Redstone Ever After

Tess shrugged. The idiot had no idea “the boss” was standing right next to them. “He gets that way. You know how it is. You don’t expect somebody in his position to be kind, generous, or go way beyond the call for his people.”

All of which Josh Redstone was and did, and if these clowns had done their homework they’d have known that. And for just an instant as Josh himself looked at her, she saw acknowledgment of the compliment she’d just indirectly paid him.

Not that it wasn’t anything she hadn’t said to him directly before; he knew quite well she thought the world of him.

He just didn’t know she was in love with him, and had been for a very long time.

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Dear Reader,

REDSTONE, INCORPORATED didn’t begin as a series. I’d written the first book, Just Another Day in Paradise, without any idea there might be more. But by the time I got to the end, the idea had been born. Still, I had no idea I would be living in the Redstone world for more than nine years. I thought a trilogy, or at most maybe a half dozen books, would do it. But the scope of Redstone grew, and the opportunities for stories I wanted to tell multiplied, until at last we’re at an even dozen.

To all the readers who have made this journey with me, I say thank you so very much. Without you, obviously, this world would never have existed and survived for so long.

But it’s finally time to leave. And of course the only way to do that is to give the center of that world, the core character who made it all work, his own happy ending. No one deserves it more.

So, Josh my friend—by now my old friend—here you are. Enjoy that flight into the sunset. You’ve earned it.

Justine Davis

lives on Puget Sound in Washington State. Her interests outside writing are sailing, doing needlework, horseback riding and driving her restored 1967 Corvette roadster—top down, of course.

Justine says that years ago, during her career in law enforcement, a young man she worked with encouraged her to try for a promotion to a position that was at the time occupied only by men. “I succeeded, became wrapped up in my new job, and that man moved away, never, I thought, to be heard from again. Ten years later he appeared out of the woods of Washington State, saying he’d never forgotten me and would I please marry him. With that history, how could I write anything but romance?”

When this series began more than nine years ago, the romance world had just lost its staunchest supporter and walking database, RT Book Reviews reviewer extraordinaire Melinda Helfer. I still miss her—we are the poorer for her absence. So I’m closing out the REDSTONE, INCORPORATED series the same way I began it, in memory of a guiding light who was one of our best standard-bearers.

Here is a portion of that original dedication.

Once upon a time there was a genre of books that was sadly misunderstood by many people who didn’t read them. Those who did read loved them, cherished them, were changed by them. Why? Because they found something in these books that they found nowhere else. Something precious, that spoke to them in a very deep and basic way.

Then one day this beleaguered genre was given a gift. A fairy godmother if you will, a person with an incredible knowledge of these books and why they worked, and an even more incredible generosity of spirit. She was a rock, a pillar on which the genre depended. Her loss has left a gaping hole that can never be filled, and will always be felt by those who love these books—and loved her.

For those reasons and so many more, the REDSTONE, INCORPORATED series is dedicated to MELINDA HELFER

Lost to us August 24, 2000, but if heaven is what it should be she’s in an endless library, with an eternity to revel in the books she loved. Happy reading, my friend….

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

The man was oblivious.

As Brad Odell talked on, completely unaware, Joshua Redstone watched the deer watch them. A young doe, he thought, frozen as she stared at the intruders, her every muscle tense as she assessed whether to flee. He understood the feeling. He thought of last night, when those coyotes had been yipping around them. The sounds had come from three different directions, giving them the eerie feeling of being triangulated by the wily predators. Josh had spent enough time in places like this, and even wilder places, not to worry, but Odell had seemed edgy. Of course, he’d seemed edgy from the moment they’d started this trek.

Josh had wondered, perhaps uncharitably, if he was nervous at being out of the orbit of his formidable and commanding wife, Diane. The woman was a bit alarming. Some suspected she was the one who really ran things, and Brad was often mute in her presence.