Atone (23 page)

So many people to thank—where do I start?

A huge, ginormous, gargantuan thank-you to my editor, Sue Grimshaw. She told me to make book two Beau's book and then bought it, sight unseen. It wasn't even a book in my head! I don't know where this book came from, but writing it was one of the most incredible experiences of my author life. I'm so grateful for Sue's faith in me as an author to deliver this book. It was both humbling and scary as hell.

I'm incredibly lucky to be supported by my family and friends. You're the reason I get to write the stories of my heart. We're a little bit closer to that pool, boys.

To the authors of The Keeper Shelf, the mighty, mighty, unicorns—I'm so blessed to know you and call you friends. You keep me sane in an insane world. You're my New York.

Stories live in the imaginations of readers. Without readers, there would be no books. Thank you for taking a chance on mine. I hope I was able to meet or even exceed your expectations.

Vindicate

Atone

Reclaim
(coming soon)

PHOTO: SCOTT YARNALL

Bestselling author
B
ETH
Y
ARNALL
writes mysteries, romantic suspense novels, and the occasional hilarious tweet. A storyteller since her playground days, Yarnall remembers her friends asking her to make up stories of how the person “died” in the slumber-party game Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board, so it's little wonder she prefers writing stories in which people meet unfortunate ends. In middle school she discovered romance novels, which inspired her to write a spoof of soap operas for the school's newspaper. She hasn't stopped writing since.

For a number of years, Yarnall made her living as a hairstylist and makeup artist, and even owned a salon. Somehow hairstylists and salons seem to find their way into her stories. Beth lives with her husband, two sons, and their rescue dog in Southern California, where she is hard at work on her next novel.

bethyarnall.com

Facebook.com/​BethYarnallAuthor

@BethYarnall

It's another cold month of winter, but never fear, we have a few special somethings to warm your heart.

USA Today
bestselling author Stacey Kennedy launches a new series, Dirty Little Secrets, with
Bound Beneath His Pain—
ladies, meet Micah, a man who takes what he wants.
New York Times
bestselling author Missy Johnson introduces a young journalist who goes undercover for a hot lead, and gets seduced by the billionaire bachelor she's supposed to be chasing, in
Resist
.
New York Times
bestselling author Tracy Wolff tells a story about a damaged actress who bares her soul, and falls for the one man who cares enough to listen, in
LOVEGAME
. Book two in the Recovered Innocence series from Beth Yarnall,
Atone,
is guaranteed to tug on your heartstrings, as will Charlotte Stein's
Never Sweeter,
where a self-reliant college girl falls for a reformed bully. Then
USA Today
bestselling author Lauren Layne's Oxford series heats up in this story of forbidden desire as a brooding jock hoping for a comeback falls for a woman who's strictly off-limits in
I Wish You Were Mine
. Jill Sorenson releases a reunited love story with
Against the Wall
. And a popular song makes for a popular story in Ellie Cahill's
Call Me Maybe
. Then plan to rev it up with
Hidden Heat
from Carla Swafford, an MC story that's almost real.

Your history lesson this month includes two new Loveswept releases. First, K. C. Bateman's Napoleonic love story,
To Steal a Heart,
and second is Maeve Greyson's time-traveling phenomena,
My Tempting Highlander
—where time's not the only thing changing and there may be a bit of shape-shifting going on, too!

Don't miss a little bit of sweetness from Flirt: Renita Pizzitola's
Addicted to You
, and hockey hotness with Sophia Henry's
Power Play
.

And last but not least, seven books in one with Stacey Kennedy's Club Sin series bundle where you'll meet all the masters of sin.

Romance yourself this month with Loveswept—you know you want to.

~Happy Romance!

Gina Wachtel

Associate Publisher

Read on for an excerpt from

Reclaim

A Recovered Innocence Novel

by Beth Yarnall

Coming soon from Loveswept

 

I'm kind of a fuckup. It's not something I aspire to. It just sort of happens. The effort's there. It's the execution that's lacking. I'm not a total loser. I have a few things going for me. I'm told I'm good looking, but my appearance hasn't delivered a single date for months. I've never had a steady girlfriend. I went to school—a good school—and got a college degree, but that didn't translate into a job in my chosen field. I bought the winning lottery ticket once and lost it. I don't play the lottery anymore. The company that manufactured my first new car went out of business less than a year after I bought it.

I joke a lot about having bad luck and being cursed. That's not what it is. I'm just one of those people who have to work harder than anyone else. Nothing comes easy to me. I get what I'm after…eventually. Usually on the third or fourth try. Never the first. I envy people who coast through life thinking about wanting something and then—BAM—they have it. My best friend, Dominic, is like that. He thought about settling down and getting married. A week later he met his wife. They talked about having children. She was pregnant within a month.

I don't get people like that.

If it weren't for my obstinate determination I wouldn't have achieved a single thing in my life. Stubborn to a fault. That's how my friends and family describe me.

At least I learn from my mistakes. My friend Mike is one of those guys who keeps doing the same thing over and over, lamenting all the while about how he can never catch a break. You gotta make your own breaks. At least those of us who don't get things handed to them. I'm always looking out for the next thing, the next “whatever it's going to be that'll take me where I want to go.” However circuitous the route. No straight lines to anything for me. Nope. The road to all my achievements has been twisty and windy, filled with flooded potholes. Every once in a while something will fly out in front of me, forcing me to change course to avoid it.

It's those unexpected detours that have lead to the most interesting things in my life. Take my new job at Nash Security and Investigations. Totally not what I saw myself doing when they handed me my college diploma for my degree in criminal justice. I was going to be a police officer. Or maybe a sheriff. Okay, a small part of me kinda hoped the FBI would recruit me right out of college. That didn't happen. Also, it turns out that I'm not cut out to be a cop. A little more than halfway through the entrance application, I had the sudden, overwhelming realization that I didn't want to go into law enforcement.

After that revelation—another something leaping across my road, making me jerk the wheel to avoid it—I found myself on an unfamiliar street, fenced in by unfamiliar surroundings, driving along at a snail's pace. That was the year I wandered aimlessly through job after job, looking for The Thing.
My
Thing. Who and what I was meant to be. And then I came across the story of how this PI firm, Nash Securities and Investigations, had helped to clear a man named Beau Hollis who was wrongly convicted for the rape and murder of his ex-girlfriend. That sounded like a really cool job. I mean, freeing someone after years in prison. Giving them their life back. That's a fucking incredible thing.

I wanted to be a part of
that
.

It was the first time I ever had that feeling about anything. I sure as shit didn't have it about selling cars or driving a delivery truck or being a customer service rep for an electronics company. The free pizza I got to eat doing deliveries for an Italian restaurant didn't give me the sensation of being imminently
useful
. Contributing to society. Doing good. Making wrong things right. That's what I want to do.

Except as usual I managed to screw things up the first chance I got.

Backing up.

I got the job at Nash Security and Investigations by nailing the interview. That never happens to me. I should've known it was too good to be true. Like I said, nothing's ever been handed to me. Definitely not something as big and as sought-after as this job was for me. The very first assignment they gave me on my own, I screwed up. Like huge, major, no-going-back-from-this, lives-in-danger kind of fucked up. It should've been a cakewalk. Watch this retail center. See if this guy shows up. Follow him. See where he goes. Simple, right?

Not for me.

I got close enough to get his license plate. I followed him, thinking I was cool and important, and then the guy lost me. One minute he was there then the next—POOF. Gone. When I got back to the office to give the car and tag info to my boss, Cora Hollis (sister of the exonerated Beau), the client, Vera Swain (Beau's firlfriend), pointed out that if I got close enough to get the guy's plate then I was close enough for him to get
my
plate. And son of a bitch if he hadn't. That's how the asshole found Vera—through me. Finding her resulted in the bastard killing her sister and nearly killing Vera and Beau, the guy who'd just gotten his life back after spending years in prison.

All of that shit was on me. Why Cora didn't fire me on the spot I have no idea. Hell,
I
would've fired me. A young girl died because of me. I almost got Beau and Vera killed. All because I can't get anything right the first time out. This was one case where the effort and the thought didn't count.
I tried
didn't mean shit.
I'm sorry
wasn't enough.
I didn't mean to
was useless.

Cora insisted there was nothing to forgive. An honest mistake, she called it. Could've happened to anyone, she said. You'll do better next time, she placated. Would I though? Second and third tries were iffy for me. Nearly as dicey as the first time. And that first time was a giant clusterfuck of epic proportions. I know it'll get better from here on out, but that's not much consolation. Like a category five hurricane downgrading to a three or a four. Still a major disaster. There will be damage, it's just a matter of how much and who it will affect.

I show up at the office and keep my head down. I do as I'm told the way I'm told. I try to absorb as much as I can from Jerry, one of the old-timers whose unenviable job it is to show me the ropes. I hope the guy has good life insurance. I joked about that once with him. He didn't laugh.

Cora hasn't been in the office much the past few weeks. She visits Vera in the hospital pretty regularly. So does Beau. Now that he's out of jail after being accused of shooting Vera. That guy's luck is as shit as mine. No. Shittier.
Way
shittier. I've never been in jail for anything, let alone been accused of hurting the woman I love—twice. That's some powerfully bad karma he's carrying around. When I think about all he's been through, I can't feel too sorry for myself. If I don't think about how he wouldn't have gone to jail that second time if not for me and how Vera wouldn't have gotten shot and how her sister wouldn't be dead.

Yeah. I try not to think about that. I do my job. I put in my best effort. I pray it'll be enough. Maybe one of these days it will be. I'm not sure why I'm here except that Cora's not around a lot and there's a ton of work that needs to get done. I owe her that at least. Whatever she asks, I do. Take out the trash—it's out. Run a few copies—they're done. Pick up lunch—I get the order
exactly
right. All I have to offer is my best effort. What happens after that is a complete and utter mystery. Could be good. Could be bad. Who knows? It's me we're talking about.

I'm running a computer search for a client—a job Beau held for a while before the shooting—when Cora walks in, muttering over the open file in her hands. She's really pretty, like the “make you drop your sandwich and stare like an idiot” kind of pretty. She doesn't even know it. That makes her sexier. Even if she weren't my boss, she'd be way off-limits to me. She's dating the son of the owner of the agency. I don't even exist to her on any level except employee. That's okay though. I'd screw that up too. She's not the kind of person you mess around with casually. She's an all-in kind of woman. The kind you marry and never cheat on. Her boyfriend is a lucky son of bitch and he knows it.

“You almost done with that search?” she asks me.

All I get is the top of her blue and black streaked head. I can't help but stare at her when she's not looking. Leaning back a little in my chair, I crane my neck to check out her legs in the skirt she's wearing. Nice. High heels look good on her, making her legs longer somehow. It's one of those tricks only women know that make a man forget his name and apparently the question they've just been asked.

“Nolan?”

Shit. My gaze snaps up to hers. Busted. “Ah, yeah. Just about.”

“Good. I have something here I want you to take a look at.”

My mind spins her innocent words into something lurid. I give myself a stern lecture about workplace decorum and about not horning in on another guy's woman. That's not cool. That's not who I am or who I want to be. I just wish my boss were a little less hot.

“Oh, yeah?” I ask.

She slides the folder she's holding in front of me and leans in with a hand on my desk. “The Freedom Project sent these cases over for our review. Every year we choose one and work it pro bono. I wish we could work on them all.” She sighs. “I see Beau in every face and it's hard to say no. I need an objective opinion.”

She separates the three pages, spreading them across my desk. Her arm brushes mine briefly and I instinctively flinch away. If she notices it doesn't show in her face. All of her focus is on the papers in front of her. There's a crease between her brows and her bottom lip is pinched between her teeth. This is important to her. Even if I didn't know her brother's story, I'd know it in the look on her face and how she touches the black-and-white mug shots of the three incarcerated people staring back at her.

“What do you want me to do?” I ask.

“Read the case summaries and the notes from the Freedom Project's staff. We need to choose one and I just can't decide. It feels like I'm handing down a sentence to the other two if I don't select them.”

And she thinks I won't get the same feeling? I glance up at her.

“We're not,” she amends. “Their cases will get handled by another PI firm, but it won't be us, you know?”

“Yeah, I think I get it. That makes me feel better about choosing.” That's a lie. I'm lousy at making decisions. She should already know this about me.

“Have a look and let me know what you think. I need to get back to them by the end of the day.”

“Sure thing.”

She leaves her scent behind and the lingering sense of doom that I'll make the wrong choice. God, really? She's leaving this up to me? Someone's life's in my hands, the hands of a fuckup. Does she have
any
idea what she's doing?

I pick up the first sheaf of paper. Bruce Swanson was convicted of the brutal murder of his parents, Doug and Nancy Swanson. As the only child he stood to inherit his parents' vast estate, which entailed a personal fortune of close to eleven million dollars, a company worth twice that, and various real estate properties worth millions more. The conviction hinged on hinky DNA evidence and a questionable witness—a cousin who inherited everything when Bruce went away. As an only child, I'm tempted to choose poor Bruce who should be sitting on fat stacks instead of a thin prison mattress.

I force myself to put the paper down and pick up the next one. D'Shawnte Devon was convicted of attempted murder for the drive-by shooting of a rival gang member based on faulty eyewitness testimony. Three people—who also happen to be members of his gang and thus deemed unreliable—said that D'Shawnte was at a barbecue at the time of the shooting. There was nothing to tie him physically to the crime and although the eyewitnesses later recanted, D'Shawnte remains in prison for a crime he didn't commit.

That one sucks. D'Shawnte reminds me of me and my bad luck. I'm starting to see what Cora was saying about not being able to choose. You only have to have a smidgeon of empathy to want to do something that could change these people's world.

The third page has a photo of a woman. A
young
woman. Nineteen. Dang. She looks younger. Like maybe fifteen. Carla Ruiz is an undocumented immigrant in prison for the murder of her son. Even though the coroner declared the boy's death an accident the district attorney filed murder charges and won. There's a note about a witness that wasn't called by the defense who could've corroborated the coroner's report. She was convicted for a crime that wasn't even a crime. That's harsh. She lost her son and then her freedom. I wonder what will happen to her if she's freed. Will she be forced to go back to Mexico or will she get to stay in the United States?

I set her sheet next to the other two, my gaze bouncing from one to the other, then the other. Who to pick? Eeny meeny miny moe? Roshambo? Put their names in a cup and draw one?

Cora's depending on me to make a decision based on something real not something arbitrary. I'll probably have to justify my decision. It would be pretty tough to defend rock, paper, scissors.

I look at their faces. They're all young. Under thirty when they went inside. They're older than that now. D'Shawte is in his forties. Bruce is thirty-six and Carla is nearly thirty. I should pick D'Shawnte. He's been in the longest. But Bruce reminds me of myself except for the rich parents. Carla lost her son. That's a horrible thing. Uuuugh. I just don't know.

I set the pages aside and try to go back to the computer searches I was doing. But my gaze strays. With a sigh I tear up little pieces of paper, write their names on them, and shake the folded scraps in my hands. I hope this is the right thing to do. I close my eyes and choose. Carla. I'm disappointed and yet not. I take her page out and look at it again.