A Lot Like Fate

Book 3: A Lot Like Home

by Kat Cantrell

Synopsis

Destiny did not just match her up with the worst womanizer on the planet.

Tristan Marchande needs to atone for his last military campaign—until then, no women, no flirting, no fun.

A smoldering womanizer is the last man on earth Cassidy Calloway should be dreaming about. She has no interest in being his next conquest. There's just one snag...Serenity's infamous prediction that Cassidy will find true love in an unexpected place. It's definitely not Tristan. Right?

Tristan's too busy fighting his own demons to question why Cassidy always leaves any room he's in. But when he's accidentally trapped with Cassidy in an underground storm shelter, secrets bubble to the surface and suddenly, nothing seems so certain except one thing: fate is what happens when you're making other plans.

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: November 24, 2018

Publisher: Brazoria House Books

Print pages: 256

Sample

Cassidy had less than an hour to get ready for the party. She picked up the pace, strictly for Aria’s sake. Her friend had pleaded with her to bite her tongue around Tristan, and Cassidy had grudgingly agreed because she loved Aria and did understand the importance of the party. But she’d told Aria in no uncertain terms that she couldn’t be held responsible for that man and the party would probably benefit from her absence.

When she rounded the bald cypress trunk halfway between Tallhorse’s house and the barn he’d donated for the school, she regretted not driving. Because then she could make an impressive display of skidding the tires to a halt and then backing up in a shower of gravel that lined the path to the barn door where that man lounged against the wood as if he had every right to invade her territory. Again.

She could still back up. Her legs had worked fine a second ago.

Except her body seemed completely incapable of moving as she greedily sucked in the visual of Tristan Marchande with his white button-down shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and arms crossed with his lithe fingers circling those delicious biceps, late afternoon sun shining down on him like a corona which had the added effect of lowering his eyes to a slumberous, sensual half-mast—okay, probably to reduce the glare—but who cared because gah how amazing was that whole package…

“I’ve been looking for you,” he called and her heart tripped before she remembered that probably wasn’t a good thing.

“Back for more nonsense about shaping young minds?” she called back and kept walking because this was her schoolhouse and the stapler she’d bought needed to go on her desk so she could staple things like the tax exemption forms she’d intended to file in her new filing cabinet but couldn’t find a paperclip—

“Not this time,” he said almost pleasantly, which immediately made her suspicious. “I came to ask you on a date.”

“You, um, wha—” That’s when she tripped over her own feet to land in the dirt, face down. In front of Tristan. Good news. The stapler broke her fall, or at least part of it as her hipbone slammed into the box instead of the ground.

Pain shot through her hip a second before Tristan’s hands circled her shoulders, gently turning her over. She let him. It eased pressure off the forming bruise on her hip and wow, her knee had whacked the ground too because it started throbbing.

“Are you okay?” he asked, genuine concern darkening his blue eyes but he was still touching her and leaning over her, his gaze sweeping her with nothing but sheer evaluation, but he was so close and that masculine scent she could not erase from her consciousness seemed to be taking up all the air in her lungs…

“Sure,” she croaked. “I was just testing out the anti-destructive properties of the stapler I bought. Can’t have a defective product on the administrator’s desk. I can report that it will easily withstand being crushed between two objects at great force.”

Tristan didn’t even blink. “That’s a relief. I’ve long been worried about substandard office supplies gracing the classrooms of America.”

Wait a minute. He wasn’t going to give her grief about acting like an underdeveloped duck in the presence of swans? Gaze narrowed, she stared at him, searching for the punchline, but he simply stood and took her with him easily as if she weighed nothing, and in the grand scheme of things, her frame probably did clock in at half the size of his solidly-built one, not to mention that he might actually be a good foot taller than she was…

Focus.

The moment she regained her feet, she stepped away from him, desperately seeking space where Tristan didn’t bleed into its very molecules. But the problem was her. She had this fine awareness of heat where his hands had been. And an even finer awareness that at least half of her consternation lay in the fact that he was being nice to her and she didn’t like it.

Or rather, she liked it, but far less than she trusted it, which was a lot on both counts.