INTRODUCTION

When I introduced Poppy in Rowdy and Salem’s book, I had no idea she was going to become the character who readers asked me about the most. Every day someone asked me if she was going to get a book, asked when her story was coming, but more than that, they really really wanted her to get a happy-ever-after. They demanded that she love and be loved better than any of my other characters. She’d been through hell and back, and without a doubt, my readers felt she deserved someone who would treat her right and be good to her.

I think that speaks to why we all love to read romance so much. It’s the idea that the heart can heal from anything and that there really, truly is someone out there who can make all the bad things that may have happened to harden a heart disappear. That there is someone who can find us and guide us to a better place no matter how lost and alone we might feel. Readers didn’t want her to be afraid anymore. They wanted her to be romanced and won over.

Make no mistake, I can give some good romance;) … but it’s not the norm for me. I have never considered myself a romantic at heart. I love love, and I adore all the sexy, sweaty things that go with it. But hearts and flowers, wooing and soft persuasion … yeah … I ain’t got no time for that. I like my romance a little ugly, a little dangerous, and a whole lot messy. So that made getting into the groove for this book—the one that was about hearts healing and real romance—challenging. It required soft and I am much more comfortable with hard.

It’s not very often I sit down and put two people with pure hearts together. It’s a rare case when I’m writing two people who are genuinely kind and caring, who are simply looking for something better out of each other and out of themselves. I tend to drift toward making at least one of my main characters all kinds of twisted and torn, but that isn’t the case here. Yes, they both have demons to slay and mountains to climb, but Poppy and Wheeler are simply good people who have had more than their fair share of bad thrown their way … they are so much more than what they have experienced. More than any other characters I have ever written, when they stumble they get right back up and keep going. I’m going to be honest, I had a rough end of 2016. Things with family, my dog, things changing professionally … it made the task of writing about perseverance and unwavering optimism, writing about hope and courage, a bit of a challenge. But that’s why I write, why I tell the stories I do. It’s an escape, a way to live in a place that has all the things reality might be missing at the moment.

In order to do these two justice, it took some digging deep, some honest self-evaluation and self-examination, on my part to get to the soft center of myself that I usually keep hidden from the world. Really, I like to pretend it doesn’t exist at all. I desperately wanted to get it right—for Poppy and Wheeler, but more for the readers who were rooting for the girl who had been ruined to be Salvaged and returned to her former glory. For the tenderhearted who wanted the nice guy to finally catch some kind of break.

I think I ended up exactly where I was supposed to with all of it … I mean at the end of it all I was emotionally spent and exhausted in the best way. I think I took a hundred naps! It’s been a journey, the best adventure I could have ever asked for, one shared with my readers through these eleven books set in my favorite place. I couldn’t be any happier with where we (and all of our friends caught between the pages) ended up.

This is where we belong

~Love & Ink

Jay

When you go in search of honey you must expect to be stung by bees.

—Joseph Joubert

I was the kind of guy that thought I had it all figured out. It came from having spent my entire childhood caught up in chaos and upheaval. When I was old enough to call my own shots and make my own way, I did it with a single-minded determination and unwavering dedication. I knew what I wanted. Every move I made, every step I took, moved me toward that perfectly planned future I had been dreaming of from the minute I realized I was all on my own. A realization that came far too early and was brutally reinforced every single time I was forced to bounce from one temporary home to the next.

I clung to the idea that I would do everything differently. I would make decisions which would lead to a life that was easy, smooth, and as steady as a car with a new alignment and high-end shocks. I found the girl that was meant to be mine and clutched her in a death grip. I went out of my way to be whoever she needed me to be, to never give her any kind of reason to go. I made her the center of my entire world, not realizing she might feel trapped there as time went on. I was holding on so tight I never felt her trying to wiggle her way free.

I started a business, bought a house, and made plans … so many plans. Plans that would be considered simple and boring to some, but they covered everything I wanted since the time I was four years old. They were the plans that would give me the life I’d been longing for since the minute I was left on my own.

I had my eyes on the prize, the promise of what could be if I worked hard, took care of my woman, and did everything that the person who was supposed to love me and care for me didn’t do. I would have held on until the bitter, burning end, but there was nothing I could do when the rope was cut.

At that point all I could do was fall.

I felt my grip on everything I was trying so hard to hold on to slip the day she walked into my garage, hiding behind one of my friends. Rowdy St. James worked at the tattoo shop where I got the majority of my ink done. He called and asked me to empty out my shop of employees and other customers one Saturday afternoon so that he could bring his girlfriend’s sister in to look at a car. He didn’t need to explain why the garage needed to be cleared out, not that I would have asked. The girl had been all over the news months before. You couldn’t get away from her terrified face and shaking body as her horrifying ordeal was splashed all over the news. Her husband had abducted her at gunpoint. Salem, her sister and Rowdy’s lady, had been a victim of the attack as well. Poppy Cruz only went with the lunatic she was married to, in order to keep her sibling safe. It had resulted in a nightmare that I couldn’t imagine anyone coming back from. Without question I cleared out the shop so she wouldn’t have to worry about being surrounded by a bunch of dirty, boisterous men that wouldn’t know how to behave around someone as fragile and delicate as she appeared to be.