Salena Barone has broken free of her family and moved into an apartment above the D’Angelos’ restaurant, where she works as a manager—without a husband, thank you very much. But even on a restaurant salary, she soon finds herself strapped for cash. Salena’s never been afraid of living on the wild side, though, so she takes on a side hustle that’ll raise big bucks…and eyebrows, if anyone finds out.
Tattooed biker Ryan is the youngest of the wealthy Rutledge wine family and has never dreamed of rings, forever, or continuing the family business. He’s perfectly happy living his own life and helping out hardworking folks in his own way.
When these two independent singles spot each other at a Rutledge-D’Angelo wedding, the attraction is instant. But as their friendship with benefits evolves into something more, the secrets Salena’s keeping—from family, friends, and Ryan—threaten the happily ever after she never knew she wanted.
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Elise’s Thoughts
The Whole Time by Catherine Bybee is a fun read. Per usual, readers will love her stories that have engrossing characters, with touching and heartwarming plots.
The story is about two independent people, Selena Barone, and Ryan Rutledge. Since they have been in other books of the series, readers got to know them. Yet, this installment shows both willing to stand up to their parents to gain their independence. Selena decides to move into an apartment owned by the D’Angelo family and work as their restaurant’s manager. Ryan has decided to veer from the family wine business and does commercial realty.
After they meet at Gio and Emma’s wedding, sparks begin to fly. Both are a bit on the wild side and decide to become friends with benefits. But when cupid strikes, they seem to become involved in a relationship neither would have predicted. The problem is Selena is keeping secrets from Ryan, her family, and her “wanna be” family, the D’Angelo’s.
The story has humor, relatable real-people, and a hero/heroine who balance each other beautifully. A bonus is that there is plenty of pages with the rest of the D’Angelo’s which makes the story even more enjoyable.
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Author Interview
Elise Cooper: How did you get the idea for the story?
Catherine Bybee: I wanted to write a different setting with the surrounding areas, outside of San Diego. This is Selena’s book and when I first wrote about her everyone thought she and Gio were going to have the relationship. It felt like she deserved her own book. In this climate, with a lot of young women growing up, she represents what others are dealing with, life decisions that are not the norm. I wanted to capture the fact that she had to break away from her controlling family.
EC: How would you describe Selena?
CB: Fiercely independent. She has a real side that everyone can identify with. My two best friends just read the book and they both said Selena is me because although I want to be independent there is this other side of me. She is stubborn, confident, flirty, and self-assured. She is very comfortable in her own skin. She finds out that she is responsible after she takes on the job of managing the D’Angelo’s’ restaurant. She is growing up in this book.
EC: How would you describe Ryan?
CB: He will stand up to his powerful father. He does love his mother and sister and tolerates his father. He is a lot like Selena. He is very self-assured. He is not cocky but confident. Not humble. He is clever. He knows when to show his cards and when to hold them.
EC: What about the relationship between Selena and Ryan?
CB: I think both have a lot more in common than most of my other heroes and heroines. In the beginning they both are not looking for forever. Ryan wants someone who understands him. He knows how to push Selena’s buttons. She wanted to find someone she could trust enough to open to. She is taken back when she does find it with Ryan. She has no doubts about her sexuality and how to use it to get what she wants. She gets her needs met. She is the male version of someone who plays the field, doing what they want with whoever they want. They challenge each other.
EC: What about pole dancing?
CB: I did one time. I got it as a birthday present. It is super hard. The workout alone is worth it. She sells videos on the Internet. Well behaved women rarely make history. My point is that she was not doing it naked. She tried to balance what she wanted to do, to be successful, but not to disappoint those she cares about in her life.
EC: What is the role of the sets of parents?
CB: Mari D’Angelo is the mother Selena wants. Mari is like the second mom and does treat Selena like a daughter. Mari knows when to accept things and hold back the reins. I had a second mom. Selena goes to her to ask for advice. Selena’s parents are not in tuned with what is going on. They will not bend. Selena’s real parents are more old- fashioned. She feels she must toe the line with her parents. Yet Ryan, does not feel he must toe the line at all.
EC: Next book?
CB: Mari lost her husband at an early age. She is a single parent. I am setting readers up for a Mari book about an over fifty-five-year-old. My next, next book is titled All Our Tomorrows. It will be a part of a series. It has an unexpected death of a monarch who has a lot of money. He has been absentee with his children. After he died the children were thrust into a world of high stakes business and money. They do not necessarily have the stakes to do the job and at the same time are searching for a brother they just found out about. It will come out next spring.
THANK YOU!!
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BIO: Elise Cooper has written book reviews and interviewed best-selling authors since 2009. Her reviews have covered several different genres, including thrillers, mysteries, women’s fiction, romance and cozy mysteries. An avid reader, she engages authors to discuss their works, and to focus on the descriptions of their characters and the plot. While not writing reviews, Elise loves to watch baseball and visit the ocean in Southern California, with her dog and husband.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for HEART LIKE A COWBOY (Cowboy Brothers in Arms Book #1) by Delores Fossen on this HTP Books Romance Blog Tour.
Below you will find a book summary, my book review, an excerpt from the book, and the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Summary
He’s Emerald Creek’s hottest cowboy—and the one man she shouldn’t want
On the surface, Egan Donnelly is hometown hero material—top gun, commanding an elite fighter training squadron and ranching royalty. Inside, he feels like a fraud, convinced he’s responsible for his best friend’s death. At least he won’t let himself succumb to the heat between him and Jack’s widow, Alana. Yet. Now that she’s making regular trips to his ranch to care for his dad, that vow is getting harder to keep.
Alana Davidson isn’t just grieving her husband’s loss, she’s feeling betrayed over his secret infidelity. Wanting Egan makes things even more complicated. As a nutritionist, she can help Egan’s dad recover from his health scare, but it’s not so easy to get her own heart back on track. Because despite shared guilt and family pressure, she’s falling fast, and Egan is right there with her…
HEART LIKE A COWBOY (Cowboy Brothers in Arms Book #1) by Delores Fossen is an emotional start to the new Cowboy Brothers in Arms series set in smalltown Emerald Creek, Texas. The Donnelly’s live on a generational ranch with all four siblings serving in the military on active duty. This story introduces the entire family and features the romance of the eldest brother, Lt. Col. Egan Donnelly.
Air Force Lt. Col. Egan Donnelly is both a hometown Top Gun hero and commander of an elite fighter training squadron and the eldest sibling in a ranching family. When his father has a massive heart attack, Egan takes a month’s leave to run the ranch and try to figure out how he will go forward. When his father returns home to recuperate, Egan comes face to face with the nutritionist working on his case. It is the sister of his ex-wife and the widow of his best friend, Jack, who he hoped to avoid. Egan has carried the guilt for Jack’s death from an IED when he was visiting him for three years.
Alana Davidson is the nutritionist helping Egan’s dad and while everyone still considers her Jack’s grieving widow, she is ready to move on from her grief. She had an argument with her husband right before he died overseas when she discovered he had cheated on their marriage. She is determined to tell Egan she feels just as responsible. Despite smalltown gossip and family interference Alan and Egan begin to discover they are ready to move on and stand together.
There are a lot of obstacles, twists, and surprises on the road to romance for Egan and Alana. I loved both fully developed characters because they communicated and did not play games. They also stood together when faced with smalltown gossip and the emotional adversity that Jack’s mother put them through. All the secondary characters added to the realism of the story and believable life situations. There are sexually explicit scenes in this romance, but they were not gratuitous. The introduction of the other siblings was entertaining, and I am looking forward to their stories in the future.
I recommend this first heartfelt book in the Cowboy Brothers in Arms series. Dolores Fossen is one of my favorite go-to cowboy romance authors and she never disappoints.
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Excerpt
CHAPTER ONE
That whole deal about bad news coming in threes? Well, it was a crock. Lieutenant Colonel Egan Don- nelly now had proof of it.
First, there’d been the unexpected visitor, AKA the messenger, who’d started the whole bad-news ball rolling. That’d teach him to open his frickin’ door before he’d even finished his frickin’ coffee.
Then, there was the so-called celebration that would stir up the worst of his past and serve it up to him on a silver platter. Or rather on a disposable paper plate, anyway.
Then, a letter from his ex, which he figured was never a good sign. Who the heck actually wanted to hear from their cheating ex? Not him, that was for sure.
Those were the three things—count them: one, two, three—that was supposed to have been the final tally of bad crap even if for only a day, but apparently the creator of that old saying had no credibility what- soever. Then again, Egan had known firsthand that bad news didn’t have limited quantities.
Or expiration dates.
Now he was faced with ironclad confirmation that
those other three things were piddly-ass drops in the proverbial bucket compared to bad-news number four.
And now, everything in his world was crashing and burning.
Again.
Thirty Minutes Earlier
In the dream, Lieutenant Colonel Egan Donnelly saved his best friend’s life. In the dream, the explosion didn’t happen. It didn’t blast through the scorched, airless night. Didn’t tear apart the transport vehicle.
Didn’t leave blood on the bleached sand.
Didn’t kill.
In the dream, Egan was the hero that so many people proclaimed he was. He made just the right decisions to save everyone, including Jack. Especially Jack.
Egan didn’t fight tooth and nail to come out of this dream—unlike the ones that were basically a blow-by-blow account of what had actually happened that god-awful night nearly three years ago. Those dreams were pits of the darkest level of hell where everything spun and bashed, stomping him down deeper and deeper into the real nightmare. Those dreams he fought.
Had to.
Because Egan had learned the hard way if he let those dreams play out, then it was a damn hard struggle to come back from them. Heck, he was still trying to come back from them.
Despite wanting to linger in this particular dream
where he got to play hero, it didn’t happen, thanks to his phone dinging with a text. He frowned, noticing that it was barely six in the morning. Texts at this hour usually were not good. Considering that all three of his siblings were on active duty, not good could be really bad.
He saw his father’s name on the screen, and the worry instantly tightened Egan’s gut. His dad had just turned sixty so while he wasn’t in the “one foot in the grave” stage, he wasn’t the proverbial spring chicken, either. Added to that, his dad still ran the day-to-day operation of Saddlebrook, the family’s ranch in Emerald Creek, Texas. The ranch that’d been in the Donnelly family for over a hundred years and had grown and grown and grown with each succeeding generation. All that growth required hours of upkeep and work.
Found this when I was going through some old photo albums, his dad had texted.
What the heck? That gut tightness eased up, some, when Egan saw it was a slightly off-center image taken in front of the main barn on the ranch. His dad had obviously used his phone to take a picture of the old photo. Emphasis on old.
It was a shot that his grandmother, Effie, had snapped thirty years ago on Egan’s eighth birthday. His brother, Cal, would have been six. His sister, Remi, a two-year-old toddler, and his other brother, Blue, was just four. Stairsteps, people called them, since they’d all been born just two years apart.
In the photo, his dad, looking lean, fit and young,
was in the center, flanked by Egan and Remi on the right, and Cal and Blue on the left. Remi and Blue were both grinning big toothy grins. Cal and Egan weren’t. Probably because they’d been old enough to understand that life as they’d known it was over.
Their lives hadn’t exactly gone to hell in a handbasket, but this particular shot had been taken only a couple of weeks after their mother had died from cancer. A long agonizing death that had left their dad the widower of four young kids. Still, his dad was eking out a smile in the picture, and he’d managed to gather all four of them in his outstretched arms.
Bittersweet times.
That’s when their mom’s mom, Grammy Effie, had come to Saddlebrook for what was supposed to have been a couple of months, until his dad got his footing. Effie was still living on the ranch thirty years later and had obviously put down roots as deep as his father’s.
Egan was wondering what had prompted his dad to go digging through old family albums when his phone dinged again. It was another text from his dad, another photo. It was an image that Egan also knew well, and he mentally referred to it as the start of phase two of his life.
The first phase had been with a loving mother that sadly he now couldn’t even remember. That had ended with her death. Phase two had begun when his dad had gotten remarried four years later to a young fresh-faced Captain Audrey Granger, who’d then been stationed at the very base in San Antonio
where Egan was now. It was an hour’s commute to the ranch that Audrey had diligently made.
For a while, anyway.
In this shot, his dad and new bride dressed in blue were in the center, and both were flashing giddy smiles. Ditto for Remi and Blue. Again, no smiles for Cal and Egan since they’d been ten and twelve respectively and were no doubt holding back on the glee to see how life with their stepmom would all play out.
It hadn’t played out especially well.
But then, it also hadn’t hit anywhere near the “hell in a handbasket” mark, either.
If there’d been a family photo taken just two years later, though, Audrey probably wouldn’t have been in it. By then, she’d been in Germany. Or maybe England. Instead of an hour commute, she’d come “home” to the ranch a couple of times a year. Then, as her career had blossomed, the visits had gotten further and further apart. These days, Brigadier General Audrey Donnelly only came home on Christmas. If that.
Egan sent his dad a thumbs-up emoji to let him know he’d seen the pictures, and he was considering an actual reply to ask if all was well, but his alarm went off. He got up, mentally going through his schedule for the day. As the commander of the Fighter Training Squadron at Randolph AFB, Texas, there’d be the usual paperwork, going over some stats for the pilots in training, and then in the afternoon, he’d get to do one of the things he loved most.
Fly.
Of course, it would be under the guise of a training mission in the T-38C Talon jet, not the F-16 that Egan used to pilot, but it would still give him that hit of adrenaline. Still give him the reminder of why he’d first joined the Navy and then had transferred to the Air Force so he could continue to stay in the cockpit.
Egan showered, put on his flight suit, read through his emails on his phone and was about halfway through his first cup of coffee when his doorbell rang. He had the same reaction to it as he had the earlier text. A punch of dread that something was wrong. It wasn’t even seven o’clock yet and hardly the time for visitors. Especially since he lived in base housing and therefore wasn’t on the traditional beaten path for friends or family to just drop by.
Frowning, he went to the door. And Egan frowned some more when he looked through the peephole at the visitor on his porch. A woman with pulled back dark blond hair and vivid green eyes. At first glance, he thought it was his ex-wife, Colleen, someone he definitely didn’t want to see, but this was a slightly younger, taller version of the woman who’d left him for another man.
Alana Davidson, Colleen’s sister.
“Yes, I know it’s early,” Alana sighed and said loud enough for him to hear while she looked directly at the peephole. “Sorry about that.”
Wondering what the heck this was all about, he opened the door and got an immediate blast of heat. Texas in June started out hot as hell and got even hotter. Today was apparently no exception. He also
got another immediate blast of concern because there was nothing about Alana’s expression that indicated this was a social visit.
Then again, Alana and he never had social visits.
Never.
Just too much old baggage, old wounds and old everything else between them. Ironic, since she’d been married to his best friend. Now, she was his dead best friend’s widow and bore that strong resemblance to his cheating ex-wife who’d left him just days before Jack’s death.
Egan was no doubt an unwelcome sight for her, too. He was the man who’d not only failed to keep her husband alive, but he was also the reason Jack had been in that transport vehicle in the first place.
So, yeah, old baggage galore.
“Sorry,” Alana repeated, looking up at him. Not looking at him for long, though. Like their avoidance of social visits, they didn’t do a lot of eye contact, either. “But I have an appointment at the base hospital in an hour, and I wanted to catch you before you went into work.”
“The hospital?” he automatically questioned.
She waved it off, clearly picking up on his concern that something might be medically wrong with her. “I’m consulting with a colleague on a chief master sergeant who’s being medically retired and moving to Emerald Creek. I’ll be working with the chief to come up with some lifestyle changes.”
Alana made that seem like her norm, and maybe it was. She was a dietitian, and because as Jack’s widow
she still had a military ID card so she wouldn’t have had any trouble getting onto the base. Added to that, Emerald Creek was a haven for retirees and veterans since it was so close to three large military installations. There were almost as many combat boots as cowboy boots in Emerald Creek.
“How’d you know where I live?” he asked.
“I got your address from your grandmother.” She glanced over her shoulder at the street of houses. “I occasionally have consults here, but it’s the first time I’ve been to this part of the base.”
Yeah, his particular house wasn’t near the hospital, commissary or base exchange store where Alana would be more apt to go. Added to that, Jack had never been stationed here, which meant Alana had never lived here, either.
“Full disclosure,” she said the moment he shut the door. “You aren’t going to like any of what I have to say.”
Now it was Egan who sighed and braced himself for Alana to finally do something he’d expected her to do for three years. Scream and yell at him for allowing Jack to die. But there was no raised voice or obvious surge of anger. Instead, she took out a piece of paper from her sizeable handbag and thrust it at him.
“It’s a mock-up of a flyer that Jack’s mom intends to have printed up and sent to everyone in her known universe,” Alana explained.
At first glance, he saw that the edges of the flyer had little pictures of barbecue grills, fireworks, the
American flag and military insignia. Egan intended to just scan it to get the gist of what it was about, but the scanning came to a stumbling slow crawl as he tried to take in what he was reading.
“Join us for a Life Celebration for Major Jack Connor Davidson, July Fourth, at the Emerald Creek City Park. It’ll be an afternoon of food, festivities and remembrance as a celebratory memorial painting for Jack will be unveiled by our own Top Gun hometown hero, Lieutenant Colonel Egan Donnelly.”
Well, hell. Both sentences were full-on gut punches and thick gobs of emotional baggage. Memorial. Life celebration. Remembrances. The icing on that gob was the last part.
Top Gun hometown hero.
Egan was, indeed, a former Top Gun. He’d won the competition a dozen years ago when he’d been a navy lieutenant flying F-16s. The hometown part was accurate, too, since he’d been born and raised in Emerald Creek, but that hero was the biggest of big-assed lies.
“I can’t go,” Egan heard himself say once he’d managed to clear the lump in his throat.
She nodded as if that were the exact answer she’d expected. “I’m guessing you’ll be on duty?”
He’d make damn sure he was, but wasn’t it ironic that the memorial celebration would fall on the one weekend of the month he usually went home to help his dad on the family ranch? Maybe Jack’s mom knew that, or maybe the woman just believed that such an event would be a good fit for the Fourth of July.
It wasn’t.
Barbecue, hot dogs, beer and such didn’t go well with the crapload of memories something like that would stir. He didn’t need a memorial or a life celebration to remember Jack. Egan remembered him daily, hourly even, and after three years, the grief and guilt hadn’t lost any steam.
“I’ll let Tilly know you can’t be there,” Alana said, referring to Jack’s mother. “She’s mentioned contacting your stepmom to see if she could be there for the unveiling.”
“Good luck with that,” he muttered, and Alana’s sound of agreement confirmed that she understood it was a long shot.
What would likely end up happening was that his brother Cal would get roped into doing the “honors.” He’d known Jack, and Cal’s need to do the right thing would have him stepping in.
“The last time I ran into Tilly, she didn’t want to discuss anything involving Jack’s death,” Egan recalled.
Alana nodded. “That’s still true. Nothing about how he died, et cetera. She only wants to chat about the things he did when he was alive.”
“So, why do a memorial painting?” Egan wanted to know.
“I’m not sure, but it’s possible the painting will be another life celebration deal that she’ll want hung in some prominent part of town like city hall or the library. In other words, maybe the painting will have nothing to do with Jack even being in the military.
Tilly was proud of him,” she quickly added. “But she’s never fully wrapped her mind around losing him.”
That made sense. The one time he’d tried to talk to her about Jack’s death, she’d shut him down. As if not talking about his death would somehow breathe some life back into him.
“There’s one more thing,” Alana went on, and this time she took a pale yellow envelope from her purse and handed it to him. “It’s a letter from Colleen.”
Egan had already reached for it but yanked back his hand as if the envelope were a coiled rattler ready to sink its fangs into his flesh. The mention of his ex-wife tended to do that. Memories of Colleen didn’t fall into the “hell on steroids” category like Jack’s. More like the “don’t let the door hit your cheating ass” category. Colleen had obviously liked that direction just fine since she hadn’t spoken a word to him since the divorce.
He glanced at the envelope, scowled. “A letter? Is it some kind of twelve-step deal about making amends or something?” he asked.
Alana shook her head. “No, I think it’s a living will of sorts.”
That erased his scowl. “Is Colleen dying?”
“Not that I know of, but she apparently decided she wanted to make her last wishes known. She sent letters for me, our aunt and your dad. I have his if you want to give it to him.”
Egan reached out again to stop her from retrieving it, and Alana used the opportunity to put the letter for him in his hand. “I don’t want this,” he insisted.
“Totally understand. I read mine,” she admitted. “Along with spelling out her end-of-life wishes—cremation, no funeral, no headstone—she wants us to have some sister time, like a vacation or something.”
Egan had no idea how much contact Alana and Colleen had with each other these days, but it was possible when Colleen had walked out on him, she’d also walked out on Alana. He thought he detected some animosity in Alana’s tone and expression.
He went straight to the trash can in the adjoining kitchen and tossed the envelope on top of the oozing heap of the sticky chicken rice bowl that had been at least a week past its prime when he’d dumped it the night before.
“I’m not interested in wife time with her,” he muttered, knowing he sounded bitter and hating that he still was.
Unlike what he was still going through with Jack, though, his grief and anger with Colleen had trickled down to almost nothing. Almost. He now just considered her a mistake and was glad she was out of his life. Some days, he could even hope that she was happy with the Mr. Wonderful artist that she’d left him for.
When he turned back to Alana, he saw she had watched the letter trashing, and she was now combing those jeweled green eyes over his face as if trying to suss out what was going on in his head. Egan decided to diffuse that with a question that fell into
the polite small talk that would have happened had this been a normal visit.
“Uh, how are you doing?” he asked. On the surface, that didn’t seem to be a safe area of conversation since it could lead to that screaming rant over his huge part in her husband’s death. But Egan realized he would welcome the rant.
Because he deserved it.
Alana took a deep breath. “Well, despite nearly everyone in town deciding I should live out the rest of my life as a widow, I’ve started dating again.”
That got his attention. Not because he hadn’t known about the town’s feelings. And not because he believed she shouldn’t have a second chance at romance. But Egan had thought she didn’t want such a chance, that she was still as buried in the past as he was. Apparently not.
“I’m only doing virtual dating for now,” she went on, not sounding especially thrilled with that. “Last week, I had a virtual date with a guy who has six goats and eleven chickens in his one-bedroom apartment in Houston.”
Egan didn’t especially want to smile, but he did, anyway. “Sounds like a prize catch. You’d never have to buy eggs again. Or fertilizer.”
She shrugged. “He was a prize compared to the one I had the week before. Within the first minute of conversation, he wanted to know the circumference of my nipples.” Alana stopped, her eyes widening as if she hadn’t expected to share that.
Egan smiled again, but this one was forced. He
hadn’t wanted Alana to think he was shocked or offended, though he was indeed shocked. He’d never considered nipple size one way or another.
He’d especially never considered anything about Alana’s nipples.
And he hated that was now in his head. That kind of stuff could mess with things that already had a shaky status quo.
“Dating at thirty-five isn’t as much a ‘fish in the sea’ situation as it is more of a, uh, well, swamp,” Alana explained. “Think scaly critters, slithery, that sort of thing, with the potential and hope that some actual fish lingering about will eventually come out of hiding.”
That didn’t sound appealing at all, but then he hadn’t had to hit any of the dating sites. He could thank the eternal string of matchmakers for that. Unlike the widowed Alana, apparently everyone thought a divorced guy in his thirties shouldn’t be solo. Especially a guy who’d had his “heart broken” when his wife had walked out on him right before his best friend had been killed.
“How about you?” she asked, clearly aiming for a change of subject and her own shot at small talk. “Have you jumped into dating waters?”
He shook his head. “Too busy.”
She broke their unwritten rule by locking her gaze with his for a second or two. “Yeah. Busy,” she repeated. And it sounded as if that were code for a whole bunch of things. For instance, wounded. Damaged. Guarded. Guilty.
All of the above applied to him.
It was hard for Egan to think about his happiness when he’d robbed Jack of his. Busy, though, was a much safer term for it.
“Well, I gotta go,” Alana said when the silence turned awkward, as it always did between them. “I’ll let Tilly know you won’t be at the life celebration so she can find someone else to do the unveiling.”
Egan frowned when a thought occurred to him. “She won’t ask you to do it, will she?” Because he couldn’t imagine that it’d be any easier for Alana than it would be for him.
“No.” Another sigh went with that. “Tilly still has me firmly in the ‘grieving widow’ category, which apparently will preclude me from lifting a veil on a painting and doing other things such as dating or appearing too happy when I’m in public.”
He wanted to ask, Aren’t you still a grieving widow? But that would go well beyond small talk. It could lead to an actual conversation that would drag feelings and emotions to the surface. No way did he want to deal with that.
Obviously, Alana wasn’t on board for such a chat, either, because she headed for the door, giving him a forced smile and a quick glance before she left and went to her car. Egan watched her, doling out his own forced smile and what had to be a stupid-looking wave.
Since he didn’t want to stand around and think about this visit, Colleen’s trashed letter—or Alana’s nipples—he grabbed his flight cap and keys so he could go to his truck. He barely made it a step, though, before his phone dinged with another text.
Great. Another photo trip down memory lane.
But it wasn’t.
It was his father’s name on the screen, but there was no picture. Only six words that sent Egan’s heart to his knees.
USA Today bestselling author, Delores Fossen, has sold over 125 novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received the Booksellers’ Best Award, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award and was a finalist for the prestigious Rita ®. In addition, she’s had nearly a hundred short stories and articles published in national magazines.
Release day! Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for BEFOREI’M GONE by Heidi McLaughlin on this Buoni Amici Press Release Blitz.
Below you will find a book blurb, my book review, an about the author section and the author’s social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Blurb
Palmer Sinclair has never needed anyone’s help. A successful loan officer, she’s all work and no play. But when splitting headaches and blurred vision begin to affect her job, she begrudgingly sees a doctor and receives a diagnosis that leaves her shaken to her core and with little time left. Facing an uncertain future, Palmer makes a bucket list, determined to do the things she’d only dreamed of before she goes.
Kent Wagner has dedicated his life to helping others. An army medic turned paramedic, he’s a regular at Palmer’s bank who makes his monthly car loan payments in person just to see her radiant smile. After responding to not one but two 911 calls involving Palmer, he learns about her bucket list. Touched by her circumstances—and needing a distraction from his own—Kent offers to take Palmer to the places on her list.
Neither is prepared for the emotional journey ahead…or how little time they have left together, but the friendship they find in that brief time might be the most lasting legacy of all.
BEFORE I’M GONE by Heidi McLaughlin is an emotional romance/women’s fiction that left me swinging between beautiful and heartfelt to devastated and ugly crying. This is a story that reminds everyone to live life to the fullest because you never know what tomorrow will bring. (When you sit down to read this make sure you have a full box of tissues close at hand.)
Palmer Sinclair has always taken care of herself, from aging out of the foster care system to working her way up the corporate ladder in a bank. She begins to have terrible migraines and blurred vision which she tries to take care of on her own until she falls at work. Taken to the hospital, she has a cat scan that reveals the worst possible outcome. Now, with a limited future, she makes a bucket list but feels hopeless to accomplish it on her own.
Kent Wagner was an Army medic who is now a paramedic with the local fire department and a regular at Palmer’s bank. He is the responder when Palmer falls at the bank and in her home. He discovers Palmer’s secret when he accidentally pockets Palmer’s bucket list. Kent is having personal problems of his own and decides helping Palmer with her bucket list will help keep him from focusing on his life.
The connection they find in their time and travels together is an emotional journey you will not be able to forget.
What a tear-jerker, and yet hauntingly beautiful story with characters that I will never forget. This is an emotional rollercoaster that feels so real and raw, but you do not want to get off the ride and there are moments of humor to occasionally give you a break from the tissues. Palmer is a heroine that you want to wrap in your arms and Kent was the perfect hero for her. How many of us continually put off what we want, our bucket list, until it is too late? Even if you do not do something on a bucket list, this friendship/love story reminds you to live every day to the fullest.
I highly recommend this emotional journey!
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About the Author
Heidi McLaughlin is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Bestselling author of The Beaumont Series, The Boys of Summer, and The Archers.
In 2012, Heidi turned her passion for reading into a full-fledged literary career, writing over twenty novels, including the acclaimed Forever My Girl.
Heidi’s first novel, Forever My Girl, has been adapted into a motion picture with LD Entertainment and Roadside Attractions, starring Alex Roe and Jessica Rothe, and opened in theaters on January 19, 2018, and is now available on DVD & Digital.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post and Book Review for PRETEND WITH ME (Beacon Hill Book #1) by Emily Mayer on this AME blog tour.
Below you will find a book synopsis, my book review, an excerpt from the book, and the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Synopsis
One phone call was all it took to upend my entire life in completely unexpected ways.
Whoever said that you can’t go home again was a lair. After the senior year from hell, I had spent a decade trying to avoid Beacon Hill and its residents. My luck came to a sudden end after daddy had an incident with a rotted floor. In and out, I promised myself. I was just there to help my parents for a week or two tops.
Things in Beacon Hill hadn’t changed much since I’d been home last. Mama still worked at the hub of gossip known as Trixie’s, Mrs. Thomas still made the best chicken salad in all of Georgia, and my sister was still the devil in a pushup bra. And of course, the St. James family was still local royalty. Our very own version of the Kennedys.
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that, not only is my sister back in town after a failed modeling career, she’s also engaged to Macon St. James. The golden boy of Beacon Hill, and the star of every single one of my teenage fantasies.
The biggest surprise of all was Holden St. James. I thought he would be one of the villains in this story, but I was learning that I had been wrong about a lot of things. And Holden just might be worth coming home for….
PRETEND WITH ME (Beacon Hill Book #1) by Emily Mayer is an enchanting contemporary romance with two people who should not have worked, but discovered they did. This is the first book I have read by this author, and it hooked me immediately and I fell right into the story.
Sutton grew up in the shadow of her older beauty pageant sister, Sissy. Sutton preferred jeans, tennis shoes, fanfics, and computers. As they grew older, they grew further apart with Sissy always having to be the center of attention and always get what she wanted. When Sutton found out her sister slept with her best friend’s boyfriend, Macon St. James and the boy Sutton secretly had a crush on, she confronted her and told her parents. Sissy got her revenge and Sutton ran from Beacon Hill after she graduated from high school.
Ten years later, Sutton is working as a coder for a gaming company in Savannah, when she gets called back home to help her father after a workplace injury. When she returns, she learns Sissy is back from L.A. and marrying Macon. She is expected to be in maid of honor and is paired with Holden St. James, Macon’s strait-laced older brother. What she discovers is that Macon and Holden are very different from her high school memories, and she begins to realize she may have dreamed about the wrong brother.
I absolutely love Sutton and Holden and loved to hate Sissy. This romance pulled me right into the story with its snarky and witty dialogue between all the characters. I laughed out loud so many times especially when Sutton and Max were together and when Sutton’s guinea pigs were discussed. (I had the same surprise guinea pig babies happen to me!) All the secondary characters are fully developed and realistic. The chemistry builds steadily through the romance plot and there is only one sex scene almost at the end of the book, which is explicit and smokin’ hot, but not gratuitous. Since this will be a series, I am very excited that I will be able to visit Beacon Hill and hopefully all these characters again in the future.
I highly recommend this delightful and entertaining contemporary romance!
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Excerpt
Once he was all settled, I got into the front seat and took a fortifying drink of my coffee.
“Okay, big guy, let’s set some ground rules for this drive.” I met his narrowed gaze in the mirror and smiled widely. “I don’t want to hear one single word about where my hands are on the wheel, the speed limit, the space between cars, or motion sickness. Got it?”
“Sutton Louise Buchanan, I was there for the day you took your first breath and I can — ”
“Good enough.” I turned the engine on and put the truck in reverse. “Why are you working on a Saturday anyway?”
“I want to make sure my crew stays on schedule while I’m laid up.” Daddy leaned forward and reached between the seats to grab his coffee. “It’s a real big job so I don’t want to fall behind right out of the gate if it can be helped.”
I nodded. “Makes sense. Where are we headed?” I came to a stop at the sign just at the end of our street.
“To the old Bradford place.”
My eyebrows rose in surprise as I turned the truck in the right direction, memory taking over. The old farmhouse had originally been built in the mid-1800s and had been renovated sporadically until the owners abandoned it in the 1980s. It was a beautiful old house — or it had been — with big porches and a sunroom that had been added on at some point. Something about that house had always called to me. I’d daydreamed about being the one to finally breathe life back into it, restore it to its former glory. Of course, all that was before Sissy had made staying here seem impossible.
There were always lots of rumors circulating about why the Bradfords had abruptly moved away after living and farming on the land for centuries, but no one really knew the reason. Beacon Hill loved its gossip. A local favorite was that one of the Mr. Bradfords had killed his entire family, and their ghosts haunted the house. Every Halloween, high schoolers would break in and try to spend the night inside. I had never been invited.
“Someone finally bought that old place?”
“Sure did, and it’s a total gut job. There were structural issues.” Daddy sounded practically gleeful at the prospect. I pictured dollar signs floating around his head like little cartoon hearts.
“I’m really happy to see that house get the love it deserves, but whoever bought it either has too much money or is an idiot.”
Daddy was silent, his fingers playing a rhythm on his Thermos.
“Well, I’d say it’s probably the former.” Daddy paused. “I don’t think anyone can call Holden St. James an idiot.”
“What?” I screeched, whipping my head around to look at him and jerking the steering wheel in the process, causing us to briefly veer off the road and onto the shoulder.
“Eyes on the road, Sutton!” Daddy yelled, bracing himself. “Jesus remember me, how many times can a man almost die in one week?”
Car in the proper lane, I took a deep breath.
“Did you just say Holden St. James bought the old Bradford place?”
“If I answer that question, are you going to be able to maintain control of the vehicle?”
I rolled my eyes, but kept them facing forward — both for safety and so Daddy wouldn’t see it.
“You’re getting dramatic in your old age. I was just surprised. It doesn’t seem like someplace Holden St. James would be interested in living. I pictured him in a sterile, ultra-modern penthouse where every single piece of furniture makes a statement and is uncomfortable.”
“Think highly of the boy, do you?” Daddy drawled, his voice thick with sarcasm.
I shrugged, reaching for my coffee. Daddy cleared his throat pointedly, and I immediately returned my hand to the wheel.
“I’d be a better driver if I was fully caffeinated,” I mumbled. “Oh! I bet he’s going to flip it. That makes sense. The property value on that place will probably be insane once you’re done with the renovation, especially with all the land it sits on.”
***
Author Bio
Emily Mayer is a part-time lawyer, full time storyteller, and an aspiring writer. She lives in Central Ohio with the two loves of her life; her husband and her dog. If she isn’t working, you can usually find her somewhere with a book in her hand.
Today I am sharing my Feature Post for WYOMING PROUD (Wyoming Men Book #12) by Diana Palmer on this HTP Books Romance Blog Tour.
Below you will find a book summary, an excerpt from the book, and the author’s bio and social media links. Enjoy!
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Book Summary
Businesswoman Erianne Mitchell falls hard for entrepreneur Ty Mosby and they quickly get engaged. But their whirlwind romance ends quickly when he gets faulty information that she betrayed him in business. They part ways, leaving both heart-broken, confused, and Erianne secretly pregnant, not to mention blacklisted for every company in town.
Erianne has to start over and she goes to Wyoming to care for her growing child. Even though furious that Ty didn’t believe in her, she can’t help missing the man she loves. She builds a life with her child and by cleaning houses.
By accident, as she’s rushing to the doctor with her baby, she and Ty see each other. He knows she never deceived him, but can ever get Erianne to trust him again?
Ty Mosby was bored out of his mind. He could have been home with his sister, Annie, watching that dragon drama on cable. Even that would be better than this stupid office party with two women drooling over him. One was recently divorced. The other was married. Women!
He turned around and almost fell over Erianne Mitchell. Well, her name was Erianne. Nobody called her that. She was just Erin to Ty and his sister, Annie. He glowered at her.
“It’s not my fault that you’re gorgeous,” she teased. “Mary over there has forgotten her ex-husband in her fever to get you into a dark room. And Henrietta—” she nodded toward a gan- gly woman with wild dark hair who was sighing into her drink as she studied him over it “—hasn’t given her husband a thought all night. Just as well,” she added under her breath, “because he’s running around with the Tarver woman.”
“What are you, the town crier?” he chided.
“It’s a nasty job, but somebody has to do it,” she replied with sparkling gray eyes. She laughed and half turned away, her dark hair in an elegant chignon at the back of her neck. “And there’s
Grace. Didn’t you date her last year?”
“Oh, God,” he groaned.
“There, there, she hasn’t noticed you. She’s too busy trying to get Danny Barnes to notice her. He just inherited his grandfather’s ranch over in Comanche Wells.”
“I’ve had my fill of social climbers,” he muttered. He was giving her the once-over with black eyes. “On the other hand, there’s you.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd, I’m not your type,” she murmured, her mind on something else altogether. It was a lie. She’d loved him forever, but Ty couldn’t see her for dust. And why should he? She was plain compared to the women who chased him. He was absolutely gorgeous. He had jet-black hair and black eyes, and light olive skin that made him look even more gorgeous in that spotless white shirt he was wearing with his dinner jacket and slacks. No wonder women drooled over him. Erin had drooled over him for years and hid it so carefully that not even his sister realized it.
“Why not?” he asked, really curious.
“I don’t run around with men.”
He blinked. “You run around with women?”
“I don’t run around period.”
“You’re what, now, twenty-five? You’d better run around with somebody or you’re going to get left behind.”
“You’re thirty-one and you’re already left behind. Besides, I work for you,” she added. “I don’t get involved with people that I work for.”
“We could make an exception,” he pointed out.
She glared at him. “Tyson Regan Mosby,” she said, exasperated. “If you keep this up, I’m calling Annie.”
“God forbid!” he groaned.
“She loves you. She’ll protect you from predatory females.”
“I’ll give you a great job recommendation if you’ll find my sister a husband,” he coaxed.
“Annie doesn’t want to get married yet,” she said. “Any more than you do. And I don’t need a job recommendation unless you have in mind firing me tonight.”
He made a face. “I don’t have enough people as it is. Other San Antonio businesses keep luring our best people away. Even the ones I fire.” He didn’t like firing people, but he sometimes had to. Even though his company was headquartered in San Antonio, people from Jacobsville worked for it. Mosby Construction Company had grown under Ty’s management. He’d taken a little construction company owned by his father and built it into a major contender. He had a degree in architecture. He loved to build things.
He had inherited wealth, he and Annie, and he didn’t really need to work. But he loved his job. And San Antonio was the best place for his company headquarters, although he and Annie still lived in Jacobsville. Ty and Annie were direct descendants of the town’s founder, Big John Jacobs, who’d talked his father-in-law into putting a a railroad through Jacobsville and built it into a cattle shipping center in south Texas back in the nineteenth century.
“Well, isn’t that just like you,” she said, exasperated. “I brought you a brand new human resources manager just last week!”
“He drinks vodka,” he said irritably. “I don’t trust men who drink vodka.”
“How do you know what he drinks?” she asked.
“I asked him.”
“Oh.”
“What are you looking for?” he probed.
“Clarence.”
“Excuse me?”
“Clarence Hodges,” she muttered, peering over a nearby woman’s shoulder. “He’s like my personal devil. I can’t turn around at a party without running into him.”
He didn’t like that, but he hid it. “What does he want?”
She looked up at him with raised eyebrows. “He wants me!”
“Why?”
She really rolled her eyes. “Annie needs to get you a book or something about human relationships.”
He grinned. “I think I can figure those out without self-help diagrams.”
“Can you, now?” she murmured absently, still looking for Clarence.
He’d known her for years. She was as familiar to him as her best friend, his only sibling, Annie. She’d spent weekends with them all through high school and through community college, where Erin got an associate’s degree in business education. She was great at cost estimates, which was her position in the company. She had a brilliant mind for math. She could do most anything on a computer, even rework spreadsheet programs that he used in his construction company. She was his right arm at work, perfectly capable of standing in for him at meetings because she knew the business inside out. Of course, why wouldn’t she, when she’d worked there part-time through high school and full-time during and after college. He trusted her. Well, on a professional basis. He wasn’t keen on thinking about anything more personal. Erin was standoffish. Once, just once, he’d teased her about going dancing with him and she’d mumbled something noncommital and shot out of the room.
He’d never admit it, of course, but it had bruised his ego. Erin wasn’t beautiful. She had pleasant features. Nice mouth, pretty complexion, gorgeous figure, sparkling eyes. But she dressed like an old woman most of the time, and she never seemed to date anyone. He’d wondered why. He’d even asked Annie, but all he got was a blank look and a smile.
He studied Erin while she looked around for the man she dreaded seeing. It wasn’t so much how she looked that made her attractive, he decided finally; it was her personality. She was warm and friendly to most people, outrageously funny around friends, and she loved animals. That last thing was important to him, because he bred and trained purebred German shepherds.
His dogs were like part of the family. They lived inside with him and Annie in their huge inherited mansion in Jacobsville, Texas. The puppies, when he bred them, had their own room and a caretaker who watched over them and kept their living quarters spic and span and odorless. He rarely had more than one litter a year and by a different female each year, from an outside stud male. No interbreeding at all, because it invited birth defects. He loved the pups when they came and had to be persuaded to give them up for adoption. Even so, he actually ran background checks on potential adopters, right down to requiring photographs of their yards and the pup’s living quarters. He was protective.
A recent adopter had taken a leather strap to his puppy when it made a mess on the carpet, and a neighbor had seen and heard what was going on. She’d promptly phoned Annie, who told Ty. He’d gone to the owner’s house that very day, accompanied by police chief Cash Grier and the local vet, Dr. Bentley Rydel, along with a search warrant that would give them access to the dog in question.
To say that the man was shocked was an understatement. He hemmed and hawed and tried to weasel them out of looking at the dog. Cash Grier glared at him. That was all it took.
Most everybody was scared of the town’s police chief, who was nice enough at public gatherings, but hell on lawbreakers of any kind. Cash loved animals as much as the vet and Ty.
The owner was forced to give them access to the puppy, which had been locked in a closet with bloody marks on its back.
Ty had slugged the man before his companions could react. He picked the pup up, gently, and after Cash took photos to document the abuse, walked out the door with Bently Rydel, to end up at his office where the poor little morsel was treated and sent home after an antibiotic shot and stitches. Cash had promptly arrested the owner. The pup’s owner went on trial, was convicted and sentenced to jail. Nobody in Jacobsville liked a dog beater. The jury had only deliberated for ten minutes, despite the harried public defender’s best efforts. All the District Attorney, Blake Kemp, had to do was put up a poster-sized photo of the abused puppy for the jury and the audience to see. It had drawn gasps and the pup’s owner had looked around at glares that felt like burns on his skin.
“What’s the matter with you?” Erin asked, glancing at his taut face.
“Puppy beaters,” he muttered.
Her expression softened. “The man got what he deserved. How is Beauregard, by the way?” she added.
He smiled. “He still whimpers in his sleep. I keep him with me at night. Rhodes isn’t enthusiastic about it, but I think he senses that the puppy needs to be spoiled for a few weeks.
Actually,” he added on a chuckle, “it’s Rhodes’s bed that they sleep in, curled up together. For an old dog, Rhodes is amazingly sweet.”
“You’ve had him a long time,” she remarked.
He nodded. “Thirteen years. I worry about him. Big dogs don’t have the life span that smaller ones do.”
“Rhodes is practically immortal,” she replied with a smile. “He’s pampered.”
“I guess so. Dad gave him to me as a Christmas present the year I graduated high school.”
“I remember your parents. They were so sweet,” she added. “Your mother and mine were best friends.”
“Hell of a shame, what happened,” he said stiffly.
She nodded. “It’s a rare thing, to have a tour bus go off the road and crash down a ravine. But those mountain roads in South America can be treacherous. Your parents were so much in love,” she added quietly. “It’s hard to imagine one going on without the other.”
“That’s what Annie and I thought,” he replied. “But it’s damned tough, losing them both at once.”
“I remember. At least you were both grown at the time,” she added softly.
He drew in a breath. “Didn’t help much,” he muttered.
“For what it’s worth, I know how it is. It was hard for Dad and me to go on, after we lost Mom.”
“Your mother had a hard life,” he said.
She sighed. “Yes. Dad’s hard to live with. He’s not mean or anything, he just makes stupid decisions and runs his mouth when he shouldn’t. Jack Dempsey won’t even speak to him.”
“That must hurt. They’re best friends.”
“They were,” she said sadly. “Dad was repeating some gossip that he’d heard about Jack’s wife running around on him. It got exaggerated, by Dad,” she muttered, “and Jack’s wife divorced him. It wasn’t even true. My father has a gift for saying things without thinking first.”
“A lot of people are like that.”
She grimaced. “I wish they’d had more kids than just me,” she confessed, looking up at him. “It would be easier to manage Dad if I had brothers and sisters to share the misery.”
He chuckled. “You do pretty good.”
She shrugged. “I could do better. I’d have to take away his phone though.”
His eyebrows arched.
“This guy called dad and said he could save ten dollars a month if he switched our long distance to their company. Dad said great, let’s do it. So I tried to phone one of our colleagues at home in Dallas last weekend and got told that we didn’t have long distance anymore. It was a scam. Dad had no idea what he’d done. I tried not to yell,” she added on a laugh. “Honestly, he’s like a little kid sometimes. Ten dollars a month.” She shook her head.
“My mother was like that,” he reminded her. “She got a call telling her the sheriff was coming over to arrest her for a bill she hadn’t paid. The man asked for pre-paid gift cards to save her from jail. She was halfway out the door on her way to town when I stopped her to ask what was wrong. Sadly for him, the scammer was still on her phone talking her through the process.”
She grinned. “I’ll bet his ears are still burning, wherever he is.”
“I imagine so. I was really mad.”
“Do you still have that jar your mother made for you? The one you had to put money in for every bad word you used?”
He laughed. “Yes. It doesn’t get fed, but I’ve still got it.” His eyes were sad with the memory. “She wanted to be a missionary, but Dad came along. She’d lived on a budget for so long that she almost ran away when she saw how much he was worth.” That was true. Her father had inherited a lot of money from his late mother, but he squandered it all on get rich quick schemes. He was still doing that, albeit on a very small shoestring. Erin wore herself out trying to save him from himself.
“A unique woman,” Ty continued. “She really didn’t care about money at all.” He studied her quietly. “Sort of like you.”
She sighed. “I like being able to buy food and gas and pay bills. That’s what money’s good for. There are lots of things it won’t buy.”
He nodded.
“Besides that, I work for this terrific manager who gives me raises,” she added with twinkling gray eyes.
“I don’t have to think too hard to do that,” he said. “I know how hard you work.”
“I’m just grateful to have a job. The economy is pretty bad right now.”
“It is,” he agreed. “Even this company has to be careful. You’re working on that bid now, the one we hope will get us the job just outside San Antonio in Bexar County; a whole retirement complex. It’s worth millions.”
“You’ll get it,” she said with supreme confidence. “You really do know how to undercut the other bidders. And I know how to price out almost everything,” she said, not bragging, just making a statement. She was a good cost estimator.
“We can undercut most of the major bidders,” he corrected. “But I’ve heard that one of them is Jason Whitehall. He and his son Josh have one of the best construction companies around south Texas.”
“His son’s a dish,” she mused.
“And how would you know?” he asked.
“I ran into him at that conference you sent me to, in Dallas, month before last. He looks just like his dad. All three of them were there, Jason and Amanda and Josh.” She sighed. “They’re just beginning to get over losing Jason’s mother, Marguerite. She was a lovely lady. So kind.”
“You know a lot about them,” he said.
“Well, one of our clients was trying to retool his public image and Amanda still owns that PR firm, so she was there getting information from him. She’s very nice. We keep in touch on Facebook.”
“Don’t keep in touch too closely,” he cautioned with snapping black eyes. “They’re competitors.”
“As if I’d ever sell you out,” she said, exasperated, as she stared up at him. “Get real! Annie would have me for breakfast, smothered in jelly!”
He relaxed. “Okay. Just testing the waters.”
She ground her teeth together. “Oh, no.”
He followed her irritated glance and saw a short, rotund man with thinning hair and a big smile headed toward them.
“I told you so,” she moaned. “I’ll go hide in the rest room… Ty!”
His arm was around her waist and he smiled down at her shocked expression. “Don’t give the game away. Smile.”
She did, trying hard to disguise the sudden acceleration of her heartbeat as she felt the strength and heat of his powerful body, smelled the spicy, clean scent of him. She’d danced with him at parties, rarely, and it had been just as problematic, to keep her headlong feelings for him from showing.
He felt a shiver go through her and his brows drew together just for an instant. Surely she wasn’t afraid of him?
Then he felt her heart race where her small, firm breasts were pressed close against him, and odd feelings stirred. Her breath was coming too fast. She was trying to disguise it, but he knew more about women than he ever let on in public.
She stiffened and started to pull back, but his arm tightened.
“What are you afraid of?” he asked in a slow, deep tone.
“Noth…nothing,” she faltered.
“Lies,” he mused. “Here.” He handed her his drink. “Liquid courage. Take a sip and we’ll ward off your would-be suitor.”
She took the glass, sniffed it, and made a face. “It’s whiskey. I hate whiskey!”
“Take a sip. It works better than it smells. Trust me.”
She took a deep breath, held it, and forced about a teaspoon of the vile-smelling liquid into her mouth. She choked it down, catching her breath.
“You could fuel trucks with this,” she muttered as she handed it back.
“This is the very finest aged Scotch whiskey,” he defended. “And now I’ll know not to share my most precious substance with those same people you don’t cast pearls before!”
She glared at him. “I am not a swine!”
“No, you aren’t,” he agreed. He cocked his head and his black eyes twinkled. “But I’ll bet you taste almost as good as a barbequed one,” he added in a slow, soft tone as his eyes fell to her pretty, soft mouth.
She actually gasped and her heart ran wild.
“My, my, is that the whiskey or me?” he asked, his eyes dropping to the fluttering of her heart, very visible under the thin bodice of her pale blue cocktail dress.
“Don’t you stare at me like that,” she said indignantly.
“Like what?” he asked, amused.
“Oh, hi, Erin,” Clarence Hodges said as he joined them. He looked crestfallen when he noticed Ty’s arm around her. “I was hoping you might like to talk to me about having your company do a remodeling job on my new house…?”
She forced a smile. “I’m truly sorry, Clarence, but that isn’t the sort of project we do,” she said in a gentle but professional tone. “We do big projects. Shopping centers. Apartments. Housing complexes. That sort of thing.”
“It’s a big house,” he persisted.
“Erin’s right, we don’t do small projects,” Ty told him, and the irritation he was feeling was visible in the tautness of his unsmiling face. “Even if we did, we’re already overbooked. Sorry,” he added. But he didn’t look sorry. He looked oddly threatening.
Clarence swallowed. Hard. His face flushed. “I see. Well…” He smiled hopefully at Erin. “Maybe you might like to come over and have coffee with me one morning?”
Ty’s chin lifted. His black eyes narrowed. He glared at the smaller man.
Erin just smiled.
“Oh, there’s Billy Olstead,” he said, looking past Erin’s shoulder. “I need to talk to him about my mother’s new car. I’ll see you later,” he added to Erin and smiled again, nervously, as he made a beeline toward the newcomer.
“Thanks,” Erin said with a heavy release of breath. “He’s not a bad man, but he can be annoying.”
“Annie says he’s started calling you two or three times a week.”
“He does,” she agreed sadly. “I can’t make him understand that I just don’t feel that way about him. I’ve never done a single thing that he could construe as encouraging.”
“It wouldn’t help,” he replied. “Men like that don’t take hints. They think they’re irresistible and it only needs persistence to wear you down.”
“He’d need more persistence than he’s got,” she said flatly.
He pursed his lips. “You could go out with me.”
Her eyes widened. “What?”
He shrugged. “You could go out with me. Jacobsville is small. It would get all around town in no time that we were dating. Clarence would hear it from everybody.” He chuckled. “Even Clarence wouldn’t be able to convince himself that he’d be any competition for me.”
“Well, yes, but…”
“But, what?” he asked quietly, and he looked down into her eyes until she flushed. Her heart was trying to get out of her chest now.
She couldn’t even find words. It was like having every dream of her life come true unexpectedly, and all at once. She was breathless, giddy. But it was insane to even think of doing it, of going out with him. The gossip would be terrible. It wouldn’t matter that the company where they worked was in San Antonio; too many employees lived in Jacobsville, where Ty and Erin lived. It would be all over town in no time. When he didn’t go out with her a second time, it would be even worse. People would start wondering what was wrong with her.
“I don’t think,” she began.
“Good. Don’t. Thinking is responsible for most of the misery on the planet. We can go dancing. There’s a Latin club up in San Antonio.”
He knew she could do Latin dances. He’d taught her how, for a high school date. How many years ago that seemed now!
“Well…”
Amazing. She was reluctant. He’d never had any woman try to refuse a date with him. It was intriguing, especially considering how fast her heart was going right now. She was attracted to him. Was it new? Or had she always been attracted, but kept it hidden? He wanted to find out.
“Live dangerously. A little gossip never hurt anybody,” he teased.
It did, but he wouldn’t know, not with his spotless reputation. Well, hers was spotless, too. So spotless that she didn’t want to risk staining it, however lightly.
“People will talk. A lot.”
He just smiled. “Your friends won’t care. What your enemies think won’t matter.”
“Yes, but I hate gossip.”
He cocked his head and smiled at her with those black eyes making sensual promises. “There’s a sushi place just down the block from the Latin club,” he said. “They have ebi.”
Ebi was her favorite sushi dish. It was so expensive that she couldn’t work it into her budget. Her father did contribute a little to the family kitty, but never enough. They lived frugally because he was a spendthrift. Ty didn’t know and it would kill her pride to confess it.
She loved sushi, especially ebi. She couldn’t afford it.
“You’re weakening. Think about it. Chilled shrimp with rice. Wasabe and soy sauce and pickled ginger to go on it…”
“Stop! You’re torturing me!”
He chuckled. “I love it, too. Come on. Say yes.”
She drew in a long breath. “Okay,” she blurted out, against her own best interests.
He grinned. “Okay.”
When she got home that night, she could have kicked herself for agreeing.
Her father was watching television. A movie on DVD. They couldn’t afford cable or satellite. The only reason she had a high-end cell phone was that the company provided it for her, along with a company car. These would have been luxuries, even on her good salary.
“I’m home,” she said.
“Hi.” He grinned at her while the commercial was on. “Had fun?”
“It was a business party,” she reminded him.
“Easy enough to have fun and do business. Speaking of business, I saw this commercial on TV about how to invest in the stock market by doing day-trading…”
“No.”
“Now, Erin…”
“No,” she repeated. “We’re still paying off that course you took learning how to sell real estate,” she added pointedly.
He grimaced. “I didn’t know I was a bad salesman until I tried it.”
“Well, trying things is what got us into this financial mess, Dad,” she said, sitting down across from him. “I’m making a good salary. If we live on a budget, we can make it, just. But there’s no extra money. None at all. I can’t work two jobs.”
He studied her with the face of a child. “But it’s only two hundred dollars, this course, I mean.”
“I don’t have two hundred dollars. Not even in savings. That went to the online gambling website you found,” she added, trying not to sound as accusing as she felt.
He grimaced. “I guess I’m not as good a gambler as I thought, either. But, listen, this course,” he began again.
“I can get an apartment of my own and move out,” she said flatly.
He gasped. “Erin, no!”
“I can’t live with the way you spend money, Dad. Either you stop trying to spend it on things we don’t need, or I’m bailing out.” She felt a hundred years old. “I can’t keep bailing you out. We already owe more than I make in a year. I’m just one person.”
“I do help out,” he said stiffly.
“You do odd jobs and you spend what you make as soon as you get it,” she replied.
He flushed. He couldn’t deny that.
“I’ll try to restrain myself. I will.” He smiled. “But the man said that this course is foolproof.”
She ground her teeth together as she got up. “I’m going to bed.”
“If you’d just listen,” he said sadly.
She turned. “I’ve listened since Mom died,” she said. “And every single thing you’ve spent money on has cost us money without returning any. I’m so tired of debt, can’t you understand that? I’m being crushed by the weight of it, worried to death about it, and you just can’t seem to see what it’s doing to me.”
He blinked. He shifted uneasily in his chair. “I’ll do better next time. You’ll see.”
“Next time it had better be your own money that you’re betting,” she replied and toughened her stance. “Or I’m moving out.”
“You’re being unreasonable, Erin,” he retorted. “You don’t love me.”
“I do love you. And you’re the one being unreasonable. Good night.”
She went into her bedroom and closed the door, sick at heart. It was like trying to explain to a child. Her father had always lived in the clouds, but her mother had been able to manage him with supreme ease. Erin couldn’t.
“I’ll spend the rest of my life paying off his bills and then I’ll die,” she thought miserably. “I’ll never get away.”
Which was the one reason she could never let Ty Mosby see how she felt about him. Everybody knew her father kept them poor, but not how catastrophically. Ty would never be sure of her. Was she dating him because she cared for him or because he could pay off their debts.
It was an unrealistic thought, but she was almost panicked at the thought of dating Ty. She’d have to find some way to back out of it, a way that wouldn’t hurt his pride. All her life, her father had been a stone around her neck. Since her mother’s death, it had been much worse.
It would have helped if she had someone to talk to about it, but her only real friend was Annie, and she’d never be able to tell Annie the truth. It would just get back to Ty. Her pride wouldn’t take that.
She wanted that date with all her heart. It was just too risky. She was crazy about him. It might show. There were so many reasons that she didn’t dare let him see what she felt. Her father was the biggest one.
But there was another. Ty wasn’t a marrying man. He kept his liaisons very private, but he’d had relationships in the past. In a small town like this, they wouldn’t be able to hide one.
Erin had a spotless reputation. She wasn’t having it damaged to keep steady company with a man who only wanted one thing from a woman, and it wasn’t love.
So, better not to complicate her life any more than it was already complicated. Which left the problem of her father to solve, if it could be solved. She would never be free of him and his get-rich schemes that never paid off. She’d be in debt until she died.
She put on her gown and crawled gratefully under the covers. She’d think about it tomorrow, she told herself. Tonight, she was going to savor her memory of Ty’s arm around her, his deep voice sensuous as he teased her about going on a date.
It could never happen. But dreaming about it hurt nobody. Especially not Erin.
The prolific author of more than one hundred books, Diana Palmer got her start as a newspaper reporter. A New York Times bestselling author and voted one of the top ten romance writers in America, she has a gift for telling the most sensual tales with charm and humor. Diana lives with her family in Cornelia, Georgia.
ACT OF VALOR (True Blue K-9 Unit Book #2) by Dana Mentink is an action packed Christian romantic suspense in this True Blue K-9 Unit series published by Love Inspired Suspense. This is the second book in the series featuring another of the Jameson brothers who all work in the NYPD K-9 unit with their varied K-9 partners. This is easily read as a standalone with a HEA and a complete crime suspense plot, but there is an over-arcing murder mystery that is in all the books of this series, so I am reading them all in order.
Violet Griffin works as a ticketing agent at La Guardia as well as helping in her parent’s family restaurant. When she encounters a suspicious passenger, she suddenly finds herself the target of a drug smuggling ring that wants her dead. When she is attacked in the employee lounge, Zach is in the airport with his beagle and saves her, but her attacker gets away.
NYPD K-9 Officer Zach Jameson and his drug sniffing beagle, Eddie, are in time to save Violet this time, but she is determined to live her own life and makes protecting her difficult and leaves her open to attack. Zach and Violet have been friends since childhood, and he is determined to protect her by bringing down the drug ring that is threatening her life.
As Zach guards Violet their chemistry ramps up. Violet refuses to ruin her friendship with Zach if he does not return her feelings of more than friendship, but she is willing to pray for and with Zach since he has lost his faith in God with the murder of his brother while trying to stay alive and bring down the drug ring.
This is a well written Christian romantic suspense that kept me reading from start to finish. The romance was believable with Violet and Zach both realizing how much they cared for each other, but afraid to lose their long-term friendship. The arguing between the two was humorous even though it was over serious matters. There are no sex scenes and yet the chemistry and love are there. There are strong faith and prayer elements throughout the story, but they are well placed and never slowed the story. The suspense is action packed and fast paced. I loved Eddie and enjoyed the balance between his work attitude and his lovable and at times naughty personality when not working. I was glad there was mention of a little progress in the murder mystery that is spread over the entire series, but I wanted more.
This is an exciting and thrilling Christian romantic suspense that ticked off everything I would hope for in this type of genre book.
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About the Author
Dana Mentink is a USA TODAY and Publisher’s Weekly bestselling author. She’s written more than forty mystery and suspense novels for Love Inspired Suspense, Harvest House, and Poisoned Pen Press. She is honored to have received two ACFW Carol Awards, a Holt Medallion Award, and a Romantic Times Reviewer’s Choice Award.
