WHERE WINTER
FINDS YOU
A Caldwell Christmas
by J. R.
Ward
On Sale: November 26, 2019
Purchase Link:
ABOUT THE BOOK:
#1 New
York Times bestselling author J.R. Ward is heating things up this
winter with a holiday novel featuring some of her most iconic Black Dagger
Brothers.
When Trez lost his
beloved to a tragic death (The Shadows, Black Dagger Brotherhood #13),
his soul was crushed and his destiny seemed relegated to suffering. But when he
meets a mysterious female, he becomes convinced his true love has been
reincarnated. Is he right? Or has his grief created a disastrous delusion?
Therese has come to Caldwell to escape a rift with her bloodline. The
revelation that she was adopted and not born into her family shakes the
foundations of her identity, and she is determined to make it on her own. Her
attraction to Trez is not what she’s looking for, except the sexy Shadow proves
to be undeniable.
Has fate provided a grieving widower with a second chance...or is Trez too
blinded by the past to see the present for what it really is? In this sensual,
arresting book full of the themes of redemption and self-discovery, two lost
souls find themselves at a crossroads where the heart is the only compass that
can be trusted...but that may require a courage that neither of them possesses.
Sneak Peek at WHERE WINTER FINDS YOU:
“Holy f--k,” Trez yelled as a semitrailer truck the size of a
building went blasting past the front bumper of his brand-new BMW.
Like right past.
Like . . . nearly peeling off the hood of the damned car.
As his four-wheel drive, heavily
treaded snow tires abruptly grabbed at that which they had been spinning on,
and a pedestrian who’d slipped suddenly righted himself out of the way of the
truck, Trez decided that the definition of in-the-nick-of time was exactly what
just happened. If he’d been able to go when the light had turned, if that pedestrian
hadn’t caught himself just when he had, they would both have been filing their
termination papers tonight.
Because about a split second
prior to the almost catastrophe going down, Trez had been debating whether or
not to just drive on. And not merely through the intersection.
Having
spent two decades in Caldwell, watching with his Shadow eyes the way a couple
generations of humans built up the city, he knew exactly where this particular
street in this particular section of town ended up.
At
the Hudson River.
So
if he hit the gas and kept on a direct, no wavering course until the street
ended, he could take a Fast & Furious
jump off the concrete embankment under one of Caldie’s two bridges. The BMW
would not last long in the free fall, the sleek car having been built to fly
over asphalt, not literally fly, and soon enough, both he and all this
expensive steel, leather, and plastic would be sinking beneath the cold,
sluggish waters of the Hudson.
As
his eyes had flashed peridot, his brain had imagined what it would be like. At
first, the water would infiltrate through seams and vents, a trickle, not a
rush. But that would change as he used the last of the electrical system’s
power to lower the windows. After that, he would sit and wait for his drowning
to take place, probably with his hands still on the wheel, maybe not, his seat
belt remaining pulled across his chest, his clothes dampening and then clinging
to his warm body with the clammy touch of the corpse he would soon become.
He
would not struggle. He would keep his eyes open. He imagined himself feeling a
calmness that had been missing since all the light in his world went out in
that hospital room about twenty miles, and some distance underground, away from
where he himself would die. He would be so relieved. Even as the water reached
his throat, then proceeded over his mouth and into his nose and ears, even as
his body temperature tried to rally against the icy submersion and failed to
conserve any warmth, even as his air supply dwindled to that which was in his
lungs and no more, he would be at peace.
The
death throes, when they came—and they would, for his body was, as all were,
evolutionarily adapted for survival, the conscious mind in charge only up to a
dire point, whereupon autonomic function took over and things went
haywire—would thrash him about in the bucket seat, throwing his head forward
and back, his mouth opening and drawing in water as a reflex, as a desperate
hope that his lungs were merely being denied oxygen as opposed to there being
none available to them. He was under no illusions that it would be easy. There
would be suffering from the suffocation, burning inside his body, perhaps even
some last-moment panic kicked over his mortal transom by the lizard part of his
brain.
But
then it would be over. Done with. The whole miserable biological accident of
his life dusted, in the bin, over and out.
A
void, and nothing more.
Which was heretical.
As a
Shadow, he had been raised in a slightly different belief system than regular
vampires. His people, an evolutionary extension within the fanged species,
relied a great deal on the stars in the sky, the traditions of the s’Hisbe a
variant of what was accepted as the way the afterlife worked. The core tenets,
however, were the same for both. It was like Protestants and Catholics—same
essential language, but different dialects—and as such, his kind, too, had the
theory that after you died, you went up unto the Fade, and lived out eternity
with your loved ones under the benevolent auspices of the Scribe Virgin.
Assuming you hadn’t been a total douche down on earth. If you had been an
asshole, you were relegated to Dhunhd,
also known as Hell, which was where the Omega and his minions hung out. Either
way, your conduct over the course of your mortal nights determined your final
zip code, and there was something after your last breath to look forward to—or
dread—depending on your worthiness.
It
was an okay theory, and a construct that he understood was, in its own fashion,
to be found on the human side of things as well. Not the Fade or Dhunhd, perhaps, not the Scribe Virgin
or the Omega, exactly, but rather other, similar belief systems that covered
both how you treated yourself and others while you were mortal, and also
considered what happened to you after your coil, so to speak, got popped.
Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, and countless other
religions, they were all efforts to give more of a vista after death than just
a coffin and a grave. Or a pyre.
He
knew from pyres.
God, did he ever.
What
he no longer knew from, however, what he no longer believed in, was all the
rest of that stuff. He’d never been particularly spiritual, but man, you didn’t
know how much you had been until you were not any longer.
At
all.
Anyway, prior to the whole
truck/intersection/ almost-obliteration thing, he had been considering what was
not exactly a sin, but rather a really, very not-so-hot idea. Assuming you were
a believer. In the lexicon of both vampires and Shadows, if you took your own
life, that was it. No Fade for you, motherfucker. Now, no one had been able to
provide him with a good explanation of what the alternative repercussions
were—sure, lore had it you were closed-door’d on the whole Fade thing. But
where did you end up? Dhunhd? Worm
food? Who knew. Yet everyone and their uncle was damn clear on the fact that
you weren’t going to be elbows deep in people you liked for the next jabillion
years.
The message apparently being, if
you took your own life, well, then, to hell with you if you didn’t appreciate
the gift you were given at birth.
Yeah, like this whole
breathing/heart-beating thing had been such a fucking prize, these years he’d
been upright and walking around such a goddamn joy. He’d been destined for a
loveless mating since the night he was born, been responsible for the senseless
suffering of both his parents, watched a dear friend get tortured by a
psychotic cunt for a good twenty years—that was fun—been a pimp, a drug dealer,
and an enforcer.
Real partridge-in-a-pear-tree
shit.
And then that heaping sundae of
shit-chip ice cream—which he’d self-medicated with an outstanding sex
addiction, thank you very much—had been cherry-topped by the granddaddy of all
gutwrenchers.
He’d met the female of his
dreams, fallen in love . . . and, after what felt like twenty
minutes of happiness, had had to hold her hand as she died of a wasting disease
right in front of him.
Honestly, he hadn’t just been
born under a bad star; he’d been born under one that kicked him in the nuts so
badly, he’d coughed them out in his hand.
So now he was here, in this BMW
he’d just bought, on this snowy night, during the motherfucking human season of
cocksucking joy, contemplating suicide—only to have the GODDAMN ACCIDENT THAT
COULD HAVE MADE IT ALL COME OUT ALL RIGHT DENIED TO HIM BY A SET OF ALL-SEASON
RADIALS THAT HAD WORKED JUST FINE AT EVERY OTHER FUCKING INTERSECTION HE’D EVER
DRIVEN THROUGH.
Not to put too fine a point on
things.
But FFS, he couldn’t even have a
chance to get dead in such a way that he could both end this bullshit AND not
run afoul of the maybe truth that suicide got you, literally, nowhere.
Not that he believed in the
afterlife anymore anyway. No matter what he’d thought he’d seen after Selena
had died.
Hell, if there was anything that
the last three months had taught him, it was that death was a hard stop.
Especially if you were the one left behind.
Well, Trez thought, as he sped
along in the snow, at least there was
still the embankment option.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
J.R. Ward is the
author of more than thirty novels, including those in her #1 New York
Times bestselling Black Dagger Brotherhood series. There are more than
fifteen million copies of her novels in print worldwide, and they have been
published in twenty-six different countries around the world. She lives in the
South with her family.
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