by Tia Louise
Angel gasps again, looking up at me. I lower my face to hers. “You got this, babe. Ready? Let’s meet our little girl.”
She nods, closing her eyes, and with one last deep breath, she yells as she pushes with all her might.
The doctor reaches forward and grabs my wrist, dragging me down to the foot of the bed and putting my hand on something hot and wet. “Guide her out.”
My heart drops to my feet, but I look down and realize… I’m touching our baby’s head. “It’s her!”
Angel pushes once more, and the doctor’s hands are beside mine, guiding her into my arms. I’m holding her when she takes her first breath and starts to cry. My heart expands fifty times its normal size. Her hair is black and her skin is red and she’s and covered in goo and screaming her little head off, and she’s so gorgeous.
I wait as the doctor snips the cord, and the nurse guides me to the head of the bed, where I place our daughter on her mother’s chest. I can’t take my eyes off her.
“My baby…” Tears stream down Angel’s cheeks, and I blink back my own tears as our daughter’s little voice fills the room with strong cries.
A nurse joins us. “I’ll take her for just a second.”
Passing her for weighing and the rest, I gather Angel in my arms and kiss her on the mouth, long and full of love. Pulling back, our eyes meet. “You did it, Mamma.”
“Oh, Deacon.” She sniffs, dropping her head against my chest.
The nurse is back, and she places our daughter in her mother’s arms, helping her latch onto Angel’s breast.
After all the commotion, the craziness, and the noise, the room settles into peaceful quiet. The only sound is my precious daughter’s little grunts as she has her first meal in the world.
I sit on the side of the bed, smoothing my palm over her little dark head. It fits perfectly in my palm.
“She’s so beautiful,” I whisper, my voice filled with awe. “I love her so much.”
Our moment is short-lived as the crew files into the room. Valeria carries Sofia, who reaches for me and climbs over to look at the new baby.
“She’s so tiny!” Sofia cries. “Look at her little fingers. Look at her little fingernails!”
We grin, watching her cousin.
“Great job, Sis.” Beto, steps forward to kiss the top of Angel’s head. “She’s beautiful.”
“Rockstar!” Lourdes holds up both fists. “First you slay the art world, then you slay the motherland… or something.”
We all laugh, and Sofia climbs off my lap to get a better view of her new cousin. “What are you going to call her?”
Angel looks up at me, and I nod. We’ve discussed her name so many times, and we finally decided on just the right one.
“Heaven.” Angel slides her palm behind the baby’s head, positioning her so we can all admire her. “Heaven Valentina Dring.”
“Heaven.” Sofia repeats, nodding her head. “Hey, there, Heaven!” Her voice is quiet. “I’m your cousin Sofia. I’ll teach you everything you need to know.”
“She’s a little piece of heaven.” Winnie says, putting her hand on Angel’s arm.
“Born from an angel.” I add, and Angel wrinkles her nose at my corny joke.
“Carried in on a tidal wave of love,” she snickers.
Our friends exchange a look, and I just shake my head.
I’m still amazed by all of us here together. All these people who hated each other not so long ago. Now we’re laughing and hugging, surrounding my wife’s bed and cooing over a tiny baby. Our valentine from heaven.
To think it all started in a park, on a warm spring day, when I crashed into a beautiful girl with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen.
Through all the bitterness and heartache, the violence and anger, we almost lost it all, but even in the darkest hour, I held onto my promise to her.
We chose love.
We chose each other.
From our first kiss to the vows we’ve exchanged, to our baby girl in our arms. Our love may be wild and free, but our family is united, stronger than ever, and choosing love over hate with every new heartbeat, with every reckless kiss, again and again, until death do us part.
THE END
Thank you for reading RECKLESS KISS!
I hope you loved Deacon and Angel and all the gang as much as I did.
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Wait for Me
by Tia Louise
Dear Taron,
I should have told you this a long time ago…
Dear Taron,
Is there a time-limit on forgiveness?
If there is, I haven’t reached it…
Dear Taron,
I still love you…
A letter never sent.
Heck, I never even finished it.
Taron Rhodes was my brother’s best friend.
He was sexy as sin.
But he was more than that…
He was ponytail-pulling, ice down your shirt teasing, throw you in the lake screaming…
Strong, tanned arms and bright green eyes over a heart-stopping, naughty grin…
Did I mention his tight end?
I gave him my first real kiss, my heart, my everything.
I said I’d wait for him…
I’m still waiting, because Taron Rhodes is still the man of my dreams,
And I have a secret that has his bright green eyes.
Noel LaGrange stole my heart when she was only eighteen—pushing me off a flatbed and calling me a city slicker.
Her brother Sawyer would kick my ass if he knew how many times we made out that summer, how close we got.
Everything changed when Sawyer and I joined the military.
We were honorably discharged, but I didn’t go to her.
Instead, I went back to the city… where no amount of money, no amount of pills can heal this wound.
Only her whiskey eyes and dark hair, her slim arms and her sweet scent, give me hope.
I broke her heart just as surely as I broke mine, but I’m going back to make it right.
If she’s still waiting…
(WAIT FOR ME is a STAND-ALONE small-town, second-chance romance. No cheating. No cliffhangers.)
Prologue
Noel
My momma was too beautiful to die.
At least, that’s what everybody said.
Penelope Jean Harris was the scion of our town’s founder and prettiest girl in three parishes. She was head majorette in high school and homecoming queen and prom queen and every other queen. She was Peach Princess, Teen Dixie Peach, and Miss Dixie Gem. She would’ve gone on to be Miss Louisiana if my daddy hadn’t made her a Mrs.
I was eleven—that strange age between too big to play in the creek in only my panties and too little to sleep without the closet light on. I loved Dolly Parton and butterflies and picking peaches straight off my daddy’s trees and eating them, jumping in the lake and running after jackrabbits with my little brother Leon.
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In the summer the trees were rich green, and the sweet scent of peach juice filled the air. In the winter they were sparse, bony hands, reaching palms up to heaven. Branches like fingers spread, grasping for hope.
Momma’s hazel eyes crinkled at the corners whenever she looked at me or my brothers or my daddy. Her sweet smile was warm sunshine when I got cold.
She would wrap me in her arms and sing an old sad song when I was sleepy or cranky or “out of sorts,” which is how she’d put it. I pictured “sorts” as ivory dominoes I could line up and knock down or slap off the table, across the room. I’d pull her silky brown hair around me like a cape and close my eyes and breathe…
Then she was gone.
She went for a walk one crisp winter evening along the narrow, dirt road that runs past our orchard out to the old house on the hill. Frost was in the air; bonfires were burning. The man driving the truck said she came out of nowhere.
He never saw her.
She never saw him.
Six weeks later, in that same orchard with peach blossoms on the trees and dew tipping the grass, on the very spot she died, my daddy took his life with his own gun.
I guess sometimes love makes you forget things can get better.
I guess he didn’t see a bend in the road up ahead.
I guess he only saw a straight line leading deeper and deeper into black.
My daddy was the star of his high school football team… but Life threw him a pass he couldn’t catch with Momma’s death.
Our world changed forever that winter.
Dolly says love is like a butterfly, soft and gentle as a sigh, but from what I’ve seen of love, I think it’s more like a tornado, shocking and violent and so powerful it can rip your soul out of your mouth…
It’s faster than you can run, and it blows one house away while leaving the next one peacefully standing.
I didn’t know which way love would take me, quietly or with the roar of a freight train. I should’ve known. I should’ve realized the moment I saw him.
It was both. It was quiet as the brush of peach fuzz, but it left my insides in splinters. It twisted my lungs and lifted me up so high only to throw me down with a force that rang my ears and flooded my eyes.
It all started the summer before they left, a month before my brother was sent to fight in a war everybody said was over.
It all started in the kitchen of my momma’s house…
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Also available on audiobook (link).
Stay
Special Sneak Peek
Stephen Hastings is a control freak.
He’s arrogant. He’s smart as a whip and sexy AF.
He has too much money. He’s bossy, and he’s usually right.
All I saw were his clear blue eyes, tight ass, and ripped torso.
I gladly handed him my V-card that night, ten years ago.
I was so stupid. I swore I’d never be that stupid again…
Emmy Barton works for a dry cleaner?
Yes, that Emmy Barton—long, blonde hair, bright blue eyes, pretty smile…
Sexy little ass. Smart mouth.
She was the only girl who interested me, but I was leaving to be an officer in the Navy.
Now I’m home, running my business. My life is perfectly ordered until I bump into her, divorced and struggling to make ends meet.
I hate seeing her like this. I hate that she married Burt “The Dick” Dickerson. What an asshole.
She says she hates me, but when we fight, it’s all heat and lust.
I won’t leave her this way.
She will let me help her and her son. She will stay…
It’s a thin line between love and hate, and this line is on fire.
(STAY is a STAND-ALONE enemies-to-lovers, second-chance, marriage of convenience romance. No cheating. No cliffhangers.)
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Prologue
Stephen
Ten years ago…
Stop crying, kid. Life isn’t fair.
Humans invented fair as a pacifier, because they needed justice. Animals don’t know fair. In nature only the strong survive. You’re kind, loving, honest? Nice try.
If you’re weak, you die.
Or poor.
“What are you thinking, Esteban?” Ximena lowers herself carefully into a dingy-brown, worn-out armchair, and I blink these thoughts away. “You were always the smartest boy in the room.”
The gray strands outnumber the black in my old housekeeper’s hair. It’s thinner than it was when I was a boy, and she keeps it twisted in a low bun.
“Now I’m a man.” I kiss the top of her head. “And I’d wager the whole city.”
Her muscles tremble from exertion, but her eyes are bright. She still greets me with a smile, just like always when I visit. “Smartest man in the city. What is that like?”
“It sucks.” I look around her crumbling one-bedroom apartment.
It’s a second-floor walkup, outdated but clean. She works hard to keep it clean, even with the cancer eating her insides. Even with the years passing, drawing her closer to death.
The thought of her dying fans the darkness inside me. “Where’s Ramon?”
“He moved downtown. He got a good job, working at the shipyards.” Her accent is thick despite all the years she’s lived in Manhattan, her English sprinkled with Spanish.
“That’s a long way from here.”
He won’t visit. He might want to, but he won’t have the time or the energy to check on his dying mother.
Her neighborhood is shady as fuck, and she’s too weak to climb stairs. And I’m leaving for a long time. I’ll have to count on her neighbors to do what I can’t.
Slipping a fat business envelope from the breast pocket of my coat, I place it under a mug on her coffee table. “This should last a while. I’ll send more, but I won’t be able to check on you. I’ll be gone eighteen months, probably longer.”
“I’m so proud of you. So proud.” Her cheeks rise, and she slowly shakes her head. “A Navy officer.”
Every line in her face wrinkles with her grin. Her faded purple housedress is as thin and old as she is. I remember her fat and jolly, shining cheeks and hair, every word out of my mouth would make her laugh, even if it wasn’t funny. I didn’t understand her, how she gave love so generously to a boy who wasn’t hers. To the son of a man who didn’t even consider her worth his time, who thought he was doing her a favor hiring her to keep his oversized brownstone.
She takes my hand from where she sits, and I take a knee beside her. Every time I visit she’s smaller, slipping away. Her grip tightens, and the scent of her drugstore perfume drifts faintly around us, dried flowers and talcum powder. It draws a memory of me as a little boy sitting on her lap, crying against her neck after the death of my mother. She would hug me against her soft body, rocking and humming a sad song I didn’t recognize.
“Your father will cut you off if he finds out you’re giving me money, Esteban.”
I exhale a disgusted laugh. “Thomas is too proud to cut me off. It would make him look bad at the club. Unruly boys are to be tolerated, bragged about even.”
Her eyes close, and her head leans back as she exhales a weak chuckle. “Men are the same everywhere. Machismo.”
Pissing wars. I rise to standing in one fluid movement. “I’ll never forgive him for doing this to you.”
I blame him for her illness. I blame him for her deteriorating health. I blame him for her inability to find work after he ruined her reputation. No one would hire her after he branded her a thief in his home. All the Upper East Siders shut their doors in her face, and she was left to scrounge a living wherever she could.
I’ve brought her money from my allowance
for five years, and I’d love him to come at me for it. Pompous bastard. So worried about his appearance. So offended by a missing watch.
“He did what he had to do.” Ximena still defends my father’s actions. “My son stole from him. Your father could not keep me in the house after he stole.”
“Ramon stole to buy you medicine. He didn’t steal to party or do drugs.”
He might’ve gotten away with it, too. If only he hadn’t stolen my father’s favorite Rolex—not one of the other seven he never wears.
“He did not put my son in jail.” She nods her head, as if my father, Thomas Hastings has the ability to throw anyone in jail.
He’s just a grown-up trust-fund brat who knows how to invest the massive wealth he inherited from our bootlegger ancestors. At least he’s good for something.
Pride beams in her eyes when she looks up at me. “Now you will go and be a hero. So handsome, serving your country.”
I smooth my hand down the front of my jacket, contemplating hypocrisy. “It’s what my mother always wanted. Her father was in the military.”
“Yes, and she can see you from above. She is so proud of you. Just like I am proud.”