by C. M. Owens
“Funny. I was thinking you to be more of the model type. Perfect symmetry.”
His eyebrows go up again, and he stares at me like he thinks I’m crazy, while I keep his face smashed between my hands, giving his lips a bit of a fish pucker effect.
“You truly are a beautiful man,” I say on a long sigh as I release the sides of his face.
“Beautiful?” he asks, laughing lightly.
“Yes. A beautiful…prick.”
I pat the side of his cheek, and all the humor in his expression disappears.
“See you tomorrow, Pretty Boy,” I say over my shoulder as I sashay away in my awesome boots. “See you guys bright and early,” I say cheerily to the table of artists.
“You okay to walk back to your place alone?” Rudy asks so helpfully.
I wink at him. “Don’t worry. I’ll give someone hell if they fuck with me.”
I grab my purse, and Liam is suddenly back at the table.
“Someone should walk you back to your hotel,” Liam says firmly.
My smile creeps up, and I peer over at him. “I’m not at a hotel. I’m staying with a family friend. And don’t worry,” I tell him as I walk away. Without turning around, I loudly add, “I’m a Wild One.”
Note from the author:
Thank you so much for reading the first book of the Wild Ones. This was a side project I wanted to do because I needed something light and fun to break up the more serious or darker books I’d been writing.
My heart needed a break.
Even my romantic comedies have some heavy subject matters at times. I just wanted something carefree, maybe even a little silly, with low intensity so you don’t have your stomach in knots, your heart ripped out, or your soul stained for all eternity or whatever. ;) Nothing too deep or heavy.
With so many intense reads, sometimes you just need a fun book to reset yourself and break them up. I needed to write this to refresh myself, and this is my fun, simple, somewhat crazy series that makes me smile.
I really hope it makes you smile too, because there are several more Wild Ones to come, if all goes according to plan.
Kylie Malone’s story is next, since Becoming A Vincent leads you into that with Liam’s tale of why he moved to Tomahawk, land of the beardless ex beards. (Don’t worry. Most still have beards, but they’re just kept neat instead of collecting trays of food now.) It’ll start in the past to show you how they initially met, then fast forward to the present where they finally meet again.
After hers, the plan (which could change, based on how the writing process goes) is to release Kai Wilder. Finally getting some of those Wild Men.
Anyway, thank you for giving this one a chance, even if it wasn’t for you. I’d love to see your reviews, and they always help a book get noticed by others the more reviews an author collects—good or bad.
Now, to tell you just a little about the Wild Ones—a lot of the crazy came from my real life. I wanted wilderness, funny, crazy, outrageous, little civilization, and a very small /backwoods town. Welcome to Tomahawk. ;)
Nothing about this series is going to be mature. This is completely wild and outlandish, which is its intent.
By now, if you’ve followed me, you realize I’m not exactly normal.
Though we’re a family of bullshitters and fish tales, we also had tons of real stories to share with people that no one ever believed…until they saw it. And then they either loved us or hated us.
My father liked to shoot a Coke can (never Pepsi) out of my uncle’s hand just to prove he was a good shot, and my uncle always went along. He still has both hands. They got dynamite one time—fish really do float to the top if they were near (but not actually inside) the blast, or at least they did that week.
Don’t worry—the fish got eaten and there wasn’t that many since this was a pond and not a lake. ;)
We got a really dirt cheap four-wheeler (yes, I realize not everyone calls them this), and the plastic upper frame was held to the actual mechanical part (how’s that awesome terminology for you?) with bungie cords. No joke.
I crashed it into the deep end of the pond, had to use a backhoe and logging chain to get it out, and pretend I had no idea why it was tore up when my dad got home.
Half of my dad’s backyard is full of buried broken things, since we couldn’t hide broken shit in the trash. He always carried the trash to work because he was too cheap for trash service—this is still a funny point of conversation with my family. Anyway, if you broke something, you buried it, because we had so many knickknacks that no one noticed something missing. Fortunately.
Unless it was a really expensive dolphin figurine…that always sucked. Prepare to do the grossest shit imaginable—clean porta potties type of gross—in order to pay back the money for a damn expensive glass dolphin. Punishments could be creative when my dad was in a funny-guy mood.
I’m getting off track.
That’s just one tip of the iceberg there. I’ll share a little more with you as the series goes on, if you want. I’ll also be using a lot of that in these books.
Bottom line, what you may find crazy might have been something I pulled from my actual life. Or an exaggerated version of it. Hopefully that makes it a little more fun to read when you’re guessing if it really happened or not. And the books, of course, will only get crazier.
(I like to ease people into the madness so they don’t see just how deep they’ve gotten until it’s too late and they realize they’re a little crazy too.)
I have some of the absolute best memories from my semi-reckless childhood because of all the crazy ways we found to not be bored—days before internet was a household commonality; before the smart phone gave you unlimited entertainment at your fingertips (which means you had to be creative or stay hella bored); and before social media could forever document the photos of stupid things you’d probably like no one else to ever know about.
(Thank fuck social media happened AFTER I had a child and not before…)
As always, I appreciate each and everyone’s support. You have no idea how much it means to me to bring these stories to life and have an incredible set of readers who support me.
Time to stop writing to you before I get teary-eyed for the first time in the book.
Btw, I love the hell out of you.
—CM
About the Author:
C.M. Owens is a USA Today Bestselling author of over 30 novels. She always loves a good laugh, and lives and breathes the emotions of the characters she becomes attached to. Though she came from a family of musicians, she has zero abilities with instruments, sounds like a strangled cat when she sings, and her dancing is downright embarrassing. Just ask anyone who knows her. Her creativity rests solely in the written word. Her family is grateful that she gave up her quest to become a famous singer.
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