Text copyright ©2019 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
Today marks six months since my mother-in-law died. Six months since she edited a book. Six months that I’ve wanted to tell her everything that’s happened that day and can’t. So this one goes out to my mother-in-law. You are greatly missed.
Acknowledgments
Golden Czermak- Photographer
Ian Daviau- Model
My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing
Cover Me Darling- Cover Artist
My mom- Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.
Kendra, Diane, Leah, Kathy, Mindy, Lisa, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Epilogue
What’s Next?
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Keep It Classy
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
The Southern Gentleman Series
Hissy Fit
Lord Have Mercy
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not (8-6-19)
Make Me (9-10-19)
Sinners are Winners (10-8-19)
Blurb
Piper Mackenzie first sees him shirtless, standing in front of the military plane she was about to board, with one rather large wrench in his hand. The fact that he has the plane—the one that she’s about to be flying on for hours—in pieces only minutes before she’s set to take off on it doesn’t faze her. At least not until a flippant joke about dying in mid-air leaves his lips.
The second time she sees him, he’s helping her from the wreckage of her car. The wreckage that he helped cause.
The third, he’s laying across from her in the same bed, and there’s no denying what happened the night before.
The fourth, well that time would be the first of many. Being Mrs. Jonah Crew has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it?
*****
Jonah Crew sees her for the first time as she stares at him in awe. It’s snowing, the temp is in the negative degrees, and he can’t think about anything but her and the look of horror on her face when he tells a badly-timed joke.
The second time he sees her, his heart skips a beat, but not for the reason that one might think. Mainly, it’s due in part to the fact that his truck smashed into her car so hard that his chest hits the steering wheel and his heart decides to stop working right.
The third time, he’s fairly positive that he’s died and gone to heaven. At least, that’s what waking up next to a beautiful woman like her signifies, right?
The fourth? Well, he’s not quite sure how he got there, but he’s already said ‘I do’ so what’s a guy to do?
Chapter 1
If you’re hungry, never go to the supermarket. You’ll wind up with a bunch of shit you don’t need. ASK ME HOW I KNOW!
-Text from Piper to Phoebe
Piper
“Gonna miss you, Piper!”
I looked back and waved at the only friend that I’d met, and continued to be able to tolerate, at the German Army base.
Jillian gave me a fist raise and turned on her booted heels, heading back toward the front door where I’d been let off.
I continued through the line of people, making my way to where I was informed to wait.
It didn’t take long, and soon I was sitting in the chair next to the large window that looked out over the tarmac.
I shivered slightly and wrapped my arms around myself, hoping that I didn’t have to wait long.
I was joining a returning troops transport back stateside, and the last thing I wanted to do was sit here any longer than I had to.
Then again, I was told that I was lucky to get the transport back home. Had I had to fly commercial, I’d have been waiting until Monday like the rest of the world, seeing as a hell of a snowstorm had barreled through our part of Germany.
“A rare spring snowstorm,” I’d been informed by not one, not two, but fifteen individuals on the way to the transport this morning.
Honestly, I was glad to be leaving.
As much as I loved the weather here in Germany, I was ready to
be home. Even more, I was ready to get my thin Texas blood back to where it was acclimated to one-hundred-degree summers. I was certainly not used to dealing with any type of snowstorms.
Pulling out my phone, I began to read my latest book.
It was nearly an hour later when I was finally called to begin boarding the plane.
I saw what the hold-up was the moment I got on the tarmac and close enough to the plane.
The hold-up being a shirtless, beautifully muscled man working on the plane we were literally in the process of boarding.
“What do you think?” I heard one of the uniformed soldiers ask the shirtless man.
“I think that y’all should’ve done this before we started loading fuckin’ people onto the plane,” shirtless man said.
Shit.
Was there something wrong with the plane?
A flash of foreboding started to fill my limbs, and I had a feeling that I wasn’t going to enjoy the trip home very much.
I hadn’t realized I’d stopped right next to the shirtless man, who happened to be standing half under the plane, with bolts and nuts and all kinds of parts on the ground, until he looked over and spotted me.
That was when I saw his eyes.
He looked familiar, yet I couldn’t place why.
And those eyes seemed to penetrate straight into my soul.
“Don’t worry,” he said teasingly. “I’ll make sure to put it all back together. May take a little duct tape, though.”
His joke fell flat when I felt my stomach drop out.
I wasn’t a good flyer.
In fact, on the flight over here, I’d had to take my valium and say a few thousand prayers.
The fact that he was teasing about us dying was not a good thing for me.
Especially since my anxiety was already through the roof, and I hadn’t had time to get a prescription for valium before having to be on the flight.
There was an emergency at home, and though I was already set to leave in four days, my CO—commanding officer—had given me permission to leave early. I’d taken him up on it. The only problem was that came with no medication.
So not only was I freaking out about my emergency back home, I was now freaking out about the fact that this man didn’t know what in the hell he was doing.
Instead of saying a word to him, I chose to board the plane, taking the only seat available, which was scrunched in between a large man that took up a lot more room than he was allotted due to the breadth of his shoulders, and a large box that sat on another seat next to the wall.
Buckling myself in and stowing my gear underneath the seat, I closed my eyes, crossed my arms, and prayed that I wouldn’t die on the way home.
***
Jonah
“That was just wrong,” Hammer said.
I shrugged and said, “You find me a new shirt yet?”
The last one that I’d had on got caught on a bolt, and not only had it ripped the shirt, but it’d also ripped my skin.
After bleeding like a stuck pig, I managed to get the blood flow stopped, a Band-Aid applied, and the problem on the plane fixed. Now I was putting it all back together.
“I have one being brought out to you,” Hammer said. “That girl looked like she was about to puke.”
I hadn’t noticed.
What I had noticed was that she had brilliant green eyes, a head full of blonde hair that was most certainly not put up in the regulation bun, and the way her jeans hugged her thighs.
“She did?” I asked, tossing him the massive wrench I’d had to use to fix the wheel. “I didn’t notice.”
“I’m sure you never got past her ass,” Hammer teased.
He was right. Kind of.
At first, I’d glanced at her face, but I’d quickly caught sight of her ass, and then I’d forgotten what I was supposed to be doing.
“Anyway,” Hammer continued. “Thank you so much for coming down here and teaching that class. I really appreciate it.”
I’d come down to teach a weapons class for an instructor that was sick. I’d had the time off, so what the hell did it matter what I did with it?
I’d needed a goddamn break from Kilgore, Texas. I’d also needed to leave before I wrung that woman’s neck.
Sadly, all good things must come to an end. Hence why I was seconds away from boarding a military transport back to the states.
Hammer, my one-time CO and now a very close friend, had gotten me a ride here, housed me for the week, and was sending me home all on his dime. Or, well, mostly the military’s dime.
Then again, in a roundabout way, I was doing the US government a favor by teaching newly minted soldiers what to do and what not to do when it came to firepower.
So it was the least they could do—give me a ride home.
I just wished I could get the US government to rehire me.
However, after one too many knocks to the head, I was what they called a ‘volatile’ situation.
Meaning that my brain was on the verge of being fucked up if I received any more head injuries.
It was kind of like when professional football players got one too many knocks to the head. At one point, it was safe. At another, it was no longer worth the risk.
At least, that risk was no longer worth it to the military.
Sadly.
Gathering what was left of the part I replaced, I tucked it all into the box that was sitting next to it, reached out for the fuckin’ baby wipe that Hammer was holding out to me, and raised a brow at him.
“Shirt?” I repeated.
He looked behind him to see a little pimple-faced recruit hauling ass in our direction.
The kid tripped halfway across the tarmac and went down hard. Luckily, he kept the shirt out of the snow.
Thank God for small miracles.
“Jesus Christ, save me,” Hammer muttered.
I grinned at the man that had once likely thought the same thing about me.
“Did you say the same thing when you trained me?” I asked.
Hammer’s eyes came to me, and something hard and unyielding crossed his features.
“Jonah,” he said. “When you came to me, you weren’t normal. You were already hard. You were already grown up. I’m fairly sure that you never even went through that stage.” He jerked his thumb in the direction of the kid who was once again back on his feet and heading our way, this time at a much slower clip.
“Probably not,” I admitted.
I’d grown up fast out of necessity, and it was a long time later that I finally realized that it was okay to let loose a little.
By that point, I was an adult and couldn’t get away with things like I would’ve been able to if I’d done them when I was a kid.
“Right,” Hammer said when the kid finally arrived with the shirt. “Thanks again for helping.”
Hammer took the shirt without saying a word, and I shrugged it on, wishing that I’d specified that it be a shirt that actually fit—oh, and was a solid color.
Hammer started to laugh when he read what was printed on it.
“Who the fuck did you get this from?” I asked the kid.
The kid swallowed.
After having spent quite a bit of time with him this week in the weapons class, I knew that with his stuttering, it might take him a bit of time to get the words out.
But he surprised me by blurting it all out in one sentence, not one hitch to be heard.
“There was only one man here today that is your size,” he apologized. “You’re freakishly large, and it’s hard to find someone that had something that’d fit. That was in the man’s car. It’s his workout shirt.”
I looked down at the shirt, then back at the kid.
“You’re secretly laughing your ass off inside right now, aren’t you?” I accused.
The kid swallowed hard, scared shitless of me.
“No, sir. Of course not.”
M
y lips twitched.
“He so is,” Hammer said as the large motors of the plane started to power up. “Get out of here, motherfucker.”
The kid took off, and I turned to Hammer.
“Were you talking to him or me?” I asked curiously.
Hammer’s mouth twitched. “You. The kid’s not got all his brain cells working. We did the gas chamber this morning.”
I laughed and offered Hammer my hand. “Thanks for noticing I needed a few days.”
He rolled his eyes. “You were the one to get me out of the bind, not the other way around. Trust me when I say that it was all my pleasure in getting you here. I fuckin’ hate teaching that class, and you saved me a week’s worth of headaches, paperwork, and dealing with bullshit.”
I imagined that I did.
“Anytime.”
With that, I tossed him the box of parts, then walked up the steps of the plane that two soldiers were holding open for me.
As soon as I passed through the door, it closed and sealed behind me.
I nodded at the pilot who was standing at the entrance, waiting for me to get on.
“Thanks for getting ‘er fixed up,” he called as I passed.
“No problem,” I said. “Try not to kill us on the way home.”
The pilot snorted. “I’ll do my best.”
I walked to the seat that my box was resting in and felt something inside of me tighten when I saw the woman that’d given me the stink eye when I’d told the joke earlier.
Her eyes were closed, so I used the time that it took her to open them to study her face.
She looked like that woman off of that country band, Little Big Town. The blonde with the fuckin’ curls.
Curls on top of curls.
The woman’s face was surrounded by them, and I wondered how the hell she ever got it tamed enough to fit it into a regulation bun.
Her face was beautiful, in an unsuspecting kind of way.
She had long, dark eyelashes, beautiful bow-tie lips, and dimples.
She had motherfuckin’ dimples.
Dimples that disappeared and reappeared as she clenched and unclenched her jaw.
The way she was clutching her hands so tightly in her lap led me to believe that she was a nervous flyer.
Great.
And when those eyes finally opened, and I got a look at the beautiful greenish/blue hue, I felt my stomach drop.
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