The Space Between Us: The Men of Evansdale County, #1

By Alyne Hart

An explosive and unexpected romance that proves opposites really do attract and burn twice as hot...

Emma f#cking Winchester.
She's the little sister of my best friend. Well, ex best friend now...She's off limits like tempting forbidden fruit, and I'm the snake slithering through the grass. She ignites a fire in me. One I can't explain. One I sure as f#ck can't control. It's raw and primal. She's sweet, and I am not. She's pure, and I'm broken. When I came back to the town and past I'd left behind ten years ago to make it big in the world of underground fighting – it was for one reason, and one reason only. To take care of my Grandma Rose, and I'll do it by any means necessary. Even if it means doing the one thing I said I'd never do. I never expected to see Emma again. I never thought I'd want her the way I do. I didn't expect to peel back all her perfectly controlled layers or for her to see through mine.Fate brings us together. Burning passion binds us. When the fire gets too hot, can love save us?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Alyne Hart
• Release date: Jan 29, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386364993

Alyne Hart

Alyne Hart is a contemporary romance author and wine connoisseur living in Walla Walla, WA. She's known for writing stories that pack an emotional punch and get you right in the feels.  She loves writing real, flawed characters and writing about realistic, gritty and raw romance. She's a romance junkie and happy endings addict, and if you’re a lover of deeply emotional, flawed and realistic romance reads with lots of delicious angst, her books are for you. Alyne's stories involve characters with bigger problems than just finding love. She writes stories about making peace with the past, rekindling old flames and healing old wounds. She loves small towns, men in uniform and alpha males with a heart of gold.  She began her story-telling journey first with her dolls, then it progressed to paper. She has a deep love for anything romantic, and she's a believer that in love anything is possible.  When Alyne isn’t writing, you can find her reading, hanging out with her cat, and spending time with her two children. She enjoys trips to the mountains just as much as trips to the wine cellar, live music, chick flick movie marathons and hanging out with her eclectic group of friends.  Follow Alyne: Facebook → http://bit.ly/2w89KNP Twitter → http://bit.ly/2w8kRqb Blog → http://bit.ly/2vxvmGy Goodreads → http://bit.ly/2vv8S8S Bookbub → http://bit.ly/2fyhncE Newsletter → https://mailchi.mp/a8a0de143ef8/alynehart

Book preview

Prologue

Dean Alexander King .

It’s a name I hadn’t heard since the day my brother said we could never utter it again. In fact, I hadn’t thought of him much since, even though I had the biggest crush on him my entire childhood. It was a silly crush. He was my older brother Forrest’s best friend since kindergarten, which meant I had barely been born when they first met.

Our mom practically adopted him like he was a stray puppy. She showered him with attention, clothes that fit him right instead of the raggedy hand me downs he wore, and plates of hot food every night she could. He was her little pet project from the wrong side of town.

In fact, Dean was such a fixture in our home that I thought of him as my other brother until I was ten and figured out what having a crush meant. After that, I followed Dean around like a pest until he and Forrest would get irritated enough to lock themselves in Forrest’s room. Other than that, he never noticed me. I was just the annoying kid sister of his best friend.

When I was sure no one was listening, I named my Barbie, Emma and my Ken doll, Dean and I made them kiss. A lot. Sometimes with no clothes on. When I was twelve, I would write Emma plus Dean, or Emma Cassidy King on my school folders over and over. Usually with a lot of hearts and other embarrassing things I’m glad no one ever saw.

Sometime around thirteen is when I started to notice the differences between them. Differences that left me confused. I never understood how Forrest and Dean were friends in the first place—they were as different as night and day.

Dean was always in trouble. He got suspended more times than I could count. He got into fistfights at school that Forrest inevitably had to break up. He went through girlfriends like dirty socks, and he got put in juvie. Three times.

Forrest, on the other hand, was and still is, polite and gentlemanly. He rarely swears, he had one girlfriend through all of high school, and like me, he follows all the rules.

Not Dean. Filthy-mouthed, cocky and arrogant—he broke the rules like it was his favorite hobby. And unlike his last name might suggest, Dean King was nothing out of a fairy tale. Which is probably why the vision of him never failed to make the skin of my cheeks fill with a hot, red blush—and why my fourteen-year-old daydreams were always of him shirtless, offering to be my very first kiss.

Of course, I never got that kiss. For one, Dean was five years older than me, and I was nothing more to him than a little sister. Two, my brother came home one day and told us his engagement to his high school sweetheart and fiancée Renee had been called off, and that Dean was the reason.

Dean never came around after that. Last I’d heard he’d taken off and was never heard from again. Well—until now that is.

Only, he didn’t look at me like I was Forrest’s little sister anymore—and he asked me not to tell Forrest he was back in town.

Dean King is fire.

Like the most beautiful and destructive of all the elements.

Fire is a welcoming warmth that washes over your skin, like a glowing blanket. But in the blink of an eye, flames can leap, devouring everything in their path. Everyone and everything in its way is left to choke on the thick black smoke. If you turn your head for even a second, everything you once loved and held so dear is gone.

Fire smolders. Flickers playfully, sending embers flying like a sparkling, hot fountain of orange against the dark purple of night.

Dean King is fire.

And I am rain.

Chapter One

Emma

Perfection. It’s a highly over-rated trait. Especially when it’s something that’s been expected of you since birth. It’s a thing I can’t ever seem to escape, and I wonder if maybe it’s just part of my DNA at this point.

The longer I live, the less it feels like I’m in control of my own story and destiny. Like everything has already been laid out for me, and I’m just blindly following the path with my eyes closed. Most of the time, I’m okay with that. Something is comforting about predictability. Mostly, that it’s—well, it's predictable.

I always got straight A’s in school. I’ve never smoked, and I rarely drink. My room has always been clean and organized. I’m the responsible one and the voice of reason in my group of friends. I’m a sucker for to-do lists, and I’m fifteen minutes early for everything, and I carry a small stockpile of things like bandages, nail clippers, snacks and a toothbrush in my oversized purse just in case. I say yes please and thank you, and I make sure to mail out the family Christmas cards each year—even after my parents died.

I left my hometown of Evansdale two years ago to attend college and finally break away from the life I’d been born into. Only to come straight back home to help my brother run the orchard that was now ours after the accident.

If you live in Evansdale, you’re most likely a farmer or a rancher. If you aren’t one of those two, you’re a laborer of some kind. Truck driving, logging, odd jobs, mechanic or you work in one of the many warehouses on the other side of the train tracks. That’s just the way it is around here.

Living here is almost too predictable. It’s like being slowly strangled. Every day I can breathe just a little less than the day before.

My mornings, for example.

I wake up at six, almost on the dot, without the aid of an alarm clock—even when I can barely sleep the night before. I shower, blow dry my hair and put on just the right amount of makeup. Getting dressed in the top and skirt I’ve laid out the night before, I fold up a fresh uniform, zipping it into a plastic baggie, so it doesn’t get dirty. I dig through my purse, double checking that I have a hairbrush, my debit card, plenty of pens and my ever-trusty first aid kit before I head out the door.

Then I make my way from the guest house I live in, to the main house where I’m greeted by the warm scent of coffee and the sight of my brother Forrest reading the newspaper.

I miss the other things that used to be in this massive, bright white, farmhouse style kitchen.

Like my mom. She was always bustling around the stove, cooking up a massive feast of French toast, bacon and eggs, with mounds of fresh fruit. I miss my dad and the smoky sweetness coming from his pipe. I miss the sounds of laughter and conversation.

I miss the booming echo of my father's voice, especially on Sunday’s when he loved to sit in the living room and watch football with the rest of the men in our family. All the women would gather in the kitchen like clucking hens, complaining about sports and gossiping while cooking. There was always cooking.

Now the kitchen sits for the most part untouched. I eat most of my meals at Charlie's, the diner I work at, or in the guest house. All of my meals that is, except for breakfast. It was something that Forrest and I started doing after the accident. Then it became a habit.

Forrest looked up at me from his newspaper and steel cut oats, eyeing me while I poured a bowl of granola with almond milk. I need you today.

I wanted to pick up a double at the diner, I groaned, looking up from my bowl.

With everything we had going towards the ranch and surrounding orchards, there was little left for my college tuition at this point. I knew he was aware of that. It’s not like he wanted to be a rancher any more than I did—we both had to drop our lives for this. But I’d been working my butt off, saving every little bit I could, in case the scholarships I’d applied for fell through.  Being here now didn’t change the fact that eventually, I wanted to go back to school and get my degree in dance.

Forrest’s light blue eyes bore into me while he rubbed at his temple’s anxiously. It was something he did when he was running on too little sleep and a lot of caffeine. It always signaled he was stressed and wired. Em, it’s harvest, I need you. We lost another picker, and I had to let the foreman go. I promise things will ease up soon. I’m just in over my head with all this, okay?

Guilt punched me squarely in the stomach. Our parents had made all of this look so easy. I spent my childhood afternoons following my father around the orchards while he talked about apples, cherries, weather, and soil.

Forrest and I both knew the ins and outs of the commercial fruit business from growing to harvesting and even packing and shipping. Heck, as kids we spent every afternoon from August to October picking fruit until our arms screamed in pain and the smell of apples was nearly nauseating. Even so, we’d done nothing but bleed money and lose workers since inheriting Winchester Estate Orchards.

Have you thought about hiring that management company, Forrest? I asked cautiously. He hated the idea that he couldn’t do it all himself. All himself that is, except for me. It was just us and a small group of pickers working the thirty sprawling acres over-looking the valley and the thousands of fruit trees that make up Winchester Estates.

Dad would roll over in his grave, he grumbled. As he raked a hand through his closely cropped light brown hair, my breath caught in my throat. Forrest bears an uncanny resemblance to our father. Right down to the wide, scruff covered jaw and deep-set pale blue eyes that sometimes sparkle when he smiles. All they want to do is espalier these days. He hated it. You know that.

I winced and wished to myself that he wouldn’t say things like that. It felt callous. Spooning a few bites of granola into my mouth, I darted my eyes around the interior of the kitchen, finally settling them comfortably on moms set of shiny copper pots and pans that hung in an uneven pattern over the stove. I gotta go, Forrest, I set the bowl in the sink and slung my dark brown leather purse over my shoulder. I’ll work this afternoon. It’s fine.

Forrest nodded, staring with a morose concentration at the newspaper in front of him. Thanks, Em.

Chapter Two

Dean

Islid into the narrow booth across from Vin and grabbed a plastic covered copy of the menu that sat wedged between a half full ketchup bottle and two dented tin salt and pepper shakers. It wasn’t too hard to decide what to order in a place like this. Most of the menu items were pictures instead of words anyway, and the choices were limited. Sliding the menu back into place, I let my eyes wander around the inside of the small boxcar diner.

Truth be told, I hadn’t missed much about Evansdale, but Charlie’s was about the only thing around here that you could call a landmark, and it was the one place I’d missed most. Everything about it was still the same down to the hard red booths, chipped white Formica table tops and the same mix of work-weary farmers, and bleary-eyed truck drivers crowded along the counter seats sipping coffee from heavy white mugs. It smelled like scrambled eggs and syrup just the way I’d remembered, and the same collection of historical images from around Evansdale still decked the walls in black frames.

My eyes swept across a black and white picture of a local baseball team from the fifties and that’s when I saw her and couldn’t tear my eyes away. Even when I tried. Her warm, butterscotch-colored eyes were shining—wide and innocent. They held me completely captive. The image of her smiling, with her hair catching a few glittering sparkles of the morning light, it’ll be forever burned into my brain after today.

Emma fucking Winchester.

From where I sat, she looked tiny. Five-three, five four tops—boxing had taught me how to size up height and weight on sight. A strawberry blond ponytail swung enticingly down past the middle of her back, and I wondered for a second what it would feel like wrapped around my fist.

The last time I saw her, she was fourteen. She was a scrawny, skinny little thing with braces and a wild, frizzy mass of hair. Emma used to follow me around like a lost puppy dog. Now with one glance, she had me salivating like the dog I am.

Her eyes flashed every time her luscious full lips curled into a smile. It had me frozen in place—and had my cock twitching in my jeans. Forrest would fucking kill me if he knew I was mentally undressing his little sister and envisioning what she might look like all fragile and purring like a kitten beneath me.

Hell. Forrest might try and fucking kill me regardless.

Emma Winchester was forbidden fruit. That was known to me since I was a kid and Forrest told me he’d kill me if I ever touched his sister. But she didn’t look like this back then, so those instructions weren’t too hard to abide by. Now she’s  this gorgeous, strawberry-haired, honey-eyed, peaches and cream wisp of a girl.

She’s like a walking Garden of Eden temptation. Emma is the fresh, ripe, shining fruit and I’m the snake slithering through the grass. My dick was a little harder just thinking about it.

Jesus, bro. Stop staring, Vin laughed under his breath and adjusted the ball cap on his head. I just wanna eat, not get kicked out on account of your creepy ass.

I know her, I narrowed my eyes at him with a grimace.

Vin turned his head to look at the petite strawberry-blond girl leaning against the counter smiling at a man who had to be seventy, pushing eighty. "She’s cute, man, and really fuckin little. She’s way the fuck out of your league."

The fuck are you talking about? I scoffed under my breath. I’ve been with chicks way hotter than that. It’s not like I’m a goon or something, so speak for yourself. Besides, it’s not why I was staring anyway.

Right, Vin called me on my bullshit and went back to studying the menu like he was about to make a life or death decision. Just saying, chicks like that don’t go out with guys like you and me. She looks like a china doll—like she belongs in a museum or some shit. She’s a look but don’t touch kinda girl. Besides, I thought you and Crystal were a thing?

Crystal is dirty, I shook my head no. "We aren’t a thing."

Vin’s eyes narrowed, and a knowing grin spread across his face, dirty, but mad hot.

She’s an angel, I nodded towards Emma, the forbidden fruit. She looks clean.

"Which is exactly why she wouldn’t want your dirty paws all over her, he laughed with a thunderous boom, shaking the table in his amusement. I thought you said that isn’t why you were staring?"

I shot Vin a shut the fuck up look and smacked the table hard with my open palm. She’s coming over.

She was even tinier in person. Delicate. Fragile. There was something about her. Despite the smile that lit her eyes, she was sorrowful, like her upward curled lips were just real enough to make people think she was okay. She was maybe even a little sad.

Definitely five three, and I doubted she weighed a hundred and ten even soaking wet. Which was a nice thought. Hey guys, know what you want? she asked with a practiced smile, barely looking up from the notepad she clutched in her tiny hand.

Vin smiled a wide toothy grin, waiting for her to be dazzled by him like most girls usually were when he laid on his specific brand of charm. Hey, sweetheart, I—

Oh, I’m sorry, she tapped at her nametag with a saccharine sweet smile pasted on her face. I guess no one taught you to read? It says Emma, hun, not sweetheart.

I laughed as hard as I could while she continued her stare off with a now slack-jawed Vin. Pretty name, I chuckled.

Thanks, she cast me a quick glance, avoiding my eyes entirely. I’ll let my mom know you approve.

He’s just trying to get a slice of cherry pie for free, Vin grinned and nodded at me with a sly wink.

Shut the fuck up, Vin, I kicked him under the table. This guy is always busting my balls.

Uh-huh, she rolled her eyes un-amused. Apparently, she was used to this kind of thing. Look, I’ve got a ton of tables, do you guys know what you want?

Emma. I chuckled under my breath. You really don’t recognize me.

Emma sighed and did a quick study of my face before recognition washed over her and her golden brown eyes lit up. Dean?

I smirked and cocked my head to the side to answer her.

Oh my God, wow. You look—different. I mean, the same—but just different.

So do you.

Well, it’s been ten years, and I got my braces taken off, I’d hope I look different. So, wow—Dean King. That’s just crazy. Emma stared at me for just a second too long, biting her lower lip between her teeth before the old guy at the counter called her over. Her head turned, flinging her long ponytail over her shoulder and I caught a whiff of vanilla sweetness mingled with apples that made my mouth water. Be right there, Don. A small, apologetic smile crossed her face momentarily. "I’m so sorry, but I really am busy. Are you guys ready to order?"

Coffee, black. And an egg white omelet, light on the cheese, I watched her scribble it down. And a side of cottage cheese with fruit.

Suit yourself, she wrinkled her brow at me in disgust before turning to Vin. You?

Pancakes, bacon, and a side of hashbrowns, and a root beer.

I’ll be right back, she wrote quickly before taking another look at me and smiling. Dean King, she tittered in a breathy exhale before walking away.

What the fuck was all that? Vin stared at me like I’d suddenly sprouted a second head.

What the fuck was what? I cocked my eyebrow.

Vin made a goofy smiling face, one I assumed to be mocking me. Don’t you recognize me? Oh, Emma. Oh, you’re so pretty. You’re an angel, he shook a fist up and down in a jerking off motion while shaking his head at me.

Fuck you, Vin. It’s called being polite, I blew him off.

Vin sniffed, rolling his eyes. Whatever. We both shut up when she came back with our drinks and smiling at me the same way she used to when she was a kid. Just saying, he cocked an eyebrow in my direction once she’d walked away again. I’ve known you how long? I’ve never seen you act like such a dork around a chick.

After we ate and paid the bill, I convinced Vin to wait in the truck for me. He did it with another cocked eyebrow and huffed a loud sigh. My expression must have told him how serious I was because he shoved the door of the diner open with a heavy push and skulked away.

I searched around until I found Emma alone near the soda machine in the back, and stood close enough to her that I had her pinned into the small area. She had to look up at me since I stood more than a foot taller than her. When she did, she found me smiling down at her.

The pink fire of her cheeks excited me even more.

Hey, I grinned. Seriously? Hey? Couldn't I have come up with something smoother? So, it’s been a long time. We should catch up, grab a drink or something.

Does Forrest know you’re back? Emma gulped, chewing on her lips.

Of course, she went there right off the bat.

I smirked with a shrug. It’s probably best he doesn’t. And I didn’t ask about Forrest. I wanted to catch up with you.

"Me? Really? her face looked surprised but delighted. I dunno, Dean. Things are—things are different. I’m super busy—plus, the Forrest and you thing. You know that already, though. Don't you?"

C’mon, I breathed out low and leaned in closer, laying it on as thick as I could.