

“Damn it, woman! What do you want?” He spun around and met her gaze.
“To talk!” Her voice was uncompromising, yet oddly gentle and the intensity of her stare bore into him. “We need to talk.”
“I am going home, Lydia. I can’t deal with this right now.”
“Well, you need to. You’ve changed.”
He sneered. “I bet you think I am just like my father, too, huh?”
A small smile creased her lips. “Well, if I said you are being an ass, would that make you feel better?”
Her subtle wit amused him and he began to relax.
“You haven’t changed a bit,” he jested. “You never cease to amaze me.”
She offered him a small, shy smile and the laughter emanating from the house broke their gaze. “I don’t suppose you want to come back inside, do you?”
Ben shuffled from one foot to the other and flexed his sore hand. “I don’t think parties are for me,” he said apologetically.
“Then let’s stay out here.”
Her straightforwardness shocked him for a moment and then his old boyish grin appeared. “You really have a nose for trouble, don’t you Miss Bell?”
Lydia laughed and placed her hand in the crook of his elbow, pulling him toward the porch. “I guess old habits die hard.”


By day, Ashley Stowe is an administrative specialist. By night, she’s a writer. Her love for Historical Fiction and Christian Romance novels has fed her desire to put pen to paper and bring her readers on a ride into the exhilarating world that she has created. One of innocence, steamy first loves and feisty characters.Ashley grew up as a “military brat”, but she’d correct you and say she is “set in her ways and well-traveled”. She spent much of her childhood traveling the United States, never really having the chance to call one place her home for very long. Home now, is Nebraska where she lives with the love of her life, Josh and their fur-kid, Mya.
