I will publish Secret Child (Book 8, Texas; Children of Destiny) August 19.

I include a brief excerpt from Chapter 1 that paints a portrait of Jack West, the hero.

Jack West awoke with a start, his black gaze as alert as a cat's as he glanced fiercely about his cheap, San Antonio motel room. He half expected to find himself back in cell block C, a knife-tip against his throat, a murderer's legs straddling his waist. But he was alone. And safe.

Even so, his heart pounded a few seconds longer, his senses having been honed by constant danger.

He felt the familiar loneliness close over him. It was deep and dark, but he surrendered to it.

The name Jack West had once meant something in south Texas. He'd been rich and famous. He’d had a beautiful wife.
No more.

Jack West. Crisp, prison-cropped black hair. Dark brooding eyes that could flame with hate or go as cold as ice and stare straight through his enemy.

Before prison he'd been tough.

After prison his carved face and tall, muscular body were harder and leaner. Scars crisscrossed his broad back from the night he'd gotten drunk on smuggled gin with a black inmate named Brickhouse.

When Jack had sobered up, he'd been in lockdown. He'd been badly beaten and slashed. He'd had vague memories of being held down while Brickhouse used a ballpoint pen and a sewing needle to tattoo matching hunting knives onto their forearms. There had been even cloudier memories being jumped by six inmates with knives.

Jack's once healthy, dark skin was sallow, and the scars on his back were nothing compared to the ones on his soul. He couldn't forget that even before his conviction,

Theodora had thrown him off the ranch, seized his daughter and cut him off from his old life forever. Once he’d almost believed his life might count for something, after all.

No more.

Jack West wasn't much different than a dead man.