Title: Mike's Way Back
Author: Amy Gregory
Publisher: Amazon Digital
Length: 485 kb
Sub-Genre: Contemporary
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Blurb:
When Detective Mike Sterling left the Chicago PD
and returned to his hometown of Renlend Kansas, he tried to convince himself it
was so his mother could stop worrying. The
truth was, even Renlend wasn’t going to vanquish the dreams that tortured him
at night.
When Taryn Watts
landed in Renland Kansas to de- sign a client’s
new cooking school she intended to stay just long enough to do the job and then
go right back to her life on the East Coast.
When Taryn and Mike found themselves sharing a
booth, one thing was certain, neither one of them thought it was a good idea.
Mike still wasn’t over his ex-wife’s
betrayal, and when Taryn found out Mike was a cop she wanted
to run all the way back to Connecticut and never look back, but she couldn’t…
Sitting outside his home late at night she watches
him
fight against his demons. Demons she already had too much experience with
firsthand.
When Mike finally admits there is no way to
outrun his demons, Tayrn knows she’ll do anything, or be
anything, to help Mike find his way back.
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Excerpts
“Of-freaking-course he’d be a cop.” Taryn
muttered to herself as she made her way toward the rear of the bar, her heels clicking on the old wood floor. Passing a high top table, she gave the
two men grin- ning at her a forced, tight-lipped smile and kept walking. Her
destination, now known to Mike the cop, wasn’t at all awkward or embarrassing.
With a frustrated huff she pulled
open the ladies room door and rolled her eyes.
When she made the decision to stay and eat at
the pub, Taryn just wanted to avoid the solitude of her hotel room. She
had a hundred ideas running through her head for the project she was working on
and wanted to lose herself in her work—something she loved and was comfortable
with.
Always one to be aware of her surroundings, as
she made her way to a table, she had noticed him instantly. His presence demanded attention and
respect. It was something some men were born with. That she knew all too well.
It was a quiet power associated with authority figures. It was something she
could prove through personal experience.
As hard as she tried to
ignore him, every so often a wave of tingles danced over her skin. She knew, not in the obvious way but in the feel
it sort of way, his eyes on her. She did her best to keep her own eyes
on her work, every now and then though, her gaze drifted over just to sneak a
peek.
The man was undeniably good-looking, tall and
broad shouldered, with muscled forearms that flexed every time he reached for a
fry or his drink. Snaking out from underneath his short-sleeved t-shirt were
bits of a tattoo that banded around his upper arm. It was when he held his hand
out to her, that she’d gotten the
first look at his eyes.
The strong jaw,
marked with the day’s shadow, made him look almost rugged. The clean-cut of his light brown hair
reminded her he was a cop. It was those eyes though that grabbed her and
wouldn’t let go. They were so sharp,
she felt almost as if he could see deep into the depths of her soul. The blue so clear, her first thought was of sea glass—the same blue as the sea
along the beaches she’d once combed back in college.
She’d had enough overbearing protectiveness that
came with being a cop’s daughter to
last a lifetime. It only became worse when her two older brothers followed in
their father’s footsteps. That made
be- ing the baby of the family by ten years, the equivalent to living in a
prison, at least in Taryn’s
mind. Their small home in Boston was quiet, and her mother was the perfect
throwback to a fifties house-
wife—minus vacuuming in heels and pearls. Deep down, Taryn knew her
family loved her and that they wanted to keep her safe and sound. As a child, she was blissfully naïve to
the lengths her father would go to just to keep his baby girl safe. As a teenager, the warm fuzzy feelings, she once had toward her childhood
home, gave way to being stifled. When her brothers were added to the mix, she
felt suffocated.
The instant her diploma hit her hand, she moved
to California for college. The
University of Southern California had been about as far away as she could get
from the men in her life. Taryn felt bad about leaving her mother
to worry about them all during their shifts…just not bad enough to stop her
from escaping.
Making her way back to her table, she expected
to politely thank Mr. Handsome with
a Badge for his good deed and have him return to his own table—or better yet,
maybe just leave. He, however, had
made himself quite comfortable at her table, and as she got closer she saw he’d
ordered them each a second beer.
With her laptop running, her notebook and sketchpad all open, it wasn’t as if
she could just pretend she had somewhere else to be. He already knew she wasn’t
from around there, so she could
only assume he knew she had no other plans.
Damn her
parents for raising her to be Miss Mary Manners.
The real problem, she realized was her pulse. As she approached Mike, her heart started
beating faster. How could she be so
drawn to a stranger, pulled out of
her control. But more, this was the first time she’d had an instant reaction to
any man. Sure, there had been a couple
of fairly serious rela- tionships in
the past. One in college and one shortly after moving back to the East coast. This was the first connection in which she
felt so out of control. It was bad enough he was a stranger, and they lived nowhere close to each
other, but to top it all off…the man was a cop.
It was a heroic profession to most everyone in
the world, heroic to her—as long as she never had to live with another one
under the same roof ever again.
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About The Author:
When asked ‘when do you have time to write’, Amy Gregory simply laughs. The real answer is, “in bits and pieces”. She and her husband live in Kansas City
with their three fantastic kids that keep them running in three very different directions. Because she sits so much, she always carries
a note- book with her at all times.
She has an off
the wall, snarky, off the cuff
sense of humor that often shocks even those who’ve known her for years. And she loves that her children have all
been blessed that ability to make oth-
ers laugh as well. At least she’s grateful most of the time! Her husband often teases her about how she
“makes this stuff up” when he’s reading a piece of her work. … The answer—“it just comes to me when I’m
typing”. Scary thought, huh!
Author’s Site
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