Drew Singer, aka Brock Kipwell, had played Slade Donovan, action hero, for five years. After a shooting at the premiere of his new Slade outing, which resulted in the death of his personal assistant. Drew left L.A. for the little village where he grew up, in North Yorkshire, to nurse his shattered hip and broken heart. All he wanted to do was spend some time with his grandmother shut away from the world. But there was one thing he hadn’t counted on… the presence of his childhood friend, and first love, Cameron McDonald.
Cameron McDonald was Yorkshire born and bred. He still lived and sometimes worked on his parents’ farm, while he ran his own gardening business. Life was plodding along nicely, until he walked into Marty Singer’s kitchen to find she had a new house guest. The two of them had been boyhood friends, best friends, until the final summer when they turned fifteen and they’d become so much more.
Ten years have passed and their attraction to each other is as strong as ever. But Cam is dealing with his troubled friend, Ed’s, problems, and Drew is carrying so much survivor’s guilt he can barely stand the weight of it. Is this their second chance? Will either of them grab it with both hands? Or is there something waiting in the dark that neither of them expected?
Excerpt:
Flashbulbs exploded as Brock
stepped out onto the red carpet. He stood for a moment, waved to the crowd, then
turned and held out his hand to Melanie. The gasp was audible as the fans
waited to catch a glimpse of his date, wondering which Hollywood starlet it
would be. He almost laughed as the gasp turned into a disappointed groan when
Melanie got out of the limo. She schooled her features with a welcoming smile
and slipped her hand through the crook of his elbow, guiding him expertly
toward the bank of photographers and entertainment reporters, all clamouring
for their pound of flesh. He wondered how they’d feel about him tomorrow, after
the announcement he planned to make at the press conference after the premiere.
“Over here, Brock!”
“This way, Brock!”
“To me, Brock! To me!”
The photographers shouted
out his name, their flashes enough to blind him, but he kept his smile
plastered firmly on his face as he turned this way and that, the click of camera
shutters drowning out everything else around him. Melanie put her hand in the
small of his back and leaned in to say something, but he couldn’t hear her. He
glanced over his shoulder at her and, as he did, there was a strange stinging
sensation across his cheek, as if he’d been slapped. He opened his mouth to say
as much to Melanie, but he heard a piercing scream from somewhere in the crowd
and turned in its direction, which was when Melanie slumped against him, blood
pouring from the hole in her neck, a bewildered expression in her deep blue
eyes.
“Mel?” Brock held her to
him, instinctively pressing his hand to her throat. “Mela—” He didn’t get to
finish her name, knocked to the ground by what felt like a punch to the back,
Melanie falling from his arms.
“He’s hit! Brock’s hit!”
The shout echoed in his ears as more gunshots rent the California night.
“It’s not me,” Brock
tried to yell, but he was already being hauled up the red carpet toward the
movie theatre, by two beefy security men, their radios crackling loud static.
He slapped at them, calling out Melanie’s name over and over.
“Shooter’s down!”
suddenly came over the radio. “I repeat, shooter’s down!”
The security guard quickly
fired back into his own radio, “We need EMT’s, now! We’ve got two casualties, one
GSW to the back and one dead.”
Dead! Brock’s
panic spiralled out of control. He desperately tried to shrug off the hands
that held him in a vice-like grip as pain, sudden and white hot seemed to flow through
him to converge in his lower back. “Melanie!” he screamed. “Mel—!”
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