Highway Man by Eden Winters

Title: Highway Man
Author: Eden Winters
Purchase at Rocky Ridge Books
Purchase at All Romance eBooks
Cover Artist: PD Singer
Genre: contemporary
Length: 15k
Formats: epub, mobi, pdf

Killian Desmond’s dreams died in a flash of pain and the scream of twisted metal. He lost it all the night a tour bus sailed off a mountainside, sending his band—with his brother—to their deaths.

Killian is dead too, if the papers are to be believed, and living a half-life of odd jobs, rodeo rides and pick up gigs. The road that once meant freedom is now Killy’s exile. No strings, no ties, no names for the one-night stands.

Answering a tribute band’s ad thrusts him face to face with his past, and into the arms of the one man who just might understand.

~*~*~*~*

I read this in its first incarnation and loved it then, but in its new form we get about twice as much story and I think I love it about twice as much now. I would not have reviewed again except the new version is double the original word count and with a different thrust. And hotter than the first time around too.

The original was gritty and raw story of a man who’d been eaten by fame and all the shit that comes with it, until tragedy let him step away and into the shadows. We get all that and more here—the man Killy beds but refuses to call by name has a much greater part. In a handful of words Tex shows his soul and his past. Three sentences become enough to show why he’s the perfect man for Killy, who never wanted to let anyone close again.


Killian Desmond's running from his demons -- everyone thinks he's dead and he's content to let them believe it, he'd prefer not to be found and connected with the rock star he was, and he's hiding in plain sight, letting his name and everyone's preconceptions cover him. He's leading a drifter's life, never staying on long, never kissing the one-night stands he finds on the Internet or at a truck-stop, and he probably won't stay til morning anyway.

He won't even call the man he makes a date for sex with by his name --that means remembering, forming a tie. Letting the hurt catch up maybe. Killy will call him Texas instead, and isn't prepared for the quiet acceptance of who he is and why he's running. 

The music Killy’d grown up with and used to define himself gets a rebirth here with Tex’s help, in a concert scene that grabs you by the throat and shakes you until you can’t breathe but still feel like you’re dancing. Hope and music and pain and maybe even some rough-hewn might-become-love jump off the page.

This is a story of pain and coming to terms with it, and getting back a few vital things that were lost, even if some losses can never be made good. Killy and Tex are going to make a future with a saddle, a guitar, an old Ford Bronco and each other. Dayum but Eden Winters gets a lot into fifteen thousand words.