Showing results by author "Lani Vale" in All Categories

Sometimes you need to crash a funeral to experience happiness. At least Kissimmee Singh, aerial artist for Singh Circus, the most sought-after traveling circus of all time, keeps telling herself that’s why she crashes funerals. In reality, she’s lost and confused. Sometimes it’s nice to experience other people’s grief and be reminded that life isn’t as bad as it could be.

He is the one that never looks her way. He is handsome and strong. He is rough around the edges and mean. He is everything she’s ever wanted. He doesn’t even know she exists. Her life is a joke. She doesn’t step on cracks in the sidewalk. She laughs at inappropriate times. She talks when she shouldn’t. She is clumsy and trips on air. She is finally on his radar. God help her now.

There’s a crush, and then, there are the type of feelings that Croft Cruisie evokes from a person. He’s everything that any straight woman would want: tall, handsome, charismatic, muscular, and sweet. At least, Carmichael thought he was sweet, until he brings another woman to the gym she owns with her brother, on the night that’s to be their first date, and lets her know in a quick and painful, nonverbal way that her feelings are not reciprocated. Fast forward six months, and she’s still trying to move on from the rejection.

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.

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.

Oakley Spurlock is dying. She only has weeks to live thanks to a freak infection that totally and completely destroyed her kidneys. Despite her family’s desperation, not a single one of them is a match. In a last-ditch attempt, Oakley’s father takes to social media to beg for help to save his daughter’s life. Pace Vineyard is lost. So lost, in fact, that he’s not sure he wants to be found. But then a beautiful woman’s face is splashed across social media, and Pace finds a spark in his soul for the first time since a bomb went off beside him. He’s already missing two legs.

It’s not every day you meet a man at the bar, stare at him for hours, and then right when you decide to make a move, he gets up to leave. Worse, when you follow him outside, you see him completely change his appearance by shucking a wig and a button down shirt, dropping them into the nearest trash can. When Crimson looks around to see who noticed the complete one-eighty that’s just taken place, not a single person notices or cares. When she looks back, he’s gone.

Poor judgment: knowing better yet doing it anyway. Flint Stone is a professional in every way. He’s a police officer with the K-9 unit and works at Gun Barrel High as the school resource officer. In his spare time, he’s working his heart out to create a successful gym from the ground up. He’s loved by every single person he ever encounters - student, faculty, and employees - everyone but Camryn Elvis Presley. The only thing they have in common is their mothers’ poor excuses for names. Period. The end.

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.

The first time Avery Flynn saw Derek Roberts, she was photographing him for the first annual Kilgore Police Department SWAT calendar. He was leaned back in his squad car, shirtless, and giving her a smile that was completely between them. A smile that hinted at what he wanted to do to her later. When she scrounges up the courage to ask him out after the photoshoot, he laughs in her face. Well, screw you, too, Mr. February.

Nash Wilder Christopherson was the world’s golden boy. For fifteen years, she watched Nash race from the safety of her phone. Every single race, PR event, ESPN interview—she was there for it. He was the one thing that kept her sane while having to live the life her father forced her to. That was all he’d ever be to her, though. A face on the other side of the screen.

Six Ines Broussard walks right into the middle of hell. And at the center of it? Lynnwood Thatcher. The mayor. The man that she took one glance at on the night of his inauguration and dismissed as boring. A total stick in the mud. Only, he’s not so boring shirtless, in the middle of nowhere, doing things that are very illegal. At first, she’s appalled. Then her interest gets piqued. Stuck-up suit is hot! And he has tattoos. Then, he goes and kidnaps her...and she soon realizes, nobody is quite as hot as you thought they were when they’re holding you hostage.

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.

This is for charity. This is for fun. You are a professional. You can do it. Those are the words that Calloway Alvarez chants to herself as she watches all the large men gather into the small room where she’ll be doing the interviews for her employer - Hero Magazine. Honestly, she’s convinced herself that she can’t accomplish the task at hand. That is until she hears his voice, and her head turns to see him standing there. Louis Spurlock. Greek god. SWAT officer. Keeper of her secrets. Ultimate fantasy. Man who will break her heart.

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.

Five years ago when she left, she broke my heart. No warning. No hey, this isn’t working out. No nothing. Just poof. One day she’s there, in my bed, and we’re talking about our futures. The next, she’s gone. So when she shows up five years later and acts like she didn’t leave me with a broken heart, I get angry. So. Freakin’. Angry.

There are a few lessons one has to learn for themselves. Then there are the lessons that most people don’t have to learn because it’s just not done. For instance, most people know instinctively that they shouldn’t crave the mother of their brother’s child. Bourne Pena isn’t most men. Bourne does everything he can to fight the attraction he feels for Delanie, but in the end, his refusal to go there almost ends up costing him his life.

Piper Mackenzie first sees him shirtless, standing in front of the military plane she was about to board, with one rather large wrench in his hand. The fact that he has the plane - the one that she’s about to be flying on for hours - in pieces only minutes before she’s set to take off on it doesn’t faze her. At least, not until a flippant joke about dying in midair leaves his lips.

Don’t ever, ever, ever go near that boy. Not unless you want to be a single mother at 17. That boy is Bad with a capital B. The words that my father spoke to me when it came to Trouper Aoki didn’t scare me like they probably should. In fact, they only made me intrigued all the more. When it came to Troup, there was just no resisting fate when it came to the two of us.