Total pages in book: 142
Estimated words: 133849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 133849 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 669(@200wpm)___ 535(@250wpm)___ 446(@300wpm)
Jared “Grim” Burch found a home with the Barnes-Fleetwood family when he desperately needed one. With support from his newfound family, Grim beat all the odds and became a veterinarian. In Willow Fork, however, there are still people who are suspicious of him and his past. When he sees Nicole, he knows she’s the perfect woman for him and Josh, but he wonders if he has the right to bring her into his sometimes dangerous circle.
For Nicole Mason, Willow Fork is nothing more than a pit stop. Once she can save up the money to fix her car, she’ll do what she’s been doing for the last several years. Run. Framed for her husband’s murder, she can never stop looking over her shoulder. There’s always someone on her trail, and she can’t let them bring her back to the real killer. Getting to know Josh and Grim makes her dream of the life they could have together. If only she could trust them with her secrets.
When their past catches up to them all, they’ll find out that even a small town can be big trouble.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Prologue
Willow Fork, TX
Jared Burch knew it was a stupid idea to hole up on the devil’s land, but he didn’t have anywhere else to go.
It was what they called Jack Barnes around town. The devil. His own mother claimed the man had been put on the earth to lead people astray. Jared had met the man, but it had been years before when he’d been a normal kid. Before his dad had died and his mom had married his stepfather. It was sometimes hard to believe there had been a time before Ezekiel Smith, that he’d had something of a childhood where he’d played with kids who lived close to him, and his whole world hadn’t revolved around pleasing one man.
He hadn’t managed to do it today.
He’d run, and the wrong way in his complete panic. He’d known his stepfather would follow him and use the shotgun on him if he didn’t get out fast enough. After all. before he’d been kicked out, his stepdad had set his brother and stepbrothers on him. It had only been after they’d given him a walloping that Ezekiel Smith had delivered his judgment. Banishment.
Now he found himself on the outer range of Barnes’s land. He seriously doubted the stories about Abigail Barnes being some man-eating siren, but he could believe Barnes could be ruthless. Not that he believed the crap his stepfather shoveled about Barnes. It was the twenty-first century, but sometimes he believed Willow Fork was stuck in 1892 or something.
He was absolutely certain his parents were since they’d chucked him out of the house for being a bad influence on his siblings. There were three of them. One older and his full brother. Two stepbrothers who were older. He was the baby of the “family” and yes, he put quotes around the word because they sure as hell hadn’t felt like family today. Maybe not since the day he realized his older brother believed everything their stepdad taught them. Billy was one of them now, and he’d proven it mere hours before.
Jared shivered in the chill. Autumn in Texas meant hot days and chilly nights.
It wasn’t fair. Anger warred with a deep sense of sorrow as he made his way across the flat plane that would hopefully lead him to the main road. He thought it would, but nothing had gone right today. All he’d done was dared to stand up to his stepfather. This time when his stepfather had punched, he’d punched back.
And then his stepfather told his brothers to defend him, and they’d given Jared a beating he was still recovering from. His brothers. His only friends.
It wasn’t like he was allowed to play with other kids. Not that he was a kid. He was sixteen, and he barely had an education that would get him any kind of job. School wasn’t important to his parents, and they’d made him drop out two years before. “Homeschool” had meant working on their ranch, reading the Bible, and learning not to talk back or have a single thought that went against their father.
And stay away from those heathen Barnes-Fleetwoods.
Well, he couldn’t now unless he wanted to walk twenty miles, and damn it, it was starting to rain.
When his stepfather had tossed him out without a dime to his name, he hadn’t exactly offered a ride. So Jared had started walking. He’d jumped the fence separating his stepfather’s land from the devil’s because there had been nothing else to do. He had to make it to town, and this was the fastest way.
Damn, it was getting cold.
He’d found one of the outer buildings the Barnes-Fleetwood ranch hands used when they got caught on the range after dark. Or when they were babysitting the herd.
His stepfather would have shoved a tent his way and told him to make do.
This place was kind of a palace compared to what he was used to.
He would get warm and be on his way.
The door opened easily. No lock, like what his stepfather put on every building and many of the rooms in their house. There was a lock on the pantry and the fridge, one on the room with the only television because his stepfather believed no one else could be trusted to watch and not to be tempted by the outside world.
Sometimes he blamed his real dad for everything. One day he’d been okay. Sure he was poor, but they’d gotten along. And then he’d died and his mother joined the most extreme church she could find, and now he was homeless because he didn’t respect authority.
He wasn’t sure there would be one, but he felt for the switch and breathed a sigh of relief when soft light illuminated the shack. Shack? It was a small house. Like one of those tiny ones he’d seen when he’d been in school. Sometimes he would see magazines or get time in the library on the Internet. He knew things, and he knew this was a nice place.