The Teacher and the Soldier #2
Summary:
How can Daniel convince the man he loves, to stay with him in Ellery?
Luke left Ellery for college and his career as a teacher, and vowed never to come back, not to the parents who hurt him, or the town that never noticed his pain. He’s bigger than bigger than his dad’s abuse and his mom’s abandonment and he has a life that he’s happy with. But when his father is murdered he returns home, not to mourn for his dad, but to settle his inheritance and sell everything that reminds him of the painful past. His sole purpose is to rid himself of his stake in the Ellery Mountain Cabins and move on, but everything takes an unexpected turn when he encounters Daniel.
A former soldier, Daniel has managed to escape the haunting memories of his past and the weight of survivor's guilt by embracing a life of living to the fullest. With his tattoos, confidence, and unyielding determination, he co-owns Ellery Resort Cabins alongside Luke. However, it's evident that Luke wants nothing to do with his family's legacy. Despite this, Daniel finds himself falling deeply in love with Luke, believing with all his heart that Luke is his forever. But Luke has made it clear that he won't be staying in Ellery, and it's only a matter of time before he departs.
Summary:
As Michael finally finds the person who left him for dead, can the love he'd found with Alex survive the fallout?
Michael survived a hate crime but is haunted by memories beyond his grasp and plagued by relentless nightmares. When he leaves his life as a catwalk model ad returns home to confront his past, it’s his present in the shape his persistent agent, Alex, who refuses to leave him alone. Once he thought he loved Alex, but their relationship crumbled is destroyed when Alex's well-intentioned but suffocating tendency to protect Michael becomes their downfall.
Michael loves Alex, and always will, and protecting the man he loves is everything. Only, in protecting Michael he loses everything, and he wants a second chance to prove that he can change. When he’s drawn into the darkness of Michael’s past, he’s determined to be a very different kind of person—someone Michael can depend on. Secrets rarely remain hidden, and the pursuit of the person who nearly took Michael's life presents a formidable challenge. The prospect of remaining passive becomes increasingly difficult as danger looms closer. Will history repeat itself, causing Alex to lose Michael once more?
Summary:
The hero is a sinner. The bad guy is a saint. And agreeing to sex for just a month turns everything else upside down.
Ben Rockwell, a former military medic, arrives in Ellery with a mission to establish a specialized unit for post-trauma care at the Veterans Center. Driven by a strong desire to rectify past battlefield decisions, he pours all his focus into this endeavor, disregarding everything else. However, his world takes an unexpected turn when a stranger moves in next door, throwing him off balance. Despite being hailed as a hero, Ben feels burdened by the weight of concealed truths, and knows he is anything but.
British actor, Nicholas Merrick, accused by the media of cheating on his fiancé and then coming out as gay flees from London, and seeks refuge in his friend’s house in small town Tennessee. He intends to remain hidden until the chaos in his past subsides. The choices he made in his life were motivated by protecting his best friend, but everyone has painted him as the villain. The moment Ben and Nicholas cross paths, they fall in lust, but is love possible for the sinning hero and the saintly bad boy?
The Teacher and the Soldier #2 & The Agent and the Model #7
Blogger Note:
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.
The Sinner and the Saint #8
Original Review May 2018:
Ben Rockwell comes to Ellery to work with the Veteran's Center his friend Daniel Skylar started to help make amends for battlefield decisions by working with the Center's residents. Nick Merrick has come to Ellery to escape the paparazzi and the scandal he created back in England. Ben and Nick find themselves in each other's orbits and despite their plans will a couple of hook-ups lead to more?
I've missed the Ellery universe and the men within its city limits and the thought that this is the last time we'll visit the area saddens me but if that truly is the case than RJ Scott left the city with a winner. Was The Saint & the Sinner as good as the other entries? Maybe not. Would I have liked to know more of Ben's Army pain? Sure. Would Nick's family's input made an impact? Probably. HOWEVER! As much as I may have liked to know more of Ben's battlefield pain I didn't need to know to feel his heartache. As much as I wanted to hear from Nick's family, it really wasn't about them, its about Nick and his need to find himself as well as help his friend Heather so it makes sense to hear from her dad and not his. Would I have added these things if this was my story? Maybe, but its not my story, it's RJ Scott's story and no one does it better.
As for the characters, I loved them both from the very beginning. I have to say that as much as I love the men together, one of my favorite scenes is Ben telling the one woman off in the checkout line. Despite the anger I felt at her words I found myself laughing as I pictured her face as Ben walked away. Its scenes like this that probably don't have much bearing on the main story that make RJ Scott's work so real and connectable for the reader. The same goes for Nick, his scene with Norma Jean shows us that he isn't just the spoiled son rebelling against the family grain, he is his own person trying to find his place. We may not meet these people every day but the author has a way that makes us want to know them.
As I said above, if this is truly the end of the Ellery men than it is a lovely exit. Who knows, maybe if we ask nicely we'll see them all again in one of RJ's lovely holiday stories, Christmas Comes to Ellery Mountain? 😉*hint hint* 😉 Whatever happens to the men, The Saint & the Sinner is a lovely read that brightened my day and I'm already looking forward to re-reading and re-visiting Ellery for years to come.
I've missed the Ellery universe and the men within its city limits and the thought that this is the last time we'll visit the area saddens me but if that truly is the case than RJ Scott left the city with a winner. Was The Saint & the Sinner as good as the other entries? Maybe not. Would I have liked to know more of Ben's Army pain? Sure. Would Nick's family's input made an impact? Probably. HOWEVER! As much as I may have liked to know more of Ben's battlefield pain I didn't need to know to feel his heartache. As much as I wanted to hear from Nick's family, it really wasn't about them, its about Nick and his need to find himself as well as help his friend Heather so it makes sense to hear from her dad and not his. Would I have added these things if this was my story? Maybe, but its not my story, it's RJ Scott's story and no one does it better.
As for the characters, I loved them both from the very beginning. I have to say that as much as I love the men together, one of my favorite scenes is Ben telling the one woman off in the checkout line. Despite the anger I felt at her words I found myself laughing as I pictured her face as Ben walked away. Its scenes like this that probably don't have much bearing on the main story that make RJ Scott's work so real and connectable for the reader. The same goes for Nick, his scene with Norma Jean shows us that he isn't just the spoiled son rebelling against the family grain, he is his own person trying to find his place. We may not meet these people every day but the author has a way that makes us want to know them.
As I said above, if this is truly the end of the Ellery men than it is a lovely exit. Who knows, maybe if we ask nicely we'll see them all again in one of RJ's lovely holiday stories, Christmas Comes to Ellery Mountain? 😉*hint hint* 😉 Whatever happens to the men, The Saint & the Sinner is a lovely read that brightened my day and I'm already looking forward to re-reading and re-visiting Ellery for years to come.
RATING:
The Teacher and the Soldier #2
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.
The Agent and the Model #7
Just beyond Shenandoah National Park, Michael Hardin finally stopped the car.
He had three hundred miles in his rear-view mirror tracing back to New York with only a couple of stops, and he was starting to feel it.
Following signs to Staunton was easy enough—finding Staunton Choral Gardens B & B less so. He’d been in a daydream and had entirely missed his satnav telling him to leave the road at the next right.
What he found when he doubled back on himself was a gorgeous place, all white sidings and a garden tumbling with a riot of colours. The extended house was stunning. And quiet. So blissfully quiet. Michael parked then grabbed his overnight bag from the seat next to him. He considered whether he should get his cases out of the back.
I’m only staying here one night.
After minutes of staring aimlessly at the cases in his trunk trying to make a decision, his New York side won out over his Ellery side and he juggled both wheeled cases out of the car. Just making that one decision had him feeling a little more confident that he could carry this ‘normal life’ off. No makeup artists fawning around him, no clothes draped by dressers on his body, no shouting, or chaos, or his damned agent ordering him here and there.
He locked the midnight-blue Porsche, then checked he’d locked it again. When parked in the city, his car wasn’t just locked—it was one of many left in a garage with security guards. In fact, the thing hardly ever moved and not for the first time he considered why exactly he’d bought the car.
To spend money, that’s all, he answered his own question.
When he turned to look up at the B & B, he faced a guy standing right by him on the grass staring with a Cairn terrier in the crook of his arms. Michael flushed at the fact that this stranger had seen the whole procrastination over cases and locking the car sequence.
“Just checking it’s locked,” Michael explained. Why he didn’t know. The man nodded like he understood the motive behind the explanation then he deliberately looked Michael up and down.
“Good morning to you,” he finally said, before ambling away and muttering something under his breath. For all Michael knew the man could be talking to his dog but he doubted it. He was used to people staring and feeling that they owed it to themselves to comment on his appearance.
Michael pushed his shades over his eyes. If the guy had a problem with tight designer jeans and a bright lime T-shirt that fitted like a second skin, then he wasn’t worth worrying about.
He awkwardly made his way up the steps to the foyer, then waited at a small desk after pressing the bell.
“One minute, sir,” a female voice came from an open office door behind the desk.
“No rush,” he called back. He pushed his sunglasses back into his long hair and waited patiently, amusing himself by checking out the various posters with views of the surrounding area. Maybe he could leave Ellery a couple of days earlier than he’d originally planned and take a detour on the way home and out into the Valley. He needed a break. Rolling his head and shoulders, he heard the cracks of tension and grimaced.
I need a massage.
He would do the couple of weeks in Ellery, spend time with his nan, Avery and Travis—be Mikey for a while. But Ellery was always sensory overload for him so maybe he should end his road trip by coming back here to this B & B to sleep. Just sleep—for a week maybe—before he’d have to go back to the place where he was Michael again.
He had three hundred miles in his rear-view mirror tracing back to New York with only a couple of stops, and he was starting to feel it.
Following signs to Staunton was easy enough—finding Staunton Choral Gardens B & B less so. He’d been in a daydream and had entirely missed his satnav telling him to leave the road at the next right.
What he found when he doubled back on himself was a gorgeous place, all white sidings and a garden tumbling with a riot of colours. The extended house was stunning. And quiet. So blissfully quiet. Michael parked then grabbed his overnight bag from the seat next to him. He considered whether he should get his cases out of the back.
I’m only staying here one night.
After minutes of staring aimlessly at the cases in his trunk trying to make a decision, his New York side won out over his Ellery side and he juggled both wheeled cases out of the car. Just making that one decision had him feeling a little more confident that he could carry this ‘normal life’ off. No makeup artists fawning around him, no clothes draped by dressers on his body, no shouting, or chaos, or his damned agent ordering him here and there.
He locked the midnight-blue Porsche, then checked he’d locked it again. When parked in the city, his car wasn’t just locked—it was one of many left in a garage with security guards. In fact, the thing hardly ever moved and not for the first time he considered why exactly he’d bought the car.
To spend money, that’s all, he answered his own question.
When he turned to look up at the B & B, he faced a guy standing right by him on the grass staring with a Cairn terrier in the crook of his arms. Michael flushed at the fact that this stranger had seen the whole procrastination over cases and locking the car sequence.
“Just checking it’s locked,” Michael explained. Why he didn’t know. The man nodded like he understood the motive behind the explanation then he deliberately looked Michael up and down.
“Good morning to you,” he finally said, before ambling away and muttering something under his breath. For all Michael knew the man could be talking to his dog but he doubted it. He was used to people staring and feeling that they owed it to themselves to comment on his appearance.
Michael pushed his shades over his eyes. If the guy had a problem with tight designer jeans and a bright lime T-shirt that fitted like a second skin, then he wasn’t worth worrying about.
He awkwardly made his way up the steps to the foyer, then waited at a small desk after pressing the bell.
“One minute, sir,” a female voice came from an open office door behind the desk.
“No rush,” he called back. He pushed his sunglasses back into his long hair and waited patiently, amusing himself by checking out the various posters with views of the surrounding area. Maybe he could leave Ellery a couple of days earlier than he’d originally planned and take a detour on the way home and out into the Valley. He needed a break. Rolling his head and shoulders, he heard the cracks of tension and grimaced.
I need a massage.
He would do the couple of weeks in Ellery, spend time with his nan, Avery and Travis—be Mikey for a while. But Ellery was always sensory overload for him so maybe he should end his road trip by coming back here to this B & B to sleep. Just sleep—for a week maybe—before he’d have to go back to the place where he was Michael again.
The Sinner and the Saint #8
Chapter 1
Loud banging, with added yelling, pulled Nick out of a nightmare. After a restless, irritable, crunchy-messy night of tossing and turning, he had finally fallen asleep some time before dawn, and now at fuck o’clock in the morning there was knocking at the front door. And some asshole shouting words that he couldn’t make out. Was this part of his dream? He couldn’t tell.
For the longest time he lay flat on his back, unwilling to move. The sheets were wrapped around him like a mummy, the quilt on the floor, and he was still in that half world between nightmare and reality. Even closing his eyes didn’t help dispel the vivid images of him walking up to the Oscar podium completely naked and with the Queen pointing and laughing at him.
Naked as the day he was born, hanging loose and free, and no one saying a thing. Apart from the laughing that was. Like it was okay that one of the Oscar nominees was walking up the steps free of any and all clothing.
Not to mention no one commented on the Queen throwing popcorn at him.
Yep, it had been that kind of nightmare, and it wasn’t the first time he’d had it. And where the Oscar fear came from he didn’t know. There would never be a chance of an Oscar for. Not for the guy whose acting career had happened by accident and formed only because of a personal rebellion against his straight laced family. His resume included two sequels to the highly profitable, but formulaic, shit-bad, Angels of Bedlam franchise, with his entire fee going charity because he didn’t need the money.
Nick hadn’t been in the first UK funded Bedlam film. Said film had been praised for its ingenious twist on a dark horror romance. No, he was the handy British villain in the next two, the studio cashing in on any money that was left out there in a saturated market by ticking all the boxes. Explosions, tick. Strong, but mostly naked, female lead, tick. Sexy down on his luck, in te wrong place at the wrong time, male lead, tick.
And him, the ubiquitous bad guy with the English accent.
The follow up were certainly not Oscar material, and once Nick pulled his fragmented sleep-addled thoughts into line, he focused on the statistical likelihood of even being nominated for an Oscar in the first place, let alone accepting it naked.
“Fuck me,” he muttered to the empty room and rolled onto his front. The banging had stopped and no one actually knew he was here, so, he wasn’t going to answer the door in a place that wasn’t even his.
Jason McInnery and his husband, Kieran, lived in this stunning home, in the small town of Ellery, Tennessee. Glass floor to ceiling, wide open rooms, a pool in the garden, and the most comprehensive jungle gym he’d ever seen for Jason and Kieran’s son, Jonas. Even the damn guest room was beautiful, a huge wood carving took up nearly one wall, and the view from the window out to the mountain was stunning. At least that was the adjective he was supposed to use for what he could see. Objectively, he could see it was spectacular, but was too lost in confusion since he got here to think about it too much. A quick glance at the clock showed him it was five am, like midnight or something back in London, and still dark in the shadow of the mountain, so he rolled over and pulled the covers up to his neck.
Even in the middle of the chaotic remnants of his nightmare he welcomed the heat that cocooned him and willed the knocking to stop. Which it did. The mess of dreams forgotten, he drifted on as many good thoughts as he could muster and was very nearly asleep when the banging started up again. He groaned and hid his face under the pillow, willing the person creating the noise to go away. Then it ceased again, and he closed his eyes, but didn’t remove the pillow. Dawn was too close now and the room would fill with light because he hadn’t even taken the time to pull the drapes.
Unfortunately, his bladder had other ideas about what he needed to do, and cursing, he grabbed the sheets and untwisted himself. Feet planted on the floor he scrubbed a hand over his face, the untamed beard was just another reminder of everything that was horribly wrong about his life right now. Normally he would have just the right amount of stubble, but the last instalment of Angels of Bedlam, cunningly entitled, Bedlam Adrift, called for him to be a castaway, hence the beard, which he’d left to tangle.
No point in worrying about it anyway. He’d left London to get away from paparazzi, and their incessant need for more, and he was in unofficial hiding. Therefore, no one would see his beard, or his bloodshot eyes.
He caught sight of himself in the mirror.
“Jesus, you look fucked.”
Bedhead. Bags under his eyes. Beard. It was a whole cacophony of B-shit. Yawning widely, he padded across the bedroom to the half bath, emptying his bladder and washing his hands. He’d gone to bed as nature intended. Well, warm nature anyway, completely naked, which probably led to nightmare. Packing back home had been done in less than five minutes, his priority was money, passport, his phone, his laptop and associated chargers. It seemed like his messed-up head hadn’t thought any kind of pajamas were needed, or indeed underwear.
The next choice was shower or bed, and the exhaustion of the past few days, the media attention, making sure Heather was okay, fleeing the UK, ending up here in the middle of rural Tennessee, it was all too much and he sighed.
“Bed it is,” he muttered to his reflection. As soon as he woke up he was going online to order everything he’d forgot to pack. Jason had said to help himself to anything he needed but helping himself to his friend’s clothes didn’t feel right.
He yawned again, and stepped out into the cooler bedroom, eyes only half open.
“Hands where I can see them,” someone shouted, and Nick, startled, his heart pounding, fell backwards into the bathroom, catching himself on the jamb as best he could. He blinked to focus on the man in front of him.
The cop.
The gun.
The cop holding a gun on him. Immediately he raised his hands, and then lowered them to cover his junk, and then raised them again when the cop didn’t move.
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.
BOOKBUB / KOBO / SMASHWORDS
EMAIL: rj@rjscott.co.uk
The Teacher and the Soldier #2
The Agent and the Model #7
The Sinner and the Saint #8
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