Chapter 1
TAYA
I reached up and adjusted the angle of my phone, moving the mechanical arm that held it up so I could type while I talked, and then smiled at the funny woman I had come to know so well over the last six months.
“And then the little weirdo started some crazy bullshit with ketchup! She won’t eat anything without it, but I draw the line at ice cream. Who does that?”
“Kids do that. Some of them don’t ever outgrow it. My oldest is twenty-six, and he still likes ketchup on his green beans!”
“Gross!”
“I can’t wait to meet Sweetie. She sounds like a gem.”
“She’s a mess,” Juni said in exasperation. “Claire’s almost just as bad.”
“Teenage hormones add a whole new layer of drama to the equation,” I commiserated. I laughed before I said, “My daughter is twenty and has finally found the brain she lost when she was about twelve.”
“Claire turns seventeen next month, and although she has a good head on her shoulders, she’s just about lost her mind over this boy she’s been seeing. Sugar’s been on the edge of a homicide charge for months now.”
“Is he a bad kid?” I asked.
“No! That’s why he’s still alive. I think Sugar actually likes him, at least a little. I’m half in love with the boy myself just from watching how he treats Claire. I think Sugar is more worried that she’ll lose sight of her goals because of the hearts in her eyes.”
“She sounds like she’s sensible. With your support, I’m sure she’ll find her way,” I assured my friend.
“Okay! Enough about my crazy family. Tell me when you’re going to get here so I can . . .” Juni’s voice trailed off, and then she asked, “Who is in that picture behind you?”
Changing the angle of the camera had exposed some of the pictures on the shelf behind me. When I looked closer at the screen, I could see the man from the bookstore, and I laughed before I explained, “That’s my muse.”
“He is?”
“Yes! I met him at my first book signing.” I told her about my anxiety and how he had calmed me down and my ex-husband’s look of shock when the long-haired biker escorted me to my seat and then stood behind me glaring daggers at Boyd until he finally left.
I admitted, “I never got his name, but I haven’t forgotten him.
I was shocked when I saw one of my readers post a picture of me with him in the background. I couldn’t help but print it out.”
“You kissed a random stranger in a bookstore, and he became your muse.”
“That’s right. He’s the entire reason I started writing MC books. I started out with small-town romances, but he was so unforgettable that I dove into everything biker-related and started the series you’re recording.”
“And you have no idea who he is?”
“Not a clue.”
“Hmm,” Juni said as she looked off into space. There was a calculating smile on her face when she looked back to me and asked, “Is there any chance you can come a day earlier than scheduled? I want to spend some time with you before everyone else gets here on Friday.”
I looked at my calendar and shrugged before I asked, “Why not? I can leave on Tuesday and be at your place by Thursday afternoon.”
“I’ll make sure your cabin is ready for you.”
“Thanks, Juni! I can’t wait to see you again.”
“I’m excited to see you too! I’ll let Sugar know you’re coming early so he’s prepared to wow you with his culinary expertise.”
“I can’t wait.”
After Juni and I finished our video call, I checked my email, answering the ones I couldn’t put off, before I made my way downstairs for lunch.
I wasn’t surprised to find my assistant, Jade, sitting at the bar with my son Blaine.
When I hired her, I had no idea what a blessing she would be to my sanity and my career and even more so to my family.
Blaine had moved back home during his divorce from his high school sweetheart.
That relationship had lasted longer than I thought it would but had given me two grandchildren I loved more than anything.
Since Jade lived in my guest house, she and Blaine saw each other almost every day - through working dinners or just passing each other when Jade was working in her office downstairs. They’d become good friends.
About six months after his divorce was final, he asked her out.
After making sure I wouldn’t have a problem with it, she agreed to go on a date with him.
Their relationship was a whirlwind after that.
Blaine soon moved out of the main house into the guesthouse so they could live together.
They got married, and a few months later, she found out she was pregnant.
Since it was convenient to have my assistant living nearby and I loved having my son at home, I hired contractors to expand the two-bedroom guesthouse into a home for their growing family.
Now there were rooms for Eliana and Sophia as well as a nursery for Oliver so they could have their own space when they were staying with Blaine during his allotted custody times.
There was even a spare bedroom in case they decided to expand their family further.
“How did your call go?” Jade asked as she set a plate of food down on Ollie’s high chair.
I took the time to lean over and kiss my grandson on the head and wasn’t offended when he was more interested in his lunch than he was in greeting me.
I said, “It went really well. She’s ahead of schedule on the book she’s working on now, and we worked out a tentative timeline for the next few releases. ”
“Look at you. People aren’t just reading your stories anymore; they’re listening to them too!”
I laughed as I sat down next to Blaine and said, “One of my readers posted a funny story the other day. She was on a road trip with her son, and since he had his earbuds in and seemed to be sleeping, she turned on one of my books. She’d been listening to it for a while when a steamy scene started.
Her son opened his eyes and looked at her in horror before he asked what in the world she was listening to! ”
“I get it,” Blaine commiserated. “I tried to be a supportive son and read your books, but the first time I came to a scene like that, I had to stop. I just can’t. It was your voice telling the story in my head, and the second you started describing the man’s johnson, I was out!”
“I listen to audiobooks when I’m alone in the car, but one time, I forgot one was cued up on my phone.
I damn near wrecked when it started playing with the girls in the back seat!
” Jade exclaimed. “That’s the last thing I want to answer questions about, and you know Eli and Soph would have had a million of them! ”
I grimaced before I said, “I do not want their introduction to the birds and the bees to be because of a romance novel!”
“I don’t want to think about that at all,” Blaine muttered as he shook his head in disgust. “Sophie asked me when she was gonna get boobs last weekend, and I almost started to cry.”
“She’s only seven, so she’s got a few years left,” I assured him.
“We decided to take a road trip to the coast this weekend,” Jade said as she slid a plate of food in front of me and then Blaine before she carried her own back to her place next to him.
“Speaking of road trips, when I drive to Montana in a few weeks, I’m going to leave a day earlier than I originally planned so I can get there a day before everyone and have dinner with Juni and her family.”
“Are you sure you wouldn’t rather fly, Mom?” Blaine asked.
“I’m a fully competent adult who is capable of driving long distances, son. I can even manage to check into a hotel to rest before I get back on the road and drive again.”
“And you’re sure you don’t want me to come with you?” Jade asked.
“I’m positive. There shouldn’t be much for you to take care of here with me gone, so you should take a few days off.”
“Maybe we should hold off on our trip to the coast so we can have some extra time,” Jade suggested. “Can you take off work?”
“Let me see if I can get Monica to let me have the girls early. They’ll have to miss a day of school, but surely that won’t be a problem.”
“It’s Monica. Of course it will be a problem,” I said with a mouthful of sandwich. I finished chewing and swallowing before I said, “You should probably run it by your dad before you ask her.”
Blaine rolled his eyes and said, “As if he’d notice I’m not in the office, considering how rarely he’s there himself.”
When Blaine was just an infant, I helped my ex-husband start a towing company.
I ran the office out of our house for the first few years while caring for Blaine, and then we added Brandt to the mix four years later.
By the time Brinn was born, the company had grown so much that we had a commercial office.
I kept the youngest two with me while Blaine was in school, and I had employees there to take over when I had to be away.
After almost eighteen years of marriage, Boyd and I split up.
He hired a divorce attorney that he was positive could cut me out of the business and my grandparents’ house that I had inherited and we’d invested thousands of dollars to renovate, but my attorney had other ideas.
In the end, I got the house and the acreage it came with, along with fifty percent of the company and its assets.
It turns out that having proof of multiple adulterous encounters was in fact good leverage when it came to divorce proceedings.
It helped that I was still raising our three children in our family home while he lived in a one-bedroom condo with our former office manager.
Through it all, I tried to make sure the kids didn’t pick up on how volatile and bitter things had gotten between us, but Boyd chose to handle things very differently.
They saw through his bullshit, and, unfortunately for him, they were never able to completely get past all that had transpired and the secrets that came to light during our divorce.
Luckily, we all grew to accept our new lives, and the kids thawed enough to reconnect with their father after a while.
Now Blaine and Brandt were in line to take over the business once Boyd retired in a few years, a move that I fully supported and encouraged.
Our daughter Brinn would have the opportunity to join if she wanted to, but her focus was on college right now and a degree that had nothing to do with the family company.
I stopped working in the office every day since tensions were high between Boyd and I, which meant I quit drawing a salary other than the quarterly income from the profits the company brought in.
Luckily, I was able to lease portions of the acreage I’d inherited to local farmers to supplement my income.
That alone paid the property taxes and left me a hefty amount to live on and squirrel away for a rainy day.
It also gave me plenty of time to pursue my dream of writing, something my ex-husband had scoffed at every time the subject came up.
During our marriage and while raising our children, I rarely had a second to myself, let alone time to sit down and write a book, but after our divorce, with the children in school, I had plenty of time on my hands.
I put that time to good use, writing an entire book series before, on a whim, I hired a local English teacher to edit my books. Once she was finished with the first three in the series, I took the plunge and released my first one as a self-published author.
I was just as surprised as my ex-husband when it resonated with readers and became wildly popular and even more surprised when readers were hungry for more.
Since then, I’d published numerous series, some more successful than others, and now had a wide circle of online friends in the writing world that included both fellow authors and avid readers.
A few years ago, after Brinn started college and moved into the dorms, I found myself an empty nester with the ability to travel at the drop of a hat.
That meant I could finally accept invitations to book events where I could meet readers and other authors in person.
That was what I was doing when I met my muse, right before my first public appearance, and what I planned to do in a few weeks when I went to Montana.
“Okay, I let Brandt know that we’re staying in town this weekend, so I’m going to take the on-call shift for him, and he’ll take it for me while we’re out of town when Mom is gone.”
“Awesome!” Jade said, almost bouncing in her chair with excitement. She hopped up and said, “Keep an eye on Ollie while I go book a rental for that weekend.”
She kissed Blaine on the cheek and then ruffled Oliver’s hair as she hurried past him to her office, and I felt tears prick my eyes when I saw the look of love on my son’s face. He was beaming when he looked back at me.
“I’m glad she’s excited.”
“You should take more time off,” I chided. “Figure out a weekend where the two of you can go away together.” Blaine glanced at Oliver, so I added, “I’ll watch Ollie.”
“Would you help me book everything?”
“After the last fiasco? Of course!”
“How was I supposed to know that was a swingers club?” Blaine asked in outrage. “Neither of you are ever going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Absolutely not, and that’s why I’m going to help you plan.”