When a child’s game goes delightfully wrong, Jude finds himself rethinking his current status quo. Jude finds himself strangely looking to Annette to make sense of his own life.

Annette is trying not to get distracted by the sexy firefighter, but when her artistic retreat begins in disaster, Jude’s playing the hero she can’t ignore. Suddenly, her artwork is completely changed with Jude’s exquisite lines transforming her landscapes.

Up until now, their life was like a notebook full of doodles, but it’s turning into a full-fledged art showing, and neither of them know how to deal with the embers of desire when they ignite into flames.

Excerpt

“I’m sorry. That didn’t go exactly how I wanted it to,” he muttered before he put his face in his hands.

“Exactly what every girl wants to hear right after sex,” she answered drily, pulling her quilt up around her, trying to hide herself more.

“I want this between us, Annette.” He motioned at the air between the two of them, and Annette cursed the unfurling in her tummy. “I know you don’t, and I’m trying to figure out how we can both be happy with it. I swear to God, what we have isn’t just physical. I needed you tonight, and you were here for me. That says something I needed to hear.” His eyes focused on hers, and golden intensity shone from them. “Even if you aren’t saying the words.” He touched her ankle, wrapping his hand around it, making her seem delicate. “You’re mine, and this just proved it.”

Annette wasn’t going to tell him she needed him to prove anything. After Drake’s words and her desperation on the square to make enough money to stay here, she needed the connection she felt with Jude, even if she hated that she needed it.

He dropped his face into his hands again.

“I get that you’re trying to do something else, and I’m somehow getting in your way. I get it, but I don’t like it. I want to see if we can compromise, but I don’t know how.” He was talking into his hands, but when he looked up at her, his eyes were tortured, and a pang hit her.

She hated all of this. She didn’t want to be so emotional over him, but she didn’t want to be used either.

“Meet me for lunch tomorrow? Bring your portfolio. I want to try to make this right between us, and I’ll try not to fuck it up this time.” His smile was wry, if not a little bashful. She saw him. Jude was a wild child who was desperate to get on her good side, knowing he had messed up and thinking he’d messed up more.

Without a second thought, Annette nodded. Her body did what it wanted to around Jude. That much was clear. She had just agreed to see him again, even after she told herself she didn’t want this.

He kissed her forehead before getting off her bed.

“Thank you, Annette. You’ll see. You’re mine. There’s no one else.” Then he let himself out and she was alone again.

With a quivering body and traitorous thoughts.

Buy on Amazon | Barnes and Noble

About the Author

Anne has written her entire life and has the boxes of angst-filled journals and poetry to prove it. She’s been writing for public consumption for the past several years. She lives in rural East Texas with her husband and children in her own private oasis, where she prides herself in her complete lack of social skills, choosing instead to live with the people inside her head.

Currently, she has five romance series. Playing with Fire explores the trials and tribulations of a small team of fire fighters in the fictional mountain town of Pamona Gulch. In Pierce Securities, she gives us Ryan, Evan, Miriam, Zack, Quinten, Jordan, Hollerman, and Simon. Her favorite series, Book B!tches, is all about a group of women in Mystic, Texas who get into all sorts of shenanigans. In Stories of Serendipity, she explores real people living real lives in small town Texas in a contemporary romance setting. In The Four Winds, she chronicles God’s four closest archangels, Uriel, Gabriel, Raphael, and Michael, falling in love and becoming human.