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He was her last vice. She was his first salvation.
He came back for a funeral. He stayed for her.
Ethan Kane—combat veteran, private investigator, sinner with a scarred jaw and a voice like gravel—swore Poison Creek was dead to him. But when old comrades start turning up in body bags, he’s dragged home to hunt a killer. What he doesn’t expect is Amara James—barefoot in the frame of a half-built house, mouth hot enough to brand him, eyes that once made him break every rule.
She was only fifteen when the soldier at her daddy’s table stole her heart. At eighteen, she stole a kiss back. And then he disappeared. Ten years later, Ethan’s on her ridge, pinning her with that same hard stare, kissing her like he never left—tongue, teeth, fists in her hair, every inch a promise he still owns her.
She hates him for it. She wants him for it. And when danger slams into her quiet life—cartel blood money, a fentanyl pipeline, enemies who know her land is the prize—she finds herself trapped with the one man she swore she’d never need.
Enemies to lovers. Forced proximity. Rough hands, whiskey mouths, filthy promises. Ethan Kane takes control like it’s his birthright. Amara fights him every step, but her body remembers the soldier who kissed her once and made her melt.
And this time, there’s no running away.
Still Smooth as Tennessee Whiskey is a raw country-noir romance where bullets fly, hearts break, and desire burns hotter than Tennessee summer nights. Not for the faint of heart.
General Release Date: 24th March 2026
Her stallion’s hooves drummed the dirt road steady as her heartbeat, carrying Amara James through the last stretch of northeast Tennessee daylight. Her daddy’s stallion—the one he’d sworn he’d never cut because ‘no son of mine’s gonna walk this earth half a man.’ Too wild for most, but not for him. And now, not for her.
Dusk draped itself across her shoulders, heavy and warm, while fireflies stitched their sparks through the rising dark. The horizon poured out that whiskey-gold glow her daddy used to call heaven’s hour—the time when saints and sinners looked damn near the same.
She believed that more now that he was gone.
Smoky dust curled up around her, catching in her throat, tasting like that endless drought of an Indian summer. She sat low in the saddle, ponytail loose against her back, eyes sharp on the stretch of gravel that had carried her family through generations. But tonight the air felt wrong, like a problem she couldn’t yet see.
Amara rode the line of the south fence, where boards sagged and posts leaned tired. Daddy always called it the backbone of the farm, patching it with sweat and spit before he’d let it fail. Now the gaps yawned wide, rails slipping loose—and she couldn’t tell if the cattle had pressed from the inside, or if something else had been testing from the out.
She led her mount through a gap in the fence, crossing the packed dirt and gravel road, looking for interference along her property. Didn’t feel right out here. Someone had been snooping around her fence line.
That’s when Amara heard it—gravel popping under fast tires, an engine growling low in the trees.
Headlights cut the bend just as she trotted back to the side of the road. The truck came too quick. Tires screeched, dust flying.
And then—for one suspended breath, horse and machine, rider and driver, locked in the same sliver of time.
No, no—hell no.
The truck came to a full stop. Her gaze snagged on the driver’s through the windshield. A face half-shadowed by a brim pulled low, jaw cut from stone, eyes haunted like they’d stared too long into hell.
She couldn’t lie to herself, though she wanted to.
She knew him.
She knew this man.
The shock hit like cold water down her spine. For a split second she forgot to breathe, forgot the reins in her hands, forgot the years she’d tried to bury that night—the night her daddy set a stranger at their table, the soldier too thin and too quiet, eyes always scanning like he couldn’t put the war down.
Ten years.
Why the fuck is he back? She froze, watching this man, flesh and bone, staring back at her as if he’d conjured her from the road itself. She heard the truck door open, and movement.
So she did the only thing she could do.
Amara jerked the reins hard, whipping the stallion around so fast gravel skittered under hooves. The horse lunged forward into a gallop, muscles bunching, breath burning loud in the silence.
Now, her heart beat harder than the hooves slamming the dirt. Harder than the cicadas shrieking in the trees. It was a runaway rhythm, panicked and wild, as if running fast enough might chase the memory back into the grave she’d dug for it.
She didn’t dare look, not at first. Couldn’t risk seeing if he’d turned the truck to follow, if those war-dark eyes were still tracking her. She just rode harder, braid lashing her shoulders, lungs raw with dust and fear and something hotter she refused to name.
When she finally stole a glance over her shoulder, her stomach dropped with the kind of prayer that wasn’t a prayer at all—only a desperate plea, God, don’t let him be there.
Amara didn’t slow the stallion until the outline of the farmhouse broke through the trees—white paint weathered gray, porch sagging like tired shoulders. The land around it stretched wide and restless, soybeans lined up in stubborn green rows all the way to the tree line. Inherited from Grandad, the farm had become Daddy’s last obsession after he retired from the Corps. He used to call it discipline you could plant. Said the beans gave him order, something to fight for that wasn’t blood and sand. Beans were most of it, but they had livestock and other animals, as Daddy had thought it was a grand idea to start diversifying.
Now all that chaos was just another burden on Mama’s back, one she couldn’t carry…not alone. Not with her only child, Amara, a recovering addict and barely on her feet herself. Mama couldn’t do at all, since grief had settled in her bones and made her brittle.
That’s why Amara had been out here at dusk, checking the south irrigation line where the pump kept choking on silt. Finding more than just a pump, but gaps in the fence and dark eyes in a darker truck.
In the stables, she slid off the horse in one motion, boots hitting dirt, heart still hammering from what she’d seen on that road. From who she’d seen.
The soldier.
The one whose hollow eyes had haunted her more than she’d ever admit.
And he was here, back in Calhoun County, looking like every ghost the night had ever coughed up.
Amara pressed a hand against the stallion’s flank, needing something solid to hold on to. None of it made sense—why he was here, why she was the one carrying this farm when Mama couldn’t, why her heart beat like it was ready to kick out of her chest.
And why, somehow, she still wasn’t on her own two feet, not after all these years sober. It was like daylight would never really come.
She stared toward the soybean rows, their leaves whispering in the evening wind, and prayed they could drown out the memory of dark eyes.
But she knew better. Some things you couldn’t outrun.
* * * *
Amara stepped inside the farmhouse and kicked off her boots by the door, dust clinging to her in a second skin of grit. The house smelled like lemon cleaner that hadn’t seen water in days, and the curtains were pulled half-closed against a world Mama couldn’t face anymore. No reason to close curtains when no one else was around. Even the farmhands had long gone home by this time.
She found Mama in the bedroom, sitting on the edge of the mattress, Bible open but unread in her lap. Mama looked smaller these days, shoulders caved in, hair loosely pulled back, as if grief had hollowed her out and left just the shell.
“Pump’s still giving me hell,” Amara said gently, leaning against the doorway. “But I patched it good enough for tonight. Fields’ll hold.”
Mama nodded, eyes faraway, then sharper as they landed on her daughter. “You stayin’ tonight, baby?”
“No.” Amara stiffened. “I told you, Mama. I’ll check in, I’ll make sure you’re okay, but I’m not moving back in.”
Her mama’s mouth pressed thin. “And who’s gonna keep this farm, huh? Who’s gonna see to the beans, to the soil your daddy bled into? You think it’s all just gonna run itself while you’re off bartendin’ at that dive?”
Heat rose in Amara’s chest, a different kind from the Tennessee night swelter. “Mama, that’s not what I want. That was Daddy’s fight, not mine. I’m building my own place. My own life.”
“You think that house out on the ridge is worth more than what’s been passed down for generations?” Mama’s voice cracked, anger and sorrow tangled. “Your daddy fought for this land after the war. He made it a promise. And you—you’d better keep his word.”
Amara’s jaw clenched. “Mama.”
The silence after was sharp enough to cut. Mama turned her face away, eyes glossed with a grief Amara couldn’t touch.
Amara crossed the room, pressed a kiss to her mother’s temple. “I’ll be back tomorrow. I’ll check the fields again. You don’t have to worry.”
But Mama’s eyes said she always would.
Amara left before the weight of it drowned her, heading for the shower, letting the water run hotter than the air outside. Once upon a time, she did live here, and, grandstanding aside, she kind of still did.
In the shower, steam curled up, carrying the dust and ache off her skin, but couldn’t wash away the sting of guilt. Always the guilt.
Out of the water, toweled off, Amara pulled on fresh underwear and a black tank, tugged her damp hair loose, and slid back into her jeans. The mirror caught her reflection—still soft-hearted, yet mouth set stubborn.
Amara grabbed her keys, slammed the screen door, and let the hum of her truck swallow her whole.
Late September, and Tennessee still roasted like a kiln. The cicadas screamed. The night smelled of honeysuckle and gasoline.
Tonight, she wasn’t a farmer’s daughter. Tonight, she was Amara James, free and wild, marching out into the dark to make a dollar.
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