Saturday's Series Spotlight: Shielded Hearts by Elle Keaton Part 2

As Sure as the Sun #4

Summary:

Love lost. Love found.

It’s time for a change. After a case that nearly ends with him in traction, US Marshal Sacha Bolic decides to move west and restart his life, this time as an out gay man.

Seth Culver avoids entanglements, romantic or otherwise. Who needs them? He’s learned the hard way that people betray you or leave. Or both.

Sacha’s ready to live the life he’s been missing; everything about the younger man is compelling and he’s not going to let him go easily.

But Seth’s commitment to no commitments may have met its match in Sacha.

As Sure as the Sun is a dual POV about a taciturn US Marshal and a free-spirited younger man finding their way to each other. The Shielded Hearts series follows a different couple in each book as they stop killers, unravel a human trafficking ring and fall in love.

(Formerly published as Accidental Roots)

River Home #5

Summary:

Wanted: A good home for a stray.

Needed: A worthy man.

Miguel arrived in town a broken man, having barely escaped an abusive relationship with his life. Since then he’s buried his deepest desire for family and taken what life doles out; one-night stands are as close to a relationship as he’s going to get.

Federal Agent Nate Richardson; focused, reliable, career minded. No time for relationships outside work. Nate doesn’t care about sex and doesn’t believe in love. He’s also never met Miguel Ramirez—until now.

Nate is a force Miguel doesn’t foresee; a red-haired officer of the law with a galaxy of freckles splashed across his face, he encompasses everything about relationships Miguel has rejected as out of his reach.

Outside forces drive Nate and Miguel apart, they’ll need to work together to conquer their demons and win the fight for their love.

River Home is a dual POV about a man with a beautiful soul who refuses to be kept down and the stoic federal agent who falls in love with him. One man knows what he wants, the other needs convincing. The Shielded Hearts series follows a different couple in each book as they stop killers, unravel a human trafficking ring and fall in love.

(Formerly published as Accidental Roots)

As Sure as the Sun #4

Original Review October 2017:
When Sacha Bolic has a fall on the job that had the potential to be a lot worse than stiff joints and achy muscles, he decided it was time for a change in direction.  Seth Culver may be the half-brother to a member of law enforcement but that doesn't stop him from helping out a stranger with the offer of a hot shower and coffee.  When researching the past, will Seth and Sacha find a happily ever after or just a happy for now?

I couldn't help but love Seth's carefree nature but he is more guarded than you think and it actually makes me want to wrap him up in bubblewrap so he has to listen and give him a good talking to about taking chances.  Sacha on the other hand is guarded about his past, for good reason, but he is open for the first time that love is possible.  One of the things I loved about this pair is that on the surface they really should not mix, they appear to be almost too opposite to fit the "opposites attract" trope but really they aren't that different when you get to know them.

As a history buff and lover of historical fiction, Seth's desire to learn Owen and Theodore's story really sucked me in, probably even more than Seth's need to discover their tale.  There's a little bit of everything in As Sure as the Sun: romance, history, lust, family, friends, and of course love.

This installment in the Accidental Roots series is a standalone and can be read without the first three entries but for me, I am glad I read them in order.  There are cameos of the other Skagit couples from the first three with minor references to their stories that I felt knowing those journeys made it flow together better.  But, I don't think I would have been lost either had I started with As Sure as the Sun.  However you choose to start, I highly recommend this series because I am already looking forward to number five.

River Home #5

Original Review February 2018:
When Miguel Ramirez found himself in Skagit, WA he also found himself a job and friends but he wasn't able to let go of his past and the trust issues that came from it but he's getting closer every day.  Nate Richardson is part of Adam Klay's FBI team still trying to get a hold on the human trafficking case.  When these two meet, the passionate attraction is obvious but will they be able to find happiness amongst trust and crime?

I love this series by Elle Keaton, in fact it was one of my Best Reads of 2017 so when the opportunity to read the newest installment crossed my desk, how could I not jump at the chance?  River Home is a perfect fit for the Skagit universe, not only do we get to know Miguel from Buck Swanfeldt’s Garage but we also get to meet Agent Nate Richardson working the case with Adam Klay.  The characters are as appealing and engaging as ever, definitely fictional but with just the right amount of what I like to call "next door neighbor factor".  I just wanted to wrap Miguel in one never-ending bear hug to keep him safe and loved but I also knew he had the strength to say "Bring it on!".  As for Nate, well he screamed the classic case of needing to risk something before discovering how important it or they are to him.

As for the mystery aspect, Elle Keaton blends the case perfectly with the characters and romance between them.  We get to see some of our favorites from previous entries that helped fill in their own lives as well as make Miguel and Nate's more rounded.  Speaking of secondary characters who were main in the other installments, if asked whether River Home is a standalone I would say, yes technically.  However, I am glad I have read them in order I just find the connections between friends to flow better which in turn just adds to the warmth and heart of the story but the case too just meshed better in my head.  But, yes it could be read without having read the previous entries I just don't think I would recommend doing so.

River Home(the whole Accidental Roots series really) at its core is about friendships and love and reminding us that family does not have to be blood alone, or at all, its about heart and those who are there beside you that makes a family.  Elle Keaton's Accidental Roots series is not only  entertaining but it also reminds us what is really important in life and when you can blend those two factors together, you know you are reading something special.

RATING:

As Sure as the Sun #4

One 

Sacha: March, Kansas City, Missouri   

“Bolic.” 

Sacha glanced in the direction Rick was pointing. Their target slipped out from between some loose pieces of plywood covering the doorway, gesturing with his free hand while he talked on a cell phone. The man saw Sacha, and his eyes widened for an instant before he turned and bolted in the opposite direction. 

Sacha took off after the government’s prize witness against the US boss of the Molejevic crime family, keeping his prey’s flashy red parka in view. He heard Rick shout something but couldn’t quite make out the words. As he ran, he gave thanks that Jacobsen looked like a Ross Dress for Less clearance rack had thrown up on him. He and Rick had spent two days freezing their asses off waiting for Jacobsen to show. No way was Sacha going to lose him now. His knee twinged, threatening retribution as he pushed himself faster; he ignored it. 

Jacobsen was no Usain Bolt but he knew the neighborhood better than Rick or Sacha, plus the streets were slick from intermittent rain showers and Sacha had to avoid slipping on metal sewer and electric access points as well as litter and unidentifiables. The rain started spattering down again. In moments, Sacha’s hair was plastered to his head and rivulets of rain ran down his face made it hard to see. Still, he had almost gained enough ground to grab the back of Jacobsen’s jacket when the man took a sharp left into a tiny alley. 

The stench of past-due trash rose up around Sacha. He forced down a reflexive gag as he sped down the dark, narrow space between two brick buildings. It was dank and barely wide enough for two men to walk side by side. Sacha was big enough to feel claustrophobic as he pounded after Jacobsen, losing a little ground because a trash container loomed from the shadows, forcing him to slow down. Jacobsen glanced over his shoulder at Sacha and grinned. Putting on a burst of speed, their uncooperative witness leapt to catch the bottom rung of a sketchy-looking fire escape and began to clamber up it with familiarity. 

Using the brick wall to push off, Sacha leapt for the fire escape, barely grabbing hold of the grimy metal bar. Praying to any possible saints of US Marshals, he hoisted himself upward, hoping the flimsy, weathered metal would support his weight. Sacha’s prayer held for a few seconds into the climb when two things happened. The first was an ominous creaking that echoed up and down the alley, along with the earsplitting shriek of metal on metal. The second was the silhouette of a large-caliber handgun appearing from a window several stories above him. Fingers flexed on the trigger as Sacha lunged to his right, leaping off the fire escape… except that it followed him, peeling away from the brick wall it had formerly been attached to. 

This was going to hurt. 

His stomach lurched, and for the briefest moment he was weightless before gravity came calling. All the air left his lungs when he hit the top of the old recycling container. He sort of bounced and, unfortunately, rolled off onto the concrete underneath the now-defunct fire escape. Flakes of rust, pelting rain, and litter that until that moment had been lodged for God knew how long in the metal grating of the fire escape showered down around him, on him. In a kind of slow motion he had only read about, the fire escape creaked to the right and smashed into the brick wall opposite. More rusty flakes showered down, along with pieces of the old metal structure itself. 

Sacha lay where he’d fallen, trying to suck a few molecules of oxygen into his lungs, thanking fuck for the fire escape collapsing under his weight. If it hadn’t chosen that moment to disintegrate, rather than reconsidering his life and most especially his career choices, Sacha would be a dead man with a hole in his head the size of a fist. The weighty mass of the forty-caliber bullet displacing the atmosphere alongside his ear was as close as Sacha wanted to get to death today. 

Groaning, he rolled over and craned his head toward the window Jacobsen had disappeared into. There had only been the single gunshot. Sacha didn’t know if the guy had actually been trying to kill him or was simply trying to get him to stop following. Regardless, whoever it had been was going to be extremely sorry he opened fire on an officer of the law. 

His partner, who hadn’t been right behind him, came panting around the corner. Rick’s searching gaze landed on Sacha where he lay in the stinking trash and dog… or possibly human… shit behind the derelict building their perp had disappeared into. Sacha thought even Sig Jacobsen should have had better taste than this place. Fuck, rats had better taste. 

“Fucking hell.” Sacha rolled onto his hands and knees, pushing himself to his feet. Every one of his thirty-nine years was making itself known. By some kind of miracle he’d merely had the wind knocked out of him and would have some impressive bruises tomorrow from hitting the trash container, but nothing felt broken. His knee throbbed, threatening imminent collapse, but after a second he was able to ignore it. Rick, the prissy asshole, didn’t bother to offer a hand, and when he got close enough he wrinkled his nose. 

“Where the fuck were you?” Sacha brushed at unnamable bits stuck to his jacket and jeans without much result. Giving up, he unzipped his jacket, took it off, and dropped it to the ground beside him. Sacha didn’t care that he was shivering in the forty-degree weather and getting wetter by the minute as the rain increased in intensity.

“I was a little behind you. I tried cutting through to the other side when he turned.” Rick brushed nonexistent grime off his suit jacket. “You know, to head him off. But the other end was blocked. I had to turn around and come back.” Sacha forced aside the urge to grab Rick by the neck and throttle him. They had been after Jacobsen for weeks, and now the guy had vanished into thin air. “Oh, wow, Bolic, you landed in—” 

“I know what I fucking landed in,” Sacha ground out. “I could have been fucking killed. Did you see the shooter?” 

Rick looked around, like he was going to see the shooter waving for his attention from a nearby window. Sacha had been lying in non-metaphorical shit for several minutes, checking all his parts to make sure they worked properly. The shooter was long gone, and Sacha was going to be hellishly sore for a few days. “You know what? Never fucking mind.” 

They walked back to their car in stony silence, abandoning Sacha’s jacket in the alley. Rick knew better than to try and talk to Sacha when he was in a shit mood. Which was most of the time. 

When Sacha had returned to regular service after two brutal years undercover, he’d hoped the transition would be easier than going under. Not so far. He took a deep breath, immediately regretting it when his side hitched, searching for patience he wasn’t known for. It wouldn’t help his case if he ripped Rick a new one… in public, anyway. 

Since returning to duty in February, Sacha had been assigned three partners. The first lasted a single retrieval before demanding a change, claiming insurmountable personality differences. What the fuck ever. The second lasted three weeks before digging up a reason not to work with Sacha ever again. The kid had been witless. Sacha tried to get him to understand that there were capital-R rules, and then there were guidelines. Not every fucking guideline had to be followed with unerring rigidity. Sacha hadn’t survived twelve years in the Marshals service because he followed every guideline like it was God’s word. 

Unfortunately, their current vehicle had not been stolen, vandalized, or towed away. The early-2000s Subaru Forester was so boring no one, not even taggers, took a second look at it. It sat where they’d left it, three blocks up from the alley. 

“I’m driving.” Sacha held his hand out for the keys. 

“Sacha…” Rick whined. 

“I’ve had enough close calls for one day; I’m driving.” 

“Fine.” Rick slammed the keys into Sacha’s palm before opening the passenger door and getting in. 

Sacha slid into the driver’s seat. “What’s your problem? I’m the one who was almost killed. Once by you and once by Jacobsen.” 

“Whatever.” 

Fuck’s sake. Sacha took a deep breath in through his nose. Ignoring Rick’s passive-aggressive bullshit, he started the engine. Talk radio blared out of the car’s speakers, making conversation unnecessary. Neither one of them moved to turn it down. 

Partner number three, for the past two months, had been Rick Lancer, prick extraordinaire, who was smarter than he acted. But this was the third time (or fourth if Sacha counted nearly being T-boned the other day when Rick was fucking talking while driving and not watching the road) Sacha had nearly been killed since he’d been back on active duty. Maybe the universe was trying to tell him something. Maybe it was time he listened. 

The lure of something different flitted along the edge of his thoughts. Maybe he needed real change, not merely a new partner. A career change. He’d had the thought before, but the onus of duty had always stopped him from leaving the service. When he left the army and joined the Marshals, his drive had been to bring down as much scum as he could. He’d made a promise to his foster sister Mae-Lin, and to himself, that as long as he walked this earth he would work to rid it of human traffickers. 

His heart wasn’t in the fight anymore. Not with the same fire that’d led him down this path so many years before. Maybe he needed to find a different way to fight. He didn’t see himself giving up, but he needed something else, something intangible and indefinable. He was tired of trying to explain himself when no one listened. His body wasn’t bouncing back from back-alley tackles— or falls from fire escapes— quite the way it had when he was twenty-five. Change was in the air.

River Home #5

Chapter One

Miguel

“For crying out loud, Miguel, pull yourself together.” 

The bedroom door banged shut, vibrating in its frame for a few seconds. Joey’s angry tread faded away as he stomped back downstairs. Not good. Miguel didn’t think he’d ever seen Joey angry before. Whimpering, he rolled over, misjudged where he was on Joey’s bed, and ended up in a painful pile on the hardwood floor. He landed on something hard and pointy that dug painfully into his lower back. He grunted and pulled it out from under him. A shiny black dress shoe. He glared at it. 

Right. Wedding. Drinking and dancing. Sex. 

Miguel groaned again, louder and longer this time. His head throbbed painfully in time with his heartbeat. He struggled against gravity until he was mostly upright— on hands and knees anyway, nowhere to go but up. Finally he stood, still naked, but upright. He kicked spitefully at the shoe, and it skittered across the hardwood before thunking against the wall under the windowsill. 

Yeah, it hadn’t been the wisest choice to hook up with the hot boy from the east side of the mountains. Even then, it wouldn’t have been so bad if Owen had stuck around for a little bit of post-hookup snuggling. Miguel liked his skin time, and he could take the heat from Joey over the indiscretion. Waking up in an empty bed with only shame for company? That was different. 

The bedroom was dim; late-evening shadows stretched across the hardwood floor, creating monsters out of stacks of laundry and making the open closet door especially menacing. Miguel squinted around, trying to locate all of his clothing before making his body move in the general direction of his crumpled dress shirt and rented tuxedo. Only for Buck, Joey’s new husband, had he donned one of those monkey suits. If he ever tied the knot— he snorted at the random thought, because no way in hell was he ever getting married— it would be on a beach wearing board shorts and a T-shirt, or maybe a swanky Hawaiian print shirt, with the sunset behind him. Fuck, his head hurt. 

For him to be anywhere close to considering marriage he’d have to date, meet someone who’d evolved past crawling up onto the hot desert sand— at least he assumed the sand would be hot; why would a creature crawl out into the cold? And why was he thinking about marriage when the evidence of a very recent poor choice surrounded him? The lingering smell of sex and strewn clothing was damning. 

In fairness, Miguel mused as he struggled to make himself fit for public, Sara Schultz was absolutely decent. They just weren’t quite right together— and that was okay; they’d managed to get back to being friends. They’d danced, hadn’t they? He was pretty sure he remembered dancing and Sara laughing while he demonstrated his moves to an Arctic Monkeys song. Or maybe it had been Maroon 5. Or not Sara? No, it had been Sara. He was sure. 

Checking the full-length mirror hanging on the back of the bedroom door, he grimaced. His unruly black hair stood up in random tufts, making him look like an unsexy version of that actor from Shakespeare in Love. There were bags under his eyes the size of carry-on luggage, and his skin had a sort of ghostly pallor. Also, he’d missed a button on his dress shirt, so it was bunched up awkwardly. He stared down at it for a minute trying to decipher which button to undo and rebutton before deciding it was never going to happen. He shoved his arms into the uncomfortable suit jacket and gingerly made his escape. 

Joey was right: it was time for him to get his shit together. The wedding debacle was another in a long string of poor choices. All those choices started with wanting something that just wasn’t possible, but he’d allowed himself to keep trying anyway… with the same results. Wasn’t that the definition of insanity? 

Miguel shut Joey’s door behind him and negotiated the stairs one careful step at a time. He needed to focus, decide what he was going to do with his life. Between the top stair and stepping out into the hallway two floors below, Miguel swore off men. And women too. Done. For a while, anyway.

He’d been in Maureen James’s house enough times by now to know there was a side door leading out to the almost-wraparound porch. The murmur of wedding guests lingering in the living room and kitchen reached his ears. Probably some were still out in the backyard as well. It was late, but in the Pacific Northwest this time of year it was barely dusk, and the cleverly placed mason jars with solar-powered lights inserted into them were beginning to wink on. 

Miguel tiptoed along the hall toward the side door, his best and only hope. The voices behind him rose in laughter. Joey was probably telling a work story. Or Kon, Maureen’s foster kid, was entertaining. Miguel twisted the crystal doorknob, pushing the door open just enough so he could slide out sideways and pull it shut behind him. Turning as quickly as his hangover would let him, he ran smack into someone. Someone with a hard chest. They were the same height, and their foreheads cracked together, leaving Miguel with black spots dancing in his vision and a stomach threatening to empty itself. “Jesus fucking Christ, watch where you’re going!” 

The man who’d run into him glared back, rubbing his forehead with a pale, freckled hand. Miguel recognized him as one of Adam Klay’s cops; couldn’t remember his name. “Excuse me? I think you’re the one trying to sneak out of the house. You need to work on your exit moves, buddy.” 

What’s-his-name had fiery red hair, the kind that looked like a copper penny that had been in someone’s pocket for a while. Freckles exploded across his face and down his neck like a galaxy of stars. Miguel wondered if he had them all over. He almost smacked himself in the forehead again. He’d just been ditched by a hookup. 

“Whatever, just move already.” 

“Are you all right? You smell like a distillery.” The man waved a hand in front of Miguel’s face. Should he bite it? “You aren’t driving, are you?” 

“Fucking fuck.” 

Miguel had come with Joey and Buck, not having a car of his own. Why would he have one, since he worked at an auto repair and could borrow the shop car anytime? Miguel cast around, thinking who he could hit up for a ride. He’d have to slink back into the celebration to find someone. He hadn’t thought he could feel any worse. Someone turned up the sound system; Dennis Edwards crooned Papa was a rolling stone… wherever he laid his hat was his home… Buck had finally wrested control of the music selection from his new husband. 

What’s-his-name pulled a set of keys out of his pocket. “Let me drive you home. Even if you aren’t drunk, you look terrible. You aren’t going to be sick, are you?” 

Home sounded so good. 

He would have walked, truly he would have, but the thought of making the three-mile trek in rented dress shoes made him want to cry. Or throw up. Maybe he was going to be sick. Relentlessly he squashed the feeling, refusing to admit he felt less than stellar. “No, I’m not going to be sick, thank you very much.” Taking a deep breath and letting it back out, he tried to gain some control over this weird situation. Sticking his hand out, he said, “Miguel Ramirez.” 

“Nate Richardson.” The man grinned, and his somewhat plain appearance went from what Miguel privately called “cop face” to a thing of beauty. He was devastating. It was a good thing Miguel had sworn off men only minutes earlier, or he might be tempted to see if Nate wanted to take a walk on the wild side. 

“It’s, ah, great to meet you, Nate. Normally I’d say ‘No, thanks,’ but I need to get out of here. I could use a ride.” He’d done an inadvertent double take and now was trying not to stare… and probably not doing a very good job of it. Awareness spiked inappropriately, rolling thunder careening across his sensitive skin, reminding Miguel of what he could not have. 

“Thank god; I need a reason to leave. I’m happy to give you a ride. Hopefully you’re miles out of town?” Nate asked, blue eyes sparkling with humor. Miguel wondered if he had any idea how attractive he was. “My boss made me come. I’ve never been forced to attend a wedding before. Let’s get out of here.” 

Yes, let’s, Miguel thought, only barely managing to suppress the urge to flirt. Nate was slim and strong; he’d look good behind a desk or out in the field— a modern-day cowboy. And the way he looked at Miguel, thoroughly, assessing, like maybe he was really seeing him. It left Miguel a little breathless. 

Nate led the way across the porch and down the three small steps to Maureen’s driveway. He pointed his keys and squeezed the fob. In the distance, red lights flashed. 

“You don’t need to say goodbye to anyone?” Miguel asked. 

Nate looked over his shoulder, giving Miguel a knowing glance. “Do you?” 

“Fucking hell no. Let’s get out of here.” 

Nate drove one of those shiny, black cop-style SUVs meant to intimidate other drivers and pedestrians On the other hand, it had a decent sound system that blared a song Miguel didn’t recognize when Nate cranked the engine. “Oops,” he said sheepishly, reaching to turn it down. 

Miguel stopped him with a wave of his hand. “Not on my account. I need something to wash all the sappy love song crap out of my ears.” 

Nate chuckled. “It was a little over the top.” 

“Dude. You have no idea. The things Joey wanted to do; he claims he settled.” Miguel settled into the passenger seat, leaning back against the headrest. “Buck would have let him do anything. I think we’re lucky we didn’t have to all sit and watch a special showing of Beauty and the Beast. His mom put her foot down, and Kon— the ring-bearer kid— claimed he would be embarrassed at school. Thank god.” 

It was only a fifteen-minute drive between the two houses, with traffic lights, and this time of night traffic was almost nonexistent. Dark had fallen by the time Nate pulled up in front of Buck and Joey’s. Miguel’s stomach plummeted when he remembered something else he didn’t want to think about. Buck and Joey didn’t need a third wheel hanging around their marriage. He had to find his own place to live.

Briefly he considered going back on his newly minted vow of chastity and seeing if Nate wanted to come inside for a while. They would probably have some fun in the sack. Chances were that the guy was open; he’d witnessed a marriage between two men, after all. But really, it was too depressing, inviting a guy back to a house that wasn’t his. 

Nate fumbled around, and the door locks clicked open. Miguel opened his door. “Thanks for the ride, man. I owe you one.” 

“Seriously, it’s fine. You have no idea how much I wanted to leave.” 

“Weddings aren’t your thing?” Miguel chuckled, standing with his hand on the door, not ready for the empty house. 

“Not really.” The engine rumbled as the SUV idled. “I hate making small talk, and I hate talking about myself, and I’m new to town so I don’t know anyone.” 

“We’d make the perfect couple; I have no trouble talking about myself.” Miguel waggled his eyebrows. Then realized what he’d said. “Oh crap, I’m sorry.” He dragged a hand down his face. “Sometimes my mouth gets away from me.” 

“Only sometimes?” Nate teased. 

“I need to put myself to bed before I dig an even bigger hole for myself. Thanks for the ride. Look me up sometime. I work at Swanfeldt’s; maybe we can grab a coffee or something.” 

“Yeah, sure.” 

Miguel shut the car door, stumbling a bit on the uneven sidewalk. Maybe he was still a little drunk. He’d made it about halfway to the front door when he stopped in his tracks, realizing he didn’t have any keys. Or his ID. Because he’d left them in his favorite pair of jeans when he’d put on the monkey suit. His jeans, which were somewhere in Maureen James’s house. 

“Fucking fuck.”

“You’re locked out, aren’t you?” Nate’s voice startled the crap out of him. 

Miguel spun around and would have fallen if Nate hadn’t grabbed his arm. 

“Wha-?” His vision swam, and his forehead hurt where he’d smacked into Nate. 

“I’m a pretty smart guy. Also, I know how to break into places. Unless you want to head back to the wedding?” 

“No! Break in all you want.” He gestured at Buck’s two-story bungalow. 

Ten minutes later they were standing in Buck’s kitchen. Nate was insisting Miguel drink a gallon of water before he tumbled into bed. He wasn’t that drunk, but he could feel the residual alcohol in his system. Nate disappeared for a minute before returning with a bottle of ibuprofen. 

“I rummaged through the medicine cabinet. I think you may want this.” 

“Oh hell yeah. You are my knight in shining armor tonight. What did I do to deserve you?” 

Nate blushed. Miguel couldn’t avert his eyes. When Nate blushed he went big; there was no hiding the tide of red that swept across his face. 

“Aw, it’s okay, baby. I needed a hero.” 

“I’m pretty sure you need some more water and to go to bed.” 

“Yeah, probably, but you know I’m gonna try and get you to join me.” Yep. Vow of chastity out the window. 

Nate blushed harder, but he grinned too. “I don’t think we play in the same league. As in I’m an amateur and you must have several gold medals under your belt. So to speak.” Even more blush. He was cute. And way too good for Miguel.

“Is this your place?” Nate asked, while refilling the water glass. He tapped two ibuprofen into Miguel’s palm and watched as he swallowed them. 

“Nah.” Miguel waved a hand at the kitchen walls. “It’s Buck and Joey’s. Buck— who, before I start sounding truly ungrateful, is my best friend and possibly the nicest person in the world— got all high-handed when he found out where I was living and basically made me move in with him.” 

Nate glanced around the kitchen, and Miguel was struck by how much he’d miss this place, he felt physically sick and didn’t think it was the alcohol. It was homey and comfortable, with little touches like a goofy black cat clock with a swinging tail and a vintage tin Mobil gas sign with a red Pegasus leaping into flight taking up most of the wall behind the breakfast nook. The back door they had come through led out to a small deck with potted flowers and a two-person table-and-chairs set. 

“I gotta find my own place before they get back.” Miguel tried not to let on how depressing he found that idea. 

“They asked you to move out?” 

“No.” He let out a heavy sigh. “But it’s time this little bird left the nest. I can’t keep letting Buck take care of me. Joey is enough of a handful.” 

Miguel made his way upstairs to his bedroom, Nate followed him. 

“Are you gonna tuck me in? Isn’t that below your pay grade Fed? 

He threw himself dramatically onto his bed. The covers were a tragic mess as usual and Miguel didn’t care enough to try and straighten them. 

“Are you going to sleep in your tuxedo? Let’s at least get the jacket off.” 

“Fucking tuxedo.” Miguel muttered but he sat up so Nate could help him take the jacket off, his own fingers fumbling helplessly with the various parts that needed unbuttoning or unsnapping. How’d he managed to get the cummerbund back on? Nate carefully folded it along with the jacket, laying them across the back of a chair sitting in the corner. Then he returned to unbuttoned the stupid shirt. Miguel just sat there, a dress shop dummy, and watched while Nate took care of most of his clothes. 

“What about your slacks?” Nate eyed Miguel with 

“What about my slacks? You wanna see what’s underneath? I gotta secret…” Miguel waggled his eye brows. “I don’t like underwear.” 

“I think you can sleep with the slacks on.” 

“Fine.” He pouted, he’d take them off as soon as Mr. Straight-laced left the room. 

“That’s enough, Romeo,” Nate chuckled after a stray hand ran down the inside of his trouser-covered leg. It was Miguel’s hand. Huh. 

“I’m just being friendly.” 

Nate rolled his eyes. “You have the hands of an octopus.” 

“Octopus have tantacula, tentacles. Right.” Amused blue eyes stared down at him. “Wow.” 

“Wow, what?” 

“Your face… mmm.” Miguel lifted a hand, trying to reach Nate’s cheek. His freckles fascinated Miguel. He had the most ridiculous thought that he wanted to trace them and see if the constellations he was imagining led anywhere. Exhaustion and alcohol finally overwhelmed Miguel; he shut his eyes and swirling images of galaxies and red-haired men with eyes like the night sky beckoned him toward sleep. 

A hand touched his shoulder, startling him. Nate— right— pulled the duvet up over his shoulders. Miguel loved the weight of covers despite the early-summer heat. His pillow was cool under his cheek, and the last thing he was conscious of was the bedroom light blinking off.   

“There you are, you jerk.” 

A bright light shone directly into Miguel’s eyes. He rolled over, fumbling to pull his pillow over his head and eyes. The pillow was pulled ruthlessly from his head. 

“You are such an asshole. Did you ever think for one minute that people were worried about you? You couldn’t have left a note or told someone you were leaving?” 

Miguel tried to blink the sleep from his eyes while he processed and deciphered what was being said. “Please turn the light off?” 

Buck huffed but did as Miguel asked. The dark was a blessing. Miguel wondered what time it was and how long he had been asleep. Buck came over and sat on the edge of his bed, a serious expression on his face. Oh, great, it was daddy-chat time. 

Miguel rolled over onto his stomach, his head resting in the crook of his elbow. “I’m sorry. I just wanted to get home, and Nate Richardson offered me a ride. I didn’t want to barge in and interrupt anything.” 

“You mean you wanted to sneak off without a lecture.” 

“Yeah, that too.” He turned his head so he could see Buck. He was still wearing his wedding tux. The man looked incredibly hot. Miguel could hear noises coming from downstairs, where Buck’s new husband was probably plotting Miguel’s death. “What time is it?” 

“Late. But I was worried about you.” Buck ran a hand through his thick blond hair. He sighed. “Look, are you going to be okay while we’re gone?” 

Shit. He must have really messed up if Buck was this worried about him. Miguel cast around for a way to reassure his best friend that he would not careen off the tracks while Buck and Joey were off enjoying Disneyland, or World, or wherever it was they were going. 

“I was blowing off some steam, all right? Please don’t worry. It’s all good. I got this, the boys and I have the shop under control, and you are going to go off and enjoy your honeymoon with your man, all right?” 

He must have said the right things, because Buck looked relieved. “Okay. If you need anything, call, okay? We can come home.” 

Right. Miguel was going to interrupt his best friend’s honeymoon by calling him home. No fucking way. “I’ve got this. I promise. You go keep Joey out of trouble— if that’s possible.” 

An indignant “Hey!” floated up from the first floor. 

Buck grinned and dragged Miguel into a huge hug, which he didn’t protest against, because who wouldn’t like a great big hug from a handsome bear of a man? 

Four hours later, the airport shuttle arrived to whisk his friends off on their three-week honeymoon. Miguel said goodbye and watched as the van drove away from the little bungalow. It settled into an odd silence, like it knew Miguel was alone. He could hear the creaks and groans of the old house, the tick of the kitchen clock, the slow hiss of the toilet tank filling back up. 

He wasn’t going to be able to go back to sleep. Hitching up the sweats he’d dragged on, he headed to the living room. Buck had set up an old desktop computer system in the corner, and Miguel booted it up. He needed to start looking for his own place; he might as well start now.

👀Formerly published as Accidental Roots👀

Saturday Series Spotlight

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TBT Time Machine

The NorthStar(Xmas in July)

Author Bio:

Elle hails from the northwest corner of the US known for: rain, rain, and more rain. She pens Shielded Hearts, Veiled Intentions, and West Coast Forensics series all set in the Pacific Northwest. Elle's books feature hot mm romance with the guarantee of an HEA. The men start out broken, and maybe they end up that way, but they always find the other half of their hearts.

While Elle often claims she was raised by wolves, she was in fact raised by her mom and step-dad in a little village called Seattle. When she grew up there were still lawn darts and pull tabs on pop cans, and she went to the park with just her trusty dog (who once went home without her) as company. Later in her life she tried adulting and found it wasn't "all that". She loves both cats and dogs, Star Wars and Star Trek, pineapple on pizza, and is known to start crossword puzzles with a ballpoint pen.

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📘🎥Friday's Film Adaptation🎥📘: Sounder by William H Armstrong

Summary:

Set in the Deep South, this Newbery Medal-winning novel tells the story of the great coon dog, Sounder, and the poor sharecroppers who own him.

During the difficult years of the nineteenth century South, an African-American boy and his poor family rarely have enough to eat. Each night, the boy's father takes their dog, Sounder, out to look for food and the man grows more desperate by the day.

When food suddenly appears on the table one morning, it seems like a blessing. But the sheriff and his deputies are not far behind. The ever-loyal Sounder remains determined to help the family he loves as hard times bear down on them.

This classic novel shows the courage, love, and faith that bind an African-American family together despite the racism and inhumanity they face. Readers who enjoy timeless dog stories such as Old Yeller and Where the Red Fern Grows will find much to love in Sounder.

1

THE TALL MAN stood at the edge of the porch. The roof sagged from the two rough posts which held it, almost closing the gap between his head and the rafters. The dim light from the cabin window cast long equal shadows from man and posts. A boy stood nearby shivering in the cold October wind. He ran his fingers back and forth over the broad crown of the head of a coon dog named Sounder.

“Where did you first get Sounder?” the boy asked.

“I never got him. He came to me along the road when he wasn’t more’n a pup.”

The father turned to the cabin door. It was ajar. Three small children, none as high as the level of the latch, were peering out into the dark. “We just want to pet Sounder,” the three all said at once.

“It’s too cold. Shut the door.”

“Sounder and me must be about the same age,” the boy said, tugging gently at one of the coon dog’s ears, and then the other. He felt the importance of the years—as a child measures age—which separated him from the younger children. He was old enough to stand out in the cold and run his fingers over Sounder’s head.

No dim lights from other cabins punctuated the night. The white man who owned the vast endless fields had scattered the cabins of his Negro sharecroppers far apart, like flyspecks on a whitewashed ceiling. Sometimes on Sundays the boy walked with his parents to set awhile at one of the distant cabins. Sometimes they went to the meetin’ house. And there was school too. But it was far away at the edge of town. Its term began after harvest and ended before planting time. Two successive Octobers the boy had started, walking the eight miles morning and evening. But after a few weeks when cold winds and winter sickness came, his mother had said, “Give it up, child. It’s too long and too cold.” And the boy, remembering how he was always laughed at for getting to school so late, had agreed. Besides, he thought, next year he would be bigger and could walk faster and get to school before it started and wouldn’t be laughed at. And when he wasn’t dead-tired from walking home from school, his father would let him hunt with Sounder. Having both school and Sounder would be mighty good, but if he couldn’t have school, he could always have Sounder.

“There ain’t no dog like Sounder,” the boy said. But his father did not take up the conversation. The boy wished he would. His father stood silent and motionless. He was looking past the rim of half-light that came from the cabin window and pushed back the darkness in a circle that lost itself around the ends of the cabin. The man seemed to be listening. But no sounds came to the boy.

Sounder was well named. When he treed a coon or possum in a persimmon tree or on a wild-grape vine, his voice would roll across the flat-lands. It wavered through the foothills, louder than any other dog’s in the whole countryside.

What the boy saw in Sounder would have been totally missed by an outsider. The dog was not much to look at—a mixture of Georgia redbone hound and bulldog. His ears, nose, and color were those of a redbone. The great square jaws and head, his muscular neck and broad chest showed his bulldog blood. When a possum or coon was shaken from a tree, like a flash Sounder would clamp and set his jaw-vise just behind the animal’s head. Then he would spread his front paws, lock his shoulder joints, and let the bulging neck muscles fly from left to right. And that was all. The limp body, with not a torn spot or a tooth puncture in the skin, would be laid at his master’s feet. His master’s calloused hand would rub the great neck, and he’d say “Good Sounder, good Sounder.” In the winter when there were no crops and no pay, fifty cents for a possum and two dollars for a coonhide bought flour and overall jackets with blanket linings.

But there was no price that could be put on Sounder’s voice. It came out of the great chest cavity and broad jaws as though it had bounced off the walls of a cave. It mellowed into half-echo before it touched the air. The mists of the flat-lands strained out whatever coarseness was left over from his bulldog heritage, and only flutelike redbone mellowness came to the listener. But it was louder and clearer than any purebred redbone. The trail barks seemed to be spaced with the precision of a juggler. Each bark bounced from slope to slope in the foothills like a rubber ball. But it was not an ordinary bark. It filled up the night and made music as though the branches of all the trees were being pulled across silver strings.

While Sounder trailed the path the hunted had taken in search of food, the high excited voice was quiet. The warmer the trail grew, the longer the silences, for, by nature, the coon dog would try to surprise his quarry and catch him on the ground, if possible. But the great voice box of Sounder would have burst if he had tried to trail too long in silence. After a last, long-sustained stillness which allowed the great dog to close in on his quarry, the voice would burst forth so fast it overflowed itself and became a melody.

A stranger hearing Sounder’s treed bark suddenly fill the night might have thought there were six dogs at the foot of one tree. But all over the countryside, neighbors, leaning against slanting porch posts or standing in open cabin doorways and listening, knew that it was Sounder.

“If the wind does not rise, I’ll let you go hunting with me tonight.” The father spoke quietly as he glanced down at boy and dog. “Animals don’t like to move much when it’s windy.”

“Why?” the boy asked.

“There are too many noises, and they can’t hear a killer slipping up on them. So they stay in their dens, especially possums, because they can’t smell much.”

The father left the porch and went to the woodpile at the edge of the rim of light. The boy followed, and each gathered a chunk-stick for the cabin stove. At the door, the father took down a lantern that hung on the wall beside a possum sack and shook it. “There’s plenty of coal oil,” he said.

The boy closed the door quickly. He had heard leaves rattling across the frozen ground. He hoped his father didn’t hear it. But he knew the door wouldn’t shut it out. His father could sense the rising wind, and besides, it would shake the loose windowpanes.

Inside the cabin, the boy’s mother was cutting wedge-shaped pieces of corn mush from an iron pot that stood on the back of the stove. She browned them in a skillet and put them on the tin-topped table in the middle of the room. The boy and the three younger children ate their supper in silence. The father and mother talked a little about ordinary things, talk the boy had heard so many times he no longer listened. “The crop will be better next year. There’ll be more day work. The hunting was better last year.”

This winter the hunting was getting worse and worse.  The wind came stronger and colder than last year. Sometimes Sounder and his master hunted in the wind. But night after night they came home with an empty brown sack. Coons were scarcely seen at all. People said they had moved south to the big water. There were few scraps and bones for Sounder. Inside the cabin, they were hungry for solid food too. Corn mush had to take the place of stewed possum, dumplings, and potatoes.

Not long after supper, Sounder’s master went out of the cabin and stood listening, as he always did, to see if he could hear the cold winter wind beginning to rise in the hills. When he came back into the cabin, he took off his blanket-lined overall jacket and sat behind the stove for a long time. Sounder whined at the door as if he were asking if someone had forgotten to light the lantern and start across the fields of dead stalks to the lowlands or past the cottonwoods and jack oaks to the hills. The boy took Sounder some table scraps in a tin pan. As Sounder licked the bottom of the pan it rattled against a loose board in the porch as if somebody were walking across the floor.

Later, when it was time for the smaller children in the cabin to go to bed, Sounder’s master got up, put on his overall jacket, and went outside. He did not take the lantern or Sounder or the boy with him. The stem order to the coon hound to go back under the porch came in through the cabin door, and Sounder’s whining continued long after the footsteps on the frozen path had died out.

Inside the cabin, the boy’s mother sat by the stove, picking kernels of walnuts with a bent hairpin. The woman watched each year for the walnuts to fall after the first hard frost. Each day she went with the children and gathered all that had fallen. The brownish-green husks, oozing their dark purple stain, were beaten off on a flat rock outside the cabin. On the same rock, the nuts were cracked after they had dried for several weeks in a tin box under the stove. When kernel-picking time came, before it was dark each day, the boy or the father took a hammer with a homemade handle, went to the flat rock, and cracked as many as could be kemeled in a night.

The troubled whimper of a child came through the little door that led to the shed-room where the children slept.

“You must go to bed soon,” the mother said. “Your little brother gets addled in his sleep when you ain’t in bed with him.”

The boy reached into his mother’s lap, where the golden half-kernels lay in the folds of her apron. She slapped his hand away. “You eat the crumbs from the bottom of the hull basket,” she said. “I try to pick two pounds a night. That’s thirty cents’ worth. Fifteen cents a pound at the store if they’re mostly half-kernels and dry. The man won’t pay if they’re all in crumbs.”

Sometimes the woman told the boy stories she had heard at the meetin’ house. “The Lord do powerful things” she would say. The boy liked it when she told her stories. They took away night loneliness. Night loneliness was always bad when the younger children had gone to bed, or when the father was not in the cabin. “Night loneliness is part fearing,” the boy’s mother had once said to him. But the boy was never afraid when his father was near.

Perhaps she too felt the loneliness that came with the wind as it passed the cabin outside, and the closeness of a world whose farthest border in the night was the place where the lamp light ended, at the edge of the cabin walls. So she told the boy a story of a mighty flood which the Lord had sent to wash away all the evil in the world. When the story was over, she sent the boy to bed and continued picking out kernels and adding them to the neat mound in the folds of her apron.

The boy pressed his head deep into his straw pillow. The pillow was cold, but it felt smooth, and it smelled fresh. He had the same feeling he got when he rubbed his face against the sheets that hung on the clothesline every Monday. His mother washed his pillowcase and sheet every week, just like she did for the people who lived in the big house down the road. He buried himself deep in his side of the straw tick; he felt where the wooden slats of the bed crossed under his body. He rolled close to his little brother and tucked the edge of the coverlet under his body to keep out the cold that seeped up through the straw ticking. His little brother’s body warmed him.

He heard Sounder whimpering under the porch. But Sounder was warm because the boy’s father had put two burlap sacks under the porch for the time when the hard frosts came. The boy thought there must be two pounds of nuts in the pile on his mother’s lap. His mother always said “Two pounds is a good night’s work if you can start early and there ain’t a sick child to rock.”

He wondered where his father had gone without Sounder; they always went together at night. He heard the thump, thump, thump of Sounder’s paw hitting the underneath side of the porch floor as he scratched at a flea in his short tan hair.

The boy dreamed of the stalk land covered by the Lord’s mighty flood. He wondered where the animals would go if the water rose over the foothills. “Cabins built on posts would just float like boats, porch and all,” he assured himself in a whisper. If they floated from the far ends of the land and all came together, that would be a town, and he wouldn’t be lonely anymore . . .

When the boy awoke in the morning, he went to the window. He remembered his dream of the flood covering the stalk land. He called the younger children. His breath steamed up the windowpane. He wiped the steam away with the bottom of his fist. His dream had not come true. There was no floodwater rising in the bottom-land. Except for frost on the ground, everything looked just the same as it had yesterday. The younger children looked, saw nothing, and asked, “What is it?”

The big blue-enameled possum kettle was boiling on top of the chunk stove. It had two lids and doubled for cooking and heating. The boy felt the brown paper bag of walnut kernels on the shelf behind the stove. “Yes,” he said to his mother, “I think there are two pounds.”

He stood close to the warm stovepipe, turning one cheek and then the other to its glowing warmth. He circled his arms in a wide embrace around the pipe and rubbed his hands together. The warmth ran up his sleeves and down over his ribs inside his shirt and soaked inward through his whole body. He pulled in deep breaths from above the stove to catch the steam escaping from under the kettle’s lid as it bounced up and down, breaking the rhythm of the bubbles that went lob, lob, lob on the surface of the fast-boiling pot.

In a skillet on the second stove lid there were pork sausages! He sniffed the thin lines of smoke curling up from under the edges of each of them. Pork sausage was for Christmas. But he knew it wasn’t Christmas yet. His mother put a pan of cold biscuits on the lid of the possum kettle to warm. She was humming to herself. The lid stopped jumping up and down, and the steam began to whistle softly as it squeezed from under the lid.

The smell that came from under the lid wasn’t possum. It was ham bone. The boy had only smelled it twice in his life, once before in his own cabin, and once when he was walking past the big house down the road. The sausage and hambone smells filled up the cabin and leaked out through the cracks in the floor and around the door. They excited Sounder, and now he was scratching at the door.

Sounder hadn’t had much to eat yesterday. Besides a few scraps, he had had one cold biscuit. When flour was scarce, the boy’s mother would wrap the leftover biscuits in a clean flour sack and put them away for the next meal. Then they would be put in a pan, sprinkled with a little water to keep them soft, and warmed over. The boy called to Sounder to stop and go away. His mother stopped her humming and said, “Shush, child, you’ll wake your father.”

Then she went back to her humming. His mother always hummed when she was worried. When she held a well child on her lap and rocked back and forth, she sang. But when she held a sick child close in her arms and the rocker moved just enough to squeak a little, she would hum. Sometimes she hummed so softly that the child heard the deep concerned breathing of terror above the sound of the humming. The boy always thought her lips looked as though they were glued together when she hummed. They seemed to be rolled inward and drawn long and thin. Once when she kissed him good night when he was sick, they were cold, he remembered. But when she sang or told stories, her lips were rolled out, big and warm and soft.

Outside, the wind still blew, the sun was weak, and the earth was gray. Several times the boy went out to bring wood for his mother. He ate sausage and biscuits at the tin-topped table with the other children.

When his father got up, he chopped some wood and sat by the fire. The top of the possum kettle bounced up and down again because the biscuit pan had been moved. The father lifted the lid now and then. With the big wire fork that had a wooden handle, he pulled the ham half out of the water and turned it over. The boy felt warm and proud inside when he saw his father’s great hand take hold of the handle of the hot lid without using a pot rag the way his mother always did. Finally his father took from the shelf a flat oak slab, bigger than any of the pans or dishes, and put it on the table.

The boy liked to smell the oak slab. It smelled like the Mercy Seat meetin’-house picnic held every summer. He also liked to rub his fingers on the edge of the slab, for it was soft and smooth where the grease had soaked it. His father had hollowed it out during long winter evenings as he sat by the stove. The boy had cleaned up the shavings and slipped them under the door of the stove when the draft was open. They burned with a bright flame, and they made a great mystery for the boy: The curled ones straightened out as they burned, but the straight ones curled up.

The boy remembered when the oak slab had had ham on it before. One year his father had won a pig in a shooting match and raised it to a hog. They had eaten one ham and traded one for beans and flour at the store. That year they had spareribs and chitlins and pan scrapple. Sometimes when the boy’s father helped butcher hogs down at the big house, he would bring home spareribs and sowbelly—lots of sowbelly, but not much spareribs.

The boy’s father took the ham from the kettle and put it on the oak slab. “Save the ham-boilin’ for Sounder,” he reminded the boy’s mother.

“Sounder will eat good now,” the boy said.

The father sharpened the butcher knife with the whetstone he used to whet his scythe and his goose-necked brier hook in the summer when he cut brambles and young sumac in the fencerows.  He cut big pieces of ham, and they stuck out from under the brown tops of the biscuits. It was like a Christmas bigger than a pork-sausage Christmas. The boy slipped a piece of the fat rind into a biscuit and took it out to Sounder. When the ham-boiling had cooled, he filled Sounder’s pan and ran his fingers up and down the great dog’s back as he lapped it up.

The windows of the cabin stayed steamed up almost all day, the kettle had boiled so long. The cold wind continued to blow outside. Nothing moved except what the wind moved—dead leaves under the cabin, brown blades and stalks from the fields which were dead and ready to be blown away, bare branches of poplars, and the spires of tall pines. Toward evening the father wiped the steam away from the glass and looked out a couple of times. The dry cottonwood chunks burned like gunpowder in the stove. In one or two spots the side of the stove gave off a red glow.

With the flavor of ham and biscuit still in his mouth, the boy felt good. He watched his mother as she patched his father’s overalls with a piece of ticking. The combination of faded blue overall cloth and gray-and-white-striped ticking looked odd. One time at the meetin’-house picnic, boys with patches the same color as their overalls had laughed at him and pointed to the checkered gingham on the knees of his overalls. He had felt mad and hurt. But his mother had said, “Pay no mind, child,” and had led him away. He hoped no one would laugh at his father. His father wouldn’t be hurt. He didn’t get hurt. He would get mad and fight back, and the boy was always afraid when his father got mad.

When the woman had patched the torn place, she got the walnut basket, folded her apron in her lap, and began to pick out the golden-brown kernels. The boy thought she would sing, but the rocker only moved enough to squeak. She hummed softly, and her lips looked glued together. “Look down, look down that lonesome road.” The boy wished she would stop humming and tell a story about the Lord or King David, but she kept humming “That Lonesome Road.”

The boy decided it was lonesomer in bed in the dark than it was staying up. He was glad he could set a long time after the young children had gone to bed. Once he had been gathering weeds which his father had cut at the edge of a lawn. On the lawn a lady sat under a tree reading a story aloud to some children. He wished his mother or father could read. And if they had a book, he would hold the lamp by the chair so they could see the words and never get tired. “One day I will learn to read,” he said to himself. He would have a book with stories in it, then he wouldn’t be lonesome even if his mother didn’t sing.

Black sharecroppers during the Depression fight to get their children a decent education.

Release Date: September 24, 1972

Release Time: 105 minutes

Director: Martin Ritt

Cast:

Cicely Tyson as Rebecca Morgan

Paul Winfield as Nathan Lee Morgan

Kevin Hooks as David Lee Morgan

Carmen Matthews as Mrs. Rita Boatwright

Taj Mahal as Ike Phillips

James Best as Sheriff Charlie Young

Eric Hooks as Earl Morgan

Yvonne Jarrell as Josie Mae Morgan

Janet MacLachlan as Camille Johnson

Sylvia "Kuumba" Williams as Harriet

Ted Airhart as Mr. Perkins

Richard Durham as Perkins' Foreman

Jerry Leggio as Prison Guard

Spencer Bradford as Clarence

Judge William Thomas Bennett as Judge

Reverend Thomas N. Phillips as Minister Garth

Awards:

45th Academy Awards

Best Picture - Robert B. Radnitz - Nominated

Best Actor - Paul Winfield - Nominated

Best Actress - Cicely Tyson - Nominated

Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium - Lonne Elder III - Nominated

27th BAFTAs

Best Original Music - Taj Mahal - Nominated

30th Golden Globes

Best Actress in a Motion Picture – Drama - Cicely Tyson - Nominated

Most Promising Newcomer – Male - Kevin Hooks - Nominated

Author Bio:

William H. Armstrong (1911 - 1999) was an American children's author and educator, best known for his 1969 Newbery Medal-winning novel, Sounder.

In 1956, at the request of his school headmaster, he published his first book, a study guide called Study Is Hard Work. Armstrong followed this title with numerous other self-help books, and in 1963 he was awarded the National School Bell Award of the National Association of School Administrators for distinguished service in the interpretation of education.

In 1969, Armstrong published his masterpiece, an eight-chapter novel titled Sounder about an African-American sharecropping family. Praised by critics, Sounder won the John Newbery Medal and the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award in 1970, and was adapted into a major motion picture in 1972.

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⏳Throwback Thursday's Time Machine⏳: The Heart of Texas by RJ Scott

I've decided to add a Throwback Thursday to my weekly posts where I'll be focusing on older stories.  Never too soon to revisit an old favorite nor is it ever too late to discover an old but new to you read.  What better way to kick off my Throwback Thursday's Time Machine than with the first published MM read that brought me to the genre, RJ Scott's The Heart of Texas.

⏳💸⏳Limited Time Audio $4.99 as part of Audiobook Promo⏳💸⏳

Summary:
Texas #1
Riley Hayes, the playboy of the Hayes family, is a young man who seems to have it all: money, a career he loves, and his pick of beautiful women. His father, CEO of HayesOil, passes control of the corporation to his two sons; but a stipulation is attached to Riley's portion. Concerned about Riley's lack of maturity, his father requires that Riley 'marry and stay married for one year to someone he loves'.

Angered by the requirement, Riley seeks a means of bypassing his father's stipulation. Blackmailing Jack Campbell into marrying him "for love" suits Riley's purpose. There is no mention in his father's documents that the marriage had to be with a woman and Jack Campbell is the son of Riley Senior's arch rival. Win win.

Riley marries Jack and abruptly his entire world is turned inside out. Riley hadn't counted on the fact that Jack Campbell, quiet and unassuming rancher, is a force of nature in his own right.

This is a story of murder, deceit, the struggle for power, lust and love, the sprawling life of a rancher and the whirlwind existence of a playboy. But under and through it all, as Riley learns over the months, this is a tale about family and everything that that word means.

Blogger Note:

It's been nearly 10 years since I first discovered The Heart of Texas and at the time I wasn't blogging and fairly new to writing reviews so my original was short and sweet but still captured all the feels:

 

Original 2013 Goodreads Review: WOW!!! The characters are so well written, you'll love them, you'll hate some of them and I was definitely sucked into the story.

Starting the summer of 2015, this series has become an annual re-read/re-listen and so I'm putting my last overall series reviews here because though I am featuring only the first in the series for this post, I can't read/listen to just one.  It's all or nothing😉😍!

Overall Series Re-Read Review 2018:
I seriously have no idea what more I can say about Texas that I haven't already.  This is the series that brought me into the world of published M/M genre so Jack & Riley Campbell-Hayes and the Double D universe will always hold a special place in my heart.  No matter how many times I read this series, I always smile, cry, laugh, and just completely escape into their world.  I may never experience that first time adrenaline rush but it still gets my blood pumping and heart racing.  Texas is not just Jack and Riley's journey, yes they are the primary leads but we also get to see their children, their family, their friends all navigate life on and off the ranch.  The Double D has a way of bringing people together, giving them hope and purpose, a fresh start, a place to grow and become who they are meant to be, but at the heart of each story is just that: heart.  When RJ Scott wrote The Heart of Texas, I doubt she had any idea what she started, how far it would go or how many people it would touch but I'm just glad she gave life to Jack and Riley and everything that came from their love.  This is one series that isn't getting old any time soon for me.

Audiobook Overall Series Review 2019:
As I've said many times before, RJ Scott's Texas series was the first published M/M genre book that I read so they will always hold a place of pride in my heart.  No matter how many times I read or listen to the journey Jack and Riley Campbell-Hayes, their friends and family take I never tire of it.  The characters and the paths they take are so real, so honest, the good and the bad, the heartache and the healing, it never fails to put a smile on face.

As for the audio versions, I can't imagine anyone other than Sean Crisden bringing these stories to life.  Sean's voice make Jack, Riley, and the whole Texas family(which grows with each entry because its not just blood that connects everyone) real.  Honestly I felt as if I looked up I'd see Jack with Solo Cal out in the yard or Riley on the floor with his maps.

If you haven't read/listened to Texas before I highly recommend giving it a go but it is a series needed to be experienced in order.  I warn you though Jack and Riley can be addictive, you'll never want to say goodbye and now thanks to audio you really don't have to😉😉.

RATING:

Chapter 1
"Sit down, boys," Gerald Hayes said firmly, his back to the Dallas skyline and his arms folded across his chest. They complied with his request since it was more of a command, both sliding into the leather chairs opposite the desk. They wore different expressions, though both were his sons.

Jeff was the mirror of his father, six-five, strong, not averse to getting his own way through means others might consider somewhat underhanded or devious. He'd achieved good things for Hayes Oil, very good things. Under his control, the company had grown in strength due to some well placed deals and some serious, if somewhat questionable, pay-offs to just the right people.

It was how Hayes Oil had gotten where it was today; the second largest oil company in Dallas, billions passing through their coffers on an annual basis, with a staff of over seven hundred in the head office alone. Jeff was a chip off the old block; he knew when to deal, and when to back off, when to buy off. It was a joy for an old man to watch. Jeff was sitting in his chair, his back straight. He was calm, with a virtually inexpressive demeanor, and his eyes were like chips of ice. He was dressed in dark gray Armani, perfectly groomed, his shirt crisp and white, and his tie a deep maroon. His hands were placed on the material of his pants, his nails perfectly manicured. He had an air of expectancy layered about him in palpable waves. Gerald couldn't have been prouder of his eldest son. Jeff was the right choice to form part of the new era of Hayes Oil, his student, and his success.

Riley, his middle child, only an inch shorter than Jeff and nearly as cold, was sitting just as calmly. Nearly. He too was wearing Armani, this time a charcoal black with a black silk shirt and no tie. He exuded the same confidence as his older brother, but with a subtle difference. He was an untamed version of his brother. His middle child had his mother's way about him and eenjoyed the money the Hayes family had, way more than was really necessary. But to give him his due, under his guidance, Research and Development had flourished, and Gerald was as watchful of Riley as he was of his oldest— but for very different reasons.

Riley made decisions driven by his heart, by immeasurable instinct, too many times to make Gerald entirely happy with leaving Hayes Oil under his control for any length of time. Still, Riley deserved a place at Hayes Oil; after all, he supposed, whatever his thoughts, and whatever decisions were made, it was his legacy too.

Riley looked tired today, and Gerald glanced down at the Dallas Morning News on his desk, knowing what was on page seven, the gossip page, knowing what was in evidence before him, and knowing it made his decision easier.

"How is Lisa?" he asked Jeff conversationally, glancing over at the pictures grouped on one side of his desk— his family, Jeff with his arms around his perfect blonde wife, with his two grandchildren posed just so. It filled him with pride to see the Hayes Oil generations all set to carry on the Hayes name. He glanced at photos of his youngest, Eden, and at Riley, both in their photos alone, both for very different reasons.

Sighing, he unfolded his arms, wondering if what he was about to say would change the face of Hayes Oil forever.

* * * * *

Jim Bailey was furious. He could only imagine what Riley was going through at this very minute, and he knew someone had to go and find him before the middle Hayes boy took a gun to his father's head. He had watched as Gerald and the favored son had left. The older man's arm was loose across Jeff's shoulders, their heads close in conversation, and it cut him to the core. It was Jim who had prepared the legal papers, Jim who had argued against the idiocy Hayes Senior was proposing. Someone had to be on Riley's side in this whole freaking mess, even if it meant this was the end of his tenure at Hayes Oil, and he knew where to find Riley. Taking the elevator, he left at the sixty-fifth floor, following the darkening corridor to the map room. It was the one place where Riley could always be found if the stress of his family got too much, sitting cross-legged on the floor poring over his beloved maps. He would spend hours with the geological surveys, the statistical results, his instinct for oil leading R&D to make decisions that had quadrupled Hayes Oil's output over the last two years. It astounded Jim that such a young man, only twenty-seven, had such an instinct. IIt reminded him of the old days, when Gerald and Alan would fly by the seat of their pants to locate new oil reserves based on nothing other than instinct.

Jim hesitated outside the door, steeling himself for what he would find within. Riley was rightly going to be furious with him for withholding the legal changes at Hayes Oil from him. He considered Jim a friend and, as such, probably had the right to expect more. Breathing deeply, he pushed open the door to find the large room echoing and in darkness, the only light from the closing Texas evening and the growing glow of the city outside. It wasn't difficult to locate Riley. Jim could almost touch the anger radiating from the tall man standing at the window silhouetted in the increasing gloom. Jim said nothing, just closing the door behind him and leaning against it. He loosened his tie and focused hard on the dark form. Riley was locked into silent stillness, looking out through the glass.

"Twenty-two percent," Riley finally said, his words clipped and tense. Jim could see himself reflected in that same glass, hesitating, lost, just waiting for the explosion. Jim had known. He had known as soon as the figures hit the desk. For fuck's sake, he was the company's lawyer. He was the one to write up the contracts for handover, the one who'd known the full details for three days longer than Riley.

His anger at what Gerald had forced him to do was manifesting itself as guilt. God knows he had wanted to say something. Every time he looked at the young man who worked so damn hard for this company, he had wanted to tell Riley what Gerald was planning. Never the right moment, never the right reason, and now… now he was paying for the betrayal. "Riley?"

Temper snapped and spat from Riley. "Fucking less than a third, the same as my sister!" He started pacing, gesturing with his hands, frustration in every exaggerated movement. Jim grimaced, because he knew that the percentage Eden got wasn't the point of Riley's temper. Riley was close to his sister, loved her and her shopping ways, and didn't begrudge his Paris Hilton wannabe sibling anything. No, the point was that it hadn't been fair at all. His brother, his acknowledged bastard of a Stepford brother, had just been handed forty-eight percent of Hayes Oil, and effective control of the company.

In a flurry of sudden but controlled movement, Riley spun on his heel, throwing whatever was in his hand across the room, missing Jim by inches. It was a map-reader, fifty thousand dollars of technology smashed into fractured pieces against the glass wall, and then it began. The words that Jim had been expecting.

"He sat there, in his fucking throne room, and he took everything away from me and gave it all to Jeff!" The temper in him was high and rare, and Jim flinched as Riley stalked around the tables that separated them with no direction other than just to walk. "And do you know why?" He stopped, grabbed at the newspapers that were lying in a tangled mess on the final map table by the door, and in one motion, Riley swept everything other than one sheet to the floor. He jabbed at the picture that had been snapped the night before, Riley and Steve at a club, arms around each other, Steve with his usual wide smile, Riley looking somewhat worse for wear from his brush with Jack Daniels and José Cuervo. "This."

It was the usual blurred image from the paparazzi who followed Riley, the playboy prince with a bottomless pit of money, everywhere he went. He shook his head. Now he was really confused and couldn't understand what Riley was getting at. Gerald had explained very clearly that his eldest son was the best for the company, the one switched on to commerce, the one with the business brain. He hadn't listened when Jim had pointed out the amazing upturn in R&D, the increase in oil locations, the way Riley was so committed to Hayes Oil. He had just shaken his head as if he couldn't believe, or didn't want to believe. "The photo?" Jim wasn't stupid; the picture didn't exactly show Riley in his best light. There was the blur of his smile and an unwarranted amount of skin on display as he tumbled half in and half out of the cab, stopping obviously to pose with his best friend.

"He said," Riley paused, a sneer on his face, "that the friendship I have with Steve is unhealthy— unhealthy, shit. He was concerned by Steve's association with Campbell!" The name Campbell came out on a spit and a sneer, the perfect take-off of how Gerald Hayes would have said it, how Jim knew he would have said it. "Oh, and also, because I haven't got myself a brood mare like my oh so fucking perfect brother, then of course I must be confused about my sexuality."

Jim winced, both at the description of Jeff's wife as a brood mare, and at the whole confusion statement. Steve Murray, Riley's best friend since college, was openly bisexual, but Riley, despite having a history of mixing it up with men as well as women, was a lot less defined by a label. He had a different woman every night, younger, older, richer, poorer, it didn't matter, and neither did the boys he did on rarer occasions in the bathrooms of wherever they were. However it panned out, Riley always had tail.

"Said I should look at him and Mom." Again came the sneer, and Jim saw how the temper twisted his normally calm face. "Fuck. Like my mom had the perfect husband in my dad, like Jeff had the perfect fucking marriage with Lisa and her drinking." His voice trailed off, the venom in it spitting and harsh as he dismissed the marriages of his closest family as society based, financially arranged facades.

"Riley," Jim started, thinking maybe a time-out here, some down time, might be good.

"No, Jim. No," Riley interrupted, his hands clenched in fists. "Know what he said?" Riley stopped. Of course Jim knew what Hayes Senior had said. After all, it would have been Jim who had written the damn contract. Riley bowed his head, his face revealing disappointment at his friend's betrayal. Jim prayed that Riley could see that Gerald had forced him into this position. "He said it would be okay if I just got myself married in the next three months—if I found myself some stable brood mare time, and stayed married for a year. Then he would hand over more of Hayes Oil. Not based on the work I do, or the fact that, without me, Hayes Oil would have been landless for the next eighteen months, but based on a marriage. I mean, what the fuck, Jim? This is the twenty-first century, not the nineteenth."

"I know," Jim said simply, holding his hands up in his defense. "I tried, Riley, I tried to get him to see sense. I'm so sorry." He knew his voice sounded exhausted, sad. All the emotions that were trapped inside at what he'd had to do came swimming to the surface, puncturing the civility he had to show to the world whenever he was at the office. It was almost as if his words pushed through Riley's temper as suddenly and as finally as the thrust of a knife, and Riley visibly deflated in front of him. His head was bowed, his short blond hair disheveled. He looked calmer, but Jim knew this man well; his temper was clearly just below the surface.

"How do I do this, Jim? How do I fucking show the bastard that he can't win, that he can't push me to marry just to get what was rightfully mine anyway?" He looked up at him, the dim light from outside the window casting shadows across high cheekbones and green-hazel eyes. His lower lip was caught in his teeth, and the pain on his face was something Jim had never seen before. "I work fucking hard for this company. What more can I do?"

"So we find someone for you to marry, Riley, some quiet Texan debutante who will agree to a pre-nup, yeah? Someone who ticks the boxes, and then after this prescribed year is up, you can quietly divorce."

Jim could see that Riley wanted to say he couldn't do that, wanted to say that no woman in her right mind would agree to this, but they both knew it would be easy to find a bride. Both knew that the chance of marrying Riley Hayes was going to bring everyone out of the woodwork, fairly begging for the chance.

"I can't do that," Riley said simply. "I won't give Dad the satisfaction of winning like this."

Jim sighed. "So you let him win by not doing it, then. For him it's a win-win situation. Let's face it, you either let him win by doing something, or you let him win by doing nothing. Either way, Riley, you're fucked."

Saturday Series Spotlight

Part 1  /  Part 2  /  Legacy

Author Bio:

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.

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The Heart of Texas #1

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Texas Series

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