Home in Your Arms

By Charlotte O'Shay

After her sweetheart Joe dies in a road accident, twenty-four hours after he returns from Army service, grieving Karla Payne slams the door on love.
Five years later, Karla's tavern business is booming, and she owns her home, but she knows forever love has no part in her future.

Headed to interview for his first civilian job, retired career Army 1st Sgt. Zane Blackthorne can't resist visiting his late buddy's beloved Vermont hometown. He also can't resist looking up Joe's sweetheart, Karla, who is an alluring mix of brains, beauty, and bravery.
Loyalty to his brother-in-arms demands Zane fight his attraction to Karla. Besides, even if Karla wants him, she'll never love him.

Can Zane say goodbye to the woman he has no right to call his own?
Even if his only true home is in her arms?

• Language: English
• Publisher: The Wild Rose Press
• Release date: Oct 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781509232864

Charlotte O'Shay

Charlotte O'Shay was born in New York City into a big family and then married into another big family. Negotiating skills honed at the dinner table led her to a career in the law. After four beautiful children joined the crowded family tree, Charlotte gladly traded her legal career to write about happily ever afters in the City of Dreams. The Marriage Ultimatum is the first, standalone, story in the City of Dreams series.

Book preview

Inc.

Okay, I did what you wanted. Now, you have to do what I want.

Oh, really? And what’s that? He tensed up even more, examining her like she was an explosive device, and he had nowhere to run.

I want to know a little about you. She shifted on the hard mattress finally twisting onto her left side so she could examine his face.

Not much to tell. Twenty years of proud service. Now out and looking for work.

And I am grateful for it. For your service. Thank you, Zane. His somber gaze met hers and she reached out a hand to him. After a moment’s hesitation he grasped her fingers. She didn’t let go and neither did he.

Family, siblings?

Half siblings. Four in all. I never kept up with them, nor they me. They were a whole lot younger than me. And last I heard, living in a few different states out west. I speak to my mom now and again.

That’s a big family.

Yeah, my mom wanted a lot of kids, but my dad left when I was a newborn. I’m glad she got her family, glad she has my sisters.

What about you? Do you have a sweetheart? she whispered.

No. No one. I was married once. It didn’t work out. His gruff voice was clipped. We were both too young.

Praise for Charlotte O’Shay

The writing can be summed up in three words: emotional, intoxicating, irresistible.

~NNLightBookHeaven.com

~*~

THEIR NO-STRINGS AFFAIR

WINNER, 2019 OKRWA National Readers’ Choice Award, Best Contemporary Series Romance

2nd Place, PRG Reviewers Choice Awards 2019

Novel with Military elements

~

FOREVER IN A MOMENT

2nd Place, Oklahoma RWA 2019

International Digital Awards, Contemporary Short

~

2nd Place, Hudson Valley RWA 2019

Hook, Line & Sinker Contest

~

Finalist, NNLIGHTSBOOKHEAVEN.COM 2019

Holiday Romance

~

THE MARRIAGE ULTIMATUM

Finalist, LVRWA I Heart Indie 2018

Erotic Romance

Home

in Your Arms

by

Charlotte O’Shay

Deerbourne Inn

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

Home in Your Arms

COPYRIGHT © 2020 by Evelyn P. McCabe

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

Contact Information: [e-mail]

Cover Art by Tina Lynn Stout

The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

PO Box 708

Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

Publishing History

First Champagne Rose Edition, 2020

Digital ISBN 978-1-5092-3286-4

Deerbourne Inn

Published in the United States of America

Dedication

For anyone looking for the courage

to open the door to loving again

Chapter One

Zane

Déjà vu.

The unsettling sensation chilled Zane’s spine as he drove past Town Square. Ahead, the shiny pavement of Maple Run Avenue gleamed in the dawn light, burnished copper and pewter in the remnants of a late winter rain. Only a few brave buds spiked up green from the muddy ground. Everything was the same. He’d seen this place—in his dreams—hundreds of times over the years.

But only once had Zane physically breathed the air and trod the ground of Willow Springs—Joe’s funeral.

The rest of the time, his visits to Willow Springs had all been inside his head. Every time the words spilled from Joe’s lips, he’d imagined. First time Zane half-listened, unwillingly, as the only passenger in the Humvee as he and Joe, his newly assigned driver, traveled the dangerous, desolate roads from one far-flung US command post in Iraq to another. Somehow on that first trip, Joe, to whom strangers were truly friends he hadn’t met yet, considered it his duty not only to get his superior from Balad to Baghdad alive and on time, but also to regale him with tales of his hometown, his family, his friends, and his sweetheart. After a few futile attempts to shut down the loquacious corporal, he gave up because the extroverted driver knew how to tell a story rich in detail and laden with good-natured humor. Eventually, Zane hung on every word because Joe had become his buddy, a guy who longed for home and missed his girl. Since he had neither home nor woman, and was never likely to, Zane allowed Joe’s tales of the folks and events of his hometown to fill the gaping hole in his life. Over time, Willow Springs became Zane’s happy place too.

Pumping the brakes of his old pickup, he decelerated, determined to savor every detail.

Another turn, and now the Deerbourne Inn lay straight ahead. In the dawn light, every brick and shingle, every acre of rolling fields looked fresh, bursting with life, and impossibly cheerful, almost unreal to his tired eyes. And Zane was tired to the bone. Tired the way you get when you’ve been driving a truck for sixty hours. Tired the way you get when you’d finally separated from the honor, privilege, responsibility, and obligation of serving your country full-out for twenty years.

Good thing he’d gone ahead and booked a room at the inn. The town of Willow Springs was small, but then again so was the inn, and after a few nights sleeping in his truck, he would take no chances on finding a warm bed. Driving cross-country with only his thoughts and spotty FM radio for company guaranteed Zane felt the weight of every one of his thirty-eight years.

He slowed the truck to a crawl and lowered the window. The pungent aroma of wet earth filled his nostrils, and the early morning country sounds he’d never quite forgotten all those years on foreign soil assailed his ears. Raucous and strong, the dawn chorus sounded an aggressive warning to all the competing birds in the vicinity: mine. His mother used to say the birds were calling out a warning to each other. Mine. Mine. The word had a strange sound to it. What could he claim as his own? What had he ever had that was truly his? His possessions were few. This truck and the three duffels in its rear compartment contained all of his worldly goods.

Twenty years in the service meant Zane claimed no permanent home. His marriage lasted a fraction of that time, and there were no kids from that ill-fated union. He’d been eager to have children in those days, but Torrie hadn’t wanted any. In retrospect, he considered her decision to be the only good one either of them made during the two years they were together.

Good God, he’d been naive when he enlisted straight out of high school. Not that anyone believed his age back then. Not when he stood nearly six foot four and had already mastered an intimidating right hook. But after only a year in the service, the thought of coming home to someone special appealed to him, and the thought of a stable home and kids gave him hope. He and Torrie married when they were both nineteen. Later, in the ways that twenty-something year-old guys talked, he found out most men Torrie encountered before and after they married didn’t have to make it legal to enjoy her favors.

At first, he might have been pretending to enjoy the unceasing solitude of his army life, but before long he actively preferred it. When he reached his ultimate goal, attaining the rank of First Sergeant, he limited his social interactions with his soldiers even further, knowing he needed to keep the necessary distance to enhance his authority and ability to lead.

Nope, being alone wasn’t anything new. Besides, what did he know of home and stability? Exactly zero, and when his marriage imploded before his first hitch was up, he figured out life was divided between the lucky ones and the unfortunates.

Circumstances stacked up early against him ever being one of the lucky ones. He’d never known his father; his mother eventually married and divorced the man who fathered his half-sisters. The Blackthornes, which was his mother’s surname, were scattered all over Oregon, Nevada, and California. Likely, if he did one of those DNA tests, Zane would discover he had tens of cousins and half siblings in the logging towns of his youth. Strangers linked only by chromosomes. Yeah, no thank you.

Joe Armstrong, though, had been blessed with a good family, solid relationships, a class A girlfriend, and a welcoming hometown he knew inside out. Joe was truly blessed. Then one ill-fated night cost him everything.

Zane pulled up to the Deerbourne Inn and wound round to the back lot, executed a quick turn so his truck faced out toward the street. A tractor growled to life in the distance. Country life started before the sun came up. Good thing he could sleep in any conditions.

The lone male receptionist inside the inn greeted him with a wary good morning, checked him in with a minimum of fuss, and handed him a brass key. Zane forced a show of teeth in an unaccustomed smile knowing his bulk and stature, coupled with his hawk-like visage, exuded threat. Smiling had never been in his vocabulary. But manners were. Issuing a gruff thank you to the clerk, he climbed the center stairs to Room Ten.

Dropping his duffle on the polished oak floor, he stripped off his shirt and did his best to wash two days of travel from his face and upper body. Damn, there was no shower, only a classic but not particularly large looking clawfoot tub. Could he fold his body into that thing? Joe would guffaw at the thought of the spectacle. Of course, he was never supposed to stay here at the inn when he visited Willow Springs. He was supposed to stay with the Armstrongs. Joe had talked about it enough. So much that Zane finally swore to Joe he’d make it to Willow Springs after his last hitch. Turned out Zane had been here even before he completed his service.

Joe had been fortunate to make it through basic and all the way through his tour in Iraq, only to fall victim to a hit and run driver less than two days after his return home. The guy who always assured him he had everything to live for, the guy who’d never taken for granted how unbelievably blessed he was, was gone. Damn.

Maybe his plan to see Willow Springs on his way up to his interviews in South Burlington was a bad idea. He’d get some rest and then bail. Zane brushed his teeth, flipped the little wooden hanging sign on the outer doorknob to Do Not Disturb. He pulled the curtain shut on the dawn light and stretched out on top of the duvet covered featherbed.

****

With nothing to do but sleep, he slept almost round the clock. When he stirred, his watch told him it was five o’clock p.m. The featherbed had been serenely comfortable after those nights cramped and chilled in his truck, even if his feet hung off the bottom of the bed. All he could think of was food. Zane needed some, and he also needed a real shower, but he settled for washing up again, this time with bracing cold water before he changed into fresh clothing. Finding one of the power bars he’d stashed in his bag, he consumed it in two bites. He’d neglected to make a reservation for dinner at the inn which would have been handy given his hunger,