The final book in the Texas series which
started with The Heart of Texas is available 25 September.
Buylinks:
RJ Scott Website
Blurb:
Sometimes
Riley and Jack have to be the ones to fight other people's battles and stand up
for what is right.
With the life changing prospect of a yes
vote from SCOTUS on the issue of same sex marriage, Riley and Jack realise they
have decisions to make. Add in some distressing family news and the very real
possibility that old secrets may resurface, and this last book in the Texas
series pulls together as many threads as the boys can manage to handle.
But through all the ups and the downs,
children, family events, laughter, and tears, there is nothing as special as
the forever love between these two men.
The full book list:
Book 1 - The
Heart of Texas
Book 2 - Texas
Winter
Book 3 - Texas Heat
Book 4 - Texas
Family
Book 5 - Texas
Christmas
Book 6 - Texas Fall
Book 7 - Texas
Wedding
Excerpt
Chapter One
Jack slid his arms around Riley from behind
and pressed his cheek to the space between broad shoulders. He couldn’t stop
himself from moving his hands under the soft T-shirt material and caressing the
warm skin. Touching Riley was an addiction.
“You all done?” he asked.
Riley turned in Jack’s hold, the laundry in
his hands crushing between them.
“It’s like these tiny T-shirts multiply,”
Riley groused. “I turn my back for one minute and suddenly there’s another ten
of the damn things.”
Jack smiled up at his husband, at the
narrowing of his beautiful hazel eyes and the stubborn set of his mouth. Then
he released his hold of his waist and instead cradled his face.
“It was your idea to sort out the twins’ old
clothes,” he reminded Riley.
“I wanted to box it away….”
“We can do it together at the weekend.”
“I want to do it today—”
“It’s a Tuesday.” Jack interrupted Riley’s
reasons why. “I thought you said you had that report to read from Tom?”
Riley huffed a little. “I can’t
concentrate.”
“So, you’re sorting clothes?”
“Is that a bad thing?” Riley sounded so
defensive.
Jack sighed. “What are you avoiding?”
Riley raised an eyebrow, and Jack couldn’t
help but press a kiss to his lips. After all this time together, he had learned
these weird domestic chores Riley undertook were usually a way of avoiding
things he didn’t want to do. Whether it was Riley’s way of thinking about
things, or pure procrastination, Jack didn’t know.
“I have a shareholder meeting the first
week of February.” Riley finally said.
“I know. I got the same letter, but I
wasn’t planning on going. Why will this be different from any other meeting?”
Jack was confused. Hayes Oil meetings were dry and boring, and he’d survived
the only two he’d attended by slouching back in a chair directly opposite
Riley. He would eat as many of the complimentary mints as he could manage and
gently disrupt the meeting by rustling the wrappers. This never failed to make
Riley smile. Mostly Jack conned Josh into going, or gave Riley his proxy.
Still, when he did go, he loved nothing better than insolently lazing around
and being all cowboy in the room full of suits. Inevitably, this led to hot sex
with Riley, who couldn’t keep his eyes off Jack throughout the entire meeting.
“I have something to admit,” Riley said
with a sigh. He eased himself away from Jack and leaned back against the
cabinet. “Dad has appointed this new manager to the team, and we have a
history.”
Jack huffed a laugh. “Riley, you have a
history with so many people, I lost count.”
Riley looked affronted for a second, but
that emotion didn’t slip into a ready smile, so Jack realized this was serious.
Jack stood next to Riley and waited for the man he loved, to admit what the
hell was going on. In fact, Riley had been weird for a few days: less quick to
smile, less easy to poke at, in a hurry to go find a quiet space away from
everyone.
“Not like that,” Riley said. “The woman’s
name is Charlotte Harrold, and her dad is Josiah.”
Jack nodded. He and Josiah had their own
kind of history, one where Josiah had tried courting Donna and failed, where
Josiah looked down at Jack, and where Jack refused to give a rat’s ass. The
fucker had blocked Hayes Oil on several occasions and didn’t have a high
opinion of Riley, nor of Riley and Jack. Add to that, Tom, Riley’s right-hand
man at work, had unfortunately had a run-in with Josiah Jr., Charlotte’s
brother. Too much history between the Hayes and Harrold families.
“Why would Jim hire her, then?” Jack paused
to think about what he knew concerning Charlotte. “I remember her being a bitch
with daddy issues.”
Riley shrugged. “I don’t know. I mean, I
asked him, and he said she’s good at what she does, and that she’s changed,
whatever that means. Oh, and I should give her as much of a chance as people
gave me.”
“Cryptic. So you think she’s going to cause
trouble.”
Riley looked at Jack sharply. “Hell no. I
know her work, and she’ll be an asset. It’s only….”
Jack tensed. “You slept with her.”
“Jesus, Jack,” Riley said instantly. “No
way. She was Jeff’s. I mean she and Jeff were having an affair. He called her
Charlie, and I damn well walked in on them once. The wedding photos were still
wet at the printer’s, and there he was, fucking around on Lisa.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, oh. And we’re going to be in the
same room as her. All I can remember is that Jeff was balls-deep in Charlie,
and he had his hands—” Riley demonstrated with his hands in front of him in a
ring. “—around her neck.”
Jack immediately realized what the problem
was. The joined families, whether Campbell or Hayes, had quietly consigned Jeff
and everything he had done to something never to be talked about. Riley never
shared cute childhood stories where he, Eden, and Jeff were friends; no tales
of brotherly misadventures. To Jack’s mind, Jeff had been born a sadistic
bastard, and likely there were a lot of stories Riley hadn’t told him about the
kind of things Jeff had done to both Riley and Eden.
“Seeing her makes you face what he did,”
Jack said. He reached over and held Riley’s hand, lacing their fingers together
and squeezing. This was what he did best. He was there for Riley, supporting
him, holding him up, knowing as much as he needed to know, and still being
there for the man who was his other half.
Riley sighed and bumped shoulders with
Jack. “Yeah,” he whispered.
“So your dad doesn’t know that Jeff and
Charlie were…?”
“No. I’m sure I’m the only one.”
“Lisa didn’t know?”
Riley squeezed back. “She always knew he
was unfaithful, but with Charlie, no, I don’t think so.”
For a second, Jack allowed the words to
settle. Lisa was damaged by much more than physical pain. She had a world of
hurt where her dead husband was concerned, not least of which was the end
result of what he did to her. The secret she carried with her was too awful for
Jack to contemplate knowing how she lived with it.
“We don’t see enough of Lisa and the kids,”
he said.
That was true. Lisa hadn’t visited in a
while. Although to be fair, whenever Jack and Riley organized a family
gathering of any sort, they always invited her. She’d moved to San Antonio with
her fiancé, Ed, and was building a place for herself and the kids well away
from the life she’d had here. Luke was sixteen, Annabelle coming up for
nineteen. They weren’t at the ranch as often as Josh’s kids. They had lives of
their own, but still, Jack was all about family.
“We’ll get them over, or maybe we’ll go
visit them,” Jack said. He wasn’t going to let Riley focus on this one thing to
distract himself from the central issue. “Back to the meeting. When you sit
there, it will be all business, and if she comes over to talk to you, you
smile, nod, and put on the best goddamn Riley act you can.”
“You’re not planning on being there.”
“I hate them,” Jack said, then he felt
guilty. Riley was clearly concerned about the meeting, and he should make the
effort. “I can try.”
“Don’t say that.” Riley smiled at Jack. “As
much as I like it when you do that ‘I don’t care, I’m a hot, dusty cowboy’
thing, I seriously think you should stay away.”
“Yeah?”
Riley looked at him again. This time, the
shadows had disappeared from his eyes. “It’s like torture for you.”
“Tell me more about how you like the cowboy
thing,” Jack growled.
Riley grinned. “When you push the chair
back and you kind of sprawl there, with your thumbs in your belt. You smile and
nod when you need to and all I want to do is crawl over the table and ride you
right there in the meeting.”
Jack’s cock swelled and pressed against his
jeans. Riley’s voice was husky and low and sent every molecule of blood south.
“Jesus, Riley.”
“Sometimes you unwrap those stupid little
mints, and you press one to your lips, and then you suck it in.”
“I like the mints.”
“All I can imagine is my cock in your
mouth, and I’m so freaking hard I can’t concentrate on the numbers.”
Jack wriggled to get comfortable, and he
had to press his free hand to his zip to ease some of the pressure. “Like it’s
easy for me,” he muttered. “You in your suit, and those ties you wear, and all
I can imagine is ripping it all off, tying you down and fucking you into
tomorrow. That’s the only reason I go.”
Riley moved so quickly Jack didn’t have
time to draw breath. He straddled Jack and pushed him back on the bed.
“Carol.” Jack mentioned their nanny’s name
with the last remaining moments of having the presence of mind. “People…,” he
added as a warning, as Riley stole his words with the deepest, dirtiest,
messiest kiss he’d had since the last time they’d been in the barn.
Riley pulled back enough so Jack could look
into his eyes. “Barn,” Riley said. “Now.”
Riley scrambled up and away, unbuttoning
his jeans and adjusting himself. “Now,” he repeated.
With determination, they made it out of the
house. Hayley was at school, Max out with Robbie and the horses, the twins were
happy with Carol, so they had nothing to stop them. It didn’t matter it was ten
in the morning, this was happening.
About RJ
RJ
Scott has been writing since age six, when she was made to stay in at lunchtime
for an infraction involving cookies. She was told to write a story and two
sides of paper about a trapped princess later, a lover of writing was born.
As an
avid reader herself, she can be found reading anything from thrillers to sci-fi
to horror. However, her first real true love will always be the world of
romance where she takes cowboys, bodyguards, firemen and billionaires (to name
a few) and writes dramatic and romantic stories of love and passion between
these men.
With
over seventy titles to her name and counting, she is the author of the award winning
book, The Christmas Throwaway. She is also known for the Texas series charting
the lives of Riley and Jack, and the Sanctuary series following the work of the
Sanctuary Foundation and the people it protects.
Her
goal is to write stories with a heart of romance, a troubled road to reach
happiness, and most importantly, that hint of a happily ever after.
www.tumblr.com/blog/rjscott (some NSFW
(not safe for work) photos)
Giveaway:
Competition to
win $15 Amazon/Are giftcard, and 2 further prizes of RJ Scott e-books – closes
8th October at 00:01 GMT (London)
a Rafflecopter giveaway
I love Jack & Reily so much!!! Such a great way to end the Texas series(if it has to end ;) )
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