Unstoppable (A Country Roads Novel) by Shannon Richard Read Free Book Online

wouldn’t prove he was domesticated. Quite the opposite, in fact.
    “So this place is temporary?” she asked, taking another healthy sip of wine. “Haven’t you lived here for two years?”
    “Yeah, I have. But it’s not where I’m staying. It’s too small. I want to buy a house soon. I just haven’t found the perfect one yet. But it works for now. The garage is convenient, and I’m able to use it to work on pieces here as opposed to having to find some other space.”
    “I saw everything you made for Jax and Grace. It’s all incredible.” She took a bite of the ravioli. It had sundried tomatoes and basil in the sauce, and it was pretty freaking amazing.
    “Thanks,” he said.
    “Did you make anything here?”
    “That steamer trunk in the living room.”
    Mel looked over at it. Even from twenty feet away she could see his attention to detail. The hardware was antique, and the dark mahogany wood had been treated. It looked as if it had survived generations but at the same time it had been cared for.
    “Wow,” she said, turning back to him. “Did you restore it or build it?”
    “I built it.”
    “I’m impressed. But then again, I normally am when it comes to your creations.”
    “Thank you,” he said again. But this time he didn’t look pleased so much as humbled.
    God, she liked him more and more. This was going to be a problem. Who the hell was she kidding? It was already a problem. A massive one.
    *  *  *
    Eating dinner while sitting across from Mel was so much better than Bennett had imagined. She’d been a little nervous when she’d first gotten to his house, but she was fine now. They kept up the conversation with each other, and there weren’t any of those awkward pauses where neither knew what to say. She told him what it had been like teaching the last two years. How much she loved what she did.
    She had a lot of passion for her students, passion for life.
    “So what about you?” she asked, as she put her napkin next to her empty plate. “Did those years in the military help train you to be a proper Southern gentlemen? Or was it all your mother?”
    Bennett couldn’t help but grin. His stepmother had trained him long before he’d joined the military.
    Jocelyn was a short woman, about five foot four, with red hair and bright blue eyes. She’d been taller than Bennett until he was about twelve, and then he shot up right past her. But it didn’t matter that he was bigger than her; he’d always listened to her, not only because she was his mother in every sense of the word and that was what a good Southern boy did, but because what she said went. Always had, always would.
    Even Bennett’s father listened to her. But Walker was pretty easygoing, so he and Jocelyn worked well together. She wasn’t overbearing or anything;, she let Walker do his thing, and she did her thing, but nobody was going to take advantage of her. Ever.
    Bennett had definitely gotten his temperament from his father. Well, at least he assumed he had. He hadn’t spent enough time with his birth mother to really know what he’d gotten from her. Though she apparently didn’t have any difficulties walking out on her family, so she was just easygoing in a different way.
    “It was Jocelyn for the most part.” He smiled at Mel. “You know she’s not my birth mother, right?”
    “No,” Mel said, sitting back in her chair. “I had no idea. You always call her Mom.”
    “That’s because I’ve considered her my real mother since she married my dad. She raised me. She’s been there for most of my life. I wouldn’t trade her for anything. My dad started seeing her when I was five, and even at that age I had no delusions that Kristi, my birth mother, was coming back. I might’ve been a little bit of a troublemaker when I was little. It had just been my dad and me for over a year, and I liked it that way. I didn’t need another mother who was just going to leave.”
    “That’s understandable.”
    “Jocelyn