Operation: Middle of the Garden

 Winner of the 2013 Virginia HOLT Medallion Award of Merit in the paranormal category.

Second place in Lyrical Press's first annual "How Lyrical Is Your Romance" contest.

In the hidden basement lab of a military research facility in Needles, California, Eli Johnson jerks to consciousness. He is strapped to a stretcher and remembers nothing until he hears a voice he knows only as “The Tormentor.” That’s when it all comes back: he has been a prisoner in this lab for eight years. And he’s about to die. 

 Operation: Middle of the Garden is a top-secret government and military operation running under the nose of the American public in Washington, D. C. Eight years ago, troops in Afghanistan stumbled upon the remains of what looked to be the Garden of Eden. The skeletal remains of two trees peeked through centuries-worth of sand and debris. The soldiers who discovered the trees were coerced into being test subjects for the trees’ fruit. The fruit from the supposed Tree of Eternal Life turned the men immortal. Now, the Operation seeks to test the fruit from the second tree: the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. 

 He must destroy his Temptation, before she destroys him. 

 After millennia of faithfully guarding his post in the Garden of Eden, the cherubim Jayden flees. He leaves everything - including his sword - behind, disobeying orders for the first time in his existence, and all because he can sense her: his Temptation. She’s close, and Jayden can’t allow himself to be weak: to fall the way his brothers have for centuries whenever they encounter their very human, very beautiful Temptations. But he has a job to finish. He must regain the integrity the Trees have lost through being tested by vile humans, and it will require blood. And if seeking out the humans he must kill brings Jayden into contact with the one woman who could destroy everything he is, he may never be able to resist her. 

 A loyal soldier of the Garden of Eden, Anahita is faced with a daunting mission: to slay the three imprisoned immortals who ate from the Tree of Eternal Life. But her Temptation is among these immortals, and once she lays eyes on him, her spirit wars with the Compulsion to both kill and protect him. 

 Stuck in a death cycle that repeats itself every seven days, Oliver Phillips is on the hunt for the mate who will put an end to his misery—a mate he both loves and hates, though he’s never met her. Will he exact his revenge and lose his mate forever, or will he give up his quest in exchange for the love he never thought he’d need? Used as bait and punished when she’s successful, Farrah Haddad lives life on the run. As a victim of human trafficking, Farrah has three goals: stay alive, find Mother, tell no secrets—ever. When a man, the first ever to make her heart beat faster, offers her a better life, she finds his offer and his actions contradictory, and therefore, dangerous. Will trusting him make her safe, or will he destroy her forever? 

 D.C.'s top-secret military operation, Operation: Middle of the Garden, is the exciting backdrop for these strong heroines and sexy heroes who must team up to save the country, and themselves, from the most unlikely of sources: the immortals who hold the secret of the Garden of Eden. Join these four couples as they discover paradise isn't quite as tempting as real love .