His Rebel Heart

by Amber Leigh Williams

  Can a rebel ever change his ways?

  Being a single mother and successful florist is tough, especially when your new next-door neighbor is the man who shattered your heart. Eight years ago, bad boy James Bracken walked away from Adrian Carlton...and their unborn child. Now he’s back. And Adrian’s desire to protect her son from the truth of his biological father isn’t enough to hide the wild blue eyes of father and son, or to keep Adrian from surrendering to the raw passion between her and James. But is he truly the changed man he claims to be? Maybe this time his rebel heart really is home to stay.

  “I don’t want you to be alone...”

  Adrian sighed. “James, I have been alone, for a really long time.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “Adrian...I am so, so sorry.”

  When he drew her into his arms, she was helpless to stop him. She felt his lips come to rest on the top of her head. His arms wrapped around her back, closing her in, tightening.

  He simply held her, for what seemed like ages.

  A small eternity passed in the space of moments. Memories stirred, whispering to life, ghosts of what had been.

  When his lips touched hers, it felt so natural. The simple press of his lips brought her back to life. Her heart fluttered, lifting and soaring.

  She should have pushed him away. After everything, she should shove him back, make him leave. Instead, she let the moment stretch, deepen until she felt him brush up against the soul she’d buried from everything and everyone...

  Dear Reader,

  Revisiting my hometown, Fairhope, through the eyes and hearts of my characters is something I look forward to every time I write a book in this series. But there’s something about Adrian and James that made me anticipate writing this book more than any other. Penning their story was an emotional experience I won’t soon forget. Mostly because I wrote this story within a year of having my first child, a blue-eyed boy much like Adrian’s.

  Writing love stories that involve single parents can be a delicate process. Being a mother opened my eyes to the special bond between mother and child. Even on days when writing had to be put off until bedtime, I wasn’t bothered because I knew that the bond he and I have built was the inspiration I needed to do justice to these characters.

  And speaking of inspiration...I have to give props to my beloved husband. Not only is he a tall, bearded man in a tool belt—just like James—but his knowledge of engines, mechanics and BB guns was invaluable while researching this book, particularly for a certain scene involving a squirrel and a trip to the emergency room for my unfortunate hero.

  I hope you enjoy Adrian and James’s story, readers! You can find more about James, Adrian and other characters from previous books in my Fairhope series at amberleighwilliams.com.

  Amber Leigh

  AMBER LEIGH

  WILLIAMS

  His Rebel Heart

  Amber Leigh Williams lives on the Gulf Coast. A Southern girl at heart, she loves beach days, the smell of real books, relaxing at her family’s lakehouse and spending time with her husband and their sweet blue-eyed boy. When she’s not running after her young son and three large dogs, she can be found reading a good romance or cooking up a new dish. Readers can find her at amberleighwilliams.com!

  Books by Amber Leigh Williams

  HARLEQUIN SUPERROMANCE

  A Place with Briar

  Married One Night

  Visit the Author Profile page

  at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  To my firstborn…. Live always in a world

  where dragons fly and fairies dance.

  Chase dreams and dragonflies.

  Breathe deep and get your hands dirty.

  Build wisely and love faithfully.

  Listen to stories—and tell a few of your own.

  And to Sassy, who we miss….

  Dear friend and spirit animal.

  Meet you at the Rainbow Bridge.

  Contents

  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

  Excerpt from Twice in a Blue Moon by Laura Drake

  PROLOGUE

  THE NIGHT ADRIAN CARLTON first saw James Bracken naked, he was bloodied and bruised. He’d gone several rounds with a bottle of Wild Turkey 101, then crawled behind the wheel of his father’s old Mustang convertible.

  The joyride ended abruptly on a backcountry road when the speeding muscle car skated off the pavement, plowed through the entry sign in front of Carlton Nurseries and skinned the side of a giant oak tree before barreling into the glass front of the office building.

  From the farmhouse behind the nursery, Adrian had heard the deafening crash and gone running—out the front door and through the rows of her parents’ shrubs and saplings, her bare feet sinking into the damp earth. A light drizzle was falling from the leaden night skies and the humidity had swelled at the onset of rain. By the time she reached the nursery’s office and saw the cherry-red Shelby that had decimated it, sweat was crawling from her neck to her back.

  “Oh, my...” She trailed off as she took in the scene. Her hands lifted to her mouth as she shook her head. “What in God’s name...”

  She trailed off at the sound of a grunt and tinkling glass. Her feet unstuck and she took several steps forward. Surely no one had survived this carnage.

  The grimacing man unfolding himself from the driver’s seat as he struggled to push the car door open suggested otherwise. Swearing under his breath, he grabbed the top of the car for balance. He hissed, lifting his arms away from the glass shards that were littered there, tilting his wrists to the dim light from the street to reveal fresh cuts on the undersides.

  “Somabitch,” she heard him mutter, the foul words tripping over each other.

  Adrian scoffed. The guy was drunk. Her lips peeled back from her teeth in a sneer as she hissed, “You stupid moron! You could have killed someone!”

  He started at the sound of her voice. His head turned. Through the blood leaking from a large gash close to his dark hairline and the thin cut below his left eye, recognition struck her. Adrian’s eyes rounded in surprise. “James?” she said, her voice laden with dread. “James Bracken, is that you?”

  He stared at her face for a moment, his eyes moving slowly, sluggishly over her features. Then he staggered forward, his mouth warming into a devilish grin. “Adrian.”

  As he loped around the trunk of the car, it wasn’t just his towering height and lean, muscled form that struck her. Her heart rapped against her chest. He was bloody. He was bruised. He was grinning like a fool. And he was naked as a jaybird. She took a long step back and swallowed. “James, are you all right?”

  He laughed, stumbled a bit. When she dove for him, he pulled himself up to his full height, his blue eyes winking with laughter and not a hint of remorse. She couldn’t be altogether sure that he wasn’t suffering from a concussion or worse, much less that he was completely aware of his surroundings.

  He was six feet fi
ve inches tall, easy. Her eyes were level with the wooden cross on his sternum that hung from a leather strap. The religious symbol was so at odds with his devil-may-care persona she frowned, extricating her gaze from his fine, muscled form and, more importantly, his naked hips.

  She watched his gaze skim from the top of her head to the tips of her bare toes, and she frowned once more when she felt her red-painted toenails tingle under the smoldering assessment.

  “Adrian Carlton,” he drawled, swaying a bit. “Damn. Was that an earthquake—or did you just rock my world?”

  He was picking her up? Now? For heaven’s sake. She pursed her lips, ready to give him the what-for. “Listen, hot rocks, you can’t just—”

  His eyes rolled into the back of his head and his legs folded beneath him. Cursing, she ducked under his shoulder to catch him but he was too tall. Too damn heavy. She shrieked as they both went crashing to earth. The breath whooshed out of her when his naked form landed on top of her in full supine position. She pushed against his shoulder, couldn’t budge him and cursed again.

  “Damn you, James Bracken,” she murmured, teeth clenched as she yanked his head back with a fistful of his thick, tousled hair. Jaw slack, eyes closed, he greeted her with a gurgling snore. With a sigh, she dropped his head back to her shoulder and groaned. “You’re going to be more trouble than you’re worth.”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Eight years later

  SPRING HAD GONE to the birds, and Adrian didn’t mind so much that it had. She encouraged them, setting up bird feeders and birdbaths all around the backyard of her Fairhope cottage. With the weather warming into late March, it allowed for her to open the windows of the house and let the spring breeze waft through the screens. The scents of fresh-cut grass, potting soil and early annuals, as well as the sound of birdsong drifted through the cottage with it.

  The squirrels, however, thought the bird food was theirs for the taking.

  “I don’t think so,” Adrian muttered as she watched one such offender—a big vermin with a beer belly—creep down to a bird feeder from one of the overlarge oak trees surrounding the yard. She stood up from the nook table and, using one of the chairs, grabbed her son’s BB gun from the top of the cabinets where she’d hidden it.

  She crouched next to the half door that led out onto her small patio with the pretty terra-cotta tiles she’d laid herself. Leveling the gun on top of the half door, she closed one eye and sighted it. “I see you,” she said, and felt for the trigger.

  “Mom!”

  Adrian jumped a mile high and shrieked. The sound and movement startled Nutsy the Squirrel and he lit off up the tree, chattering angrily at the spoiled opportunity.

  Adrian fought back a curse and stood, raking a hand through her short crop of red hair. “Kyle,” she said in as normal a voice as she could manage.

  Kyle narrowed his eyes. They were a wild shade of Scandinavian blue. Right now they were scrutinizing her as they scanned the weapon and her long, white nightgown. “Were you shooting squirrels again?”

  Adrian cleared her throat. “I was just going to pop one in the butt. Teach him a lesson.” When Kyle rolled his eyes, she drew her shoulders back, searching for some dignity. “He was stealing birdseed.” Then she waved a dismissive hand. She didn’t have to explain herself, no matter how ridiculous she felt in the face of his seven-year-old derision.

  “Mom.” Kyle sighed. “Please stop doing that. It’s embarrassing.”

  Adrian raised a brow and felt the corners of her mouth twitch. “Oh, is it, huh?”

  “Yeah,” Kyle said, and scrubbed the backs of his first two fingers over his mouth. It was an endearing habit he’d had since his toddling years. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “There’s some cereal in the pantry,” she told him, and waited until he went inside before crawling back up on the chair and replacing the gun on top of the cabinets, out of his reach. Then she got down, carried the chair back to the table and met him at the refrigerator. “Orange juice?” she asked.

  “Sure,” he said, and took a seat at the table, pouring Cap’n Crunch into a bowl. Adrian topped the cereal with milk, then fixed him a glass of juice.

  “Did you know there’s a moving van next door?” Kyle asked.

  Adrian stopped in the midst of pouring herself a second helping of coffee. “What?”

  Kyle craned his neck to look out the bay window over the nook table. “Somebody must be moving in.”

  The house next door had been for sale for well over six months. The previous owners had left it in a state of complete and utter disarray, so much so that everyone on the street had begun to resent the overgrown property. Adrian leaned over the table, placing a hand on Kyle’s dark, tousled head, and peered across her trim, perfectly kept yard into the next.

  The grass of the adjacent property had grown as tall as reeds. The mailbox was hanging loose on its stand, the driveway was cracked and mottled and the detached garage was even beginning to fall in. The roof of the house was carpeted in dead leaves and strewn with naked oak branches. The screen door of the front porch had been torn. Adrian was surprised to see the For Sale sign gone and an oversize moving truck parked at the curb, butted up against a sleek, black sportster.

  “Somebody finally bought it,” Adrian muttered with an unbelieving shake of her head. “I thought they were gonna have to tear it down, the state it’s in.”

  “Maybe they’ve got kids,” Kyle said, eyes widening at the possibility. He watched more closely, nose nearly pressed to the glass now, as the movers milled from truck to house with boxes of varying sizes. “Do you see any toys, Mom?”

  Adrian, too, watched for a moment, then frowned, dropping back to her heels and straightening. She wondered how many other neighbors were rubbernecking this morning to get a gander at the street’s newest addition. And while, for the most part, rubbernecking was a harmless sport, Adrian knew all too well what it felt like to be the victim of it. “Eat your breakfast,” she said with a pat on Kyle’s shoulder.

  “It’d be really cool if there was a guy my age moving in.” Kyle considered as he pushed his cereal around with his spoon, no longer paying Cap’n Crunch much mind. “Then Blaze and I can play two-on-two when Gavin visits in a few weeks.”

  “What if they have a girl?” Adrian asked coyly, glancing sideways from the counter just in time to see Kyle wrinkle his nose.

  The kid positively moped at the idea. “I guess that would be all right, too.”

  Adrian chuckled. Kyle was firmly entrenched in the cootie phase. “It wouldn’t be so bad. You like Harmony, don’t you?”

  “Harmony’s a baby,” Kyle told her, referring to their family friends the Savitts’ little girl. “Real girls are mean.”

  Adrian hid a snort in her coffee. “Just concentrate on eating. We’ve got to get you to school, mister.”

  “Hey, maybe we could send them something to eat,” Kyle suggested, still gazing out at the movers.

  “Something to eat?” she asked, brow creased.

  “Yeah. Like how we sent the Millers one of Briar’s pies when they moved in. Blaze said it was real good. That’s how we got to be such good friends.”

  Adrian smiled as she watched her son’s mind work. With a small business to run and being a single parent, her days were so full she had hardly a moment to stop and breathe. But sometimes when she looked at Kyle her heart ached with how much she loved him and at how fast he had grown. “Good idea. I’ll talk to Briar this afternoon.”

  Kyle finally turned his head and grinned at her. In the light spilling in from the open windows around the room, those wild blue eyes shone like stars and the dark freckles across his nose contrasted with his cheeks. “Thanks, Mom.”

  She walked to him and touched a kiss to his brow, brushing back the dark hair that was growing over his forehead at a rapid r
ate. “Take your bowl to the sink. Then get dressed quickly. You don’t want to be late.”

  As Kyle slipped by her, Adrian stole one last glance at the house next door. The movers were hauling in what looked like weights and power tools. She frowned at the license plate of the sportster. Out of state, from the looks of it. Though the tall grass was obscuring her view.

  She just hoped whoever was moving in got the old eyesore looking somewhat decent again. How they would manage it all, she had no idea.

  Only an idiot would buy a house that run-down. Or somebody with some serious ambition. Hoping for the latter, she turned from the windows and went to help Kyle get ready for the day.

  * * *

  JAMES BRACKEN FROWNED at the cards in his hand. Pocket jacks. He’d always had a knack for knowing what cards were going to show up on the table as well as for reading the people who challenged him to Texas Hold ’Em. Those fine-tuned senses told him that despite the nice, round pile of poker chips between them, his opponent, a scrawny man in a near-to-threadbare work shirt torn at the shoulder, was bluffing.

  Scanning the man closely, James wondered when the last time the mover had had a good steak dinner. Not the lean kind of steak. A big, juicy, porterhouse number with fat trimming the edges. He couldn’t have been older than thirty but judging by the deep furrows in his brow and his receding hairline, things like luck and plenty had never been on his side.

  After leaving home just shy of eighteen, James had found that the former came far more easily to him than most. For eight years, it had brought him a great deal of the latter. Which was why when the dealer, another mover, this one heavyset around the middle and sweating like a pig in the unaired rooms of James’s new house, flicked the river card onto the table, James took pity on his less fortunate opponent.

  Ignoring those smiling pocket jacks, he dropped them facedown onto the siding board laid across two sawhorses to make a makeshift poker table and cursed under his breath. “Nothin’,” he muttered as hope lit in his opponent’s eyes. Reaching for the bottle of water that was sweating as much as their dealer, James lifted a shoulder and leaned back in one of the creaky beach chairs he’d found folded against the wall of the sorry excuse for a two-car garage. “Goddamn, Ripley. The cards love you.”