by Jackie Ashenden
Publication Date: 3/30/2021
About the Book:
Coming home was the easy part. Facing her will take everything he’s got…
Silas Quinn hasn’t been back to
Deep River, Alaska, in years, not since he joined the army. He left behind the best
friend he’d ever had. But he knew Hope Dawson was meant for bigger things than
Deep River—and he—had to offer. What he didn’t know was that when he left, he
took Hope’s dreams right along with him…
Then tragedy strikes and sends Silas home, and the entire town is thrown into chaos when they learn what brought him back—he’s inherited ownership of the town and the newly discovered oil reserves under it!
Hope gave up on ever getting out
of Deep River. Her mom needed her, then her grandfather died and left her the
local hangout to run. Now Si is back in town, stirring up old
feelings—including her anger at being left behind. His return brings Hope an
offer that can change her life. Love, or adventure, are almost within reach—but
she can’t have both…
Meet the Author:
Jackie Ashenden has been writing fiction since she was eleven years old. She used to balance her writing with the more serious job of librarianship until a chance meeting with another romance writer prompted her to devote herself to the true love of her heart – writing romance. She particularly likes to write dark, emotional stories with alpha heroes and kick-ass heroines. She lives in Auckland, New Zealand.
Purchase
Links:
Amazon:
Apple: https://apple.co/32jN528
Kobo: https://bit.ly/3qL0U4y
Bookshop: https://bit.ly/2EyV4QC
Books2Read: https://bit.ly/2MbQjAC
Read an Excerpt:
Damon Fitzgerald woke with an excruciating headache and the sense
that he was being stabbed slowly but relentlessly through one eye. The headache
was familiar—usually a sign he’d imbibed a little too heavily the night
before—but the stabbing sensation not so much.
Cautiously,
he raised one hand to touch the eye currently being stabbed only to encounter
his own eyelid. So. Not being stabbed then. That was a relief.
He was still
a little disoriented though, and his mouth felt like the bottom of a birdcage,
so it took him some time to realize that the stabbing sensation was coming from
the sunlight shining through a gap in the curtains and straight into one eye.
Sun. He
hadn’t seen the sun for at least three days, due to the weather being crap,
which was strange for LA…
Which was
when he remembered that he wasn’t in LA. He wasn’t even in Juneau, where he’d
been for the last couple for weeks.
No, it was
worse than that. Way worse.
He was in a
room over the Happy Moose bar in a tiny, privately owned town called Deep
River, smack bang in the middle of nowhere, Alaska. And he’d been stuck here
for three days because the weather had been so bad he hadn’t been able to fly
out.
Damon lay
there for a moment as the realization settled through him, trying to reorient
himself, because he’d definitely over imbibed the night before and this
hangover had teeth. Then with a sudden start, he remembered that sun was a good
thing.
Sun meant the
weather was better, which in turn meant he could get the hell out of here and
back to LA.
Rolling off
the bed, he dragged himself over to the french doors that led onto the room’s
tiny balcony, shoved them open, and stumbled out onto the balcony itself, just
to check that the sun was real.
Sure enough,
though it must have been early in the morning, the sun was actually shining,
the sky a bright, almost painful blue, making the white caps of the mountains
looming on all sides look extra white and extra sharp.
Ahead of him
was the deep, rushing green of the river the town was named for. Deep River. It
had been settled during the gold rush at the end of the nineteenth century by
the West family, who’d bought the land Deep River sat on and leased out bits of
it to anyone who wanted a place to call home.
A quirky
little town, as Damon had spent the last three days finding out.
Deep River
consisted of a ramshackle series of buildings clustered on the side of the
river, connected by a boardwalk that projected out over the water and a narrow
street that ran behind the buildings on the land side. They were old, those
buildings, the paint on them faded, the wood cracked and worn through long
exposure to rain and sun and snow. Not as picture-postcard as the ones in
Ketchikan to the south, but there was definitely a certain vintage charm to
them. Like a group of elderly ladies whose beauty was a little faded and
careworn, they still possessed the ghost of their stunning youth, a certain
timeless magic that tugged at the heartstrings.
Houses very
similar to those at the water’s edge were scattered up the hill behind the
town, and there were a few more buildings along from the boardwalk, huddling
against the hill’s side.
A set of
wooden steps led down from the boardwalk to a dock where several fishing boats
and trawlers were tied up, but since it was comparatively empty, most of the
boats must have gone up the river to the sea for a day working the nets.
Damon took a
deep breath and then another, the fresh bite of the air settling his headache
and cooling his skin, waking him up. He wasn’t a small-town kind of guy, but
there was something quite majestic about the mountains and the forested hills
that loomed above him. Especially now the sun was shining.
He’d complained
about the rain the night before to one of the locals, who’d then informed him
of Deep River’s average rainfall, which was some horrendous amount that sounded
just wrong to someone from LA.
Still, it did
explain the solid three-day downpour and made him feel lucky that it was a
beautiful day now.
Movement
below him caught his eye, and he glanced down at the boardwalk.
The kid was
there again, skulking by the big wooden pole stuck in the boardwalk that had
“Middle of Nowhere” painted down the side. A tall, gangly teenager dressed in
jeans and a black hoodie.
He always
seemed to be in Damon’s vicinity, and if Damon didn’t know any better, he’d say
he was being followed.
Though surely
it was a little too early in the morning for teenagers? Weren’t they supposed
to sleep past twelve or something?
The kid was
looking straight at him, though he was too far away for Damon to see what
expression was on his face. The fixed way the kid was staring was slightly
unnerving.
A woman came
suddenly into view. She had shoulder-length blond hair, and it was blowing
around in the wind, a bright counterpoint to the plain jeans-and-T-shirt-combo
she wore, a parka pulled on over the top, and she moved with great purpose to
where the kid stood. She spoke to him a second and then turned her head, and
Damon found himself under the intense scrutiny of two people.
His skin
prickled, cool air moving across it. Moving everywhere across it.
Aw hell. He’d
neglected to dress before stumbling out onto the balcony, and since he always
slept naked… Yeah, no wonder both the woman and the kid were staring.
***
Excerpted from Deep River Promise by Jackie Ashenden. © 2021 by Jackie Ashenden. Used with
permission of the publisher, Sourcebooks
Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc. All rights reserved.
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