How It Started Read online

  HOW IT STARTED

  (OATH OF BANE, BOOK 7)

  By T. S. JOYCE

  How It Started

  Copyright © 2021 by T. S. Joyce

  Copyright © 2021, T. S. Joyce

  First electronic publication: October 2021

  T. S. Joyce

  www.tsjoyce.com

  All rights are reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the author’s permission.

  NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR:

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental. The author does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for third-party websites or their content.

  Published in the United States of America.

  Editor: Alyxandra Miller

  Other Books in this Series

  How It’s Supposed to Be (Book 1)

  How It Has to Be (Book 2)

  How It’s Meant to Be (Book 3)

  How It Is (Book 4)

  How It Will Be (Book 5)

  How It Was (Book 6)

  Contents

  Copyright

  Other Books in this Series

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Up Next from this Author

  Up Next in the Oath of Bane Series

  Newsletter Sign-Up

  More Series from this Author

  For More from this Author

  About the Author

  Prologue

  Leanna Mitchell lifted the headphones off her ears and frowned at the silence of her office. She could have sworn she’d heard something, but all she could currently hear was the muffled death metal song she had been listening to while she worked. She was the town’s best calligrapher. Technically, she was the town’s only calligrapher, but details, details.

  Thinking herself crazy, Leanna replaced her headphones and bobbed her head to a Slipknot song as she geared up to write the next wedding invitation. God was punishing her for pushing Holly Derdun down in the second grade. Why did she think this? Because she’d been hired to create Holly Derdun’s wedding invites, and who might the groom be? None other than Tyler Applejohn, Leanna’s ex-fiancé.

  Knock, knock, knock!

  Okay, that time she definitely heard something. Leanna yanked her headphones off again, tossed them onto her desk, and bustled toward the front door of her small office. One quick peek at her calendar on the wall said she hadn’t scheduled a consult today, and none of her jobs were due for delivery so what the…Leanna yanked open the door… helloooooooo nurse.

  She stood there, as frozen as an Otter Pop, staring at the most gorgeously masculine creature her eyes had ever had the privilege of ogling.

  He was taller than the door frame, had bright eyes in a strange color of gold, a lopsided grin, short hair and muscles…muscles everywhere. Muscles on his shoulders, stretching out his navy-blue T-shirt, muscles on his pecs, highlighting a perfect line that was just visible in the shadows of that stretched shirt, muscles in his long legs that pressed against the dark jeans he was wearing. He had mud on his boots, but why did that make him more attractive? She would have to clean the trail of dirt smears that followed him from the door down the hallway, all the way across the white tiles to the back room of her office. Those boots had been worked in. He didn’t have tattoos that she could see, and his skin was smooth and tan.

  “Shit, woman, it’s been a while since I’ve been checked out that thoroughly,” the man said. Oh, yum! His voice was deep and commanding and sexy.

  “Heeeeey,” she drawled out in a creepy voice she didn’t even recognize. Oh God, this is what it felt like to crash and burn. She cleared her throat and tried again in a not-so-psychotic tone. “What can I do to you? Do you for?” Do. Better! “What can I do for you?” There it was. There was her professional voice. She plastered a smile on her face.

  “I need some business cards printed for my job. I Like Big Decks.”

  “Pardon?” She’d clearly misheard him.

  “My company is called I Like Big Decks.” He stood up a little prouder. “We build decks. Big ones. Your newspaper ad said you can design logos too. Can you incorporate a cartoon weiner on there somewhere? It’ll piss my boss off.”

  Okay, this was the most interesting project prospect she’d ever considered. “Of course I can do that. And wow, I think you’re the first one ever to have found me in the newspaper. Honestly, I thought I was wasting eleven dollars a month taking out ads. The hometown news doesn’t get as many views as the internet.”

  “Which is sad. The internet is an abyss. The newspaper though? Have you read the police reports section this morning? Some dude got arrested for selling baby raccoons as blue heeler puppies.”

  She laughed and nodded. “That was Frank. It’s a small town, so everyone knows everyone. He probably thought the baby raccoons actually were puppies, too. I’ve never seen that man sober.”

  “Frank sounds like he knows how to party. The police reports are my new favorite entertainment here.”

  “I haven’t seen you before. Are you new in town?”

  “I just moved here from Washington.” He studied the pictures on her bookshelf of the kids she’d nannied. “You sure have a lot of kids.”

  “Oh, they aren’t mine. I mean I was very close to them. I was a nanny, not so long ago,” she explained. Her voice had softened as she looked at the pictures. None of them needed her anymore.

  “You must love kids to have a job like that.”

  “Yeah, I really do. It was hard though. When they aren’t yours, they move on with their lives and leave little holes in your heart when they distance themselves. And the distance is natural. Kids grow up. Anyway, I don’t do that anymore. I had a hard time saying goodbye to the kids, so I started this place up.”

  “Huh. How long have you lived here?” he asked as he took a seat across from her desk and crossed an ankle over his knee. Even just relaxed, leaning back into the chair, there was something big about him. Something that took up more space than he physically did. The whole room seemed crowded, but not in a bad way. Maybe it was his charisma, or the way his yellowish eyes bore straight into her when he asked questions. Privacy was her treasure, but with this man, she actually wanted to answer his questions instead of skirting around them.

  “I’ve lived here my entire life,” she admitted. “It’s probably the cause of all my problems.”

  “Nah, you don’t have problems.” The man spread his arms out. “Look at your place. This is your office, right? You own your business. Leanna’s Design. You’re Leanna?”

  She nodded. She probably should’ve introduced herself earlier. “Leanna Mitchell,” she said as she leaned over her desk and offered her hand for a shake.

  And shake he did, but it was strange. His hand was big and warm and strong, and he held onto her hand for a few seconds after they shook. H
e narrowed his eyes and released her. “Perhaps I’m wrong. You do have problems.”

  “What?”

  “I can feel it.”

  “Oh, so you’re some kind of psychic or something?”

  “Hell no, and thank God. I don’t want to know shit about fuck about my future. I live for the here and now.” He frowned again. “Or I did, before I moved here. Now I’m trying something new.”

  “New how?” Leanna! This man’s life is none of your business!

  “Wrong friends back in Washington. Wrong support system, and no one who matched me.”

  “Matched you how?”

  He shook his head in denial and rested his elbows on his knees as he leaned forward. “I’m Amos Henry.” He twitched his chin at the invitations stacked neatly on her desk in different phases of completion. “Did you draw those?”

  This. This was what she enjoyed talking about. Leanna lifted a calligraphy pen out of the inkwell and gently tapped off the excess ink before she set the tip to paper and wrote out in looping letters, request the honor of your presence on July Twentieth.

  “An artist,” he said, arching his eyebrows and nodding like he was impressed. “Do you ever use traditional quills?”

  “Oh, I used to, but I’m extremely picky about them, and finding the right kind of feathers is hard.”

  “Hmm,” he grunted with a thoughtful expression on his chiseled features. “Do you ever mess up?”

  “Not often anymore.”

  He pointed to her pile of throwaways. “Then what happened there?”

  Leanna’s shoulders slumped and she sighed. “Those mistakes are all just me being in my own head about this project. Admission, I didn’t want to take this job at all.”

  “Why not?”

  He sure asked a lot of questions. She didn’t yet know if she liked his forwardness or not. “Because I know the couple.”

  “Ooooh, small town drama, everyone knows everyone.” Amos leaned back again and grinned. “Lay it on me, Leanna. I have to wait a whole day to read the newspaper again. Give me the dirt. How do you know them?”

  Leanna scrunched up her nose and changed the subject. “Here is the price list for business cards. I do them in increments of fifty, and the more you order, the more of a discount I’ll give you. They won’t be handwritten but I can design them, with approval from you, and payment is due when the cards are completed. I’ll be printing them out on that big printer over there.” She pointed to a printer she’d named Big Bertha when she dragged it in here two years ago, after her life had fallen apart and she’d taken a hard right turn into this career. Big Bertha had been her first big purchase, and had been the beginning of her creating a completely new life for herself. Big Bertha was her best friend.

  Amos slid a thoughtful look to the printer, and back to Leanna, then down to the partially written invitation in front of her. “This couple was mean to you?”

  Why did that touch her heart? That a stranger would care if someone was mean to her?

  She exhaled a sigh. “The groom is my ex-fiancé. I had invitations just like these made for him and I, so it’s strange to be writing them out for him and someone else. It just brings back a lot of memories, I guess.”

  “Oh, shit.” He cracked his knuckles, and asked, “Why would you take this job?”

  “Because we’re okay. We’re sort of friends. I understood why he ended us. I mean, after I was done being pissed and keying his truck.” Her cheeks flushed with heat. “I went a little crazy from the heartbreak for a few days.”

  “As you should. Ex-fiancé. And you got far enough into planning to have invites made. If he was going to cut you loose? He should’ve done that way before you got to that point.”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged it off. “Oh well. It was a couple years ago, and I’m totally over the embarrassment. Eventually I didn’t feel like my heart was being stepped on every time I saw him in public. He was considerate enough to wait a while to move on, so it wasn’t shoved in my face. He isn’t a bad guy, he’s just not the right guy for me. A marriage would’ve been tough. He did the right thing.”

  “By your tone, I can tell you don’t mean that.” He pointed to his ear. “I have good hearing. Are you going to the wedding?”

  “I’m invited. It might be weird though. My sister thinks I should go and hold my head up high and act like nothing phases me.”

  “What do you want to do?”

  She clamped her mouth closed in surprise. “I haven’t been asked that in a very long time.” Leanna thought about it. “Honestly, I don’t know. It’s a quick wedding, happening in just a few weeks. Feels like everyone will be watching my response. We were the couple in town, you know? The ones who were going to make it and stay here and have a bunch of kids and go to town meetings and be one of the families deeply involved in the community. I kind of pulled out of all that and have been quiet for the last couple years. Just working on my business, eat, sleep, go out on Fridays with my friends, taking my sister’s dog to the park when I need to get out into the sunshine. Every day is planned before I wake up, and that’s what has been working for me. I made sure my life is simple. Going to the wedding will shake up feelings I don’t want to shake up. I’ll probably work that day and listen to music to drown out the past stuff, and eat a salad from Pete’s Subs for lunch and go home and get in my pajamas and watch old action movies with about seven pounds of popcorn.”

  “Sounds like a good day. It also sounds safe.”

  “Safe is what I want. If I keep my life simple, it doesn’t hurt.”

  “Darlin’, life is supposed to hurt sometimes so you can learn to appreciate the good stuff.”

  She didn’t know what to say. She liked that he had called her darlin’ in that rich baritone voice, but more than that, he’d said something profound.

  He leaned forward and with dancing eyes, he said, “I think you need my number.”

  “Oh, I’m…I’m not dating right now.”

  His grin stretched wider. “Me either. Probably. I mean for the business cards.”

  “Oh. Oh!” She snapped out of that canyon-deep conversation-mode and fumbled for a blank information sheet.

  “I’ve got it,” he said easily as he scribbled his number and email address onto one of the invitations she’d messed up and crumpled in frustration.

  “By the way,” he said, handing it to her. “That dude did you a favor. His name is stupid.”

  “Tyler Applejohn?”

  A wicked grin stretched his face as he stood. “Your last name could’ve been Crappledong.”

  She snorted and coughed softly to hide the laugh, then stood to follow him out. “Oh my gosh, now I’ll probably accidentally write that onto his invitations.”

  “And now every time you see his last name, you will say Crappledong in your mind, and you can think of me.” Amos turned at the door and offered his hand out again. “It was nice to meet you.”

  Leanna hesitated to shake it. He was stirring up a curiosity in her that she hadn’t felt in so long. It was dangerous to touch him.

  But he was a patient hunter and waited, chin high, those yellow-gold eyes staring right into her soul, his hand out and steady, a slight and handsome smile tugging at the corners of his lips. It would be rude not to shake it. Her cheeks on fire, she slipped her hand into his, and the second she did, he lifted it to his lips and pressed a kiss onto her knuckles. “Go to the wedding,” he told her. “Wear something sexy. Smile the whole time even if you don’t feel like it. Let the town watch you be all right.” He released her hand and did an about face, and sauntered down the hallway with the most confident gait she’d ever seen on a man. “Oh, and don’t forget the cartoon dick on my business cards,” he called without turning around.

  Then he was out the building exit, and she was left to stand in the open doorway wondering what the hell had just happened.

  Chapter One

  Amos was going to be late.

  He was almost out of business cards, s
o he grabbed some from the cardboard container next to his computer and slid them onto his clipboard. His entire business set-up was on one of those rickety folding tables he’d constructed near the kitchen. Crappy table, but his computer was new and did everything he needed for the new job.

  Three estimates were scheduled for today, and he wouldn’t be surprised if Nuke got called last-minute for more.

  His friend, Nuke, couldn’t be trusted to handle meeting customers for the design process or giving quotes for the decks and repair work they wanted on account of him being grumpy, uncharismatic, and barely in control of a motherfreaking dragon inside of him. So…Amos had taken it upon himself to handle this part of the business.

  Starting this deck company had been exhausting. He’d never realized all it took to get a business off the ground, between marketing, meetings, project permits, hiring a finance team, constant estimates, and actually building the decks, but he loved it. He truly did. He liked the chaos and each day being different, as well as the challenges that came with construction. Plus, it kept him out of trouble. And Nuke, for the most part, too. Keeping that old dragon busy was at the top of his list, so he and the others in this newly formed Crew could actually survive.

  Every time he picked up a new stack of cards, he thought about the designer. Leanna. He couldn’t help it. She’d been so interesting and open, and good God she was sexy. Brunette hair highlighted with blonde streaks, full lips, pretty brown eyes framed with infinite dark eyelashes. The high cheekbones, the cute nose, her heart-shaped face. Ugh. But that body. Curves for days, an hourglass figure, perfect ass for grabbing, and soft tits pushing up out of that V-neck shirt that had his dick hard half the time he was trying to concentrate on a conversation with her. He even appreciated the splashes of green paint on her hands from whatever artwork she’d been doing that day.

  There were a few problems, though.

  One, she was completely uninterested in him. She’d been short and professional in every email they’d exchanged about the business cards, she’d never used the phone number he’d given her, and she’d had the cards delivered to his trailer so he didn’t have to come pick them up. She’d even sent him an invoice through email so he could pay electronically. Those weren’t the power moves of an interested woman.