by Karen Rock
Was this how her life ended? If so, she’d go out guns blazing. She made as if to drop the gun and fired a round into Alejandro’s shoulder instead, spinning him so he tumbled.
She didn’t think—she was on automatic. Her jaw ground, her temples pulsed and her blood roared in her ears. She fell along with Alejandro, using him as a shield. Gunfire exploded around her. She kicked the table down and crouched behind it.
“Don’t shoot!” Alejandro hollered, his hand pressed tightly over a shoulder wound.
“Let him go,” growled the group’s leader. “You’ll never get out of here alive.”
“I wasn’t either way.” She prodded Alejandro to his feet with the butt of her gun. “Drop your weapons and line up against the wall. Any attempt to stop me and Alejandro dies.”
Grim laughter boomed as the men exploded in mirth.
“No, senorita. You die!” With blunt force, Alejandro swatted the gun from her hand and it flew several feet away. He forced her arms behind her back, trapping her.
Before he could make good on his threat, someone kicked the door. It crashed open and bounced off the opposite wall and there stood Daryl, legs braced apart, arms raised, pistol pointed at the men with guns still trained on her. “Drop your weapons. Carefully. The police are on their way.”
The two goons cast wary eyes at the dark windows.
“You lie,” the leader sneered.
“Wanna bet? Stick around and spend the rest of your filthy life rotting in jail.”
Caught in Alejandro’s viselike grip, Cassidy looked at Daryl and saw a man she’d never seen before. The expression on his face should have been enough to terrify the man who held her. In combat boots and camo pants, his shoulders and arms frighteningly huge, biceps rounding out of a tank top, he looked like a wild man.
He glared over the barrel of the gun, his eyes narrow, and a set to his jaw told her he was going to act. There was no question. He didn’t look at her, but at Alejandro, and her fear evaporated. She believed in him. She knew, in that instant, that he would risk his life for her, but he’d never put her at risk. Never. If he was going to make a move, she wouldn’t be in danger.
“You have one second,” Daryl barked.
She caught his eye, silently communicating that she loved him. Believed in him. Then she dropped her head to the right to give Daryl a clear shot at Alejandro.
“Back off, man—”
Daryl took his shot. She broke free as Alejandro collapsed behind her, nearly making it to Daryl when footsteps pounded outside and armed men piled in the doorway. Gunfire erupted. Pain exploded in her side, the force toppling her forward. The ground rose up to meet her, hard. The world grew quiet, dark, cold and still...or was that her?
Then—
Nothing.
* * *
“MORE ICE, PLEASE,” Cassidy heard someone say in English. Someone male. Someone in a tunnel, the voice faint. Indistinct. Her eyelids resisted her attempt to open them. Had one of her team members rescued her?
Her brain ached as she struggled to make sense of her situation and one name blazed in her mind’s eye.
“Daryl,” she whispered, memory rushing back. “Daryl.” He’d somehow found her in Nuevo León and rescued her. Miraculously, she lay in a hospital bed, injured but alive.
“I’m right here, darlin’.” A familiar, calloused hand wrapped around hers.
Her lids fluttered open and she gasped as Daryl’s handsome face swam into view. “What...?”
“Am I doing here?” Dark circles pouched beneath his eyes and his hair stood on end as if he’d raked his fingers through it for hours. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in days, yet she’d never seen his eyes glow as bright with relief. “I came to find you. Took me almost a week. Would have preferred reuniting at a swanky hotel rather than an abandoned building full of criminals.”
“The high life.” She attempted a smile. “I’ll have to speak to my travel agent.”
Daryl chuckled and smoothed a strand of hair out of her eyes. “You did warn me.”
“How did you find me?” The words came easier now, her thoughts sharpening along with her senses. Besides the pain, she noticed the large bandage covering her torso, the beep of her heart on a bedside monitor, the babble of Spanish-speaking voices and the antiseptic scent common to all hospitals.
“Brenda told me who you were planning to meet but they’d lost track of you a week ago. I’ve been chasing you down ever since.”
“You shouldn’t have come.” Her voice was barely a croak and even that scraped her throat raw. “Emma. Noah.”
“Are just fine with Joy and Boyd,” he assured her.
“But you.” She fought back the tears that threatened. If not for Daryl, she might not have survived the ambush. “You could have been killed.”
“So could you.” His lips flattened in a straight line before he added, “Wasn’t about to let that happen.”
She marveled at him. Daryl had been there for her from the moment of her accident, despite his own grief. He hung in there, putting everyone else’s needs ahead of his own. He wasn’t just trying to be the better man to prove himself worthy of his adoptive family...he was the better man. She’d never question herself when it came to a life with Daryl again. “My team?”
“Injured,” Daryl said simply, gripping her hand. “One dead. The cartel got them before you. Hugo, the driver, played dead but he only had a flesh wound. He’d already called the police when I found him.”
“Are the cartel members dead?”
“One of ’em. Arturo something or other. Other ones are in custody.”
“You took down Arturo Servando ‘La Tuta’ Fuentes?” she breathed. Her eyes bulged.
“Tutu?” Daryl shrugged, unimpressed. “Doesn’t sound so tough.”
“‘Tuta,’” she corrected. “He’s one of Mexico’s most vicious cartel leaders and on the FBI’s most wanted list. He’s plenty tough.”
Daryl’s shoulder lifted and fell again. Despite her pain, one side of her mouth kicked up. Tough cowboy. To look at his hardened features and set jaw, you’d never know he played Clumsy the Clown for his kids as easily as he took down drug lords.
“How’s the pain?” he asked, pressing his lips to her brow.
She tilted her head to look up at him. “It’s there. Did I get shot?”
Daryl frowned. “Yes. You had surgery this morning. None of the organs were hit, but the bullet was close to your spinal cord.” He reached for the call button.
She stopped him. She didn’t want to be hazy and medicated with the man she loved beside her...not until she understood why he’d acted out of character and come for her. “Not yet.”
With aching tenderness, Daryl brushed the damp gathering on her eyelashes. “You need something. You’re crying.”
“Because of you,” she said, tears coming faster in spite of the fact she was so, so happy. “I’m glad you’re here.”
“Me, too. I should have come with you in the first place.”
“But you have the ranch to worry about, the kids. I get it.”
“I worry about you, too.”
“Thanks for your concern...?”
“And love. I love you, Cassidy. I love everything about you, who you are, what you do, how you affect me... Holding you is the most comforted I’ve ever been, and I’ve never felt as safe crying as when I’ve cried right next to you.”
“Daryl,” she sighed, reaching for her vulnerable tough guy. “I love you, too. I’ve never stopped loving you.”
He sucked in a fast breath, slid an arm around her and eased onto the bed beside her. When she turned her face, his brown eyes were enormous. “I love you more than I thought I could love a woman. My life started when you walked into the bookstore and restarted when you opened your eyes in the hospital room,” he said hoarsely, his voice a m
ere whisper.
“I loved you from the moment the safety pins holding your old backpack together broke,” she said, snuggling close. “Instead of being embarrassed, you asked the librarian for a stapler, closed the gap and didn’t miss a beat in telling me why you preferred Dorothea Lange’s photography to Ansel Adams’s.” She smiled at the memory. “Your dignity, strength and unconcern for others’ opinions made me want to be admired by you, to be loved by you, although you’re still wrong about Ansel Adams.”
“You have lousy taste, then, except in men, of course.” He nuzzled her neck and spoke directly in her ear. “I shouldn’t have let you walk away a second time. Shouldn’t have let my insecurities override my love. I love you. I’ll never regret my years with Leanne because of our beautiful children. But this can be a fresh start.”
Joy detonated in her heart, filling it with bright sparklers. They fizzled, though, as she contemplated the confession she needed to make. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve never been surer about anything. I want this. If you take dangerous jobs, I’ll go anywhere you want to go.”
“But, Daryl, you love Loveland Ranch. The life you’ve built there.”
“Don’t you realize I love you more? I need you in my life. You and my kids. Lord, Cassidy—I don’t care where that happens as long as it happens. Once you know how much you love someone, no one else will do.”
“Daryl,” she said in a whisper. “What if you change your mind? What happens if something goes wrong? You have to remember, I never thought anything terrible would happen to—”
He put his finger to her lips. “Shh,” he said. “I want you to trust me. You know you’re safe with me.”
“You are handy in a corner,” she half joked, then squeezed her eyes closed and gathered her courage. “There’s something you need to know, first.”
“You didn’t kill Leanne.”
Her lids flew open.
“Travis told me what you’d said.”
“She wanted me to watch the kids while she stayed with a childhood friend, and we argued.” Cassidy drew in a long breath, trying to calm her rapid-fire heart, and looked away from Daryl. “I called her selfish. Those were my last words to her.”
“You know what mine were?” At the deep vein of pain running through Daryl’s voice, her gaze snapped back to him. “‘If you’re not coming home tonight, don’t bother coming home again.’”
“Oh, Daryl!”
A muscle twitched in his clamped jaw as he battled the powerful emotion gripping him. “I was a terrible husband.”
“I was a terrible sister.”
“You came home the moment she asked for help,” Daryl countered.
“Actually, I was trying to stop her.”
Daryl stroked the side of Cassidy’s cheek. “I would have done the same.”
“I killed your children’s mother.” She turned away. “You must hate me.”
Daryl lightly pressed his index finger beneath her chin and guided her face back his way. “I could never hate you. And I don’t blame you. Neither will the children.”
“If it wasn’t for me, Leanne would be alive.”
“Maybe, but she still would have left us. At least you tried to stop her. It’s time to let go of our guilt.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“In your note, you said you could never take Leanne’s place. I agree.”
She winced. The harsh truth at last.
“You have your own space in our family, one we’ll create together. We’ll build a new cabin. A new life. Please, Cassidy. I don’t care how far you travel as long as this—” he tapped her heart “—stays with me.”
“It always has.” She cupped his bearded face and brought her lips to his, kissing him softly at first, then more passionately until they both gasped for air. “I love you so much I almost ache with it.”
“Or that’s your bullet wound talking.”
She chuckled softly. “True...”
Daryl rested his forehead against hers. “All of my old feelings returned when I saw you again and I fought them. It felt like I was cheating on Leanne. I figured I’d let you go once, I could do it again. I never thought my feelings would become even more powerful. Seeing you with my children, my family, the community...I only fell harder.”
She sniffed a little, and another tear rolled down her cheek. “I feel like I’m betraying Leanne, too. But I think, in the end, she wanted us to be together. She wanted to right the wrong she’d done.”
“As do I. Come back home. I make a mean mac-n-cheese...”
“That’s debatable, but you have other, laudable attributes.”
“Like...”
“Your Clumsy the Clown character.”
“Sounds sexy.”
Cassidy drew in a breath, trying to steady her tremulous voice. “Oh, he is. And goofy, and endearing and lovable. I also kinda liked you as Rambo, too.”
His eyes glinted. “Did I turn you on?”
“You saved my butt.”
“Guess that’s more important.”
“And you turned me on...but you—just you—Daryl Loveland, is who I love most. Yes. I’ll come home with you.”
“Marry me.”
“Now you’re pushing it.”
His lips lifted in an amused smile. “Marry me, please...?”
When she nodded, he kissed her again, tenderly, and she kissed him back, ecstatic. She wouldn’t need to step into her sister’s shoes to be part of this beautiful man’s life. He loved her and wouldn’t try to make her conform to his life or anyone else’s. She was free to choose her own path, and she wanted the one that led back to Carbondale, to the love and joy that’d long awaited her there.
* * *
Keep reading for an excerpt from Holiday Kisses by Anna J. Stewart.
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Holiday Kisses
by Anna J. Stewart
CHAPTER ONE
WITH HIS TAILORED jacket tossed over one arm and designer tie knotted hard into his throat, Xander Costas stood on the bottom plank of the steps and cringed at the deafening roar of waves crashing onto the beach before him. “Well, they’ve got plenty of water and sand, that’s for sure.”
He’d never understood the appeal of water, other than as a hydration agent, of course. The ocean was so unpredictable. Uncontrollable. So...loud. The way the tide left a foamy film across the damp sand reminded him of a badly topped-off lat
te or a rejected Jackson Pollock painting.
He was a city boy, born and bred. His family joked he had steel for bones—strong, unbending. Their code word for stubborn, no doubt, but he didn’t take offense. Steel stood the test of time—it shaped civilizations. Nature served its purpose, but it wasn’t the first thing Xander thought of.
Yet here he was, thousands of miles from home, placing all his hopes—and his family’s financial future—on an ocean-side town rebuilding its reputation as green and nature-friendly. A town that, up until a few months ago, few people had ever heard of.
Xander’s fists clenched as he forced himself to inhale. He nearly choked on the briny tang that scraped the back of his throat. His lungs would need at least a week to adjust from the smog-tinged air he’d been inhaling for thirty-three years. He missed the blaring traffic, the hard strength of cement and reinforced concrete, and what was with that sun? Didn’t California know it was only weeks before Christmas? His first without snow. He never thought he’d miss the snow-capped bite of an early winter cutting across his skin, and as the late afternoon rays beat down on him he wondered if he hadn’t just traveled across the country, but perhaps been transported to a different planet.
What on earth had he gotten himself into?
“Cash! Tabitha!”
The sound of urgent children’s cries accompanied by the frenetic, enthusiastic barking of two dogs drew Xander’s attention to the shore. Not only did the dogs dive snout-first into the ocean, but their adolescent owners also hurried after them. The boy hit the water face-first and came up sputtering, his arm filled with golden retriever. The little girl had come to a screeching halt. Her toes barely kissed the water before she backed away. The second dog, a terrier mix of some kind, bounded back onto the beach and plopped her drenched hindquarters into the damp sand beside her mistress.
“You’re gonna get in big trouble, Simon!” The superior tone in the little girl’s voice had Xander’s lips twitching as he was reminded of his youngest sister, Alethea. Strong, determined and most definitely unique. But where Alethea maintained a penchant for Bohemian-chic clothing and untamed curls, this little girl had crooked red pigtails, wore purple overalls and carried a worn butterfly backpack with a missing gossamer wing.