Susan Fanetti

Hi, everyone! It’s reveal day!

Today I’m announcing my next release—Snake. It’s the second book in the Signal Bend Heritage Series. This book features Cox, a member of the Horde who might not yet have made your radar (but oh, he will) and Autumn, who was very briefly introduced at the end of Virago, Book One.

Snake is available for preorder right now, on Amazon and elsewhere. It goes live on Saturday, 6 July (3 weeks from today).

You might remember that I plan to feature complicated women in this series (women get to be complicated, too!), and title their books with words commonly used as insults for women, specifically insults aimed at the female leads. I intend either to reclaim the word as a positive (as in Virago) or correct the insult as applied to the character (which is the case with Snake).

Snake is an adversaries to lovers kind of story.

Here’s the description:

Autumn Rooney has a great idea.

Newly promoted to VP of Commercial Development at MidWest Growth & Progress, she’s convinced her twentieth-century relic of a boss to fund her new “Heartland Homesteads” project, bringing vibrant new businesses to small rural communities. So many such towns are dying, and she sees a way to bring them new life without compromising the local culture.

She’s identified Signal Bend, MO as the perfect site for her pilot development. It’s a quaint town that already draws regional tourists and just needs a bit more commercial infrastructure to support its full potential. And there’s a perfect lot for it—a building that has sat vacant for more than a decade. Her project will bring that dead space back to life.

But first she has to deal with the infuriating Night Horde MC.

Like all his Horde brothers, Daniel Cox hates the redheaded, big-city snake so hellbent on forcing a strip mall onto a town that doesn’t want one. Then again, he hates pretty much everybody and everything. He shut all his other emotions down twenty years ago.

When Autumn shows up in town and Cox is assigned to keep tabs on her, all he wants is to get the night over as quickly as he can, with as little pain in his ass as possible. And all Autumn wants is to shake the scowling biker off her heels.

By the end of that night, however, their feelings are a lot more complicated. And ‘hate’ is certainly no longer part of the mix.

She’s a fashionista, corporate go-getter from a big city hundreds of miles away. He’s a taciturn, misanthropic biker who’s never lived anywhere but Signal Bend. Their powerful attraction might not be enough to close the distance between them.

It’ll take something monumental.

And a preview scene (from Chapter 3):

Cox had expected people to take note when he walked into Marie’s with the woman who was trying to ruin Signal Bend, but he was surprised when the diner had one of those straight-from-Hollywood moments and the whole place went quiet as everybody stopped and stared. It was almost six o’clock, so Marie’s was near capacity. That was a lot of people suddenly forgetting their manners.

So subtly it was unlikely anyone but him noticed, Autumn faltered a little when the silence crashed down. Cox put a hand on her back to keep her moving in the direction of the only open booth. As they headed toward it, he sent a look around, making eye contact with as many people as possible until they all remembered they had their own business to mind.

Autumn slipped into the booth. Cox slid onto the other bench and grabbed two menus from behind the condiment caddy. “You ever eat here?” he asked as he handed her one.

The look she hit him with screamed, Are you stupid? “This is my fifth visit to Signal Bend. Of course I’ve eaten here. There aren’t many options to choose from.”

He’d asked a question; she’d answered it. There wasn’t anything else to say unless he wanted to throw snark back at her, and he did not. So he focused on his menu and left her to her own.

After a minute or so of silence while they stared at the laminated pages, Cox sensed someone come up on them. It was Kalina, a waitress here, and also a club girl whom he tended to favor, primarily because she didn’t try to make conversation with him. She was happy to quietly sit on his lap in a corner of the Hall while he drank, and then sit on his lap in his dorm room while he fucked her, and then go on about her life without expecting even a ‘see ya later’ from him.

“Hey, Cox,” she said as she put her pen on her order pad. “You know what you want?”

Cox nodded at Autumn, whom Kalina had thus far ignored. “You ready?”

“Sure,” Autumn answered. “I’ll have the fried chicken sandwich with fries—can I get some cheese on that?”

“We got American or Swiss,” Kalina answered with a hostile sigh.

“Swiss, please,” Autumn said, either unaware of the chill in Kalina’s tone or ignoring it. “And a Coke.”

“Diet Coke?”

“No, regular. Thank you.”

“Uh huh.” Kalina turned to Cox, and her tone shifted to friendliness. “What’re you having tonight?”

Cox found that he’d been so absorbed by Autumn’s order he needed a second to remember what his was. “I’ll do the grilled ham and cheese with fries.”

“You got it. Sweet tea, right?”

“Right.”

“Should be ‘bout ten minutes for your food. Drinks comin’ right up.” Kalina gave him a quick smile and walked off.

A soft, almost secret chuckle slipped from Autumn’s lips, and she swiped her phone open. “I’m always surprised how great the reception is out here.”

Cox leaned back and studied her. “I guess you know why, studyin’ up on us like you did.”

She looked up and set her phone aside. “I do. The Horde paid to put in a tower.”

He nodded.

After another stretch of quiet, she said, “Is it that you don’t like to talk, or you don’t like to talk to me?”

“I say what I need to say. Not everything’s about you.”

Kalina arrived with their drinks. When she was gone again, Autumn said, “You are every bit the jerk you look like.”

Now Cox did grin, briefly. “Yeah, I am. But ain’t you s’posed to be makin’ nice with us hicks out here?” He let his voice settle into his father’s Ozark drawl. “Ain’t that the way with you big city business folks? Stealin’ food out our mouths while you grin at us all pretty?”

For about two seconds after he finished that volley, she looked hurt, and then angry. Her expression didn’t change; it was all in her lively eyes—which were a light, coppery brown that did, in fact, seem gold when the light hit them right. Then her eyes settled, and a predatory smirk shaped her mouth.

“I tried that. I came into this sincerely wanting to work together to make Signal Bend better, and you all shoved that up my ass. Now I don’t have to take your abuse with a smile anymore, because I have what I wanted. That property is mine. Signed, sealed, and paid in full. And now you have to be nice to me to get something for yourselves.”

“I don’t have to be nice to anybody.”

“You know I meant your ‘club.’” She made quotes with her fingers, as well as with her voice.

He didn’t take that bait. “Why d’you think anybody’s gonna be nicer to you now? You took what nobody wanted to give you. That don’t make you a hero.”

“The mayor wanted the deal, and he’s not the only one. This project will help Signal Bend when it’s finished and operating. And it will help whoever gets the construction contract, too.”

“We don’t need your help. Not now, not in the future. We’re fine here without your stupid strip mall.”

Her fists balled up with sudden, palpable frustration, and Cox noted with some surprise that she was about to slam them on the table. But Kalina arrived right then with their plates, and Autumn smoothly returned to nonchalance.

When Kalina was gone again, as Cox reached for the ketchup, Autumn said, “It is infuriating that you dunderheads refuse to see what I have shown you repeatedly: Heartland Homesteads are not strip malls. They are designed to be community centerpieces, not basic services.”

“This community has a centerpiece. It’s called Main Street, and we’re on it.”

“Yes. True. And it’s charming as hell. This is a great little town, with great potential. But you don’t have the infrastructure yet to realize that potential. One ten-room inn inside the town limits. One market. Two bars. A diner, a Sonic, one slightly more upscale restaurant, and a tea room. That is nowhere near enough to keep people in town, enjoying all you offer here, spending money here. I bought a building that has stood empty for more than a decade. I didn’t displace anyone. I didn’t force a business to close. I bought an abandoned building.”

He noticed that she spoke of the deal as hers, not her company’s. Not knowing what to make of that, he filed it away in case it mattered later. “And you’re buying out a whole block of houses, too. Some of those houses are rentals. You think their landlords are gonna help them out?”

“I’m offering move-out packages to tenants, and I’ve offered the Zillow value for everybody who’s sold so far—and Zillow is higher than fair market value calculations, trust me.”

“I don’t trust you.” He trusted almost no one. His Horde brothers. Mostly. But that was it.

Autumn sighed. “I’m not the enemy, Cox. I’m not a monster.” She sagged back in her seat, as if he’d exhausted her reservoir of snark.

He felt a glimmer of guilt but shoved it away at once and said, “You’re human. That’s bad enough. And I don’t give a shit if you’re an enemy or not. You can have that out with Badge.”

More quiet. Cox waited a bit to see if this spell would finally stick. When Autumn seemed to be finished making her case for how she was going to save a town that was doing just fine without her, he picked up his sandwich and got to eating.

She took his cue and picked up her sandwich as well.

He’d been surprised that a chick like her—tiny and obviously glued to the fashion magazines—would order such a robust meal (a not-Diet Coke even), and he’d expected her to pick at it, but she grabbed that fried chicken sandwich in both hands and took an impressive bite. She chewed for a while, washed the rest of her bite down with a big sip from her soda, and went in for another big bite.

The way she was putting away that sandwich would give some of the Horde a run.

She looked up and saw him watching. “What? Are you horrified by a woman who’s not afraid to eat?”

Cox registered that he’d been staring while she put down most of her meal, and his sandwich was growing cold and soggy in his hands. He set it down on his plate.

“I don’t care how you eat.”

“Then why are you staring?”

“Just surprised somebody like you eats like that.”

She paused with a fry halfway to her mouth. “Somebody like me?”

He waved a hand at her. “Little and skinny and dressed like a model. I thought all you shiny city girls eat six almonds and a strawberry and call it a meal.”

Setting the last bit of her sandwich down, Autumn wiped her hands with a napkin. “Shiny?”

“Now you’re just repeating words I say.”

“They’re provocative words. What about me is shiny?”

Cox felt like she’d maneuvered him into a trap. This was the kind of shit that happened when he put any effort into a conversation—he missed some double meaning, or some sneaky stratagem, and ended up wedged in a corner with no way out, like a rat in a maze.

“All of you. Like plastic,” he said, hoping to put an end to it.

He succeeded. She reacted like he’d hurt her, even wincing subtly.

She slid to the outside of her bench. “I need to use the bathroom. I’ll pick up the check on my way back.” She stood. “Then I’m going down Main Street. I don’t give a damn what you do.”

Cox watched her walk toward the restrooms. He hated that chick. Fucking snake.

So why the hell did he feel guilty?

©2024 Susan Fanetti