Hot Man With a Badge

By Avery Flynn 

I blame it all on Tom Selleck’s Magnum PI.  

Sure he was a PI not a cop, but who could deny the awesomeness of his mustache and the wriggling eyebrows? Smooth, funny, hot and with an amazing car, he charmed and sweet talked while solving mysteries and taking risks because it was the right thing to do. So when it came to write Dry Creek County Sheriff Hank Layton’s story, it wasn’t an actual sheriff who inspired me, instead it was a fictional private investigator with major-league swagger.  

Hank is six-feet, three-inches tall, has short dark brown hair and the Layton family hazel eyes. A former Nebraska Cornhusker quarterback, he married his high school sweetheart and seemed to lead a charmed life that in reality was a twisted mess. He is a tortured alpha hero starting over in life and something about Beth Martinez calls out to him.  

That’s what I love about the alpha hero. To fully reach his potential, he has to find an alpha heroine – that one person who challenges him and pushes him to be more than he ever thought he could. 

 

In A DRY CREEK BED, that person is Beth Martinez, but she’s a woman of many secrets – one of which may kill her. So despite her strong attraction to Hank, she’s determined to maintain a distance, even if sometimes she slips. 

*** 

Five days into a two-week vacation, he’d given up his Dry Creek Country Sheriff uniform for jeans, a T-shirt and a scraggly beard that he somehow made appealing. Her fingers itched to feel the prickle of the three-day beard on his square jaw, to run through his thick brown hair that she knew from years of lustful observation curled if he let it grow to his collar. He was the stuff of dreams. Naughty, sweaty, tasty dreams. The object of her desire strolled across the cracked asphalt to her side. The smell of fresh coffee wafted up from the paper cup in his large hands and mixed with the woodsy scent of his cologne.  “Are you okay?” Worry weighed heavy in his deep voice and he brushed a stray hair away from her face, his eyes searching for injuries caused by the car accident. Every objection to touching him evaporated and all her thoughts focused on how much she wanted to wrap her arms around his waist and soak up his strength. “I do believe I can arrest you for looking at someone like that, you’ve got to be breaking some indecency laws.” Taking a deep breath, she recovered her bearings. Mostly. “You’re out of your jurisdiction, sheriff.” 

***

And fireworks ensue.

Hank can’t stop thinking about Beth to the point where he’s afraid of becoming permanently bowlegged. And even though the sexual tension between them is thick enough to trip over, she runs every time he chases.

But when a mysterious developer forces her neighbors off their land, Beth becomes the one person standing between the scoundrel and millions of dollars. Only Hank can help her uncover the truth. Together they risk their lives exposing decades-old secrets and learn that everything is not as it seems in their rural Nebraska town. 

Thanks for letting me stop by – it’s been a real pleasure!

About A DRY CREEK BED: 

Avery Flynn returns to western Nebraska, the setting of her first novel, Up a Dry Creek, to continue the story of the Layton family in her new contemporary romantic suspense novel A DRY CREEK BED, just published as an e-book original by Evernight Publishing.Flynn was inspired by her former hometown for the setting of the fictional town that has been home to the Laytons for generations.   Siblings Claire, Hank, Sam and Chris Layton were introduced in Up a Dry Creek, the story of Claire and her nemesis-turned-hero, Jake Warrick, as was Claire’s friend, Beth Martinez.In A DRY CREEK BED, readers discover Beth Martinez still mourning the deaths of the grandparents who raised her after her parents died in a car accident.  Beth has seen her share of tragedy, including having the dream of starting her own family ripped away from her.  Though quietly in love with Hank for years, she knows they’ll never be together.  Hank, now the Sheriff of Dry Creek County and divorced from his first wife who lied to him about her desire to have children, wants a family, something Beth can never have and can’t give him.  Despite their mutual desire for each other and Hank’s determination to pursue her, she manages to keep him at a distance.All Beth has left of her family is the home built by her grandfather.  So when a mysterious developer makes an offer on the property, she refuses.  Soon she’s receiving threats and can no longer hide what’s happening from Hank.  Forced together by circumstances, it becomes harder and harder for them to rein in their passion.  Suddenly, the stakes go higher. Coercion turns into murder and it’s up to Beth and Hank to uncover who wants the land and why—before they both end up dead.                

In A DRY CREEK BED, Avery Flynn once again brings readers a strong and sexy romantic suspense novel, with plenty of action, engaging characters and an unexpected ending.  

About the Author               

Romantic suspense novelist Avery Flynn’s first Dry Creek novel, Up a Dry Creek, was published in 2011.  Her latest, A DRY CREEK BED, has just been released by Evernight Publishing.  Born and raised in western Nebraska, the setting of her fictional town of Dry Creek, she now lives in the Washington, D.C. metro area.  There she continues to write and work at her day job while enjoying her own happily ever after with her husband, three children and two dogs.  She dreams of one day having a floor-to-ceiling library, à la Beauty and the Beast, and is working to perfect the coffee IV drip.  She is delighted to have her first two books published and to be hard at work on High and Dry Creek, her third Dry Creek novel. 

A DRY CREEK BED, an E-book Original, on Sale Now

http://www.averyflynn.com

http://www.evernightpublishing.com