...I'm the one still in my jammies at one o'clock in the afternoon... (sigh)
Hey there, ya'all. Sorry to be late posting this morning. I have been virtually attending the 20Booksto50K Conference this week and after four days of drinking from a fire hose, I just dropped into bed last night with not an ounce of energy left to post a blog. LOL But the good news is that I'm moving again and thought I would share with you an excerpt from one of my Christmas stories.
Garland Creek Cowboy is the first story in the Legends of Garland Creek, which will eventually become a collection of holiday stories that focus on second-chance romances in the small mountain town of Garland Creek, Arizona.
Enjoy!
Melayna Gaines and Devin Douglas dated all through high school. But when Devin
proposed to Melayna just after graduation, she panicked and fled like her tail
was on fire. Her dream had always been to travel internationally, and Devin’s
future was tethered to Garland Creek.
Sixteen years later, Melayna returns to her hometown to celebrate Christmas
with her family, and comes face-to-face with the boy she’d loved in high
school—who has become a key figure in the town, and now has a fifteen-year-old
daughter.
Will the magic of Christmas in Garland Creek give these two star-crossed lovers
a second chance at love? Or is Devin destined to pick up the pieces of another
devastating rejection? After so many years, are their feelings still strong
enough to even try?
EXCERPT:
Melayna steeled herself as she pulled into the valet line and put the truck in park. She’d experienced a feeling of ‘coming home’ as soon as she’d landed in Arizona, but the tension had ratcheted up fast with every mile she drove toward Garland Creek. It was good to be home, but her entire family would be here—parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins—anyone and everyone with the power to turn her life on its head.
She adjusted the sunglasses on
her face and opened the door just as the valet approached.
The sandy-haired boy, who
couldn’t be much older than eighteen, smiled as he scribbled on a ticket. “Good
morning. May I park your car?”
Melayna returned the smile as she
swiped a lock of dark auburn hair from her face. “Take good care of her. She’s
my trusted steed.”
The boy grinned. “I’ll treat her
as if she’d just won the triple crown.”
She laughed as
she exchanged a five-dollar-bill for the ticket he offered, slipped her purse
strap over her shoulder, took a deep breath, and headed into the fray.
As she approached the entry to
the hotel, she could already hear the commotion inside. Her heart pounded as
she picked out the voices of her favorite Aunt Mandy and her grandmother. Yep,
her family was here…loud and proud.
She hesitated. It would be easy
to turn and run. She glanced over her shoulder.
My truck’s still in the valet line. No one would ever know I was here.
The thought of the histrionics
she would face from her grandmother if she didn’t show propelled her forward. Melayna’s
family had a lot of Jewish heritage, which had only served to give her grandmother
an excuse to hone her over-the-top theatrics. It had nothing to do with being
Jewish, and everything to do with being in control.
She pulled in another deep breath
and slowly exhaled.
Just do it.
Melayna stepped through the
doorway of the hotel to find the lobby filled with familiar faces and booming
voices. She didn’t get three feet inside the door before she was set upon by
her cousin, Lane. “Hey, Mel, good to see you.” He hugged her. “You shoulda
run.”
She chuckled. “You saw that?”
He nodded. “Yes, and they’re in
fine form—especially your grandmother.”
Her stomach churned. “G-u-u-r-r-r-e-a-t.”
She and Lane shared the same gramma on the Jewish side of her family tree, but
they always assigned ownership to the other whenever she acted out.
Lane grinned as he pointed toward
the front desk. “Oh, look, here she comes now.”
Melayna pasted a cheesy smile on
her face, pulled her shoulders back, and turned to face the onslaught that was Colleen
Gaines.
“Oh, Melayna, you’re late,” she
announced to anyone within earshot. She waved her arms in the air as she
approached, her dark silver bob brushing the tops of her shoulders. “I worried
maybe you’d had an accident and were lying dead in a ditch somewhere and
couldn’t use the phone. You shouldn’t scare your poor grandmother like that. Would
it have hurt you to call? I’m not as young as I used to be, and you shaved ten
years off what little life I have left.”
Melayna was surprised to find her
grandmother had shrunk a bit. Colleen had always been rather tall—about
five-foot-seven. But now she seemed much shorter, perhaps no more than five-five.
Melayna’s heart wrenched at the
thought of the family matriarch aging. She’d always been so full of life.
“Look, everyone,” Colleen declared
at the volume of a bullhorn, “it’s Melayna.”
Her vocal cords still work.
Her grandmother continued. “She’s okay. She’s not dead.” She
immediately straightened the collar on Melayna’s coat before she threw her arms
around her granddaughter.
Melayna heard Lane snicker behind
her and she smiled, surprised to feel the tension drain from her the moment she
hugged her gramma. It didn’t usually work this way. Colleen Gaines was the
Grand Poobah of the women who filled her life with tension. She was not the
woman who took it away.
She thought about reminding her
grandmother it was eleven-twenty, and she’d promised to arrive by noon. By any
reasonable standard, she was on time, early even. But it wouldn’t matter to Colleen
Gaines. It wasn’t about what time she arrived, it was about having everyone’s
undivided attention.
So, when she was finally released
from the hug, Melayna nodded as she met her gramma’s crystal-clear blue gaze. “I’m
fine, and I’m sorry you were worried.”
The older woman must have
expected a fight because she narrowed her gaze and stared at Melayna. “Are you
okay?” She put her hand to her granddaughter’s forehead. “You’re not getting
sick, are you?”
Melayna waved her hand away. “No,
I’m not sick.” Eager to change the subject, she asked, “Are my parents here
yet?” Her mother had called a couple of days before to say they were visiting
friends in Phoenix and might not be back home until the day of the party.
Her grandmother let out an
over-the-top theatrical sigh as she put her hand to her forehead. “No. They are
visiting strangers down in the valley and don’t have time for us. They won’t
arrive until Friday afternoon. I’m just sick over it.”
Before Colleen could continue
with her performance, the aunts mounted an intervention. Melayna’s family was
large—lots of cousins, lots of aunts and uncles. At the moment, she counted six
aunts crowding around her, all chattering at once, all vying for a hug.
“Where’s Aunt Cee?” she asked, of
no one in particular, as she hugged each of her aunts, in succession.
Her Aunt Mandy shrugged. “She was
here a minute ago. She probably had to pee.” Mandy rolled her dark brown eyes.
“I swear, that woman has a bladder the size of a pea.” She scanned the crowd
and raised her hands in the air. “What did I tell you? There she is now…” Mandy
pointed across the crowded lobby at a woman hurrying in their direction, and
lowered her voice as she added, “…with half a roll of toilet paper hanging out
the back of her pants.”
Melayna looked in the direction
her Aunt Mandy had pointed, to find her round Aunt Cee barreling toward them at
the speed of sound, waving and calling out, “Oh, Melayna, there you are. I’m so
happy you could make it.” Behind her trailed about five foot of toilet paper,
flapping in her wake.
Melayna snorted, and immediately
covered her mouth, as Aunt Cee made her way across the crowded lobby to a sea
of laughter. The gaggle of aunts abandoned her to march to the aid of their
clueless sister.
She smiled, unusually entertained
by her family’s antics, which used to annoy the crap out of her, and grateful
she’d cleared her calendar. She had decided if all went well, she would stay a
few weeks. And if it didn’t, she’d return to Denver. For the next month, she
had no commitments either way.
“I see some things never change.”
The baritone voice over her shoulder made the hair stand up on the back of her
neck as goose bumps skittered across her shoulders.
She turned to find Devin Douglas
wearing the lopsided grin that had almost been her downfall in high school. She
swallowed hard as a flutter started in her heart and dropped to the pit of her
stomach.
Stop that. This isn’t high school.
“Well, hello, Devin.” She smiled,
struggling to maintain control over the riot of impulses slamming through her
body, and relieved her voice didn’t give her away. “It’s so good to see you
again.”
He reached to hug her. “It’s been
a long time, Mel.”
She slipped her arms around him
and breathed deep, remembering the subtle smell of his cologne. Devin had put
on size and stature since high school, and she thought perhaps he may even have
grown another inch. At six-foot-two or three, he dwarfed her, but his hug was
gentle—just as she remembered. She barely resisted the urge to snuggle in.
She and Devin Douglas had been in
love back in their senior year of high school. But when he asked her to marry
him the day after graduation, she panicked and broke it off, fleeing to an
out-of-town university and the life of travel she’d always dreamed of.
Devin had been considered the
best catch in town, so it wasn’t that he didn’t have a lot to offer, and she had been in love with him. But his dream
had been to stay on the family ranch and continue to raise cattle, as four
generations of Douglases had before him.
Her dream had been to graduate
from college and travel the world, and she’d had a desperate need to get away
from her smothering family. So the fear of having her dreams crushed by
marrying Devin had driven her to run like a wild mustang from the future every
other young woman in Garland Creek would have given her eye teeth for.
She’d seen her family at their
enormous yearly reunions in Las Vegas. But this was the first time she had been
home since she’d bolted, and the first time she’d seen Devin Douglas in sixteen
years.
She stepped out of the hug with
the sense he’d turned loose of her reluctantly. She squashed the little niggle
of hope that squirmed through her gut when he trailed one hand down her arm.
She smiled. “It has been a long time.” She couldn’t
resist a quick look up and down. He’d matured into one of the most handsome men
she’d ever seen—a tall, sturdy, gorgeous hunk of cowboy wearing a black Stetson
and a bearing that screamed confidence. “You are looking wonderful.”
She did a mental head-slap at the
realization that she’d openly ogled her ex-boyfriend.
He probably has a wife and three kids by now, you idjit. Remember why
you left—ran, actually.
Devin returned the ogle. “And
you’re still the prettiest girl in Garland Creek.” He held her gaze and the
crooked grin returned, bringing a twinkle to his dark green eyes, “This town
hasn’t been the same since you left.”
His hair was shorter, dark, and
he now wore a close-cut beard and moustache. But beneath the changes, he was
still the most handsome man she’d ever laid eyes on. She had to remind herself
to breathe, and it annoyed her. How could a man have such a hold on her for so
long—and from such a distance?
Devin cut his gaze toward the
lobby and back again. “So, I see the Gaines family has turned out in force.”
She rolled her eyes. “And you
expected something different? The Founders Ball is the perfect event for this
tribe to show off their flair for drama. There isn’t a one of them who would
miss it.”
He laughed, the corners of his
eyes crinkling slightly. “Yeah, what was I thinking?”
“I can’t imagine. You’ve known
them almost as long as I have. You know how they are.”
A pretty young girl with dark
auburn hair and brown eyes, who looked to be around fifteen or sixteen, stepped
up behind Devin and tugged at the sleeve of his jacket.
He turned and wrapped an arm
around the girl, pulling her into the little circle. “Mel, I want you to meet
my daughter, Parker.”
“Daughter?” Melayna’s heart
dropped to her feet and she gasped a silent breath as her heart hammered in her
chest and her mind screamed nooo. From
the apparent age of this girl, he hadn’t lost any time replacing her after high
school.
Melayna extended her hand.
“Hello, Parker. I’m Melayna Gaines.” She hoped the young girl couldn’t feel her
shake, or that Devin couldn’t hear the screaming in her head.
Parker shook her hand and flashed
a dazzling smile full of straight, white teeth, with the braces still on them.
“It’s nice to meet you.”
Melayna struggled to regroup while
Devin spoke to his daughter. “Mel is an old friend of mine. We went to high
school together.”
She nodded and shifted her gaze
back to Melayna. “So, did you move away?”
Melayna nodded. “Yes. I live in Denver
now, but I’m hardly ever there.” She winced inwardly at the edge of
disappointment in her voice as she added, “I travel a lot all over the world for
my job.”
Parker’s face lit. “Oh, how
exciting.”
Melayna knew all too well how
glamorous international travel would sound to a young girl. It had certainly
captured her attention as a teenager. Now she found a corner of her heart
yearned for a little slice of home. She was happy she came.
“So, I heard you’re doing
livestock appraisal these days. I didn’t think you were going to go into
anything agricultural,” Devin said.
She shrugged. “I wasn’t. But I
switched to something more in my wheelhouse when I realized how much a social
worker didn’t make—even an international social worker. Decided I’d rather make
enough to travel in mid-range accommodations, than work in a field that afforded
me the kind of travel that came with a government-issued mosquito net.”
“Sounds like you chose right.”
“Yeah,” she replied, “I got lucky
and fell into a job with a built-in world class mentor. His training and advice
propelled me to the top of the industry.”
“You married?”
There it was…the open door to
confirm the bad news. She shook her head. “No. I haven’t had time. Just me.” It
sounded so pitiful that she tried to lighten things by adding, “My neighbor’s
cat comes to visit when I’m home.” All she managed to do was sound even more
pathetic, so she tried to turn the table. “You?” She shifted her gaze to Parker
and back. “You must have a half-dozen by now.”
Devin stared at her for a moment
before he pulled in a visible breath. “No, I’ve never married.” He reached out
and stroked the dark brown hair sticking out from beneath Parker’s pink baseball
cap. “This one was a very pleasant surprise.” Love for Parker was written all
over his expression.
Relief flooded Melayna’s system
with such force, she locked her knees to remain upright. The next emotion to
slam into her was envy. Devin had once looked at her with such love. Her throat
was so tight that she didn’t trust herself to speak right away, so she kept her
gaze on Parker, who chewed on her lower lip, clearly uncomfortable to be the
subject of discussion.
Love ya,
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