Hard Love (Wild Hearts, Contemporary Romance Book 3)

by Nancy Adams

  Copyright

  Hard Love

  Copyright © 2017 by Nancy Adams.

  All right reserved.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  Published by: Nancy Adams

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  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

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  About the Author

  1

  At 13 years old, Robbie Christopher felt like one of the luckiest young men who had ever lived. He was the star of his junior high football team, he was “steady” with Janine Tyler, one of the most popular girls in the school, and life was just generally grand. The only real problem that he felt affected his life, at least in any meaningful way, was the frequency with which he was expected to babysit his little sister, Anna. Anna was only four, with beautiful red hair, and was one of the most inquisitive children that Robbie had ever known.

  “Where does the rain come from?” “If the sky is blue, how come it's not the same color as the water?” “Why does it hurt when I pull your hair?” The list of questions that she could come up with seemed to be absolutely endless, but his answers, and his patience, were getting pretty rare.

  Don't misunderstand, it wasn't that he didn't love his little sister. He loved her with all of his heart; she was family. However, when you're 13 years old, there are just so many other things you want to do besides babysit a four year old. Seriously, Robbie could think of lots of different things to do that were more fun than babysitting.

  Skateboarding—skateboarding was definitely more fun than babysitting! This was particularly true ever since they installed the new skate park, but even when they had to build their own ramps and obstacles, Robbie and his buddies had always been able to find a way to enjoy skateboarding. Privately, Robbie often wondered if he might have been a surfer had his family chosen to live near the ocean, but surfboards didn't do much good on Lake Moses. It just wasn't big enough for tides to help it generate any serious waves, and you can't use a surfboard on a ripple.

  Then, there was motocross. Robbie had inherited an old 250 cc dirt bike, one that his uncle had used years ago when he was young, and which had required Robbie to spend many, many hours learning the general principles of motorcycle repair. It had paid off, though, after a year of weekends and many evenings spent mowing yards to earn money for parts. The old Honda ran like a dream, and was the envy of most of his friends. Robbie won many of the races in his particular motocross class, and though his parents weren't always pleased, especially when he came home bruised and bloodied, they always supported his dream of becoming a motorcycle racer. As much as they worried, he was good at what he was doing, and they knew it.

  Most enjoyable, of course, as would be the case with any 13-year-old boy, was finding excuses to be alone with Janine, his girlfriend. Janine was actually a year older than Robbie, and was a cheerleader, both of which made her seem exciting and alluring to him. Her mother was oriental, so while she was rather small, the “exotic” appearance she had inherited gave her an appeal that Robbie simply couldn't resist, even if he had wanted to. He happily spent afternoons wandering through the mall with her, expressing his approval at different outfits she wanted to try on, different perfumes she waved under his nose, and even some of the strange foods she wanted him to try—who on earth would have thought of rolling up strips of raw fish, and selling it for three dollars?—in order to make it to the evenings they could occasionally spend alone.

  He was 13, she was 14; they were at the perfect ages for exploring the wonders of that mystery known as “the kiss.”

  On this particular day, Robbie's ruminations were brought on by the fact that his parents had decided that it was time for the annual family journey to visit Aunt Kay in Maxwell. He didn't particularly mind the road trip, because at least he'd get to enjoy the scenery along the way, but he knew what was going to happen when they arrived at their destination. Mom, Dad and Aunt Kay would be going out to have some fun, which meant that Robbie would be babysitting.

  Oh, well, he thought to himself. Maxwell isn't that bad, and they've got some great hills for the skateboard. I'll get lots of chances to get out and have some fun, at least during the daytime.

  He even had a few friends in Maxwell. Over the years, during their visits, he'd gotten to know a lot of the local kids, and there were quite a few that lived near Aunt Kay. He got along well with two boys on her street, Jimmy and Travis, and was looking forward to seeing them again. They had skateboards of their own, and knew some of the best places to go.

  Because it was a 12-hour drive, his parents liked to get an early start on the trip. They always made sure that everything was packed up and loaded into the car the night before so that they could leave Cincinnati at about four AM, which—even allowing for stops to eat, get gas and go to the bathroom—would put them in Maxwell at around six or six-thirty that afternoon.

  Robbie suspected that it might also have to do with the fact that leaving so early meant that he and Anna would be sleeping for a good part of the trip. Robbie wasn't stupid, no matter what his parents thought; he knew that they wanted to avoid Anna's constant, ongoing inquisition just as much as he did. The more she slept, the fewer questions had to be answered.

  School had let out the week before, and his father had gotten his vacation time arranged, so it was time to make the trip. They would be leaving on a Wednesday morning, so Robbie spent all of Tuesday afternoon and evening with Janine, practicing kissing techniques and reassuring her that there was no other girl in Maxwell that caught his attention. It was a bittersweet evening, enjoyable because of smiles and kisses, but sad because of the knowledge that they wouldn't see each other for two whole weeks.

  When you're 13 or 14, two weeks can be a lifetime. You can't be certain that you’ll ever even see each other again, not with two weeks of separation staring you in the face. Who knew what could happen? When they finally said goodbye, Robbie didn't admit to Janine that he had a strange foreboding, that he might not be seeing her again as soon as he hoped. He shook it off, and made it home just in time to avoid being yelled at by his dad.

  “Come on, get up out of that bed!” he heard his mother say. �
��Come on, Robbie, we're leaving in about 20 minutes. Daddy says we’ll stop for breakfast on the way, he wants to get on the road as soon as possible. Up, up!”

  “I'm up! Holy cow, Mom, I'm up!” He rolled over onto his back, his eyes closed, ready to fake his way through five more minutes of sleep, but it wasn't to be. Little Anna jumped up onto his bed and plopped onto his stomach, knocking the breath out of him for a moment and waking him up faster than anything his mother could ever have dreamed of.

  “OOF! Get off me, you little monster! Oh, I'm going to strangle you!”

  “But you gotta get up!” Anna said. “We gotta go, daddy says we gotta go.”

  Their mother poked her head back into his room. “Robbie, don't you dare threaten her like that again! That's your baby sister, and you should be glad you have her. Let me tell you something, the day will come when you'll know that she loves you so much that she'll do just about anything for you, and that day is when you’ll most need help. You need to be nice to her, because someday, you're going to need her. Trust me on this, I know from experience!” She disappeared back out of the room, as Anna climbed down off of her brother.

  “Robbie, you gotta get up,” Anna said again, pleadingly. “Daddy says you gotta get up.”

  “Anna, I'm up!” He rolled to his right, and let his feet touch the floor while his back came up straight.

  Anna grabbed hold of his hand and started pulling. “Yay! Come on, get up and get dressed.”

  Robbie stood up, grinning down at her. “Okay,” he said, “I'm up, I'm up, how many times do I have to say it? Now, get out of here so I can get dressed.”

  Anna giggled, but ran out of the room, and Robbie shut the door behind her. He shook his head, then reached over and picked up the clothes he had laid out the night before. Even at 13, he knew that you wore comfy clothes for a long road trip, so he put on his most comfortable jeans and a T-shirt. He slid his feet into socks and sneakers, grabbed up the books he was taking along to read on the trip, then patted his computer goodbye. His parents had absolutely forbidden him to load the bulky thing into the car, but he knew that Aunt Kay had a fairly new Dell, and she was always bragging to him about how fast her cable modem was, so he figured it would be able to get online once in a while. He’d be able to check his Yahoo mail and message his friends.

  They finally pulled out of the driveway about a half hour later, then stopped right beside the Interstate to get breakfast at one of the all-night fast-food places. Robbie liked it when they got breakfast there, because they had a steak-and-egg biscuit on the menu that was really good. Usually, his dad would say he needed to get something cheaper, but on trips like this, Robbie managed to get pretty much what he wanted. He asked for two of the steak and egg biscuits, then pushed his luck by asking if he could have a cup of coffee. He was surprised when his dad grinned at him and nodded.

  “And tell them lots and lots of sugar!” he added, and his father relayed the request to the person in the window. Anna got an egg biscuit with cheese, and a carton of chocolate milk that Robbie had to open for her. He grinned when she looked up at him and told him, “Thank you,” as politely as any adult Robbie had ever known.

  Okay, he admitted to himself, maybe having a little sister wasn't all bad. He looked at how Janine's older brother acted, and figured he would probably be just as protective of Anna when she got into her early teens. Luckily, Janine's brother Walter was on the high school football team, so he and Robbie had a lot in common. He had taken Robbie out behind their garage one day, though, and explained in no uncertain terms exactly what the limits were during those kissing practice sessions. Robbie got the point, and the two boys had been best friends ever since.

  The road stretched out ahead of them, and Robbie watched the local scenery slide by the windows. As they made their way out of town and into the countryside outside Cincinnati, the houses and the stores and the car dealerships and all the other buildings faded away, and they were surrounded by trees and wilderness. That view always sent Robbie's imagination into overdrive, and he would fantasize about what it might have been like to be one of the first explorers to see this part of the New World. Somewhere in all that dense forest, he was sure, there were places where no one had ever set foot. He dreamed of the day when he might be old enough to go camping and exploring out there, to go hunting and set traps and live off the land for a while. Years ago, he had read a book about a boy who had run away from home to live in the woods. It was called My Side of the Mountain, and it told all about how he found what plants were edible, how he caught fish without a fishing pole; all the little tricks of survival that wilderness people had known and collected over the years, this boy had read and researched and buried deeply into his memory. What a story!

  Robbie wasn't interested in running away; his life wasn't that bad, even having a little sister. He'd save his wilderness adventures for when he was grown, and didn't have to worry about who might come looking for him or the whipping he'd get when he got home. Still, he enjoyed daydreaming about it as the car rolled swiftly past all the wild countryside.

  Anna was asleep by the time she finished eating, so Robbie closed up her chocolate milk and put it in a cup holder on his side of the car. That was simple self-preservation, because if it got spilled, he knew that his parents would ask him why he hadn't made sure it couldn't get spilled. He'd learned, through sad experience, that the explanation that it wasn't his milk didn't get him anywhere. He was still in trouble, and he knew it. Putting the milk away simply avoided potential problems.

  They passed various towns along the way, and made it to Dayton, a fairly large city in its own right. That's where they got on the Interstate that would take them all the way into Missouri, and as they made their way west and left Dayton behind, Robbie saw a whole new vista of wilderness. There were far more trees up here, and they crossed a number of rivers and large streams, places where he fantasized about catching giant catfish, or setting traps for the animals who would come to water there. The idea of trapping fascinated him, though he'd never yet had the chance to try it.

  He'd been hunting a couple of times, when his dad had taken him. His uncle had gone along, until he got sick, and Robbie had not only inherited the motorcycle from him, but also his collection of hunting rifles. Legally, of course, they belonged to his father, but Uncle Joe had made it plain that they were to go to Robbie. So far, he'd only shot a couple of wild turkeys and a single deer, a doe, but he was looking forward to what his father promised would be a serious deer-hunting trip in the coming winter. Robbie wanted to shoot a buck, just like every other boy he knew who went hunting.

  They slid into Indiana and the trees got even thicker. Rolling across the state, Robbie thought about stories he had heard, stories about huge bucks with 15 points that weighed 700 pounds or more. He didn't know whether the stories were true or not, but he'd love the chance to find out. How exciting would it be, to have a rack like that mounted on your wall? Robbie was sure it would be one of the ultimate hunting thrills.

  He glanced at the wristwatch he'd gotten for Christmas the year before, and saw that it was only 7:30. They'd only been on the road for a little over three hours, so there was still a long day of sitting in the backseat ahead of him. He pulled out a book, one that Janine had given him and told him she liked. He promised her he would read it, even though it was about some little girl who turned out to be a princess in some other magical world. Janine said the story was more exciting than the Harry Potter stories they'd been reading, so he agreed to give it a try.

  He glanced at the cover. Magic Trixie and the Crystal Witch, he read. All Janine had told him was that Trixie, who was only nine years old, had grown up in our world and didn't even know that magic existed until she was kidnapped and taken to another world, the world she’d been actually born in. There, she learned that she was a princess and the true heir to the throne, but that her evil aunt had murdered her mother and taken it for herself. There followed some amazing adventures, including T
rixie's escape from the tower in which she was imprisoned, a wild race across the land, incredible monsters and magic, and the final battle scene that Janine promised him would be as exciting as anything he had ever read before. Robbie liked to read, so he leaned back in his seat and opened the book.

  Four hours later, when his father announced that they were stopping for lunch, Robbie was breathlessly racing across PerAmbras with Trixie, the incredible swordsman, Rollo, and their multitalented minstrel friend, Bester. The evil queen's army wasn't far behind, but the party was unaware that Trixie's father and stepmother, aided by elves and ogres, were on their own quest to rescue her. The two groups were missing each other by miles; Robbie could tell that something was about to happen to bring them all together in the final battle. Little Trixie might only be nine years old, but as Rollo said, she had the heart of a queen beating inside her.

  Surprisingly, they had already passed through Indianapolis and were into Illinois, but Robbie hadn't noticed. He was amazed that so many miles had gone by without him realizing. He carefully marked his place, and set the book down on the seat as they went into the restaurant.

  His mother took Anna into the bathroom, and Robbie decided that that was a good idea, himself. He went into the men's room, took care of what needed to be done, and then washed his hands and came back out to find his father wandering around the little store that you had to pass through to get to the dining room. It was chock full of toys, games, souvenirs, candy and snacks, and Robbie wondered how much he could talk his dad into buying, using the logic that some snacks might help to keep Anna quiet for the rest of the trip.

  He was fairly successful, and by the time his mother and sister rejoined them, Robbie had a fair-sized bag of chips, beef sticks and sweets. He had to keep it from Anna until after they finished eating, or she might never be willing to sit still and finish the chicken tenders that were put in front of her.