Katie sighed. “Well, it’s not for the faint of heart. I work for one, and I’m married to another. Together, the siblings are three men who were raised by a single father. That tells you all you need to know.”
“Because their mother died young, right?”
Ivy nodded. “Yes. It’s probably understating the case to say they lacked a female influence. They’re arrogant and stubborn and completely unwilling to accept limitations, but they can be surprisingly sweet despite all that alpha-male testosterone.”
“They’re pussycats at times,” Katie agreed. “But never make the mistake of thinking you can pull something over on them. They hate being handled.”
Frannie nodded. “Even as a teenager, Zachary had this incredible self-confidence. I envied him, to be honest. It took me years to feel comfortable in my own skin.”
Ivy smiled. “I don’t think it’s ever easy for a woman to be seen as ‘too smart.’ You must have had female friends, didn’t you?”
“I did. Oddly, though, most of my friends were guys. But it was because I was a tomboy, I suppose. Not athletic, believe me, but more interested in science than makeup and fashion. I was hopelessly awkward.”
The kitchen door swung open, and Zachary walked in. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, Frannie. You were cute in a quirky kind of way.” He grinned at Katie and Ivy. “She had these oversize corduroy overalls, one forest green pair and one navy, and she swapped them out with half a dozen T-shirts.”
Frannie gaped. “I can’t believe you remember that.”
“We spent a lot of time together, Bug. I have a damned good memory.”
Katie lifted an eyebrow. “Bug?”
Zachary reached in the fridge for a beer and popped the cap. “Everybody at the Glenderry School for Gifted Children had nicknames, me included.”
“We didn’t pick them,” Frannie said hastily. “Other students, usually upperclassmen, handed them out like toxic candy, and they invariably stuck. Of course, if you were popular like Zachary, they weren’t so bad. Right, Stoner...or Stone Man?”
He shrugged, a light in his eyes. “Bugs are cute. Ladybugs. You know.”
Katie and Ivy gave her identical sympathetic looks. Katie shook her head slowly. “I’ll bet you hated that nickname, didn’t you, Frannie?”
“Oh yes.” Although hearing Zachary speak it casually made it not so bad. He had never said it with malice.
Ivy, bless her, went to bat for wallflowers everywhere. “But look how you turned out, Frannie. You’re tall and gorgeous and brilliantly successful. No one would ever guess that some dumb kid in high school named you Bug. Living well is the best revenge. Isn’t that what they say?”
Though Frannie didn’t have a lot of close friends, mostly by choice, she liked Ivy and Katie. In other circumstances, she might have enjoyed getting to know them better. Her chosen career left little time for socializing, and because she bounced all over the world, she had learned to be self-sufficient. As soon as she started her task at SRO headquarters, she would be immersed in the job. That’s how she worked best. Head down. All her focus on the puzzle.
Looking for one single thread that could lead her to answers.
If such a thread even existed.
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Ivy,” Frannie said. “I’ve come a long way since my Glenderry days. Most people harbor a few unpleasant memories from adolescence. Mine aren’t really so bad. It was better than being stuck in a regular public school and not being allowed to study all the things I wanted to... At Glenderry, there were no limits.”
Katie shook her head slowly. “I’m glad you and Zachary had that opportunity.”
Ivy frowned. “But Stoner?”
“It was a joke.” Frannie grinned. “Zachary never touched drugs. Everyone knew that. He was too determined to stay in good shape physically. That’s why it was such an aggravating nickname.”
Zachary sighed. “I was what you might call conflicted. Glenderry was a hell of a good place for me, but I fought that reality every day. I just wanted to be normal.”
Frannie smiled, a smile that started small and grew to include Katie and Ivy and Zachary’s two brothers, who had joined the party in the kitchen. “Oh, come on, Zachary. You were never normal.”
Copyright © 2020 by Janice Maynard
SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM
West Caldwell has come to Redemption Ranch to put his past behind him. Flirting with a pint-size police officer who thinks he’s bad news is definitely not part of the plan, but it’s deliciously easy to get under Pansy’s skin. In her arms, West feels like the man he always wanted to be—but can he become the man Pansy deserves?
Read on for a sneak peak of The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch, a Gold Valley novel, from New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates.
The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch
by Maisey Yates
“I...I DON’T CARE who you’re with, West.”
It was the first time she’d ever directly addressed him. The first time she’d ever used his name.
“Pansy,” he said. “I think you do.”
“I don’t,” she said. “I’m trying to get a job as the police chief. And I’m not going to mess around with... I’m not going to...”
“But you want to.”
“I want this job.”
But he had seen her. Seen the way that her lips parted softly when she looked at him, the way that she looked at his mouth when he took a drink of beer. He had seen how she looked at him, and he knew the way that it made him feel. It was too damned late for her to pretend that he hadn’t.
He reached out and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulled her up against him. He wrapped his other arm around her back and placed his palm directly at the center of her shoulder blades. He expected her to get stiff. Expect her to pull away. But she didn’t. Instead, she shivered. Her whole body went pliant against his. All his blood rushed south. He wanted...he wanted her.
He wanted this.
And he was going to take his time, because he hadn’t held a woman in his arms since his wife, and every memory of making love to Monica was ruined now. Torn beyond repair.
In the dim light he could just make out her eyes, wide and looking up at his, glittering beneath the moon. He ran his thumb along her lower lip, and found it soft and full.
Inviting.
“Damn you’re pretty,” he said.
His voice was rough and husky, a stranger’s voice. He didn’t know if he could recall a time when the potential for a kiss had made him feel this way. So damn hard he couldn’t see straight. So damn hard it hurt.
And then she did something he hadn’t expected at all. She went up on her toes, bracketing his face with her hands, and kissed him.
Don’t miss The Bad Boy of Redemption Ranch by Maisey Yates, available June 2020 wherever HQN Books and ebooks are sold.
www.HQNBooks.com
Copyright © 2020 by Maisey Yates
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ISBN-13: 9781488063022
Wild Nashville Ways
Copyright © 2020 by Sheree Henry-Whitefeather
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or repr
oduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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Wild Nashville Ways Page 17