This month, I have an excerpt for everyone! Since my newest novel, The Lonely Heart, will be available to VIP members from Total-E-Bound on the 17th, I thought it only appropriate to post a peek.
Enjoy!
Take two stubborn cowboys, add in one determined little boy, and
toss in a snowstorm for good measure. Who knew building a family could
be so hard?
If you ask Isaiah Preston, he’s pretty lucky. He’s
happy in his job as a ranch manager, admires his boss, Grady, in more
ways than one, and if he doesn’t have everything he wants, well, that’s
life, isn’t it?
Enter one little brother, and suddenly Isaiah's
comfortable world is turned upside down. Everything becomes complicated
and he's seeing people in ways he never has before—good and bad.
Near-perfect isn't enough anymore. Isaiah wants it all—home, family and,
most importantly, Grady, in both his life and bed.
To get what he wants, though, Isaiah is going to have to fight prejudice, misunderstanding, and even Grady himself.
Excerpt:
Isaiah stepped onto
the porch, zipping up his coat with gloved hands. The ranch was quiet today,
the boys hunkering down inside around the wood stove. Isaiah didn’t blame them.
The snowstorm that had whipped through the night before had left more than just
a thick coating of white on everything. The temperature was down around ‘forget
the thermometer, I’m freezing my balls off’ and any sane person was staying
inside beside the nearest heat source.
So what did that say
about Isaiah? Probably nothing good. But he was going stir-crazy
inside, and if he had to put up with Grady’s crappy mood for one more minute,
he was going to snap.
Isaiah’s sense of
fair play took that moment to pop out and remind him that he hadn’t exactly
been an angel to live with lately, either. He told his inner voice to shut up,
but it didn’t erase that niggling sense of guilt.
Hell, maybe he just
needed to get laid. When was the last time he’d used anything other than his
own hand? Isaiah swore softly when he realised he couldn’t remember. No wonder
he was so cranky.
Grady, on the other
hand, was just being difficult.
The screen door
squealed behind him and Isaiah’s jaw clenched. “Get back inside before you
freeze to death,” he said around gritted teeth.
“Isaiah.”
Isaiah swung around.
“What?”
Grady stood in front
of the door, hands shoved in his jeans pockets, clad in nothing more than a
thick AQHA sweatshirt. Isaiah rolled his eyes. The man really did plan on
freezing to death.
“If you’re gonna bug
me, at least put a coat on,” he ordered.
“You want to tell me
what’s eating at you?” Grady pressed, making no move to go back inside. “Josh
is worried.”
Isaiah snorted. “Oh,
please. He’s so absorbed in that new video game you bought him we could blow up
the couch and he wouldn’t notice.”
“What is with you?”
Grady demanded. “I’ve never seen you in such a crappy mood.”
“You!” Isaiah whirled
around. Everything welled up—the sudden responsibility of Josh, moving in with
Grady, their constant arguments lately, the lack of sex. God, the list was
endless, and Isaiah snapped.
He ignored the way
Grady took a reflexive step back, ending up pressed against the side of the
house. Isaiah’s temper was in control and it felt damned good. “For the last
month you’ve been wandering around in a daze. You barely talk to me and
practically run from the room when I’m around. You spend half your time hiding
in your bedroom and last night you fell asleep at dinner. You won’t discuss the
ranch with me, you won’t discuss business plans. I don’t know what’s going on
with you, and you’re obviously not interested in sharing. You want to be an
antisocial bastard? Fine, but at least have the decency to quit lying to me.”
“I’m fine—”
“What the hell did I
just say?” Isaiah scowled, planting his clenched fists on his hips and
struggling with the urge to throw a punch at that stubborn jaw. Talking to
Grady could be like talking to a rock. The man only heard what he wanted to
hear, and most of that he chose to misinterpret.
Josh and Isaiah had
been living in the big house with Grady for nearly a month now. At first, it
had been great. For the first time, Isaiah had felt like he was getting to know
the real Grady—a big-hearted man whose laugh stirred equal parts lust and
affection in Isaiah. He’d managed to shove back the lust, despite the looks he
caught from Grady. They were building a comfortable little makeshift family
here and he wasn’t about to mess it up by throwing sex into the mix. But just
when they’d established a nice routine, Grady had withdrawn.
Grady sighed and
shifted from one foot to the other, one toe poking out of a hole in the blue
woollen sock. “Can we at least discuss this inside where it’s warm?”
“No.” Isaiah could be
stubborn, too. All right, it would be more effective if he wasn’t spiting
himself with it, but Isaiah wasn’t feeling very rational at the moment.