REVEAL! WAIT: The Brazen Bulls Beginning

I usually do the reveal on the Saturday 6 weeks before release day, but I will be traveling then, so I’m doing this one today. Happy #teasertuesday!

Wait is my next release, my last for 2019. This is Mo and Delaney’s story. It goes live on Saturday, 2 November. Preorder will be available Saturday, 12 October.

You can add it to your Goodreads TBR here.

Wait is both a prequel and a standalone. If you’ve read The Brazen Bulls MC series, then you already know Brian Delaney as the first president of that MC, and Mo as his old lady. In the BBMC books, they are in their fifties and sixties, a couple long established and the patriarch and matriarch of that rambunctious found family. This is the origin story of their relationship, set decades earlier.

Wait is not, strictly speaking, a biker book—or perhaps it’s better to say it’s not an MC book. Brian began riding a Harley as a young man, and he rides through much of this story, but he doesn’t found the Brazen Bulls MC until the very last chapters. This story is not really about how the club was founded; it’s about the people who did.

Wait is a story about a soldier struggling with the wages of war and the woman strong enough to stand with him while she overcomes struggles of her own. Aside from a prologue and epilogue set in the 2000s, this story takes place in 1968-1976, during and immediately following the Vietnam War. Brian has a long and complicated service in that war, and that is the ground in which his love with Mo is seeded and grows.

You need not have ever heard of the Brazen Bulls MC to enjoy the love story of Maureen Quinn and Brian Delaney. However, if you do know the Bulls, you will recognize in this story some characters and events, and some questions will be answered.

Here’s the description:

Oklahoma, 1968.

Brian Delaney is home from war, scarred in body and soul. He’s not the same man he was when he left Oklahoma, and he’s come back to a home he doesn’t quite recognize. He’s struggling to get his life going again.

Maureen Quinn was just a girl when she was ripped from her home in Northern Ireland and dropped into the middle of Oklahoma, a world she didn’t understand, with family she’d never met. Even years later, she doesn’t quite fit. But she has big plans for her life, and the drive to reach them.

One spring day, while Brian’s out riding to clear his head, he stops at a small-town store. The blue-eyed Irish lass behind the counter captures his interest with her beauty and sass.

Mo eyes the scruffy biker buying rubbers and smokes and finds herself intrigued by his husky voice and wry smirk.

And the rest is history.

Their life isn’t easy. Brian’s war isn’t over yet, and Mo’s fight is just beginning.

But their love is forever.

What they have is worth waiting for.

And for a preview, a scene from their first date (from Chapter Five):

“I don’t think I’m smart enough for this film,” Mo muttered and reached into their bucket of popcorn. “I think I must be missing all the fascinating nuance.”

“I think a lot of drugs went into the making of this. It’s the only reasonable explanation.” 2001: A Space Odyssey had, an hour and a half in, been an endlessly dull, frequently confusing mess of a movie.

A chill had entered the evening, so Brian had gone to the box in the truck bed and pulled out Lenny’s emergency blanket. Now, he and Mo were close enough to share it, but not much more. Brian was trying not to come on too strong with this girl who was a good five years younger than he’d thought. But her presence was like a magnet, and he’d been giving the movie only about half his attention; the rest had been on her. He wanted to be closer. Shit, the way he felt around her, he wanted to fuse her to his bones.

“What do the apes have to do with anything?” she asked.

“From the beginning? I don’t know. I was hoping you could explain it to me later, college girl.”

She threw popcorn at him. He laughed and caught her hand before she could reload. Then, since he had her hand, he did the age-old trick and pulled her in close so he could get his arm around her. Finally.

Clearly on board with that plan, Mo snuggled in and kept on munching. She was a hearty eater, he was glad to see. It seemed like girls had gotten skinnier while he was away. And all the models were like sticks, like that Twiggy chick. Mo had nice curves exactly where they belonged.

She plucked another popped kernel and held it up for him. Though she no doubt expected him to take it with his fingers, instead, he put his mouth around it and took the chance to taste the salt and butter on her pretty fingers.

Her head turned and she looked up at him, but she didn’t take her fingers back. Those eyes could undo him if they looked too long into him.

He released her hand. “What do you study at OU?” he asked, to turn down the heat.

“Right now, everything is ‘general education,’ so I’ve been taking classes in a lot of things—literature, economics, history, and maths—but I know what I want to major in.”

For the most part, her accent shaped an American way of speaking. He supposed she’d been here long enough for Oklahoma to have changed her phrasing, without taking the lovely lilt from her voice. But every now and then, an odd word or phrase popped in, like echoes of her past. Brian was thoroughly charmed.

“And what’s that?”

“Education. I want to be a teacher.”

“That’s a worthy profession.”

She nodded. He felt it against his chest, felt a surprisingly deep intimacy in just that, how close she was to him that he could feel her nod. They’d been together here for more than two hours, and he’d felt calm and quiet every minute. Even when they’d spoken directly, albeit briefly, about the war.

He hadn’t even craved a cigarette. He’d started to light up early on, and she’d made a face and asked him not to. Figuring he’d run up to the space between the bathrooms and concession stand when he needed a smoke, he hadn’t minded complying. But he didn’t want to leave her side more than he had to, and a smoke didn’t seem nearly worth that loss.

“When I first came here,” she said, continuing their conversation, “I was so turned around I didn’t know which end was up. I didn’t want to be here, I didn’t know my family here, I didn’t understand this place at all. Everything I knew was gone. I was scrappin’ with everyone, and my aunt and uncle didn’t know what to do with me. But a teacher I had helped me get right. She let me talk and showed me how to write things down so they’d get out my head. I want to be like that.”

If she’d been brought unwillingly to the States, and if she lived here with her aunt and uncle, then something had happened to her parents in Northern Ireland. Rather than ask directly, Brian decided to tell her something about himself. “My mom got sick and died when I was six, and my dad got caught in a combine when I was fourteen. My sister and her husband took care of me after that. I’m living with them now.”

She sat up a little so she could look him straight in the eyes, and she did just that before she spoke. The weighty silence went on long enough for Brian to remember where they were and hear the computer’s voice in the speaker hanging on the window. Hal was its name. Or HAL, he supposed. It was asking if it would dream.

Whatever had taken her so long to decide, Mo finally spoke. “My folks died together, in a wreck. I was twelve. They went out and didn’t come home. Two weeks on, I lived here.” Her sigh carried the echo of a lost twelve-year-old girl.

Brian felt that loss in his own heart, and he needed more, needed to join his remembrance with hers in some way. He cupped his hands around her face, felt her hair surround his fingers. When she didn’t give any sign of reluctance or resistance, he bent close and brushed his lips over hers.

She sighed and drew closer, sliding her hand up his chest, around his neck, into his hair, and on that encouragement, Brian made the kiss something deep and real.

©2019 Susan Fanetti