She's Gotta Be Mine (47 page)

“Well, boy,” the mayor said, “how about I buy you a beer?”

“I do feel a bit parched, Mayor. A beer would be nice, thanks.”

Nick realized he’d finally come home. Bobbie had brought him there.

###

Don’t miss the sequel to
She’s
Gotta
Be Mine
!
 
You’ll get
Brax’s
story in
Fool’s Gold
!

Cover Design by Rae Monet Inc

Goldstone, Nevada: It’s not your typical vacation getaway.

Sheriff Tyler Braxton hightails it out of Cottonmouth to Goldstone for a little R&R, when his sister puts out a distress call.
 
Suddenly, instead of vacationing,
Brax
is having to offer advice to the lovelorn! And to top it off, he has to start his own investigation on his sister’s behalf: Is his brother-in-law having an affair with the local erotic author?

Simone Chandler has found her haven in Goldstone; she loves the forsaken town and its lovable but somewhat beleaguered residents.
 
With a thriving Internet business penning made-to-order erotic fantasies, some of her friends in Goldstone just happen to be her clients, too.
 
The problem, the hunky sheriff from out of town wonders if she’s not only writing stories for his brother-in-law, but acting them out with him, too.

Then murder comes to Goldstone, and
Brax
is suddenly hip-deep in small-town secrets. And sexy Simone Chandler just might head his list of suspects.

Is Simone the real deal, or, like everything else in Goldstone, is she much closer to
FOOL’S GOLD
?

Here’s an introduction to Jennifer
Skully’s
latest release!

Baby, I’ll Find You

Cover design by
Rosemary Gunn

A man without a future, a woman determined to give him one...

Jami Baylor has lost her job, her fiancé, her hopes, and her dreams all on the same day. But she believes in fate and destiny, and after finding Colton Amory’s CD in a thrift store grab bag, Jami knows it’s serendipity that she’s heard his song now. “Baby I’ll Find You” speaks to her heart, right when she needs it most. So, off she goes to the wilds of Yosemite to discover why Colton Amory hasn’t written another song in seven years.

The only problem? The man who wrote such beautiful music turns out to be a self-pitying jerk. Or so it seems, until Jami digs deeper.

Seven years ago, Cole Amory had a flourishing musical career and a little girl who was his pride and joy. In one split second, he lost it all. He hasn’t written a lyric or played a note since. Buried in a small Yosemite town, he’s now a fry cook at a fast-food joint. And he doesn’t need a woman with stars in her eyes opening all his old wounds and his guilt.

Can two people with nothing left to lose find it all?

Baby, I’ll Find You

Copyright 2011 Jennifer Skully

Chapter One

Good Lord, he’d fired her. Just like that. Her boss, Richard Headley, had
scapegoated
her. After five years with the company, Dick Head—as Jami referred to him in the privacy of her own mind—ripped the rug right out from under her.

Jami Baylor had never been fired, not even from the paper route she’d had as a kid.

The Bay Area had a late September rain yesterday, and a damp, musty smell permeated Used But Not Abused as Jami pushed through the thrift shop’s front door. She didn’t know if it emanated from the used clothing that had been shoved to the back of someone’s closet for too long or the ancient orange shag carpet covering the store’s concrete floor. Even the books smelled musty, as if they’d lain for years lost and forlorn in somebody’s attic.

Why did that feel like a metaphor for her life right now?

The stale scent didn’t bother anyone else. The shop was sardines-in-a-can packed. Fifty-percent-off Tuesday brought out shoppers in droves. Jami could barely find a spot to eyeball the latest treasures beneath the scratched glass showcase.

Behind the counter, Olga waddled towards her. “Baby Doll, what are you doing here in the middle of a workday?”

A large woman, Olga had to suck in her stomach to get behind the counter. Her face had turned to leather from years of smoking, and when she laughed too hard, she often lapsed into a coughing fit. Yet for the five or so years Jami had frequented the second-hand shop, Olga always had a kind word and a sweet smile.

Jami gave her one in return. “I needed a Used/Abused fix.”

The woman leaned in to inspect Jami. “You okay? Your nose looks like Rudolph. Got a cold coming on?”

No. She’d been crying. In the car, once she’d left the office, it hit her hard. She’d been fired. She’d worked in Silicon Valley for thirteen years, since graduating university, the last five at Southside Manufacturing. After four years as Cost Accounting Manager, she’d made the leap to Director of Materials, a job she’d toughed out for over a year. The first female director at Southside Manufacturing.

Yet when it came time for someone to take the blame, it was her signature on that purchase order sticking the company with thousands of specially machined parts they couldn’t use when their customer canceled a million-dollar contract. Cardinal rule in Purchasing, give yourself an out. Dick Head had her sign the PO without a cancellation clause. Against her better judgment.

That fact seemed to have slipped his mind when he fired her.

“I’m fine, thanks for asking,” she said, to avoid explaining. Especially since she might start blubbering again. Really, she wasn’t cut out to be an executive. “I just felt like a day off.”

“Well, good for you, Baby Doll. And let me tell you, we got some fine pieces in this weekend that your nieces will love.”

A woman elbowed Jami out of the way. “I want to see
that
,” she pointed for Olga, adding another finger smirch to the glass counter.

Jami gave the other lady room. Slightly chipped crockery and fine china with the gold edging worn off filled a display cabinet, and the necklaces and earrings in the glass sideboard were more of the
dimestore
variety than anything one would find at a jewelry store, but Jami loved buying the trinkets for her nieces. Kids were so easy. At last count, she had five nieces but no nephews, and that lack of a male heir was the bane of her mother’s existence.

By the time Jami came along, her mother already had three girls, each a year apart. She’d wanted a boy so badly she’d actually given Jami the boy’s name she’d had picked out before having the ultrasound. When the tiny fetus turned out to have the wrong apparatus, Mom thought she’d be cute by simply dropping the
es
off James and adding an
i
. Jami often wished her mother wasn’t so cutesy. She’d grown up feeling a bit...unnecessary in the scheme of things.

Not finding a thing that would make any of her nieces absolutely hyperventilate, Jami moved on. Halloween was, comparatively speaking, just around the corner, and Used But Not Abused was like any other shop, stocking Halloween gear a month before the main event. Scratched trick-or-treat pumpkins were stacked one atop the other and next to that, an assortment of battered skeletons to hang on the front door and Frankenstein monsters to guard the stoop.

At the back of the store, where the air got a little less circulation, the mustiness was enough to wrinkle her nose. But at least the crowd had thinned out. Most patrons favored the clothing aisles. Jami wasn’t interested in clothing. She’d discovered a treasure trove on a shelf in the back corner years ago. Even if she made it to the shop only five minutes before closing, when she had a particularly hard day, or was stressed at work, or she’d had a fight with Leo, she came here.

Not that she and Leo argued a lot. Their relationship was pretty darn amicable. And comfortable. Maybe too comfortable. What if Leo never thought it was the right time for a family? Jami was thirty-five. It was time. She wanted a child so badly it sometimes felt like shrink-wrap squeezing her insides. They’d been living together for seven years. When would he make up his mind? There was always that next big promotion around the corner or one more financial goal he needed to achieve. Not to mention that their lovemaking had become increasingly perfunctory, and, to be honest, not so much about her pleasure.

Jami shivered. How was she supposed to break the job news to Leo? They lived in his condo, but she shared expenses. She had savings to live on for...well, over a year at least, but it would still be a blow to them both.

Okay, she wouldn’t think about all that now.

Jami hunkered down in front of the stapled paper bags on the bottom shelf. Grab bags. They took her back to her childhood when her favorite uncle visited, with grab bags for her and each of her sisters. Filled with junk that her sisters threw out along with the paper sack, in Jami’s mind, there was always a treasure in there, big or little. Growing up, she’d been the youngest and never learned how to scream the loudest or the longest, and her mother was often too busy dealing with someone else’s drama to notice Jami’s relatively minor problems. The fact that her uncle always knew the perfect treasure to put in that sack, one especially for her, made up for the lack of attention.

Continuing grab-bagging into adulthood was, at the very least, a little OCD, but Jami didn’t care if she had an obsessive-compulsive disorder. She loved the grab bags.

Closing her eyes, she put out a hand for a stapled bag. Best not to think or look too hard. That was the key to grabbing. If you didn’t over-think, the universe stepped in and gave you exactly what you needed.

Then someone snatched the magic bag right out of her fingers. Jami snapped her eyes open and rose to her full five foot seven plus three-inch heels. “Hey, that’s mine.”