How can
you imagine forever with someone who's leaving everything behind?
Callahan,
a former army sniper, wants to make an escape from his past and everything he
experienced at war, but most of all, just not feel. Feeling leads to pain and
he's suffered enough. When he inherits a house on South Carolina's Kiawah
Island, he packs his bags, lured by the peace and seclusion he thinks it will
bring. But, Callahan never counted on meeting anyone like Trinity . . .
Trinity
has always been the cute, and funny one, who most guys overlook in pursuit of
her "hot" friends. She became used to being everyone's pal, until the
day the young man she was attracted to, was drawn to her in return. He became
her first great love, and first crushing heartbreak when she found him in bed
with one of her closest friends.
To move
forward, and to carry out her commitment to helping those in need, Trinity
enlists in the Peace Corps, but not before returning to Kiawah for one last
memorable summer. She just never imagined it would be so unforgettable.
Callahan
doesn't want to get close to anyone-let alone Trinity. He finds her perkiness
insufferable and her attempts to entice a smile distracting. After all, he's in
Kiawah to leave all feelings behind. But when it comes to Trinity, who feels
everything, it's hard not to feel something.
Buy Links: Amazon | B &N | iTunes | Kobo
_______________________________________________________________
Prologue
Callahan
Three
days.
That’s
all I have left until this shit ends.
Three
days shouldn’t feel like forever, not compared to the eight years I’ve bled to
the Army. Thing is, good men have been killed in less time. In as quick as a
blink, a squeeze of a trigger, or a small breath right before a grenade blows
is all the time it takes to shove someone right out of life and well into
death.
That’s
what makes three days as long as it is. Three days is plenty of time to die.
My
eyes tear when the wind picks up and shoots grime through the small hole of my
lookout point. This blown out piece of cinderblock is only big enough to allow
me a view of the street below, but not so small I don’t get smacked in the face
with more filth. The tarp flaps above me as I spit out another layer of the
dirt-sand mix spackling my teeth. Christ Almighty, I need a swig of the water
resting near my elbow. But my thirst, like everything else has to wait.
I
have a job to do.
I
adjust my hips against the cracked cement of my bed, bathroom, and home all
rolled into one, thankful that the agonizing ache stretching over the lower
half of my body has settled into a now familiar numbness.
Out
of all the points I’d scouted, and all the accumulated years spent in this
position, I should be used to it. And in a strange way, it should almost be
home. Yet nothing ever has been home.
But
in three days, maybe something finally will be . . .
I
shove my thoughts away and breathe as my fellow Rangers stalk along the street.
It’s then I see them, a mother and daughter walking straight toward my team.
Less than one city block separates them from the men counting on me to keep
them alive.
The
hell? How did they get past the other sniper unreported? Rogers is new on
watch. But the quick paces these two are taking should have clued him in that
something’s up. I train my scope on their faces; their expressions are blank,
unreadable. ‘Cept that’s not what keeps my attention.
The
little girl can’t be more than five. So why the fuck isn’t her mother holding
her hand? I lift my radio and bark a warning, dropping it beside me as I lock
my scope dead center on the woman’s head.
The
radio crackles and Modreski chimes in, yelling at his team to hold their
positions. He asks me what my plan is, knowing if something’s caused the
short-hairs on my neck to rise, he and the boys damn well need to listen. But I
don’t hear him, with a breath and a squeeze of the trigger, I leave a kid
without a mother.
Just
beneath the sleeve of her abayah―the
dress completely covering her body―I see it, a detonator that would trigger the
explosives likely strapped to her chest. A few Rangers I know―Simons and
Boreman, rush forward. I start to mutter a curse, pissed at her for making me
shoot her in front of her kid. But the curse lodges in my throat when I see the
kid isn’t looking at her mother lying next to her dead.
She’s
watching my advancing team as she lifts the detonator clasped tight in her hand.
This was such a good Beauty and the Beast type story. We have our handsome, tortured and very beastly hero, Callahan and our good hearted, sweet and smart beauty, Trinity.
Callahan served in the war, he's come back with a lot of baggage and just wants to be left alone, but Trinity takes one look at him and she is immediately drawn to him. Despite his constant brushoffs and trust me there where many, Trinity keeps coming for him and breaks down all of his walls.
Between Callahan and Trinity and the great supporting cast, I was enthralled and very much looking forward to Trinity's friends finding their happily ever after just like Trinity and Callahan.
Rating 5 out of 5
Read@Book
_______________________________________________________________
Cecy Robson is a new adult and contemporary author of the Shattered Past series, the O’Brien Family novels and upcoming Carolina Beach novels, as well as the award-winning author of the Weird Girls urban fantasy romance series. A 2016 double nominated RITA®finalist for Once Pure and Once Kissed, Cecy is a recovering Jersey girl living in the South who enjoys carbs way too much, and exercise way too little. Gifted and cursed with an overactive imagination, you can typically find her on her laptop silencing the yappy characters in her head by telling their stories.
