States of Love Read online

  ARIZONA ARTIST

  A STEAMY ROMANCE FEATURING A SEXY AND MYSTERIOUS HERO WITH A SECRET

  ANN OMASTA

  CALLIE LOVE

  CONTENTS

  Free Book!

  1. Kendall

  2. Kendall

  3. Thom

  4. Kendall

  5. Thom

  6. Kendall

  7. Thom

  8. Kendall

  9. Thom

  10. Kendall

  11. Thom

  12. Kendall

  13. Thom

  14. Kendall

  15. Thom

  16. Kendall

  Epilogue - Kendall

  Arkansas Athlete Sneak Peek - Bristol

  Let’s stay in touch…

  Acknowledgments

  FREE BOOK!

  Have you met sexy, magnetic, and heroic Ranger? He’s the total package… and it’s a big one!

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  1

  KENDALL

  My mind is replaying the awful events that have transpired over the past thirty-six hours. Since my brain is sluggish from a lack of sleep, I still can’t quite believe the truth, even though I saw it with my own eyes.

  When I received the direct message on my Life Chat account that indicated I could purchase a dirty laundry secret about someone important in my life, I almost deleted it. I should have deleted it. What good could possibly come from knowing a loved one’s deepest, darkest secret?

  I ignored the message for a few minutes, but wasn’t able to deny its siren’s call for long. The desire to know overtook my senses. Some sick, twisted sense of curiosity wouldn’t allow me to simply go about my day in peaceful oblivion. I needed to know what someone else was trying to hide.

  The snippets of news that I’ve seen lately should have been enough of a warning not to respond to the message. People far and wide are finding out secrets that they never wanted to know. Murders are at an all-time high, and now I understand why.

  I almost had blood on my hands. That’s why I had to get out of there. Rage consumed me when I found out the terrible truth. Getting in my car and driving far and fast is the only thing that saved me from taking a life––or preferably two.

  If I could go back to the time when I first received that message knowing what I know now, I don’t know if I would respond to it again. That clickbait teaser has caused me more heartache than I ever dreamed it could be possible to endure, but the dark side of me is glad to know the truth. At least I’m no longer playing the fool.

  The long, narrow road ahead of me blurs in my vision as I picture the little blue link taunting me with the promise of a major secret revealed. Despite the loud music in my car, I hear my mouse clicking to follow the link as I revisit the scene in my mind over and over again.

  After my finger tapped the button, a colorful page lit up my laptop’s screen with a tantalizing hint in bright purple letters. Send $5,000, and we’ll share your boyfriend’s biggest secret.

  I’d stared at that screen for so long, the purple letters appeared to marbleize. I was happy with Lucas, and he’d been hinting for a while now that he might be almost ready to propose. Besides, I’m not the kind of person who has an extra $5K lying around in a drawer.

  I spent over an hour trying to convince myself that I shouldn’t pay the hackers for this secret. These people were taking advantage of the widespread data leak and using their computer skills to play on others’ insecurities. I shouldn’t fall into this trap. Nothing good would come from it.

  But how could I marry a man who had a secret from me? Besides, it might not be anything that bad. Maybe he just has a messy closet where he hoards old newspapers, or he doesn’t wash his hands after he uses the restroom. That second one would be gross, but I’m sure I could convince him to start practicing better hygiene.

  Even as I was telling myself that I shouldn’t find out this secret, part of my brain was calculating how to pull the money together to pay the exorbitant fee. It would take every dime I could scrape together, but I could make it work.

  It was almost like the hackers knew exactly how much money to ask me for. Shaking my head, I realize that they have open access to every tiny detail about our lives. Of course, they can figure out how much money a person has, or in my case, doesn’t have.

  When the radio station I’ve been listening to for the past hour gets fuzzy, I begin searching for a new station. I land on one playing an oldie-but-goodie Britney Spears song. The upbeat tune would normally improve my mood, but nothing can cheer me up right now.

  After I’d sent the fee to the hackers, they’d linked me to numerous screenshots of direct messages that were supposedly exchanged between Lucas and other women timestamped during the months we had been dating.

  Wanting to believe the best of my man, I immediately fired back that these could have easily been Photoshopped. That’s when they sent the photo. That damn photo.

  It was a selfie taken in a mirror of a man balls-deep inside a woman as he bangs her against a wall. Their heads were cut out of the shot, but something about that room was familiar.

  As I blinked and looked closer, I saw on the side table the framed photo of Lucas and me at the Farmer’s Market that I’d given him for Valentine’s Day. Upon further inspection, I realized the heart-shaped dimple at the side of his hip that I love tracing with my fingers and tongue was also visible in the picture.

  I glared at the woman’s thin leg wrapped around him. Despite how much I’d like for my legs to be that long and shapely, they aren’t.

  There was no denying it after seeing that. Lucas had been with someone else while we were together. The mere idea of it makes my heart ache as if it has been left on a hot burner.

  The hours after receiving that damning photograph are a blur in my mind. I cried and wailed and threw things––mostly Lucas’s belongings, but I was in such a tizzy I hurled some of my own. In fact, I’m pretty sure I broke my favorite teapot. I guess it’s just another casualty of Lucas’s lies.

  Looking back on it now, I wish I’d just called to scream at him, rather than storming over to his apartment. I’d been ready to rip him a new one when I used the key that he’d given me wrapped as a gift for Christmas to unlock his front door.

  The sounds coming from his bathroom made it obvious that he wasn’t in there alone, but some sick, twisted side of me needed to witness his betrayal with my own eyes. I wanted him to know he’d been caught and for him to see first-hand the pain he’d caused.

  I stood outside the bathroom door for a long moment listening to the shower water running as a background to their passionate noises. It was obvious by the woman’s low wails that he was going down on her. Lucas had an absolutely magical tongue. He could make me come undone with just a few tantalizing flicks of it.

  Based on the incoherent moans emerging from the bathroom, it was clear that I wasn’t the only one who had such a strong reaction to his hot mouth skills.

  A smart woman would have turned around right then and left. I had plenty of evidence that Lucas was cheating on me. Why did I feel the need to torture myself by seeing it with my own eyes?

  My hand shook as I reached out for the door handle. I didn’t want to see what was going on inside his bathroom, yet something compelled me to push onward.

  The tempo of the woman’s moans changed and Lucas’s grunts joined in. He was fucking her now. I knew precisely what
the mystery woman was experiencing––still spiraling from the mind-blowing orgasm his talented tongue had caused when his thick cock enters and begins sliding slowly in and out.

  Lucas knows how to please a woman. There’s no doubt about that. I guess I’d been foolish to believe that I’d been the only one with whom he was sharing his sexy talents.

  From the escalating panting inside the bathroom, I deduced that his thrusts were picking up speed. If I wanted to interrupt him during the act, I needed to make my move.

  After taking in a deep breath, I turned the door handle and barged into the bathroom. After whipping the shower curtain back, I blinked and tried to clear my vision as I stared at the stunned, naked, and wet couple.

  Lucas had the woman backed against the shower wall and he was buried to the hilt inside her. She had her limbs wrapped tightly around him. They both remained frozen in shock as they gawked at me.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Lucas shouted at me, as if I were the one in the wrong.

  I wasn’t able to respond to him or scream at him, like I had intended to, because I was too busy staring into the woman’s beautiful, unique aquamarine-colored eyes. I would recognize them anywhere, especially since they are so similar to mine.

  My devastated voice emerged in a croaky squeak when I uttered the single word, name, and question that was swirling around my stunned mind. “Mom?”

  2

  KENDALL

  The horrific mental image of my mother’s bare legs wrapped around my boyfriend’s trim torso is forever ingrained into my mind. Every time I close my eyes, I see Mom’s ecstatic o-face as Lucas plowed into her.

  It took her a seemingly endless moment to register my interruption of their interlude. When her gaze finally locked with mine, I could swear that I saw the tiniest smile upturn her lips before she masked it.

  She wanted to hurt me. That realization is the most messed up part of all of this. My mom, the person who is supposed to have my back no matter what, did this intentionally to hurt me. There are plenty of other men she could have banged, but she chose to be with Lucas. I almost wonder if she wanted me to catch her with him.

  It’s beyond screwed up, but this is the life I was born into. My relationship with my mother has always been strained, but this takes it to an entirely new, horribly low level.

  I can’t imagine what I have done to make her hate me this much. Aren’t moms supposed to care for and protect their children?

  It would be easy to say the problem is with her, but she gets along fine with my sister, Quinn. The two of them are never going to be best friends, but they don’t have the same level of animosity simmering just beneath the surface of their interactions as Mom and I do.

  If I could go back in time and change whatever it is that makes my mother hate me so much, I would happily do it, but I don’t even know when or why it started.

  Tears begin pooling in my eyes as I think about how our relationship should be. We should be planning day trips together to eat lunch and shop. She should be my confidant and number-one fan. Instead, she’s having sex with my boyfriend and doing her best to hurt me.

  I pound my fist against the steering wheel––furious that I still care about her and what she thinks. She has proven over and over again that she doesn’t love me. This latest betrayal is simply her latest strike in our long, twisted tale of bitterness and hurt feelings.

  It is time for me to forget about forging a real relationship with my mother and move on without her in my life, but that is more easily said than done. The little girl inside me still craves her mother’s love, despite the woman’s many faults.

  My mother’s betrayal hurts so much more than Lucas’s does. He is the one who was supposedly in a committed relationship with me, but he is a sexy player. Even though I wouldn’t admit it, even to myself, I almost expected him to cheat on me––just not with my mom.

  The only good thing about all of this is that I must have reached rock bottom. Things can’t get much worse from here.

  As if the Universe is punishing me for even thinking such a bold thought, the air conditioner in my old car splutters and stops blowing cool air.

  “Really?” I ask the empty car, beyond frustrated with everyone and everything.

  For the first time in many hours of driving, I glance around my surroundings. I’ve been so focused on getting as far away from the city as possible that I hadn’t done much more than ruminate and occasionally stop for gas in a long, long time.

  I appear to be on a remote highway in the desert. I remember crossing the state line into Arizona a while back, but I have no idea if that was two hours ago or five. There isn’t anything but sand, red mountains, and giant cactuses for as far as my eyes can see.

  Just as I’m wondering if the plural form of cactus should be cacti, I reach for my water bottle and find it empty. Great.

  Now that I have no air conditioning or water, the sun seems to beat through the windows with even greater strength. My throat is parched and the heat is so intense it feels like I’m baking.

  Unsure if it will help, I roll down my window. The blast of hot air is like putting my head in a preheated oven. Deciding that’s worse than no breeze at all, I quickly close the window.

  This entire scenario is getting worse by the minute. Normally, I stay off my phone while driving, or at least pull over before looking at the screen, but there is nothing out here for me to hit.

  I tap my phone’s screen to search for the closest gas station and try to be patient as the indicator spins and searches for a signal. When nothing pops up, I wave the device in the air, hoping to pick up at least one bar of service to allow my search results to deliver.

  As I struggle to find a signal, the thought arises in my mind that at least I’m not walking. The mirages up ahead on the pavement truly look like water until I drive closer to them. They always remain just out of reach. It’s easy to see how people would be tricked by them while stumbling around out here in the heat.

  When the car makes a stuttering sound and begins emitting steam from under the hood, I silently curse myself for even thinking the thought about walking. It’s almost like I dared the Universe to somehow make this impossibly shitty day even worse.

  I try driving a bit further, but the temperature gauge on my dashboard goes into the red zone to the ‘Hot’ indicator. Deciding there is no point in driving until the car is unfixable, I pull over on the side of the road and turn off the engine.

  After popping the hood of the car, I emerge from the driver’s seat and glare down at the overheated engine. I know next to nothing about cars, but I’d be willing to bet that it needs water or coolant of some type.

  Trying to swallow around the dry, burning lump in my throat, I realize that’s exactly what I need, too. Soon.

  Staring off in the distance and trying to figure out what to do, I blink several times to clear my vision. I could swear that there is a vehicle coming across the sand in my direction. The pessimist in me decides it’s probably just another mirage, but it sure seems to be coming closer––even though I’m not moving.

  Relief nearly overwhelms me when the four-wheeler and the man driving it approach. The next emotion that swims through my system is fear. With my luck lately, it’s quite possible that this man isn’t here to help me.

  My final thought as he draws near is that no one is around to hear me scream.

  3

  THOM

  The last thing I want to do today is rescue some dimwitted woman, who has no business driving alone in the desert. I should leave her here stranded and afraid for a while, but she probably doesn’t have enough sense to realize how much danger she’s in.

  I’m not sure how it became my job to save this damsel in distress, but since I’m the only other human around, I guess the responsibility falls to me. I can’t just leave her here to suffer––tempting as that thought may be.

  As my ATV draws closer to her broken-down vehicle, I realize that, of course, she’s beau
tiful. That knowledge pisses me off even more. I don’t want a sexy female around to distract me from my misery. Sulking is easier alone.

  I glare at her as I shut off the four wheeler’s engine. She flutters her long, black eyelashes in my direction. Certain that her flirtation would convince any other hot-blooded male to do her bidding, I stiffen my spine, determined not to fall prey to her obvious charm.

  “Hi. Thank you so much for coming to my rescue,” she says in a breathy voice.

  I narrow my eyes into a glare at her, not wanting her to think this will blossom into a friendship or anything more.

  She startles at the angry growl that emerges from deep in my throat. The jump-scare makes her eyes widen, and I have to contain my urge to stare into them. Her irises are a beautiful and unique color that isn’t quite blue or green. I’ve never seen any shade so pretty, but I’ll be damned if I’ll let her know that.

  Gritting my teeth together, I reach into the pocket of my utility vest to retrieve my water canteen. After I thrust it in her direction, her delicate hand tentatively accepts it. Although I can tell she’s desperate for a drink, she warily eyes the canteen as if it might bite her.

  “You’re thirsty, right?” I growl.

  She nods her head before twisting the lid off the jug.

  My annoyance grows by the second as she sniffs the liquid and uses the bottom of her shirt to wipe off the mouth of the container, as if she thinks I have cooties. When the frustrated huff of air emits from my lips, she angles her chin in my direction as if daring me to challenge her.