Wishes in a Bottle (Wishes & Dreams, #1)
by Allie McCormack
Publication date: January 15th, 2019
Genres: Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Centuries ago in plague-struck Italy, Julian DiConti cast a powerful spell in desperation to have the magical power to be able to help his people who were dying in horrific conditions. The spell goes spectacularly awry, leaving Julian enslaved to a Djinn bottle, bound to grant three wishes to each Master of the bottle until the spell can be broken. More than anything, Julian longs for a normal life – for a home, and a family. After six hundred years, however, he has begun to despair of ever being freed from the spell.
Enter Alessandra Taylor, a young woman who has followed her calling to help others, in the face of vociferous disapproval from her family, particularly her controlling father. Working at a shelter for battered women, she’s thrilled to meet the reclusive Julian DiConti, whose collection of garments from third world countries has provided funding for shelters across the country. When Julian turns out to be a Djinn from the old bottle she found in her attic, she hears his story and empathizes with his despair. Although she’s willing to free him, he can’t tell her how. As time goes by, their initial attraction blossoms into a love that both realize is doomed. Once she has made her third wish, the magic of the bottle will whisk Julian away and out of her life forever… unless she can somehow figure out how to free him. But one by one, she’s forced to use the precious wishes to help others.
Excerpt:
Jackson called
Laura to consult with one of the movers, and Alessandra watched as her sister
hurried across the room to take part in a spirited discussion with the two men.
“She’s
getting along really well,” Alessandra told Julian in an undertone. “I can’t
believe how happy she looks! It hasn’t been so very long, either.”
“She’s
been unhappy for a long time,” Julian said. “Now she’s finally discovering what
it's like to be able to be herself.”
Alessandra agreed. “She never had a chance to be herself, or even to
find out who she is... not in our house, anyway. We all had to do what we were
told, what was expected of us, even once we were grown. Father chose Robert for
Laura, you know. Hand-picked from his top crop of salesmen and business
associates. He picked someone for all my sisters.”
“And
did he pick one for you?” Julian asked, cocking an eyebrow at her.
“Of
course.” She smirked in fond memory. “I dumped hot soup in the lap of the first
one during dinner, the night Father brought him home to introduce to me.”
“Then
there was that guy who lived with his mother, even though he had to be at least
thirty,” Laura chimed in, having apparently broken off another sotto voce altercation with Jackson to catch this last part. “On the day before he took you
to meet him, you went and got your nose pierced, and got a henna tattoo that
looked very permanent on your right breast, just where it would show over the
top of your shirt.”
“Yes,
and I bought a very low-cut tank top and denim mini-skirt,” Alessandra
remembered with apparent pleasure. “And I wore coffin heeled shoes and purple
plaid hose that sagged.” She grinned. “Those were the days.”
“The
black lipstick was a nice touch. I thought Father would have a fit,” Laura
offered with a giggle.
A career medical transcriptionist, Allie McCormack is now writing from home full-time. Allie has traveled quite a bit and lived many places all over the U.S., and also a year in Cairo, Egypt as an exchange student, and a year in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia under contract to a hospital there, plus a short stint with NATO while she was in the Army. As a single mom, she raised a wonderful daughter who's recently married and there are plans afoot for grandchildren. A disabled veteran, Allie now lives in the beautiful Sorona Desert in southern Arizona with her two rescue cats and writes full-time.
Allie says: "A writer is who and what I am... a romance writer. I write what I know, and what I know is romance. Dozens of story lines and literally hundreds of characters live and breathe within the not-so-narrow confines of my imagination, and it is my joy and privilege to bring them to life, to share them with others by writing their stories."
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