Everything inside of him is screaming that he needs to run, he needs to go, he needs to escape.

Lane Warner is used to being overshadowed and overlooked.

After all, he’s the youngest brother and the most laid back one in the family. He’s the one known for going with the flow and not making waves, even when things seem to be at their worst.

Very few things in life have had the ability to rile Lane up and get under his skin. At the top of that list is his childhood friend Brynn Fox…no…Brynn Warner. The fact that they share a last name was the one thing that has the power to light him up and spin him out of control like no other. There was no calm, cool and collected when it comes to all the reasons why Brynn had to become part of his family.

It’s slowly killing him to keep wanting what he can’t have, so Lane sees only one way to stop himself from doing something they’ll both regret…he has to leave.

Everything inside of her is calling out to find him, to follow, to bring him home.

Brynn Warner is used to being stuck between a rock and a hard place.

After all, she’s the daughter of an unrepentant gold-digger who never once blinked at being the cause of her daughter’s pain and suffering.

Very few things in her life have ever brought happiness and a sense of security. At the very top of that list is Lane Warner. She has unwaveringly loved the youngest Warner since the first minute she laid eyes on him. He was everything Brynn ever wanted and everything she knew she could never have.

Sometimes the right choice is the one that hurts the most and Brynn’s had to make a few that felt like they might be the end of her.

When Lane takes off, one thing is clear, the only choice Brynn has is to go after him.

She’s going to bring her wayward cowboy home….whatever it takes.

Escape is a standalone novel, the third book in the Getaway series, which features the hardheaded and brokenhearted Warner brothers and the women who dare to love them. These boys are very good at putting the wild in wilderness.

Series:

Getaway

Book 3

Can be read as a standalone

Book Type:

Contemporary Romance

Series Reading Order:

Excerpt: Escape by Jay Crownover

“Brynn. What are you doing here?” The question came out sounding far harsher than I meant it to be. I wanted to ask her about the proposal, about Jack, but I didn’t think I could stand to hear her answers. I was regretting not letting Emrys break the news to me when she’d tried. I had nowhere left to run.

The stunning woman squeezed the little girl who was trapped in her arms and looked at me unwaveringly over the top of her head. The corner of her mouth kicked up into a familiar grin, but I could see the way her fingers shook and the tremble in her lower lip as she answered, “I came to bring you home, Lane. The ranch needs you. Your brother needs you. Webb needs someone to keep him in line and show him what he needs to know. Leo misses you. Things aren’t the same with you gone. Nothing has felt right since the moment you left.”

That was all nice to hear. It assuaged some of the fears I’d had when there had been nothing but endless road and doubt while I was driving, but none of it was enough to have me packing a bag and hightailing back to Wyoming.

“What about you, Brynn? Why are you the one who came to get me? Why not Cy if he needs me so badly?” I was a dick, pushing for something when I didn’t even know if she still belonged to someone else. I was putting my return entirely on her slender shoulders when I was intimately acquainted with the heavy load that slim frame already carried. Getting me home was the rock, and I was the hard place, so fucking hard, and she was stuck directly between the two of us.

“Oh, Lane,” her voiced dipped, and I heard her suck in a shaky breath. “I don’t need you to come home.”

I fell back a step like her words were a bullet that pierced through all my toughest armor. I was getting ready to grab my niece and toss her in the truck, so I could get as far away from this woman as I could…again, when one of her hands reached out and touched the side of my face. I felt the tremor in her fingers and the truth in her pulse as it raced in the wrist lying against my jaw.

“But I want you to come back with me more than I’ve ever wanted anything ever. I want to see you at the breakfast table and hear your stories about the tourists that can’t ride. I want to pass you in the hall and share that same smile we’ve shared since we were kids. I want to bitch at you to separate your damn laundry, so I don’t have to, and I want to yell at you to put the toilet seat down. I want to patch you up when you get thrown from a horse and agree with you that Cy is an overbearing ass most of the time. I want you in my life, Lane. I don’t know how to live without you there.” She looked down at the tips of her boots which were as worn as the ones I wore and just as out of place on this beach. “I feel like I’m missing half of myself when you aren’t around. It hurts.”

I pulled my eyes away from the hope in hers and looked to where Daye was examining the shells she’d collected on the beach earlier. She seemed oblivious to the heaviness of the conversation going on around her, but I knew better. The little sprite was sharp as a tack. If I didn’t answer the right way she was going to have something to say about it and no doubt she would give Em and her father an earful when we got back to their house.

I let Brynn’s words sink in.

We’d always been friends until I couldn’t handle it because I was so confused about the way she made me feel and terrified if I admitted to wanting more, then everything would fall apart. Maybe she was right and having part of her was better than having nothing. I’d cut her out of my day to day to save myself the heartache of seeing her knowing I couldn’t ever let myself have her, but I missed the little stuff she was talking about. The familiar camaraderie that I’d shut down because it made sharing the same life, but moving in opposite directions so hard.

I tunneled my fingers through my damp, dark hair and looked down at my feet. They looked naked without my cowboy boots, and I suddenly realized everything about me was exposed, and vulnerable out here in the world so far away from the one that was meant for me. A sigh so heavy, so thick, that the waves wouldn’t be able to carry it out to sea, escaped. I had no idea what the right thing to do was anymore, but constantly running away from her hadn’t gotten me anywhere and I couldn’t deny the fact that her finally chasing after me was doing something to my insides. I was so confused, but one thing was clear, if she cared enough to come after me, I could show her that I cared just as much by going back with her.

“I want you in my life too, Brynn. Even if that means that you come with someone else. I’ve been stubborn and selfish. I’ve been acting like my mother, wanting things to be different then they are but not doing anything to make the situation better. When things got hard she left, I did the same damn thing, not once, but twice.” And wasn’t that enough to make me feel lower than low? The one person I never wanted anyone to compare me to was the woman who ruined what love meant for all the Warners. I wanted to be the man my father raised me to be, but I’d been acting like the son my mother left behind instead. It was shameful, and for a second I wallowed in that until I remembered the woman in front of me saw someone worth fighting for.

A heartbreaking smile split her beautiful face and her entire body sagged with relief. “Does that mean you’ll come home with me?”

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