New release – Cowboy Walking Away

 

Howdy! It’s so good to be with you today!

 

Usually I enjoy telling you all a farm story, but today I’m excited because my 70th book releases next week! And I wanted to share a little of it with you.

 

It’s set in the beautiful state of North Dakota and is very much an opposites attract story.

 

Now, I’ve mentioned my awesome narrator, Jay Dyess, before, and he and I are trying something a little different. We’re going to release the audio of my book, Cowboy Stealing My Heart, for FREE on YouTube BEFORE we release the ebook.

 

Yep. We’re a little crazy around here. : )

 

Now, the audio releases tomorrow, and the ebook releases this coming Tuesday.

 

Alright, rather than a farm story, I’m going to put a little excerpt of Cowboy Stealing My Heart in. Hope you enjoy!

 

Calhoun walked out, and Bellamy felt strangely bereft. She ignored that, put the rest of the bacon she held in her mouth, and walked over to the table, walking behind the boys’ chairs, as she had seen Calhoun do.

Noticing the little boy was wiggling even more, she said, “Are you okay, Cayson?”

“This is hard. I don’t want to do it anymore!” he burst out, making Bellamy want to laugh on one hand and cry on the other. She also wanted to ask why couldn’t you have said that three minutes ago when Calhoun was still in here and would have known what to say?

“Maybe I can help you with something?” She walked over and stood behind him.

“No! It’s too hard!” Cayson threw his pencil down. It bounced on the table, rolled, and fell off the other side. Crosby happened to be standing right beside it, and she picked it up and held it in her mouth.

“Crosby! No!” Bellamy said before she heard a crunching sound that was most definitely the pencil being chewed in their dog’s mouth.

“Crosby! Put it down!” Bellamy said, hurrying around the table to get the pencil, or what was left of it, from the dog’s mouth. She wasn’t sure what pencil splinters did to a dog’s insides, but she kinda figured a vet would probably have to be involved.

She dropped to her knees, shoving her hand into the dog’s mouth and hoping it didn’t all of a sudden decide to bite her. She pulled the pieces out as well as she could, setting the slobber-covered splinters in her lap so she could take them to the garbage can.

She pulled out the last piece, patting Crosby on the head and standing back up, making a mental note to make sure no pencils were left lying around on the floor. Looking over the table, she was dismayed to see that Cruz had completely stopped doing his work and was now wrestling Cayson, their arms locked together, as each one was apparently attempting to be the first one to knock his brother off his chair.

Calvin wasn’t wrestling, but his pencil was lying on his book, and he was no longer working but watching his brothers with a grin.

“Boys,” she said, not loud, but as firmly as she could, which didn’t sound very firm to her. She’d never dealt with children before. Funny that she’d been married five times, but never long enough for her and whichever husband she was with to think about kids.

Thankfully, she supposed. Although, the idea of having a normal family was something that elicited a longing in her chest.

But, while Calhoun had seemed to have complete control, in the short ten minutes he’d been gone, she’d lost it, because the boys ignored her word and continued wrestling.

“Cruz. Cayson. You boys are not doing your schoolwork.”

“Cayson said it was too hard. And mine is too,” Calvin said while the other two boys kept tussling.

“Why didn’t you tell Mr. Calhoun that when he was here?”

“Because it wasn’t too hard then,” Calvin said like the answer should have been obvious, his eyes never leaving his brothers.

Cruz seemed to be on the verge of knocking Cayson off his chair. Calvin shoved his own chair back and hurried to help his brother. Grabbing a hold of Cruz, he and Cayson threw him down to the floor. They cheered, which caused Crosby to start barking and dancing all around them.

Cruz yelled, and Bellamy was sure he’d broken something with the way he landed, but thankfully he popped back up, grabbing a hold of Calvin in a headlock, trying to jerk him down, apparently getting the upper hand by catching Calvin off guard.

Cayson took the opportunity to yell and try to grab hold of the dog and run around the table, avoiding Bellamy who reached out to try to grab either the boy or the dog, she wasn’t sure. At this point, either one would have been fine.

She missed both, coming up with just a handful of hair, while Calvin body-slammed Cruz to the floor. Cruz didn’t pop up quite as quickly that time, and Calvin yelled, beating his fist on his chest, then laughing as Cayson and the dog ran by him.

He turned around and started chasing them. Rather than going around in a circle, they cut through the living room, stepped over the coffee table, ran over the couch, and used the end table as a jumping-off point, with Calvin following along behind, only when he got to the end table and jumped, he ducked his body and did a flip, landing on the back of his neck on the couch. He shouted then grunted before rolling over.

Bellamy almost swallowed her tongue. She thought for sure the kid was going to break his neck.

But she realized that somehow the entire box of new pencils had spilled to the floor, and when she’d grabbed at Crosby, she’d dropped all the pieces she’d just picked up, so now there were slobbery pencil pieces on the floor, along with brand-new pencils rolling everywhere. There was also paper scattered over the table, she wasn’t sure quite when that happened, and boys running everywhere, along with the dog, and it felt more like four boys. Or twenty.

She was supposed to be in charge of this chaos.

She wanted to cry. She had no idea how to stop everything.

If you can’t beat them, join them.

She wasn’t sure where that advice came from, but she’d heard it somewhere before, and it seemed very applicable now.

So she ran over to the steps, yelling, “Watch this, boys!” as she jumped up five steps, then turned around and jumped down, realizing as she did so that the last time she’d done anything like this, she’d been a teenager, and it had been a lot easier.

She barely missed the last step and fell forward.

But the boys didn’t notice. They cheered and piled on the stairs, each of them trying to jump from higher and higher up.

Every time they jumped, somehow they managed to land on their feet and do a running turn around the dining room table. Every once in a while, they took a detour into the kitchen and grabbed a piece of bacon off the dwindling pile on the plate on the counter, and then they’d run across the couch in the living room, pass the coffee table, jump on the end table, and Calvin and Cruz would do flips as they landed on the couch before they went back to the stairs.

So far, Cayson hadn’t managed to do a flip, and he wasn’t quite able to go up as high as the other boys could on the stairs.

Definitely joining them was easier than trying to contain them, and Bellamy realized after a while she was actually having fun. She was also able to lead them, in a roundabout way, which gave her an illusion of control.

But they were soon bored with jumping on the stairs, so she grabbed the four corners of her bedsheet and held it in one hand while stepping over the railing at the top of the stairs with the other.

Calvin had suggested jumping off of the railing at the top, and she wanted to say it was too dangerous, but then she decided she could just go first and try it out for them.

Cruz was the one who suggested a parachute. That’s why her bed things were scattered everywhere, over the railing and partway down the stairs, as she held the sheet in one hand, the railing in the other, and looked down at the floor which seemed strangely farther away than it should.

There were two seconds of silence while the boys waited for her to jump with baited breath, and that’s when the door opened and Calhoun stepped back in.

Bellamy, hanging onto the railing with one hand, holding the four corners of her bedsheet with the other, one toe dangling over the open air, froze with wide eyes.

Cruz was right behind her, on the other side of the railing. Calvin had just finished a jump and a flip and was lying on his back on the couch looking up, waiting for her to jump.

Cayson was munching on a piece of bacon and was standing on the table. He was the only thing on the table, and Bellamy honestly wasn’t quite sure where the schoolbooks had gone.

Crosby, as though aware that possibly their antics weren’t going to be met with approval, and possibly having experience in that very thing, slunk down the stairs, her tail between her legs, her butt wiggling back and forth as she went to greet Calhoun.

Calhoun blinked twice, opened his mouth, paused, then slowly closed the door behind him, ignoring the dog, his eyes sweeping the room, then landing back on Bellamy.

“If you’re giving a lesson on gravity, I suggest using an apple.”

 

Alright, Jessie here again. : ) If you’d like to listen to Cowboy Stealing My Heart, you can find it here tomorrow morning after 7:00 am EDT: https://www.youtube.com/c/SaywithJay

 

And, if you’d like to preorder the ebook,  you can do that here: https://www.amazon.com/Cowboy-Stealing-Coming-Western-Romance-ebook/dp/B09W7BZ6FG?tag=pettpist-20

 

Thanks so much for spending time with me today!

 

~Jessie