The Gamble

Connor Williams wants revenge, and what he needs is Sarah, but his anger and his single-minded pursuit of something he can’t change may crush their love.

A HOLLOW HEART

Connor Williams is haunted by the ghosts of the people he has lost, and is consumed by revenge against the forces that took his loved ones from him. The Great War and all its horrors has left him a shell of the man he used to be. The only thing stopping him from becoming a monster is Sarah Dawson, the girl he’d left behind.

Sarah knows she’s in trouble. With her father dying and a floundering bakery to run, love is the last thing she needs. But Connor is a lure she can’t seem to resist. A shadow of the man she thought she would marry, this new Connor is darker than her childhood sweetheart and twice as magnetic. But Connor’s need for revenge is driving them apart. When Sarah’s nightmares all start to come true, she doubts Connor will be the man she needs him to be. The man he could be if only he’d allow love back into his heart.

SAMPLE

“Do you not have anything left here, Connor? Surely, even if you have grown some, there was something in here we could let out, maybe add a bit of fabric to so you can get some more use out of it?” Sarah’s words sent sorrow piercing through him.

Abruptly, he turned, striding out of the house and around the back of the chook yard. Breaths coming in short sharp pants as he struggled to control himself, Connor tried to shove memories aside before it was too late. It didn’t work.

“I’m sorry you had to hear about it like this, son.” As the mayor, Harrison Ware Senior had seen it as his duty to come to see Connor himself. It wasn’t a conversation that should have been had with the recipient of the news in a hospital bed covered in shrapnel wounds, but it was a necessary one all the same. Hopefully, news that, if broken here, where there were people to help, would see him able to cope a little better with the situation.

Connor struggled to breathe. Not only his brother but now his mother. No one left to return home to. He was a husk. An empty shell. Everything that had meant anything to him was gone. All because of that—

“Maybe you could ask someone to help you flesh out that kit bag of yours with a few more clothes before you go? Your mother…” the mayor hesitated. Connor’s gut sank. He knew what was coming, had seen it himself before when his father passed. “She wasn’t herself at the end. When the ladies found her, they also found two piles of charred remains of clothes. Gave them an even bigger scare, that did. Why…”

Connor’s ears buzzed, the words no longer clear. Two burning piles of clothes. If she had waited a month, she would have had the news her eldest was coming home.

Instead, she gave in to despair.

And left Connor to face it on his own.

A gentle hand on his wounded shoulder had Connor whirling, fist stopping short of the face of the last person he’d ever hurt intentionally. Remorse filled him, and shame burned a hole in his chest. Sarah didn’t flinch, however, just stared boldly at him with pity in her eyes.

It was almost worse than fear.

Abruptly, anger filled him. At himself, at the do-gooders invading his space, but mostly at his mother. And here in front of him was a convenient outlet.

“I don’t want your pity, Sarah, so if that’s what’s running through that clever little mind of yours, you can take it with you as you turn around and march your troops back through my gates,” he snarled.

She didn’t back away. No, the brave chit stood there, riding his anger, the pity in her eyes melting into a temper of her own. He admired the way it made her eyes flash with fire, even as it stirred his own further.

“Pity is the last thing you need. A swift kick in the behind is more like it.” Her swift retort stoked his own anger.

“A swift kick in the arse you mean?” His attempt to shock her with crude language fell flat. Apparently, being friends with his brother had inured her to the effect of vulgarity.

“If that’s the only thing that will get you to start acting like a man instead of a brooding thunder cloud again, then yes. A swift kick in the arse is what you need.”

Frustration and anger ate at him, her words lighting a fire in him. He wasn’t sure whether it came from his temper or his arousal. Trying to rein in his churning emotions, he explained, through gritted teeth, “I told you yesterday, this is a Williams’ work and it’ll be done by a—”

“Williams. Yes, I understand, Connor.” Sarah’s sarcastic eye-roll saw his temper soaring. “You’re the man of the house. You’ll do all the work, even if it means reopening the wound on your shoulder that still has you hunched.” Hunched. Of all the— “Go ahead, you great, galloping fool. Ignore the fact that people care—”

When his lips crashed down on hers, Connor wasn’t sure whether it was to shut her up, or because the sun turned the wispy curls that had escaped her braid into a fiery halo that drove him to taste. Either way, his hands cupped her face, touched those tantalising curls, as he took the kiss deeper with a groan.