Love and Sorrow (Small Town Secrets Book 5), стр. 83
“But, mom, why do you feel so guilty? It’s not your fault.”
Her words sunk down into my bones: It’s not your fault. And yet I had been feeling like it had been entirely my fault, that I had somehow been negligent. Sarah’s words washed over me, atoning me of a good portion of the guilt I’d been holding onto over the past year.
Unbuckling my seatbelt, I leaned over enough that I could hug my daughter. “Just know that I love you with all that I am and, if I can help it, I will never let anything happen to you again.”
“Don’t promise that, mom. Just promise you’ll always love me.”
“Yes, yes, absolutely. You’re a part of me. You’ll always be a part of me. When you hurt, I hurt. I only want what’s best for you.”
As I held my firstborn, still crying, I realized that my parents were the same—they only wanted what was best for me. I got over this new outpouring of tears and adjusted in my seat, ready to get back on the road when I spied Justin’s truck coming toward us down the highway. After he pulled a U, he parked behind the car and then hopped out of the truck, dashing up to the driver’s side of the van, and I rolled down the window.
“Everything okay?” My knight in shining armor asked.
“Great, actually.”
Justin smiled back at me, stroking my cheek with his finger. “Then what say we get our family home?”
Damn, I loved the sound of that. I nodded, re-buckling myself as I looked at Sarah again and winked. My daughter actually grinned back, and in that instant I saw the beautiful baby I’d once held in my arms, the sweet toddler, the young lady, and the woman Sarah would someday become.
Together, we had made it. And from this point forward, as a family, life would be better. Deep down, I knew it.
THE END
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Thank you for reading! I hope you loved meeting Randi and Justin. The next book in the Small Town Secrets series is Love and Romance. When steamy romance author Elizabeth loses the guy she calls her “pretend boyfriend,” what happens when her good-looking best friend steps in to pick up the pieces?
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Excerpt from Love and Romance
“Dude, just a second.” Holding up a finger, Ridley whips his cell phone out of his back pocket. Oh, yes, those faded blue jeans hug his ass, and just how nicely they do so is more apparent when he’s pulling something out of a pocket. The ring tone that plays is either Warrant’s “Cherry Pie” or something super nasty like Mӧtley Crüe’s “Ten Seconds to Love.” He brings the phone up to his ear after swiping the green Answer button on the screen and says, “Yeah, babe?” His full lips almost touch the phone but not quite, almost as though the phone screen is her lips and he is teasing her.
“I need you. Now.”
The corner of his mouth turns up in half a smile. God, he is so cocky that it’s almost a turnoff. “At your service.” He blinks, the long dark lashes that frame his blue eyes almost touching the inside lens of the sunglasses. He ends the call, sliding the phone back in his pocket, and saunters over to his Harley before turning back to his friend. “Sorry, man, but duty calls. The girlfriend needs me. Bad.” Smirking, he slides a helmet over his dark blond hair, pulling the strap snugly over his chin, avoiding the hair from the sexy goatee that he’s growing out.
* * *
I shook my head, trying to listen to what Ridley really said. I’d always imagined that kind of at your service response when I called, but, truthfully, I could usually sense the exasperation in his voice. I was pretty sure that the words in his head were bad timing, bitch, but who could resist a no-strings-attached booty call? Certainly not Ridley.
Still, I needed him and I needed him right this second. “Look…can you come or not?”
I could hear the smile in his voice, damn him. “Don’t get your panties in a twist, little Lizzie.” Oh, God, I hated when he called me that—and he knew it. But now was not the time to quibble. “I’ll be there in a sec. What are we doing this time?”
I suppose now is as good a time as any to let you know what was going on. I was an English instructor at Winchester Community College. It wasn’t a bad gig, especially since I couldn’t get a tenured position at a university to save my soul. Believe me, I tried when I’d first earned my fancy MFA in Creative Writing. I should have listened to my advisor back in my undergrad days when she’d told me an MFA was one of those dime-a-dozen degrees, and I’d be lucky to get a job teaching contemporary poetry at a soup kitchen in exchange for a slice of bread. At the time, though, I’d been sure the coursework would make me a much better writer than I’d been when I’d started and that the degree would pay for itself.
But five years after getting said degree, I was working my ass off paying through the nose for student loans that seemed to never dwindle in size. In all fairness, the