Fractured Hearts

by SJD Peterson

  Table of Contents

  Legal Page

  Title Page

  Book Description

  Dedication

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  New Excerpt

  About the Author

  Publisher Page

  Fractured Hearts

  ISBN # 978-1-78430-985-5

  ©Copyright SJD Peterson 2016

  Cover Art by Posh Gosh ©Copyright January 2016

  Edited by Sarah Smeaton

  Totally Bound Publishing

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.

  Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorized or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.

  The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.

  Published in 2016 by Totally Bound Publishing, Newland House, The Point, Weaver Road, Lincoln, LN6 3QN

  Totally Bound Publishing is a subsidiary of Totally Entwined Group Limited.

  Warning:

  This book contains sexually explicit content which is only suitable for mature readers. This story has a heat rating of Totally Burning and a Sexometer of 2.

  FRACTURED HEARTS

  SJD Peterson

  Unrequited love, two sexy cowboys and a passionate veterinarian fight their past in order to find their futures together…half a heart at a time.

  A promise broken.

  Losing her family at a young age, and being a victim to broken promises from the man she loved all her life, means Charlie McCarty rarely lets anyone get close to her. Resolved to live her life without love and determined to become a top-notch veterinarian, she begins her residency in Redfield. Fate, however, has a way of stepping in to change even the most stubborn set plans, and forces Charlie to face her past, pushing the boundaries of her control and her heart to the brink of destruction.

  A passion-fueled desire.

  It started out as a celebration, a chance for Charlie to let her hair down and just let go of her firm control for just one evening, but a sexy as hell cowboy, and his familiar best friend, ambush everything. With relentless determination, both cowboys set out to show her that she is everything they want to complete their lives. Charlie begins to dream, once again, for the future she thought lost to her years ago.

  A journey of the heart.

  When a terrifying figure from the past steps into their fragile romance, will their love be enough to overcome the horror about to be unleashed, or will it leave them with hearts broken?

  Dedication

  To Becca, who blessed my life the moment she entered it. Thank you for opening my eyes to the gift of romance stories. Without you, I would never have written this book.

  Trademarks Acknowledgement

  The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:

  Stetson: John B. Stetson Company

  Coke: The Coca-Cola Company

  Jacuzzi: Apollo Global Management, LLC

  Google: Alphabet Inc.

  Cutty Sark: The Edrington Group

  Disney World: The Walt Disney Company

  Frigidaire: Frigidaire Appliance Company

  Frankenstein: Mary Shelley

  Jack Daniel’s: Brown-Forman Corporation

  Howard Johnson: Wyndham Hotel Group

  Baileys: Diageo plc.

  Taz-Mania: Time Warner Inc.

  Prologue

  Charlie looked up at the clear blue sky and scowled. It should be raining.

  In the movies and on TV, it was always gloomy and raining at a funeral and the characters would cry. At the age of ten, when her parents had died, it had been raining and she had sobbed uncontrollably. Maybe that was why she couldn’t seem to shed a tear today—it wasn’t raining at Gram’s funeral.

  Truth be told, she hadn’t cried since walking into Gram’s room two days ago and finding her in bed not breathing, having passed away in the night. Charlie had walked quietly out of the room into the kitchen and had called the number a hospice nurse had left to inform them that Gram had died. She’d then walked out onto the front porch, wrapped her arms around herself and sat to wait for the ambulance to arrive.

  I’m a smart woman. I understand the ‘normal’ grieving process. First shock, then denial, followed by sadness and anger, before acceptance. Charlie had bypassed the first, had gone straight to downright pissed off, and screw acceptance.

  Looking around at the phony sniffling faces of the few townsfolk who had come to pay their last respects to Ms. Eudora McCarty had Charlie desperate to scream in rage.

  Where the hell had these people been when Gram had been alive? When Gram had first been diagnosed with metastatic cancer a little over a year prior, not one of them had ever offered a single hand of help to her or Gram.

  Not that Charlie would ever regret having to care for Gram, it was the least she could do since Gram had taken her in when her parents had died. Still, she thought at least one of these people could have offered to sit with Gram while Charlie had gone to her senior prom, homecoming dance, or hell, just to hang out one night at the local malt shop and be a kid.

  She had spent every day of her senior year with Gram and been homeschooled for the last semester of the year when Gram had gotten too weak to get out of bed. Gram had urged her to go out and have fun, to be a kid, but Charlie just hadn’t felt right about leaving her alone.

  Over the year, Charlie had learned to control her emotions. She could hide her disappointment, fears and anger. She’d learned to put on an airy, confident attitude around people and had kept it in place right up until Gram died.

  Today, however, she was just tired of staying in control. She wanted to scream, to hit something or someone. She refused to think about which someone she’d hit first.

  Nope, not today. This is about Gram, not you!

  Agony as well as longing bubbled at the surface, trying to take hold of her heart and shred it again. With a strength that only years of heartache had taught her, she forced it back down, deep into the dark recesses of her brain, so she could slam the door on it and lock it tightly. Only in weak moments like today did it try to sneak past her
carefully laid defenses.

  She’d celebrated her birthday nearly a year ago, and although she could hold on to hope for a few more months before her eighteenth year was behind her, it would be in vain. She knew. Knew it in her heart, in her soul, even in her bones, she was now completely and utterly alone. Charlie brought the tissue to her mouth and muffled the sob that worked its way up past her throat. He was to have come for her over two hundred and thirty-four days ago, but he hadn’t, and he never would.

  Best not to think about all that right now, Charlie.

  The pain of that hurt even worse than the pain of watching Gram being slowly lowered into the cold ground. Gram hadn’t wanted to leave her, to take away her hugs, smiles and warmth. She had fought so hard to stay with Charlie, tried to hide the pain in her eyes as the cancer had ravaged her body. She would wrap her arms around Charlie, rock her slowly and comfort her with kisses to her head as she shushed her with soothing words. All the while, she had fought for breath and against the pain. Gram had desperately battled to stay with her.

  He had chosen to leave her, to walk away with a promise to come back for her. He’d sworn he would always be there for her no matter what and that she would never be alone. She didn’t need to sit and wait for the inevitable to prove that he had lied to her. He had taken her heart, then snuck away with it, never to return.

  It was gone, just as cold and dead as Gram was now. Charlie laid her head back against the folding chair, the sound of the coffin lowering still audible over the preacher’s last prayer for the dead. She opened her mouth in a silent scream and felt the first drops of cool rain land on the bridge of her nose.

  Tears finally escaped her eyes, ran down her face and mingled with the cold rain.

  It always rained at funerals.

  Chapter One

  Seven years later

  “I can’t believe I let you talk me into coming here.”

  Charlie knew she was pouting, but she didn’t really care at the moment. She hated honky-tonks.

  She looked around Jack’s Place. It was like all the other cowboy bars she had allowed Rae to force her to. The standard chicken wire stretching across solid wooden beams closed off the small stage in an attempt to protect the local cover bands from rowdy patrons and wayward longnecks. Sawdust covered a wood-plank dance floor that sported couples whirling and twirling in two-step fashion while twangy music blasted from a jukebox in the far corner. The decor did nothing to cover up or distract from the thick, harsh aroma of stale beer and cigarette smoke—it assaulted the nose and eyes just the same.

  Rolling her eyes at Rae, Charlie continued to pout. “Dammit, Rae, this was supposed to be a celebration for my seven years of hard work. Not just another excuse for you to hogtie some poor, unsuspecting cowboy.” She stuck her tongue out at her best friend.

  “C’mon, Charlie, this is about you. What better way to celebrate your success and burn off a little stress than surround yourself by tight asses? If I happen to get a chance to hogtie one, it’s just an added bonus. You know what you need?”

  “Oh, do tell.”

  “You, my friend, need to get laid.”

  Charlie snorted a laugh, nearly choking on her beer. “Ha! If I needed to get laid—which I don’t—the last place on earth I’d look for a date would be somewhere like this.”

  Rae lifted an eyebrow at her. How the hell does she do that? Charlie had spent hours in the mirror trying to perfect that look and just couldn’t get it right. It was a look that made the recipients instantly start questioning themselves.

  “See, that’s your problem right there. I never said you needed a date, just that you should get laid. What’s it been, like a year? Is that even possible? Honey, what you need is one of these big, strong, hot and horny cowboys to work all that tension right out of your system.”

  Actually, it had been one year, eleven months and four days—not that she was counting or anything. The image of rope-callused hands as they stroked up and down her body made Charlie squirm in her chair. She would certainly never admit it to Rae, though.

  The self-induced celibacy was sometimes even a bit much for her. She had her reasons and knew she had made the right choice not to get involved with anyone, physically or otherwise. But dammit, some days were harder than others.

  “Besides,” Rae continued, “it would do the locals good to see their new town vet with her hair down and having some fun.”

  “First of all, I’m just an overworked, underpaid resident. I won’t officially be able to call myself a vet for another year. Secondly, I don’t really think the ‘locals’ will give a damn whether my hair is up or down when I have my arm shoved up their cows’ asses.”

  “Eww.” Rae grimaced. “TMI, Charlie, TMI!”

  A roar of laughter escaped Rae and Charlie joined her. They laughed until tears rolled down their cheeks and Charlie’s sides ached. They wiped the tears from their eyes as their waitress approached then set down two longneck bottles of beer and two shot glasses that smelled strongly like tequila.

  Charlie stared at the waitress through watery eyes. The woman was short, but what she lacked in height, she obviously tried to make up for with the size of her surgically enhanced breasts. They strained against a size too small T-shirt that advertised she got ‘off’ at Jack’s Place. Calling the material she wore across her ass shorts would be adding length to the barely there garment.

  Charlie couldn’t help but wonder how uncomfortable it must be to have to wear such an outfit at home, let alone in public. Maybe that was why the woman had a look of disgust in her eyes and a snarl on her bright-red lips, though she highly doubted it.

  “Compliments of the cowboy at the end of the bar,” the waitress drawled, jerking her head in the direction indicated. She met Charlie’s eyes with a look of pure hatred before she stalked off.

  “Jesus, what the hell is her problem?”

  “Who cares? Holy shit, Charlie! Turn around and look at the wet dream that just bought us drinks,” Rae murmured. “I think I just came in my panties.”

  Charlie picked up her beer and turned toward the bar with every intention of saluting the cowboy with the beer in a gesture of thank you. When her eyes locked on the man standing at the bar, she was too stunned to move.

  “Holy shit is right,” Charlie panted.

  At the end of the bar stood a curly, dark-haired mountain of a man, a black Stetson pulled down low over his eyes. Olive skin accentuated a strong masculine face with full lips turned up into a sly smile above a strong, square jaw with just a hint of dark stubble.

  The man was a god, pure and simple, and the look on his face showed he knew exactly what effect he had on the opposite sex. Hell, he was gorgeous enough that he probably had the same effect on most of the same sex as well.

  Charlie let her eyes travel downward from his handsome face to his broad shoulders and thick chest, which tapered beneath a tight white T-shirt to lean, narrow hips. His jeans were loose, hung low on his hips, and covered tree-trunk-sized thighs.

  Charlie took in the sight of him with a deep appreciation as she moved back up the man’s smoking hot body and locked on those piercing eyes. Her quickened heart rate increased to hummingbird speed and her lungs forgot the need for oxygen as the sexy cowboy’s smile moved from sly to dazzling, then winked in her direction.

  Heat rushed through her body like a freight train and heated up every cell of her body, only to merge into one lava-hot charge between her thighs.

  Turning back to face her friend, Charlie knew the awed, dazed look on Rae’s face was a mirror image of her own. She worked hard to slow down her breathing and squirmed in her seat, attempting to relieve the ache in her sex.

  “Rae?” she whispered.

  Silence.

  “Earth to Rae.”

  Rae continued to stare in the direction of the bar, never once blinking until Charlie kicked her shin under the table. “Please tell me I’m not imagining that the sexiest man on the planet is standing against a bar be
hind me and just bought us a drink.”

  Rae jumped with a start, nearly knocking her beer over, and they both burst out laughing.

  “So, what were you saying about not needing to get laid?”

  “Well, I do believe that Mr. Yum-Yum might be able to convince me otherwise given the right motivation.”

  “Uh-huh, might? Riiiight! On that note, I think I’ll head to the little girls’ room to wring out my panties.”

  Charlie watched Rae’s exaggerated hip swings as she swished and swayed her way across to the back of the bar and had to giggle. She was actually having a good time. She had met Rachel ‘Rae’ Lang during her first semester in college, and the woman always seemed to know exactly how Charlie was feeling and just what she needed.

  She so needed this tonight. She just wanted to spend one evening without thinking about school or anything else. During the semester, she was able to immerse herself completely in her studies with little time to let the loneliness she felt take up residence in her thoughts.

  In between semesters, void of the schedule and the endless hours of researching and studying, were the hardest times for her. Rae was the only person on the planet who seemed to give a damn if Charlie existed or not. At twenty-five years old, she had no family and only one friend. Just how pathetic was that? A twinge of pain hit Charlie as she wondered what the hell she was going to do when Rae finally found the cowboy of her dreams and settled down. What then?

  You go back to being lonely and miserable like you are whenever Rae’s with her family.

  Not really a comforting thought. Charlie sighed, realizing the truth of it as she took a sip of beer.

  Feeling a heavy hand land on her shoulder, she nearly jumped out of her skin when a deep, sultry voice whispered in her ear.

  “Dance with me.”