Something he pushed down and away year after year after year. But from the moment he met Cassidy, a crack began to spread in his impenetrable shield as the pull to be with her tugged at him incessantly. He was a badass bounty hunter who focused on the job and nothing else. For eternity.”ĭeacon was a broken man, but a man that hid all that hurt and anger behind a shroud of indifference.

The other part, the bigger part, was even feeling all that, I had a near-overwhelming urge to go to him and wrap my arms around him. But this was only part of the reason he scared the heck out of me. And it was one day, while they were bickering, that a shadow, big and looming, stood at her door, renting cabin eleven. Her boyfriend, Grant, however, was not willing to do the work, not willing to share in these hopes. To turn these eleven cabins into a thing of beauty. She was willing to work hard to make her dreams come true. But rewind six years to when Cassidy uprooted her life at her father’s farm and moved to a new place with a boyfriend and a dream.Ĭassidy Swallow moved to Colorado to take over some remote cabins in the mountains, hoping to turn them into a haven people would visit. There was so much inside of Deacon… ugly, volatile things… but with Cassidy, and surrounded by the idyllic mountains of Colorado, their falling in love was beautiful and inevitable and ohsoright. I felt as if Deacon and Cassidy’s story was simultaneously intense and tranquil. It was six years of pining and retreating, of inching closer only to walk away, a slow burn that sizzled until one night unexpectedly changed everything. I can tell you his story was a gradual crescendo, an unfinished tale that spanned years as Deacon longed to bridge the chasm between who he was and who he wanted to be in the face of the most beautiful, disarming woman he had ever met. Wanted to know why he exuded a mask of indifference. He was described as utterly cold… a man with a mask. After reading Raid, I couldn’t wait to dive into Deacon’s story.

Deacon by Kristen Ashley