A Hero to Come Home To (33 page)

When Etta returns to Everson, Texas, for her grandmother’s funeral she discovers her grandmother had been in the middle of turning the old family home into a bed and breakfast. The responsibility of finishing the work on the old family home falls to Etta, and after reading her grandmother’s notes on the project she sees that each of the guest rooms has been named and decorated with an old-fashioned dessert as the theme—desserts that evoke comfort and fond memories of days spent with her grandmother.

I love dessert, so deciding on the room names was deliciously fun, and I didn’t have to count a single calorie. For the first room I thought back to my school days. Buying lunch in the cafeteria of my elementary school was not high on my list of favorite childhood memories, with one exception. The
cherry cobbler
was scrumptious with just enough tart fruit to moisten the pie crust on top. I’ve had other cobblers since then, but that one remains my favorite. So of course Cherry Cobbler had to be one of the rooms. I decorated the room in different shades of red and taupe, cozy throw pillows scattered everywhere, and topped it off with pictures of cherries in bright white bowls. A cheerful room that could brighten any day.

Next was the
Banana Pudding
room. Banana pudding was one of my father’s favorite desserts, so I always think about him whenever I make it. I still think the recipe on the vanilla wafer box is the best I’ve tried. And making the pudding part from scratch is simple and tastes so much better than any pudding from a box. With that as my inspiration, I decorated the room in pale yellows and fluffy meringue whites. A light and airy room that wraps the guest in down comforters and soft pillows.

But food can evoke other powerful emotions as well. When I was a barely a teenager my older brother went to a summer camp, and when we went to visit on family day all the boys greeted us with a meal they’d prepared themselves. The star of the meal was the Ham in the Hole. They dug holes and lined them with slow-burning wood, and then buried the hams, cooking them until they were tender. It was their gift, their offering to the visitors. And it was delicious. The campers were so proud of themselves.

When my brother found out a few years ago that he had cancer, he decided on his own course of treatment and chose the path he wanted to take. As he got weaker we watched him stay strong in his resolve to live the rest of his life on his terms. One of the last things he did was to invite his family and friends over for a special gathering. He’d gone into the backyard and dug a hole. Then he lined it with slow-burning wood and buried a ham. When it was done he fed us more than a meal. It was his last gift to us all. It was a thank-you for loving him and being his family. I let Donny Joe Ledbetter borrow my brother’s gift as the gesture he uses to show his home town his appreciation. It makes me happier than I can say to make the Ham in the Hole such an important part of Donny Joe and Etta’s story.

I hope you enjoy it, too!

Learn more at:

MollyCannon.com

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Dear Reader,

I have an obsession with names, which shouldn’t surprise readers as the names I give my characters run the gamut and are often out there.

In my Dream Man series, I introduced readers to Cabe “Hawk” Delgado, Brock “Slim” Lucas, Mitch Lawson, and Kane “Tack” Allen. My Chaos series gives us Shy, Hop, Joker, and Rush, among the other members of the Club.

I’ve had quite a few folks express curiosity about where I come up with all these names, and I wish I could say I knew a load of good-looking men who had awesome and unusual names and I stole them but, alas, that isn’t true.

In most cases, characters, especially heroes and heroines, come to me named. They just pop right into my head, much like Tatum “Tate” Jackson of Sweet Dreams. He just walked right in there, all the gloriousness of Tate, and introduced himself to me. And luckily, he had an amazing, strong, masculine, kick-ass name.

In other instances, who they are defines their name. I understood Hawk’s tragic back story from Mystery Man first. I also understood that the man he was melted away; he became another man with a new name so what he called himself evolved from what he did in the military. His given name, of course, evolved from his multiethnic background.

The same with Mitch, the hero from Law Man. The minute he walked into Gwen’s kitchen, his last name hit me like a shot. What else could a straight-arrow cop be called but Lawson?

Other names are a mystery to me. Kane “Tack” Allen came to me named but I had no clue why his Club name was Tack. Truthfully, I also found it a bit annoying seeing as how the name Kane is such a cool name, and I didn’t want to waste it on a character who wouldn’t use it. But Tack was Kane Allen and there was no prying that name away from him.

Why he was called Tack, though, was a mystery to me, but I swear, it must have always been in the recesses of my mind because his nickname is perfect for him. Therefore, as I was following his journey with Tyra and the mystery of Tack was revealed, I burst out laughing. I loved it. It was so perfect for him.

One of the many, many reasons I’m enjoying the Chaos series is that I get to be very creative with names. I mean, Shy, Hop, Rush, Bat, Speck, and Snapper? I love it. Anything goes with those boys and I have lists of names scrawled everywhere in my magic notebook where I jot ideas. Some of them are crazy and I hope to get to use them, like Moose. Some of them are crazy cool and I hope I get to use them, like Preacher. Some of them are just crazy and I’ll probably never use them, like Destroyer. But all of them are fun.

All my characters names, nicknames, and the endearments they use with each other, friends, and family mean a great deal to me. Mostly because all of them and everything they do exists in a perfectly real unreality in my head. They’re with me all the time. They’re mine. I created them. And just like a parent naming a child, these perfectly real unreal beings are precious to me, as are the names they chose for themselves.

I just hope they keep it exciting.

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