A Lot Like Family

Book 4: A Lot Like Home

by Kat Cantrell

Synopsis

Destiny can jump in the springs if it thinks she needs that man as a business partner.

Navy veteran Hudson Rafferty is fine being alone with his nightmares and what's left of his soul. He's not fine with Ember Nixon calling dibs on the space in downtown Superstition Springs that he'd earmarked for his new restaurant. She's the one woman he can't ignore, the one woman who pushes past his carefully constructed boundaries—and the one woman who seems to get him.

Ember left Superstition Springs at seventeen, pregnant and disgraced. She never dreamed she'd be back with a special-needs seven-year-old in tow. Or that Aunt Serenity's love prediction would say a partnership with Hudson Rafferty is the only way she'll get the empty space she wants for her new business enterprise. The enigmatic ex-Navy guy doesn't even acknowledge that she exists no matter how much she flirts with him. How can they possibly be partners?

Or maybe a better question is...how did this partnership blossom into a budding romance that can never survive Hudson's biggest dealbreaker?

Small town military heroes—all swoon, no steam

Welcome to Superstition Springs, the place where destiny is the ultimate matchmaker. All you have to do is believe.

Release date: May 4, 2020

Publisher: Brazoria House Books

Print pages: 267

Sample

What would be the harm in talking to Hudson about the partnership? This was a legit plan.

Still musing it over, she left Serenity and wandered back down to the second floor, then stood in front of Hudson’s door. If she stared at it hard enough, maybe the right leverage would appear scrawled into the pressboard. Because she needed some divine help, stat.

The universe did not comply with her wish, and instead opted to spice things up by encouraging Hudson to open the door at that precise moment. Which meant he’d caught her skulking about in the hallway as if she’d been waiting for him like a big fat loser.

His pale irises, colored enough to be almost hazel, sliced right through her as he sized her up without a word.

“Just the man I was looking for,” she purred automatically. It was like breathing. Attractive man—her inner siren blipped on. She didn’t know any other way to speak to men. “It’s almost as if you were expecting me.”

His expression didn’t change, but then it never did. He had two emotions, disinterested and neutral. If she stripped down to her bra and panties here in the hall and danced around with a live chicken, she had a feeling his face would look exactly the same.

She tried again. “I have a proposition for you.”

Something flitted through his gaze. Scarcely a flicker. But she’d spent eight years studying men and their tells, not that she would have laid odds on Hudson actually having any. Certainly, the flicker didn’t tell her anything other than she’d breached the first wall. How many more were there until she got to the center of Hudson Rafferty?

And why did the thought of getting there thrill her so much?

“Relax, Romeo,” she said with a light laugh. “Not that kind of proposition. Though I’m all ears if you would like to veer off on a side trip of that nature. Why don’t you let me in so we can chat?”

“You can talk in the hall,” he rumbled, spilling his heavy voice into all the empty space around her.

She shivered involuntarily and it was nine kinds of delicious. She’d heard his voice before. It wasn’t like he pretended to be at mime practice twenty-four seven. It was just so rare that he did deign to use his vocal cords that she’d forgotten how it affected her.

Now that she’d gotten him started, how did she keep him engaged?

This was exactly the sort of challenge she couldn’t resist and really, really should, but she never went through with any of her flirtations anyway. Was it so wrong to want to figure out how to get this particular man to respond to her?

“As invitations go, I’ve had better,” she told him with a smile designed to inform him she had many secrets she might share with the right persuasion. “But as it happens, I’m in need of a man, so I’ll take you up on your kind offer to talk in the hall.”

She paused and he did not fill the silence with a flirty comment the way most men would. Out of her depth here. The imbalance of it had her scrambling.

“Here’s the thing,” she began, forgetting all about her flirty pretense. Gah, the man drove her so far off her rocker that she’d landed on a totally different porch. “We both want the art studio space. I have plans to open a bar. You want it for a restaurant. There’s literally no reason we can’t combine forces and open a place together.”

That got his attention. And not in a good way.