Strike Read online

  STRIKE

  Gentry Generations #1

  By Cora Brent

  Copyright 2017

  All Rights Reserved

  COPYRIGHT

  Please respect the work of this author. No part of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental. Any similarity to events or situations is also coincidental.

  The publisher and author acknowledge the trademark status and trademark ownership of all trademarks and locations mentioned in this book. Trademarks and locations are not sponsored or endorsed by trademark owners.

  © 2017 by Cora Brent

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover Design: Sara Eirew

  Cover Photo: Sara Eirew

  DON’T MISS A THING!!!

  Sign up for my newsletter and get early news on releases, cover reveals and special giveaways…

  CORA BRENT'S NEWSLETTER SIGNUP

  I always love hearing from readers so contact me at: [email protected].

  Check out what’s happening on Facebook:

  www.facebook.com/CoraBrentAuthor

  Join my exclusive reader Facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/CoraBrentsBookCorner

  Add future releases to your TBR list:

  https://www.goodreads.com/CoraBrent

  Get your hands on the latest hot new releases:

  Amazon Author Page

  AMAZON AUTHOR PAGE

  Gentry Boys Series

  DRAW

  RISK

  GAME

  FALL

  HOLD

  CROSS (A Novella)

  WALK

  EDGE

  SNOW (A Christmas Novella)

  Gentry Generations

  STRIKE

  TURN (January 12, 2018)

  Stand Alones

  FIRED

  NAILED (Pre-Order)

  HICKEY

  Unruly

  Breathless Point (Coming soon)

  Defiant MC Series

  Know Me

  Promise Me

  Remember Me

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  Camille

  My sister knew that the lure of bacon was the best way to jolt me out of a sound sleep so she stuck two greasy slices right under my nose.

  “Up and at ‘em, Cams,” she cheerfully commanded.

  I grumbled a half coherent curse and snatched at the bacon with my eyes still closed.

  Cassie responded by jerking the prize out of my reach.

  By the time I pried my eyes open she was sitting cross-legged on her bed and pointedly biting into a crispy piece.

  “Sadist,” I complained, pushing my hair out of my eyes so I could glare at her properly.

  My grinning, golden twin sister held out the remaining bacon slice.

  “Peace offering,” she said sweetly, dangling it until I lunged.

  I wound up falling out of bed amid a tangle of sheets and the hand sewn quilt my Aunt Truly had given me as a sixteenth birthday present. With a mighty thud my left hip connected with the floor and I winced, figuring I’d probably just earned a sizeable bruise.

  And I still didn’t have any fucking bacon.

  Cassie leaned over and peered at me with a pitying look before finally deciding to share her snack.

  “You’re going to be late for your first day,” she observed as I chewed on a bite of pork perfection.

  I swallowed and wiped the grease from my lips with the back of my hand. “Maybe.”

  Three loud knuckle raps thumped on the bedroom door.

  “What’s going on in there?” boomed my father’s suspicious voice, as if we were still a rebellious pair of teens who might be doing questionable things behind closed doors.

  “Nothing, Daddy,” Cassie and I sang out together.

  There was a pause but I knew he was still there.

  “You can come in,” I said.

  The door cracked open and my father eased into the room, blinking as he gazed around like a wanderer in a strange land. His eyes landed on me and he frowned. “What are you doing on the floor, Camille?”

  “Exercising,” I said, springing to my feet. “It’s a beautiful morning.” I knew my parents were ecstatic that I was spending the summer at home so I was trying to be cheerful and avoid bellyaching too much about my lost internship opportunity in New York.

  My dad scratched his head and broke into a smile. When I was growing up I was endlessly annoyed at the way my friends would drool and giggle over my father, insisting he didn’t look like a dad at all, more like a tattoo model or a cage fighter.

  That was bullshit.

  To me, Cord Gentry had always looked exactly like a dad, one who wasn’t too macho to wear a fake tiara or sip invisible tea out of plastic pink cups. A dad who couldn’t stop himself from throwing steely-eyed glares at the young men who showed up at the front door to take his daughters out and didn’t bother to wipe the proud tears out of his eyes the day Cassie and I graduated from high school three years ago.

  “Your mom went all out on breakfast this morning,” he told us. “It would be nice if you girls could sit down at the kitchen table for a few minutes before heading off to work.”

  The way he looked at us, all earnest and hopeful, made me feel a little guilty that I’d ever been bummed about spending the summer at home in Arizona.

  “Will do,” I said. “Let me just jump in the shower first.”

  My dad nodded and bowed out of the room, closing the door behind him.

  “You’d better hurry,” Cassie warned as I started foraging in the dresser for clothes. “Because I swear I will not feel the slightest guilt over gobbling up the rest of the bacon.”

  My sister hopped off her bed and scuttled out the door, leaving me to glare at her back. She wasn’t joking. We didn’t joke about bacon.

  Then I smiled because I realized I wouldn’t be having this minor disagreement with my sister if I was in New York. I dearly missed my whole family when I was at school in San Diego but Cassie was my other half. I always felt vaguely incomplete when she wasn’t nearby. Maybe it was a twin thing. Maybe it was because I worried so much that my sister’s sweet vulnerability would end up leaving her at the mercy of the worst people in the world. It had happened before.

  I finished grabbing what I needed from the dresser and headed for the bathroom. First thing in the morning I always needed a scalding hot shower to banish the cobwebs from my head. Fifteen minutes later I strolled into the kitchen with my wet hair in a towel and feeling ten times more awake.

  “Good morning, Gentry family,” I said brightly, and earned a withering scowl from my younger sister, Cadence, as she tried to escape from the plate of pancakes my mother was chasing her with.

  “Good morning, honey,” answered my mother, who beamed at me briefly before directing another frustrated plea to her youngest
child. “Just a few bites. You cannot live on coffee and chocolate.”

  “I am doing an admirable job so far,” Cadence insisted as she shouldered a backpack.

  A horn blared from outside and my father peered out the window, sighing. “Why can’t that kid ever knock on the damn door and say hello?”

  “Is that Jacob?” I asked, getting a glimpse of a red Mustang as I squinted over my father’s shoulder.

  “It’s Jacob,” my father said as he waved at the car’s occupant. I couldn’t see if my cousin waved back.

  “Uncle Creed must be doing pretty well to buy him a car like that.”

  “It was a junker,” my dad said. “Stone and Conway helped Jacob fix it up in exchange for him putting in some work after school.”

  “Ah,” I nodded, understanding. Stone and Conway Gentry owned a garage nearby. Of course they would have been glad to help Jacob fix up his dream car.

  “I’ve gotta go,” Cadence complained, sidestepping my mother once more as she headed for the side door.

  “Since when are you in a hurry to get to school?” Cassie teased.

  Cadence turned to her and quirked an eyebrow. “Since it’s the last week of school and Elton Manus is spending the summer herding cows on his grandmother’s Santa Fe ranch, which means precious few days remain for me to appreciate the way his fine ass fills out a pair of jeans.” She blew a kiss and dashed outside.

  “I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that,” my mother groaned.

  “I think we should all pretend we didn’t hear that,” I said.

  “Who the hell is Elton Manus?” my father grumbled.

  Jacob honked the horn once more just as Cadence disappeared into his gleaming sports car. I could see his face now and he was laughing. So was Cadence. The two of them had been thick as thieves since they were toddlers. They were still best friends.

  “You know Cadence is all talk,” Cassie said reassuringly. “And Jacob will keep her out of any real trouble.”

  My mother handed me a cup of coffee. “Speaking of Jacob, don’t forget about his graduation party on Friday.”

  “Damn, I can’t believe little Jacob is graduating from high school,” I said, thinking of an adorable baby boy who was adopted by my aunt and uncle so many years ago. “Where does the time go?”

  My father was watching me with a wry expression. “The same thought occurs to me every day.”

  My mother was hell bent on stuffing some pancakes in my mouth before I left for work so I obliged and ate hastily between gulps of coffee. When she passed by my father’s chair he suddenly pulled her into his lap, kissing her neck, while Cassie pretended to gag and I suppressed a snort of laughter. We were used to the fact that our parents would be ridiculously in love until the earth stopped turning but we still pretended to be grossed out by their displays of affection. When I was about thirteen I asked my mother how it was possible to spend day after day, year after year, with the same person.

  “Don’t you get bored?” I’d asked, thinking of all the awkward, gangly boys at school and how they all howled over the same jokes about farts and boobs. “How does anyone fall in love in the first place?”

  Saylor Gentry had responded with the serene, knowing smile of a woman who had lived the fairy tale. She brushed a lock of hair off my forehead and said, “Falling in love is like getting struck by a lightning bolt. It comes out of nowhere. And you’re never the same afterwards.”

  I knew most of my parents’ story. I knew my father and his brothers had grown up wild and neglected in a small town fifty miles away. My last name meant something different there. It meant intergenerational cycles of violence and poverty and dangerous men. But my father and uncles had escaped, forever breaking the bad legacy.

  And then on a fateful night six years after Cordero Gentry had wronged a shy hometown girl they collided again in a new place. She gave him something no one else ever had; a rare chance to prove he wasn’t the same heartless boy who she’d once had reason to hate. He won her heart and every day earned the right to keep it.

  But this morning I didn’t have much time to ruminate over life and love. I ate enough food to satisfy my mother, left my parents snuggling in the same seat at the kitchen table and then elbowed my sister out of the way in front of the bathroom mirror.

  “What?” I asked, noticing Cassie’s raised eyebrows.

  “I thought you had to wear a uniform.”

  I glanced down at my plain blue t-shirt. “I do. Sort of. I’m allowed to wear khakis or a knee-length skirt of my own. But I am supposed to visit Human Resources today in order to receive my allotment of snazzy polo shirts emblazoned with the resort logo.”

  My sister nodded seriously. “Polo shirts are totally hot.”

  “Said no one ever,” I finished.

  “I can do your hair for you,” she said delicately. “I don’t mind.”

  I tightened my ponytail and sighed. “I’m only working at a spa. Anyone who shows up planning to fork over the equivalent of a week’s pay for a massage and a salt wrap isn’t going to give a goddamn how the girl at the reception desk wears her hair.”

  “Cams,” my sister sighed, calling me by my old nickname. She draped an arm over my shoulder, her blue eyes regarding me seriously in the mirror. “I know you’re less than thrilled to be back here for the summer instead of chasing the Pulitzer Prize in New York.”

  I sniffed. “Wasn’t expecting a Pulitzer. A simple byline would have sufficed.”

  She grimaced. “It’s a shame the Times discontinued their internship program.”

  I kept my expression carefully blank. “It sure is a shame.”

  Cassie held my eye in the mirror for a second and I wondered if she knew I was lying. It was a small lie, an inconsequential lie, a lie to keep my family from feeling obliged to scrape together additional financial resources they didn’t have. A university grant that I was supposed to receive was cancelled for lack of funding. Living in New York for the summer without it would have been far too expensive to justify.

  Cassidy Gentry broke into a smile. She was so pretty, always had been. We weren’t identical twins. I was born with the gentle features and soft brown hair of my mother while Cassie was a Viking princess who could stop men in their tracks. Yet that wasn’t always a blessing. And anyway I’d never been jealous of her, never could be.

  “I suppose now I can confess something,” she said. “I’m selfishly delighted you’ll be home for the next three months. You have no idea how much I miss you when you’re gone.”

  “I miss you too,” I said because even though I had a ton of friends at school, there was no bond on earth that compared to sisterhood. “And I’m grateful I was able to find a summer job on such short notice.”

  Cassie smirked and started applying some pink lip gloss. “Thank Uncle Deck for his endless labyrinth of connections.”

  “Already did. You sure it’s okay if I command custody of the Toyota this summer?”

  She shrugged. “Yeah. Mom’s got two books to finish by August and she’ll be holed up in her office twelve hours a day so she’s giving me full rights to the minivan.”

  “How many classes are you taking this summer?”

  “Two in the first summer session. Two more in the second. And I’ll be working at the campus bookstore twenty hours a week.”

  I nudged her. “Proud of you, Cass.”

  She blushed and screwed the cap of her lip gloss. “It’s just community college. I should have taken this step a while ago.”

  “You’re taking it now. That’s what matters.”

  A glimmer of uncertainty passed over Cassie’s face but it quickly disappeared and she resumed her makeup application. There were things she didn’t like to talk about and whenever the subject hovered too close she always pulled back.

  “Cass?” I ventured, searching for the words to tell her that if she ever had the urge to vent about the demons of the past I was here for her. I always would be. I’d walk through fire for anyon
e in my family but for Cassidy, my beloved twin, I would kneel down on the blistering floor of hell itself to spare her a minute of pain.

  “Ah, shit,” she mumbled, glancing at her watch. “I’m supposed to be opening the bookstore in ten minutes.” She blew me a kiss as she floated out of the bathroom. “Have an amazing first day.”

  “I’ll do my best,” I said, trying to conjure some enthusiasm for my summer job. Really, I would be an asshole if I complained about getting paid decent money to sit in an air-conditioned spa all day and smile at people. There were far worse ways to spend the summer and now I’d have time to work on a few articles to hand over to the editor-in-chief of the school paper when I returned in the fall. My mother had tried to interest me in collaborating on a novel even though she had a slew of other projects going on but I didn’t have her knack for dreamy romantic worlds populated by strong-jawed heroes. My head wasn’t full of whimsical stories. I was addicted to hard facts and a thirst to uncover the truth.

  “You need lunch money?” my mother called worriedly, emerging from her home office when I shouted a goodbye.

  “No, I’m good,” I said with a straight face, trying not to laugh at how she still considered me a child whose every need had to be worried over.

  At first I didn’t realize she was still hovering as I opened the front door and stepped outside, pausing to scan the sky.

  “What are you looking for?” my mother asked as I kept my face pointed up for a long moment.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head, thinking again of the words she’d once spoken about lighting strikes and their life altering side effects. The fact that it was a metaphor for love didn’t matter. I had no need of such complications in my life right now.

  “Write all the happily ever afters,” I called airily before I hustled over to the trusty old compact Toyota my sister and I had shared since high school. When I went away to college I’d left it behind and made do without a car but it was always nice to be back behind the wheel. Starting the ignition was like greeting an old friend.