This Love of Mine (Raine Series #1)
Read This Love of Mine (Raine Series #1) Online
Authors: Amanda Bennett
This Love of Mine
By
Amanda Bennett
Copyright
©
2013 By Amanda Bennett
All
rights reserved. Printed in the United States
No
part of this book may be used or reproduced in any form or by any means
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any
information storage and retrieval systems, without prior written permission of
the author except where permitted by law.
The
characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to
real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Cover
art by Robin Harper/ Wicked By Design
Check
out other books by Amanda Bennett
Time To Let Go
Beautifully Broken (The Broken Series #1)
Breaking Beautiful (The Broken Series #2)
Misguided Heart
Coming
Soon
This Trust of Mine (Raine Series #2) MAY
1013
This Heart of Mine (Raine Series #3) JUNE
2013
Unbreakable Hearts (The Broken Series #3
novella) JUNE 2013
Faithless AUGUST 2013
(All dates are subject to change)
You
can find Author Amanda Bennett at the following:
www.authoramandabennett.com
www.facebook.com/authoramandabennett
www.twitter.com/spoiledbrat81
www.goodreads.com/author/show/6550967.Amanda_Bennett
A huge thanks to everyone who constantly
supports me and reads my books. You all are amazing beyond belief.
A special thanks to:
Jenn Foor (Author)
Thank you for spreading the word about my books and
helping me find awesome beta readers.
Robin Harper (Cover Artist)
You are an amazing person and cover artist and I
have decided I am keeping you..LOL
Thank you to all of my new friends on Facebook,
Twitter and Goodreads y'all are amazing, wonderful people.
Thank you to all the book bloggers that have helped
spread the word for all of my books and that have taken the time to read and
review my work. I seriously couldn't have asked for better people in my life:
Denise & Nic w/ Flirty and Dirty Book Blog,
Books Books Books, Into The Night Reviews, I Heart Books, The Book Hookers, Totally
Booked, Book Crush, Sugar and Spice Reviews, First Class Books, Cynthia Shepp
Book Reviews, and The Little Black Book Blog, just to name a few
To my #1 fan and amazing new blogger Tamsyn Bester
(The Secret Book Brat) You are an amazing person and I am proud to call you my
friend.
A HUGE thanks to my beta readers and amazing new friends.
I could not have finished this book without y'all:
Cami Holt-Krystyniak (editor), Jennifer LaFon, Ena
Burnette, Mechelle Lovell-Jackson,
& Tosha Powers
Table of Contents
I think
deep down I may have always known, but part of me still questioned his motives.
I had always been a popular girl, but I had a real knack for finding trouble;
no matter what form that trouble came in. Lucky for me, this time it showed up
as a hot tattooed cowboy in the middle of nowhere Texas. I knew better, lord
knows I knew what pretty packages like his came with, but I couldn't help but
want to know more about him. Momma always said a boy would be my downfall, I
just didn't know to what extent. I tried my damndest to stay away from him, but
with those looks, and those eyes. Oh those sparkling emerald green eyes. Yep, I
was a goner from day one. Nothing could've stopped me from getting to know
Madison Raine, baseball player/cowboy, absolutely nothing.
1
Kayla
"Kayla
Anne James, you get your sorry ass down here right this instant."
I rolled
my eyes knowing damn good and well I was in for it again. "Coming
Momma." I quickly tugged my Aerosmith shirt over my head, and buttoned up
my jeans. I double checked my makeup and tied my shoes, before I went flying
down the stairs. If her tone of voice was any indication as to how much trouble
I was in, then I wasn't about to make her wait any longer than absolutely
necessary.
As soon
as my converse covered feet hit the last step, I felt her hand connecting with
my cheek. My hand instinctively went straight to my now burning skin, and fell
into defensive mode.
"Momma,
what the hell?" Before I could get the last word out of my mouth, her hand
was reared back and ready to let loose. I knew all too well, that fighting back
wouldn't help, so I let her unleash her wrath upon me.
"How
dare you embarrass me like this! You and that no good, drug-dealing asshole
have pushed me too far this time. I found these in your room, you little
slut!"
I felt
the bag of weed and strip of condoms push against my heaving chest. Part of me
was pissed off that she had the audacity to go through my things, but another
part of me was glad. This just meant I would be gone sooner rather than later.
Every
summer for the past five years, my mother has been shipping me off to my
grandparent's farm in Texas. I used to despise her for doing it at first, but
slowly came to feel more at home with them, than at my own home with my mother.
My mom was your typical country club wife, except for the wife part.
Right
after my fifth birthday, my father decided to leave. He never told me his
motives or reasoning for leaving us, he just reassured me that it was not my
fault and that he'd be back for me. That was twelve years ago, almost to the
day.
Despite
the fact that my father was no longer around, I was still a daddy's girl
through and through. Ever since he left, I made it my goal in life to earn
enough money to get back to him. After my fifth birthday, my father hadn't
called for almost a year. I willed him too, on a daily basis, but no matter how
many times a day I prayed or wished for him to come back or call, it never happened.
Momma had been amazing the first year. She took me to and from school, took me
to do fun things afterwards, and treated me like the princess I was. My mother
never blamed me for my father leaving, and she always reassured me that no
matter what happened, she would always be here for me.
Exactly
three days after my sixth birthday, I got the first phone call from Cliff, aka
my father. I was bouncing up and down and couldn't hold still throughout the
entire conversation. I told him how much I had missed him. I asked at least a
million questions and didn't give him more than a second to respond to any of
them. Momma finally took the phone from me and listened for the answers that I
was too impatient to wait to hear.
She
quickly handed the phone back to me and within seconds, her demeanor had
completely changed. My father explained to me that he wasn't coming back home,
but he would be calling me every Wednesday to "catch up," whatever
that meant. The only details I had remembered from that conversation, was that
he was currently living in London with his new wife who was pregnant with their
first baby, and when he could, he would come back for me and we would be a
family again. This made Momma mad. She never outright told me that it did, but
I could tell that she would have hit him, had he been standing in front of her.
When I
turned twelve, I think I finally came to the realization that he was never
coming back, and if I ever wanted to see him again, I would have to find my own
way to him. I hated that my own father couldn't even make the effort to come
see me or even call me. Our conversations quickly went from once a week, to
about once a month, if that. I understood, but in a way I felt as though I
wasn't a good enough daughter to have around, now that he had his
"new" family.
The day
I turned sixteen was one of the best and worst days. The morning of my party
was amazing. Momma wasn't drunk, which was a shock and she actually had taken
the time to go and get me a gift. This was a feat all in itself seeing as she
was rarely sober enough to drive. When I opened the box containing my new
Chanel purse, I screamed out in joy. I ran straight to my momma's arms and
squeezed her as tight as possible. And for the first time, in almost ten years,
she reciprocated my affections with a smile. It ended up being one of the best
days of my life. But as they say, you have to take the good with the bad. There
was nothing but bad that followed.
As the
years passed, Momma's grip on me became suffocating. She started dating a new
guy six months before my party and he was about as upscale as you get. He was a
defense attorney for the state of Arizona and she never let me, or anyone else forget
it. They were your typical high power couple, minus the fact that Momma didn't
work anymore. She was what my friends and I like to call a "country club
rat." She spent everyday at that damn country club, drinking and who knows
what else. I tried to stay as far away from her business, unlike her, who had
to be all in mine.
My
junior year in high school started out well, but was easily tarnished once my
momma got wind of who I had decided to keep company with. I met Wren through
one of my best friends when I was fourteen, but hadn't seen or run into him
again until he started going to school with us this year.
My
entire world flipped upside down and inside out when Wren and I started hanging
out. I went from being an over achieving, good girl, to chew 'em up and spit 'em
out bad girl within months. The worst thing I had ever done before meeting him,
was smoke a cigarette. Now I was finding myself doing drugs, sneaking out to
raves and being the getaway driver for his small thefts. I knew what I was
doing was wrong and I even threatened to leave Wren if he didn't calm his shit
down, but he never would have let me leave anyway. This was my life now, and I
just had to make it work until I turned eighteen and could leave.
Momma
hadn't noticed my reckless behavior at first. She was usually too wrapped up in
Richard, the attorney. They had been together for some time now, but I knew
deep down that Richard had no intentions of marrying my mother. I don't know
why I say that, but I just felt like Richard wasn't exactly genuine. He was
always unbelievably nice to me. He'd always buy me things and even take my side
in many of Momma's and my arguments, which only made matters worse, but he
deserved more than my mother. She was beautiful, don't get me wrong, but she
was an alcoholic and honestly why would a successful attorney want to be with
an alcoholic, who let the whole world know all of her shit?
2
Madison
"Son,
just get the work done. I only have ya here for two more days, and I need it
done."
I heard
my grandfather's voice trail off, as I made my way out towards the empty field
that separated my grandfather's land from the James' land. I knew I had a lot
of work left to do, but I was fucking dragging ass today. My best friend Glenn,
from my hometown, was visiting
his
grandparents also, so he had come to visit late last night to hang, but we
ended up drinking a fifth of Jack, and now I was feeling it.
