Spotlight & Giveaway: Free Me by Kimberley Ash

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Kimberley Ash to HJ!

Hi Kimberley and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Free Me!

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

I’m thrilled that I can finally bring you Matt’s story, the youngest of the Van Allen Brothers. We met Matt briefly at the end of Jonah’s book, Forget Me, and now we get to find out why Raya Piacenza, the captain of his First Aid Squad, is looking such daggers at him. Raya’s been getting on fine without him, she says, but he left her at the worst moment of her life, and he’s going to have to figure out a way to redeem himself. There’s more family drama, more of the brothers getting to know each other, and a lot more sassy, sexy heroine time. These men are gorgeous but they need a few lessons in women.
 

Please share the opening lines of this book:

Raya had never been this nervous. This was worse than the day she’d found out she’d been elected captain of Tanner’s first aid squad, the youngest ever to get the position. This was worse, because she didn’t want to be nervous that Matthias Van Allen was coming home. She wanted to feel nothing.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

• At one point in the story, Matt buys a motorbike. I had a small bike when I was a college student, and boy, did I love it. So I had a lot of fun researching what kind of bike he would have, and how turned on Raya is by it, despite herself!
• Matt and Raya are very different personalities that complement each other perfectly. If you want to know how different, I would listen to Evanescence, then Shakira, then My Chemical Romance, then J.Lo, then Fall Out Boy, then… you get the picture.

Please tell us a little about the characters in your book. As you wrote your protagonist was there anything about them that surprised you?

The ending surprised me! I can’t spoil it for you, but I didn’t expect Matt to do that, and then I didn’t expect Raya to do that. The motorcycle thing also crept up on me. That was one of those times where the character spoke in my ear and said, get me a motorcycle.

If your book was optioned for a movie, what scene would you use for the audition of the main characters and why?

Well, of course it would have to be a scene that showcases the chemistry between Matt and Raya. This one might fit the bill:

He moved slowly, giving her all the chances to say no. He put out a hand and touched the inside of her wrist with the back of his finger. When she didn’t move, he stroked her wrist, feeling her pulse flying under his touch. She was wearing an old sweatshirt with the name of a local farm on it, and the frayed cuffs tickled him. Matt took hold of the cuff with his thumb and forefinger and gently pulled.

At first, Raya used the length of her arm to keep her from him, but when he reached the end of that, she allowed herself to take a step forward, putting her within two feet of him. She looked down at her hand, as though she didn’t know why it was there.

“Rae,” he said.

Her other hand came out to touch his bicep. He was in a black T-shirt which exposed his army medic tattoo. Raya twisted his arm so she could look at it. The entwined serpents around a winged rod represented so much to Matt that he was almost shy of it, and distracted for a moment from his purpose. But Raya relaxed her hold, touching his bicep instead, circling it with her hand as best she could. Her other hand was now entwined with his. Matt put her arm around his waist, holding it there lightly, willing her to look up at him rather than staring so hard at his chest, as she was doing right now.

She did, and as he bent down she pulled his arm, inviting him to put it around her the same way he’d done to her. And she kissed what little of his collarbone his T-shirt showed, and then his neck, and then his jaw, and Matt let go of her hand behind him so he could run it through her ponytail, bringing her scent to him, until Raya tilted her face and kissed him.

What do you want people to take away from reading this book?

That forgiveness is possible at any age, and that family is whoever you want it to be. None of the Van Allen brothers, or the women in their lives, expected to end up a family, but in the end they all bring out the best in each other.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have planned?

My next books will continue the themes I always have of love, and family, appearing where you least expect it. I can’t say any more except, the first one is set at the Jersey Shore (the REAL Jersey Shore!) and the next involves a road trip.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: Copy of Free ebook and Tule swag

To enter Giveaway: Please complete the Rafflecopter form and Post a comment to this Q: Is it true that you can’t go home again? Have you experienced returning to your home town after many years away? Were you able to pick up where you left off, or did you have to learn some things again?

 
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Excerpt from Free Me:

Matt left Raya’s office in such a quagmire of hurt, guilt, and shock that he’d walked twenty blocks out of Tanner before he could slow down. Only when the sidewalk gave out and he saw lights in the distance to his right, where the old A&P was being renovated, did he move over into the parking lot of a second-hand furniture store.
Beyond the furniture store, there were a few old houses with scrubby front lawns or concrete parking spaces, and then the land opened up into the dark. The streetlight above his head was the last one on this road, so Matt had to squint to look. He remembered the farmland around Tanner, but hadn’t realized it was still there. Somehow he’d expected more changes to the town since he’d left, not fewer.
Had Raya stayed the same? He guessed he’d expected her to. And in some ways, she had. She was still real good at being angry. She was born to be in charge of the squad, so nothing unexpected there. And yet…
She was harder now. Matt kicked at a patch of grass that was growing through cracks in the parking lot at his feet. Why shouldn’t she be? He’d skipped out on her at her most vulnerable time because of a few words spoken in a fury of grief and shock.
She’d been his hero since they’d first seen each other in freshman year of high school. Matt had stumbled through his education until then, covering his ADD as best he could, making jokes, playing up, working hard on the football field so people would just say he was more athletic than academic. His parents knew there were issues, of course, and part of why Matt wanted to hide so much was because he couldn’t stand the bewilderment in his father’s eyes. Peter was so smart. How could he have produced a kid who still read at a fourth-grade level in eighth grade?
They tried to offer him aides and tutors, and medication, but the medication stopped him sleeping, and he couldn’t bear to have the kids see him as flawed. He’d rather they saw him as amiably stupid. Illogical, he knew, when he looked back on it later, but that was his brain—illogical. Jumping from one thing to the next with no notion of what was important and what wasn’t. A bird out of the window could hold his attention to the exclusion of all else, even when he was supposed to be concentrating on world history or geometry or whatever.
In high school, however, they’d put them into levels, and now Matt was where everyone could see him—in the “academic” class, which was a polite way of saying, the stupid class, for math and English. He fumed and cursed in the privacy of his own bedroom, and once Mariah heard him, she persuaded him to begin to get the help he needed. But years of thinking little of his own abilities made him reticent to try again.
Until Raya appeared, running around the track while he and the football team were practicing one day that fall. She’d caught the attention of half the team, with her flowing black ponytail and lithe, strong body. But Matt, of course, was the one who got yelled at for following her around the track with his eyes, long after the others had gone back to their training.
She saw him looking, and looked him disdainfully up and down. Just another jock, she was thinking—she told him so later—and then and there, Matt decided he would be more, if only to change the look in her eye.
He succeeded, and it was easy. He just had to be himself. Raya’s worst class was Spanish, the only class that Matt was good at. He liked to think that his accent had won her to him, but when he diffidently offered to tutor her one day when he overheard her complaining to her friends at lunch, he saw the interest flare in her eyes. She held his look for a moment, during which time Matt tried to look as non-wanting-to-kiss-her-really-badly as possible, and then said, “Okay,” as if nothing had happened, as if she hadn’t just handed Matt a gift that would last him through high school and beyond.
She’d quickly called him out on his bullshit and they’d spent hours in the school library, using the computers to research ways Matt could retrain his brain. She spoke to his mother and father about what they’d learned, what Matt could still do, and Peter relaxed a little. Perhaps that was when he’d fallen in love with her. Perhaps it was when he’d taken an AP in biology and passed it, something he never thought he’d achieve. Or perhaps it was the first time she allowed him to see her cry over her mother’s abandonment. For Raya, letting any vulnerability show meant she was completely, totally comfortable around him. And he’d sworn he’d protect her for the rest of her life.
He kicked at the grass again, digging it out of the crack with the toe of his boot. So much for that.
His phone beeped, pulling him out of his brooding. The screen almost blinded him when it lit up.
It was Jonah. He could only have gotten a hold of Matt’s number by calling Mariah or even, God forbid, his father. Matt hadn’t expected to hear from him so soon.
“Hey, it’s Jonah. Want to get together for lunch sometime this week?”
Hell, yeah, he wanted to. He’d burned his bridges with Raya. If Jonah was starting to mend his own bridges, Matt was all in. Peter didn’t need the hassle of an angry son, or the guilt Matt knew he felt over Jonah. If Jonah was starting to see that too, then Matt’s homecoming might turn out to be something good.
Even if he spent it watching Raya walk away from him in every way that counted.
“Sounds great,” he replied. “Whenever you say. I’m not working yet.”
“Come to my office at the college tomorrow. Laurel said she’ll make us sandwiches.”
So he’d talked to Laurel about Matt, about meeting with him again. Had Jonah been honest about how long he’d ignored Matt and his father?
When Matt had left, Jonah had been in school after a close brush with the alcoholism that had almost felled their father. This new Jonah had still ignored him unless he couldn’t avoid it, but Matt had been glad to see him recover. Family was family, after all, even if its idea of brotherly ties was messed up. Also, the chance to see where Jonah worked now that he was a psychologist was intriguing.
“Sounds good. What time are you free?”
“Twelve thirty work for you?”
Such consideration. Matt thought back to the one time his and Jonah’s paths had crossed in high school, when Jonah had been a senior and Matt an eighth grader coming for orientation. Jonah had been the school rebel then, dressed to repel overtures, smoking and drinking like he’d invented the vices, skipping the odd class and sneering at anyone who lived what he called a normal, suburban life. Like Matt.
“I’ll be there.”
Jonah gave him some directions to the correct building and floor, and they each typed, “See you then.”
Matt closed his phone and tapped it on his chin. Despite the slight lift to his spirits in the direction of Jonah, his heart was heavy, overwhelmed with what Raya had said.

As Matt drove out of town toward the college where Jonah ran the counseling program, he thought about all the studying, and networking, his sullen brother must have done to get this great job, but Jonah was more like their father than Matt had realized—brilliant was the term that usually went around about Peter. Often followed by wasted talent, since Peter had settled into his teaching at a small college and hadn’t moved in thirty years. Matt had heard something about a career beginning at Columbia Law, but Peter had been at Newcliff as long as Matt had been alive, and he fit the image of a tweedy professor with inky hands and a faraway look to a T.
Jonah had only had eyes for one person the other night. Matt had stopped asking for news about his brother, the few times he’d come home, but he’d been sure Jonah’s life hadn’t included a serious relationship. Whatever had happened with Laurel Moore, though, sure looked serious. Matt hoped so, though the thought of true love running smooth made his heart hurt.
The counseling center wasn’t nearly as pretty as the rest of the campus, but it was busy and had an upbeat atmosphere Matt responded to. It was hard to tell which of the people in the corridors were students and which the counselors. Man, maybe he was older than he’d thought.
He found Jonah’s room on the first floor and knocked. Jonah opened it himself and Matt looked up at him. Jonah looked pleased to see him, but a little shy at the same time.
“Come on in,” he said, leading Matt to a corner that held a winged armchair and a two-seater couch, in the middle of which was a coffee table covered with food that looked and smelled so good, Matt’s stomach growled audibly. The other side of the smallish office held an old—not the good kind of old—desk and chair and a wall of filing cabinets and books. Jonah’s diplomas were on the wall between the windows, and a picture that looked as if it had been painted when the center had been built hung on the wall nearest Matt. Not much personality in here, but perhaps that was the point. Jonah was there to learn from others, not to impose himself on them.
Matt had spent many hours playing in his father’s study at Newcliff when he was younger, as a reward when he got a good grade in school or made it through a whole movie without jumping out of his chair. At least Jonah’s office wasn’t decorated with 1970s orange accents.
“What’s for eating?” Matt said, taking the winged armchair.
“Pulled pork sandwiches, broccoli slaw, chips.” Jonah opened a separate tin. “Chocolate chip cookies and lemon bars for dessert.” Then he picked up a large glass thermos and shook it a little. “Homemade lemonade.”
“Holy crap,” Matt said, looking at it all. “She must really love you.”
Jonah blushed. How fun was that! Matt had to rub it in. “You’re blushing,” he added.
“She’s better than I deserve,” Jonah said, busying himself with plates, spoons, and glasses. Nothing plastic, nothing disposable. Laurel had thought of everything.
“Probably,” Matt agreed, taking a plate of sandwich, slaw and chips. Thinking of Raya.
Jonah paused in putting food on his own plate. “You don’t know the half of it.”
“That’s why I’m here,” Matt said, his mouth already full. The pulled pork was sweet and savory, still warm in its brioche bun. “Dayum. I couldn’t pay attention to the food on Saturday. She’s amazing.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jonah agreed, still keeping his face turned away.
This was the first time in Matt’s life that he had Jonah in front of him and ripe for some teasing. Who wouldn’t take advantage? “So, you wanna tell me how you guys got together?”
“Nope.” Jonah took a giant bite out of his sandwich to forestall another question.
“Come on. What can you possibly give her that equals this?”
Jonah chewed and swallowed. “I don’t ask her for anything. I believe in her. I’m there for her. That’s about it.”
Matt nodded. That was about all he’d had to give Raya. And now he could see that he’d blown the last requirement.
“Well, you make a good-looking couple,” he said, raising the glass Jonah had now poured for him. “Here’s to the two of you. Here’s hoping you don’t fuck it up.”
Jonah laughed and drank along with him. “Highly likely, but I’m trying.” Then his smile slid away. “This is a pitifully small question, after all these years, but how are you doing?”
“I’m good.” I’m worried about Dad. I’m worried about the burden he’s putting on Ma. I’m realizing that I had things all wrong with Raya and I’m eight years too late to fix them.
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. Really.”
They ate for a moment in silence, Matt reflecting on male culture and how little it encouraged close conversation.
“So anyway,” they said at the same time. Both laughed.
“You go,” Matt said.
“Okay,” said Jonah. “I’ve been a jerk to you for most of your life—all of your life—and I’m here to say I’m sorry. I can’t really make up for thirty years of ignoring you, or screwing with you, or blaming you for what your parents—our dad—did, just by saying ‘I’m sorry,’ but I am. They were my own demons and I should never have taken them out on you.”
“Phew.” Matt put down his plate.
Memories flashed through his mind. Jonah, at his house when Matt was about five, silent and radiating such anger that Matt, who was thrilled to see his brother and confused by his hostility, ended up careening around the room and knocking over a bookcase. Jonah had called him a jackwad and Peter had called Jonah’s mother and demand she take Jonah home.
Matt’s eighth birthday party. He’d asked if Jonah could be invited. Jonah only agreed if he could bring a friend. The two of them made jokes about Matt’s friends and derided the bowling alley they all went to for the entire party. Even the pizza Mariah had ordered got a sneer and Jonah’s friend had made a loud comment about greasers. Peter had stood up and shouted at Jonah in front of everyone and Matt had thought Jonah had looked ashamed for a moment. But Peter had told them they could walk the five miles home if that was their attitude. Which they did, as far as Matt knew. Jonah didn’t come to any more birthday parties.
A trip to the high school for incoming ninth graders. Matt saw Jonah down a corridor. He was in full rebel mode now—leather jacket, spiked hair, ripped jeans he’d been sent home to fix once already. Looking like an extra from an Audioslave video. Jonah had seen him too, in the crowd of younger kids. He’d sneered, looked Matt up and down as if he weren’t even worth an insult, and turned away. Matt’s whole body had heated up; he’d wanted to run after him and punch him into acknowledging, just for a second, that he had a brother. But the group was directed into a science lab and the teacher said, as so many of them had over the years, “Matthias Van Allen! Focus! Get over here!”
Yet Matt had met Raya in high school and not a damn thing mattered to him except her. When she researched methods of getting his homework done in one hour rather than three, or when she told him about kinetic learning and they told his mother about 3D learning materials that would stop his teachers discussing keeping him back a year, or when she came across the room as he was cutting up in lunch, sat next to him and just put her hand on his knee to keep him in his seat before he got in trouble, Matt needed nothing and no one else. He almost forgot about Jonah.
Jonah was off at college by then and Matt stopped asking about him. Then Jonah was flunking college and Matt heard his mother’s concerned tone when she spoke to Peter about it. Peter was concerned, too, but one night, over dinner, he said, “I’ve tried, Mari, I swear. He listens to me less than his own mother, even. And you know she blames me worse than anyone.”
“Do you think he’ll listen to me?”
“No, sweetheart.” Peter had put a hand to her cheek. Matt looked away, down to his food, embarrassed by his parents’ love. “To her, you’re the reason I left her.”
“Isn’t she?” Matt said, in spite of himself.
“No.” Peter caught Matt’s eyes with his pale blue ones. “That’s what Pam can’t understand. I’m not proud of it, or of myself when I was that age, but I married your mother because I love her.”
“Ew, Dad,” Matt had said, as a teenage boy should, but another drop of safety and stability had fallen into his spirit. From then on, he’d had sympathy for his brother, who was living with a bitter single mother and a bunch of lies, rather than with two loving parents and a nice house.
Then Jonah had changed, right around the time Matt left high school and he and Raya were working through their EMT program together. Matt didn’t hear this from Jonah, but from Peter, who looked visibly relieved to relay that Jonah had stopped drinking and was going to graduate school. He still wasn’t talking to Peter or Matt, and through them, Mariah, but at least he was healthy, and using his skills to their best.
“It’s okay,” Matt said now. “I understand what you went through.”
“It’s not okay, and I knew you’d say that, you goddamn saint.” But Jonah was smiling at him.
“Okay.” Matt thought back to the hurt he’d experienced as a child. “You were a jerk. But Dad was a jerk to you. So we’re even.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. But thanks.”
“I learned pretty quick in the army that bearing grudges is a waste of energy. You never know who you might lose and when.” A sliver of fear went down his throat again, thinking of his father. “And we’re brothers, no matter how hard we might have tried to forget that once.”
“I never forgot you were my brother,” Jonah said. “That was the worst of it. I wanted to think nothing of you”—they both winced—“but I was always thinking of you, even if it wasn’t usually anything very nice.”
“You too,” Matt said with a shrug. “Guess we’re stuck with each other.”
Jonah smiled and the smile widened when Matt put out his hand. They shook, a close, hard clasp that Jonah broke with a yell, jumping up from his seat and looking at his hand, where Matt had deposited a chunk of soft, sticky pulled pork from his own palm.
“Asshole,” Jonah laughed, opening a cabinet, pulling out a box of tissues.
“Jerkoff,” Matt replied. “Even?”
“If you say so.” Jonah sat back down.
“Okay, then. I wanted to ask you something.” It was Matt’s turn to get serious. “I was wondering if you could recommend someone to me. For me to talk to.”
“I knew it. You’re not fine.”
“I am, honest. As far as that goes. I did my job out there. I was patching people back up, not shooting them up in the first place. I saw some terrible shit, but I know, I truly know, that I did the best I could. I don’t often have nightmares and I didn’t leave feeling I should have been or done something more.”
“How freaking well-adjusted are you?” Jonah said with a smile.
“Thing is,” Matt went on, “there might be stuff going on that I don’t know. I’m not that self-aware.” More so than he’d acknowledged, according to Raya. “You’re the psychologist, but it doesn’t take a doctorate to know stuff might come out later that’ll level me if I’m not ready for it. I don’t want to upset Mom and Dad more than joining the army in the first place already did, so I just want somewhere to… talk, where if anything comes up, I can get it dealt with before it becomes a big issue. You know anywhere like that?”
“Sure.” Jonah used the napkin Laurel had provided—that he hadn’t used for his hand, Matt noticed, probably because he was trying to keep his girlfriend’s linens nice—to wipe his mouth. “We have a few vets at the college and we refer them to specialists outside the school who work pro bono. Or there’s a support group that meets every month or so. You could go along to that and see if that fits you better. Otherwise, I’ll get you a name.”
Matt thought about it. He’d always been more comfortable in crowds, but he was usually the one cheering everyone up. “Thanks. I’ll think about it. I can pay, though.”
“Okay.”
They ate again in silence. Gradually Matt realized Jonah was using eating to cover an increase in fidgeting, and that several times he’d opened his mouth to speak, but taken a bite of a homemade chip or a gulp of lemonade instead.
Matt waited. Finally, Jonah said, “So, what’s the deal with you and Raya?”
Was that what he’d been so nervous to say? Well, it was pretty personal, after all these years. “There is no deal,” Matt answered. “We were together in high school and for two years after that. Now we aren’t.”
“Laurel told me she remembered that you two were inseparable after high school. You went into the first aid squad because of Raya.”
“Not because of her. Just with her. It was something we both wanted to do.” Matt twisted coleslaw around his fork.
“So what changed? Laurel sensed a problem with you and Raya since before you came home. Raya hardly said anything about the party planning, when everyone else was falling over themselves to help.
“And you did join up kind of abruptly. I can’t believe you would have done something so drastic if you guys had just had some kind of fight.”
Matt looked up at him. “It wasn’t a fight. I had to—” Until last night, he’d never really talked about this before, not mentioning it in his psych exam because he didn’t want to be sent home for having a shitty excuse to join up.
“Her dad died,” he said, “in a car accident. I was first on the scene, and… my actions ended up causing her father’s death.”
The words turned to dust in his throat, and he looked down.
“Shit,” Jonah said. “I’m sorry.”
Matt nodded. “Raya’s dad was her only family, and because I didn’t tell him to stay put, or wait two more minutes for the other guys to get there, he died. She screamed at me pretty good, told me to get out, the works.”
Jonah’s eyes flickered. “So you did what she told you to do. Why did you join the army?”
“I was…” Matt turned his glass of lemonade between his palms. “It was an act of desperation, after three days of running around feeling like hell. Vic was like a father to me, too. I wanted to make it better, but I couldn’t. All I could do was make me better, so I’d never do that again.” Jonah frowned, but Matt pressed on. “In the army, I could… not erase, exactly, but… make up for it by helping a bunch of other people. And that’s all I’ve wanted to do with my life, in the end. It wasn’t that big a leap.”
Being a medic had been everything that Matt had wanted in terms of job fulfillment, even when he couldn’t save everyone. Halfway through his second tour, he’d been reassigned to a hospital away from the front, and the transition from dusty fatigues to clean scrubs had been hard, though the work brought new challenges.
“It worked out for me,” he said after a pause. “It was a good place for me to be. I learned more, got to help more people. Did what I was made to do. You and Dad”—he waved a hand at Jonah’s office—“you’ve found a place to live inside your head. Inside my head was always too chaotic. This was how I made myself useful. How I still want to.”
“So you’re going back to the EMTs? But Raya’s your boss now.”
“I know. She’s off-limits. She’s made it clear,”—boy howdy, hadn’t she made it clear—“even if her position didn’t make it… uncomfortable. But I still want to work with the squad.”
“Aren’t you overqualified?”
“No. State licensing doesn’t let army medics go into any other positions than EMT when they get back, without more training. There are gaps in what I learned there that I’d have to fill before becoming a paramedic or a nurse or something like that, and that would take a whole lot of studying that I’m… not ready to begin.”
“Why not? What else have you got going on?”
Matt took a bite of food before he answered. “When I said my mind was too chaotic to live inside, I meant it. I couldn’t handle that level of concentration.”
“You were in the army for years. Surely you took classes and tests there.”
“Yes, but…” He’d struggled. Only the techniques Raya had taught him, and his love for the subject matter, had kept him going. “I’m in no hurry to repeat the experience.”
“Did you try medication?”
“It made me jittery. I couldn’t sleep, and then I’d be worse the next day.”
Jonah looked at him for a moment, then seemed to decide not to pursue the matter. “Have a lemon bar.”
Matt took the olive branch and they talked about Jonah’s work instead, until Jonah looked at the clock and said, “My next client’s coming in a few minutes. Sorry to kick you out.”
“Ach, you love it.” Matt grinned, and helped Jonah gather up the remains of the “picnic.”
“Drop in any time,” Jonah said when Matt was at the door and they were shaking hands again. They weren’t at the level of a bro hug, yet, but this was progress. “I reckon you’ll find me at Sullivan’s most evenings from now on.”
“Yeah?” Matt looked hard into his eyes, but he didn’t see tension there. Jonah looked more at peace than Matt had ever seen him. “You okay with that?”
Jonah’s bearded face split into a grin. “More than okay.”
Matt could only grin back. “Good for you. Like I said—”
“Don’t fuck it up. I know. Get out of here.”
Matt turned away. Jonah’s words had immediately reminded him of Raya’s, throwing him out of her office. Did that mean that Matt had hope of reaching a peace with Raya, or that the contrast between his laconic, slow-moving brother and his wired, energetic ex-girlfriend meant he had no chance?
Today had been a minor miracle. Perhaps he could push for one more.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

When you love something, let it go…

To everyone in his hometown, Matthias Van Allen is a hero. Back from his posting as an army medic, he’s welcomed with a party the whole town attends. Everyone’s happy to see him – except his ex-girlfriend, Raya. First, Raya lost her father, and when Matt joined the army, she was left with no one.

Raya Piacenza‘s used to being alone now. She’s made her way in the world and doesn’t need anyone or anything except her jobs: an EMT captain and personal trainer. But now Matt is back, pushing her buttons in a way she thought she’d grown out of. Worst of all, she’s now his boss.

As Matt settles back into the community and Raya is offered a chance to leave it, they will have to figure out if their lives have room for each other – or if they should set each other free.

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Meet the Author:

Kimberley Ash is a British expat who has lived in and loved New Jersey for twenty years. When not writing romance or romantic women’s fiction, she can usually be found cleaning up after her two big white furry dogs and slightly less furry children. You can reach her at www.kimberleyash.com, and on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Goodreads.
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