The Last Second Chance: A Small Town Love Story (Blue Moon Book 3) Read Online Free Page A

opportunities arose. He’d carved out a comfortable life for himself on the west coast. A nice house in the hills, the phone numbers of several aspiring actresses and models, invitations to the hottest events. But it hadn’t been enough.
    No matter how fat his bank account or who was on his arm on the red carpet, something was always missing.
    When he found the picture of Joey—all cocky grin and long, long legs—that Summer had posted on her blog last June, he’d booked a red-eye home. Nothing would ever be enough without her. So he’d plant roots here with his brothers on the land his father had loved. And he would make it all up to them. Especially Joey.
    She’d kissed him last night. A smile tugged at the corner of his lips. It had been a power play on her part, but it still counted. Joey didn’t do things she didn’t want to do. And for the first time since he’d come home, Jax felt hope. She still wanted him.
    And now that he’d had a taste of her, he wasn’t going to stop.
    A commotion from below had him snapping back to reality and shoving thoughts of Joey and her wicked mouth aside.
    He found Franklin, his mother’s fiancé and Gia’s father, directing a symphony of chaos on the lower level. He was a bear of a man, broad shoulders and generous proportions. Today he was wearing a long-sleeve Hawaiian shirt with hula girls and sharks on it. He held a cellphone to his ear while carrying on a conversation with a delivery guy and rolling silverware into paper napkins.
    Jax sighed with relief. Franklin, Blue Moon’s most successful restaurateur, had volunteered to help the brothers set up for the opening. And thank God for that because Jax was just starting to realize that they were dangerously close to being in over their heads.
    “Morning,” Franklin greeted him from the center of the chaos.
    “Morning. I thought you’d take a few hours off this morning to recover from the festivities last night.” Not only had he walked Gia down the aisle, but Franklin also sang a convincing Sinatra tune with Fran’s band.
    “I’ve been thrown out of my own house,” he lamented with a chuckle, signing the delivery slip. “Eva and Emma commandeered Phoebe and the kids.”
    “Poor Evan,” Jax said, thinking of Gia’s twelve-year-old son trapped in a house full of women. “I’ll have Beckett swing by and pick him up before he comes in this afternoon.”
    “My grandson will be eternally grateful.”
    “Yeah, especially if I let him hang out with Joey for a while today,” Jax said, whipping out his phone and firing off a quick text to Beckett.
    Franklin chuckled. “He’s got good taste. Seems like you do, too.”
    “All of us Pierce men do,” Jax said evasively.
    “Do what?” his older brother Carter said strolling through the downstairs door.
    “Have good taste in women,” Franklin grinned.
    Carter lit up as he always did at the thought of his wife. “You know, I seem to recall Jax and Joey disappearing from the reception right around the same time,” he said stroking his beard.
    Franklin’s eyes sparkled. “That’s right. The photographer was looking for you two for the countdown to midnight.”
    Jax looked at his feet. He sure as hell wasn’t about to give his family any ammunition over him and Joey, not when he finally felt like he had a shot.
    “What are you doing here so early?” Jax asked Carter, ignoring his brother and Franklin’s speculation. “Shouldn’t you be hovering over Summer for launch day?”
    Carter shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. “She kicked me out. Said I was driving her nuts. She’s being eerily calm.”
    The brothers knew from experience that a calm Summer was a dangerous Summer. It meant she was burying all her stress and pretending everything was just fine. Jax decided then and there that he’d swing by Summer’s office a little later in the morning to see for himself how close to the deep end his sister-in-law was.
    “We still on for the