Today I am so pleased to welcome Lily Morton to Joyfully Jay. Lily has come to share an exclusive excerpt from her latest release, Milo (which I reviewed here and totally loved). Please join me in giving her a big welcome!

Excerpt

I come awake that night suddenly and with a gasp as I realise that someone is in my room.

“Sorry.” Silas’s voice is loud in the quiet. “Sorry to wake you up, Milo, but it’s an emergency.”

I reach over and switch on the bedside lamp and the two of us hiss and shield our eyes for a second. When I uncover them, I cast a quick look at the clock. “What’s the matter?” I ask slowly. “It’s three in the morning.” Then his words sink in and I bolt upright. “What emergency? Is it Cora?”

He shakes his head immediately. “No, calm down. It’s Oz’s mum. She’s fallen and broken her hip.”

“How did she do that?”

“Rollerblading, for God’s sake.” Oz’s voice comes from the doorway and I look up to see him bleary-eyed and dishevelled, dressed in jeans and a crumpled t-shirt and hoody. He’s holding Cora and doing that slight side-to-side sway that I’ve noticed most people do automatically when they’re holding a baby. Anything to stop them from potentially crying.

“Is your mum okay?”

Oz nods. “I’ve spoken to her. She’s in pain, obviously, but she’s in hospital. They’re waiting to see the surgeon in the morning to discuss the options.”

I straighten up, pulling my tangled hair away from my face. “So, you’re obviously going to her. That’s fine. We can manage here.”

Silas shakes his head. “It’s not quite that simple.”

“Why?”

Oz comes nearer the bed. “We can’t take Cora with us. I want to, but Silas isn’t keen on exposing her to a hospital and all those germs. She’s just got over that horrible cold.”

“Oh, okay,” I say slowly. “So who are you leaving her with …?” My words trail off as the two of them look straight at me. “Oh my God,” I say slowly but any other words trail away as heavy footsteps sound on the attic steps outside and Niall appears in the doorway.

He’s rumpled like Oz and wearing pyjama shorts, battered old motorcycle boots, and an ancient-looking hoody, but unlike the rest of us he actually looks rested and alert. “What’s up?” he says deeply. “You said you needed me and it was urgent.” He looks at the three of us with Oz and Silas grouped around the bed with me in it and blinks. “Okay. If you’re thinking of a threesome, I’d totally leave Cora out of the room.”

I shake my head.

“You’re disgusting,” Oz mutters but it’s in a slightly admiring tone. He and Niall always spark off each other.

“I know,” he says happily before his eyes take me in. I self-consciously scrub my hands through my hair, wishing it was tied back. His face darkens. “Is the urgency you, Lo? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” I mutter, grabbing my hand back that he’s just seized.

“It’s my mum,” Oz interjects. “She’s fallen and broken her hip and Silas and I need to go to her.”

He stands upright, his notorious calmness in a crisis snapping into place. “Of course you do. What do you need?”

Silas pats his arm. “We need to go to London tonight so we can be there when she sees the surgeon. I’m not sure when we’ll be back, but Oz is intending on bringing her back with us.” He pauses. “Oh, and we need to leave Cora with you and Milo.”

Niall’s calmness in a crisis abruptly leaves and he gulps with his eyes bulging. “You want to leave a baby with me? Have you gone fucking mental?”


Blurb

Once upon a time a brave knight rescued a young man. Unfortunately, he then spent the next few years bossing the young man around and treating him like a child.

Milo has been burying himself at Chi an Mor, hiding from the wreckage of his once promising career and running from a bad relationship that destroyed what little confidence he had. Niall, his big brother’s best friend, has been there for him that entire time. An arrogant and funny man, Niall couldn’t be any more different from the shy and occasionally stuttering Milo, which has never stopped Milo from crushing wildly on the man who saved him.

However, just as Milo makes the decision to move on from his hopeless crush, he and Niall are thrown into close contact, and for the first time ever Niall seems to be returning his interest. But it can never work. How can it when Milo always needs rescuing?

From the bestselling author of the Mixed Messages series comes a story about a man who needs to write his own happily ever after.

This is the second book in the Finding Home series, but it can be read as a standalone.

Content warning: There are descriptions of domestic abuse in this book.


Bio

Lily writes contemporary romance novels, and specialises in hot love stories with a good dose of humour.

Lily lives in sunny England with her husband and two children, all of whom claim that they haven’t had a proper conversation with her since she bought her first Kindle.

She has spent her life with her head full of daydreams and decided one day to just sit down and start writing about them. In the process she discovered that she actually loved writing, because how else could she get to spend her time with hot, funny men!

She loves chocolate and Baileys and the best of all creations – chocolate Baileys! Her lifetime’s ambition is to have a bath in peace without being shouted by one of her family.

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