Summary:
Ellery Mountain #2
How can Daniel convince the man he loves, to stay with him in Ellery?
Luke Fitzgerald left Ellery Mountain for college and vowed never to return, but with his father murdered, he has no choice but to return. Luke only goes home to sell off his share of the Ellery Mountain Cabins, but everything changes when he meets the son of the other owner.
Daniel Skylar is an ex-soldier who lives every day to the limit and sees a future in Luke. It doesn’t matter what Daniel says, or how much he needs Luke; Luke isn’t staying once everything is sold off. Surely Daniel can understand that?
When I read Ellery Mountain it was an established series and read #1-7 back to back and only writing an overall series review.
Original Overall Series(1-7) Read July 2015:
What starts out as three friends weekly get-togethers we discover how lives can intertwine over time in very unexpected scenarios that can actually create a pretty good life, community, and family. Each book in this series centers on a different couple and because of that, strictly speaking each story is a standalone but in my opinion you really should read this one in order because one half of the couple had either a cameo or was mentioned in passing in the previous book. Also, each of the previous couples have at least a partial scene in the following installments. For these reasons I'm doing an overall review as opposed to each book having their own write up. Ellery Mountain has loads of drama, interesting and intriguing characters both main and secondary, hints of mystery, and of course plenty of romance, not to mention what would an RJ Scott story be without some well placed hotness. So come along with the Ellery Mountain Fridays and see what life has in store for them.
RATING:
Only the darkening sky told Luke Fitzgerald what time it was. His cell was in the car with a dead battery and he never wore a watch. The evening was drawing in, and with it the familiar coolness of a fall night in the mountains, and if he wasn’t careful he would get caught in the regular evening rain he remembered from his childhood. Coming here, to Ellery, to the place he’d called home for the first eighteen years of his life, was something he had never thought he would do. Not all the time his dad had been alive anyway.
Leaning against the fence, he stared down at the town nestled in the V of the valley caused by Ellery Mountain and Mercury Peak. Where he had been able to see things clearly a few short minutes before, now everything was blurring in the deep grey-blue smudge of evening light. Luke tracked the car’s progress by its headlights as it left the town and made its way up into the mountain. There had been a few cars passing by today, but Luke was far enough away from the road that no one had stopped to ask him what the hell he was doing rooted to the same spot for hours.
Shifting his stance, Luke pulled away from the fence and stretched tall. His back ached, his head hurt and he felt like shit. Driving straight through for eight hours was possibly the worst decision he had made since he’d decided to come back to Ellery. His chiropractor was going to have a cow when he assessed the damage Luke was doing to the already heavy tension he carried through his back muscles and up into his neck.
The headlights shot momentarily through spaces in the fir trees on each bend. He identified it on the last bend as a cop car, the white standing out against the dark of the trees. When it pulled onto the shoulder next to his car, Luke wasn’t surprised. Cops were far more attuned to spotting cars parked off the main road. The lights of the car meant he didn’t get a good look at the cop until he was less than four paces away. The cop stood loose-hipped and with his hand resting on the weapon in his holster. Peering through the gloom to the cop’s face, Luke knew that fate was fucking with him. Not only had an Ellery cop found his hiding place, but that Ellery cop was Corporal Finn Ryan.
Finn Ryan in the flesh. The man who was so closely involved in the death of Luke’s dad. Christ. Way to slap what Luke had hoped to avoid right up in his face.
"Is there a problem, sir?" Finn asked firmly.
Luke pushed his clenched fists into his pockets and stilled the rising anxiety in him.
"No problem, officer," he said. "Just visiting town and spending a little time clearing my head after a long drive."
Finn took another step closer and a look of recognition passed over his face. Luke remembered Finn as tall, dark and rangy as hell, although his memories were of a boy of fifteen, not one of…what would it be now? Twenty-four? He’d been five years younger than Luke if he remembered correctly. Luke really didn’t want to remember anything about Ellery.
"Luke?" Finn looked momentarily taken aback before regaining his posture.
"Hi, Finn."
They’d not been friends in school, just people who knew each other by sight. Luke was at college whilst Finn was still a freshman. Of course Finn, being a resident, would have heard all the rumours about him and his dad. Hell, he probably knew everything that had happened. Familiar resentment built inside Luke. He was bigger than that, bigger than his dad’s abuse, or his mom’s abandonment, bigger than this town. He would not let this place drag him down again however hard they tried.
"You missed the funeral," Finn offered. There was no accusation in his voice. He was simply making a statement and one that hung in the air with no possible answer Luke could give. Or at least not one that didn’t involve reiterating the contents of two years of counselling sessions and eight years of living his life.
"Busy," was all Luke eventually offered in response. Finn didn’t call him on the excuse.
"You’ve been up here a while, Luke. Widow Jenn called it in. Said a stranger had been standing here for hours and he was just staring down at town."
Luke shrugged. He couldn’t deny the hours had passed as he’d gazed down at the town and the tiny distant shapes of gravestones in the far churchyard of St Jeremiahs. He had deliberately stayed up here until darkness had begun to creep over the mountain. Call it self-preservation but there was no way he was driving into Ellery in the daylight. He changed the subject.
"Widow Jenn is still alive?" he said. Finn took the change of subject in his stride and nodded.
"Ninety-eight and thriving on ten a day with a glass of whisky," he said.
"She still has those binoculars?" Luke snorted a laugh. Widow Jenn was one of the more colourful characters in the town and when he was younger she’d had her fingers in so many pies—evidently that hadn’t changed.
Ellery Mountain—a series of books set in the town of Ellery in the Smoky Mountains focusing on heroes as they navigate the barren landscape of being gay in a small town. Read stories of men like Finn the cop, Daniel the ex-marine, Kieran the carpenter, Marines, SEALs, teachers, soldiers, and a town that embraces them with love.
Saturday's Series Spotlight
Writing love stories with a happy ever after – cowboys, heroes, family, hockey, single dads, bodyguards
USA Today bestselling author RJ Scott has written over one hundred romance books. Emotional stories of complicated characters, cowboys, single dads, hockey players, millionaires, princes, bodyguards, Navy SEALs, soldiers, doctors, paramedics, firefighters, cops, and the men who get mixed up in their lives, always with a happy ever after.
She lives just outside London and spends every waking minute she isn’t with family either reading or writing. The last time she had a week’s break from writing, she didn’t like it one little bit, and she has yet to meet a box of chocolates she couldn’t defeat.
The Teacher and the Soldier #2
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