Text copyright ©2020 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
To my loyal dog that snores outside my door for hours upon hours that just so happens to be the object of my attention as I’m writing this dedication. Love you big guy.
Acknowledgments
Golden Czermak - Photographer
My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing- My editors
Cover Me Darling - Cover Artist
My mom - Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred and twelve times.
Kendra, Diane, Sarah, Laura, Lisa, Kathy, Mindy, Penney, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Table of Contents
Blurb
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Epilogue
What’s Next?
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Keep It Classy
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
The Southern Gentleman Series
Hissy Fit
Lord Have Mercy
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding
Fries Before Guys
Maybe Swearing Will Help
Ask Me If I Care
May Contain Wine
Joke’s on You
Join the Club
Any Day Now
Say it Ain’t So
Officially Over It
Nobody Knows (11-3-20)
Depends Who’s Asking (12-8-20)
Valentine Boys
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Souls Chapel Revenants MC
Repeat Offender (1-12-21)
Conjugal Visits (2-23-21)
Jailbait (4-6-21)
Doin’ A Dime (5-4-21)
Inmate of the Month (6-29-21)
Kitty Kitty (8-10-21)
Gen Pop (9-21-21)
Shakedown (11-2-21)
Standalones:
Somethin’ About That Boy
Blurb
Going from a professional baseball player to a SWAT officer should’ve been seamless. Should have been.
But it wasn’t.
All it took was one single calendar shoot for word to spread that Nathan Cox was not only no longer playing professional baseball, but he was also the man behind saving the life of Reggie Morton, the city of Kilgore’s princess.
***
Reggie didn’t know that by agreeing to provide the expertise and the know-how for the Police Officer’s Ball that she would be required to actually attend the function.
What she also didn’t expect was needing to be saved—again—by the same man that had saved her life a year ago when she hosted her debut event.
This time in a not-nearly-as-spectacular way. The moment she falls into his arms like a modern-day Cinderella and takes him in, in all his three-piece-suited glory, she realizes that she’s been fighting the impossible.
Nathan Cox owns her. Body and soul.
Prologue
Rise and shine, motherfucker.
-Coffee Cup
Nathan
The day before college graduation
“I need you to make a pact with me,” I said as I stared at the woman that was hell-bent on ruining me.
The same woman that I never could quite pull myself away from. Could never quite pull all the claws out of my skin before she sank yet another one in deeper.
“What?” Reggie asked, just as drunk as I was.
She was also not the woman that was hell-bent on ruining me.
That woman happened to be the one that was crying about her life on Facebook. About how she had cancer and was about to go through multiple rounds of chemo and radiation that might or might not help her.
“Don’t let her fuck me over. I will fall for those big tears just like I always do and I know that I’ll lose,” I murmured, glancing one more time at the text message that I’d received from Eerie, my own personal hell, and shoved it into my pocket.
I looked around at the bright sparkling lights that Las Vegas had to offer.
“And how do you propose that I do that?” Reggie snorted. “You have a toxic relationship with her. Just walk away.”
I looked down at the paperwork in my hand that the toxic woman had given me the night before and shook my head. “It’s not that easy, Reg.”
Reggie rolled her eyes. “Listen, I have a solution. But you’re not going to like it.”
Reggie and I had never gotten along. But, despite the fact that we hadn’t, I knew one thing forever and always—she would have my back. No matter what.
Which was the entire point of having this conversation.
Though, maybe if I’d known what she was going to offer, I would’ve maybe suggested she think of something else.
My drunk brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, though, and I’d never really been able to tell Reggie no.
***
Two years later
“What do I do?” I asked.
“We get a lawyer,” my father suggested. “And you fight her.”
I groaned and rubbed my hands against my face as I tried to make sense of all of this.
“Start over.” My mom pinched the bridge of her nose. “Why did you do this?”
I looked over at Reggie who’d been remarkably quiet through all of this.
“I didn’t know what to say,” I admitted. “She had these fucking tears. You know how I am with the tears.”
When Eerie had come to me two years ago and asked me to fertilize her eggs because she had cancer and had to undergo chemo, I’d done it.
Thinking back, I probably should’ve stayed far, far away. Because I knew that that wasn’t the end for Eerie. She could’ve just as easily done the same thing with a sperm bank.
Yet, I’d done it anyway.
At the time, Eerie hadn’t done me wrong time after time as she had over the years. At the time, I was a lovesick fool.
I loved Eerie, and I’d do anything for her. Even fertilize her eggs and freeze them for when the time came that she wanted to have babies.
The chemo and radiation that she was required to have due to the cancer was sure to harm all of the eggs that were in her body. The eggs that the company harvested for her said that the eggs would do better if they were fertilized, and at the time, Eerie and I had been going strong. I’d loved her and I’d thought that she loved me.
“Mark my words, kid. This is going to come back and bite you in the ass.”
I was already shaking my head.
“It’s not,” I said. “When her lawyer called me today, I already told them that there was an ironclad agreement with the cryo-bank that we did this with. She can’t use them. It’s against the law.”
Reggie snorted. “Since when has that ever stopped Eerie Foster?”
Since when was right.
But Eerie had some morals. She wouldn’t do this without making sure it was okay with me.
Right?
Chapter 1
The difference between your opinion and coffee is that I asked for coffee.
-Reggie’s secret thoughts
Reggie
One year later—present day
“You’re an event planner?”
I looked over at the woman that was standing next to her daughter’s bedside and smiled.
“I am,” I confirmed. “Well, kind of? I do it as a hobby on the side. This.” I gestured to the room around us. The NICU. “This is my passion. The other gig is just a thing that I like to do in my spare time. A way to, I don’t know, have fun without actually having to go out and attend the functions?”
The woman smiled at my explanation.
“When did you start doing this?”
That was a question from the man standing beside the woman.
He was intense.
I wasn’t sure why every time I looked at him I felt the need to confess all my sins, but I guess that was common when faced with who I was facing.
Dracon and Flo Green were a beautiful couple. Dracon, the city of Longview’s police commissioner, was an intense man that always made me stand up to attention.
His wife, Flo, looked nothing like I would’ve expected someone to look who could handle such a forceful personality like Dracon. But she didn’t seem too overwhelmed when it came to his presence like I did.
He was staring at me intently as I spoke, making my heart pound. God, he was a beautiful man.
“Umm,” I hesitated. “I just started, actually. I started by planning birthdays for friends. Things like that. Then I moved into larger-scaled things like reunions and anniversary dinners. I know East Texas like the back of my hand now. It’s pretty great.”
“So what’s the biggest thing you ever planned?” Flo asked.
I moved Dracon and Flo’s baby onto her side where she mewled in protest.
Dracon reached his big hand into the incubator and rubbed his blunt finger down the length of the baby’s arm. His finger and the baby’s arm were the same size.
“I planned the mayor of Kilgore’s commencement ceremony not too long ago,” I said.
“That was you?”
I winced.
Dracon’s words had me stilling.
“It depends on what you heard,” I admitted.
Flo’s laugh was infectious.
The mayor of Kilgore had his commencement ceremony last fall. The only reason anybody had really heard about me at all was thanks in part to what had happened at that ceremony. And, I’d just like to point out, that it wasn’t my fault that I’d allowed a gunman into the event that was intent on murdering the mayor before his commencement.
I did, however, make it all better by making sure that the man’s testicles were shoved up into his body so far that he would likely never have kids again.
Now, sadly, I was known as the ‘Princess of Kilgore’ thanks to saving a man that didn’t need to be saved.
“I heard what happened,” Dracon said. “I was actually there. And nothing that I ‘heard’ was anywhere close to the truth.”
That was true.
I swallowed hard thinking back to that day almost a year ago.
***
“Everything set?”
I looked up at the mayor and smiled, fiddling with the small kid’s McDonald’s toy keychain I’d found on the floor moments prior.
Smoothing my hand down the length of my dress, I looked up into the beautiful eyes of the mayor and nodded once.
“I think so,” I said. “We can open the doors when you’re ready.”
“Sounds good. I’ll let the greeters know,” Lynn, the mayor, said.
I gave him a thumbs up and he winked before disappearing into a side hallway that led to the offices.
I looked around at the perfectly set tables and the beautifully decorated room and knew that I’d done a great job.
I was so excited with how it’d turned out that I hadn’t realized that the doors had opened, and people were filing in until the room started to fill up around me.
I nodded at each and every person that smiled at me, giving them what I hoped was a gracious smile.
Feeling quite underdressed in my blue floor-length sleeveless gown that I’d gotten from a boutique in town for sixty bucks, I made my way to the outskirts of the room hoping that by doing so it would keep me out of the way.
The only thing that it did was bring me closer to a person that I hadn’t seen in a year.
A person that I’d have done s
o much better staying away from.
Hell, it took me way too long to even realize that he was there.
“Not even going to say hi?”
I squeaked and whirled, surprised to see that the darkness on the other side of the pillar was actually a man and not a shadow like I’d thought it was.
“Fuck,” I said, placing my hand over my heart and staring at the man that liked to make my life a living hell. “What are you doing here?”
He grinned at me. “I was home for the weekend and Wolf was asked to go. I tagged along as his plus one.”
My mouth twitched up into a grin. “As his plus one?”
“You know how he gets when he’s forced to do shit he doesn’t want to do.” Nathan shrugged. “What are you doing here?”
I gestured to the room at large with a sweep of my hand. “Paying off student loan debt.”
If I only had about three more of these specific types of events that paid as well as this one for the mayor did, I’d have all my student loans paid for.
I’d gone a little wild when I was in college. When I’d been offered a loan for my ‘extras’ I’d taken it. And now it was biting me on the ass.
I should’ve just been happy with my mom and stepdad paying for my tuition and getting a job to pay for all the extra stuff that I would need. Instead, I fucked around for my entire college career, racked up student loans, and had barely passed any of my classes.
Luckily, I’d wised up the last year I had there and had tugged my barely passing self out of the downward spiral I’d found myself in and gotten a job with the sweetest lady that planned events just like this one. Which had helped me get my act together, and prepare for my real-world job of being a nurse.
And I’d learned a lot from her before she’d passed away and left me the knowledge of how to continue in this world as an event planner if I so wished.
“As what? An escort?” he joked.
I reached out and slugged him in the arm. “Not funny, Nathan.”
His husky chuckle sent shivers of want down my spine.
I threw the keychain at his face, and he caught it, pocketed it, and then winked at me.
Him and his fast fucking hands.
I stepped away from him and crossed my arms over my chest, holding myself as if I’d fall apart if I didn’t.
“Sorry,” Nathan apologized, sounding like he somewhat meant it, too. “Easy to slip back into it.”