What Lies Between Them

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!! As a romance author, of course I love this holiday. Though I do believe, too, that celebrating romance and love throughout the year is even better, if only done in those little bitty ways.

I was so pleased to learn that What Lies Between Them was chosen as a CAPA-nominee in the contemporary romance category this year. This story is very near and dear to my heart as it has a vet heroine and a rancher/cowboy-type hero--two of my favs! This is also one of my oldest written stories. I wrote it before I ever delved into the erotic romance genre--so back in 2001 or so--and I am ever eager to find time to write more in this vein.

Here's a little something from What Lies Between Them as a V-day treat! Hope it's a great one for you!! :)

Quitting was the best option.

Autumn knew as she drove her SUV up the long winding stretch of her parents’ front entrance it wasn’t the option she would take. She owed it to herself and her unborn baby to continue with her veterinary work at the ranch, to prove she wasn’t the child she’d acted like this morning any more than she was the reckless girl she’d once been. She also wasn’t weak the way she’d blubbered to Matt.

She was just…tired.

She frowned into the rising sun that peeked through the trees on either side of the drive. Last night she had used fatigue as a bad excuse to avoid acknowledging she was jealous of his potential girlfriends. This morning her weariness was the simple truth.

She was tired—of not sleeping enough to compensate her body’s growing needs, of having to keep a secret as wonderful as a baby from all those around her and mostly she was tired of fighting the unwanted attraction that existed between Matt and her.
She’d wanted his kiss badly this morning, Autumn accepted as she put the vehicle into park and stepped out into the crisp morning air. If the impressive bulge she’d felt pressed up against her bottom were any sign then so had he, wanted her kiss and a whole lot more. That was exactly why quitting was the best option.

He’d been sweet last night and again this morning, comforting her at a time when she deserved to be scolded or possibly let go. He hired her on to be a vet, someone who could to see the welfare of his animals. She’d sobbed like a baby the moment one of those animals didn’t pull through. He should have been angry, should have told her she was fired. Instead he all but begged her to stay.

He’d said he would miss her if she quit.

Blowing out a breath, Autumn unlocked the front door and stepped into the foyer. What had motivated him, a man who less than a month ago neither liked nor trusted her, to say he would miss her? To honestly sound like he meant it? Was he really that concerned about finding another vet or was there more to it?

She told herself he wasn’t tormented by the same restless yearning that had her on edge whenever he was within a hundred yards of her but maybe she’d been wrong. Thinking back to his heated expression, the thickness of his voice and other parts of his body as he’d exited the barn this morning, she knew she’d been wrong.

He felt something too. The question was, what did he plan to do about it? Or maybe the better question was, what did she plan to do about it?

She’d never been the silent party in their relationship. She had always been the impulsive one, the one to jump in with both feet forward. Right, and just look where that had gotten her in the past. With a fragmented heart and misconceptions on how it got that way.

Autumn blew out a frustrated breath as she slipped out of her boots. Matt had given her time off—a day, he’d suggested, but she planned to take more. Not just for the sake of thinking time, though she wouldn’t discount that any, but because she had things to see to back in Dallas, namely an appointment with her obstetrician and another with a real estate agent.

She still had no idea if she would be staying in Saugatuck but she knew she wasn’t going back to Dallas. The city held no appeal for her, never truly had outside of the fact Court was there. Regardless of what she’d told Matt this morning she was the same girl he remembered. One who needed fresh air and clean water. And one, it seemed, who still had a foolish hunger for a sexy brown-eyed rancher.

~ Jodi

www.JodiLynnCopeland.com