Winning my Best Friend's Girl - Piper Rayne Page 0,91
chips at my defenses.
I nod and walk back toward the entrance to Terra and Mare.
“Sedona?”
I circle back to face him.
“Is she deaf?”
I nod and move to open the door, but my curiosity gets the better of me. “How do you know how to sign?”
“My uncle was deaf.”
So there’s the answer to the question about Palmer’s deafness.
He must see me trying to remember ever meeting his uncle because he says, “He died when I was over here during senior year, remember?”
Vaguely, but we had so much going on trying to figure out how we would stay together after high school ended. Though now that I’m thinking about it, I vaguely remember him missing the funeral because his family couldn’t afford the airfare home.
“Bye, Jamison,” I say.
He raises his hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I open the door and disappear into Terra and Mare. Holly and Austin are opening the presents. I want to thank my sisters and sisters-in-law for spurring them to continue on and not have everyone waiting for me. I sneak into the room, sliding into a chair in the back row.
Palmer slides off of Stella’s lap and climbs up onto me. The one thing I miss now that I’m so pregnant is the fact that I can’t get her as close as I want when I hug her. She nuzzles up in my arms and rests her head on my belly because it’s her nap time.
Phoenix sits next to me and grabs my hand in hers, conveying that we’ll get through this. I know she believes that. I run my hand through Palmer’s hair and watch her breathing become shallower and shallower as she drifts off to sleep.
Oh baby girl, our world just blew up and you don’t even know it. But rest assured, I’ll never allow him to hurt you the way he’s hurt me. That’s a promise.
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Whoa, that story was all kinds of emotion, wasn’t it? At one point in the middle of the story Rayne thought to herself, is this even funny? But as any of our faithful Piper Rayne fans know, we try to be true to the characters. Kingston and Stella just had too much of a past, and their love was so deep it felt more emotional than funny a lot of the time.
We’ve had all the Bailey covers ready to go since book one. Stella and Kingston’s photograph is one of our favorites but we’re not going to lie, we were worried about the backlash of two white women writing a black heroine. We’ve seen the comments on Facebook—some people think books should be more diverse regardless of the race of who is writing them and others disagree. But we just didn’t feel like the reality would be that out of nine kids, they would all marry in their same race. We had trouble finding photographs of interracial couples but fell in love with Stella and Kingston’s photo as soon as we saw it. (Are you listening photographers? Please start shooting more interracial couples!!!) Because of our concern, we reached out to diversity editor, Renita McKinney, for her help. She’s an amazing woman and she helped us tremendously with this book! We also had three sensitivity readers go through the book and we owe them a huge thanks as well—Amber L. Cotton, Isha Coleman and LaToya Toney-Walterhouse. Any issues within these pages are on us, not anyone else.
When we decided on writing this story line, I’m not sure we thought it was going to toe the line of second chance romance. Originally, we thought maybe Stella would work at the local bar but then that would mean she would’ve always been in Lake Starlight. But as we teased Kingston and Stella’s story and brought Owen in, it quickly turned into something bigger. It wasn’t just a my best friend’s girl trope because Kingston had been friends with her too. Good friends. The best of friends. Add in the fact that they weren’t getting their HEA until book eight and we knew they couldn’t both live in the same town for that long and never get together. And so Stella left for school and didn’t return for a long time.
One of our secrets is, we came up with their past while writing this book. We knew something huge had to have happened for Stella to run but we had no idea what until we started WMBFG. Thankfully, because we kept Kingston and his history with Stella vague in previous stories, we didn’t write ourselves into a corner.
Rayne did a shit ton of research on the crazy ass stunts Kingston loves. She watched video after video wanting it to seem authentic because she’d never dream of doing any of them, but she admires those who do. You can go to YouTube and look up speedriding down mountains or bore tide in Anchorage. You can even see the Alaska Adventure Race. Alaska is so beautiful and all the videos show how lucky the Baileys are to live there.
Our team deserves HUGE HUGS, who if not for them, we’d never be able to get these books to you!
Danielle Sanchez and the entire Wildfire Marketing Solutions team!
Renita McKinney for her diversity edit.
Cassie from Joy Editing for line edits.
Ellie from My Brother’s Editor for line edits.
Shawna from Behind the Writer for proofreading.
Our sensitivity readers— Amber L. Cotton, Isha Coleman and LaToya Toney-Walterhouse.
Sarah from Okay Creations for the cover and branding for the entire series.
Sara from Sara Eirew Photography for the super sexy picture of Juno and Colton.
Bloggers who consistently carve out time to read, review and/or promote us.
Our Piper Rayne Unicorns who champion this series to others with their whole hearts.
You the reader who took a chance on our book with so many choices out there!
We’re already tearing up just thinking about Sedona’s book. The last full-length book in The Bailey series. UGH. But Jamison is back and the Bailey brothers aren’t on the welcoming committee, that’s for sure. We can’t wait to see how it all unfolds. Bet you can’t either. ;)
XO,
Piper & Rayne
About the Author
Piper Rayne, or Piper and Rayne, whichever you prefer because we’re not one author, we’re two. Yep, you get two USA Today Bestselling authors for the price of one. Our goal is to bring you romance stories that have "Heartwarming Humor With a Side of Sizzle" (okay...you caught us, that's our tagline). A little about us... We both have kindle’s full of one-clickable books. We're both married to husbands who drive us to drink. We're both chauffeurs to our kids. Most of all, we love hot heroes and quirky heroines that make us laugh, and we hope you do, too.
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Also by Piper Rayne
The Baileys
Lessons from a One-Night Stand
Advice from a Jilted Bride
Birth of a Baby Daddy
Operation Bailey Wedding (Novella)
Falling for My Brother’s Best Friend
Demise of a Self-Centered Playboy
Confessions of a Naughty Nanny
Operation Bailey Babies (Novella)
Secrets of the World’s Worst Matchmaker
Winning My Best Friend’s Girl
Rules for Dating your Ex
The Modern Love World
Charmed by the Bartender
Hooked by the Boxer
Mad about the Banker
The Single Dad’s Club
Real Deal
Dirty Talker
Sexy Beast
Hollywood Hearts
Mister Mom
Animal Attraction
Domestic Bliss
Bedroom Games
Cold as Ice
On Thin Ice
Break the Ice
Box Set
Charity Case
Manic Monday
Afternoon Delight
Happy Hour
Blue Collar Brothers
Flirting with Fire
Crushing on the Cop
Engaged to the EMT
White Collar Brothers
Sexy Filthy Boss
Dirty Flirty Enemy
Wild Steamy Hook-up
The Rooftop Crew
My Bestie’s Ex
A Royal Mistake
The Rival Roomies
Our Star-Crossed Kiss
The Do-Over
A Co-Workers Crush