In last month's post I talked about Rough Stock and how it was my first foray into writing a cowboy with a military career. Well, it might have been my first but it has not been my last. My ONE NIGHT WITH A COWBOY features a part time bull rider, who is also in the Army. The best part? The eBook is on sale thru 3/25 $1.99, that's 80% off!
Below is an excerpt of what my hero Tuck faces in Afghanistan, when he realizes he's not in Oklahoma anymore, and maybe he should have taken care of some things before he left.
Enjoy!
“Hold on
to your hat…ONE NIGHT WITH A COWBOY is one sexy romp with a sweet and hot hero
you’ll want to keep around for longer than one night!” ~ Lorelei James,
NY Times Best Seller
ONE NIGHT WITH A
COWBOY
An Oklahoma Nights
Romance, Book 1
a USA Today Best Seller
eBook Sale $1.99 thru 3/25 (80% off!)
One Sweet
Ride…
Oh yeah.
A single look at the leggy blonde in the stands and Tucker Jenkins is
ready to
buck all night long. It’s time to forget all about his cheating ex and his
usual hands off policy.
One Hot
Night…
Becca
Hart is an East Coast professor. Not a buckle bunny. But no degree can
prepare her for the moves of the sexy bull rider she hooks up with at her first
rodeo … Or the shock of finding him at her first Oklahoma State University
staff meeting.
One Happy
Ending…
Tuck
knows it’s all about holding on, no matter how wild the ride. Now he just has
to convince Becca that a rough start out of the chute doesn’t mean they aren’t
a smokin’ combination …
EXCERPT
“So,
you got a girl at home, Jenkins?”
The
rounds had slowed, but they sure as hell hadn’t stopped. Maybe the enemy
fighters were starting to run out of ammo and were forced to ration it. Good.
Maybe they’d run out completely. That thought gave him a small amount of hope.
“You want to talk about home now?” Tuck still
had to raise his voice to answer.
Conseco
shrugged beneath his body armor. “Sure. Why not? You got something better to
do?”
Tuck
glanced at him. “I’d feel better if I were shooting back.”
“We
all would.” Conseco blew out a sound of disgust. “If you’d like some
ventilation holes in your helmet, go ahead. Stand up and try to take a shot.
Otherwise, we’re stuck here waiting.”
They
exchanged looks, and Tuck realized Conseco was right. He gave in and answered.
“No, I don’t have a girl at home. Well, I kind of did. But not really. I don’t
know.”
Tuck
realized how pitiful that sounded. He laughed, but it was short, more like a
wheeze as the bullets peppering the ground in front of him kicked up enough
dust to make him choke.
“You
don’t know?” Conseco laughed.
“I’m
not quite sure.” Pressing back as close as he could against the wall—and
safety—Tuck admitted the sorry truth. “I didn’t mean to, but I think I might
have totally ended any chance we had by leaving.”
That
he wasn’t sure where he stood with Becca, where he wanted things to stand
between them, was a pretty sad state of affairs. Especially since today could
be his last.
“Sounds
like there’s a story there.” Conseco angled just his head toward Tuck. “Tell me
about her. What happened?”
“Seriously?
You want to hear it all?” The incoming fire had slowed to sporadic bursts,
making talking a little easier.
“Sure,
I’m bored and we could be here a while. It’ll help pass the time. I’ve heard
all these other sorry bastards’ stories a hundred times over the last nine
months. It’ll be refreshing to hear something new for a change.”
Tuck
had never felt so helpless, and Conseco was bored and wanted to chitchat. But
in this situation the man next to him was the one with experience, and like it
or not, Tuck was the cherry.
Since
he hadn’t been struck yet, he calmed himself enough to glance around them and
reevaluate the hellish situation. Shooting back was out of the question. Even
if his weapon was trained in on where the insurgents were hiding, which it
wasn’t, to get a clear shot he’d have to expose himself to their hail of
bullets.
His
teammate was right. The best thing to do was sit and wait for air support, or
for the bad guys to run out of ammo. Either way, it was going to be a little
while.
“All
right.” Tuck shrugged and was reminded of the weight of his pack braced against
the rock wall.
Even
though he’d never told the story in its entirety, not even to his best friends,
he swallowed away the dry grit in his mouth and launched into the tale of two
city girls who walked into a rodeo one July night in Oklahoma. He somehow felt
he had to tell it, from start to finish. That another living person knowing it
all would keep the memory alive because there was a very real chance he
wouldn’t leave this valley. At least not that way . . . alive.
He
glossed over the very intimate bedroom details, but told Conseco everything
else, right down to his deciding to leave when they got caught in the library
on the security video and how he thought he had to, before they both got into
trouble.
When
he’d finished, Conseco shook his head. “That’s a hell of a story. Sounds like
true love to me. Like a damn fairy tale.”
“Nah.
We weren’t that serious.” The statement rang so false in his ears, he
elaborated to make it sound more convincing. “Just having some fun together.”
That
didn’t sound any more truthful.
Love. The other reason Tuck had left in such a hurry. Love was a
word Tuck had deliberately avoided saying or even thinking, yet Conseco spat it
out easily. Maybe daily near-death experiences did that to a man. The fear of
love and getting hurt by it was starting to feel ridiculous as real pain, the
kind inflicted by automatic weapons, loomed literally at their feet.
But
as for the fairy tale? No. Tuck couldn’t embrace that concept even a little
bit, because being crouched against a rock face braced for the impact of the
bullet that would take his life while Becca was back in Oklahoma totally
unaware of why he’d really left was certainly no fairy tale ending.
“Here’s
my question.” Conseco paused to spit a dribble of tobacco-tinged saliva into
the dirt. “If you were having so much fun, then why the hell did you leave her
and volunteer to come to this shit hole? I would have said fuck it to the
university and their fucking rules and kept seeing her on the sly.”
Another
bullet hit close enough to Tuck he could hear the whoosh of it passing his ear.
To hell with it. If this were the last thing he ever said, the last man he ever
spoke to, he intended on speaking the truth. That old saying was true. There
were no atheists in foxholes, and though he would give a year’s salary just to
have a foxhole to hide in right now, this shale crevice was close enough.
As
if Conseco was a priest and Tuck at confession, he finally spoke the truth. “I
guess I left because I love her.”
“Did
you tell her you love her?” Conseco’s dirt-encrusted brows rose beneath the rim
of his helmet.
“No.”
A round hit particularly close, sending shards of rock into Tuck’s face. He
closed his eyes to protect them and then blinked away the dust.
Conseco
let out a snort. “You should have.”
Didn’t
Tuck know it.
AMAZON
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