Cross
Creek Series #1
By Kimberly
Kincaid
Genre: Contemporary
Romance
Hunter Cross has no regrets.
Having left his football prospects behind the day he graduated high school,
he’s happy to carry out his legacy on his family’s farm in the foothills of the
Shenandoah. But when a shoulder injury puts him face-to-face with the high
school sweetheart who abandoned town—and him—twelve years ago, Hunter’s simple
life gets a lot more complicated.
Emerson Montgomery has secrets.
Refusing to divulge why she left her job as a hotshot physical therapist for a
pro football team, she struggles to readjust to life in the hometown she left
behind. The more time she spends with Hunter, the more Emerson finds herself
wanting to trust him with the diagnosis of MS that has turned her world upside
down.
But revealing secrets comes with
a price. Can Hunter and Emerson rekindle their past love? Or will the realities
of the present—and the trust that goes with them—burn that bridge for good?
(The setup is that heroine Emerson has just come back to
her hometown of Millhaven after twelve years and is working as a physical
therapist)
"I’ve got a patient for you,
so I thought I’d pop over to see if you have an opening today," Doc
Sanders said.
Emerson thought of her schedule,
complete with the tumbleweeds blowing through its wide- open spaces, and bit
back the urge to laugh with both excitement and irony. “I’m sure I can fit
someone in. What’s the injury?”
“Rotator cuff. X-rays and MRI are
complete, and Dr. Norris, the orthopedist in Camden Valley, ordered PT. But the
patient is local, so I figured if you could take him, it’d be a win-win.”
“Of course.” An odd sensation
plucked up Emerson’s spine at the long-buried memory of a blue-eyed high school
boy with his arm in a sling and a smile that could melt her like butter in a
cast-iron skillet. “Um, my schedule is pretty flexible. What time did he want
to come in?”
“Actually, he’s a little anxious
to get started, so he came directly here from the ortho’s office . . .”
Doc Sanders turned toward the
hallway leading to her waiting room, where a figure had appeared in the
doorframe. Emerson blinked, trying to get her brain to reconcile the
free-flowing confusion between the boy in her memory and the man standing in
front of her. The gray-blue eyes were the same, although a tiny bit more
weathered around the edges, and weirdly, the sling was also a match. But the
person staring back at her was a man, with rough edges and sex appeal for days,
full of hard angles and harder muscles under his jeans and T-shirt . . .
Hunter Cross.
Emerson stood with her feet
anchored to the linoleum, unable to move or speak or even breathe. For the
smallest scrap of a second, she tumbled back in time, her heart pounding so
hard beneath her crisp white button-down that surely the traitorous thing would
jump right out of her chest.
A blanket of stars littering the
August sky . . . the warm weight of Hunter’s varsity jacket wrapped around her
shoulders . . . the warmer fit of his mouth on hers as the breeze carried his
whispers, full of hope . . . “Don’t go to New York. Stay with me, Em. Marry me
and stay here in Millhaven where we’ll always have this, just you and me . . .”
“Emerson? What . . . what the
hell are you doing here?”
The deeper, definitely more
rugged-around-the-edges version of his voice tipped the scales of her
realization all the way into the present. She needed to say something, she
knew, she knew, but her mouth had gone so dry that she’d have better luck
rocketing to the moon in a paper airplane right now.
“I work here,” Emerson finally
managed, the truth of the words—of what they meant—delivering her back to
reality with a hard snap. She hadn’t returned to Millhaven for a jaunt down
memory lane. Hell, she’d only come back when her process of elimination had
dead-ended in total despair. She was here for one thing, and one thing only. To
bury herself in as much work as her body would allow.
Even if her first client probably
hated her guts.
Kimberly Kincaid writes
contemporary romance that splits the difference between sexy and sweet. When
she's not sitting cross-legged in an ancient desk chair known as "The
Pleather Bomber", she can be found practicing obscene amounts of yoga, whipping
up anything from enchiladas to éclairs in her kitchen, or curled up with her
nose in a book. Kimberly is a USA Today best-selling author and 2016 and 2015
RWA RITA finalist who lives (and writes!) by the mantra that food is love. She
resides in Virginia with her wildly patient husband and their three daughters.
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