Today I am so pleased to welcome TN Tarrant to Joyfully Jay. TN has come to talk to us about her latest release, Adam (Whispers From a Hidden World, Book 2). Please join me in giving her a big welcome!
Hello! I’m TN Tarrant and I’m stopping by Joyfully Jay’s to introduce you all my new series Whispers From a Hidden World. Today I brought an except from Book 2, Adam. Adam is a little different from most of my Rimalians, because he’s a Rimalian who was raised mostly by humans. So there’s a lot he knows about his birth culture, and a lot he has to ask. Don’t worry though, he’s got two hunks by the names of Dylan and Simon to help him out of any trouble… or maybe into it… I hope you all enjoy!
Excerpt
Simon looked up as a nurse walked into the waiting room. He nudged Adam gently, waking both Adam and Dylan. They had fallen asleep, leaning against him.
Adam got up to meet the nurse. “Can I go see Sam?”
The nurse nodded. “You can only stay for a few minutes, but you can see him. He may not be awake, though.”
“Has he been awake at all?”
“About an hour ago, which is why we can let you in, he managed to tell the doctor to let you in.” Adam followed the nurse to ICU.
Walking into the cubicle, Adam’s chest hurt seeing Sam. He was hooked up to all sorts of tubes and machines, and he looked fragile. His longish brown hair was tangled and Adam thought absently that he needed to brush Sam’s hair. Adam stood next to the bed, and touched Sam’s face gently. He leaned down and laid a gentle kiss on Sam’s forehead. Sam’s eyes fluttered and he whimpered.
“Hey, easy, Sam,” Adam said softly. “You’re safe.”
“Adam, what happened?” Sam asked, confused.
“We went to go run and you were shot. Right now I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ll find out.” Adam stroked Sam’s face, the only place he was certain he could touch without causing pain. “Your folks’ll be here sometime this afternoon. Just rest. I’ll take care of you.”
“I’m s’posed to take care of you this time…” Sam whispered.
“It’s okay, babe. You have been taking care of me.” Adam watched as Sam’s eyes closed again. “Just rest, you’re safe.” Giving Sam another kiss to his forehead, Adam left.
Simon and Dylan were waiting for him. “How is he?” they asked. Adam looked at them for a moment then burst into tears. Seeing Sam that hurt was too much. Dylan and Simon enveloped him in their arms, holding him tightly, as he buried his face in Dylan’s neck. After a few minutes, Adam got it back together, and Simon handed him some tissues. Wiping his face and blowing his nose, he looked at these men who he’d not even known for three days. He couldn’t believe they had stayed all night with him.
He cleared his throat and answered them. “He woke up for a few. He didn’t remember what happened.”
“That’s normal, Adam,” Simon answered.
“How do you know?”
“Couple years ago I got shot out on an op. Was in ICU for a couple of days. Zimmer had to tell me three different times I’d been shot before I remembered what happened, and then I chewed him out for risking his own neck for mine,” Simon replied.
Dylan nudged him. “You’ll forgive me if I remain glad he did.”
Simon touched Dylan’s face with an amazing amount of tenderness, the first overt display of affection in public that Adam had seen.
“I’m glad, too, don’t doubt that.”
Dylan grabbed Adam’s hand. “Come on, let’s find you something to eat.”
Adam shook his head. “I need to—”
“Eat,” Simon finished for him. “You’ll do Sam no good if you pass out on him. I’ll stay here, just in case. You go with Dylan to the cafeteria and eat something. Make him eat something, too. He has a bad habit of not eating when he’s upset.”
Dylan flipped Simon off and Simon shrugged, unrepentant. Adam smiled wanly as Dylan led him out.
Down in the cafeteria, Dylan filled a tray for Adam, when he didn’t seem able to pick out anything, just staring. He got a few things for himself to eat as well, even though he wasn’t hungry. Seeing Adam this upset made Dylan’s stomach hurt, but he didn’t want to fight with Simon about it. He also picked up a few sandwiches to take back to Simon, and more water. Adam twitched, reaching for a wallet that wasn’t there when they got to the register.
Dylan nudged him lightly. “Don’t worry about it, I got it. I have to feed that bottomless pit anyway.”
Adam followed Dylan to a table, and sat, looking at the food in front of him, not in the least interested in it. Dylan touched his wrist where it lay beside the tray, and he looked up.
“Eat something, honey. Simon’s a martinet about that sort of thing. He’ll smell our breath if he thinks he has to.” Dylan smiled. “And today he’s going to get a noseful of morning breath and ham and cheddar, with mustard. At least from me. You, he might give a pass to, this time.”
Adam chuckled weakly. “Why is he such a martinet about eating?”
Dylan shrugged. “Part of it is the whole ‘I’m uber-soldier, look at what my body can do, as long as I treat it right,’ thing; part of it is I’ve always had a problem with eating when I’m upset, bad enough sometimes I have passed out. And part of it is he’s right about you not being able to take care of Sam if you don’t make some effort to take care of yourself.” Dylan paused. “Part of it is he gets mad about people throwing away good food when he’s seen children starving.”
“Let me guess. He gave them his food, didn’t he?” Adam asked, managing a small bite. Dylan had chosen items that even if Adam didn’t eat it all now, he could finish it later.
Dylan nodded. “They all do. The first time he came back from an op in Afghanistan, he’d lost a good twenty pounds, at least. Maybe even thirty, because they gave most of their rations to the villagers they were staying with. All of them came back having lost a lot of weight. Simon never did regain it. His first op there he was gone four months. I know he’s been in and out of Iraq, Deity knows where else, that he’ll never be able to tell about. To this day I don’t even know where he was when he got shot.”
Adam looked down and realized he’d finished the entire sandwich as he listened to Dylan. He also realized that because Simon and Dylan were lifemates, Dylan probably had a pretty good idea as where Simon was when he was shot, but he would honor the need for secrecy.
Dylan snorted as he took a bite of his sandwich. “Simon’s girlfriend dumped him after that op. She didn’t even wait ’til he was home, she just called Zimmer and told him to tell Simon she didn’t want to date someone who could get killed and no one even tell her what happened.”
“Didn’t they talk about that when they started dating?” Adam asked.
“Yeah, when he got serious about her, he sat her down and talked to her about all of it, the leaving at the drop of a hat, being gone sometimes for months without any contact, about not being able to tell her what he was doing most of the time. He explained that it wasn’t just that way during wartime, but it could be that way during peacetime, too. She told him she could deal, but I guess she couldn’t…”
“That really sucks,” was all Adam could think of to say, which seemed entirely inadequate.
“It really hurt him. I think he was really falling for her. He’s always been very choosy, you know?”
Adam could relate because he’d always been pretty picky, too. “How did you handle it?”
“Simon being gone suddenly? I guess I had it easier than the others left behind.” He quickly looked around, making sure he couldn’t be overheard. “I, at least, knew he was alive and okay, no matter what. The rest of it… I knew how hard he trained to be better than the best. I knew how much he loved being a SEAL.”
“He’s pretty bitter still, though, isn’t he?” Adam said.
Dylan nodded. “Do you blame him?”
Adam shook his head. “Oh, no, I get it. I can’t imagine going through all of that.”
Blurb
Adam Darcy might be a star, but he’s not immune to a cheating lover. He kicks his lover out and buries himself in work for months until his best friend drags him out to go dancing. Dylan and Simon Rosetai are finally rejoining the scene after a sexual assault on Simon nearly ends both their lives. What affects one lifemate affects the other, after all. But they survived and are determined to go back into the world and enjoy their lives. When they meet Adam, a romance begins, but is threatened by an enemy from Adam’s past.
Bio
TN Tarrant is a hard-working single mom living in the wilds of Wyoming, who enjoys embarrassing her child with bright red lipstick prints to the forehead. When she isn’t embarrassing her child, or hunting, killing and dragging groceries home through the snow, she loves to write romantic stories with hot lovers. She suffers from a love of extremely bad jokes and has a tendency to inflict them on innocent bystanders. She has recently been accused of developing an
unhealthy yarn addiction, merely because she has bought enough of the stuff to start her own store. She notes that this does not keep her child and others from enjoying the products of that yarn addiction in the form of scarves and blankets. Other issues facing this poor soul are the continuing threats of books and nail polish overtaking the entire household and burying her amongst themselves. We won’t get into her child’s rocks…
You can contact her at wyotnt3@gmail.com or her Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/tn.tarrant
