Rugged and Restless Read online

  Rugged and Reckless

  Saylor Bliss

  Rowan Underwood

  Prism Heart Press

  Contents

  Copyright

  Description

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  The End

  Bonus! False Start

  False Start

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Description

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Bonus! Baller’s Baby

  Baller’s Baby

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 75

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Epilogue

  About The Authors

  Acknowledgments

  Social Media

  Copyright

  COPYRIGHT 2017 PRISM HEART PRESS

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  COVER DESIGN: © 2017 Louisa Maggio

  EDITING: Maria Alexander

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or, if an actual place, are used fictitiously and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control and does not assume and responsibility for author or third-party websites or their contents.

  E-books are not transferrable. They cannot be sold, given away, or shared. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in Federal prison and a fine of $250,000 (http://www.fbi.gov/ipr).

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Description

  As an L.A. police dispatcher, Christine provided comfort when people needed it most, but one fateful call changed everything. He was kind, charming, in need of help. Twenty-four hours later, he was dead, and she was shattered.

  Pine Haven, Wyoming was supposed to help her fulfill a promise she made to the man she never got the chance to love, but soon after arriving, she finds something altogether different, and it scares the hell out of her.

  Travis spent the last 16 years on mandated hiatus. His return isn’t accepted with open arms, but when he meets the town’s latest female arrival, he just might have a reason to stay. The only problem is, his life isn’t exactly simple.

  The more often they see each other, the more complicated their lives become. Will their opportunity for true love end in a happily ever after or in disaster?

  Prologue

  There is no natural phenomenon which is held by all mankind in greater dread than earthquakes. Our ideas of permanence, solidity and strength are based upon the condition of the earth, as we daily see it; so that when the firm ground shakes under us, there naturally comes over the mind a feeling of abject helplessness. – New York Times, April 9, 1872

  Seven years earlier …

  Splat.

  “Son of a---“

  I glare at the double chocolate iced mocha. Pale brown slush slides off the toe of one white shoe to form a sticky puddle on the blacktop.

  A quick glance at my watch tells me I’ll have to hurry or I’ll be late for my shift as a dispatcher for Los Angeles City Emergency Services. I kick the melting mush from my shoe, step around the puddle of yuck and race across the parking lot to the low brick building. Behind me, traffic on the freeway growls and horns blare.

  Good morning, Los Angeles.

  I yank on the heavy glass door and stepped into the coolness of the air-conditioned building with a sigh.

  “Morning, Alley Cat,” greets Rose from behind the reception desk. “Lunch at Del Rio’s today?”

>   “Yeah, lunch sounds great. Gotta run. I’m late.” With a wave, I hurry past the desk and into the ladies’ restroom. Setting my oversized purse on the counter I grab several paper towels and crouching down, dab at the mush, noting with dismay that it has worked into the seams of my brand-new tennis shoes.

  “Gross.” I’ll be lucky if it didn’t stink like sour milk at the end of my shift. After mopping the worst of it away, I push to my feet and as I feel my world shift, stagger sideways. My hand hits the cool marble wall of the first stall as I fight to steady myself.

  “What the hell?”

  A low primeval rumble surrounds me, invading my midsection and radiating up into my heart and throat. I stumble to the left and then the right. The fluorescent light overhead flickers off and on mimicking a flashing strobe light.

  Earthquake!

  The word registers in the recess of my mind. It spurs me toward the door. Getting out of the small enclosed space of the bathroom, before the ceiling collapses and buries me alive, my only thought.

  Sudden blackness swallows me as the lights lose the battle to stay on. The grumble grows to a roar and then a scream. I lurch to the right, pushing off the wall and careen through the bathroom door. The floor beneath my feet rolls and writhes causing me to scream again, echoing dozens of other coworkers at their workstations. Shelves topple, notebooks tumble to the floor scattering everywhere.

  The roar slowly dwindles to a dull grating, the heaving finally halting altogether. I lay on my side, my back jammed against the wall just outside the bathroom. My insides still quiver and shake like jelly, the remnants of the quake continuing in my viscera. Chills wash along my skin as I sit up and take stock of the dispatch room. My co-workers, my friends, move at a sloth’s pace, sitting and looking around, dazed and wide eyed.

  “Holy fuck,” murmurs Rose, pushing to her feet and doing a three- sixty. “That felt like an eight or nine.”

  Fluorescent lights sputter before half of them wink on and stay on. The backup generator kicks on, running nonessentials at half power until the lines can be looked at.

  More operators push to their feet, their faces all wearing uniform dazed expressions. Jabbering fills the air as a dozen people seem to find their voices at the same time. The cacophony crescending, until I think my head is going to explode from the loudness alone. I close my eyes and attempt to sort out some of what is being said.

  “… my kids …”

  “I think my arm’s broken ... “

  “Maybe we should get …”

  “Comm’s down!” Nick Stokes, IT wizard, calls out. “Switching to backup.” If anyone can get us back up and running it is Nick. He’s a self-renowned technical problem solving guru.

  Phones begin ringing within seconds. Frowning, I try to focus and orient myself. Locating my desk, I sit and prepare for the onslaught of emergency calls that will be pouring in.

  I slide my headset over my ear and punch the answer call button. “Emergency service— “

  A shrill scream assaults my ear across the line. I force myself to speak calm words of reassurance as I wrestle open my desk drawer and pull out an empty notebook and black pen. Somehow despite the screaming and crying on the other end of the line I manage to discern that the caller is an elderly woman who is disoriented and frightened. After calming her the best I can, I end the call.

  The phone lines flash as more calls come in. Around the room, I watch as more dispatchers find their bearings and begin answering calls.

  “Backup comms are online,” Nick announces emerging from the computer room.

  The first report of a fire comes ninety seconds after I first start answering calls. The gas lines along the side of the Convention Center have burst and somehow ignited. Hell has erupted in Central Los Angeles.

  I can’t seem to stop the tremors running along the inner fault lines of my own neural pathways. I’m a professional. People are depending on me. I chant repeatedly in my mind as I study the older system that had just been replaced by a two-million-dollar upgrade, only months earlier, and re-familiarized myself with the buttons and switches. Then, in a voice that only barely trembled, I dispatch Fire Station Number 9 to the L. A. Convention Center.

  The first shift after my vacation is off to a very rocky start. If I had the gift of preordained sight or any psychic gift at all, I wonder if I would have run in the opposite direction, straight back to Vegas and my luxury suite in the Trump towers or would I have stayed, even knowing that before this shift was over I would learn two important things. First, I was getting the hell out of L.A. Second, it was possible to fall in love with someone, sight unseen, in twenty- three hours and fifty-seven minutes.

  Chapter One

  Christine

  Today

  The day was bright and sunny, the air dry and light.

  The perfect day for honoring lost love.

  Maybe after my visit this year, I’d finally find the strength to move on. Even as the thought teased, I suspected it might take another cataclysmic event to let go of the man I’d given my heart to in less than twenty four hours.

  Summer is still a couple of weeks away, not that you would know, based on the warm temperature of the clean and brisk mountain air. A direct contrast to the heavy smog of L.A., where I’d first met him. I have no memories of the man in this place except for the ones he painted into my mind while we talked. Yet, Wyoming was where I felt his presence the most.

  My red roan colt pranced beneath my seat, needing to run off his intense teenage energy. Dry dirt, kicked up by Cloud, muffled the sound of his hoof- falls solid, dull thuds, which he punctuated with occasional impatient snorts.

  As we traveled, the dusty ground became harder, more firmed and flattened. Gray and white rocky outcroppings thrust upward amid a dry, tan landscape dotted by the washed out green of desert grasses. More of the same lay between us and the scrub pines along the swell of foothills in the distance.

  I point Cloud toward those hills, finally allowing the exuberant colt to set his own pace. He catapults us across the plain, brawny muscles alternately flexing and contracting beneath me, racing at full gallop. The denim jacket I hadn’t bothered to fasten catches the wind and billows behind me. Chilly air works icy fingers along the exposed skin of my neck, bringing with it a wonderful ache.

  We top a gentle rise and a sea of yellow and purple wildflowers surprise me. God’s own casually sown garden spread across the plains all around. The sky overhead is a deep blue and cloudless. With the prairie behind and the snow-covered peaks ahead, I pull Cloud up inside a cathedral of Ponderosa pines, close my eyes and inhale the pungent scent. It was exactly as he had described it which made it the perfect place to remember him.

  Seven years had passed, yet the pain remained an exquisite fresh wound, probably owing to the fact that I revisit the memory every year on the anniversary of that unforgettable day. In the hills of Wyoming, that he had loved and missed so much, I picked the scab off the wound I never quite allowed to heal.

  The job was all that mattered now. I made myself disregard the toppled shelves and scattered books. I blocked out all thoughts about the likely state of my own home. As I listened to the chatter on the official channels, I kept meticulous handwritten notes regarding the status of each unit checking in.

  “Battalion 9- Alpha, this is Engine Squad 9- Bravo, do you copy?” The connection was filled with static and the voice was muffled, hard to hear.

  I wait for the response of the battalion chief on scene.

  None comes forth.

  The callout is repeated once again, the voice even more urgent. “This is L.A. Engine Squad 9-Bravo, dispatched to the Convention Center---“Again static broke the transmission.

  Following protocol, after the second unanswered call, I intervened. “Copy you, ES-9-Bravo. This is central dispatch. Your transmission is breaking up.”

  I checked my watch and jotted the time in my notes: 0724 hours.

  The response was drowned out by a loud burst
of static in the earpiece.

  “9-Bravo, be advised you are breaking up,” I repeated.

  More harsh squawks of static burst from the receiver causing me to wince in pain. If that kept up. My head might explode – or at least an eardrum. Then, amid the static, I clearly heard the code every dispatcher dreaded. “9-Bravo is 10-60, this location. Code three, code three, code three… trapped…”

  The code for firefighter down.

  Static filled the airways again as I punched buttons on my console, frantically trying my best to help the signal.

  “Dispatch, do you copy?” The voice is screaming, “Central! This is 9-Bravo we are in need of assist. The building’s coming down around us!”

  Afraid to switch over to relay, with the risk of losing contact altogether, I motioned for Kate, the dispatcher sitting next to me. With lightning, fast strokes, I wrote on my notebook in bold black ink: UNIT IN TROUBLE.

  At the next desk, Kate nods and switches channels to contact the Battalion 9 squad leader over the comm.

  “9-Bravo, this is Central Dispatch,” I acknowledge. Stomach-wrenching fear threatening to leak into my voice, so I bite down on the inside my cheek ... hard. Dread shoots out little tentacles of hopelessness to curl around my lungs, squeezing the breath out of me. “I’m reading you, sending help your way. What’s your location?”

  “Civic Center parking garage—A level. The building’s coming apart! We need extraction.” The voice was still urgent but the panic had faded.

  I need to get my own terror under control and keep it that way, I remind myself, otherwise I wouldn’t be any help to anyone.

  “Copy you 9-Bravo. Who am I speaking with?”

  “Mick-“More static, then “Mic-key.”

  I scribble everything I can make out into my handwritten notes. “Mickey, you’re breaking up badly. How many do you number? How long have you been trapped?”

  “Two confirmed, dispatch,” He mumbles into the static filled mic, “possibly three.” The transmission cuts for a second and then “I can feel my partner, but he’s unconsious. I heard someone else down here earlier. I don’t know how long it’s been. I think I’ve been unconscious too – I’m pinned – can’t move. It’s dark – can’t see a thing.”