Spotlight & Giveaway: Twilight at Wild Springs by Delores Fossen

Today, HJ is pleased to share with you Delores Fossen’s new release: Twilight at Wild Springs

Family is always worth the fight

 
We’re thrilled to share a sneak peek of the latest installment of the Last Ride, Texas series! Please enjoy this first look at our protagonist, Lily Parkman!

Lily Parkman has a Texas-size secret. For years, the single mother has managed to keep the true identity of her daughter Hayden’s father under the saddle. But after a mysterious note turns up at Wild Springs Ranch, Lily knows it’s time to come clean…starting with Wild Springs’ ruggedly handsome foreman, Jonas Buchanan.

Jonas already suspects that his deceased brother is Hayden’s real father. Still, the widowed rancher isn’t prepared for what Lily’s revelation means for their friendship—or their future. They both soon discover that when there’s more to love, there’s more at stake. And when a troublesome figure from the past comes to Last Ride, they must fight like never before…or risk losing their newfound family forever.

Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from Twilight at Wild Springs 

CHAPTER ONE
Lily Parkman hit the brakes when she turned into her driveway and spotted Sherlock Holmes and the Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen in her front yard. Well, they were people dressed like those characters, anyway.
And Sherlock and Katniss weren’t alone.
There were at least two dozen other people milling around the yard as if such milling around in that particu¬lar area was perfectly normal. It wasn’t.
“What the heck?” Lily muttered, automatically going with the milder profanity that she’d trained herself to use because her fourteen-year-old daughter, Hayden, was seated right next to her in the truck. But there were some much harsher curse words going through Lily’s head.
Some mountain-sized questions, too.
Despite the clothes and getups, Lily recognized every single one of the folks doing the milling around. Not hard to do since she’d lived her entire life in Last Ride, Texas, and knew all the residents. However, to the best of her knowledge, many of these folks had never paid a visit to her Wild Springs Ranch.
“What’s going on?” Hayden asked.
Lily thumbed back through her memory to recall if today was her birthday and if this was some sort of sur-prise party. An unwanted one. But her birthday was months off. Ditto for Hayden’s. And months off, too, for her ranch foreman, Jonas Buchanan, and his stepson, Eli, who lived on the ranch grounds just a quarter of a mile from her own house.
Nope. No birthdays. No anniversaries. So, either she’d won the lottery, unknowingly become a celebrity or… Lily stopped and mentally thumbed back through another date.
Since it was the first of August and just past 7:00 p.m., this crowd could have something to do with the Last Ride Society—aka a group of her Parkman kin who had way too much time on their hands, more time than she did, anyway. But many of her kin would say the Last Ride So¬ciety was the ultimate tribute to their ancestor and town founder, Hezzie Parkman.
Lily knew the spiel as well as the faces of those in her yard and on her porch. Hezzie had formed the Last Ride Society before her death in 1950 as a way for her descen¬dants to preserve the area’s history. The woman hoped to accomplish that by having a quarterly drawing so that a Parkman would then in turn draw the name of a local tombstone to research. Research that required the Parkman who’d drawn the name to dig into the deceased person’s history, take a photo of the tombstone and write a report for all the town to read.
The date fit for the Last Ride Society meeting since the quarterly drawing was done on the first of the months of February, May, August and November. The timing fit, too, since the drawing was usually done around 6:00 p.m. So, maybe her guests were all there to tell her that she was this quarter’s drawer and to give her the name of the drawee since Lily hadn’t attended the meeting.
Her stomach tightened.
Oh, heck. She hoped she hadn’t drawn Maddie Buchanan’s name. The woman had been married to Jonas and had died two years earlier from cancer. He was still grieving for her, and researching Maddie would only take jabs at that grief.
At least the name couldn’t be one that would jab at her own grief. Griff Buchanan. He’d died years ago and had not only been Jonas’s brother, but he’d also been the love of Lily’s life.
Well, maybe he had been.
Since Griff had died when they were teenagers, maybe that love would have faded by now. Still, Lily wouldn’t have to take that particular trip down memory lane because her own twin sister, Nola, had drawn Griff’s name a year ago, and those jabs of grief had had some time to fade.
Lily took her foot off the brake and inched closer to the house. The sound of her approaching truck obviously got the attention of, well, everyone since they all stopped milling around and turned in her direction. Some of them cheered, and others came rushing toward her.
Crap.
This couldn’t be good. Now that she’d gotten a better look at the expressions of her visitors, Lily could see the down¬right giddiness coming off them in gleeful waves. She saw something else, too. Glancing in her rearview mirror, she spotted her sisters, Nola and Lorelei, pull up in Lorelei’s car. They came to a stop behind her and proceeded to barrel out. Yes, barrel. They were obviously in a hurry.
Alarmed they were there, Lily got out as well and turned toward them, ignoring the shouts of welcome and congrats from the others. “Is everything okay?” Lily couldn’t ask her sisters fast enough. “Are the kids all right?”
It was a reasonable question since Nola had a three-month-old son and Lorelei had a nearly two-year-old daugh¬ter, but her sisters just seemed puzzled that she’d gone there with her response. Welcome to the club. Lily felt like a poster child for puzzlement right now.
And she got another gut punch of concern.
Even though Lorelei and Nola were heading toward her and the crowd of visitors were converging on her from be¬hind, Lily glanced at her phone that she’d silenced while Hayden and she had been doing some errands and having an early dinner in nearby San Antonio. She goggled at the sheer number of texts and calls she’d missed. They prob¬ably equaled the number of visitors she had right now, but none was from her mother, Evangeline. So, all was prob¬ably well with her.
“It’s Hezzie,” Nola said, causing Lily’s attention to snap to her twin sister.
Before she could grasp the unlikelihood of what she was doing, Lily glanced around as if expecting to see her great-great-great grandmother’s ghost since the woman had been dead for over seventy years.
“Hezzie,” someone in the crowd verified while others kept doling out congratulations to Lily.
And Lily got it then.
“I’m the drawer, and Hezzie’s the drawee,” Lily grum¬bled, trying to wrap her mind around that.
Many verbally confirmed it, and some patted her on the back. Others did little bouncy dances around the grass. Katniss, aka Frankie Parkman, the owner of the town’s cos¬tume shop and tat salon, shouted, “I volunteer as tribute.”
That got some laughs, and the president of the Last Ride Society, Alma Parkman, stepped through the crowd to reach Lily. She took hold of Lily’s hand and gave it a few enthusiastic pumps and pats.
“Congratulations, congratulations, congratulations,” Alma gushed. The woman was in her eighties, but clearly had a lot of energy since she was bobbling around in glee as well.
Lily couldn’t muster up the matching enthusiasm or glee, but she did have some questions. “In the past seventy-odd years of the Last Ride Society, no one has ever drawn Hezzie’s name?”
“Nope,” Alma confirmed. “Her name was one of the first in the drawing bowl, and over the decades, hundreds of names have been added. Now you’ll get to do the high¬est honor a Parkman can have by researching her.”
Others joined in on that highest honor, and one of the Sherlocks, Derwin Parkman, threaded his way to her. “Of course, the Sherlock’s Snoops will help you in any way we can.”
This was a little out of the realm of the Sherlock’s Snoops, a club formed to investigate mysteries. Lily sus¬pected there were no mysteries left in Hezzie’s life, but she gave a polite thanks to Derwin anyway.
“I’m sure you’ll do Hezzie proud,” Alma went on, and while she slid her arm around Lily’s waist, she turned to the others. “Now, why don’t y’all head home so Lily here can get started? I need to go over the research rules with her so she can dive right into doing the report.”
That brought on some mumbled groans from those who clearly wanted to stretch out this moment a little or a lot longer, but the crowd started moseying toward their ve¬hicles. Alma waved at each one, smiled and kept waving and smiling until they’d all driven away. Then the woman released a long, weary breath, and both her smile and en-thusiasm went south.
“Let me get the research packet from my car, and then we’ll have a little chat,” Alma muttered on a sigh and headed toward her vintage VW that she’d had painted to resemble a turtle.
The sudden change in the woman’s mood baffled Lily, but she supposed this might be a situation of catching the biggest fish in the proverbial pond. Everything else after this would be a small haul, and some Parkmans might lose interest in the drawings.
“Oh, there’s Eli riding one of the new mares,” Hayden said, and her daughter immediately headed in the direc¬tion of the pasture where Eli was astride an Andalusian horse that Lily knew had been delivered to the ranch ear¬lier that day.
“A lot of people will bug the crap out of you about draw¬ing Hezzie’s name,” Nola remarked, speaking what Lily knew was the God’s honest truth. As Nola was prone to do. “That’s why Lorelei and I came right over.”
“We’ll try to run some interference for you so you don’t have a constant flood of people showing up to ask you about the research,” Lorelei added.
“I appreciate that,” Lily told them.
And she did. That was the God’s honest truth, too, and since both her sisters had gone through this, they had some experience in research pitfalls of the Last Ride Society. Still, Lorelei and Nola had busy lives, what with their babies and businesses. Nola was a glass artist, and Lorelei owned the shop that sold Nola’s pieces and other glass art.
“But don’t worry if you don’t have the time,” Lily added. “I suspect I won’t have much to do since Hezzie’s life is probably an open book…”
Her words trailed off. So did her attention on the sub¬ject of Hezzie. Her sisters’ attention shifted as well, and the reason for that was the hot, hunky guy who walked out of the barn.
Jonas.
He’d stripped off his shirt, baring a muscled chest that was toned, tanned and perfect for being bared. Mercy, the man could give hot cowboy cover models an inferiority complex with that body and the rest of the package that went with it. The midnight black hair, sizzling green eyes and a face that had to be a benchmark for “hot guy” faces.
“So can’t believe you haven’t tapped that,” Nola mut¬tered.
Lily automatically frowned. “So can’t believe you’d think I’d tap my ranch foreman. A man who works for me and lives just a stone’s throw away.”
But since Lily wasn’t blind and had normal urges, she had fantasized about such things. Then again, probably every woman in Last Ride had had some smutty fantasies about Jonas. About his brothers, too, who had those same dreamy looks and bodies.
“You’re lusting over your own brother-in-law,” Lily pointed out to her sisters.
“Looking at, not lusting,” Lorelei automatically cor¬rected in her usual prim voice. The rest of her was prim, too, with her blond hair tumbling perfectly over the shoul¬ders of her perfectly fitted turquoise-colored top. “I’m al¬lowed to look.”
Nola made a grunting sound of agreement. No primness for her. Her long blond hair was scooped in a disordered ponytail, with just as many strands falling out as there were gathered up. No makeup and, judging from her stained jeans and old Roper boots with burnt specks, she’d been blowing her glass art right before she’d made this visit.
“Besides, Wyatt will benefit from any lustful urges I get from gawking at a hot guy,” Nola added.
Wyatt, Nola’s husband and the love of her life. In their case, that particular label was actually true since they’d started their romance way back in high school, and after some bumps and hitches, some of which had been plenty serious, their relationship had continued and led to mar¬riage.
Lily cleared her throat, looking for a change of subject. A change of mindset, too, since she didn’t want to be men¬tally stripping off any more of Jonas’s clothes. “Where are Stellie and Charlie?” Stellie was Lorelei’s daughter, and Charlie was Nola’s son.
“With Dax and Wyatt,” Nola answered.
Dax and Wyatt Buchanan were not only Jonas’s broth¬ers, but they were also married to Lily’s siblings, which made this sort of a Seven Brides for Seven Brothers deal. Minus Jonas and her, of course, since they’d never ever hooked up in any kind of way. Probably never would, ei¬ther, because while Jonas was hands-off for Lily, she was no doubt hands-off for him, too, because she had been his kid brother’s girlfriend.
“Dax is having a daughter-daddy playdate with Stellie,” Lorelei said, keeping her gaze on Jonas as he made his way toward them.
Nola groaned softly when Jonas pulled on his shirt, covering those amazing abs and six-pack. “Well, since Alma got rid of your visitors, I guess our services aren’t needed right now.”
“Yes, but call us if things get too wild,” Lorelei added. She brushed a kiss on Lily’s cheek. Nola gave Lily a light punch on the arm, and her sisters headed back to Lorelei’s car.
Alma was parked right next to them, and the woman appeared to be looking through file folders in a box. Ap-peared to be, Lily noted. But Alma also kept glancing back at her in a way that made Lily think she was waiting for everyone else to leave so they could talk alone. Maybe Alma intended to emphasize to Lily just how important this research would be.
“You okay?” Jonas asked Lily when he stepped up be¬side her.
Lily nodded, and because she was still doing some lust¬ing, she didn’t look up at him. Best not to make eye con¬tact until she was certain she’d temporarily squashed those smutty thoughts about him.
“I got Hezzie’s name in the Last Ride Society draw¬ing,” Lily explained.
“Yeah, I heard. I was checking fences in the east pas¬ture when I got a call from Larry, whose wife was at the meeting. I rode back because I thought you might need help getting rid of the folks coming here. Then I saw you had it all under control.”
Larry Davidson, one of the horse trainers, who was married to Lily’s distant cousin, Ellie, and yes, Ellie would have definitely been at the drawing and probably would have come with the crowd of well-wishers if she hadn’t had to get back to their twin toddlers.
“When I first got the call from Larry,” Jonas went on, “I thought he was going to tell me that you’d drawn Maddie’s name.”
Lily made a quick sound of agreement. “I thought the same thing when I spotted the crowd.” She didn’t add they’d dodged a bullet by it not being Maddie because she had a bad feeling in the pit of her stomach there might be a bullet of a different kind headed her way.
“I think it would have been hard on Eli to have Maddie’s life dissected,” Jonas added.
“Yes,” she verified. Because such dissecting would have brought up her death.
“What’s Alma doing?” he asked, tipping his head to the woman. Since only Alma’s overalls-clad butt and legs were showing, Jonas no doubt recognized her from her car.
“Getting some research stuff on Hezzie.” Lily didn’t add that Alma was also acting weird. Then again, Alma had begun her stand-up comic career at a point in her life when most people would have been winding down, so weird was usually Alma’s default behavior.
“Alma, you need help carrying that?” Jonas called out to her.
“Nope. It’s not heavy. I’m just making sure it’s all here before I give it to Lily.” Alma glanced back at them and kept aiming those glances at her while she continued to thumb through the box. It seemed to Lily, though, that Alma was stalling more than verifying the box’s contents.
Since Jonas was studying Alma, too, Lily expected him to remark on her odder-than-usual behavior. But he didn’t. “Once Alma’s gone, we need to talk,” Jonas said, keeping his voice low. “I found something in the mailbox.”
Now Lily had to risk that eye contact when she turned toward him. “What?”
Her mind started doing more whirling with specula¬tion. Some kind of prank maybe, like poop? After all, she had a teenage daughter and Jonas had a teenage stepson, so one of their kids’ friends could have thought that was a fun way to pass the last week of summer break.
Jonas didn’t answer because Alma chose that exact mo¬ment to drag the box from her back seat and head toward them. Despite Alma’s assurance that it wasn’t heavy, Jonas hurried to help her with it.
“Thanks bunches,” Alma said. “If you want to go ahead and set it on Lily’s porch, that’d be great.”
Of course, Jonas didn’t refuse, but Lily saw the suspi¬cion on his face and was sure it was on hers as well. Alma clearly had something she wanted to tell Lily in private.
As Nola and Lorelei had done, Alma watched Jonas as he took the box from her and walked toward the porch. The woman shook her head.
“Not sure how you can get work done when you’ve got a view like that,” Alma remarked.
The view was Jonas’s butt, which she knew was just as prime as the rest of him. The fit of his jeans verified that.
Alma fanned herself, and then, as if snapping herself out of a lust-induced trance, she cleared her throat and swiveled back to Lily. Her expression went into the “total serious” mode.
“Full disclosure,” Alma said after an extremely windy sigh. “Every quarter before the drawing, I make sure to shove Hezzie’s name all the way to the bottom of the bowl.”
Because of all the speculation Lily had already done over Alma’s oddball mood, that didn’t come as a surprise. “Because now that Hezzie’s name has been drawn, you think people might lose interest in the Last Ride Society.”
Alma blinked as if that thought had never occurred to her. Then her forehead bunched up. “No, I put Hezzie’s name at the bottom of the bowl because I never wanted it to be drawn. Never ever,” she emphasized.
Now Lily had to shake her head. “I don’t understand.”
“I know, but I’m about to explain it to you.” Alma gave another of those windy sighs. “Girl, we got to be very, very careful about this big-assed can of worms you’re about to open.”

Excerpted from Twilight at Wild Springs by Delores Fossen. Copyright © 2023 by Delores Fossen. Published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

Excerpt. ©Delores Fossen. Posted by arrangement with the publisher. All rights reserved.
 

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Meet the Author:

USA Today bestselling author, Delores Fossen, has sold over 125 novels with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received the Booksellers’ Best Award, the Romantic Times Reviewers’ Choice Award and was a finalist for the prestigious Rita ®. In addition, she’s had nearly a hundred short stories and articles published in national magazines. You can contact the author through her webpage at www.deloresfossen.com

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