Total pages in book: 93
Estimated words: 86808 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86808 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 434(@200wpm)___ 347(@250wpm)___ 289(@300wpm)
Marcie DeLeon just navigated her way through a bitter divorce, now intent on reimagining her life as a single career woman. She’s not looking to revisit the burden of a relationship anytime soon but when Ethan turns to her for help, she can’t help but lend a sympathetic ear to the handsome and broody man.
Ethan and Marcie are strangers who find a common thread to weave them together, creating a bond neither were seeking but both are loathe to walk away from. When Ethan faces a high-stakes battle against his family’s bitter enemy, he knows without a doubt there is nothing he won’t do to win the fight. Ready to give of himself completely, Ethan prepares to face-off with his foe hoping that no matter what the outcome, Marcie will be by his side in the end.
The Feud is a friends to lovers novel within the Bluegrass Empires series. All books in the series can be enjoyed as standalones.
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CHAPTER 1
Ethan
This isn’t my first journey down the sweeping staircase, attempting to maneuver my six-foot-three frame as quietly as possible. With my boots in hand so as not to wake the woman I left sleeping in a rumpled bed, I’m thankful for inlaid marble treads rather than squeaky wood. I’ve made this trip more than once over the last handful of years, but I’ve been doing it less and less of late. Things with Diane have run their course. In fact, I haven’t been in her bed in more than two months.
It certainly hadn’t been on my agenda or even on my mind to come here last night, but tragedy struck when I lost a foal and a mare during a very difficult birth. Those bitter losses are hard and it made me crazy with the need for… something.
I could’ve chosen anything, really.
A bottle of Kentucky’s finest bourbon—any brand other than Mardraggon—or I could have picked a fight with one of my brothers, which would’ve ended in fists and bruises. Either one of those might have distracted me from the pain of losing those horses but instead I called Diane.
And now I’m making an escape.
I’ve barely gotten one socked foot on the marble foyer at the base of the staircase before I hear her call out in that twangy southern lilt. “Where are you going, baby?”
The sun has just started to peek over the horizon, as evidenced by the bluish-gray light filtering in through the windows of the palatial home. Glancing over my shoulder, I see her at the top of the stairs, belting a diaphanous peach robe at her waist.
Diane Turner is a stunning woman. Thirty-five years old and widowed six years ago, she’s become something of a friend with benefits except she isn’t exactly a true friend. More of a long-term acquaintance—known her for years in the saddlebred competition world—and she boards her horses at Blackburn Farms.
Tall and voluptuous with a cascade of blond hair spilling down her back and over her shoulders, most men would be running right back up the stairs for another round. But I can only take her in small doses. She married up in age and for significant wealth and then her geriatric husband died, leaving her everything, and she now lives a life of luxury in his Kentucky mansion, vowing never to marry again.
“Headed out,” I say, sitting on the staircase to put on my boots. No need to be quiet now that she’s awake.
“It’s too early,” she croons. “Come back up to bed for a bit and then I’ll make you breakfast.”
Sliding on my last boot, I shake my head and rise. “Too much work to do and not enough daylight hours to do it in.”
“That’s why you have employees, Ethan.” I glance up at her—arms crossed over her chest, hip cocked out, annoyance all over her face. “For God’s sake, you’re the biggest saddlebred farm in the United States and employ a small army of people to do that shit. Why you insist on being so hands on is beyond me.”
Petulant words coming from a woman who doesn’t have to work for her money.
Although I’d never admit it to her, Diane has a valid point. Blackburn Farms is indeed the largest breeding and training farm of American Saddlebred horses in the United States. With over a thousand acres of pastureland, barns, training arenas and medical facilities, over two hundred broodmares, almost seventy retired horses and nine studs, not to mention a sizable yearling population each year, it does take an army of people to make it all run smoothly.