Upcoming Release! A preview!

 Greetings, all! I hope you're doing well and enjoying life out there.

Before I get to the preview, I've got some announcements! First, I've finally got a website and a newsletter--that I'm actually updating with free reads and previews--so if you're interested, head over to my website and sign up for the newsletter. There's a new release coming out on Tuesday, a Christmas freebie coming out for newsletter subscribers next month, and (if all goes well) a little announcement for March. Don't miss a thing!

 And, check out this gorgeous cover by the lovely and talented Cate Ashwood! I want to write more books just so I can have more covers by her.

And now, the preview!

 

Chapter One

Sam

 

The scent of carnations and fresh-cut roses rushed at Sam Northwick on a wave of cool air as he pulled open the door to Loraine’s Floral and Gifts. He was in a hurry, and more than that, he had no idea what he was looking for, but he hoped Loraine could help him out. She always knew just what to do for any occasion, though neither of them had ever dealt with this particular occasion.

It had taken the social worker nearly a week to get ahold of him since his sister, Lisa, only had the number for the house phone, and he wasn’t around enough during the day to answer it. The woman had left messages, but he never checked the voicemail since everyone who mattered called him on his cell phone. When he finally did catch a call, heard a stranger’s voice on the other end asking if he was Lisa Northwick’s brother, he’d known it meant trouble, because it was always some kind of trouble when Lisa was involved. He’d only seen her once since the last time she’d run away, and that was when she hitched her way home to see their parents and ask for money. Which they gave, just like they always did, always hoping she’d use it to make a better life for herself. Or at least help keep her off the street. He couldn’t recall exactly when that was, but it had to have been at least fourteen years now. He was in his senior year. Momma and Daddy were still alive. The ranch was still one of the biggest in the county, and Sam was still trying to decide if college was worth it when all he really wanted to do with his life was wrapped up under the Texas sky on his family’s land.

In the end, he’d stayed. He was glad for it now because it gave him a few more years of his mother’s cooking and his father’s wisdom, their kindness, their charitable hearts. All the things a sleepy truck driver had taken from him nearly a decade ago. All the things Lisa had missed out on, had run away from, chasing a man or drugs or both when she was barely seventeen.

“Can I help ya find something, cowboy?”

Sam nearly jumped out of his skin, and he dropped the stuffed animal he’d been holding. He’d heard that line a thousand times, but it was usually some tiny girl with curves and long hair and a pretty smile. Definitely not today, though. He turned to find an unfamiliar face, unfamiliar shaggy blond curls hanging over unfamiliar green eyes that were so light, they probably looked blue when the sun hit them just right. The guy shot him a smile that Sam couldn’t read. Friendly, but like he was considering if he wanted to eat Sam for dinner at the same time.

“I don’t know.” Sam nearly tripped over a display bursting with bright orange tropical-looking flowers as he stepped back. “Probably not.” He didn’t mean to be rude, but he was on a deadline, and he’d spent his entire life not flirting with anyone within a fifty-mile radius of his home. “Loraine around?”

“Loraine,” the guy called over his shoulder toward the back of the shop. “One of your boyfriends is here.”

“What’re you on about?” Loraine pulled back the plastic curtain, her smile almost as big as her bleach-blonde hair. “Sam?” she said as she stepped closer and pulled him into a tight hug. She’d been his mother’s best friend and always treated him like one of her own. Every year, on the anniversary of his parents’ death, she put together a big bouquet and would ride down to the cemetery with him, hold his hand while he stood for a while, pretended not to notice if he cried. She’d been there for him over and over again throughout his life, and he was glad to have her. 

“Hey, Miss Loraine,” Sam said, pulling back just enough for her to kiss his cheek. She grinned at him as she wiped her bright red lipstick off his skin with her thumb.

“It’s so good to see you, darlin’.” She said it like it’d been weeks, months, but he’d seen her three days earlier at a graduation party for one of her cousins’ kids. “Is today the big day?”

He didn’t know if big day were the right words for it, but he didn’t say so. “It is.” He nodded and glanced at the guy by the counter again. In truth, Sam could stand there and look at him all afternoon. If he had the time. “On my way to the airport, and I thought I maybe shouldn’t go empty-handed.”

Loraine looked like she might well up, her sigh a little shaky when she said, “You’re the sweetest man God ever put on this earth.” She patted him on the cheek and added, “Just like your daddy, I swear.”

He didn’t know about that, but he certainly didn’t mind the comparison. There wasn’t another person in the history of the world he’d rather be like.

“Well, you and Bill here,” she corrected with a smile and a nod at the new guy.

Sam couldn’t help but give him another look. The hot pink T-shirt tucked carefully into the top edge of white jeans that hung precariously low over slim hips, the glittery painted fingernails, maybe even a hint of makeup around the eyes. “You don’t look like a Bill.” The words slipped out before Sam could stop them. He hadn’t meant it as an insult or even a come-on. He just couldn’t imagine a name less fitting for the guy in front of him.

Bill rolled his eyes as he fussed with a pile of ribbon on the counter next to him. “Right? I’m technically William Jonathan Jones. The fifth. Most folks call me Billy.”

“That’s a mouthful.” Sam wished he could take the words back, take his tone back too, because even to his own ears, it sounded like he had more than Billy’s name in mind.

For one split second, Sam could’ve sworn something extremely filthy and extremely tempting was going to come out, but Loraine shot Billy a warning look, and he said, “A boring mouthful. My parents are the least imaginative people on the planet.”

“But you love them anyway,” Loraine added.

Billy nodded. “I do. Most days.”

“Good enough,” Loraine said with a laugh before looking at Sam again. “My sister was not blessed with a kind heart or an agile mind, but she’s family, and that counts for somethin’.”

“Don’t I know it.” Sam hadn’t meant for the snort of laughter to slip out, but it did anyway. He looked at Billy again. “So, you’re Loraine’s nephew?”

Before Billy could answer, Loraine said, “I’m sure you two must’ve met at some point. He’s my favorite outta my whole family.”

Sam smiled at her and asked, “Does your son know that?”

“No,” she said, patting Sam’s cheek again. “And we’re not tellin’ him.” She nodded toward Billy and went on. “He was livin’ out in Austin, but he’s come here now to help me with the shop, learn the ropes before I retire.” She barely paused for a breath before going on. “Ed told me if I don’t quit soon, he’s gonna go on our RV tour without me, and I’d just hate that, so it’s gettin’ time. Gonna enjoy our golden years while we still got ’em, know what I mean?”

So much information in such a short span gave Sam whiplash. The idea of her nephew moving here was unsettling on multiple levels, but the one that made his chest cinch and ache was Billy being the one to pick out his flowers for his momma and wrap them up nice. “I can’t believe you’re leaving,” he said, hugging her again. “Gonna miss you.” His selfishness slapped him in the face, so he added, “I’m real happy for y’all, though. You and Ed deserve some fun.”

“I’m not gone yet, sweetheart,” she said gently, as though she’d read his mind. “And I promise you, I’ll be back for visits.” They both knew what she meant, and he was grateful for her all over again.

Into the quiet that settled between them, Billy said, “I did meet you once.”

That caught Sam’s attention, and he looked at Billy again, longer this time. “I think I woulda remembered you.”

Billy laughed and said, “I am pretty unforgettable, but it was a million years ago.” When Sam quirked his brow in question, Billy went on. “I’d come down to the high school with Aunt Loraine to help put up some decorations for a dance, got lost looking for the bathroom, and three guys started pushing me around, tried to stuff me into a garbage can, and you stopped them.”

Recognition lit up with the memory. “No shit. Billy the kid?”

Billy shook his head, but he smiled too as he said, “I’m not thirteen anymore, so not much of a kid.”

“Goddamn, I haven’t seen you in a minute.” Sam regretted the curse as soon as it passed his lips because Loraine pinched him hard enough to leave a bruise. “Sorry,” he muttered quickly, rubbing his shoulder where she got him. He’d been dodging his girlfriend—his beard, even if he didn’t know that was what she was at the time—all day, came around the corner, and found three freshmen kicking the shit out of a kid. He’d nearly knocked their heads into the wall. He spent the rest of the afternoon hanging out with Loraine and him, decorating the gym, trying to make him feel better. “What were they beatin’ on ya for, anyway?”

“Well, the word faggot got flung around an awful lot, so if I had to guess…”

Loraine pinched Billy too, but he didn’t so much as flinch. “I don’t like that word,” she said, a dark expression on her face.

“It’s not my favorite either,” Billy said flatly. “But that is what they said. I was only quoting them.”

Something about that, something about the way Billy said it so casually, like it happened all the time and he couldn’t be bothered to be upset by it anymore, twisted a new pain in Sam. “You were just a little kid. Christ.” He managed to step out of Loraine’s reach in the nick of time.

“They were only a year or so older than me, and it’s not like I was… less fabulous then than I am now.”

There were a million things Sam wanted to say, wanted to ask him, wanted to tell him. I’m sorry that happened to you and teach me how to be as brave as you rattled around in his head, but in the end, he just said, “They were assholes then, and they’re probably still assholes.”

Loraine must’ve agreed because she didn’t try to pinch him for that.

Before he could say anything else, his phone started to vibrate and chime in his pocket. “I wish I could catch up, but that’s my alarm,” he said as he tapped the screen to shut it up. “Gotta get on the road if I’m gonna make it in time.” He had a two-hour drive to the airport if traffic was kind.

Loraine had already started pulling together some flowers. Bluebonnets and yellow roses, white carnations, some fluffy white things Sam didn’t know the name of. “How old are they again?” she asked as she set the flowers on the counter. Without being asked, Billy grabbed some paper off the roll and started to arrange them.

“I think the lady said Bree is fourteen and Winston just turned seven,” Sam said, trying not to sound terrified. Not for the first time, he wished he’d declined the social worker’s call. “I don’t even know what a fourteen-year-old girl would like.”

“Other than a sixteen-year-old boy with tattoos and a car?” Billy teased as he filled a plastic bag with a little bit of water, put the stems in it, and secured it with a couple of rubber bands. Then he wrapped it all up with sparkly white paper, tied with a satin ribbon.

Sam watched him work, watched the way everything seemed to fall into place in his slim, smooth hands. He wished everything in life could come together so easy, so flawless. “From the sounds of it, she’d probably enjoy the tattooed boy and just steal a car, but I’m hoping to God that’s not true.”

“Sounds like a real firecracker.” Loraine walked over to a small shelf covered in toys.

Sam took off his hat and ran his hand through his hair, down to the back of his neck where a knot of tension tugged itself into the start of a headache. No surprise. “Sounds like her momma.” According to the social worker, she’d tried to run three times from the emergency placement they’d put her in, tried to take Winston with her once they’d been put in a home together, gave a girl a black eye, had a history of cutting—which Sam had to look up the meaning of—and he knew she had a mouth like a wrangler because he could hear her cussing in the background when the social worker had asked if she’d like to speak to him. “God help me.”

Loraine turned to look at him, her smile just as warm as always, but concern colored her eyes too. “You’ll do just fine, honey.” She held up two toys and asked, “For the little boy, fire truck or a John Deer?”

How the hell should he know? When he was seven, his toys were cows and horses and sheep. He put his hat back on and glanced at Billy. “What do you think?”

Billy looked just as nonplussed as Sam felt. “When I was seven, all I wanted was a Barbie doll.”

Sam couldn’t say the same, but he thought Billy was probably telling the truth.

“What about a book?” Loraine asked helpfully.

“Lady on the phone said he can’t read yet, can’t write his own name neither. Barely talks.”

Loraine made a sad noise, whispered something about blessing his heart, but Sam didn’t have time to ponder any of it. All he knew was that the kid—in the social worker’s words—didn’t appear to be on the spectrum. Whatever the hell that meant. She’d said it like it was a good thing, though, so at least there was that. “Maybe I’ll just go with the tractor for him.”

“When’s the last time you saw them?” Billy asked as he rang up the toy and the flowers. He wrapped the tractor in some tissue paper, made it look nice in the paper bag.

“Never.” Sam tapped his debit card on the reader and took the bag and flowers when Billy passed them to him. “Never even knew they existed until I got a call from California.”

“Oh.” Bill’s oh was loaded and sounded like there was supposed to be a shit attached to it, but Loraine was still in pinching distance, so maybe he left it off on purpose.

Sam couldn’t help a small laugh. “Yeah, that about sums it up,” he said as he turned for the door. “Thanks, y’all. Say a prayer for me. I think I’m gonna need it.”

“Every night, hon,” Loraine said as he walked out into the hot May afternoon.

If this was what he got with folks praying for him every night, what would his life be like without it? He didn’t have time to think about it, though, since he was going to have to drive like the devil to get there before their plane landed. 

 

Available for preorder now!