Showing results by author "Lani Lynn Vale" in All Categories

There was right, there was wrong, and then there was the in-between. The place where normal people reside, understanding that there are two sides to every coin. People that do bad things for good reasons. People that do bad things for bad reasons. First, I knew that Shasha Semyonov was a bad man. One that did bad things for bad reasons. That didn’t mean that I was rational when it came to him.

Dixie met Mary in a bar in the middle of nowhere. He knew the moment she served him “whatever the hell she wanted to” that she was the one. That day, he takes her from her abusive life and gives her everything she’s ever wanted. For thirty-one years, they’re married. For thirty-one years, he worships the ground she walks on. For thirty-one years, she makes him the happiest man on the planet.

Baseball is life - the rest is just details. Everyone who's played the game has heard those words a time or two. But Hancock has heard them his entire life from his parents. His family has lived and breathed baseball even before he started little league. Hancock "Parts" Peters has a name that inspires grins across many faces, but the moment those faces get their first look at him, those grins slide away. Hancock is gruff, filterless, and doesn't give a crap who he offends. He is the only man in baseball who doesn't care if he gets an endorsement or not. He's there to play the game.

Her: I wanted to have a pity party of one when I went for that beer. I never imagined I would meet a dark and dangerous man. That man took me on the wildest ride of my life. Literally and figuratively. He quickly became my entire world. Him: I didn't know I was looking for her. I saw her warming that bar stool and knew she would be mine. A man like me doesn't deserve the likes of her. But damned if I didn't take it. Her: When we met for the first time we didn't know that we already had a connection.

Peter Parker Penn. Unlike the superhero his mother named him after, Parker is no good guy. In fact, if there’s a picture in the dictionary under anti-hero, it’s his. Parker has spent his life trying to get back on the right side of the tracks, but each step he takes forward, he takes two more steps back. To save one, he hurts others. To make this good, he turns that bad. For appearances’ sake, he plays the part. He does what people expect him to do - mostly.

Luke Roberts came to the small, lazy town of Kilgore, Texas, with one thing on his mind: forgetting. He wanted to forget why he left. Forget those emerald green eyes that haunted his dreams. And forget how it felt to have his heart ripped out of his chest by a woman who didn't like the fact that he had a child. It was something he'd been doing a damn fine job of doing, too. Until Reese smashed through every one of his defenses and made him feel again.

When Mr. January himself tells Rowen to do what a gunman says, she’s had enough. Rowen has never really been a girl that does what she’s told. Mr. January won’t have to save her. She can dang well save herself.

"I’m kind of a lady, but definitely more of a weirdo." Hearing the woman at the table behind him say that to her friend should’ve turned Logan Gibbs off. It doesn’t. In all honesty, it only makes him listen harder. He’s had enough weird in his life to last a lifetime. The last thing his complicated life needs is a woman in it who has no clue what color you get when you mix yellow and blue together. Yet, her obvious blonde moments aren’t enough to deter him. Nor is her lack of finger-painting skills.

Loneliness is overwhelming in its intensity. There are times you think you can cope, that you can make it despite the hollow feeling in your chest. Then there are the times when you realize you can’t breathe through the pain of loss. When Gable Buchanan Carter walks into Athena’s life, it’s like a light is switched on inside her chest. Suddenly she can breathe. But just as much as she wants him, Gable just as much wants nothing to do with her.

Price Crow first saw Sabrina Proctor in the middle of a hurricane. She’d been sitting next to her dead best friend, who’d passed away on the beach, with no way to get her back home, thanks to the world’s worst luck and one hell of a storm. So Price does what any decent person would do: He carries Sabrina’s dead best friend to their beach house and doesn’t leave her side until he’s forced to. He had every intention of bridging that gap, of checking up on her and making sure she was okay, but life is funny and has a way of making a mockery of the best-laid plans.

Taos was tired. Tired of everything that came with living. Not to the point where he was suicidal or anything, but tired enough that he just didn’t give a crap anymore. He’d seen all the ugliness this world had to offer due to his job as a police officer for way too many damn years of his less than stellar life.

Etienne LaFayette hits the ground running the moment he breathes free air after being paroled from a maximum-security prison in Texas. He claws his life back from his brother-in-law who’d taken over his business during the years he’d spent as an inmate at Huntsville Penitentiary. Though it is hard, he puts his life back together in Accident, Florida.

After a horrible marriage, Haggard has zero plans of ever finding a woman again. One-night stands not counting, he adores his life as a single man. There are no expectations. No "where are yous" and "are you coming homes". The life he chooses to live is a simple one. Until he makes a huge mistake, and he steps over that line between "daughter’s best friend" and "a woman he desperately wants". Before long, he can’t stop thinking about her. Can’t stop wanting her. Can’t stop feeling things for her that a man 20 years her senior should never feel for a girl he watched grow up.

You better watch out for people who bounce back from everything that’s meant to destroy them. Those were the words that Coreline King learned to live by when it came to dealing with Tide "Rook" Crow, member of the Battle Crows MC, general surgeon, and all-around jerk who lived to make her life a living hell. It all started in high school when he stopped seeing her as a random girl and started to see her as his rival. Together, they became "frenemies". At least, it started out like that. Everyone always says there’s a fine line between love and hate.

Flaws? He has them. Laws? He breaks them. Dues? He’s paid them. Scars? He bares them proudly. Lessons? He’s learned them. Problems? He has one. Her name is Iris, and she’s the one thing in his life that he can’t control.

Evander Lennox doesn't do anything he doesn't want to do. At least, that is, until he's sent to prison. The four years he's incarcerated, he's had no choice but to do the things he's asked to do. And now, if he doesn't, it will mean a one-way ticket straight back to hell. Once he's free, it takes him 24 hours to get his old job back, his dog at home where he belongs, and an understanding that people aren't as forgiving as he once thought them to be. He's just about given up hope of ever integrating back into society when a woman slams into his heart, literally and figuratively.

Ford Spurlock has known Ashe Trammel since they were babies. He’s also done his level best to stay away from her because every time he gets to within five feet of her, they’re fighting like cats and dogs. Ashe is the apple of her father’s eye. The motorcycle club princess that was never to be harmed in any way - or touched for that matter. Fast forward to adulthood, and Ashe is still off limits. Still driving him insane. Still...beautiful. She never misses an opportunity to give him hell, either.

It’s not every day that someone tries to pin a murder on you and a random girl you just met. But Bram Crow isn’t your average everyday guy, either. One second he’s hiding evidence with the girl, and the next, he has to marry her so a police detective doesn’t get suspicious. Did he mention that he had a long-term girlfriend at the time? To say that things didn’t go as planned would be an understatement. To say that falling in love with his wife definitely wasn’t part of the plan, either.

The problem with Wake was that he was understandable. He was the type of villain who literally scared the absolute shit out of you because you knew that under the right circumstances, you could end up exactly like him.

Taima, a.k.a. Tai, is the last person people come to for help. He’s the fuck up...the bad boy...the guy that only looks out for himself. Which couldn’t be further from the truth. He’s fought hard to become the man he is today. He’s a hero in the public’s eye. A firefighter that the young all the way to the old turn to for help at the lowest point in their lives. What people don’t know, though, is that he’s no hero. He’s the reason his sister is dead, and he’ll spend the rest of his life trying to right that wrong.