Courage

by Kristen Proby

  “Thank you for not stabbing me this morning.” He kisses my nose. “How long do we have before the kids get out of school?”

  I check my watch. “About two hours.”

  “We’d better get started, then.” He lifts me and hurries to the bedroom. “I have a lot of time to make up for.”

  “I mean, we never even had phone sex.”

  “What I have in mind is much, much better.” He lays me on the bed but doesn’t undress me. He just kisses me long and slow. “Now, let’s spend some time in the slow lane.”

  “As long as we make it to the fast lane, too.”

  Epilogue

  ~Natasha~

  Six Months Later…

  * * *

  “Who’s excited for burgers?” I ask as the four of us climb out of Sam’s truck to walk into Ed’s for dinner.

  “Me!” Kelsey exclaims as she takes my hand. “I want extra fries.”

  “You’re my French fry monster.” I grin down at her.

  The kids have grown like weeds in the last year. And since Sam came home to stay, they’ve thrived. Now that it’s summer, we’re looking forward to spending time on the lake and hiking up in the woods together as a family.

  We walk inside and are shown to a booth. As we walk through the restaurant, I notice that Aspen, Callum, and their kids are at a table. I wave, excited to see them.

  I thought they were in London.

  I scoot into the booth, and Sam sits next to me on the outside as I glance around. “Sam, Aspen and Callum are in town.”

  “Yeah? That’s great.”

  “She didn’t call me. She always tells me when she’s coming to town.”

  “Maybe it was a last-minute trip,” he says with a shrug.

  I look to our right and see Nina and Sebastian, and not far from them are Liam and Ellie.

  My brother is at the counter with Seth King next to him.

  Noah and Fallon are behind us.

  The rest of the King family, the entire King family is seated throughout the restaurant. It’s a packed house, full of all of the faces I love the most.

  “Why are all of our friends here?” I ask.

  They’re all grinning but trying not to look at us.

  “Because Sam told them to,” Kevin says, earning a glare from Sam. “I mean, I don’t know.”

  I look at the man I love and notice that he looks…nervous.

  He clears his throat and then looks over at me with the most intense blue eyes I’ve ever seen.

  He slips his hand into his pocket and seamlessly shifts onto one knee at the side of the booth, then reaches for my hand and slides me on the bench seat next to him.

  “I love you, Natasha Mills. For a million and one reasons, all of which I will list for you later.” He winks. “I don’t know that I could have made it through the past year with all of its intense ups and downs with anyone but you. You brought so much light and balance to my life, so much strength and love. I don’t ever want to know a day without you in it.”

  He slips the ring out of his hand and holds it up to me.

  The diamond sparkles in the light.

  “Will you please marry me?”

  “Of course.” I wrap my arms around his neck and bury my face against him. “Of course, I’ll marry you.”

  The entire restaurant explodes with applause. Even Ed grins from ear to ear behind the counter.

  “Onion rings on me,” he calls out, making me laugh.

  “We’re getting married,” Kelsey exclaims. “I told you she was gonna say yes.”

  Sam stands and pulls me with him so we can get caught up in the sea of our friends for congratulations and well-wishes.

  And I know in my heart that Monica and Rich are with us. Celebrating, too. Proud of the family we’ve made.

  I can’t wait for the rest of my life.

  Don’t miss Shelter, a close proximity romance coming this winter! Read on for a sneak peek, and don’t forget to preorder Shelter here:

  * * *

  https://www.kristenprobyauthor.com/shelter

  Shelter

  A Heroes of Big Sky Novel

  Shelter

  A Heroes of Big Sky Novel

  By

  Kristen Proby

  Prologue

  ~Seth~

  Twelve Years Old

  * * *

  “If the kid wasn’t in the car, I’d give you the best blowjob of your life right now,” my mom says and then scowls at me in the back seat. We drove all the way from Texas to Montana in this horrible car that smells of her boyfriend’s cigarettes, and they never stop when I tell them I have to go to the bathroom.

  “He’ll be gone soon,” he says and grabs her boob.

  My stomach feels queasy. I don’t like it when she lets the men touch her like that in front of me.

  At least that’s not as bad as what she lets them do to me. As long as they get to touch her, they leave me alone.

  I hope she leaves me at the ranch and never comes back.

  The road to the ranch is bumpy, and I have to pee so bad, I’m afraid I’ll go in my pants. But I don’t say anything because we’re almost there, and then I don’t have to be with my mom anymore.

  I hope. I hope that Grandma and Grandpa let me stay. What if they don’t?

  My stomach is even queasier when I think about that, so I just push it away. They were always nice to me before. They let me help with the animals and would give me all the food I can eat. And sometimes, Grandma even made pie for dessert.

  “Thank God, we’re here.” Mom opens her car door. “Get out of the car, Seth.”

  I climb out and eye my grandparents warily. They’re standing on the porch. Uncle Josh is here, too, and he doesn’t look happy.

  Will they send me away?

  Mom tosses my bag on the ground next to me. I don’t have much in there. She didn’t let me take very much because she said they didn’t have room in the car.

  “What’s this about?” Uncle Josh asks.

  “Seth’s your problem now,” Mom replies. Her voice is hard. It’s been hard for a long, long time.

  I don’t look up at any of them. I just stare at the ground and make circles in the rocks with my shoes.

  What if they don’t want me?

  “Seth isn’t a problem,” Grandma says and rushes down the porch steps and pulls me against her. I instinctively stiffen.

  No one ever touches me in a nice way. It’s usually just to push me aside or give me a whoopin’.

  “He is for me,” Mom says. She and Uncle Josh talk about how she doesn’t want me anymore because she has Cole now, and she doesn’t like being a mom.

  She’s not good at it anyway.

  But then she starts to talk about my dad, and I want to yell at her to shut her mouth. To stop talking about him.

  All he ever does is leave. He doesn’t even want to talk to me when he calls.

  I hate him.

  But I don’t say anything. I just stand here, with Grandma, and hope with all my might that I get to stay here with the animals, where it’s safe. Where I can eat until my belly is full, and no one will put their hands on me if I don’t want them to.

  I don’t even care when Mom starts to scream, throwing a fit in front of Uncle Josh and the others.

  She does this all the time.

  “Seth is always welcome here,” Uncle Josh says, and for the first time since I can remember, I take a deep breath.

  They’re going to let me stay!

  He walks over to my mom and stands over her. He’s big. Really tall. And I can tell by the way her eyes get big that she’s scared of him.

  Good. I want her to be scared. Like she made me scared for so long.

  “But you are not. Seth will stay with us until Zack is back in the States in a few months. You are never to come back here.” He gets even closer to her. “If you ever show your face here again, I’ll have you arrested for trespassing, and I will ruin your pathetic life.”

  Mom sp
utters and steps back, and then she gets her mad face back on again.

  “Why would I ever come back here? There’s nothing here I want.” She doesn’t even look at me before she gets back in the car and they zoom away, headed back for the highway.

  “Oh, honey,” Grandma whispers and kisses my head.

  But I just shrug and pull away.

  I don’t like being touched.

  “Can I stay here, Uncle Josh?” I ask, just to make sure. Magic, my favorite horse, makes a noise and I let my eyes flick her way.

  “Of course, buddy. You always have a place here.”

  I want to smile. I want to jump and dance with relief. But I’m just so tired. And sore. And hungry. And I really have to pee.

  So, I just nod and look down at the ground until they tell me what to do.

  “Come on, Seth,” Grandpa says. “Grandma will show you to your room. You can have your dad’s old room.”

  Anger boils up in my throat and I shake my head, my hands fist. “I don’t want anything of his. I’d rather sleep in the barn.”

  “Okay, the spare room it is then.”

  “Come on, honey, let’s get you settled and I’ll fix you some lunch,” Grandma says with a smile. She wraps her arm around me, and I don’t pull away. It’s kind of nice. And she’s going to make me something to eat! My stomach is growling. “We’ve missed you so much. There are some fish out in the creek that need to be caught, you know.”

  Fishing is what I like the best. Well, next to the horses. When I was here a few years ago, Uncle Josh and Dad took me fishing every day. Maybe we’ll go again.

  Maybe today.

  Grandma takes me upstairs to my new bedroom. It has a nightlight, so I won’t be in the dark all the time.

  I don’t like the dark.

  “Would you like a sandwich?” Grandma asks.

  “Sure.” I shrug, and secretly hope I can have chips, too, but I don’t want to ask for them. Whenever I ask for something, Mom takes everything away.

  “Let’s go down to the kitchen and you can hang out with me while I make lunch. We have potato salad and chips if you’d like. And I even made a chocolate cake yesterday, if you want some dessert.”

  My mouth is watering at the thought of all that food.

  I love it here.

  I hope I can stay forever.

  Chapter 1

  ~Seth~

  “Got one!” I smile in triumph and show the trout off to my uncle and dad, who are just about twenty yards away.

  We’re at the creek behind the house on the King ranch, enjoying a rare late summer day off with a little good-natured fishing.

  Well, it’s good-natured as long as the fish are biting.

  “That’s a tiny one,” Uncle Josh says with a smirk, and I scowl down at the wiggling fish in my hand.

  “It’s not that tiny.” But I unhook it and drop it back in the water. “Have you heard from the fish and wildlife people about the wolf problem?”

  “They’ll be here tomorrow morning,” Josh says with a grim sigh. “This happens about every five years or so, and we end up losing a lot of calves. It pisses me off.”

  “I hope they can get it figured out. I’ll help if I can,” I offer.

  I have a degree in wildlife biology, and I’ve been working with Glacier National Park for the last several years. I have experience. And frankly, I have a personal stake in this.

  This is King land. And I’m a King.

  I plan to be here for the rest of my life.

  “If you have time to meet them with us,” Dad says as he casts his line, “that would be great.”

  “I’ll make time.”

  This ranch, and the family on it, is everything to me. They saved me from the pits of hell and showed me what it is to belong somewhere. To be loved.

  To be safe.

  And I’ll be here for the rest of my life, taking care of our home and proving to them that I’m worthy of it.

  “How is Melinda?” Uncle Josh asks with a grin.

  “Ah, well.” I shrug and pull in my line, frown when I see the worm is gone, but there’s no fish in its place, and reach for fresh bait. “She started talking about babies.”

  Dad’s head whips around to mine. “You’ve dated for what, three months?”

  “Two.” I cast the line. “So, I had to end that one. She said I needed to figure out what I want in the relationship.”

  “Jesus, after two months?” Josh demands and then shakes his head.

  “Well, to be fair, you knew within two months that you loved Aunt Cara.”

  “I knew the minute I laid eyes on her.” Josh winks at me. “But it doesn’t always happen like that.”

  “Yeah, Melinda was a little clingy. And it didn’t exactly break my heart when I broke it off, so it clearly wasn’t meant to be.”

  “You’re young,” Dad says with a shrug.

  “What do you say we drink beer and watch football tonight?” Josh asks.

  “Can’t. I’m going out with Gage to shoot some pool.”

  “How’s Gage?”

  “I think he’s doing well. He’s been busy. Haven’t talked to him much lately, but I’ll catch up with him later. Cara’s making spaghetti for dinner, and I’m sticking around for it.”

  Just then, Josh’s phone rings.

  “Speak of the devil,” he mutters and answers the phone. “Hey, Carolina. What?”

  He frowns, then hides a laugh behind his hand.

  “I understand. Well, I’d like to keep my balls, so we’ll be right there. We’re coming. Yes, we’ll hurry.”

  He hangs up and then lets the laugh go.

  “What’s up?” Dad asks.

  “She found a mouse.” We all reel in our lines and make our way up the small hill and through the woods toward the house. “It’s the second one in a week.”

  “Wonder where they’re coming in from?” I wonder.

  “I was supposed to look around, but I forgot,” Josh says. “You can bet your ass that I won’t forget now. She was losing her damn mind.”

  “Jillian would burn the place to the ground,” Dad says, referring to the woman who raised me.

  “Cara threatened it.”

  We climb the back steps and walk into the newly renovated house, and stop short at the scene before us.

  My aunt Cara, the woman who is always calm and collected, is sitting on the dining room table, holding a shotgun.

  Her blue eyes are a little crazy.

  “Uh, babe?” Josh steps forward and gingerly takes the firearm from her. “You can’t shoot a mouse with a shotgun.”

  “Says who?” she demands. “You didn’t see the size of the son of a bitch. It was bigger than a tomcat.”

  Given that we have several toms out in the barn, she would know.

  Of course, there are no mice in the barn. Because we have the cats.

  “Where did it go?” I ask.

  “Under the couch,” she says and shudders. “It laughed at me.”

  I smirk but sober my face immediately when she narrows her eyes at me.

  Pissing off the other woman who raised me is not something I ever want to do.

  “We’ll find it,” I promise her. “Get a bowl from the kitchen.”

  “You’re not putting that monster in one of my bowls,” she says, shaking her head. “That’s disgusting. We eat out of those bowls.”

  “Don’t you have an old one that we can throw away after we relocate the mouse?”

  “Relocate?” She tilts her head and stares at me like I’m crazy. “That sucker doesn’t get to relocate. I want it dead. I want its whole family dead.”

  “She’s really homicidal,” I mutter to my uncle.

  “Babe, why don’t you go over to the big house and hang out with Jillian while we take care of this?”

  “I’m not getting off this table.”

  Josh just smiles gently at his wife, and lifts her into his arms, grabs her purse, and carries her out the front door.

&nbs
p; “They’re still really mushy, even after all this time.”

  “Are you saying I’m not mushy with your mom?” Dad asks.

  “No, you are. It’s gross.”

  Dad laughs, and then we see the offending rodent run across the living room.

  “Shit, that is a big sucker,” I say in surprise. “I need something to pick it up with.”

  Josh hurries back inside and turns to my dad. “Okay, she’s headed over to your place. Holy shit, is that it?”

  “Yeah. It’s a monster. She’s right. I need something to hold it in. What about Tupperware?”

  “We have something,” Josh says and rummages through the kitchen, then returns with an old to-go container that clearly held spaghetti sauce at some point. It’s stained red.

  “Perfect. Okay, we have to corner it.”

  The three of us work as a team, laughing as the mouse darts around the room, and finally, I jump onto my belly and stretch to cover it with the container.

  “Success!” I grin as I slide the lid under it and secure it in place. “I need to let it go before it suffocates.”

  “Don’t tell Cara that we let it live,” Dad suggests.

  “Oh, I won’t. Trust me. Now, let’s figure out how they’re making their way inside.”

  I walk out to the field behind the house, close to the woods that lead to the river, and let it go.

  “Now, don’t come back to the house. Be smart. Stay out here.”

  When I return to the house, Josh is pulling a piece of duct tape off the roll.

  “Find it?” I ask.

  “Yep. Looks like there was a hole under the sink that didn’t get repaired correctly during the remodel. We’ll keep them out with this for now, and I’ll call the contractor to come back and do this correctly.”

  “I’m sure Aunt Cara will be relieved that you solved the case.” I check the time. “I’m going to go get some work done before dinner.”