A Cowboy to Need Again
Release Date: Nov 2022
Series: Sagebrush #2
EXCERPT
“Shawn?” Sylvia’s voice made goose pebbles raise on his exposed skin.
Yes, the woman was Sylvia Avery. The only woman he had ever loved.
Loved, he reminded himself. Past tense. Very past.
Teen love. And he was no longer that same teen boy, just like she was all grown up, too.
Nicely grown up.
He distracted himself by untwisting the T-shirt while he tried to make his fingers stop trembling.
As he pulled the shirt over his head, hoping it wasn’t backwards, he forced himself to remember that they had moved on. They were adults now.
He tried to remind himself, as he smoothed down the cartoon character over his stomach with shaking hands, that they were long done and over with.
But his pulse didn’t agree.
He could feel the thumping in his heart, the pounding in his head, and the sadness in his soul, as if they had just parted for the last time.
Everyone had been so angry at them.
Lydia asked, “Are you all right?”
She was probably staring at him, but he couldn’t make himself stop looking at Sylvia.
Who returned his look with a blank face, as if she didn’t know him at all. Except for her famous silver blue eyes looking as sharp as ice slivers.
He wanted to hold steady, to refuse to look away.
Lydia’s voice held concern when she asked, “Shawn?”
“I was just—” He plopped Cade’s hat on his own head.
A big roar with lots of whooping and clapping and stomping went up in the barn making the dust fly even behind the hay bales.
Sylvia turned her attention to the noise, releasing him from the connection he hadn’t been able to sever. Hadn’t wanted to sever, to tell the truth.
“Everything can be overwhelming, huh? Anyone could need a break from it all.” Lydia hugged her clipboard, but looked at Shawn like he should catch the lifeline she threw him.
Shawn hadn’t realized until now that they had become good friends during all their excursions for possible filming sites.
“Yes, overwhelming,” he repeated automatically.
She further smoothed things over by keeping the conversation going.
“Shawn, let me introduce you to the boss.” Lydia gestured to Sylvia. “Shawn Rivers, meet Sylvia Avery.”
“Of all the ranches in all the world—” Sylvia riffed on Casablanca.
“—she walks into mine,” Shawn finished.
About This Book:
From Hollywood royalty to defiant cowboy, Sylvia Avery and Shawn Davidson Rivers are poster children for star-crossed lovers.
When Sylvia, an up-and-coming director, and Shawn, a successful voice-over actor, cross paths, years after their teenage romance was forbidden, they must confront the spark between them that never faded.
But Shawn's need to keep moving will make it hard to give in to the desire that remains between them.
As Sylvia calls upon Shawn to be her perfect leading man on the set of her promising new project, will they be able to find peace, love, and a forever home in each other?
Also in this series: