Family Ties

Family Ties

By

Louise Behiel

Kindle Edition

Copyright 2012 Louise Behiel

All Rights Reserved

This ebook is licensed for your personal reading enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with others, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

Cover Art and Design by Su Kopil from Earthly Charms

ISBN:
978-0-9879440-0-9

Sunset Crescent Series

Book 1 Family Ties (Kindle Edition)

Book 2 Family Lies (coming soon)

Book 3 Family Values (coming soon)

Loner, Grayson Mills realized long ago that he’s unable to establish and sustain meaningful relationships - especially with women.  He’s constructed a lifestyle based on being alone and
h
is sexy new neighbor isn’t going to change
his decision.

Child psychologist Andie Bowen has four foster children, all with special emotional needs.  Andie’s committed to the children and she’s not going to upset them by getting involved with a man who could never accept her family.

When six year old Chloe breaks into Gray’s home, Andie is appalled until she realizes that
Jamie, her clinging youngest child, left her side for the first time in months - to look at one of Gray’s treasures.

When an unknown assailant starts tormenting Andie’s family, Gray has no choice but to step in and help protect his neighbor and her family. To protect Andie and her children, Gray will have to acknowledge his nightmares and their meaning in his life.

Together they will face his past, forcing Gray to confront his emotional needs while struggling to keep Andie and her children safe.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my daughter Sabrina, for always keeping the faith and for supporting my writing in more ways than I can count.

And to my friend Patsy McNish, who writes as Alyssa Dean. Patsy loved this hero and kept encouraging me until I finished it and published it on Amazon.

My gratitude knows no limits.

Acknowledgements

A great book is a team effort, and I had many people in my team.

Thanks to my critique partners, Patsy McNish (w/a Alyssa Dean) and Sabrina Redl, both of whom contributed beyond the call of duty to this publication.

My deepest appreciation to the Calgary Chapter of RWA. You guys are the best. Membership in the chapter kept me attached to writing until I was ready to jump into the pool again.

A big shout out to Tawny Stokes, (Vivi Anna), for your encouragement and support in this indie venture. Without you and all the Banditos at Bandit Creek, this book would have remained, 'under the bed'.

And thank you, Dear Reader. Without you, Gray's story would have remained on my computer, buried under my broken dreams.

There went the neighborhood.

Grayson Mills turned onto Sunset Crescent just in time to see an orange and white moving van pulling away from the curb. It bounced its way down the street in cheerful indifference, taking the tranquility of the neighborhood along for the ride, leaving noise and mayhem in its place.

Gray slowed his red Ford pickup to a crawl while he surveyed the scene. He’d had a number of reasons for purchasing property in this up-scale fifty year-old area. The well-tended lawns and tall stately trees had appealed to him as much as the potential resale value of the faded yellow bungalow – but the average age of the population had been a factor as well. The majority of the Sunset Crescent homeowners were either retired, or close to it. That meant they spent their days in tranquil pursuits - gardening, reading, strolling the neighborhood, minding their own business. Not tearing around other people’s property while screaming at the top of their lungs.

Which was what the new arrivals were doing.

Gray shook his head in disgust. Right now, the entire area seemed to be filled with more kids than lawn ornaments. Two blond-haired, shorts clad youths chased a ball across his recently-landscaped yard, shrieking out high-pitched, earsplitting laugher as they smashed the tender grass and terrified the roses. A bare-foot, raven-haired teenage temptress, sporting hip-hugging blue jeans and a belly-baring black shirt sprawled across a lawn chair, a cell phone propped against her ear. A little girl in a pink dress jumped up and down on the sidewalk, her piercing squeals grating his eardrums.

Surely to God these weren’t his new neighbors.

Gray swung into his front drive, then slammed on the brakes as a once-white softball trickled across the pavement directly in front of him. An instant later one of the blond kids – the one in the brown striped shorts – dashed to retrieve it. “Christ,” Gray muttered. Who was supervising this mob? He checked out the brown two-story next door but there wasn’t an adult in sight. This swarm of kids must have parents. Where in hell were they?

Biting down frustration and worry, he waited while the boy grabbed the ball, flashed him a casual wave, and then raced back across the horrified grass. Gray released a relieved sigh as he eased his vehicle into place. He hadn’t expected his quiet neighborhood to be invaded. Granted, he’d been a little surprised when the elderly couple next door had decided to sell but he hadn’t anticipated a young family buying the place – certainly not one with dozens of children. Why hadn’t they bought a place in the suburbs where they belonged?

He slid out of the truck, gave the door a good slam closed then rested a hip against it while he yanked on his brown leather work gloves. The noise next door increased in volume but a woman’s voice called out for the children to come inside. Gray’s annoyance increased when they didn’t follow her directions.

If people insisted on having children, the least they could do was keep an eye on them. Who knew what could happen out here?

“Oh, crap,” he muttered as another thought crossed his mind – that empty pool in his own back yard. Fixing the fence around it was on his list of things to do – but he hadn’t planned on doing it right now. He’d been hoping to make some progress on remodeling the back bedroom – but that was going to have to wait. With all the kids roaming around he couldn’t risk one of them falling into the hole that had been a pool.

The shrieks next door grew in volume, then abated a tenth of a decibel as a dark-haired woman strolled out the front door to join the crowd, a small box in her hands.

One of the parents, Gray surmised. Good. It was about time someone took charge of the situation – although it was hard to believe that the curvy, dark-haired woman standing in the midst of the melee was the mother of all those kids - especially the teenager with the bright red lipstick. In her well-worn blue jeans and bright red tee shirt, with her hair pulled back into a pony-tail, she looked more like a teenage contemporary than a mother.

For a Mom, she sure looked relaxed, considering she had a horde of kids running around and was on the work end of a move. He hoped she’d organized her packing more than she’d organized her children. They were still racing around, yelling questions about someone staying for supper, what were they eating and how about a sleepover? The only quiet one of the bunch was the mousy-looking brown haired boy practically crazy-glued to Mom’s right leg.

Mrs. Mom was definitely an improvement over old Mrs. Watson who used to live there, even if she had a kid sticking to her leg. Wasn’t it a little strange for a kid that age to be hanging on to his mother like that? It didn’t seem to concern her though. She slid an absent hand over the back of the boy’s hair as she grinned at the teenager then tossed a ball to one of the others.

She noticed Gray. Looked right at him. Her gaze caught his. Her smile widened, warm, friendly and contagious. “Hi there,” she called out. She started toward him, with that little boy super glued to her leg. When she reached him she stuck out her hand. “I’m Andie Bowen. Please call me Andie. The kids and I just moved into one sixteen.”

“I noticed,” Gray’s fingers curled around her soft, cool palm. “I’m Grayson Mills. Gray.”

“Hi Gray.” She smelled like lemon polish and pine cleaner, the warmth of her smile swirled around him and caught him low. Which was darn surprising considering married women didn’t spark his interest at all.

Neither did kids. Especially noisy, out of control kids. He dropped her hand and stepped back.

She blinked a couple of times but nothing in her demeanor suggested she’d noticed his reaction to her. “I know it looks like a lot of children but there are really only four. That’s Billy over there – he’s twelve. He’s got a couple of friends over which is why there seems to be so many of them. The little girl in the pink dress is Chloe, and the teenager who just went into the house is Bonnie. And down here,” she passed her hand over the hair of the boy at her side, “This is Jamie.”

“Hi Jamie,” said Gray. The little boy looked up at him with round, unblinking blue eyes and Gray found himself crouching down in front of him. “How are you doing?”

Jamie said nothing, just looked at him for a long moment before turning his head into his mother’s hip. “He’s a little on the shy side,” Andie explained.

“Uh huh.” Gray eyed the child for a long moment. Something told him that shyness wasn’t the kid’s only problem. Yeah right, he mentally jeered at himself. How in hell would he know?

He pushed himself to his feet. “At least he’s not racing around the neighborhood, almost getting run over.”

Andie’s cheeks colored a little. “Oh yes. I saw Billy’s close encounter. Sorry about that. Once we’re settled, I’ll make sure they play in the back yard.”

Gray wondered about that, although she meant well. “That would certainly be safer.” A shriek caught his attention and he looked over her shoulder at the source of the noise. Two of the boys were trying to climb the poplar in Andie’s yard. They’d get so far, then slide back down, shouting with laughter. “That doesn’t look very safe,” he muttered.

Andie watched them for a moment then turned back to him. “If they don’t climb any higher than that, it’s perfectly safe.”

And she probably had no way of stopping them if it wasn’t safe. “I hope you’re able to get some control over them, Ms. Bowen.”

Andie’s smile faltered just a little. “Excuse me?”

“This is an older neighborhood as I’m sure you’ve noticed. People just aren’t used to looking out for kids. They shouldn’t be running around unsupervised.”

Her smile faded further. “They’re not exactly unsupervised.”

Gray folded his arms. “One of them ran right in front of my truck.”

Two round, red spots appeared on Andie’s cheeks. “I couldn’t believe Billy did that. He knows better. I’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again. Bonnie was keeping an eye on them.”

“She seemed a little preoccupied by her cell phone,” Gray interjected. “Look, I just want them to stay out of my yard. The sod is new, the roses are just getting established and I’ve got an empty pool in the back that’s not fenced. I’ll start working on it tomorrow but in the meantime, you need to keep them out of there.”