Page Title

"Contemporary and calming love story which
soothes sadness and surges with passion
without the vulgarity so often found in today's
romances." -Michele Bussa, Amazon Review

"I liked everything about it." -Jeanie, Amazon
Review

Slade doesn’t understand why his sister gave up luxury to live in
a rundown bungalow with a surfer dude in Southern California,
let alone decide to marry the man, but he’s traveling there to
support her weird wedding. Even if something about it makes
him feel all messed up inside.

Who is he kidding? He’s been messed up inside his whole life.
Given his abusive past and abandonment issues, he’s
transformed himself into a regular Grade-A douchebag.

But someone seems to see past that.

A crazy surfer gypsy girl who kidnaps him, sees him for the man
he always wanted to be, takes him on an adventure he never
wanted, forces him to look at the things he’s hidden for so long…

She might just love him…

She might just save his life…

Summer Skye
Brieanna Robertson

She had told him he was beautiful.

He didn’t think anyone had ever said that to him before. Hot? Yeah. Handsome?
Sure. But beautiful…it might have sounded emasculating to some, but not to him.

To him, it was the most gratifying.

Sonora didn’t hide. She was open and honest, totally fine with herself. He had no
idea how to be like that, didn’t know if he ever would. Didn’t even know if he wanted
to be. But being with someone like that, so free, so accepting… It made his breath
move through his lungs just a little bit easier than it had before. And she made him
feel like a person—not a job, not a status, not an obligation. Sonora made him feel
like a man with his own mind, his own place in the world, his own future. Not an
identity someone else had carved out for him and forced him into.

She had made his heart feel warm, even if just for a moment.

If nothing else good happened during any of this fiasco, that was a gift he would
cherish her for forever.

She was an amazing woman, Sonora Skye. He wasn’t too much of a selfish jerkwad
to recognize that.

He had just sat down on the mattress when he spotted her striding back from the
bathroom. She had put on a pair of blue paisley-patterned yoga-style pants and a
plain white tank top. Her blonde hair spilled wildly around her shoulders and he
smiled. The first time he had seen her, he had been taken aback, out of his
element, and irritated. He had lumped her into some kind of category he, in all
reality, knew nothing about. Now, the more time he spent with her, the more he got
to know her, when he looked at her—with her bangles and her boho clothes—all
he saw was sexy, gorgeous woman. A woman who knew who she was and owned it.

“So, that bathroom was gross,” she stated as she flung her discarded clothes into
the van and hopped in. Slade pulled his legs in as she closed the back up. “I had
to practically stand in yoga poses to make sure I changed without dropping any of
my stuff. Lord knows what kind of disease I would have come away with if I had. I
don’t think that thing’s been cleaned in decades.”

Slade chuckled softly to himself as she rooted around on the mattress, trying to
get situated. He lay back and stared up at the ceiling, blinking in surprise when he
noticed a skylight for the first time. “You have a moon roof in this thing?” he
queried.

“Yeah,” she said as she pulled the covers over herself and rolled over onto her
back. “I customized the crap out of this old VW.” She let out a soft sigh as she
stared up at the inky night peppered with stars. “I like to look up at the summer
sky.”

“Not the winter one?”

She snorted. “I live in Southern California. Isn’t it all the same?”

“Point taken.” Her soft laugh did something weird to his insides, and suddenly, the
closeness of her became overly apparent. She was just lying there calmly, but he
could feel her body heat radiating over him like she was on top of him. It made him
feel trapped in the best way. He cleared his throat, trying also to clear his head.
“Well, you’ll have to drive this thing out to New York sometime,” he said. “We have
great winters. You can watch the snow fall.” The silence inside the van became
deafening as soon as the words left his mouth, and Slade felt his heart leap up into
his throat. What in the world was he talking about? Why had he even said that? He
jerked his head to the side to see her staring at him contemplatively. His throat
went dry and all he could hear was the thunderous pound of his heart. “Uh…” He
couldn’t formulate a proper response. He couldn’t take it back because he didn’t
want to. He had meant that. It was just, he didn’t want her to think… What? What
didn’t he want her to think? He didn’t even know what he was thinking. He’d
officially lost his ever-loving mind.

After several uncomfortable moments where they just stared at one another
awkwardly while the tension built to the point of suffocation, Sonora smiled softly,
incinerating the choke-hold Slade felt like he was in.

“I’d like that,” she said.

He struggled to draw in a normal breath. “You would?”

“Yeah,” she said, her eyes retaining that gentle light. “Never been to New York
before.”

He smiled tentatively and held her gaze for a few more seconds.

Finally, she murmured, “Sleep well, Slade.”

He sighed. “You too, Gypsy.” He stared out the moon roof for a long while until he
heard Sonora’s breathing turn rhythmic. He glanced back over at her sleeping
form—so close to him—and he realized he had never actually gone to sleep next
to a woman feeling comfortable.

Well, he wasn’t exactly comfortable…at least not according to certain parts of his
body. But he didn’t feel stressed out and anxious. He was fine hanging out in her
hippie love van. It was kinda nice in here. Cozy. And she was next to him, which
soothed the snapping, angry, bitter demon he usually carried around with him.
He didn’t want to think about it too much. Honestly, it didn’t really matter. He had
been two minutes away from contemplating something really messed up only a day
ago, had actually been hanging out on that precipice for a while. He didn’t care
who she was, where she came from, what she did. All he knew was that she made
him not feel like he was suffocating.

And that was more than anyone had ever given him.