line of Fire. Former special ops marine Jason McAdams spent most of his adult life running from trouble and fighting his attraction to his best friend’s baby sister, Molly Cain, but when she makes it clear she’s tired of games and ready to move on, he has to decide if he can break the curse that has left his personal life in shambles and free them both from the secrets that have kept them apart.

  There have been more than a few emails in our inbox telling us to hurry up and release Skip Trace, after readers consumed Chaos Station and Lonely Shore by Kelly Jensen and Jenn Burke. Now Zander is finally healthy and ready to track down his super soldier teammates, and he’s counting on his lover Felix to be at his side. But Felix, overwhelmed by the events that led them to this point, isn’t sure what he wants—or if he even deserves a chance at happiness with Zed. Pick up this male/male romance today!

  Alyssa Cole’s characters are getting Mixed Signals in her newest stand-alone postapocalyptic romance. Maggie Seong survived the apocalypse, but going off to college—and being torn between her lost love and the man she’s spent years pining for—might just be harder.

  Craving a great romantic suspense to get your heart pounding and nerves racing during these cool fall nights? A dying woman, desperate to live, and a solider, desperate to die, join forces to stop a madman before he can unleash a devastating biological weapon in Julie Rowe’s Lethal Game, book two in her Biological Response Team series. And once you’ve devoured this one, go back and pick up Deadly Strain.

  We welcome Jonathan Watkins to the Carina Press publishing team with his fantastic, previously self-published mystery series. Kicking things off in Motor City Shakedown, unexpected danger and unlikely romance converge on rookie criminal lawyer Issabella Bright when she partners with the reckless and charming Darren Fletcher to unravel an insidious Detroit conspiracy of drugs, lies and murder in book one of the Bright & Fletcher mysteries. Look for the next book, Dying in Detroit, coming next month, with books three and four to release in January and February 2016.

  Coming in November: Three debut authors bring us their fantastic new novels, Josh Lanyon’s new adult male/male romance is finally available and Piper J. Drake busts out her new pen name and her new romantic suspense series. If you love Maya Banks, you’ll want to pick up this series for sure!

  In the meantime, I hope you enjoy the fantastic lineup of books this month and that your boss doesn’t give you too hard of a time for missing work. No one should get in trouble for reading when they should be working!

  Happy reading!

  ~Angela James

  Editorial Director, Carina Press

  Dedication

  To my sister, Evan, who is off to college even though she was just toddling around my dorm room. Or at least it feels that way. You’re going to knock their socks off.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  The mirror needed to be cleaned. I was trying to gaze soulfully at my reflection, like people were supposed to do when facing a life-changing event, but I kept getting distracted by toothpaste spittle and random smears. It didn’t matter, really. If after twenty years on this planet I still needed to remind myself what my nose was shaped like and what color my eyes were, I should probably be checked for some kind of neurological issue. I looked like your average Korean girl—at least I assumed I did. It’d been almost four years since I’d seen one besides the frowning girl staring back at me through the smudged glass. Not since before the Flare.

  I ignored the sound of my family bustling past the bathroom door, carrying the life I’d shoved haphazardly into garbage bags down to the front porch. I wasn’t taking much with me—if you learned anything during an apocalypse, it was how to get by with the basics. Still, it was hard to pretend that everything was just fine when your family was literally putting your belongings out like the trash. Thinking of what was about to happen made me feel ill.

  Just do it, already.

  No more stalling. I grabbed a handful of my hair, held it away from my head and snipped.

  The scissors moved through the strands with a quiet shushing noise, like the sound of
the wind in the trees that I’d grown used to since society had fallen apart and my family had fled to this remote cabin. The sound was usually calming, but this time it made me feel queasy. I examined my handiwork; my ear was usually covered by a curtain of hair that hung to my waist, but now it sat exposed in the gap between black strands. It looked silly, all pink and curved. I’d never paid attention to how it folded a bit at the tip, like I was some kind of elven creature in one of the games John liked to play. Oh well, too late to go back now. I dropped the hunk of hair to the ground, kicking at it when it landed in a ticklish heap atop my bare foot, and grabbed another handful.

  You think I need a change? My mouth twisted into a frown as I remembered the family powwow I’d walked in on four months ago, the day after I’d come home with my high school equivalency degree. I’d been homeschooled by my family, but the post-Flare GED program had actually been fun. It’d been designed as a bridge for young adults who hadn’t been able to graduate since our planet had almost bit the big one and half of humanity had either died or come close to it. I’d been so proud of that little piece of paper and the ease with which I’d obtained it—barely needing to study, practicing guitar riffs and writing songs instead—but it hadn’t been enough to please some people. My family kept emphasizing that I was an adult now and should make my own decisions, but that rationale ended when I’d told them I wanted to stay close to home.

  “Maggie, I found an ecosystem growing in some Tupperware under your bed,” my brother John called out from down the hall. “If I’m patient zero of some postapocalyptic plague, I’m eating your brains first.”

  I ignored him, like he’d ignored me when I pleaded to stay at the cabin with our parents. It was as if my family had forgotten all the things that could happen to a woman out in the world, or maybe they just didn’t care. Perhaps if I’d told them of the memories that plagued me, they would’ve let me stay. Grappling with a camo gear–clad man before being bound and tossed in the snow. Blindly clutching for a door handle to escape a grasping hand and wondering if I’d be able to jump from a moving car without breaking anything. Danger was always lurking just around the bend in this world, but according to my family, going down my own path would be a great learning experience. It never occurred to them that I wasn’t interested in all of the lessons that awaited me.

  I hacked at another hunk of hair, and then repeated the motion. Sweat ran down my neck and popped up on my brow, despite the fact that I was getting rid of the heavy mass that usually weighed me down. The silky locks were stronger than they looked—my deep conditioning routine had apparently worked too well—and what I thought would be a quick and liberating experience was turning into a nightmare. Years of my life pooled at my feet in a mound of split ends and loneliness, yet another reminder of the lack of forethought that often led me down the road to “Why the hell did I do that?”–ville. I didn’t feel any better and, even worse, I still had so much left to cut. If I stopped now, I’d be mistaken for a deranged mole person who’d wandered onto campus. And who knew what Edwin would think when he came to pick me up? He was already wary of me; if I showed up looking like I might drag him to my underground lair, I’d have to walk to Oswego.

  I groaned in embarrassment and tried to block out the memory of our awkward encounter, but of course it’s the things you want to forget that your brain preserves for the ages. Maggie, I can’t do this. Your family trusts me.

  My calm and deliberate cutting turned into a panicked weed-whacking that only came to a halt because the scissors got hopelessly tangled in a knot of hair. I felt the hot pressure of impending tears spread through my sinuses as I reached up and tugged helplessly at the scissors hanging from my strands like a sad Christmas ornament.

  What had I done? I was about to travel far from home for the first time ever, and I’d chosen now to go full Edward Scissorhands? This had been a mistake. If this was an omen of things to come, it was probably best if I returned to my room and hid under my quilt.

  “Maggie—ohmysweetjesus!” John’s hand flew to his chest as he stepped in through the door he’d pushed open. His head snapped back, like the sight of me had sucker punched him, but he almost succeeded at pulling his features into something resembling a smile of encouragement. “Pre-college makeover, I see? How...feisty of you.”

  I felt foolish standing there with an asymmetrical nightmare on my head, like a little girl who’d done something just to be spiteful and ended up hurting only herself. I nodded miserably, unable to talk around the sudden lump in my throat.

  John held up his other hand and waved the tablet, our family’s latest return to the technological age. His job in the communications department at Burnell University definitely came with perks. “Someone wanted to talk to you before you left.”

  “What the hell is going on over there?” a familiar voice called out from the wide, slim device, and I was torn between deepening embarrassment and elation. “What is all that stuff on the floor? Is Maggie shedding?”

  He turned the screen, and I saw my sister-in-law Arden’s face, much too close to her phone’s camera, as if she were trying to jump through the screen to get a better look at what was going on. She wouldn’t want to miss out on anything, even from three thousand miles away. I was still mad at her, too, but I missed her too much to waste time and a good internet connection by rejecting her call. She and my brother Gabriel had left to visit her parents in California two months ago, after the trip across the country had finally been cleared as moderately safe enough by the government. It hadn’t been easy, but they’d gotten there in one piece.

  I took the phone and held it in front of me. Her smile was bright and her curly mane was glorious, but her eyes were tired. Although her parents were survivors, her mother had hepatitis and trying to get her health back to where it had been before the Flare required a lot of work. Gabriel being a doctor helped immensely, but Arden had spent years harboring guilt about not being with her mother when the Flare had occurred. She’d been avoiding her mother’s illness then, and now that her family was reunited she was running herself ragged trying to make up for it.

  “So what’s up with this?” she asked. “Did you get gum stuck in your hair or something? I hate to tell you this now, but a little peanut butter would have gotten that right out.”

  “I wanted a new look before leaving for school,” I said. “I thought a haircut—”

  “Would be a great way of telling everyone in the family to fuck off? That was stupid.” Arden’s tinny voice echoed off the bathroom tile, amplifying the last word. Stupid, indeed. I almost let the tears come, but then she continued. “Because once John helps you even that out, you’re gonna look fucking fantastic. If you were trying to scare people away, you totally failed. Have you always had those cheekbones?”

  Her words released the pressure valve on the fear that had been building up inside me as I’d frantically cut, leaving my face open to judgment. Looks weren’t everything, but my hair had always been my most complimented feature. Even if Arden was the only one who thought I was pretty without all the hair, her opinion meant a lot. I sucked in my cheeks and prodded at my face. “They are pretty nice.”

  John opened the medicine cabinet and plucked a fine-tooth comb from behind a stack of Tiger Balm. Pain flared in my scalp and then receded as he tugged the scissors from my hair and took up a position behind me. “I hope you didn’t volunteer me because you think all gay men have some hairdressing gene, Arden.”

  “I volunteered you because Gabriel is here with me, so you have to handle all older sibling duties, including ‘crazy haircut prevention task force.’ Besides, you’ve been cutting that mop on Mykhail’s head for years now, so this shouldn’t be a hardship for you.” Arden looked at me for a long time, and even the pixelated video image couldn’t hide the way her eyes went soft and shiny. I was tempted to stroke my finger across the screen, but realized I’d probably end the call if I
did. I missed everyone being together so much, even if it was childish to think that we could continue the way of life we’d started in those first months and then years after the Flare. Everyone had interests outside of the cabin, but this house and the people in it had been my entire world for years. Would things ever be the same?

  The connection froze, and I clutched the tablet harder, willing the tetchy Internet connection—which was better than nothing, of course—not to crap out, just this once. My pleas were answered by the internet gods, and when the video unfroze, Arden was shaking her head. “Well, this little stunt of yours makes what I have to say even more important. Let’s get down to it.” She leaned her phone against something to free up both of her hands and reached for something off screen. When her hands came back into view, I cringed and my cheeks flamed. Maybe the internet spirits had been trying to warn me of what was to come.

  I shook my head. “No. No, you don’t have to—”

  She wiggled the banana in her left hand toward the screen. “Someone has to teach you these things! Sex is about more than sticking tab A into slot B. First, this is how you put on a condom.” She was holding a square aluminum packet toward the screen when a pale hand shot into the frame and snatched the banana away so hard that it squeezed out of its skin.

  “Here we go,” John muttered behind me.

  “Arden! What the hell?” Gabriel growled. My oldest brother’s stern face suddenly crowded Arden out of the screen, his amber eyes narrowed. “Do you need me to list off all the sexually transmitted diseases out there? Trust me, I’ve had to treat plenty of cases at the clinic. Ever hear of the clap? There’s been an uptick since the Flare because people haven’t been as cautious. Penises are disease vectors and should be avoided at all costs. End of lesson.”

  “Get out of here with that abstinence-only stuff, Gabe.” Arden pushed her way back into the picture. “I’m too young to be an aunt. After Morris, I don’t want to see another diaper for at least ten years. Wrap it up, Maggie.”