Cottonbloom, #1
by Laura Trentham
Releasing
May 31st 2016
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
St. Martin’s Paperbacks
BlurbA river divides Cottonbloom in two: the upscale enclave on the Mississippi side and the rundown, rough and tumble side in Louisiana. They’re worlds apart—but nothing can build a bridge like love…
Cade Fournette never had it easy Cottonbloom. He stuck around long enough to raise his orphaned siblings and then hightailed it out West—and never looked back. Even though he’s made a success of himself in Seattle, Cade never lost the toughness and the angry edge that helped him survive down South. His only weak spot: the girl he left behind…
Monroe Kirby came from the wealthy side of town, but that didn’t protect her from her mother’s drinking—or her mother’s boyfriend. It was Cade who did that, on a long-ago hot September night, before he disappeared…along with a piece of her heart. Now Monroe is a physical therapist who can fight for herself, and it’s Cade who could use some conditioning when he makes an unexpected return back home. Will he and Monroe pick up where they left off and finally explore their mutual passion—or will the scars and secrets of the past divide them once more?
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“You left Cottonbloom without telling me. Without saying
good-bye. I want to know why.” Monroe hadn’t meant for the words to come out at
all, much less with such vehemence.
“It was complicated.” Cade broke eye contact. “You were a
good kid in a bad situation.”
“Weren’t you a good kid in a bad situation?”
He shifted toward her, bracing a hand on the dash and
laying his other arm over the back of her seat, invading her space. She didn’t
retreat. His intensity spurred her heart rate into an erratic gallop, yet she
wasn’t intimidated. Perhaps it was only echoes of the past, but he made her
feel safe, even when he was the one she should be scared of.
“I grew up fast and tough.” His voice contained more than
a hint of warning.
“You were nice to me,” she said softly.
“Don’t fool yourself into thinking I’m nice. I wasn’t
then, and I’m sure as hell not now.”
He ran a callused finger down her cheek, the rasp
igniting her nerve endings like a flint. His hand continued south and wrapped
itself in her braid, the slight tug on her scalp sending shivers through her
body in spite of the sun bearing down on the truck. Her nipples felt tight, and
she hoped her tight sports tank masked her sudden, inexplicable arousal.
He pulled her braid, forcing her toward him. She didn’t
fight him. He dropped his face next to hers, his coarse beard hair caressing
her cheek, his mouth close to her ear. “If I see something I want, I go after
it and get it by any means necessary.”
“How very Machiavellian.” She tried a laugh, but it came
out more like a stuttering sigh. His scent hooked her even closer, and her lips
grazed the outer rim of his ear.
He pulled back, his green-eyed gaze roving her face. She
returned the favor, noting the faint brackets around his mouth, the crinkles at
his eyes, the thick beard. A full-grown man. Yet was he so different from the
boy she remembered?
“Ovid.” The movement of his lips jammed the cogs of her
brain. The word made no sense. Her confusion must have been obvious, because
the mouth she stared at tipped up in the corners, deepening the grooves. “The
Greek philosopher Ovid, not Machiavelli, actually wrote: The end justifies the
means.”
“Ovid. Of course.” Apparently, Monroe had slept through
that philosophy class at Ole Miss. The fact that high-school dropout Cade
Fournette was quoting Ovid made her wonder what other mysteries she might
uncover if she went digging.
Just when she was ready to grab a shovel, he released her
braid and slipped away. His limp was less pronounced as he took the stairs
holding the cane parallel to the ground. Although he’d physically released her,
she felt bound to him in some other fundamental way, incapable of tearing her
eyes off him until he disappeared behind Sawyer’s front door. Even then, she
sat, unable to drive away for a long minute.
How could the simple brush of Cade’s finger ignite a fire
when other men left her cold? As her arousal ebbed, she realized something
else. She’d just been manipulated by a master. He hadn’t explained why he left.
She spent the evening going through the motions of her
life, eating when her stomach growled and heading to bed when her eyes felt
heavy. A few short hours ago, her life had been tidy and predictable and
boring. Cade Fournette’s return had spun her into chaos.
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Author
InfoAn award-winning author, Laura Trentham was born and raised in a small town in Tennessee. Although, she loved English and reading in high school, she was convinced an English degree equated to starvation. She chose the next most logical major—Chemical Engineering—and worked in a hard hat and steel toed boots for several years.
She writes sexy, small town
contemporaries and smoking hot Regency historicals. The first two books of her
Falcon Football series were named Top Picks by RT Book Reviews magazine. When
not lost in a cozy Southern town or Regency England, she's shuttling kids to
soccer, helping with homework, and avoiding the Mt. Everest-sized pile of
laundry that is almost as large as the to-be-read pile of books on her
nightstand.
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