 by Lilly Atlas.jpg)
Total pages in book: 48
Estimated words: 46081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 46081 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 230(@200wpm)___ 184(@250wpm)___ 154(@300wpm)
Frost earned his road name on account of his less-than-fuzzy personality. After years of drifting around the country alone and lonely, he yearns for the strong family bond offered by the Handlers. But first, he needs to make it through the prospecting period, and acting like his aloof, antisocial self isn’t the way to do it. Neither is lusting after his president’s long-lost sister. But one of those things he can’t seem to control.
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
PROLOGUE
SEPTEMBER
The search results blew her mind.
Page after page, article after article, describing a man she’d never met but would forever be connected to. He’d spent time in jail. Serious time. Not a six-month stint for petty theft or a few nights in the drunk tank, but over a decade for the brutal murder of a child.
He was innocent.
Or so the recent articles proclaimed.
The thought of it horrified her. A huge chunk of his life now gone because of false accusations and a wrongful conviction.
Travis, or Curly as the new outlets called him, might not have murdered the child he’d been accused of harming, but he wasn’t an angel.
He was a criminal.
A one percenter, as per motorcycle club lingo.
Rachel spent hours gobbling up as much information as she could find on motorcycle clubs. And that was after the six straight hours she’d sat at her computer searching for every morsel of intel she could find on Travis, aka Curly, aka her long-lost half-brother.
“Sup, girl. I’m home,” her roommate and bestie called out. Jennica had announced herself that way every day for the two years she and Rachel had been living together.
“In my room,” Rachel hollered.
Jennica appeared at her door a few moments later. “Please tell me you aren’t still sitting at your computer. You did take a break, right? Like, for a few hours? Because I’ve been gone all day, and it doesn’t look like you’ve moved an inch. You’re still in your pajamas.”
Busted.
Rachel glanced over her shoulder at the long-legged blonde beauty. “You know I work from my computer. I’m always here.”
“Nuh-uh.” Jen strode into her room, wagging a finger. “You usually start up here, then take your computer downstairs to the gym and walk on the treadmill while you work, then come back here, then head to a coffee shop. Your ass hasn’t moved from that seat all day, Rach.”
Sighing, Rachel slumped back against her cheap computer chair. The thing numbed her ass and killed her back, which was a large part of why she tended to change locations throughout the day. “I know. I can’t stop thinking about him. I’m obsessed.”
Jen plopped down on her bed with a sympathetic smile. She wore scrubs, having come straight from her shift as an ICU nurse. “Why don’t we go take a walk? It’ll give your eyes a rest, get your blood flowing, and you can tell me what you’ve found.”
“Really? You’ve got to be exhausted.” Jen and her fiancé were saving for their wedding, so she’d been picking up extra shifts. She’d been working for the past eighteen hours straight and had to be ready to keel over.
She shrugged. “I am, but I can’t sleep yet. A walk will help me decompress and clear my mind before I pass out.”
Might as well. Maybe talking it out with Jen would help her make a decision. “Okay, let’s do it.” She grabbed a hoodie and stuffed her feet in her sneakers while Jen went to her room to change out of her workwear.
Five minutes later, they were wandering around the pond in a park across the street from their apartment complex. As it was September, the Minnesota air had cooled to chilly sweatshirt weather, even with the bright sun overhead.
“Okay,” Jen said after a few moments of silence. “Lay it on me.”
Rachel inhaled the fresh, early fall air. Colorful leaves littered the path and turned their stroll into a picturesque experience.
Where to begin. “You know I reached out to the adoption agency to find out the name of my birth father.” It’d taken years to work up the courage, but she’d finally reached a point where she wanted to know about her birth parents and their history. Well, she’d learned a few years ago her mother had been working as a prostitute in Florida when she’d gotten knocked up, but everything beyond that had remained a mystery.
As much as not knowing had driven her nuts, if she didn’t discover the truth, she could still maintain some fanciful notion of who her father was. A whole Pretty Woman kind of pipe dream. Her father could be some rich businessman who’d wanted to sweep her mother off her feet and provide her with a better life.