The Heart of a Hero

by Janet Chapman

  “When combining magic, passion, and warmth, no one does it better than Chapman.”*

  Praise for the novels of Janet Chapman

  “Janet Chapman is a keeper.”

  —Linda Howard, New York Times bestselling author

  “Chapman continues to maintain a great blend of magic, romance, and realism in a small-town setting; tales in the style of Barbara Bretton’s popular books.”

  —Booklist

  “Heartwarming . . . Readers will enjoy the enchanting town and characters.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Chapman is unmatched and unforgettable.”

  —*RT Book Reviews

  “A captivating, heartwarming paranormal romance that will capture your attention from the very beginning . . . The combination of wit, clever dialogue, charismatic characters, magic, and love makes this story absolutely enchanting.”

  —Romance Junkies

  “One can’t beat a love story that combines magic and a man willing to move mountains for the woman he loves! Great elements of humor, magic, and romance.”

  —Night Owl Reviews

  “A spectacular and brilliant novel for those who love the juxtaposition of the paranormal and the real world . . . A PERFECT 10 is a fitting rating for . . . a novel which is both tender and joyful, but also has beasts looking for peace and a new way of life after centuries of struggle.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  Jove titles by Janet Chapman

  HIGHLANDER FOR THE HOLIDAYS

  SPELLBOUND FALLS

  CHARMED BY HIS LOVE

  COURTING CAROLINA

  THE HEART OF A HERO

  The Heart

  of a Hero

  Janet Chapman

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

  USA / Canada / UK / Ireland / Australia / New Zealand / India / South Africa / China

  Penguin Books Ltd., Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  For more information about the Penguin Group visit penguin.com

  THE HEART OF A HERO

  A Jove Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2013 by Janet Chapman.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Jove Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group,

  JOVE® is a registered trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  The “J” design is a trademark of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  Cover art by Jim Griffin.

  Cover design by George Long.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-61828-8

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Jove mass-market edition / March 2013

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The publisher does not have any control over and does not have any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  To Raymond Byram.

  You’ve always been a soft place to land, big brother,

  but your wisdom and grace make you a truly

  amazing family patriarch.

  (You will, however, always be Dipsy to us.)

  Contents

  Praise

  Also by Janet Chapman

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Chapter Twenty-three

  Epilogue

  LETTER FROM LAKEWATCH

  Chapter One

  Watching through the windshield of his truck, Nicholas studied the three young men getting out of the late-model pickup on the far side of the employee parking lot at the base of Whisper Mountain. But the more the man sitting beside him explained why he’d asked him to come down here today, the more confused Nicholas became. Rowan was second in command of Nova Mare’s security force and quite capable of dealing with this sort of problem on his own.

  “And the reason you didn’t simply intervene?” Nicholas asked. As he watched, one of the three young men lifted a bicycle out of the pickup and leaned it against a tree in front of the older, mud-splattered truck they’d pulled up beside. “They’re on resort property, Julia Campbell is an employee, and last time I checked, keeping our staff safe was in your job description.”

  Apparently not the least bit intimidated by the growl in his boss’s voice, Rowan shook his head with a soft snort. “If I’ve learned anything living in Spellbound Falls this past year, it’s that Mainers don’t particularly care to have strangers butting into their business—especially family business. Her brother’s the one with the peach-fuzz beard.” Rowan scowled at the young men lighting up cigarettes as they leaned against the shiny red truck they’d arrived in. “And I didn’t intervene last week because I was afraid it would make things worse for Julia when she got home. Here she comes,” he said when the bus shuttling employees down from the mountaintop resort halted in the middle of the parking lot.

  Nicholas reached over and stopped Rowan from getting out. “Let’s sit and watch for a while. You say he’s here every Friday waiting for her to get off work, and that it’s obvious he’s hitting her up for money?”

  Rowan nodded. “She usually has it in her pocket and just hands him some folded bills. Only last week he apparently wanted more than she was offering and grabbed her purse. They got in a small tussle, she lost, and he dug out her wallet, pulled out a fistful of money and tossed the wallet and purse on the ground, then got in his truck and left. The punk couldn’t even be bothered to take her home, but left her to ride her bicycle in the rain. There, that’s her in the red wool jacket and black pants, carrying those empty feed sacks,” Rowan said, nodding at the worker stepping off the shuttle bus.

  Nicholas saw the woman in red hesitate when she spotted the three young men leaning against the pickup, then watched her square her shoulders and head toward them—her brother straightening at the sight of her.

  Julia Campbell was taller than average for a woman and somewhat on the thin side, with a thick braid of light brown hair hanging halfway down her back that Nicholas suspected would spring into a riot of curls when let loose. It was dusk and starting to snow, so he couldn’t make out the color of her large eyes set in her oval face on top of a gracefully long neck. Her posture was intrinsically feminine, her stride filled with purposeful energy despite it being the end of her workday. “She’s older than I was expecting,” he said, assuming she’d barely be out of her teens, judging by the age of her brother.
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  “I asked the shuttle driver her name after that little tussle,” Rowan said, “then went back up to your office and checked her employee file. She turned thirty last month, has been married but is divorced. And even though I’ve since learned her mother’s dead and that she lives with her father between here and town, she listed a sister as next of kin to notify in an emergency. The empty sacks she’s carrying were full this morning. Her family owns a cedar mill, and Julia supplies the resort with kindling and pinecones for the fireplaces to supplement her wages and tips. She works housekeeping Tuesday through Saturday, and from what I’ve gathered from quietly checking around, she asked to always be assigned the same eight cottages.”

  Nicholas glanced at him, arching a brow. “Any particular reason you’ve become an expert on one of our female employees?”

  “I’m concerned,” Rowan growled back. “Sweet Prometheus, man, I’m old enough to be her father.” He suddenly grinned. “And yours, sir,” he drawled, just as Julia Campbell reached her brother, her hand already emerging from her pocket holding some money. “I don’t like interfering in family business,” Rowan continued. “But I also don’t like seeing a woman being harassed. That’s why I asked you to come down here today and help me decide what to do—if anything.”

  “Our authority ends at the resort’s property lines, which means it’s not our place to interfere in—” Nicholas stopped in midsentence. Julia had just handed her brother the money, then twisted away when he made a grab for her. She stepped around him and pulled a set of keys from her pocket as she headed for the older pickup, but halted again when the other two boys moved to block her path.

  Nicholas was out of his own truck and halfway across the parking lot when he saw Julia’s brother start dragging her toward the bicycle while trying to wrestle the keys away from her. “Come on, Reggie, it’s snowing,” she said as he dodged employees walking to their vehicles. “Give me a ride home.”

  “I’m not heading back to town,” the punk said, still dragging her. “Dad’s drinking again, so I’m spending the weekend at Corey’s camp.” Finally getting hold of the keys, he gave her arm a shake. “You were supposed to leave the keys under the mat so I could get the truck this afternoon. I had to wait four freakin’ hours in town.”

  She yanked her arm out of his grip. “I kept them so you’d give me a ride.”

  “Not happening, sis. Pedal fast and you’ll beat the storm. And while you’re at it, you can figure out how to lug your kindling on your bike from now on, because you’re not getting my truck again.”

  “Is there a problem?” Nicholas asked from directly behind the boy.

  “Not that I know of,” the kid snarled as he pivoted, only to stumble back when he found himself glaring at a broad chest. “Who the hell are you?” he asked, taking another step back.

  “Director of security for Nova Mare,” Nicholas said, matching him step for step. He looked past the boy at Julia. “You in need of some help, Miss Campbell?”

  Her eyes widened, apparently surprised that he knew her name, before she dropped her gaze and shook her head. “No, everything’s okay.”

  “I’m outta here,” the boy said, reaching for the door of his truck.

  Nicholas placed his hand on the door to hold it closed. “I believe your sister asked you for a ride home.”

  “No, that’s okay,” Julia said as she headed for the trees. “I’ve decided I’d rather ride my bike.” She set her sacks and purse in the basket attached to the handlebar, nodded at Nicholas with a forced smile, then walked the bicycle along the tree line before veering into the parking lot several vehicles away.

  Suspecting Rowan was right about their interference creating more problems for her, Nicholas turned to the boy. “I catch even a whisper that you’ve laid a hand on your sister,” he said quietly, “on or off the resort grounds, you and I are taking a long walk in the woods together, you got that?”

  “Are you freakin’ threatening me?”

  Nicholas leaned in, crowding the punk against the mud-splattered door. “Yes,” he said succinctly. He turned and walked to his pickup. “Take the shuttle back up the mountain,” he told his second in command when the man fell into step beside him. “I’m giving Miss Campbell a ride home.”

  “So much for not interfering,” Rowan said on a chuckle as he headed to the bus with a wave over his shoulder.

  He’d had to interfere, Nicholas decided as he got in his pickup, because he couldn’t stand seeing a woman being harassed any more than Rowan could. He started his truck, but then had to wait for several cars to idle past before he was able to pull out behind them. And why was Julia Campbell letting some fuzzy-faced punk half her age push her around? If the little bastard wanted money, he could damn well break a sweat for it, not bum it off his sister.

  Nicholas unclenched his jaw and turned on the windshield wipers to clear the swirling snow. “It’s none of my business,” he muttered, finally pulling onto the main road behind the procession of exiting workers. “I’m just going to make sure she gets home without breaking her lovely neck.”

  He’d been working at Nova Mare over a year now and still couldn’t get a handle on the locals, which was confounding, considering there wasn’t a country or culture he hadn’t studied at length—some quite intimately. But Mainers appeared to be a breed unto themselves; maddeningly stoic, stubbornly self-reliant, and highly resilient. They were also deeply proud, especially the women.

  Nicholas scowled out the windshield. Not only were the women proud, some of them were really quite bold when it came to pursuing something—or someone—they wanted. And apparently several of them wanted Nova Mare’s unusually tall, blue-eyed director of security. Which was becoming a real problem, as he didn’t particularly like being considered Spellbound Falls’ most eligible bachelor—a title he’d heard whispered around. By the gods, some of the women’s antics were bordering on brazen.

  Not that he had any intention of living like a monk if a lovely lady happened to catch his interest. He just preferred to be the one doing the pursuing.

  So how had the decidedly lovely Julia Campbell escaped his notice?

  Nicholas saw the vehicles in front of him swerve across the center line, allowing his headlights to land on Little Red Riding Hood walking her bicycle down the side of the darkened road in the nearly blinding snow. She’d pulled her hood over her head and was struggling to keep the bicycle’s snow-caked tires out of the ditch, making him wonder why none of her coworkers were offering her a ride.

  Tempted to hunt down her brother and take the punk on a one-way walk in the woods, Nicholas had to make himself relax his jaw again as he drove past her and pulled to the side. He got out of his truck, but then had to snag the bicycle’s seat when Julia merely veered into the road to go around him. “Take your purse out of the basket,” he said as he grabbed the bike by the frame. “I’m giving you a ride home.”

  He lifted the bike when she didn’t move—which made her snatch her purse with a startled squeak—and set it in his truck, but then had to grab Julia’s arm and hustle her out of the road as several vehicles swerved around them. She opened the passenger door, but then just stood there staring at the chest-height seat.

  She gave another soft squeak when he caught her around the waist and lifted her into the truck. Nicholas closed the door before she could see him grin at the realization that Julia Campbell’s eyes—their long lashes littered with snowflakes—were a rich hazel-gold. Feline eyes, he decided, with the potential to be warmly inviting one minute and stubbornly aloof the next.

  And wasn’t it interesting that he happened to like cats?

  After walking around the front of the truck, he slid in behind the wheel, checked his side mirror, and pulled back onto the road. “You’ll have to tell me where you live,” he said into the silence broken only by the thump of the windshield wipers.

  “Just a few miles on the right. Um, thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.” He pulled off one of
his gloves with his teeth and turned up the heater fan, then held out his hand to her. “Nicholas.”

  She hesitated, shook his hand without taking off her own glove, then went back to hugging her purse to her chest. “Julia.”

  What Nicholas liked most—and, ironically, least—about cats was their fierce independence, while he considered their most endearing quality to be their general lack of vocalization. And although he only suspected Julia Campbell could be stubbornly independent, judging by her determination to walk home in a snowstorm rather than ask a coworker for a ride, she was also proving to be a woman of few words. “How long have you worked at Nova Mare?”

  “Since May.”

  Only six months. “And before then?”

  “I waited tables at the Drunken Moose weekends and worked at my family’s cedar mill through the week.”

  Wow, a whole sentence. “So were you living here when the mountains moved and the earthquake turned Bottomless into an inland sea three and a half years ago?”

  “No, I was living just north of Bangor. But we felt the earthquake down there.”

  “You work in housekeeping, don’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  Nicholas felt his jaw tightening again with a whole new appreciation of the women who complained that talking to him was like pulling teeth, and tried to decide what about this particular woman was bugging him. “You enjoy working at Nova Mare?”

  “Very much,” she said, adding a slight nod when she obviously heard the edge in his voice. “Mrs. Oceanus is a wonderful boss. That mailbox is my road.” She reached for the door handle. “You can drop me off here. I live only a short ways in.”

  Nicholas turned onto the road and kept going, stifling another grin when he heard his passenger release a barely perceptible sigh. “With this weather, it looks as if your days of riding a bicycle to work are coming to an end. You don’t own a car?”

  “I . . . It’s being repaired.”

  Must be quite a major repair, since Rowan had told him Julia had been biking to work for months now—except on Fridays, when she apparently borrowed her brother’s truck to bring her kindling and pinecones. And the woman’s idea of a “short ways” was an understatement, considering he’d already driven down the rutted forest road over a mile without seeing any signs of a house yet.