ABOUT THE BOOK
When her best friend is murdered the same way her brother was, who can she possibly trust?
A decade ago, Delaney Broward discovered her brother’s murdered body at the San Antonio art co-op he founded with friends. Her artist boyfriend, Hunter Nash, went to prison for the murder, despite his not-guilty plea.
This morning, Hunter walks out of prison a free man, having served his sentence.
This afternoon, Delaney finds her best friend dead, murdered in the same fashion as her brother.
Stay out of it or you’re next, the killer warns.
Hunter never stopped loving Delaney, though he can’t blame her for not forgiving her. He knows he’ll get his life back one day at a time, one step at a time. But he’s blindsided to realize he’s a murder suspect. Again.
When Hunter shows up on her doorstep, asking her to help him find the real killer, Delaney’s head says to run away, yet her heart tells her there’s more to his story than what came out in the trial. An uneasy truce leads to their probe into a dark past that shatters Delaney’s image of her brother. She can’t stop and neither can Hunter—which lands them both in the crosshairs of a murderer growing more desperate by the day (hour?).
In this gripping romantic suspense, Kelly Irvin plumbs the complexity of broken trust in the people we love—and in God—and whether either can be mended.
Book Details:
Title: Trust Me
Author: Kelly Irvin
Genre: romantic suspense
Publisher: Thomas Nelson (February 8, 2022)
Print length: 384 pages
LOVE IT OR LEAVE IT WITH KELLY IRVIN
A few of your favorite things: my heated blanket and flannel pajamas, my copy of The Secret Garden, the 2,000-piece Lego typewriter my son and daughter-in-law gave me.
Things you need to throw out: the clothes in my closet that I keep because I might gain back the weight I lost, as well as the ones I keep in case I lose that additional 10 pounds.
Things you need in order to write: a quiet room, a fast computer, time to daydream.
Things that hamper your writing: health issues, loud music, barking dogs.
Things you love about writing: when new characters/plot twists appear out of nowhere.
Things you hate about writing: realizing I’m 10,000 words over my contracted word count and still have story to tell.
Easiest thing about being a writer: spending time with my characters every day.
Hardest thing about being a writer: bad reviews.
Things you love about where you live: my office’s big windows, the view from my office of an open field with lots of trees, no traffic, the bay window in the kitchen that allows me to eat my breakfast while watching the Cardinals and hummingbirds eat theirs at the birdfeeders.
Things that make you want to move: the long drive into town, barking dogs.
Things you never want to run out of: crunchy peanut butter, apple-cinnamon-spice tea, patience, story ideas.
Things you wish you’d never bought: nothing comes to mind.
Words that describe you: writer, novelist, introvert, creative, a daydreamer.
Words that describe you but you wish they didn’t: disabled, cancer patient, impatient.
Favorite foods: my husband’s homemade pizza, chicken enchiladas in green sauce, tater tot casserole, praline sweet potato pie.
Things that make you want to throw up: kale, hominy, liver and onions.
Favorite music: Zach Williams and Dolly Parton’s “There Was Jesus.,” country music, Fleetwood Mac, Bryan Adams, Bruce Springsteen, contemporary Christian music.
Music that make your ears bleed: heavy metal, rap.
Favorite beverage: decaf iced tea, decaf coffee with almond milk & stevia.
Something that gives you a pickle face: any soda.
Favorite smell: because of health issues, I have no sense of smell. I miss the smell of cilantro, fresh cut grass, popcorn, and coffee brewing.
Something that makes you hold your nose: I don’t miss beer breath, bathroom smells, and the smell of my cats’ litter box.
Something you’re really good at: making up stories.
Something you’re really bad at: math.
Something you like to do: read, eat, sleep.
Something you wish you’d never done: drank one too many beers one too many times.
People you consider as heroes: oncologists, cancer researchers, ALS patients, ALS caregivers and researchers, young people such as Greta Thurberg, Simone Bile, and Amanda Gorman who step up for what they believe in in a big way, first responders and healthcare professionals who continue to work tirelessly as we begin year three of this pandemic.
People with a big L on their foreheads: conspiracy theorists, journalists who perpetuate fake news, people who sue social media to beat up others for their beliefs, racists, bigots, white supremacists, misogynists, and people who would ban books because they don’t agree with their content.
Last best thing you ate: my husband’s homemade chicken and dumplings soup.
Last thing you regret eating: too many roasted brussel sprouts–bad bellyache!
Things you’d walk a mile for: if I could walk a mile (unfortunately I can’t): spending time with my 3 grandchildren and my daughter. They live on the east coast while I’m in South Texas.
Things that make you want to run screaming from the room: reality TV, especially The Bachelor & The Bachelorette.
Things you always put in your books: my characters almost always have pets, using dogs and/or cats, I try to represent characters with disabilities in my books.
Things you never put in your books: graphic sex scenes.
Things to say to an author: What a great fulltime job. You must be living your dream.
Things to say to an author if you want to be fictionally killed off in their next book: What a fun hobby. I’d write a book too, but I don’t have time. Or “you must be rich now.”
Favorite places you’ve been: Costa Rica and Maui.
Places you never want to go to again: Florida.
People you’d like to invite to dinner (living): Michael Connelly, Laura Lippman, John Sanford, Sara Paretsky, James Lee Burke, Meg Gardiner, JA Jance, William Kent Krueger. (I’d have a potluck with mystery/suspense writers and we’d sit around and talk writing all night so I could pick their brains and soak up their knowledge. It would be fun to see what dishes they bring too.)
People you’d cancel dinner on: without getting political, a number of politicians from both sides of the aisle, but especially those currently representing my adopted home state of Texas.
Favorite things to do: read, play with my grandkids.
Things you’d run through a fire wearing gasoline pants to get out of doing: going to parties given by people I hardly know.
Things that make you happy: watching movies with my husband, reading, writing.
Things that drive you crazy: waiting forever in waiting rooms for doctors’ appointments.
Proudest moment: when I saw my first published book on a bookstore shelf and then on a library shelf.
Most embarrassing moment: I worked as a newspaper reporter covering city hall in Laredo, Texas. One night the zipper on my sundress broke and my dress gaped open from the back so everyone behind me could see.
Best thing you’ve ever done: married my husband. Decided to get serious about writing on my 45th birthday and wrote a novel, got an agent, & then a publisher.
Biggest mistake: Waiting until I turned 45 to start seriously writing fiction.
EXCERPT FROM TRUST ME
CHAPTER 1
APRIL 22, 2010
SAN ANTONIO ART CO-OP
SOUTHTOWN, SAN ANTONIO
The cloying stench of pot told the same old story.
With an irritated sigh Delaney Broward quickened her pace through the warehouse-turned-art-co-op toward her brother’s studio at the far end of the cavernous hall. On his best days Corey had little sense of time. Add a joint to the mix and he lost his sense not only of time but of responsibility. It also explained why he didn’t answer his phone. When he got high and started painting, he wanted no interruptions. His lime-green VW van was parked cattywampus across two spaces in the lot that faced Alamo Street just south of downtown San Antonio. He might be physically present, but his THC-soaked mind had escaped its cell.
Marijuana served as his muse and taskmaster. Or so he’d said.
The soles of her huarache sandals clacking on the concrete floor sounded loud in Delaney’s ears. “Corey? Corey! You were supposed to pick us up at Ellie’s. Come on, dude. She’s waiting.”
No answer.
At this rate Delaney would never get to Night in Old San Antonio, affectionately known to most local folks as NIOSA. Everyone who was anyone knew it was pronounced NI-O-SA, long I and long O, the best party-slash-fundraiser during the mother of all parties where her boyfriend would be waiting for her. “Hey, bro, I’m starving. Let’s go.”
Delaney’s phone rang. She slowed and dug it from the pocket of her stonewashed jeans. Speaking of Ellie. “I’m at the co-op now. He’s here.”
Share as little info as possible.
“He’s stoned again, isn’t he? I’m sick of this.” Ellie’s shrill voice rose even higher. “I swear if he stands me up again— ”
“Us. Stands us up.”
“Stood us up again. That will be it. I’m done. I’m done waiting around for him. I’m done playing second fiddle to his self-destructive habits. I’m done with his starving-artist, free-spirit, pothead schtick. The man is a walking stereotype. I’m done with him, period.”
Delaney mouthed the words along with her friend. She knew the lyrics of this lovesick song by heart. The childish rejoinder “It takes one to know one” stuck in her throat. “We’ll be there in twenty. You can tell him yourself.”
Ellie would and then Corey would kiss her until she took it all back. With a final huff Ellie hung up.
The door to his studio— the largest and with the best light because the co-op was Corey’s dream child— stood open. “Seriously, Corey. Think of someone besides yourself once in a while, please.” Delaney strode through the door, ready to ream her brother up one side and down the other. “You are so selfish.”
Delaney halted. At first blush it didn’t make sense. Twisted and smashed canvases littered the floor. Along with paints, brushes, beer bottles, and Thai food take-out cartons.
Wooden easels were broken like toothpicks and scattered on top of the canvases. Someone had splattered red paint over another finished piece— a woman eating a raspa in front of a vendor’s mobile cart, the Alamo in the background.
Delaney’s hands went to her throat. The metallic scent of blood mingled with the odor of human waste gagged her. A fiery shiver started at her toes and raced like a lit fuse to her brain. Her mind took in detail after detail. That way she didn’t have to face the bigger picture staring her in the face. “Please, God, no.”
Even He couldn’t fix this.
She shot forward, stumbled, and fell to her knees. Her legs refused to work. She crawled the remainder of the distance to Corey across a floor marred by still-wet oil paint, beer, and other liquids she couldn’t bear to identify.
He sat with his back against the wall. His long legs clad in paint-splattered jeans sprawled in front of him. His feet were bare. His hands with those thin, expressive fingers lay in his lap. Deep lacerations scored his palms and fingers.
Her throat aching with the effort not to vomit, Delaney forced her gaze to move upward. His T-shirt, once white, now shone scarlet with blood. His blood. Rips in the shirt left his chest exposed, revealing stab wounds— too many to count.
Delaney opened her mouth. Scream. Just scream. Let it out.
No sound emerged.
She crawled alongside her big brother until she could lean her shoulder and head against the wall. “Corey?” she whispered.
His green eyes, fringed by thick, dark lashes that were the envy of every woman he’d ever dated, were open and startled. His skin, always pale and ethereal, had a blue tinge to it.
Delaney drowned in a tsunami of nausea. “Come on, Corey, this isn’t funny. I need you.”
Her teeth chattered. Hands shaking, she touched his throat. His skin was cold. So cold.
Too late, too late, too late. The words screamed in her head. Stop it. Just stop it. “You can’t be dead. You’re not allowed to die.”
Mom and Dad had died in a car wreck a week past her eighth birthday. Nana and Pops had taken their turns the year Delaney turned eighteen. Everybody she cared about died.
Not Corey. Delaney punched in 9–1–1.
The operator’s assurance that help was on the way did nothing to soothe Delaney. She sat cross-legged and dragged Corey’s shoulders and head into her lap. She had to warm him up. “Tell them to hurry. Tell them my brother needs help.”
“Yes, ma’am. They’re en route.”
“Tell them he’s all I’ve got.”
CHAPTER 2
TEN YEARS LATER
NASH RESIDENCE, SAN ANTONIO
Real men didn’t cry. Not even during a reunion with a beloved truck.
Swallowing hard, Hunter Nash wrapped his fingers around the keys, concentrating on the feel of the metal pressing into his skin. He cleared his throat. “Thanks, Mom. For keeping it all these years.”
His mom didn’t bother to try to hide her tears. She wiped her plump cheeks on a faded dish towel, offered him a tremulous smile, and bustled down the sidewalk that led from the house on San Antonio’s near west side where Hunter had grown up to the detached two-car garage in the back. It had housed his truck for the past eight years. Almost ten if he counted the two years it took for his case to go to trial. He had no place to go in those years when he’d allegedly been innocent until proven guilty. His friends no longer friends and his job gone, he had no need for transportation.
The door to the garage was padlocked. Mom handed him the key. “My hands are shaking. You’d better do the honors.” She stepped back. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”
“I did my time, Ma.” As a model prisoner he’d earned time off for good behavior. It was easy for a guy to behave when he spent his days and nights scared spitless.
“I know. All those nights I’ve lain in bed worrying about you in that place, whether you were safe, if you were hurt, if you were sick.” Her voice broke. “I can’t believe it’s over.”
“Me neither.”
It wasn’t over. In fact, it was just beginning, but she didn’t need to know that. His determination to prove his innocence would only worry her more. A divorced mother of four, she’d raised her kids on a teacher’s salary and an occasional child support check from the crud-for-brains ex-husband who showed up once every couple of years in an attempt to make nice with his kids. She deserved a break.
The aging manual garage door squeaked and protested when Hunter yanked on the handle. He needed to do some work around here, starting with applying some WD-40. The smell of mold and old motor oil wafted from the dark interior. Hunter slipped inside and waited for his eyes to adjust. A layer of dust covered the 2002 midnight-blue Dodge RAM 1500, but otherwise it remained in the pristine condition in which he’d left it the night he said goodbye and promised he’d be back. “My baby.”
More tears trickling down her face, Mom chuckled softly. “After you finish reintroducing yourself, come back inside. I’m making your favorite chicken-fried steak, mashed potatoes, gravy, pineapple coleslaw, and creamed corn. Your brother and sisters are coming over after work. Shawna’s bringing a carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Melissa’s contribution is three kinds of ice cream, including rocky road. She said it seemed appropriate. I hope you haven’t lost your sense of humor. And you know Curtis. He’s all about the beer.”
The last thing Hunter wanted to do was celebrate with his sibs. Mel and Shawna had visited faithfully at first, but less as the years rolled by. Curtis never showed, even though Fabian Dominguez State Jail was only a few miles down the road from San Antonio.
Nor did Hunter want to explain why he’d sworn off alcohol. The conditions of his parole included monthly pee tests— no alcohol or drugs, but that part of his life was over anyway. It had been easy to comply in prison, obviously. Whether he could maintain his sobriety in the beer drinking capital of the country remained to be seen. He’d do AA if necessary. “Mom— ”
“No buts. They’re family. They love you. You need to live life, enjoy life, make up for all you’ve missed. You haven’t even met most of your nieces and nephews. Did you know Mel is expecting another baby in August?”
“Yes, I— ”
“Today we celebrate your new job and your new life.”
His bachelor of fine arts with an emphasis in drawing and painting from Southwest School of Art might once have allowed him to teach art in one of the school districts, but not anymore.
It didn’t matter. The prison chaplain had hooked him up with Pastor James. The preacher ran a faith-based community center that served at-risk youth. He’d hired Hunter to teach art to those who’d already had their first brush with the law. He figured Hunter could teach life lessons at the same time he introduced them to art as a way to channel their anger at the hand life had dealt them. Learning what happened when a guy got off track would be the lesson.
Even though Hunter hadn’t gotten off the track. He’d been shoved off it. By an eager-beaver, newbie detective; a green-as-a-Granny-Smith-apple public defender; and an assembly-line justice system.
He would get by in this world that had hung him out to dry. Especially knowing Mom had his back. She had that don’t-mess-with-me teacher look in her burnt-amber eyes. Like her sixth graders, Hunter knew better than to argue. It felt good to know she remained in his corner. When everyone else had hit the ground, scattering in opposite directions, she never budged in her belief that son number two could not be a murderer. She’d brought him up better than that.
“You’re right. Give me a few minutes.”
She patted his chest and stretched on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek. Her lips were chapped, and the wrinkles had deepened around her mouth and eyes. Her long hair had gone pure white during his years away. “Take your time, sweetheart.”
Hunter gritted his teeth. After years of looking over his shoulder, bobbing and weaving around hard-core convicts who’d as soon shank a guy in the shower as look at him, he didn’t know how to cope with nice. With sweet. With love tempered with wisdom and a hard life.
“One day at a time.” That’s what the prison chaplain had told him. “Get through the next minute, the next hour, the next day.” That’s how he did eight years at Dominguez. This couldn’t be any harder. He opened the truck’s door and slid into the driver’s seat. The faint odor of pine air freshener greeted him. And citrus.
More likely that was his imagination. Delaney’s perfume simply could not linger that long. Move on. She has. She did. To her credit Delaney held on as long as she could— until the guilty verdict. Then she was forced to move on. She couldn’t be blamed for that.
Hunter picked up the sketch pad on the passenger seat. In those days he kept one everywhere. Just in case. The first page. The second. The third. All drawings of Delaney. Sweet Laney eating a slice of watermelon at a Fourth of July celebration. Laney rocking Hunter’s newborn nephew in a hickory rocker on the front porch. Laney in a bathing suit sitting on the dock at Medina Lake. Laney with her soulful eyes, long sandy-brown hair, and air of sad vulnerability worn like a pair of old jeans that fit perfectly. That too-big nose, wide mouth, and pointed chin. Corey might have been the angelic beauty— totally unfair— but Delaney’s face had character. She had a face Hunter never ceased to want to draw and paint.
And kiss.
He turned the pages slowly, allowing the memories to have their way with him. Meeting at a party Corey had thrown when Delaney was a senior in high school. Their first date, ribs and smoked chicken with heart-stopping creamed corn, potato salad, coleslaw, and jalapeños at Rudy’s Country Store and Bar-B-Q followed by dancing at Leon Springs Dance Hall.
She had danced with the abandon of a small child. As if she didn’t care who watched. Her face glowed with perspiration. Her green eyes sparkled with happiness. His two left feet couldn’t keep up, but she didn’t mind. She twirled her peasant skirt as she flew around him, her hands in the air, her curves beckoning.
Hunter closed his eyes. Her softness enveloped him. Her sweetness surrounded him.
He needed to see her again. He needed to talk to her. Somehow he had to prove to her that she was wrong about him. Whatever it took. He laid the sketchbook aside. “Come on, dude, let’s take a ride.”
He stuck the key in the ignition and turned it.
Nothing. Not even a tick-tick-tick. He tried a second time. Nada. “I’m an idiot.” He patted the steering wheel. “Not your fault, man.”
The truck hadn’t been driven in years. The battery was dead. He might be able to jump it, but more likely he’d need a new one. Batteries cost money.
One thing at a time. He’d waited this long.
Hunter slid from the truck and eased the door closed. “I’ll be back when I get my act together.”
In the kitchen Hunter found his mom peeling potatoes. She pointed the peeler at him. “You can’t imagine how good it feels to have you home.”
“You can’t imagine how good it feels to be here.” He landed a kiss on her soft hair. She smelled of Pond’s cold cream. The same old comforting scent. Life had changed but not her. “I’m gonna take a walk. I need to blow the prison stink off.”
“Enjoy. They redid the walking trail at the lake and installed new outdoor fitness equipment.” She waved the paring knife in the air. “But don’t stay too long. You have company coming.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He pantomimed a mock salute and headed for the front door.
One thing at a time. One step at a time. That’s how he’d get his life back.
***
Excerpt from Trust Me by Kelly Irvin. Copyright 2022 by Kelly Irvin. Reproduced with permission from Thomas Nelson. All rights reserved.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bestseller Kelly Irvin is the author of thirty books and novellas, including romantic suspense and Amish romance novels. Publishers Weekly calls her latest release, Trust Me, “a whirlwind romantic thriller,” and “an emotional rollercoaster.” The two-time ACFW Carol finalist worked as a newspaper reporter for six years writing stories on the Texas-Mexico border. Those experiences fuel her romantic suspense novels set in Texas. A retired public relations professional, Kelly now writes fiction full-time. She lives with her husband, photographer Tim Irvin, in San Antonio. They are the parents of two children, three grandchildren, and two ornery cats.
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