Gus turned in my arms and pressed me against the closed utility room door. Up close and naked, I felt every inch of him. He kissed my forehead, my cheek, and finally my lips. “Works for me.”
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To purchase and read more books by Garrett Leigh, please visit her website at
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About the Author
Garrett Leigh is an award-winning British writer, cover artist, and book designer. Her debut novel, Slide, won Best Bisexual Debut at the 2014 Rainbow Book Awards, and her polyamorous novel, Misfits, was a finalist in the 2016 LAMBDA awards, and she was again a finalist in 2017 with Rented Heart.
In 2017, she won the EPIC award in contemporary romance with her military novel, Between Ghosts, and won in the contemporary romance category in the Bisexual Book Awards with her novel What Remains.
When not writing, Garrett can generally be found procrastinating on Twitter, cooking up a storm, or sitting on her behind doing as little as possible, all the while shouting at her menagerie of children and animals and attempting to tame her unruly and wonderful FOX.
Garrett is also an award-winning cover artist, taking the silver medal at the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards in 2016. She designs for various publishing houses and independent authors at blackjazzdesign.com.
Bonus material is available for all books on Garrett’s Patreon account, including short stories from Misfits, Slide, Strays, What Remains, Dream, and much more. Sign up here: www.patreon.com/garrettleigh.
Also Available from Carina Press and Garrett Leigh
Forgiven
He disappeared from her life, but never from her heart.
When Mia Amour returns to England to open a florist, all she wants to do is put her lousy ex behind her and never look back. But getting a fresh start is easier said than done when her first love, the boy who once broke her teenage heart, strolls back into her life. He’s every bit as sexy as she remembers, and the urge to melt back into his arms almost makes her forget how devastated she was when he took off without a word. Almost.
Left with no choice, Luke Daley did what he had to do, leaving town to earn enough money to save his broken family, though it just about broke him too. But now he’s back, running his uncle’s business and trying desperately to forget about Mia, the girl he left behind all those years ago. When he runs into her in town, the shock of seeing her again brings an intense rush of emotions: love, guilt...and an overwhelming urge to find out if things between them are still as amazing as they used to be.
With each new touch, each moment of forgiveness, old hurts heal and the future they’d once hoped for becomes possible again. But their fragile connection is tested by a threat neither of them saw coming—a threat that could end their second chance before it even gets started.
Read on for an excerpt from
Forgiven,
the first book in author Garrett Leigh’s Forgiven series
Chapter One
Mia
Sandgrove Country Park was my entire childhood. Even years after I’d left Rushmere, I still missed the scent of the Christmas tree farm buried in the forest there. How it smelled festive all year round, even in summer, and I recalled with perfect clarity my mum bringing us to choose the cheapest tree to brighten up our budget celebration. Add-in Safeway frozen turkey and a slice of Mr. Kipling cake, and I’d been the happiest girl in the world.
I missed that girl too.
With one last breath of earthy pine filling my lungs, I walked back to the dodgy Astra I’d bought on eBay when I’d got off the ferry in Dover last night. I’d driven till dawn to get home—a place so strange and familiar—but the sign for Sandgrove had reeled me in before I’d reached Rushmere, and now I was finding it hard to make myself leave.
On cue, my phone buzzed.
Gus: where are you?
I ignored him. Buried him again, like I had over and over for the last five years, pretending I hadn’t missed him too. I leaned against my car and tilted my face to the bright spring sky. Five more minutes.
Sandgrove had always had a way of sucking up my time, but eventually even the clean air and birdsong couldn’t block out my phone blowing up in my pocket.
With a heavy sigh, I got in the car and called my annoying little brother back. “I’m on my way. What are you hassling me for?”
“I’m not hassling you, sis,” Gus said. “I was worried. You said you’d be here an hour ago.”
I wondered when he’d turned into my mother.
And when I finally made it back to the house we would share on the outskirts of town, I wondered too when my gangly younger sibling had turned into a strapping hottie.
“You’re a man,” I said stupidly.
He cocked a dark eyebrow and enveloped me in a strong-armed bear hug. “Je ne me souviens pas avoir prétendu être autrement.”
He’d missed my point, but that was fairly standard when it came to Gus and me. I talked, he shut me down, then we reversed our positions and pressed repeat. At least, that’s how things used to be. I didn’t know what we were anymore.
Gus pulled back to unlock the green front door of the house he’d bought with his half of our mother’s life insurance. I’d never seen the interior, only Facebook photos of the outside, but as soon as I stepped inside, it became clear that he’d made better use of his inheritance than I had.
I spun around the tidy living space. “This is nice.”
Gus appeared behind me with a couple of beers. “You sound surprised.”
“I’m more surprised that you’re cracking open the booze at nine a.m.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t sleep last
