Love comes home small to.., p.1
Love Comes Home: Small-Town Romantic Suspense (Boulder Canyon Book 1), page 1
Love Comes Home
Small Town Romantic Suspense
CM Smith
Lots of Pages, LLC
Copyright © [2023] by [CM Smith]
All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing without permission of the publisher or author will be considered unlawful piracy and theft. For permission to use any part of this work, please contact cmsmith@cmsmithauthor.com
No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, including electronic or through AI, without direct, written permission from the publisher or author except as permitted by U.S. copyright law.
This is a work of fiction, and any resemblance to names, persons, characters, places, brands, and incidences are either the product of the author's mind or purely coincidental.
This work is intended for mature readers only due to the subject matter.
Publisher: Lots of Pages, LLC
Cover Design: CM Smith
Editing: Brandi Zelenka, My Notes in the Margin
Proofreader: Linda Pichler
ISBN Number: 979-8-9878405-4-2
Contents
Love Comes Home
Dedication
Prologue
Patricia “Trish” Ashley
1. Chapter 1
Trish
2. Chapter 2
Davis “Slider” Mills
3. Chapter 3
Trish
4. Chapter 4
Davis
5. Chapter 5
Trish
6. Chapter 6
Davis
7. Chapter 7
Trish
8. Chapter 8
Davis
9. Chapter 9
Trish
10. Chapter 10
Martha Ashley’s Journal
11. Chapter 11
Davis
12. Chapter 12
Trish
13. Chapter 13
Davis
14. Chapter 14
Martha Ashley’s Journal
15. Chapter 15
Trish
16. Chapter 16
Davis
17. Chapter 17
Trish
18. Chapter 18
Davis
19. Chapter 19
Trish
20. Chapter 20
Martha Ashley’s Journal
21. Chapter 21
Davis
22. Chapter 22
Trish
23. Chapter 23
Davis
24. Chapter 24
Martha Ashley’s Journal
25. Chapter 25
Trish
26. Chapter 26
Davis
27. Chapter 27
Trish
28. Chapter 28
Davis
29. Chapter 29
Martha Ashley’s Journal
30. Chapter 30
Trish
31. Chapter 31
Davis
32. Chapter 32
Trish
33. Chapter 33
Steven “Preacher” Carmichael
34. Chapter 34
Davis
35. Chapter 35
Trish
36. Chapter 36
Davis
37. Chapter 37
Trish
38. Chapter 38
Davis
39. Chapter 39
Trish
40. Chapter 40
Joker
41. Chapter 41
Trish
42. Chapter 42
Davis
43. Chapter 43
Trish
44. Chapter 44
Davis
45. Epilogue
Six Months Later
Love Saves Home
Keep In Touch
Also by CM Smith
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Love Comes Home
When I came home, I thought I could avoid him. I thought wrong.
I’ve managed to avoid him for years. I ran away to school with no plans to return. Until forced to.
He’s different now. Long hair, tattoos, muscles. Undercover in the town we both grew up in. Finding him here was not on my agenda, but what he does seals our fates and forces us together in a fight for our lives.
But I’m different, too. Tired, jaded, bitter. Weighed down by responsibilities that never should have been mine. I’m not a lovesick and broken-hearted teenager anymore. He can’t hurt me again. Can he?
Our mistakes cost us years, and his actions now have drawn us into a world of secrets, lies, and threats that pull us closer to each other and closer to the truth of my past.
He’s finding his way back in. His words sweet. His arms comforting. His skills lethal.
If we survive, it will change everything.
Love Comes Home is a best friend's brother, first love/second chance, romantic suspense story.
Dedication
To my dad
You might not be here to see me do the thing, but I know you'd throw me the biggest party for doing it.
—CM
Prologue
Patricia “Trish” Ashley
Two Years Ago
“Patricia, I need you to come home.”
“Mom, I’ll be home on Friday to take you to the doctor,” I tell her. It’s been years since she’s called me Patricia. I don’t know why she’s starting now.
“No, I need you to come home. I need you to tell them you won’t be there next year and come home.”
“What? Why?”
“Because there are things we need to do now to get everything ready.”
“Ready for what, Mom? You aren’t making any sense.”
“Baby, I need you to come home. For good.”
“But why? What do you mean?”
“I’m dying, Patricia. And I need you to come home now and prepare for that.”
I almost drop the phone at those words. I knew she was sick. I’d been driving back and forth for the last year, taking her to appointments. But nowhere, not once during all that time, did anyone say the word dying. Or terminal.
“I don’t understand, Momma,” I whisper finally.
“They found something, baby. On my brain. And they can’t operate.”
“What about medicine? Or chemo? Radiation?” I toss out all the words I’ve learned in the last year.
“It won’t work. It won’t save me.”
“But Momma. You’ve been doing so well.”
“I know, baby, and I feel good. Better than I have in a while. Would you believe that’s what prompted them to run the scan? Because I felt good.”
“You have to fight this!”
“I have, Patricia. We have fought it. For a year. And it’s time to give up that fight. Help me enjoy the time I have left. Help me make sure you know everything before I go.”
“I… Momma. No,” I argue with her.
“Do this for me. Please. Come home and help me make sure everything is good before I can’t do it. I need to know that your brothers and sister will be okay.”
“Yeah, Momma. Of course, I’ll come home.”
The list of things needing to be completed before I can do that is already growing in my head. Who needs to be called, what needs to happen to move out of my apartment, what I’m going to tell my boss. And school.
“I’m so sorry, baby. Just so sorry. I never wanted this life for you. Please know that.”
“I do. I know. Give me a few days to figure everything out, alright? Start writing down what we need to do, and I’ll fill it in with whatever we forget when I’m there. Can you do that for me?”
“I love you, baby girl,” she whispers.
“I love you, too, Momma.”
Chapter 1
Trish
Present Day
“Lucas Grant Ashley!” I yell up the stairs. “You have five minutes to show your face, or you’re going to miss the bus, and you can’t miss the bus today!”
“Whatever!” the thirteen-year-old yells back at me.
“I mean it! If you aren’t down these steps by the count of three, no PlayStation this week!”
“Trish!” he whines. But he also comes barreling down the steps. Threats to video games for the win.
“Why do you do this every morning? You know when the bus comes. You know I’m going to yell. Do you like it when I yell?” I ask, pulling him in for a reluctant hug.
“Whatever,” he replies at a normal volume.
Giving him a smacking kiss on his cheek, much to his disgust, he slides his shoes on and throws his backpack on his shoulder as he walks out the door. I look at my watch, sighing with relief when he still has three minutes before the bus comes. Wonder how long it will take him to notice the breakfast burrito in his bag?
I don’t have time to dwell on it as I trudge up the stairs to work on the next part of the school day rush. Harper, the angel that she is, is up and already dressed, reading a book in her bed. Best ten-year-old ever.
“Hey, there’s breakfast burritos in the kitchen,” I tell her as I pass her room.
“Awesome! Thanks!” She fists the air before jumping off her bed and running past me to the stairs.
I smile before turning to Owen’s room. For six years, Owen has made it known that he is not
“Owen, bud, time to get up for school,” I quietly tell him, brushing his hair off his still-sleeping face.
His eyes scrunch up, and his nose wrinkles before his head shakes back and forth.
“Not twime to get up,” he whines, his speech worse before he’s fully awake. At just six, Owen’s speech is delayed. He was born tongue-tied, but it wasn’t corrected until he was two, and I took him to his check-up. Mom was dealing with the kids’ father leaving and was sick and not able to take him to that one, so I stepped in. They offered him speech therapy then, but Mom failed to get him to the appointments that I set up. Now he goes twice a week, and it’s improving, but mornings are still rough.
“Yeah, bud, it’s time. Have to go to school so you can grow up and take care of me when I’m old.”
He giggles, “You old now, Twish.”
“I’ll show you old,” I laugh with him, tickling his sides.
“Is Mommy coming today?” he asks through his little boy laughs.
And there it is. The question that always makes my eyes water.
“No, bud, Mommy’s staying in Heaven. Remember?”
“No, she come back soon.”
“I wish she’d come back too,” I tell him, leaning in to kiss his forehead.
Every morning it’s either questions about Mom or if we can get a puppy. It’s getting harder to tell him no on the dog, and it doesn’t matter that it’s been almost two years…it still hits me every time he asks if Mom’s coming home today.
He crawls into my lap, looping his arms around my neck and burying his face in the crook of my shoulder. He’s getting so big, almost too big for me to hold him like this anymore, but when the alternative is a surly teenager whose main vocabulary consists of “whatever” and eye-rolls, I’ll take this every time.
“Hey, bud, I made your favorite for breakfast. If you hurry up and get changed, you’ll have lots of time to eat before we have to leave.”
“Ba-witos?” he asks, his eye lighting up.
“Yup. Want me to help you get dressed?”
He gives one last yawn, rubbing the lingering sleep from his eyes, and nods his head. We work together, getting him into a pair of pants and a t-shirt, only arguing over if his socks have to match. He wins that fight and now sports one green and one orange sock.
I get him to the kitchen with a clean face and brushed teeth, stuffing his face with a bacon and cheese burrito, no egg.
“What’s on the agenda today?” I ask Harper, who has returned to her book.
“Nothing. Hoping I’ll finish this book today,” she replies, never looking up from the page.
“Nothing, huh? That’s like the sixth time in the last three weeks you’ve done nothing during school. Wanna try that again?”
Rolling her eyes, she says, “School is so boring. I don’t know why I can’t just stay home with you and read and write all day.”
“Isn’t that the dream, kid? But even I don’t get to do that. And work calls.” I look at the clock over the stove. “And we need to get going.”
Getting everyone out of the house with both shoes on—Owen—and their backpack—Harper—feels like a win. And heaven knows I need those in any way I can get them these days.
The elementary school is only a five-minute walk, but I have to go to the coffee shop this morning, so we drive. Pulling into the drop-off line, I’m reminded why I don’t like to drive. The long line of luxury cars, SUVs, and oversized farm trucks with all the latest gadgets makes my car look like a toy. The rust spot on the back passenger side bumper really stands out. And the dent in the driver-side door looks ten times the size it really is. It’s just one more way the town has impressed upon me in the last two years how much less than I am compared to them.
Mrs. Babcock is standing at the front of the line. She’s older than the earth itself, having been my third-grade teacher more than twenty years ago. And she seemed old then.
“Good morning, Miss Ainsley.” Mrs. Babcock purses her lips when it’s our turn at the front.
“It’s Ashley,” I deadpan.
“Oh, that’s right. I keep forgetting your momma slept around. I’m surprised you aren’t knocked up yet, to be honest.”
Uh—wow. All I can do is stare at her, my anger boiling. The kids are out of the car and halfway to the doors before my brain starts working again. Leaning over the passenger seat, I yell at them to have a good day before looking at Mrs. Babcock.
“I don’t know who you think you are, but that was inappropriate to say in front of those kids.”
“You think you can talk to me like that?”
“If you can talk like that about a dead woman around her children, yeah, I think I can call you out on it. If you think you have any say over my sex life and the outcome of that life, yeah, I can talk to you like the evil woman you have always been. Have the day you deserve.” I put the car in drive and gun it out of the line, only feeling a little bad when the muffler gives up a good cough of black smoke. Great, looks like a trip to the garage will need to happen soon.
This is why I worked so hard to get into college and left for Briar Mountain State University as soon as I could. Briar Mountain is a small town about forty-five minutes away and wasn’t my original plan, but it was far enough away that people there didn’t know me. This is also why I worked so hard to not have to move back. My parents were children having children, honestly. The only thing I know about my father—if we want to call him that—is that he left when I was two and he was only twenty. My Mom raised me alone in this town that called her names behind her back because she worked in the kitchen at a bar. That treated us like trash most days of the week. That stopped for a while when she met Zach Lee, my half-siblings’ father. He was a great guy and treated us like we mattered. But they never got married. Three children later and they still weren’t married. And that was unacceptable to this town. When he left, it was to go home to take care of his aging mother. When he didn’t come back, we all became Martha’s bastard children. Now we were Martha’s bastard orphans. And still trash, according to a large population of the town.
Boulder Canyon has a clear divide between the haves and the have-nots, and we live right on this side of the line with the haves. We weren’t rich, but Mom inherited our house from my grandparents and never had a house payment. It meant we went to the better schools in the nicer neighborhoods, but the two of us were never fully accepted here.
There are some good people here. Ginny, my best friend since we were five, and Lottie, who we adopted into our little group the following year, are the best women on earth. Their brothers played baseball together, and I got to tag along most of the time, so Ginny had someone to play with and her parents could watch the games. I was in love with Ginny’s brother, Davis, for most of my childhood years. He never returned that affection, and as the years went on, I learned to shove those feelings into a box and lock it up tight. I thought I might have a chance at one point, but that was nothing but a lie. Those feelings? They’ll stay locked away in that box.
