The Gilded Cage By Lauren Smith

The Gilded Cage 

By Lauren Smith

Meet the Hero from The Gilded Cage

I’m so excited to introduce you to the hero from my new book! Bad boy bullrider Fenn Lockwood was kidnapped as a boy and stolen from his rich family’s home in Long Island. Raised on the lamb by one of his kidnappers, he later is unofficially adopted by the Taylor family who runs a ranch in Colorado. He doesn’t remember who he really is, or that he has a family and life he’s missed out for the last 25 years.

Name:   Fenn Lockwood
Height:   6’2
Weight:   210 lbs
Hair:   Golden blond, a little on the long side and windblown
Eyes:   Hazel

1. Who is your special lady? Hayden Thorne
2. What do you like most (or least) about her? She’s a firecracker, and not just in bed. She’s crazy smart and has an MBA. Between her curves and her brains, she turns me inside out. I even love arguing with her because making up in bed is so much fun. She isn’t spoiled, I love that about her. She’s a real woman, strong, full of a good heart and ready to die for those she loves. Who doesn’t love a woman like that?
3. What do you like to do for fun? Fun? Well…I work almost all the time on the Broken Spur ranch to keep it from getting foreclosed. But, I did have a good time getting into a bar fight with an old rodeo rival named Kyle. Me and my childhood friend Wes Thorne (Hayden’s big brother) kicked Kyle’s butt. That was definitely fun.
4. Who is the best friend and why? Apparently, before I got kidnapped, I had three best friends: my twin brother Emery, Wes Thorne and Royce Devereaux. But I haven’t seen them since I was eight, so my best friend sort of become Jim Taylor, the owner of the Broken Spur ranch, but he’s more like a father to me.
5. Share an exciting moment from the adventures you’ve had since you met Hayden:  Well, hell, exciting? I guess that time we got trapped on the side of a damn mountain when an assassin shot out a tire on a semi-truck. It knocked my truck over the cliff and we landed in a tree. Hayden and I climbed out and slept on a cliff ledge waiting to be rescued. She really had to trust me that night and it strengthened the bond between us.
6. Describe a tortured moment from your past:  Being kidnapped with my twin brother Emery at age eight. We were held for three months in a crumbling mansion and tortured by an insane Italian assassin who’d been hired to kill us by someone who wanted to keep us from inheriting our family’s fortune. I got hit in the head during an escape attempt, and didn’t remember most of what happened, not until I reconnected with my brother Emery.
7. What makes you the bad-ass that you are: I’ve learned to survive on my own without a family and without help. Everything I’ve done to survive has been because of my own strength, not because someone had to help me. It’s like Jim Taylor says, “You have to pull yourself up by your own bootstraps.”