Excerpt Reveal: RIVETED by Jay Crownover
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Marked Men books comes the next installment in the Saints of Denver series.
Everyone else in Dixie Carmichael’s life has made falling in love look easy, and now she is ready for her own chance at some of that happily ever after. Which means she’s done pining for the moody, silent former soldier who works with her at the bar that’s become her home away from home. Nope. No more chasing the hot as heck thundercloud of a man and no more waiting for Mr. Right to find her; she’s going hunting for him...even if she knows her heart is stuck on its stupid infatuation with Dash Churchill.
Denver has always been just a pit stop for Church on his way back to rural Mississippi. It was supposed to be simple, uneventful, but nothing could have prepared him for the bubbly, bouncy redhead with doe eyes and endless curves. Now he knows it’s time to get out of Denver, fast. For a man used to living in the shadows, the idea of spending his days in the sun is nothing short of terrifying.
When Dixie and Church find themselves caught up in a homecoming overshadowed with lies and danger, Dixie realizes that while falling in love is easy, loving takes a whole lot more work…especially when Mr. Right thinks he’s all wrong for you.
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Church
“You’ve been awfully quiet tonight.”
The southern drawl was lighter than mine, more lyrical
and smooth. The Blue Hills of Kentucky rolled thick and unmistakable in Asa
Cross’s twang as he looked at me steadily from behind the massive oak bar he
was currently in the middle of wiping down.
“I talk when I have something to say.” No one would
ever accuse me of being the chatty type. When I did choose to speak the
Mississippi Delta was deep and locked thickly around all my words. My drawl was
much slower than the blond bartender’s and far less practiced. Asa used his
inflection and his southern charm to work whoever was sitting on the other side
of the bar like they were one of his marks in a long con. He turned up the
south in his voice to make hearts flutter and to fool drunks into thinking he
was far less sharp than he was. His Kentucky-flavored tone was nothing more
than a tool he used to his advantage whenever he needed it, while my unhurried
inflection reminded me of a home I hadn’t seen in far too long. That was one of
the reasons I never had much to say. Every time I opened my mouth the sound of
my voice, like molasses over gravel and deep as the Mississippi River, took me
back to a place I had been actively avoiding for over a decade.
I’d spent a little over ten years serving my country
in various capacities while enlisted in the army. I’d been around different
types of men from a million different walks of life. In all that time I’d never
met anyone as hard to unravel as the man standing across from me. He had eyes
the exact same color as the aged whiskey on the shelf behind him, and they were
picking me apart with a perceptiveness that made me uneasy. I wasn’t used to
being so transparent. Whatever shield I had up, whatever ironclad curtains I
had pulled around me, Asa Cross saw right through them.
“You are usually quiet, but tonight you didn’t say a
single word. You look like you have something on your mind.” His eyebrows
lifted and that smirk on his face turned into a grin that I wanted to put my
fist in. He wouldn’t be half as pretty as he was with missing teeth and a
bloody nose. “Dixie had a date tonight. I figure you were worried about her
since she’s been spending time with those internet guys over the last few
months, and the bar is never the same on her nights off.”
My back teeth clicked together in aggravation and a
low growl escaped my throat. My hands curled into fists at my sides without me
being aware they were doing it and I could feel a furious heat climb up the
back of my neck.
The idea of Dixie, sweet, sunny Dixie, out there with
God only knew what kind of troll she was going to find on the internet made me
want to destroy everything. I wanted to break the bar top in half. I wanted to
throw chairs through windows. I wanted to smash all the meticulously placed bottles
displayed behind Asa into smithereens. I wanted to dropkick the remaining few
stragglers nursing their last-call drinks out the door and I wanted to get my
hands on whoever had taken Dixie out tonight and throttle him within an inch of
his life.
Logically, I knew there were decent, normal
individuals using the internet to find love and sex . . . the sex being more
likely. There were millions of people online dating and while I thought that
was okay for them I refused to think it was an option Dixie should be
utilizing. I hated the idea of her dating at all, but there was something about
her meeting strangers, meeting men that hadn’t had the opportunity to see her
in person before taking her out, that really rubbed me the wrong way.
Dixie Carmichael was the nicest girl I had ever met.
She didn’t have a mean bone in her perfectly curvy and petite body. She was
always smiling, always laughing, and there wasn’t a moment spent in her company
where it didn’t feel like the sun was shining directly on you. She embodied
warmth and care. Someone behind a computer monitor would never understand that.
They would never feel the way her innate ability to make everything seem like
it would be okay made the world seem like it was worth saving. There was a lot
of bad shoved at us all on a day-to-day basis but somehow Dixie was a filter
for it, and when you were around her it seemed like the only thing you could
focus on was the good she let through.
She needed someone that could appreciate that. She
needed a man that shined as bright as she did and that would hold her above the
shit that was always trying to drag everyone else down. I doubted that guy was
on Tinder or Bumble. In fact, I doubted that guy existed at all.
“I don’t keep track of her comings and goings.” I rubbed
a hand over my mouth and watched as Asa’s eyebrows shot up and his lips
twitched. I was a damn good liar. I lied to myself for years and years about
the kind of man I was in order to convince myself that the choices I made were
the right ones. But I was currently trying to lie to a man that was a
professional liar, so it was no surprise that he saw right through the bullshit
I was laying down.
“Ahh . . . I see. You have no interest in the fact she
might be out there with a serial killer that wants to turn her pretty hair into
a coat for his pet hamster?”
I glowered at him and crossed my arms over my chest. I
was a big guy. Years of doing PT and boredom in the desert had led to a
strenuous fitness routine I still maintained, partly out of habit and partly
because when my muscles burned and I made myself sweat I could shut off all the
other stuff that was crowding my head. Some of it nagging, niggling regret from
the past, a whole lot of it new nightmares and realizations from my present. I
had a couple inches in height on the Kentucky charmer and a whole lot more
brute strength. Yet none of that or the glower that I was sure was stamped
across my face kept Asa from keeping his stupid, sound advice to himself.
“Dixie is a good girl, she deserves someone who can
give her that kind of good back.” I could see the surprise on Asa’s face as I
finally gave him something that was wholeheartedly true.
He pushed off the bar and hollered that it was time
for the last few customers to finish up. There were some grumbles but everyone
left was a regular and as soon as the clock hit one thirty they would move
towards the door without any hassle. I liked nights like this, where there were
no fights to break up, no crying girls to console, no puke to clean off the
floor, no amorous couples to shoo out of the bathrooms. Typically on a night
like this I would watch Dixie scamper around shutting the bar down while
pretending I wasn’t looking at her. I couldn’t help myself. My eyes were pulled
to her and when she laughed or smiled I felt it in my gut like a punch. She did
things to me that no woman had ever done to me before.
She made me want to smile and that alone was enough to
have my feet itching to hit the road before I did something stupid, like fall
in love or take her up on her blatant invitation into her bed. I wanted to fuck
her, but I knew if I did it would fuck us both. She was nothing but good and
when I got good in my life it always went bad, so I didn’t allow myself, or
her, to go there. She shone as bright as the sun every single day but I was a
man that knew all too well that too much time in the sun could lead to some
serious burns.
I’d spent the last few months biting my tongue until
it bled while she dated men that weren’t me and I went to bed alone each night wondering
why I didn’t just pick up one of the barflies that hung around making it known
they were ripe for the picking.
I’d never been the kind of guy that burned through
women. My mother, and subsequently the women that stepped in to raise me after
my mom was gone, Elma Mae and Caroline, taught me to understand that women’s
hearts were fragile and you had to be careful with them. They tried to teach me
how to take care of the good when you had it, how to respect it and earn it. I
kept the lessons close because they were some of the only things I had left of
the women that shared them with me. I never played with a woman’s body if I
didn’t know for sure her heart was kept in a separate box somewhere. I liked my
hands on soft tits and full hips, and silky legs wrapped around my back as much
as any other guy. What I didn’t like was wiping away tears, explaining myself,
and dramatic good-byes when I didn’t stick around after a good time. I was
picky about who I went to bed with and I made sure they understood all my hard
and fast rules about not committing or sticking around before I ever put my
hands on them.
“Denver was just a pit stop.” I rubbed my hand over
the top of my buzzed head and looked down at the wooden floor under my boots.
“With everything that happened with Brite and Avett a few weeks ago I think
it’s about time I put some space between me and the Mile High.” A friend and
his daughter had recently run afoul of some really nasty people. My old
commanding officer and current boss and I had moved in to help in any way we
could, which ended with bullets and blood and some seriously pissed-off drug
dealers. Holding a weapon in my hand and kicking in doors was second nature to
me. I missed the fire of combat in my blood and the adrenaline coursing through
my veins. I was made to fight, not to rest on my laurels. “Well past time I
made my way home and tried to mend some fences.”
This was why Asa was such a good bartender. He pulled
your story out of you whether you were planning on telling it or not, and he
listened like he cared even if my story was told in fewer words than he was
used to.
He nodded at me and pushed a rocks glass filled with
amber liquor towards me. He typically drank Scotch at the end of the night, but
I was a bourbon guy through and through. “I know all about mending fences,
brother. Not a day goes by that I don’t have to dig a hole for a new post and
string up some new wire.” He took a swig of his own drink and plastered that
arrogant smirk back on his face. “Plus you might as well run before that girl
you’ve been watching when she isn’t watching you fall in love with someone who
ain’t you.”
I was going to hit him. My intent must have been clear
because he put his glass down on the bar and lifted his hands up in a gesture
of surrender. “My girlfriend is armed and she likes my pretty face the way it
is. Keep that in mind, soldier.”
I slammed back the rest of the bourbon and let it burn
its way down my throat. “Fuck you, Opie.”
He chuckled at me and turned to cash out the register
behind him. “That’s why they say the truth hurts, Church.”
Before I had been Church I’d been Dash. And before I
had been Dash I’d been Dashel. It was already hard enough being a kid with less
than white skin and with parents in an interracial relationship, but having a
name that was as uncommon as mine down in the Deep South was fuel on an already
burning fire. I’d hated it growing up and even with shortening it to Dash I’d
still struggled with it. But now I’d been Church for a long time, and he was a
man that didn’t give any kind of shit what anyone else thought of his name. I’d
earned that nickname through service and blood. It wasn’t a name that was given
to me. It was one I had taken and made my own. Elma Mae was going to hate it
and she was still going to call me Dashel even when I begged her not to but
there was a part of me that couldn’t wait to hear the stubborn old woman tell
me, I’ll call you by the name your mother picked out for you, son. That’s the
name she wanted for you and you should respect it. I should, but there were a
lot of things I should have done to make my mom proud that I didn’t do.
The truth Asa
was laying down did hurt, because there was no hiding from him that part of the
reason I was ready to bolt was because I really couldn’t stomach the idea of
watching someone else take Dixie’s heart.
“Didn’t ask you for the truth.” I stuck my head out
the front door and watched as the last two bar patrons climbed into their Uber.
I locked the front door and shut off most of the lights and made my way back to
the bar.
I liked the operation Rome had set up here. I liked
the people, both the ones who worked for him and the ones he served, and I
liked that the atmosphere was usually festive but pretty mellow. On the nights
that heads needed to be cracked and tempers needed to be tamed I enjoyed the
exertion and physicality of that as well, but I wasn’t meant to be a bouncer. I
had too much training, too much experience, and frankly too many demons that
needed an outlet, to babysit drunks and party girls for the long haul. It was
time for me to stop drifting.
Asa finished up with the money and shot a glance at
his phone. I could tell by the genuine smile that crossed his face and the way
his gaze sparked that his gorgeous redheaded girlfriend was the one behind the
message. Royal Hastings, the pretty Denver policewoman had recently moved in
with the annoying southerner and it wouldn’t surprise me if she ended up with a
ring on her finger before the year was out. The cop and the con had something
special going on even if I firmly believed it was doomed to fail.
“Most folks don’t ask for the truth but that doesn’t
stop me from giving it to them.” He gave me a look that told me if I was any
kind of man I would take that truth he was so fond of and do something smart
with it. I didn’t bother to tell him good and
I didn’t really see eye to eye. We made our way to the
back door after a quick stop at the office to lock the money up in the safe.
Asa scribbled a note to Rome and then quickly checked the security cameras. He
typed out a message on his phone and by the time we hit the parking lot at the
back of the bar a brand-new Toyota 4Runner was pulling in with a smiling
redhead behind the wheel.
Asa clapped a hand on my shoulder and gave me a look
that burned with understanding and seriousness. I felt like he was speaking
directly into my soul when he told me quietly, “The real truth is, I let
something good go, so I know how that feels. Got it back and would move heaven
and earth to keep it by my side, so I know exactly what you’re walking away
from, soldier. Be smarter than I was and don’t let all that goodness slip
through your fingers.” He turned around and walked backwards for a second while
flashing me that shit-eating grin of his. “It’s always better to be warm than
it is to suffer the cold, Church.”
He moved towards the SUV and I had to look away when
he leaned into the driver’s side window to kiss his girl. There was so much
intimacy there, so much passion that it made everything I swore I knew about
love and togetherness pull against the reins that held it tight.
I gave a halfhearted wave as Royal honked the horn at
me and pulled out of the parking lot, then made my way over to my Harley. It
was still nice enough weather to ride, another reason I needed to get my ass in
gear and head south. In a few weeks it was going to be too cold to have the
bike on the road and I wasn’t interested in putting the beauty on a trailer and
driving her like some expensive piece of luggage back to Mississippi.
I was swinging my leg over the chrome-and-leather
beast when my phone vibrated in my back pocket. It was after two in the morning
so I knew anything buzzing through at this time of night couldn’t be good.
Considering I’d recently shot Denver’s top drug supplier’s right-hand man and
put down another one of his henchmen for good, I was dreading seeing what was
waiting for me on the display.
It was almost as bad as I expected it to be. The
number was one I’d been ignoring since I landed in Denver months ago. It was a
number that belonged to a man that I owed more than some simple conversation or
a handful of words. It was a call I would have continued to ignore if it hadn’t
come in the middle of the night and on the heels of three other calls
throughout the day that I had turned a blind eye to.
It was time to stop running from my past. It was time
to man up.
It was time to be a better man, the man the person
calling had tried his best to raise me to be.
“Hey, Julian.” I rested the Harley back on the
kickstand and ran a hand over my face. I could practically feel the shock
wafting across the phone line. He hadn’t expected me to answer and that made me
a special kind of asshole.
“Dash.” His voice was even deeper and coarser than
mine. People often told me I sounded like Johnny Cash but Julian Churchill
really had the Man in Black’s rough growl embedded throughout his tone. “I
didn’t think you were going to answer.” I sighed and felt like the wild
five-year-old he had tried to wrangle all over again. “Been busy. Took a while
to settle in and get used to sleeping without bombs going off overhead.”
He didn’t say anything for a long minute and when he
spoke I could tell he was trying really hard to keep the hurt and censure out
of his deep voice. “You have a perfectly good bed here and last I heard there
weren’t any bombs in Lowry.” Lowry was the small town where I had been born and
raised, just outside of Tupelo, Mississippi. There weren’t bombs there but
there was a bucket load of memories that blasted me with emotional shrapnel
that hurt worse than the kind I’d had surgically removed from my skin.
“I needed time, Jules.”
“Had more than enough time, son. You need to come
home.” I bristled just like I always did when he tried to tell me what to do. I
thought I’d squashed that urge after we stood side by side and lowered my mom
into the ground but there was something about him talking to me like I should
know better that always made me feel like an unruly kid.
“Planning on it. Have to tie up a few loose ends
around here, and I have to make sure I don’t leave my friend that helped me out
in a lurch.” Rome would send me on my way with a pat on the back and a foot in
my ass if he knew the real reason I was hiding in Colorado instead of
hightailing it home. He was understanding, but the man was all about family
first and he wouldn’t abide the way I’d been avoiding mine for the last decade
or so. I was a coward and I didn’t want a man I’d been in the trenches with, a
man I would die for and knew would die for me, to know just how deeply that
weakness ran.
“Dash.” There was a sigh and then Julian cleared his
throat, so I knew he was struggling to keep his emotions in check. “Elma Mae
had an accident.”
I almost dropped the phone as I bolted up from my
lounging position on the bike. “What do you mean she had an accident?” My
fingers tightened around the phone to the point that my knuckles hurt and the
blood rushing furiously between my ears made hearing his response difficult.
“She was carrying her laundry in off the line and
tripped going up the stairs. She fell backwards and busted her hip. A neighbor
heard the commotion and ran to help. They had to airlift her to the hospital in
Tupelo. She’s also got a dislocated shoulder and a sprained wrist. She’s back
in the Lowry hospital now recovering and she should be going home at the end of
the week.”
“Jesus.” Elma Mae was chasing down eighty if she was a
day. None of us knew her exact age and she refused to tell. She would just
smile at us and tell us we kept her young. Those kinds of injuries were serious
for someone in their prime. In a woman Elma’s age they were life threatening.
“She gonna be all right?”
“Elma is a tough old bird. It’ll take more than a
tumble to keep her down. She’s been asking about you.”
Well, if that wasn’t just a fucking red-hot poker right
through the guts. It was also a slap across the face with the reality of
everything I’d purposely been avoiding and denying for way too long.
“I bought a Harley. Gonna have to ride it home, so
I’ll be there in a couple days.” My homecoming was happening sooner than I’d
planned, but there was no way I couldn’t be there for the woman that had always
been my true north. When nothing else in my life made sense there was Elma Mae.
She was the only safe place I had ever known and if she needed me I was going
to be there to return the favor. I owed the woman everything and the fact I’d
waited so long to see her after years of deployment was a startlingly clear
reminder of why I was correct and considerate in staying the hell away from
Dixie.
She lived in the light and I was far more comfortable
hiding in the dark.
“I’ll let her
know. That will make her day.” He paused for a second, which made me brace for
whatever was coming next. “She mentioned a girl. Elma told me the reason you
weren’t in any hurry to come home from Denver was because of a girl. That
true?”
Son of a bitch. The truth might hurt but the lies I
told, and they were more gray than white, were going to outright kill me.
“There’s a girl.” And there was, but she wasn’t entirely the reason I wasn’t ready
to face Julian or anyone else back in Lowry. She had been one of my reasons for
sticking around Denver longer than I’d planned. She was an excuse that would
buy me time and one that wasn’t entirely untrue.
“Do me a favor and see if you can bring her with you.
Elma would love nothing more than to see you happy, to know you’re finally
settling down and moving past the things that happened with your mom and with
Caroline. You bring your girl home with you and give all of us some peace of
mind. Make an old woman happy, Dash. You owe Elma a few years where she doesn’t
have to worry about you catching bullets or ending up alone.”
Shit. I rubbed my temples and kicked at the loose
gravel under the soles of my boots. “I’ll see what I can do.” That was
bullshit. Dixie would drop everything and come with me if I explained the
situation. She was too nice and too sweet to tell me no. Elma Mae was going to
goddamn love her after she gave her a ration of hell in order to make sure she
was the right girl for her boy.
“If the girl cares about you then she’ll figure out a
way to be here. If she can’t figure it out, she isn’t worth your time. Come
home, son, we miss you.”
I missed home, too, but I could do without the
memories and reminders that had kept me away since the day I signed my life
away to my country.
It was my turn to sigh. “I’ll see you soon, Jules.” He
hung up and I wanted to kick myself because after all these years and all the
time and effort he put into raising me I still couldn’t call the man Dad. He
deserved the title, after all it was his last name I carried around with me,
not that of the man who had knocked my mom up and run. He had earned it much
like I had earned my name, but whenever I tried to say it the word got stuck
and I fell back on something that seemed less important. It felt like I was
fooling God and everyone under the sun about just how important Julian was to
me if I refused to call him the only thing he had ever been to me. I was trying
to trick fate so Jules didn’t end up the way so many others I loved had.
I was also going home, and I was going to put some
sunshine in my pocket and take it with me.
Jay Crownover continues her Saints of Denver series with Riveted, available February 14th, 2017
Give yourself a Valentine's Day gift in advance...Preorder and fill out the form here: https://a.pgtb.me/t0JkQX
Pre-order Riveted today and on February 14th, you'll also receive a glossy Saints of Denver poster and an exclusive first-look at Chapters 1 and 2 of Avenged, her forthcoming Mackenzie Family novella.
Avenged combines the grit of Saints of Denver series with the all-out heat of The Point series with a mind-blowing, mystery, yet-to-be-revealed, couple combining both of these worlds. Be one of the first to find out who it is, pre-order Riveted today.
Posters will be mailed the week of February 14th and Avenged chapters will arrive via email.
Jay Crownover is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Marked Men, The Point, and the Saints of Denver series. Like her characters, she is a big fan of tattoos. She loves music and wishes she could be a rock star, but since she has no aptitude for singing or instrument playing, she'll settle for writing stories with interesting characters that make the reader feel something. She lives in Colorado with her three dogs.
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