Hi peeps, we have Kate Sherwood visiting today with the blog tour for her new release Home Fires, we have a great excerpt, an awesome giveaway and Shorty’s review, so check out the post and leave a comment to enter the giveaway! <3 ~Pixie~ 

Home Fires

Kate Sherwood

Trouble comes to Mosely, Montana, from the outside world. When the residents of Mosely are left on their own, they can make things work. Sure, there’s always been a militia operating up in the hills, but they were small-scale—just survivalists doing their thing—until organizers came in from out of state. Now Jericho Crewe and the rest of the sheriff’s department are facing down a heavily armed band of fanatics, and the feds are busy elsewhere.

The odds are hopeless, but Jericho swore an oath to serve and protect the citizens of Mosely. He won’t walk away from that, even if Wade Granger’s begging him to run away somewhere and finally be together the way they always should have been.

But this time, it’s Jericho who refuses to leave Mosely, even if staying kills him.

Common Law series!

Jericho Crewe escaped from Mosely, Montana, when he was seventeen and built a new life for himself, first as a Marine, then as an LA police officer. Fifteen years later, he’s back, and everything is just as confusing as it was before he left.

Especially Wade Granger. Wade’s still a rebel, still a criminal, and still dangerously fascinating. As Jericho digs deeper into the town’s underbelly, he has to decide whether Wade’s the worst the town has to offer, or the only part of Mosely worth saving.

Get all four books from Riptide Publishing! Common Law series

Excerpt!

“Is there any possibility it’s a practical joke?” Jericho Crewe asked. “Or just a rumor, maybe?”

Unfortunately, Sheriff Kayla Morgan shook her head. “I was the one who called them,” she said, leaning back in her battered leather desk chair.

“You called the feds.” Jericho waited a few seconds for the words to make sense, then gave up. “We have feds in town worrying about the border, feds in town still cleaning up the biker mess, feds in town investigating your dad, feds in town trying to catch Wade—and you woke up one morning, looked around, asked yourself, ‘What does this town need more of?’ and the answer you came up with was ‘feds.’ Honestly?”

Kayla’s scowl suggested that Jericho wasn’t the first person to express a similar opinion. “I’m not going to let my pride get in the way of doing my job, Jay. The FBI already knew about the basic situation—they’re tracking about a dozen little militia groups in this part of the country—but they needed to know Tennant and his boys are flaring up. Receiving a big shipment of illegal weapons is definitely a break in their typical pattern of behavior.”

“And you know that because you got an anonymous tip?” Jericho hated to do it. He didn’t want to think it, much less say it. But . . . “Have you considered the possibility that this is more of Wade’s bullshit? I mean, he—” Jericho’s throat tightened as if the words shouldn’t be spoken, but he was fairly used to his body betraying him when Wade was involved “—he was with me all weekend.” Maybe Kay hadn’t formally known that, but she wasn’t clueless, and Jericho would be damned if he’d hide it. “So maybe this was just another case of him using me as an alibi, setting up something to distract everyone else, and then having one of his minions run a shipment across the border.”

“I never thought I’d say this, Jay, but not every criminal activity in Mosely is connected to Wade Granger. Ninety-five percent of it, yeah. But I think this may have been something from that other five percent.”

Jericho wanted to believe it. The weekend had been—well, not perfect, not considering the long car ride with two highly unpleasant children and then a lot more snakes than Jericho had ever wanted to see in one place—but it had been memorable, all the same. Jericho and Wade, outside of Mosely, weren’t cop and criminal. They weren’t their parents’ sons, weren’t men with painful histories, weren’t running, and weren’t refusing to run. They were just Jericho and Wade, and that was all they ever needed to be, as long as the world left them alone.

There had been nothing romantic about taking Jericho’s half siblings on a road trip to the Billings zoo in order to fulfill Jericho’s promise to get Elijah more access to snakes. Nothing romantic at all. And the two nights together had been fairly tame since Elijah and Nicolette had been sleeping in the adjoining motel room, but that hadn’t mattered. It had still been Jericho and Wade in bed together, warm bodies and hot kisses, and Jericho was pretty sure he’d remember it all for the rest of his life.

They’d driven back the night before, dropped off the kids, and gone to Jericho’s place as if it was the most natural thing in the world for them to stay together, and with no kids to worry about the night had been considerably hotter than the previous two. Then a late breakfast before Wade had left to do whatever Wade did all day and Jericho went for a run. Jericho hoped to be able to remember it as something pure, rather than as the latest episode of Wade’s endless series of manipulations and games.

But Jericho was at work now, wearing the brown and beige polyester even if it was for one of the last times, and he needed to think like an under-sheriff, not a hormone-raddled teenager. “So if it wasn’t Wade, who was it? Who do you think the tip was from?”

“Someone with knowledge of a single shipment of illegal weapons and ammo. So that means probably someone on the arms-dealer side, because it was only one shipment, no mention of the overall arsenal the militia has stockpiled.”

“Or a disgruntled ex, or a neighbor who doesn’t like the guys and wants to stir shit up. Might not be anything at all. The department’s had an eye on these guys since well before I got here, and we’ve never seen anything to worry about before.”

“Are you negging me, Jay? Is that what you’re doing?” Kay frowned for a moment before her brows lifted in understanding. “Oh. You’re worrying about how this is going to affect you. A bit harder to bail on me, guilt-free, if I’m in the middle of a big situation. Is that what you’re thinking?”

Damn. Maybe it was. For too long Jericho had felt as if his life was out of his control, and he’d only recently started clawing it back. The weekend had been his announcement, to himself if no one else was listening, that the situation was going to change. But now? “Is it harder for me to bail out now? I mean, my reasons for quitting are the same as they were—I don’t think I can be a good cop, the kind of cop I want to be, when I’m not sure I believe following the law is always the best idea, and—”

A shout from the main room interrupted his declaration. “We have agents down! Agents under fire, agents down!”

For a frozen half second, Jericho stared at Kayla, who stared back at him. Then they were both in motion, sprinting out to the central room.

The scene there was close to chaos. Federal agents and sheriff’s deputies, all electrified and ready for action, desperately waiting for someone to tell them what to do.

The man on the phone, one finger plugging the ear he wasn’t using to listen, was unfamiliar to Jericho, but his suit, haircut, and general attitude announced him as a fed. Almost certainly one of the new crop of FBI agents Kayla had invited into town. “Coldcreek Road,” he told the crowd, but he spoke as if the words were in a foreign language. “Just past the canyon turnoff?”

And with that, half the room was in motion. The locals—and the feds who’d been around for a while—knew where they were going. The other half were pulling out their phones, tapping at them to call up the GPS.

Jericho let himself be washed along in the flow down the stairs. In LA, this all would have been different. There would have been a call to the SWAT team, a central command to coordinate squad cars and helicopters and snipers. But in Mosely, there was one M4 per squad car, and there were sidearms. That was all.

The feds wouldn’t even have the M4s. Feds were good at stirring shit up, but they generally left the cleanup to special teams or locals. And the locals, officially, weren’t too well armed, though if there’d been time, practically every deputy in the department could have run home to pick up a few hunting rifles or bigger stuff. But there was no time.

“Is this the militia?” Jericho demanded as he followed Kay to her squad car. “Coldcreek by the canyon turnoff—that’s on the way to Tennant’s place. Were there feds heading out there this afternoon?”

Her grim expression answered his question. A bunch of fanatics who’d just received a shipment of arms, and the sheriff’s department was going after them with little more than cap guns and courage. “This is a federal operation,” Jericho tried as Kayla wheeled the car out onto the street. “We don’t actually have to get involved.”

She kept her eyes on the road. “I can’t hear you over the siren.”

He leaned back in his seat. Shit. He was still wearing the brown and beige, and even if he hadn’t been, he’d have followed Kayla wherever she led. So this was going to happen.

“Talk to dispatch, get things coordinated,” Kayla ordered.

It would have made better sense for Jericho to have been driving so Kayla could do all that, but he did his best. As they raced through town and out into the mountains, he listened to the dispatchers sending back reports as they came in. Three feds injured, two others still active on-site. The feds were pinned down behind their vehicles, returning fire against an unknown number of perps who’d taken cover behind three cube vans. There was a more specific location, a helicopter was on the way, and someone was back at the dispatch center taking charge and directing units.

“Mosely County Five,” the dispatcher called, and Jericho reached for the radio.

“County Five, go ahead,” he said. Kayla kept her eyes on the road, but he could practically see her ears straining toward the radio.

“You’re two klicks from a secondary road, no name on the map,” the man at dispatch said. “It should lead around behind the incident. Break.”

“Go ahead,” Jericho barked. He hated radio protocols, but that was a fight for a different day. Or for never, he remembered. He was getting out of this policing business. The radio wouldn’t be his problem soon. But already, that dream seemed to be receding.

“Assuming the road is passable, we’re sending you and Mosely County Three down it. Circle the incident and block approaching traffic.”

“We’re not traffic cops,” Kayla protested, but she wasn’t holding the handset. If she had been, she probably wouldn’t have said anything.

“Copy,” Jericho confirmed, then ignored the radio as he scanned the road ahead. “See it?” he asked Kayla once he’d found the break in the trees.

“This is bullshit,” she growled.

Of course she wanted to charge in with the rest of the team, wanted to be part of the action, wanted to prove she wasn’t the local yokel the feds seemed to take them all for. But the car ahead of them was Mosely Three and it had its turn signal on. Kayla wouldn’t leave any of her deputies without backup, and there was no time to argue with the assignments.

“Taking orders sucks,” Jericho agreed as they bounced off the main road onto the much rougher path. Kayla didn’t answer, so he busied himself with the GPS, then clicked on the radio handset. The road was so rutted he wished he had a third hand he could brace against the ceiling to steady himself. “Dispatch, County Five here. We’re coming up on a spot that’s really close to the active event. We could go cross-country on foot and get another angle on things.”

Kayla glanced at him, clearly wanting to see the GPS and confirm his observation. But the car was still bouncing and jouncing and she was fighting to keep it on the road, which was more like a wide hiking trail.

“Copy, County Five,” dispatch responded. “Stand by.”

The wait was agonizing. “We’re coming up on the best spot,” Jericho told Kay.

“It’s good?” she demanded. “This is a good path you’re seeing?”

He crouched down to get a better view of the terrain out her side of the vehicle. “If it’s passable, it’s good. And it looks passable.”

She reached over and flipped the siren on, just one long meeeeeep, the sound the department used to get the attention of other officers. Jericho was unlocking the M4 as Kay pulled them to a stop and by the time he had the ammo free of the glove box, she was out of the car, yelling instructions to the deputies, Meeks and— Shit. Meeks and Jackson.

Jericho hit the radio button. “Dispatch, County Three and Five are going cross-country. Advise other officers that we’ll be on the slope above the event.”

Outside the car, Jackson was arguing. “Dispatch directed us to—”

“I’m the sheriff,” Kayla said calmly. No showdown, no getting in his face, just a simple reminder as she checked her gear and then started for the slope. His objections clearly weren’t important enough for her to pay attention to. “Fall in.”

Meeks and Jericho jogged up beside her, and they started into the woods.

Jackson was still back at the car, messing with the radio.

“Jackson, fall in now.” Kayla barked.

He ignored her, holding on to the handset as if it were his route to salvation.

“Jackson, you’re suspended from duty,” Kayla said. “This is a restricted area. Remove yourself immediately—on foot, back along this road.”

And then she turned to Jericho, her eyes a little brighter than usual, her cheeks flushed, but her voice still strong and level. “Jay, this is your area of expertise. You direct.”

Too many tours of duty made that an unfortunate truth, and some part of Jay’s mind had already been calculating, analyzing. The hill was steep, the ground covered in duff and debris that made them slide back half a step for every one they took forward. But all three of them were fit, and they were moving well.

“Shit.” He sped up a little to get into the front. “I— Yeah, okay, but you guys tell me if you’ve got better ideas. I’ll take point; you guys pick a flank. Keep your eyes open, let me know if you see anything.” That was all straightforward enough. “We’ll have to get a better plan once we see what we’re into.”

That was when the sound of gunfire reached them. It was loud enough that Jericho knew the earlier silence had been because of a lull in the shooting, not because they’d been too far away to hear. He listened as he jogged up the hill, and his gut tightened. The noises were familiar, but after he got out of the military he’d hoped to never hear them again.

Automatic weapons, mixed in with a few single cracks, probably from the FBI agents’ handguns. So at least one of them was still able to fire back. Jericho wondered how much ammunition an FBI agent would carry on a casual drive, and he picked up his pace until he was practically sprinting up the hill.

He was almost to the top when he sensed movement, just over the rise of the hill, off to the right.

Instinct and training made him drop to the ground, waving for the others to lower themselves behind him. Then he crawled forward, fast but careful. He eased his head around the side of a tree and his forehead burned, just as it always did in situations like this, as if his skin was anticipating the bullet. At least two inches of vulnerable skull had to be exposed before his eyes made it clear of the tree and he could see what was going on.

Three men. Unfamiliar, dressed in mismatched camo, carrying some serious firepower. Jesus, one of them had a fucking grenade launcher.

Read more at http://www.riptidepublishing.com/titles/home-fires (Just click the excerpt tab)

About Kate!

Kate Sherwood started writing about the same time she got back on a horse after almost twenty years away from riding. She’d like to think she was too young for it to be a midlife crisis, but apparently she was ready for some changes!

Kate grew up near Toronto, Ontario (Canada) and went to school in Montreal, then Vancouver. But for the last decade or so she’s been a country girl. Sure, she misses some of the conveniences of the city, but living close to nature makes up for those lacks. She’s living in Ontario’s “cottage country”–other people save up their time and come to spend their vacations in her neighborhood, but she gets to live there all year round!

Since her first book was published in 2010, she’s kept herself busy with novels, novellas, and short stories in almost all the sub-genres of m/m romance. Contemporary, suspense, scifi or fantasy–the settings are just the backdrop for her characters to answer the important questions. How much can they share, and what do they need to keep? Can they bring themselves to trust someone, after being disappointed so many times? Are they brave enough to take a chance on love?

Kate’s books balance drama with humor, angst with optimism. They feature strong, damaged men who fight themselves harder than they fight anyone else. And, wherever possible, there are animals: horses, dogs, cats ferrets, squirrels… sometimes it’s easier to bond with a non-human, and most of Kate’s men need all the help they can get.

After five years of writing, Kate is still learning, still stretching herself, and still enjoying what she does. She’s looking forward to sharing a lot more stories in the future.

Twitter: @kate_sherwood

Giveaway!

To celebrate the release of all four books in the Common Law series, we’re giving away one four-tour-wide GRAND PRIZE of $100 in Riptide credit!

Contest is NOT restricted to U.S. entries. Thanks for following the Home Fires tour, and don’t forget to leave your contact info! 

Enter at each stop on each tour (once they go live) to maximize your chances to win!

Review

Title: Home Fires 

Series: Common Law # 4 

Author: Kate Sherwood

Genre: Suspense, Thriller, Action, Contemporary

Length: Novella (162 pages)

Publisher: Riptide Publishing (April 3, 2017) 

Heat Level: Moderate

Heart Rating: ♥♥♥♥♥ 5 Hearts

Blurb: Trouble comes to Mosely, Montana, from the outside world. When the residents of Mosely are left on their own, they can make things work. Sure, there’s always been a militia operating up in the hills, but they were small-scale—just survivalists doing their thing—until organizers came in from out of state. Now Jericho Crewe and the rest of the sheriff’s department are facing down a heavily armed band of fanatics, and the feds are busy elsewhere.

The odds are hopeless, but Jericho swore an oath to serve and protect the citizens of Mosely. He won’t walk away from that, even if Wade Granger’s begging him to run away somewhere and finally be together the way they always should have been.

But this time, it’s Jericho who refuses to leave Mosely, even if staying kills him.

ISBN: 978-1-62649-533-3

Product Link: https://riptidepublishing.com/titles/home-fires

Reviewer: Shorty 

Review: This story is part of a series and must be read in order.

I loved this story most out of the series. Wade and Jericho’s so called romance throughout the first three books was almost non-existent with everything else going on. This book is different.

I have always loved the chemistry between these two men and felt the needed more time together to explore. I got that and more in this action packed, romance filled story.

I was pleased with this entire book from start to finish. Most questions that had been left unanswered were finally answered. The way Wade and Jericho interacted with each other was awesome. The action scenes were edge of your seat, holding your breath awaiting the outcome. 

This is a fantastic story that I loved.

Check out the other blogs on the blog tour!