Where the Road Ends
Kathryn Beck
Publication date: January 13th 2025
Genres: Adult, Contemporary, Romance, Women’s Fiction
Bartender Mara Sawyer has sixty days to turn her life around. If she can’t, Mara will lose the chance to regain custody of her daughter. Never having envisioned her life as a living, breathing, public service announcement for the Wyoming judicial system, Mara embraces the judge’s harsh rebuke. Finding a steady job will be easy, finishing school will be easy. Eluding the distraction of the new swaggering Texan, Luke Whitten, will be anything but easy.
With all her cards on the table, Luke and Mara build a strong friendship and along the way, she gives herself permission to fall in love again. When Mara’s ex offers up full custody in exchange for betraying Luke, Mara must choose — her daughter’s happiness, or her own.
Goodreads / Amazon / Wild Rose Press
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EXCERPT:
New guy held up his finger for the fourth time in an hour.
She swept his plate and silverware into the dirty dishes bucket and pulled the handle to deliver him another beer. “Are you sure you don’t want a shot of something?” She waved at the collection of liquor bottles behind her. “Your something unpleasant is going to get expensive at some point.”
He ran his finger along the grain of the wood, up the condensation of the glass. His hands were large and calloused. Workingman’s hands.
Refusing to bite, or speak apparently, he looked up and smiled.
Twisting around, she grabbed up one of their generic, bar-grade bottles. “You look like a tequila man.”
“A tequila man, huh?” He raised one eyebrow, motioned with his finger for her to pour. “Sure, you want to call that tequila?”
She glanced at the bottle, thought again, and grabbed up a bottle of Sagebrush, her mid-grade agave tequila, and held it up for inspection. “Better?”
“I’m impressed.” He nodded as she was poised to pour.
“So, a man who knows his tequilas. A man not in his element with this weather.” She glanced at his ambiguous touristy ball cap. “You’re from Texas.”
He extended a killer smile that swept all the sharpness away in an instant. “And how would you know that?”
“Simple.” She looked at his hands, at his chest. “We get a lot of oil guys in here. But oil guys in Wyoming are different.”
She nodded at a customer a couple of bar stools down, held her finger up to new guy.
He shot down his tequila and winced, looped his finger as she got back to him. “You realize you’d be laughed out of the Lone Star State with your tequila selection.”
“Maybe, but that means I’m right about the Texas part though.”
He rocked his head from side to side. “Perhaps.”
“Ball cap is a dead giveaway.” She floated her head sideways to indicate the packed bar. “Wyoming boys wear them backward, trying to look cool, or what they think is cool. Texas boys are already confident, wear their caps like grown men should.” She was flirting, but he was a safe sort. The kind just passing through on their way somewhere else. Not like he’d be interested in her anyways. Since the courtroom visit—her sweet and salty explosion of junk food continued, ending last night with an entire key lime pie. Instinctively, she glanced down the counter to Angela. But here new guy sat, had sat. She knew better than to read anything into that.
After three shots, he slowed down, nursing his beer, staring so intently at the coaster, there had to be something unpleasant and deep going on. There was no way one night on her barstool would touch his problems. No matter how many shots he did.
But in an instant, his buzzed ass stared at her with blue eyes, glacier blue, burning straight to her insides. She liked to think she could hold her own looking someone in the eye, but she was the first to look away. She didn’t need anyone trying to analyze her lengthy list of problems.
“Do you have family here?” she asked, trying again. She’d never worked so hard for a conversation. Two nights off diminished her let-me-into-your-world vibes.
“Huh?”
“Mom, brother, sister? What you Texas boys may call kinfolk?”
She didn’t miss the flinch when she said brother. She also didn’t miss his eyes lighting up and the bite at his lip when mentioning a sister. Within ten short seconds he pulled out a photo of not only his sister, but two adorable nephews, in full cowboy attire.
He put his credit card on the bar and returned the pictures to their sleeves. After he signed the receipt, he hitched his hip and jammed his wallet into the back pocket of well-worn, faded-to-soft jeans.
He tipped his cap, looking over the crowd for a minute, and turned his hat around backward, making her laugh. “Does that make me blend better?”
Author Bio:
Kathryn is a transplanted Canadian who now calls Texas home. She loves writing strong, morally gray women tackling complex relationships and their messy lives. Kathryn enjoys road trips, spa weekend getaways, and spending time with family and friends.
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