Heart of Clay (34 page)

Clay chuckled, kissing her cheek. “Too happy
to sleep? Did you like your anniversary surprise that much?”

Quickly turning in his arms so she could see
his face in the muted darkness, she smiled at him. “It was the most
wonderful, romantic, beautiful thing anyone could imagine, Brick. I
can’t even begin to tell you how much it meant to me.”

“I’m glad you enjoyed it. It meant a lot to
me, too.” Clay wrapped her in his arms and held her close to his
heart. When she shivered, he rubbed his hands along her back. “Come
back to bed before we both freeze.”

“But Clay…” Callan leaned back so she could
better see his face. “I just want…” her breath caught as her throat
tightened with tears. “I want you to know how much I love you -
will always love you. I’m grateful every day for the gift of you
and I plan to spend the rest of our lives making sure you don’t
forget it.”

“Callan...” Clay moved his hands to her
cheeks where his thumbs wiped away her tears. “I plan to spend the
next fifty years or so showing you how much I love and cherish
you.” After kissing a trail down her cheek, where the tears had
been, he whispered in her ear. “How about if I start right
now?”

Callan responded with a hungry kiss, placing
her hand on his chest. She knew without a doubt what resided in the
heart of Clay – unconditional never-ending love.

1 box cinnamon cake mix

½ cup butter, melted

1 tsp. vanilla

2 eggs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

The cake mix should have a separate
cinnamon-topping packet. Pour it into a small bowl and set
aside.

Combine cake mix, butter, vanilla and eggs
until well combined. Shape dough into walnut-sized balls and roll
in cinnamon topping.

Place on a cookie sheet and slightly flatten
balls. Bake about eight minutes or until cookies are just set.
Remove from oven, let rest on cookie sheet for a minute before
removing to a wire rack to cool.

Makes about two dozen cookies.

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The Women of Tenacity
Series

Welcome to Tenacity!

Tenacious, sassy women tangle with
the wild, rugged men who love them in this contemporary western
romance series.

The paperback version offers a
short story introduction,
A
Prelude
, followed by the three full-length
novels set in the fictional town of Tenacity, Oregon.

Book 1 –
Heart of Clay

Book 2 –
Country Boy vs. City Girl

Book 3 –
Not His Type

Country Boy vs. City
Girl
(The Women of Tenacity, Book
2)
-
Tenacious and
determined, Jenna Keaton has no plans for a husband or marriage,
devoting her time and energy into her career. The very last thing
on her mind is falling for a man, even one as handsome as Josh
Carver.

Successful, charming, and blissfully single,
Josh Carver has no plans for commitment until he meets the
refreshingly honest and incredibly independent Jenna Keaton.

When Josh unexpectedly reveals his lifelong
aspiration is to be a farmer, she decides he’s gone off the deep
end. It’s a headlong battle of stubborn wills, outrageous
adventures, and unexpected heartbreak as the country boy takes on a
city girl.

Turn the page for an excerpt…

Six and a Half Years Later

Josh Carver kept an eye on the hay he
swathed as it fed into the front of the machine. He loved the smell
of fresh cut hay, loved to watch a field fall into neat windrows as
he went through an honest day’s work as a farmer.

The best thing he’d done was purchase the
farm and leave his job in Portland as a luxury car salesman.

Correction. The second best.

The single best thing he’d ever done was
convince Jenna Keaton to become his bride. It had taken no small
amount of effort on his part.

Even though she agreed to marry him, she
quickly decided she would never, ever adjust to life as a farmer’s
wife. She called off their engagement three times before Josh
convinced her she could continue to work in the city. He promised
to take her to plays and concerts. He even refrained from burning
his suits so he’d have something to wear when they attended one of
her aunt and uncle’s parties.

After resigning from his position at the car
dealership, he traded in his sports car for a new extended cab
pickup and a used flat bed truck. Josh poured his savings into the
land he purchased right after he proposed to Jenna.

He added a shop so he could start making
repairs and progress on the land. As soon as spring arrived, work
began on the house. It was finished just a few months after their
wedding before the first hard frost that fall. The next additions
were a barn and storage shed followed by a hay shed.

When the fifteen acres at the end of their
road came up for sale, Josh purchased it, giving them nearly five
hundred acres of hay and wheat ground as well as pasture for the
herd of registered Hereford cattle he worked diligently to
build.

The business of farming proved to be more of
an investment than Josh anticipated. Although he owned the land and
structures, it took a sizeable loan to purchase the farm equipment
he needed, and that was buying everything used. He started a custom
haying business on the side. The income from that helped whittle
away the debt.

Before they wed, Jenna declared not one
penny of her hard-earned money would go into the farm. She insisted
they maintain separate banking accounts and nearly separate lives.
She kept her apartment, refusing to leave until the new house was
completely finished.

If Josh wanted to see her, he did so on her
terms. For months, he commuted to Portland, eager to be with his
bride. The day they moved into the spacious new home, almost a year
after he proposed, Jenna’s resistance to the farm began to
waver.

As Josh started spring farm work and tried
to find ways to involve her, she became more interested in the
farm. The newborn Hereford calf he gave her for Easter that spring
obliterated her resolve to stay out of the farming business. She
merged their accounts and, in so doing, finally committed to fully
entwining their hearts and lives.

Josh grinned as he thought about his wife.
She’d gone from her manicured nails, high heels, and a fear of all
things rural to being able to drive the tractor, set irrigation
water, and wear ugly rubber boots and a ball cap without having a
meltdown.

Jenna learned to put up with the dust and
dirt of country life and became a real help to him as he pursued
his dreams.

Not that she’d given up her own dreams. She
poured herself into her career and it paid off. Recently promoted
to a training and development specialist for the state, Jenna would
travel extensively in her new career, visiting various branch
offices throughout the state while training individuals and
offering support services.

Her first trip in the position was to
Washington D.C. for three weeks of training before she assumed full
duties of the new position. It nearly doubled her salary, but Josh
wasn’t sure he could get used to her being gone so often.

She was due back tomorrow afternoon and he’d
missed her tremendously. Although she occasionally traveled with
her former position, gone for a day or two at a time, he would
never get used to having her away for days on end. Three weeks was
approximately twenty days more than he wanted to think about her
being gone. The house and farm seemed so lonesome without her
there.

He glanced across the road, proud of the
house he built for his bride. Painted light tan with dark red
shutters and white trim, the Dutch-gabled farmhouse looked homey
and inviting with a deep porch and wide front steps. An attached
garage kept Jenna out of the weather and her car relatively
clean.

When they moved into the house, Josh
half-jokingly told Jenna he planned to fill every one of the
upstairs bedrooms with babies.

She glared at him as though he’d physically
struck her. “No kids, Josh. I can’t do kids and a career. I just
can’t,” she said and walked away.

He supposed children, or her lack of
interest in them, might have been a good topic to discuss before
they got married. Nevertheless, he figured when the time was right,
Jenna would come around. He’d been patient, waiting for just the
right time to delicately broach the subject again, but in the past
five years, the time hadn’t seemed right.

Since they were both in their mid-thirties,
he hoped to make some headway soon. However, Jenna’s new job would
definitely put a damper on his baby-making plans.

Lost in his thoughts, Josh jolted back to
reality when the swather made a loud clunking noise, indicating a
problem. He shut down the machine and climbed out of the
air-conditioned cab, closing the door to keep the cool inside. It
took him not time to dig out a plug then look to make sure
everything else was in good working order.

He found a piece of barbed wire wrapped
around the sickle bar and gently tugged it loose. Annoyed, he
wondered how many years it would take before he finally picked up
all the junk the previous owners randomly tossed out around the
place.

One field on the back of the original
homestead had been full of golf balls. He didn’t want to know how
they came to be there, but his nieces, Audrey and Emma, had a great
time running around picking them up in baskets like Easter eggs. He
still occasionally unearthed one when he irrigated the field.

Tin cans, metal scraps, and old appliances
scattered across another field. He hauled truckload after truckload
off as scrap metal before he could work and plant the ground. It
was no wonder he got such a great price on the place.

His family jumped right in and helped him
clean up the unbelievable mess the former owners left behind. His
sister, Callan, and her husband, Clay, provided hours and hours of
free labor along with equipment borrowed from Clay’s parents who
owned one of the biggest ranches in the area. Clay’s cousin, Jake,
often came and lent a hand, as did Josh’s dad, Big Jim.

Josh didn’t give too much thought to the
fact his older brother, Bob, had yet to set foot on the place. Bob
was nineteen years his senior and Josh had never liked or respected
the man. The less he saw of Bob, the better. He and his wife,
Donna, weren’t the kind of people anyone enjoyed being around.