Loving Jackson (Wishing Well, Texas Book 10)

by Melanie Shawn

  Besides spending our days forcing characters to fall in love Melanie and I also love to binge-watch TV shows, fall down YouTube rabbit holes ranging from Military Homecomings to Van Life Blogs, listen to music, watch movies and get to know our readers! And the easiest way to do that is virtually. Here are some places you can stalk…I mean follow (sorry Freudian slip…I may or may not social media stalk all of MY favorite authors Carly Phillips, Lucy Score, Violet Duke, Erin Nicholas, Samantha Chase I’m looking at you!) us online.

  Like us on: Facebook

  Join: Club HEA with Melanie Shawn

  Follow us on: Instagram

  Subscribe to us on: YouTube

  Follow us on: Twitter

  But enough about us, let’s talk Jackson and Josie. Did you know that their HEA has a soundtrack? Well you do now! And if you’d like to check it out, here is their playlist:

  Heaven – Kane Brown

  Blessed – Thomas Rhett

  Beautiful Crazy – Luke Combs

  Heartbeat – Carrie Underwood

  Mercy – Brett Young

  You Make It Easy – Jason Aldean

  She’s Everything – Brad Paisley

  Must Be Doin’ Somethin’ Right – Billy Currington

  You’re Getting to Be a Habit with Me – Bria Skonberg

  Don’t You Wanna Stay – Jason Aldean, Kelly Clarkson

  Oh, and one more thing, if you’d like to keep up with all our new releases, sales, and general book (and life) shenanigans make sure to sign up for our newsletter!

  And as always we wish you love, laughter, and happily ever after!

  Shawna & Melanie

  Panty Dropper

  Available Now

  Chapter 1

  PANTY DROPPER

  (ref: Urban Dictionary)

  Pronounced: Pant-ee-drop-er

  A term used to describe a male with good qualities. Though the definition of a Panty Dropper changes from person to person, the usual standard is a good-looking male, maybe with a special talent; such as being good at music, sports, or any of your typical “sexy” male activities.

  PANTY DROPPER

  2 fl oz Vodka

  1 fl oz Tequila

  1 fl oz Lemonade

  Splash of Cranberry Juice

  Maraschino Cherry and Lemon Slice

  1. Fill tall glass w/ice

  2. Pour vodka and tequila in glass

  3. Pour lemonade to the top add splash of cranberry juice

  4. Garnish with maraschino cherry and lemon slice

  Billy

  “Sugar, you are one hot and tasty snack of a man!”

  The delicious piece of ass who’d just murmured the remark made no secret which parts of me she thought were hot… or tasty… or manly. Her bold hands required no invitation before tugging at the hem of my shirt and sliding them beneath the thin cotton. The material bunched up as she spread her fingers out on my torso.

  I took a slight step back, putting an inch of space between us to give her better access and my back bumped against reams of paper stacked in the tiny supply closet we were holed up in. She giggled and I grinned down at her as she licked her plump, red lips. Auburn hair draped across her face as she lowered her eyes to my body and damn near purred while her expert touch wandered the ridges of my pecs.

  “Mmm, yummy.” Her breath caught as she continued her exploration up to my chest.

  My muscles automatically flexed beneath her touch.

  “You must work out all the time,” she commented in awe.

  I didn’t.

  My old man didn’t have many traits I was proud to have inherited but his naturally muscular frame was sure as hell one I didn’t mind having. The Comfort genes were strong and generations deep.

  My father, James Comfort Sr., had two brothers, Henry and William. Just like genes, names also ran deep in our family. My younger brother Jimmy had been named after our father, and my brother Hank and I had each inherited an uncle’s name.

  The OG Comfort brothers all shared the same broad shoulders, chiseled arms, and washboard abs, which they were good enough to pass down to us.

  None of us had to work for our athletic frames. Besides slinging cases of booze and kegs of beer at Southern Comfort, the bar I ran with my brothers, I didn’t do much in the way of exercise. Unless you counted hooking up with pretty little things like this one as physical fitness training. If that was the case, I suppose you could call me a workout junkie.

  Sadly, as of late, my “fitness routine” was getting a little old. Stale. Played out. I wasn’t finding the same results as I once had from my favorite sweat-breaking activity.

  For the past year or so, each encounter I’d had left me feeling empty instead of satisfied. Numb instead of invigorated. Don’t get me wrong, in the moment, I felt a whole lotta alive, but after the surge of a heart-racing release, I flatlined.

  Variety sure as hell wasn’t to blame for my declining enthusiasm. Before my diminishing results, I broke a sweat on a regular basis with a myriad of workout partners.

  Firefly Island might have a population of less than five thousand but it drew close to half a million tourists a year. My humble Georgia hometown was renowned for deep sea fishing, breathtaking beaches that lit up nightly with lightning bugs, a downtown area with both historic and arts districts, the tallest Ferris wheel in the East on Firefly Pier, and Abernathy Manor, an estate that was regularly on “The Top Ten Most Haunted Places in The U.S.” lists and had been featured on several paranormal investigation and reality shows.

  Thanks to those diverse attractions, there was a constant stream of visitors, and a good percentage of them were women ready to cut loose and let their hair down. Vacation sex with a local seemed to be high on many a traveler’s to-do lists. And being the Southern gentleman that I was, I was more than happy to oblige.

  Instead of an open door policy, I had a revolving door policy. Women entered and exited my life, and I was just as happy to see them go as I was to see them come.

  At least I had been. Over the past year or so, I hadn’t been the least bit tempted to exercise. Next week kicked off spring break, which was normally the candy store with me as the kid.

  But not this year. This year, it seemed my sweet tooth hadn’t got the memo.

  I’d just grown tired of being women’s vacation hall pass. And as far as local talent was concerned, in Firefly, Comfort men were dirty little secrets. They weren’t fit to bring home to their mamas.

  They were the men that women snuck around with and didn’t take to Sunday service. We were the sinners, not the saints. Not that I was looking for anything serious.

  But sometimes, there was just no replacement for a woman’s touch. And the reason wasn’t always what ya’d think. This encounter, for example, was born out of emotional necessity, not carnal desire. I needed a distraction, a fleeting amusement. Things were a little too heavy and I was chasing a mental diversion through physical activity.

  Acrylic fingernails scraped along the ridge of my straining erection, trapped behind the zipper of my Levis. “Damn. You’re not a snack, you’re a whole meal,” she said, her voice low and throaty.

  I brushed soft, auburn hair away from my current distraction’s face as she toyed with my belt buckle.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate her efforts at seductive back and forth, but there was some time pressure at work here. I was due in a meeting and she was on her ten-minute break. I wanted to see those luscious lips wrapped around my thick cock, no matter how cute her smile might be.

  And it was cute, if nothin’ special. Kind of like the girl herself. Reddish brown hair, fair skin, brown eyes. A mouth that looked like she knew how to use it for more than talking. And hell, I wasn’t in this thing for conversation—I’d only met her fifteen minutes before. Not to be blunt, but we weren’t holed up in this closet because I was curious to know what she had to say.

  Of course, I’d never put it to her like that. That was no way to talk to a lady.


  “I hope you’re hungry, darlin’,” I encouraged in my huskiest, sexiest, highest-batting-average voice. I’d found that “honey” or “darlin’” were always good choices when I couldn’t remember a female’s name, and… Lily? Or Posey? Or something floral… didn’t seem to notice. Quite the opposite, actually. Her fingers unhooked my belt buckle and then deftly unbuttoned my fly.

  The brown-eyed cutie giggled as her fingers brushed across my waist. “My auntie warned me about you Comfort men.”

  I’d never seen this girl in my life before I’d walked in to find her sitting behind the front desk. She’d explained that she was a temp and I’d figured that she was new to town. I had no idea that she had people in Firefly. “Your auntie?”

  “My Auntie Caroline.” Her brown eyes twinkled as her fingers continued to explore my torso.

  “Caroline Shaw?”

  “Yep. That’s her.”

  Miss Shaw was in her late sixties and a staple in Firefly. For decades, she’d owned Pretty in Peach, which had been the sole beauty salon on the island until the Montgomerys bankrolled The Beauty Mark for their daughter Kendra. It was the family’s attempt at “rebranding” her, which had become necessary after their only daughter was “cancelled” as an Instagram model after a brief stint as a spokesperson for diet pills that caused major organ failure.

  “What did your auntie warn you ’bout, honey?” Miss Shaw had always been kind to me and my brothers, which was a hell of a lot more than I could say for a lot of people in this town. I figured it was because she’d been engaged to my Uncle Henry before he’d been killed in a plane crash.

  “She said that y’all were cursed.”

  Naturally athletic physiques weren’t the only thing that was passed down in the Comfort bloodline. The “curse” ran three generations deep.

  The story went that Lucille Abernathy, of the famed haunted Abernathy Manor, had been engaged to my grandfather, but he fell in love with my grandmother and left Lucille at the altar. She’d put a curse on him that day, folks said, dooming any male in his bloodline who found love to either die or to lose that love tragically.

  The “Comfort Curse” was not something I put much stock in. But if anyone would believe in it, it was Caroline Shaw, considering my uncle had been killed a month before they were set to walk down the aisle.

  “And she said,” she continued, “that all the Comfort men had strong jaws, wide smiles, big hands, and kissed like the dickens.”

  Those weren’t the words that were normally used to describe us. We were well-known for being associated for descriptors that started with F.

  I ran my fingers along her jaw, and bent down ready to show her that I lived up to our reputation. “Is that right?”

  My lips brushed across hers as she whispered, “And that you and your brothers were known for three things. Fighting. Flirting. And fucking.”

  There it was. The three Fs. My older brother was the fighter. He could knock anybody out cold with one punch. My little brother flirted with anything with a pulse, and that left me. And as far as the last F…well hell, there was a reason that my nickname was Panty Dropper, and had been since high school.

  She tilted her head and met my eye, a coquettish smile playing on those luscious lips. “Wonder which one you’re known for?”

  I grinned. “Well, darlin’, I think it’s time to find out.”

  She had just dipped her hand inside my pants when the door of the closet flew open.

  There, standing on the other side and holding the handle, wearing his usual baleful expression, was my oldest brother Hank. The fighter. His jaw was set and his tone flat as he spoke, “Put it back in your pants.”

  It was more words than he normally strung together and I knew playtime was over. Avoidance had fueled me, allowing me to be sidetracked by the temp receptionist who ended up being Miss Shaw’s niece, but it was time to face what I’d been running from and get down to business.

  I had a will reading to attend.

  Whisper of Love

  Available Now

  Chapter 1

  “Are you looking at porn!?”

  “What?!” KJ’s brow furrowed as his eyes remained glued to the device he was clutching in his hands. “No!”

  The grunts and groans Allison Walsh had heard from the hall that had sent her to where no man dared to go—a teenage boy’s bedroom—were silenced now. Thanks to the homemade blackout curtains her nephew had put up a few months ago, the room was dark even though it was four in the afternoon. The only thing she could see through the small crack in the door was her nephew’s face illuminated by the screen of his iPad.

  “Give it to me.” Ali did her best to sound authoritative as she shouldered the door pushing it open slowly. The task was made difficult due to an enormous pile of laundry halting its path. After putting her back into it, she managed to budge the blockade enough for her to finally squeeze inside.

  The first thing to hit her was the overwhelming, pungent smell—a combination of dirty socks, rotten food, and the distinctive funk of teen-boy aroma—that was so thick she was choking on it. Lifting her hand to cover her mouth, she instantly regretted that she’d let the room checks slip over the last few months.

  That’s not the only thing you’ve let slip, her inner—somewhat judgmental—voice chimed in.

  She shook off that truth and forged ahead into the funk cloud, expertly navigating the minefield of dirty laundry, pizza boxes and general debris that covered his floor. When she reached the bed, she snatched her nephew’s iPad out of his hands.

  “Hey! What are you doing!?” he shouted angrily.

  Making sure you’re not watching porn. Her eyes quickly glanced at the screen and relief swept her when she saw there were no naked bodies. “You’ll get it back when your room is clean and the yard is mowed.”

  Her nephew shot up to a seated position and extended his hand in an entitled belligerent manor. “You can’t take that, I need it for schoolwork.”

  Shit. Ali’s mind raced as she searched her nephew’s light green irises for any hint of deception.

  Was he lying?

  Was he telling the truth?

  She had no idea.

  A year and a half in as his legal guardian, she’d yet to develop any kind of parental radar skills. Her bullshit meter was either broken or non-existent. She was officially in over her head and since he and his twin brother had only just entered the dreaded teen years, she was afraid the worst was yet to come.

  Trying to get a clue as to whether KJ actually needed the device for scholastic reasons, she looked down again to see if she could figure out what he’d been watching. It didn’t take much detective work since the YouTube video was still playing. It was an MMA fight that she’d seen at least a dozen times, which for her was a dozen times too many.

  “This is not schoolwork.”

  “Yes, it is! It’s for my essay.”

  “What essay?”

  “The essay I have to write on who my hero is.”

  No. Not that. Not him.

  Of course she knew that her nephew looked up to the man that he was named after. Kade Jameson McKnight, the twins’ godfather, was an MMA fighter who got more press for his extra-curricular behavior than he did for his profession. He’d been the reigning Bad Boy of MMA for nearly ten years, which was not an easy title to gain much less hold. That line of work didn’t normally attract choir boys. To stand out as trouble in it was quite a feat.

  She didn’t want to discourage KJ from doing the assignment, as getting him to do any homework at all was like pulling teeth, but she wanted to guide him in a different direction so she suggested, “Why don’t you write it on—”

  “You can’t tell me who to do my project on. I already emailed Uncle Kade the questions!” His anger was palpable as he grabbed the iPad from her hand.

  “He’s not your uncle.” She knew that she was being petty but it was better than what she’d wanted to say which was, He’s not your uncle, he’s an as
shole who showed up at your dad’s funeral drunk with a stripper, got in a fight with the caterer, and then when he found out that he was as legally responsible for both of you as I was, disappeared, leaving me to raise you and your brother alone.”

  Considering the alternative…petty wasn’t so bad.

  Ali knew that she wouldn’t get anything accomplished by arguing with her nephew and if she didn’t start dinner now she wouldn’t have it done before he left for jiu-jitsu, so she decided a strategic retreat was the best move.

  If there was one thing she’d learned over the past eighteen months, it was to pick her battles. As much as she wished her nephew being rude was one of the fights she could take on, it wasn’t. Vandalizing property, getting in fights in school, drinking, stealing—all of which he’d done—were much higher on her list of priorities than a bad attitude. At this point she just wanted to get him to eighteen alive and without a juvenile record, which the way he was going seemed almost impossible.

  “Clean your room,” she instructed as she made her way back through the mess, even though she knew it was pointless.

  Before she’d even made it out into the hall, he yelled, “Shut the door!”

  She did.

  And then she leaned back against it as tears formed in her eyes. She and KJ used to be so close. They’d had a secret handshake and shared inside jokes. She used to be the person he’d come to with any problems he had. Now, their relationship was combative and distant. She’d been told, by more than one person, kids take out their anger on the person they feel the safest with. If that was the case, KJ must feel really safe with her.