Lone Star Reunion

“In Royal, Texas, everything brings back difficult memories...especially you.”

But walking away again might prove impossible...

Feuding grandparents ended Daniel Clayton and Alexis Slade’s teenage romance—and ten years hasn’t healed the family rift...nor cooled their intense desire. But when staying apart backfires spectacularly, Daniel and Lexi find themselves entangled in a forbidden affair that leads to an unexpected pregnancy. Will they stay loyal to their families...or to their own hearts?

“I’ve been watching you all evening, and you’ve been watching me, too.”

Daniel lifted his hand to trace patterns on her jaw. “We’ve both been wondering how it would feel to be together again. Especially now that we’re older, more experienced...confident in how to satisfy one another in bed. Come home with me, Lex. Let me peel that ridiculously sexy dress from your gorgeous body and replace it with my lips and hands. I’ll make it good for you, I promise.”

He’d make it too good and, yeah, that worried her. “Daniel, this is madness.”

“So let’s be mad, just for a night. In the morning we can go back to being a Clayton and a Slade, opposing forces in this long, futile war that we never started.”

Alexis closed her eyes and shook her head. She wanted him but she didn’t like wanting him, found herself wishing instead that she could put him in the past where he belonged. Maybe she did need to sleep with him again to flush him out of her system. After all, reality was never as good as fantasy, and then they could both finally move on.

Alexis leaned forward and stroked the pad of her thumb over his lower lip. “Take me to bed.”

* * *

Lone Star Reunion   by Joss Wood is part of the Texas Cattleman’s Club: Bachelor Auction series.

Dear Reader,

Sometimes a book comes along that is pure sunshine and an absolute joy to write. For me, Lone Star Reunion   is that book.

Over the course of the previous books in this installment of the Texas Cattleman’s Club series, our lovely readers were introduced to Daniel and Alexis and their meddling, interfering but lovable grandparents, Gus and Rose. A fifty-year-old feud has kept Gus and Rose apart and played a part in Daniel and Alexis’s breakup when they were teenagers. Now, a decade on, everyone is that much older. But not, unfortunately, wiser, and the road to true love is a rocky, dusty Texas trail!

Noticing Daniel and Alexis’s attraction, Gus and Rose are determined to keep them apart, and conceive a plan to hold a charity bachelor auction in the hope that somebody else—anybody else—will catch their grandchildrens’ attention! But fate is sneaky and the two octogenarians fall in love, grateful for a second chance.

Realizing that they were wrong to keep Daniel and Alexis apart, Gus and Rose hatch another plan, this one aimed at getting them together. What could possibly go wrong this time?

Happy reading,

Joss

Prologue

September

Over the decades many wedding receptions had been held at the Texas Cattleman’s Club, and there had been a fair amount of scandals, for sure. Alexis Slade remembered talk of a groom being caught in a compromising position with the matron of honor, and a father of the groom passing out under a lavishly decorated bridal party table after streaking across the dance floor, wearing nothing more than a very lacy pink thong. There had been tearful brides, drunk brides, regretful brides and emotional brides, but Shelby Arthur was the first bride who hadn’t made it to the altar.

The Goodman-Arthur wedding, or nonwedding, would undoubtedly be talked about for weeks on end. Alex looked across the still-crowded reception room and saw Reginald Goodman, father of the groom, with a tumbler of whiskey in his hand, looking pale but composed. Her eyes tracked left and there was the mother of the bride, a handkerchief clutched in her fist. Alex snorted at her wobbling lower lip, her crocodile tears. Daphne Goodman was a designer-dress-wearing barracuda who’d made no secret of the fact that she despised her son’s fiancée and was totally against their marriage. Having been an object of Jared’s affections in high school, Alex believed Shelby came to her senses just in time.

Marrying the spineless groom meant marrying his awful family—Brooke Goodman, Jared’s sweet-natured sister, was the exception—and really, no woman deserved that. Marriage was tough enough without any added pressure from the in-laws. Jared and Shelby’s marriage would’ve been a marriage of three, with Daphne Goodman calling the shots.