Joscelyn

Justifiably Joscelyn Series

Joscelyn Bryant started her Saturday morning with a visit from Justin Chambers, her boyfriend of two years. Justin came with an unexpected ultimatum, which caused Joscelyn to wonder if her day could get any worse. Soon after Justin’s departure Eric West, the father of Joscelyn’s two children, showed up with a surprise of his own, and if she thought her day was bad she hadn’t seen anything yet. When her best friend Belinda Little showed up on her doorstep and offered her a free shopping spree she thought her day was looking up. Belinda and Joscelyn ended up at a local nightclub that was full of surprises, and Joscelyn quickly found that one night could change her entire life.

Joscelyn Bryant is more than just a single mother of two and a high school English teacher. She is engaged to be married to high powered Criminal Defense Attorney Justin Chambers, a man who once broke her heart by abandoning her when she did not agree to marry him the first time he asked. Joscelyn is having a baby for multi-business owner Bryson Jenkins, the man she pegged as just the rebound guy after her breakup with Justin. Her relationship with Eric West, the father of her two sons is completely platonic, yet complicated. Justin, Bryson, and Eric all seem to love Joscelyn in their own way, still despite the appearance of an overabundance of love, she is struggling to find her own happiness. Does love really make a woman happy? Is Joscelyn’s inability to be completely happy her woman’s intuition telling her that something is not right? Can Joscelyn find a way to overcome her feelings of sub-happiness so that she can finally be free to live happily ever after?

Any woman who has ever tried to find happiness outside of herself will identify with the dilemmas Joscelyn faces. Follow Joscelyn on her journey to survive situations she never thought she would have to endure, in hopes of overcoming, when circumstances doom her to live happily never after.

Defense attorney Justin Chambers has built his entire life on control, order, and the belief that life needs balance because in his line of work, balance keeps you alive. But when a dangerous new client from New York demands Justin represent him in a murder case he does not want to touch, Justin feels the ground shift beneath him. The man is guilty. The man knows too much. And the man won’t take no for an answer.

As Justin resists the case, the past he’s tried to bury resurfaces as flashbacks pull him into the secret he’s spent twenty years burying. At sixteen, he was accused of killing his pregnant first love, Jennifer Rhoden, a case that ended with a “not guilty” verdict but no body ever found. Though the court declared him not guilty, the suspicion, the whispers, the unanswered questions, and the accusation shaped the obsessive, rigid man he has become.

Now, defending a murderer threatens to reopen wounds Justin has never allowed to heal and the past he escaped may be the very thing this client plans to use against him. When the truth begins to surface, Justin must confront the one question he’s avoided his entire adult life: If the justice system once failed him… will it do the same again?

Kyle Jerome Johnson kept his twelve year old son Keljay a secret from his wife Lacey, but one phone call changed everything. Kyle and Lacey Johnson find out that Keljay Johnson’s mother Kendra Jones was tragically killed in an automobile accident. Kyle convinces Lacey to travel with him to St. Augustine, Florida for Kendra’s funeral, and Keljay insists on coming home with them. Kyle loves his son, but fears that Keljay’s presence will be a constant reminder of his infidelity to Lacey and the death of his marriage.

Lacey Elizabeth Ann Johnson is no stranger to heartache. She was the sole survivor when her parents were killed in a car accident on her tenth birthday. She was taken in by her godmother Ann and molested by godmother’s boyfriend. Lacey met Kyle and he promised her happily ever after, but when he became an attorney, arrogance and adultery became his priorities. After nearly twenty years of broken promise, three miscarriages, and the arrival of Keljay, Lacey sees the changes in Kyle she prayed for. Keljay is the child she always wanted, but can she raise another woman’s child and love him as her own? Is the love of Keljay worth forgiving the man who caused her greatest hurt of her life?

Bryson Jenkins has been to hell on Earth and back…more than once. Years ago his first love Janet Harris shot him before turning the gun on herself and killing herself and their unborn child. Just before a medical discharge from the Navy, due to his injuries and state of mental instability, Bryson brutally beat Janet’s father half to death after he raised allegations about her suicide being a murder case. In turn Bryson served an eighteen month prison bid in Virginia State Prison system.

Years down the road, after meeting Joscelyn Bryant the love of his life Bryson’s sister Charity Jenkins tragically dies in a car accident. Bryson temporarily lost his will to live but found it again with his renewed love of Joscelyn.

Tragedy struck again when Joscelyn was kidnapped. When evidence pointed to Bryson he took matters into his own hands, staged his death, and then went after the mentally ill abductor himself. Now that Bryson’s wife is home safe and sound, he suffers from the nearly fatal gunshot wounds to the chest he sustained while in pursuit of her captor.

Physically, two months and three surgeries after nearly being shot to death, Bryson fears that he will never be the same. Now that Joscelyn is back home, four months pregnant and fighting cervical cancer, Bryson knows he needs to be her strength, but who will be his?

Bryson Thomas Jenkins is a man who has overcome unbelievable odds. He must now be husband, father, business owner, and caretaker, as he silently suffers through physical pain and mental anguish that is a burden far beyond what the average man can bear. Despite his incredible strength, this story of friendship, faith, and the finality of fate, will make or break Bryson Jenkins.

And leave him with no choice, but to believe.

Stretch was never the boy Lacey Johnson should have trusted, but she always did.

When he turns up wounded in Laurel Oaks after a near-fatal shooting, Lacey tries to help him recover, unaware that healing is only Step One of his plan…Step Two is revenge.

Once Stretch regains his strength, he returns to Jacksonville, Florida, the place where he was shot, the place where the men who betrayed him still breathe. This time, he isn’t running. He’s hunting, and Lacey, without meaning to, becomes tangled in the path he leaves behind.

Her marriage to Kyle Johnson is already strained. As a criminal defense attorney, Kyle has seen what vengeance does to men, but he never imagined watching his own wife drift closer to the one person capable of destroying her future. Or that he might one day face the unthinkable: defending Lacey in a courtroom he once ruled with confidence.

As Stretch’s quest for payback ignites violence across Jacksonville, Lacey is pulled deeper into the fallout, caught between the friend she once loved like family and the husband fighting to rescue her from the consequences. Stretch crossed his line the moment he left Laurel Oaks. Now Kyle races to save Lacey from crossing hers because when vengeance runs in a man’s veins, everyone connected to him risks bleeding for it.