Text copyright ©2020 Lani Lynn Vale
All Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
Sometimes you eat the cookie. Sometimes you don’t. Today I ate the cookie.
Acknowledgments
Golden Czermak- Photographer
My Brother’s Editor & Ink It Out Editing
Cover Me Darling- Cover Artist
My mom- Thank you for reading this book eight million two hundred times.
Kendra, Laura, Kathy, Mindy, Lisa, Penney, Barbara & Amanda—I don’t know what I would do without y’all. Thank you, my lovely betas, for loving my books as much as I do.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue I
Epilogue II
Other titles by Lani Lynn Vale:
The Freebirds
Boomtown
Highway Don’t Care
Another One Bites the Dust
Last Day of My Life
Texas Tornado
I Don’t Dance
The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC
Lights To My Siren
Halligan To My Axe
Kevlar To My Vest
Keys To My Cuffs
Life To My Flight
Charge To My Line
Counter To My Intelligence
Right To My Wrong
Code 11- KPD SWAT
Center Mass
Double Tap
Bang Switch
Execution Style
Charlie Foxtrot
Kill Shot
Coup De Grace
The Uncertain Saints
Whiskey Neat
Jack & Coke
Vodka On The Rocks
Bad Apple
Dirty Mother
Rusty Nail
The Kilgore Fire Series
Shock Advised
Flash Point
Oxygen Deprived
Controlled Burn
Put Out
I Like Big Dragons Series
I Like Big Dragons and I Cannot Lie
Dragons Need Love, Too
Oh, My Dragon
The Dixie Warden Rejects
Beard Mode
Fear the Beard
Son of a Beard
I’m Only Here for the Beard
The Beard Made Me Do It
Beard Up
For the Love of Beard
Law & Beard
There’s No Crying in Baseball
Pitch Please
Quit Your Pitchin’
Listen, Pitch
The Hail Raisers
Hail No
Go to Hail
Burn in Hail
What the Hail
The Hail You Say
Hail Mary
The Simple Man Series
Kinda Don’t Care
Maybe Don’t Wanna
Get You Some
Ain’t Doin’ It
Too Bad So Sad
Bear Bottom Guardians MC
Mess Me Up
Talkin’ Trash
How About No
My Bad
One Chance, Fancy
It Happens
Keep It Classy
Snitches Get Stitches
F-Bomb
The Southern Gentleman Series
Hissy Fit
Lord Have Mercy
KPD Motorcycle Patrol
Hide Your Crazy
It Wasn’t Me
I’d Rather Not
Make Me
Sinners are Winners
If You Say So
SWAT 2.0
Just Kidding
Fries Before Guys
Maybe Swearing Will Help
Ask Me If I Care
May Contain Wine
Joke’s on You
Join the Club
Any Day Now (8-11-20)
Say it Ain’t So (9-8-20)
Officially Over It (10-13-20)
Nobody Knows (11-3-20)
Depends Who’s Asking (12-8-20)
Valentine Boys
Herd That
Crazy Heifer
Chute Yeah
Get Bucked
Blurb
There are a few lessons one has to learn for themselves. Then there are the lessons that most people don’t have to learn because it’s just not done.
For instance, most people know instinctively that they shouldn’t crave the mother of their brother’s child.
Bourne Pena isn’t most men.
Bourne does everything he can to fight the attraction he feels for Delanie, but in the end, his refusal to go there almost ends up costing him his life.
***
Delanie Davidsdottir just wanted to forget. One night, she wanted to feel like a normal human being.
That one night changes her life and gives her a son that becomes her heart and soul. From that point forward, she does her level best to keep her head on straight and not make any more mistakes.
And falling for her child’s father’s twin brother—say that three times fast—would be a mistake. Not only is he Trouble with a capital T, he’s also a SWAT officer that puts his life on the line every single day.
She can’t take another loss like the one she suffered once before.
Then again, Delanie never encountered a man like Bourne Pena before, either.
Chapter 1
You’re the sprinkles to my donut.
-Text from Bourne to Booth
Bourne
“Bro.”
I looked up and over at my brother, Booth.
“What?”
He gestured toward his kid who was sleeping in his arms.
“Can you get the door?”
I did, standing up from my perch on the best goddamn couch in the world.
“Sure,” I said as I got the door.
The wind hit me in the face the moment that I opened it.
The screen door slammed shut so hard that I nearly lost two fingers, and I backed up rather quickly before it hit me in the face.
“I think,” I said as I pushed the door open again and held it with my foot this time, “I’m kind of boned for now.”
“You can wait it out. It’s supposed to be loud, strong, and short. The weatherman said it’d be an intense eight minutes.”
Delanie’s husky voice sounded from behind me, and my semi became an instant hard-on.
It’d been semi-hard since I’d walked into her house an hour before.
Today was Booth’s day for visitation with their son, Asa.
Delanie and Booth. Booth being my twin brother.
The reason I was there was because Delanie had bought Asa a new bed. A new bed that they’d delivered, put together, and then had left
in the middle of the room. The bed was heavy, made of solid wood, and neither Delanie nor her twin sister, Dillan, could move it.
Hence the reason I’d been asked to come over today, in my tux, right before a fucking wedding.
The bed had been heavy. And it was on my list of things to do to call the fucking furniture company and rip them a new one for not finishing the job they were hired to do.
I glanced backward at Delanie in her short black dress, then turned my head toward where the storm was quickly brewing and wondered if I should just chance the rain.
But then I saw a trampoline rolling down the road and realized that would be incredibly dumb.
“When is it supposed to hit?” Booth asked. “I’m literally twenty minutes away.”
We were.
We lived in a subdivision—one that housed about sixteen duplexes, almost all of them occupied by a cop or a cop’s kid—that was literally a hop, skip, and jump down the road.
But then the first drop of rain hit me square in the face, and I realized that I might as well stay.
I was already dressed and ready to go. And if it was short like they said it was going to be, then there was no reason for me to go home just to turn around and leave again. I was literally eight minutes from my destination if I left from here.
“I’ll stay,” I murmured.
Booth gave me a thumb up and took off, glancing down the road at the trampoline that was still rolling in the direction that he needed to go.
“Who has a trampoline that lives near you?” I asked as I closed the door once my brother had gotten into his truck.
“The neighbors have grandkids. They just bought it. Why?” she asked.
I turned to find her bent over, slipping on black sky-high heels that made her legs look fucking amazing.
I turned quickly away, but it didn’t matter. The vision of her in my head was branded there for always.
Delanie was super tall. About five foot ten or so.
She was blonde-haired, fair-skinned, and had the most exquisite pastel blue eyes I’d ever seen in my life.
Which was saying something since Delanie had a twin sister, Dillan, who was also identical to her.
But there was just something about Delanie.
She had short blonde hair that was just underneath her chin, and today it was curled and cute, and I wanted to latch onto it with both fists and kiss the hell out of her.
But, alas, I couldn’t do that.
Not to my brother’s baby mama.
It was already really fuckin’ awkward.
Booth was in love with Dillan. Had been since we were in high school.
Yet, he’d had a kid with Delanie.
It was a messed up situation, and something that had always been a faux pas since it’d happened.
“Because it’s now down the street. I’m guessing it’s long gone.”
“Oh, no.” She stood up, her face flushed from being bent over. “That’s awful. I watched them put that together in the dark the night before their grandkid’s birthday. They seriously were out there forever with flashlights. I felt so bad for them.”
I winced.
“Tomorrow I’ll see about coming and helping them get it back into place,” I said. “What’s on your agenda tonight?”
Booth had said that she had a wedding to go to just like I did, but I never expected her to say what she did next.
“There’s a wedding at The Back Porch. A man that I helped pair a service dog with last year invited me,” she said. “Actually, he blackmailed me. He said that he had someone that he wanted me to meet. He apparently thinks this man needs a service dog. Or, at least, he thinks his son would do well with one. His son is diabetic. They think that he would do really well with a service dog that could alert them in the middle of the night if something were to happen.”
“I thought that you specialized in dogs that helped with PTSD and seizures. Is it easy to train them for diabetics?” I asked curiously.
She wiggled her hand in a so-so gesture. “Sort of. At least, not any more hard or easy than seizures or panic attacks. It’s just them being alert to a different problem with their charge. I’ve been working with a dog that I think would be a great pairing. But he’s still quite young, and I need to work with him a bit more until I’m sure he’s ready. But… we’ll see.”
“How do you train these dogs?” I asked curiously.
The house shook with a boom of thunder and Delanie jumped, then pressed her hand over her ample chest—an ample chest that was very beautifully displayed in the dress she was wearing—and started to explain.
“It all starts with discipline,” she said. “We have to train them to be a good dog before they can do anything else. It starts with sit, stay, come, heel. Things like that. Then we move into the more experienced programs of obedience. Once they’ve obtained that, we go into the training for other specialties, such as PTSD. Some of the first signs of a panic attack is elevated heart rate. Sweating. Hyperventilating. Things like that. The dog learns to recognize those signs, and then we start to train them on what to do if they do recognize those signs. For instance, Hayes’ dog. If he starts experiencing any of those signs, he’s trained to get Hayes’ attention. First it’ll start with gentle nudging. Touching his nose to Hayes’ hand. Then if that doesn’t help, he’ll start licking his hand. If that doesn’t work, he’ll start nudging. Barking. Then he’s taught to stay with his human, offering comfort, until Hayes pulls himself under control.”
Hayes, one of my buddies on the SWAT team, had been a prisoner of war. He’d come home with quite a few problems that kept him from interacting with society at times. Ares, his now-wife, who was also a SWAT kid—kids of the original Kilgore SWAT team members like me and Booth—had contacted me to sound out Delanie to get Hayes a service dog.
The dog was perfect for Hayes and helped him be more regular with day-to-day activities.
Like going to the grocery store, or the mall.
“What about the blood sugar?” I asked. “Is that something they can smell?”
“We’re not actually quite sure how they figure it out. I mean, it could be the symptoms such as the slowed heart rate or respirations. A change in their body composition or odor. I don’t know. They’re just able to detect it. This dog will be trained to alert the father since it’s unlikely that the kid will be able to do anything about it.”
“How old is the kid?” I asked.
“According to Janvier, the man that got the service dog from me last year, the kid is around four. He has type one diabetes,” she explained.
“Rough,” I said. “That’s about Asa’s age. I couldn’t imagine him having something like that.”
She made a sound of agreement and stood up just as another boom of thunder rocked the house.
“Damn,” she said. “I forgot to close the garage door to the kennels.”
My brows rose.
“It was a nice day today. I was giving them some fresh air,” she explained. “I’ll be right back.”
She hadn’t even made it two steps into the living room before I caught her by the arm and pulled her toward me.
“I’ll do it,” I said as I brushed past her and went out her garage door.
Delanie and Dillan had a four-bedroom farmhouse that they’d added a garage onto. The garage housed their kennels where they put the dogs when they weren’t home.
I’d asked once why Delanie locked them into their kennels instead of just allowing them to have free range of the house. She’d explained that service dogs weren’t like other house pets. They were working dogs that had a job to do. And since they had a job to do, they couldn’t just ‘be a house dog’ like normal pets. At least not when she was training them.
They have to have a structured routine. They have to have their own space. They have to have strict rules, because when they go to their people, they need to be solely and entirely focused on their charges. I am
not their charge. I am their teacher.
I walked out through the garage door and took the covered pathway outside to the added-on building that was the kennel area.
There, I grinned when I saw all the dogs.
She had four all together right now, and each one of them was cute as hell.
After talking to each one of them, I went to the garage door and closed it with the button. Once it was closed, I once again spoke to each dog, rolling my eyes when I saw the brand-new pet beds in their kennels, as well as a fucking television that was across the room giving them some noise.
After leaving, I winced when the wind hit my face, making my hair blow this way and that.
I’d tried to get it tamed into some semblance of containment, but it just wasn’t in the cards for me, apparently.
My hair was much too long. I was about two months past needing a cut, but I just didn’t have fuckin’ time to get it done.
If I wasn’t working, I was taking SWAT calls. And if I wasn’t doing either of those things, I was doing a family dinner, helping watch Asa, or trying to catch up on sleep.
When I made it back inside her place, the rain finally started.
And it was fucking raining.
Big fat drops so plentiful that I could no longer make out the kennels that I’d just come out of.
“Holy shit,” I said.
“What?”
I didn’t jump, but only because I’d been trained not to.
Over the years, my brothers and sisters had done their level best to scare each other.
If it wasn’t my own twin popping out from around the corner that I was nearing, it was my younger brothers, Heath or Garrett. Or my sisters, Bell, Priscilla or Daniella.
Hell, there was nothing worse than being scared by your baby sister.
Nothing.
So though Delanie’s sudden appearance had startled me, she hadn’t seen the outward effects.
I turned so that my body was sideways and I wasn’t taking up the majority of the window in the door, then gestured to the rain.
“Wow,” she said. “Do you think they made it before it started?”
Just as she asked that, my phone beeped.
I pulled it out to see two words in a text from Booth.
Booth: Made it.
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