Love Knows No Bounds by Brooke Moss, Nina Croft, Boone Brux Page B

acknowledge every parent who gives their all and provides their children with the best opportunities and the kind of love that knows no bounds. Huge kudos goes to Entangled Publishing for giving 100% of the net profits to Autism Speaks and promoting autism awareness.

About the Author
    Boone is an award-winning writer, crafting everything from humor to dark fantasy, but has a warm spot in her heart for demons. Her novel, “Shield of Fire”, is out with Entangled Publishing and her stories appear in the ezines Digital Digest and Everything Erotic.
    She’s lived in beautiful Alaska for nearly two decades and spent many of those years in the bush, where the internet and flush toilets were a luxury. Now in civilization, she’s a full-time author, spinning tales for us thirsty souls.

Bittersweet
    Brooke Moss

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
    Copyright © 2012 by Brooke Moss. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
    Entangled Publishing, LLC
    2614 South Timberline Road
    Suite 109
    Fort Collins, CO 80525
    Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
    Edited by Libby Murphy
    Cover design by Heather Howland
    Manufactured in the United States of America
    First Edition April 2012
    The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Star Wars, Transformers, Jaques Torres, Disneyland, Better Homes and Gardens, Top Ramen, Boy Scouts of America, Google, and Bon Appetite Magazine.

For my Sammy.
    “The wildest colts make the best horses.” ~Plutarch

Chapter One
    “It’s getting worse.” I sighed.
    My son’s occupational therapist, Gianna Mancini, looked up from the glob of shaving cream on the short table in front of her and blew a dark lock of her hair out of her eyes. Her hands were gently locked around my son’s wrists as she encouraged him—unsuccessfully—to touch the stack of fragrant white fluff.
    “How so?” she asked.
    I shifted in the seat, the armrest jabbing me in the rear. “Bowen’s teacher said that he is still disrupting the other students during silent reading time. I just don’t know what to do. I keep going over it with him, but every day it’s the same thing.”
    Gianna looked at Bowen, whose white-blond hair positively glowed next to his face, which was now a deep red as he struggled to keep from touching the shaving cream. “Bowen? Are you disturbing the kids during reading time?”
    He positioned his eyes on a spot at the corner of the table, muttering, “No.”
    I sighed and closed my eyes. I didn’t feel up to prying the facts out of him. This was the routine on most days. He would lie, and I would spend the next fifteen minutes or so encouraging him to confess what’d really happened. I was too tired for it today. “Come on, Bo. Out with it.”
    When I opened my eyes, I noticed that he was watching me, his pale blue eyes assessing my defeated posture. “I did it,” he told me. “I scooted my chair.”
    “Bowen, you know you aren’t allowed to move your chair back and forth during class.” Gianna manipulated his hand so that it was propped above the cream. “It makes noise and disturbs your friends.”
    Bowen’s frown returned, and he looked away. “Don’t have friends.”
    His Asperger’s syndrome made it difficult for him to hold eye contact for long, a simple act I missed so deeply, and I was often tempted to take his eight-year-old face in my hands and force him to look at me. His eyes, the same shade as a spring sky void of clouds, were my weakness.
    “You do too have friends.” Gianna kindly pried his forefinger out of his clenched fist.