A Hero in the Making

Montana Secrets #6

by Kay Stockham

After all Skylar Mathews has been through recently, she only wants her son, Cody, to get better. And visiting Montana is supposed to accomplish that. Yet thanks to the unexpected and larger-than-life presence of Marcus Whitefeather, her plan could be in jeopardy. She can't indulge the sparks flaring between them because reuniting with him is not an option. Not with the secret they share.

But when Cody doesn't improve, Marcus suggests the unthinkable—that they reveal the truth. Everything else has failed so maybe this will work. But how can Skylar be sure? With her son's welfare at stake, Marcus has to prove he's the hero she and Cody need him to be.

Genres: Romance, Contemporary, Harlequin, Contemporary Romance, M F Romance, Category Romance

288 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 2012

About the author

Kay Lyons Stockham is an award-winning author of 25+ books published by Harlequin Enterprises, Berkley Publishing and Kindred Spirits Publishing. She has also been a Book Buyers Best, HOLT Medallion and RITA Award finalist with a million books in print.

For more information on Kay's work, please visit her website at http://www.kaystockham.com or find her at one of the following:

Kay Lyons Stockham, Author (FB)
@KayStockham (Twitter)
Kay Stockham (Authorgraph)
Kay Lyons Stockham (Pinterest)

Reviews

[Ellie · Rating 1 out of 5]

You must be joking.

This heroine is a serious contender for doormat of the year. Disappointing, because she seemed stronger at first.
I was giving her credit she didn't deserve.

So, check it out. She and the H were hot and heavy since high school. Going to be married, etc. You know the types.
Well, hero Marcus gets drafted to the NFL and starts pressuring heroine Skylar into marriage - to ditch college, give up her own life and dreams to live on the road with him whilst he lives his.
Selfish much?
So, after fighting repeatedly over this, Skylar tells Marcus that they should take a break. She does NOT break up with him. She does NOT tell him they are over.
Literally hours later, she goes back to see him and make up, and finds him balls deep in a girl he picked up in a bar.
WHO DOES THAT?!?

Obvs, they break up for real. In the meantime, Marcus gets hit on the field, breaks his back, and is permanently paralysed from the knees down. Skylar also learns she's pregnant at the same time. She goes to see Marcus in his hospital room to tell him. Marcus flips his shit, screams at her to leave and never come back, that he doesn't want her or the kid. Adios, sayonara, GTFO.
She marries some older, sick dude who dies when the kid is 7. She then goes back home, having never been back. Her family 'conveniently' doesn't tell her that Marcus moved back some time ago. They don't know why she and Marcus broke up or that the kid is actually his - but wouldn't you know? When they find out what HE did to her, they side.with.him. They side with this selfish, cheating fucker and berate her for keeping the kid to herself!
I can't even.

So now, this kid, Cody is a proper BRAT who lives in a fantasy world that his mother enables. I don't buy the whole 'father dying,' grief explanation for the way this kid acted. He was a rude, spoilt wee scunner and needed a good switching across his bum. His poor behaviour was totally on his mum, who by then was starting to piss me off.

The story goes on to a lot of pushing by Marcus and a lot of resisting by Skylar. She put up a decent fight until he tried to kiss her and then? You guessed it. Betraying body syndrome (BBS).
This went on a good while, with Marcus alternating between threatening her with lawyers, to apologising repeatedly, to demanding she give up the life, job and home she loved and move back to where he was!
I applauded her for planting her feet and saying no, she wouldn't sacrifice her life for him 8 years ago, she wouldn't do it now. But then Marcus has a slight accident and this stupid cow makes such a sudden about-face I got whiplash.

So, the upshot is the knobhead hero cheats on her because she wouldn't lose herself in his ambition, throws her and their child away and doesn't even try to fix it UNTIL she conveniently comes home for a visit. Then he's all, "I never stopped loving you, I made a terrible mistake, I'll never forgive myself, I've missed all this time with my son," blah blah, blah.
Yeah, cry me a river, pal.

And in the last 5% of the book...the idiot heroine gives up her entire life that she built in New York - for him. He sacrifices NOTHING and gets it all, she sacrifices everything and gets the booby prize. A man who cheated within hours after a fight and then rejected her and their unborn child. In addition, he disregards her dreams and desires because clearly his are so much loftier and important.
You go, girl.

This story was frustrating and insulting, and I've already spent too much time bitching over characters I don't give a toss about.
Don't recommend, especially not for the safety gals. Because cheating dick head.

[Veronica WordsAreMyDrinkOfChoice · Rating 1 out of 5]

Currently reading! Marcus is beyond disgusting! I am currently reading him throw in the heroine’s face about how she slept with a married man! May sound bad, but we are
Told how she was seduced by a friends married father who wanted revenge sex against his wife. But the real kicker is the heroine was 14! Yet she feels guilty! The hero is scum, this was statutory rape and abuse, and he is trying to shame her for it!
Skylar’s mother is a joke, beyond redemption to me, no wonder she never turns to her. She would have Skylar suck up her pain and betrayal and forced into marrying Marcus years ago, even if it destroyed her!

[Christy Stewart · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, this is about a crippled man falling in love with a small Aryan child who together wheelchair race into lands where their love is legal.

No, but actually it's a Hallmark type of romance where a woman has recently lost her husband and their young son now believes they will become a family of vampires so she decides to truck them off to the middle of nowhere to rehabilitate him at the ranch for disabled people and horses.

Spoiler alert: there were no vampires.

[Vanessa · Rating 1 out of 5]

Oh the drama!! I read the review of this one over on another site – it wasn’t good. I have to agree w/ them on a lot of points though. It really did feel like EVERYONE was against Skylar and for Marcus. Marcus had made a mistake in pushing Skylar for more than she was willing to give him eight years before. He was playing pro ball and wanted her to give up all for him and travel w/ him, she needed a “break” – wanted to think and get her head on straight, and he decided that meant he could take OW to their semi-warm bed. Yes, Skylar caught him and they were through. However, she soon realizes she needs to tell him something and approaches him to relay the news – yep a bun in her oven. Did Marcus step up to the plate? Nope! He kicked her out and didn’t want anyone to EVER know about that bun! She was on her own. Skylar feeling like a failure and not wanting to appear like it again with her family soon married an older dying man to help her raise her child and give him a family that he couldn’t have.

It go so annoying that her family who aren’t counselors were telling her what to do and she couldn’t figure it out on her own. Yes, I know she is too close to the situation but not one of them was trained and frankly, her mom really irked me!! I didn’t like the fact that while Marcus “made a mistake” and wanted to put things right, he NEVER went in search of Skylar and their child. She has to return to his home turf and he wants to start things all over again. It felt like a venus flytrap waiting for the fly!! I didn’t like the re-writing of history that he tended to do and I especially didn’t like Skylar’s mom interference and wanting Skylar to have hung around waiting for Marcus to come to her senses when mom didn’t have a great r/s w/ her own father NOR did she seem to give her first hubby a lot of chances. But what really, REALLY IRKED me and made me question EVERY single person in this book was the story of Rick!!

****SPOILERS****

(Rick was the father of a friend from school and Skylar hooked up w/ him thinking he cared for her. Rick was estranged from his wife and was looking for revenge hanky panky. Apparently his wife had been messing around w/ Skylar’s father! Marcus points it out to Skylar at one point calling it a mistake that she made in the past. Okay seems fair. However the big flashing DEATHCON one that was flashing for me was that she was FOURTEEN!!! Rick was a grown MAN! Skylar was under the age of consent! Yet not one dang person in this entire story EVER thought that it was wrong. They deemed it an “affair”, they claimed that Skylar got involved w/ older men – NEVER once did they think that was wrong on so many levels. Her mother, the saint, didn’t even file charges against this man!! It was all a fourteen year old’s fault!! All of it!!)

So while I can plausibly consider forgiving Marcus w/ some heavy duty groveling and the no interference of people that wouldn’t know a disturbing r/s if it hit them on the nose, I can NOT get past what they allowed to occur to a fourteen year old. Nor the fact that they act as though it was a “mistake” that Skylar made and Rick walked away scot-free! Skylar can NOT catch a break, always blamed for something.

Just NO!!!!

[Jacqueline J · Rating 4 out of 5]

One of the best books dealing with a disabled person that I've read. Having no real world experience I can't say for sure all the details were right but it felt and seemed realistic to me. I liked the fact that the hero being in a wheel chair was not the crux around which the story revolved. It wasn't yet another 'strong but bitter man needs the heroine to help him cope with life in a wheelchair.' He'd already coped on his own although it had taken him many years. But he was whole in spirit and had a good life, etc.

They had some pretty tragic past history where both carried some fault but I will say that it seemed as if most of it was his fault and he was truly sorry and apologized sufficiently. I wanted her to forgive him sooner but that was her issue that she wouldn't.

Well written, tightly plotted. It was interesting and moved right along. I'd be interested in going back and reading the stories of some of the others who've obviously had their own stories.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fantastic book. Both Skylar and Marcus were terrific characters. Both were dealing with very real issues, and I felt that the book portrayed them realistically. Their parting eight years earlier was not pleasant, and it was nice to see that both were shown to be at fault. I also liked seeing the way that Marcus had changed, and that it had been a long process, not an overnight "see the light". Skylar also showed that she was not innocent in the matter, and was still holding on to the past. I really enjoyed seeing Marcus's patience as he tried to develop a relationship with Cody, and to repair his relationship with Skylar.

[Courtney · Rating 4 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this standalone romance! I’ve read a couple others in this series and this one definitely didn’t disappoint. I enjoyed the development of the second chance romance between the main characters. The only drawback was the heroine’s eagerness to fight the inevitable. But HEA nonetheless!! Good read!

[Jane · Rating 2 out of 5]

ALTERNATE TITLE AND PACKAGING! Same book as “A Hero in the Making” by Kay Stockham.

[Moria · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the most empty and unsatisfying novels I've read in a long time. The main character Skylar is horrible. Marcus is like a rough draft of a character whose details were never filled in. The rest of the cast exist purely to move the "plot" forward.

A quick note, it seems most agree the cover is terrible. Cringeworthy actually. I really want to tear it off & throw it away. Who thought it would sell books?

I've read some of the other North Star books but not one with Skylar. All I know is she's incredibly unlikeable, immature, & selfish. I even thought about stopping early on, she's so awful. Instead I started skimming page after page of her rationalizing her skewed point of view to everyone. Unfortunately not much happens besides Skylar bickering and stressing with everyone she encounters. The few events that do happen are incredibly cliched.

Basically when they were around 21 Skylar broke up with Marcus, so he went out & had a one night stand. To her, this was the ultimate betrayal that she's held against him for almost a decade. A short time later, he's critically injured & becomes paraplegic. A DAY or so later, Skylar goes to the hospital & tells him she's pregnant. His first thought after his injury is to push her away.

She's a teen counsellor yet she seems unaware that people who suffer such injuries commonly push people away and can only focus on themselves. So we hear endlessly how terrible Marcus was for "cheating" on her "while they were on a break" (sorry, Friends turned that plot point into a joke years ago) yet she bears zero guilt for abandoning him after his injury. She turned it all around to be about her.

A WEEK later she marries another man, moves to NYC, & refuses to have anything to do with Marcus, including keeping his son from him & telling everyone her husband is the father. What follows is page after page of how hard HER life has been and how horrible Marcus is. See, the man she married out of convenience & not love (it seems they both wanted to have someone take care of them & she wanted the security of his money) - he knew he was dying of a genetic disease. Now most people know how hard it can be on a child to watch a parent deal with serious illnes and then die. Skylar chose to put Cody through that but, again, no guilt. When her mother brings it up she says she thought he would die years earlier before Cody could get so attached!

Unfortunately, it seems pretty easy to understand how an injury like Marcus' could effect a young man's ego. One can understand why he figured Skylar & Cody were better off without him in the first few years and not go after her. Yet the author doesn't go into any of that. Much of what he's been through is barely discussed or seems to have had much impact on him. (FYI no one with his sort of injury would use a hydraulic lift to get into his car. Also his cliched very low injury that left all the "crucial parts" working fine had me rolling my eyes.)

Typical of bad romances, he's a virtual superman: impossibly good looking, he not only was a pro-football player but he'd won a Superbowl by age 21 or 22, then he becomes an incredibly successful sculptor and a world-class wheelchair athlete. Yet he's only ever pined for Selfish Skylar. Her only redeeming quality is how much he wants her sexually.

The delusional, violent kid storyline (and the way Skylar coddles him) is beyond tedious. At one point he beats up a little girl because she laughed at one of his delusions. It turns out it's not even the first time he's attacked a child. Yet for all the trouble he gets in he may as well have refused to share a toy.

When he finally is told the truth of his parentage, Skylar does it by telling him the man who raised him as his own for 7 years wasn't his "real father". She calls him his stepfather and instead says Marcus is his real dad. Supporters of adoption would love it.

Another example of Skylar's skill as a teen counsellor - at almost 30 she discovers a bully she knew in high school has reformed and made friends with many in town. Her response is "you can't believe her crap" and to believe people just don't change like that. SHE'S A TEEN COUNSELLOR.

And yes, her SEXUAL ABUSE at age 14 by a friend's father is treated like an adult affair that didn't work out. Her family merely mention it by saying she "into older men".

The point is these don't seem like real people, just contrived situations created to produce a book. Nor does one care about any of them. I had other books by this author on my to be read list but I'm so disgusted by this book I'm deleting them all.

[Lorie - Bookaholic · Rating 5 out of 5]

Eight years of sacrifice

"Oh my goodness I didn't expect what I read." It was actually scary to say the least. Poor Cody!

Kay Lyons did it again! She is such an amazing writer and one never knows what to expect next.

From the story:

'Yes. She wanted some. She wanted Marcus's softness, his sincerity. His live and strength and that tough outer shell that didn't disguise the man beneath. She didn't have to lose herself in him. All this time, she'd thought that kind of live made a person weak but -- she felt stronger now. That's why Marcus wanted them with him in Atlanta while he trained for the Olympics, because they made him stronger.

Thank goodness Cody came out of his shell and accepted who his real dad was.

"Daddy won! Mom, Daddy won! They said his name! He won! He won!"

Keep reading all you book lovers!

[Debbie DiFiore · Rating 1 out of 5]

He cheated and she married someone else!

That is the point of the book. I couldn't belie e in either of them. It was a good writing but I just hated everything about it. The kid was really having issues. He thought he was a vampire and that his Father was a vampire and that he,was coming back from him but it just was so not what I was expecting. The whole she broke up with him, and then came back two hours later and he already had slept with some skank from a bar just tripped a trigger for me. And I honestly wish I had never read it. I should have read reviews. Ugh.

[Jayne Tracy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Both were very immature when their son was conceived. Skylar has a history of making bad decisions since high school and seems to have resisted growing up. Marcus had a tragic accident, adjusted, and really grew up. My own bias is that Skylar works in a public school but her son has to attend a private school that is 100 times better than public schools.

[Diana C. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Their Secret Son

This couple has been through trying times but have persevered waiting on each other. They both needed time to wait out some growing pains. Then add their son into the mix.

[Sheila Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

Heartwarming

A wonderful and totally inspiring story. Ms. Lyons story is so honest and her characters and dialogue so believable that it stays with you long after you've finished the last word.

[Karla · Rating 5 out of 5]

Growing

An interesting book with looks at how life choices can change as you grow and get more experience. This gives you a look at how things change as you learn how to deal with the adversity thrown your way.

[theStorykeeper · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF @ 12%

MMC is unredeemable, FMC isn't great either, kid isn't cute (and let's be real, we read romances with kids in them mostly to awe), writing is cringy

[Bernadine Sydow · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can do anything

This is a great story about accomplishing anything if you put your whole heart and soul in it and also a great romance.

[Evelyn Derenzy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Loved this story of finding the one who makes life happy and exciting after too many years apart.

[Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice book, very angsty. The hero and heroine have a past, and a son together. As shown in the cover, the hero, an ex-pro-football player, is wheelchair bound due to a bad hit in a game. The heroine found out she was pregnant right after the accident and the hero reacted badly, so she married someone else, a man with a terminal disease. So now the husband is dead and the boy is not coping well. The heroine goes home to her family in Montana in hopes it will help, but the hero is there and he wants to change the deal.

I have a few quibbles, like the deal with the 14-year-old girl and the adult male mentioned in my progress report, and the extreme unlikelihood of a Native American man having a blond child no matter how blond mom is... I have that black-haired white-skinned (early gray) Irish coloring and the blondest kid my very blond fella and I ever got was a caramel brown that bleached out in summer when he was little. Admittedly, my Japanese-American ex-sister-in-law had a brown-haired green-eyed girl with her second spouse, but it's still not white blond. Knew a freckled strawberry blond with a Latino-Native-American hubby whose kids looked just like her except for their black hair and brown eyes... But it was mostly possible to suspend my disbelief because it's a good, angsty, romance-y story. I liked it a lot and quibbles just can't do much.

[Jon Nottingham · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading the series, Skylar was the only left out person until now. She returns to the area bringing her son and has to face family and the real father of her son. All of the insecurities of Skylar and the story of how she and Marcus had loved and split was revealed. Marcus's story was heartbreaking but inspirational and to watch his son learn about his father and their relationship to develop was great. As a disabled paraplegic who works on the Ranch that was where he had met Skylar back in High School was unique and a great story idea. Skylar's son is dealing with the death of his step father and is having real difficulties adjusting. Stockham takes the in-depth pasts, tragedies, heartaches and consequences and really develops this book. One of her bests.

[Selina · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was very well written. The characters were all very unique and all of their reasonings and motivations were very clear. Skylar annoyed me at times with her stubborn attitude, but I could see where she was coming from. Surprisingly, this ending didn't seem super rushed. I would have liked to see more, obviously, but I felt that it was very well paced.

[Emilie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the latest one in a series as of January 2012. Now I want to go back and read some of the earlier ones in the series, because a lot of characters who had had their own books appeared in this one.

[Darlene Torday · Rating 4 out of 5]

A different kind of love story. Former lover, secret baby, and dealing with the loss of a husband all in one. Enter a former star quarterback now an artist and in a wheelchair. I loved the story as the both work through past problems. The hero reminds me of the book "A man like Mac".

[Elsie Weihrauch · Rating 5 out of 5]

Such a good book

I loved this story. Miss Lyons is a newer author for me but I've already read seven of her books and have loved them all. I appreciate that she brings the story to a real conclusion and doesn't leave me wondering like some times do.

[Harlequin Books]

Miniseries: North Star, Montana

[Harlequin Books]

Miniseries: North Star, Montana