For today’s Snippet Saturday I thought I’d share an early scene from what I’m working on now – UNDENIABLE (working title), the first book in my Dalton Gang series to be published in November 2012 by Berkley Heat. (That means there will be some HEAT!) And, yes, I know it’s a LONG time away, but I think it’ll be worth the wait.
(Also, isn’t Dax worth waiting for???)
*****
Whatever else might’ve changed in Crow Hill during his absence, Dax Campbell knew he could count on Lasko Ranch Supply for more than his need for feed. Land owners, ranch hands, old-timers, and those aiming to fuel the gossip mill gathered in the parking lot before breakfast to shoot the shit of the day, or at lunch to share the food that flowed as freely as the news.
Like all communities of folks making their living off the land, Crow Hill knew about getting the word out. Trucks passed on a country road and occupants traded the latest. A driver dropping hay bales at one ranch carried stories from the last. Drifters looking for work brought with them the grim truth of what they’d learned at the place they’d tried before.
Dax wasn’t after the grim truth or stories or the latest. His reason for hanging out at the feed store was all about getting laid. It had been way too long since he’d taken the time, even had the time for that particular pleasure. And being out of touch all these years meant scoping out the lay of the land.
Word of the inheritance he’d be sharing with Boone Mitchell and Casper Jayne had reached him in a bar outside of Bozeman. He’d been drunk, he’d been cold, and for the first time in years, he’d been homesick. Not for the place he hadn’t seen since the summer after high school, but for his boys.
Learning of the passing of Tess and Dave Dalton on top of that ache had almost done him in. He’d loved the Daltons, considered them family. They’d been there when his mother had taken up the causes of less privileged children instead of seeing to her own. They’d encouraged him to live his life his way when his father insisted he follow the path of all Campbell men.
Dax had wanted to cowboy—not go to college, and definitely not to law school to add Esquire to the end of his name. Tess got that. Dave got that. Casper and Boone got it, too. They’d sent him packing with promises to keep in touch. He hadn’t, and had nothing but his vagabond life to blame.
But that night in Montana, finding out he’d lost the Daltons had him missing his boys with an unimaginable hurt. Every good memory of his teenage years was connected to Boone and Casper. The summers they’d spent working the Dalton Ranch were the best times of his life.
In fact, outside of honoring the Daltons’ wish that he help keep the place they’d poured their hearts and souls into from being sucked up by Crow Hill’s First National Bank, the only thing that would’ve brought him back to Texas was raising some Dalton Gang hell. But he needed a woman—or two, or three—to do it up right.
Read the rest of this entry �
Here’s an oldie but goodie bit of romance in a rather 
