Excerpt from Sins of the Fathers

Dawson’s heart went out to Jason, worried about his long-time partner without news of how he was doing and now afraid of being left alone.

“Lily sent us here to talk.” Grady tag teamed. “She knew you’d be upset. She also knew how much you two loved each other.”

Lily Franklin was the long-time Meals on Wheels volunteer who had delivered to Jason and Everett for many years. She’d become a good friend and was Everett’s emergency contact once Jason passed away.

A door slammed. Grady’s head snapped up, and he shot a questioning look at Dawson. Dawson reached out to take his hand, intertwining their fingers and holding their hands in the air.

“We’re like you and Everett. We understand wanting to stay together.” Dawson picked up the conversation.

The planchette trembled before beginning to move. “D-A-N-G-E-R-O-U-S,” Dawson said as the pointer moved.

“Dangerous to admit what you and Jason were to each other?” Grady asked.

The planchette moved to “YES.”

“It can be, but plenty of people are ‘out’ these days. Even married,” Dawson answered.

A framed photo rocked back and forth on the mantle. Dawson saw that it showed two men in their thirties decades ago on a sunny day, grinning with arms slung over each other’s shoulders.

“If Everett can’t come home, do you think you could go to him?” Grady asked.

The planchette went wild, circling “YES” over and over.

“Is there something here that means a lot to you that you could ‘travel’ with if we took it to Everett?” Dawson looked around, wondering what objects among the collections of a shared lifetime might be special enough to anchor a ghost.

A crash sounded from the back of the house. They headed toward the noise and found the door to a bedroom open and a painting on the floor in a broken frame. As soon as Dawson entered, he was shoved by invisible hands sending him stumbling toward one side of an unmade king-size bed.

He nearly fell, and when he braced himself against the edge of the mattress, he saw a leather jewelry tray on the nightstand, and in it, two silver military rings.

“These?” Dawson felt a puff of cold air in response.

“What are they?’ Grady stood in the doorway, respecting the privacy of the old man who had lived there.

“Army service rings. Vietnam, if I’m right.” Dawson picked up the rings and looked at them in the light.

“Lily said they met when Everett was a nurse at the VA hospital, and Jason came home wounded from the war,” Grady replied.

Dawson’s gaze went to a photo of a younger version of the two men standing together in uniform. They were circumspect in their pose, but Dawson imagined that he could see a slight lean, a bit less space between them than usual, and broad grins.

That could have been Grady and me if we’d been born then. I’m glad they found each other and were happy.

We met the two MC’s in book one, Kings of the Mountain, where Grady and Dawson get together and start their romance.   But it’s been over two years since I read that book so I didn’t really remember details but that didn’t matter; Sins of the Father can easily be read as a standalone story.  I was very happy to get a copy of it for review.  Unfortunately, hurricane Ian totally messed with my reading and reviewing schedule causing this post to be about a week late. ☹

This story kept me on the edge of my seat for much of it but there was also enough humor in it to keep the high-tension stuff from being overwhelming.  Grady and Dawson fight more than one battle with monsters as the story gets going but the main event came near the end and it had me holding my breath at times and my heart pounding.

At the end of my review for book one, I said that I wanted to learn more about Grady’s brother and we do find out more about him in this book.  There were also a couple of new characters introduced in this story, Federal Agents Gibson and Tucker, and I hope they show up in a future book.

Morgan Brice knows how to tell a suspenseful story and keep her characters on their toes while at the same time allowing them to have some very nice romantic moments and I enjoy her books very much.

Reviews for Morgan Brice

Excerpt from Kings of the Mountain

The longer they spent time on the road and on hunts together, the more Dawson felt a powerful attraction to Grady. He’d always been fond of the younger man, but Dawson found himself admiring the person Grady was growing into. Grady deserved to find the right guy—if that’s what he wanted—who could make him happy. And as much as Dawson wished fervently that could be him, he knew he couldn’t take the chance that Grady might feel pressured or obligated to respond if Dawson made any advances.

Not to mention how Grady’s mother had always carried on about how awful it was to marry a “cousin,” something that she claimed no one in her family had ever done. She’d made her position loud and clear while she was married to Aaron, which had not endeared her to the rest of the community. Such marriages were legal in North Carolina, and not uncommon in the rural areas.

The fact that Grady wasn’t a cousin by blood probably wouldn’t matter to Camille. But what if Grady had accepted his mother’s bias? Maybe Dawson had imagined the flirtation, or worse, projected his own feelings onto the other man. So Dawson took the edge off with hookups and out-of-town one-night stands, very aware that he tended to choose partners with a resemblance to Grady.

Until he couldn’t stand it any longer.

That’s when Dawson enlisted.

Once they were on the main highway, Dawson turned to watch Colt’s profile.

“So…what happened with Uncle Denny and Grady?”

Colt’s grip on the steering wheel tightened, and the tic in his jaw told Dawson that the other man didn’t want to have this conversation. “They’re both alive. But a hunt went wrong a week ago, and Grady isn’t dealing with it very well.”

A week, Dawson thought. That was when he’d stopped getting emails from Grady. He had tried to convince himself the silence was due to any number of impersonal reasons, but Dawson knew in his gut something wasn’t right. His responses from Uncle Denny had gotten short and less frequent around the same time.

Was this what his nightmare had been warning him about?

“Could you be a little clearer?” Dawson knew Colt could read the warning in his tone.

“Grady got hurt. Aaron was killed. Grady’s not dealing well with it. Uncle Denny didn’t want to leave Grady alone. So they sent me.”

Dawson’s head swam. Uncle Aaron, dead? That’s hard to even imagine. He was always so full of life. And Grady—it’s got to be bad if he couldn’t come. Oh, God. I almost lost him. Plus there’s something Colt isn’t saying, something even worse. Because if Uncle Aaron died on a hunt, then Grady had to have been right there when it happened. That’s bad, really bad. No one should see their parent die, especially not like that.