The Braddock Boys: Travis (LFB6) by Raye Kimberly

Author:Raye, Kimberly [Raye, Kimberly]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Romance, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781459209084
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2011-07-19T07:00:00+00:00

HE WAS HOME.

Reality hit Brady as he stood before Merle’s gas station and stared at the fading red sign that hung in front. The same painted oval that had always teetered back and forth from two small chains. The edges were a little more worn than he remembered, the paint chipped in several spots, but otherwise it was exactly the same. The same name with the same familiar twenty-four hour service guarantee printed just below. A red-and-white T-ball banner flapped in the wind depicting one of the local teams in the peewee league. The same team—the Kansas City Royals—that Merle’s station sponsored each and every year.

Thankfully.

Brady had seen too many new barns, new fences, even a few new houses dotting the horizon on the drive into town and the scenery had made him worry that maybe things had changed too much for him to simply waltz back home after all these years and pick up where he’d left off.

And he wanted to. Christ, he wanted it more than his next breath of air.

He glanced behind him at the familiar span of buildings lining main street, from Turtle Jim’s Diner, where he’d eaten chili cheese fries after school every Friday afternoon, to Sullivan’s Pharmacy, where he’d purchased his very first condom. The breath he’d been holding eased from his lungs and he drank in another lungful of Texas heat.

Home.

He’d dreamt about this moment so many times over the past eleven years, when the stress of a fast-paced advertising career and a less than perfect home life had overwhelmed him and he’d longed for the peace he’d known while growing up. The freedom. The control.

He’d been the one in control back then. But for the past eleven years, life and circumstance and his ex-wife had called the shots, dictating the how, when and where.

Only because he’d allowed it, he reminded himself. It wasn’t as if he’d been forced away from Cadillac. He’d fallen in love, or so he’d thought at the time, and walked away by choice—to do the right thing. In the end, however, everything he’d done that fateful day and every moment since had been wrong. So wrong.

Not now. Not ever again.

The past was just that—the past. Over. Finished. Bye, bye. It was the future that mattered now, and Brady wasn’t making any more mistakes. Rather, he was finally going to set things right.

He ran a hand through his sweat-dampened hair and spared a glance around him. A handful of kids were gathered around a nearby candy machine at the far corner of the building. Brady turned, letting his gaze sweep the other side. The gleam of an old-fashioned Coke machine caught his eye and he smiled. Yep, Cadillac was still good old Cadillac.

Sliding a coin into the slot, he pushed the same button he’d pushed every day after school since the moment he’d been tall enough to swipe quarters from the top of his older sister’s dresser once she’d left for school in the morning.

The machine grumbled, then stalled the way it always had for several long moments before finally spitting out a can of Orange Crush.

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