Texas Rebel

by Jean Brashear

  “Who are you? What are you doing on my ranch?”

  Gray eyes went wary, studying him for a long moment that made Boone’s spine tingle with unease. Fringed with thick dark lashes, a striking black ring around the irises, her eyes softened.

  “Are you Boone or Mitch?”

  He stared at her. “I’m Boone,” he replied, frowning. “How do you know my name?”

  She stuck out one slender hand to shake his, her eyes still soft. Too soft. Almost like an apology. “I’m Maddie Collins. Your father mentioned you in his letter.”

  He forgot the extended hand. “What letter?” Boone had only gotten a telegram, and that only after Sam was dead and buried.

  “You didn’t—?” Her eyes darted to the side, looking toward the house. “He didn’t…?”

  “Didn’t what?” His stomach clenched. “Why are you here?”

  The woman named Maddie swallowed, then straightened, shaking her dark brown hair back over her shoulders as if preparing herself. In the sunlight, it glowed hints of red like the sky’s warning of storms to come.

  Then her next words wiped out all thoughts of silky dark hair and husky voices.

  “Your father left the house to me.”

  “He…what?” But even as he waited for her reply, he believed her, this stranger in too-bright gypsy colors who didn’t belong here. He’d been crazy to hope that anything might have changed between him and his father, that Sam had regretted abandoning his sons.

  “I’m sorry. I—I thought you would already know.”

  Her regrets didn’t help. At that moment, he knew only one thing. He wasn’t through losing things that mattered. He’d been a fool to think otherwise.

  Even in death, the man who’d been barely a father still denied him the only place he’d ever thought of as home.

  …Excerpt from TEXAS SECRETS by Jean Brashear © 2011.

  Buy TEXAS SECRETS

  Buy Boone’s long-lost brother Mitch’s story TEXAS LONELY

  Buy the secret baby’s story TEXAS BAD BOY

  Maddie and Boone are major characters also in TEXAS ROOTS and all the Morning Star couples appear in TEXAS DREAMS.

  * * *

  THE MARSHALLS:

  TEXAS REFUGE

  (Quinn and Lorie, The Marshalls #1)

  Wounded hero Quinn Marshall is haunted after nearly dying in a failed attempt to save his sister. The last thing the former homicide detective wants is another woman to watch over, but someone important to his brother is in trouble, and Quinn’s basic nature is to protect. Soap opera star Lorie Chandler has already lost her husband to an obsessed fan and now her son is the madman’s new target.

  While the police hunt the killer, Quinn’s rugged Texas ranch is the ideal hiding place for Lorie and her child. Neither Quinn nor Lorie expects the explosive heat or the powerful emotion that flares to life in his canyon refuge, yet there is no future for them and both are painfully aware that their time together can only be temporary. When the madman finds them, Quinn’s sole focus is on keeping Lorie and the boy he’s come to love safe, even though his success will mean that he will have to give them up to a life where he cannot belong.

  Quinn Marshall jolted awake in his seat.

  The acrid scent of candle smoke seared his nostrils. He glanced around and remembered he was on a plane. Took a deep breath.

  The passenger beside him still slept.

  But the flight attendant’s gaze was locked on his.

  Had he cried out in his sleep?

  “Sir?” she whispered, dark curls falling forward. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Can I get you something?”

  My old life back. “No. Thank you.”

  She hesitated. He flattened his gaze and sat still, willing her to give up. What he needed was beyond even her best intentions.

  She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, then nodded her head. “Well, let me know if you change your mind.”

  “I will.”

  After she retreated, he shook his head hard, as if that would dislodge the sense of evil clinging to the curves inside his skull. Why had the dreams started again? First the dark-haired boy, now this. For months after he’d left the force he hadn’t experienced any.

  He never wanted another one. After the first one, his sister had been murdered. He’d been too late to save her, nearly died himself.

  But now they were back. Who was the little dark-haired boy around whom he felt such danger? Who was the blond woman in the picture?

  A blonde…. Like Clarissa.

  I don’t want this. It’s useless. I didn’t save her.

  Let me be.

  To settle himself, he visualized the table rock at the canyon’s edge where he’d found respite. Grounded by earth, the only sound the constant wind sweeping his mind clean of shadows, he could find rest for his troubled mind.

  Peace he didn’t deserve.

  He felt the change in the engines and stirred, raised his seat back and prepared for the landing. When they touched down and rolled to a stop, he uncoiled his tall frame and rose to grab his carry-on. The flight attendant caught his eye, her expression intimating that this didn’t have to be the end. With regret, he shifted his gaze to stare at the ceiling. She had no clue what she’d be tackling.

  “56 West 66th,” he told the cab driver a few minutes later, then settled back into the seat of the taxi, gathering himself for the charade he must act out. He hated to be less than honest with his younger brother, but Josh knew nothing about this crack in the steadiness he’d always counted on from Quinn, how it had swallowed him up, how damned scared Quinn was that the darkness seemed to have become a permanent part of him.

  Once they had shared practically everything, the three orphaned siblings, but Clarissa was gone, and Josh had a new life and a bright future. Their one surviving relative, their grandmother’s sister whom they called Tía Consuela, was aging and carried her own burdens.

  This was his battle to fight.

  Things were looking up for his brother now, and Quinn wasn’t going to screw it up. Josh’s grief over Clarissa had faded in the demands of his new leading role. He’d worked hard for what he’d accomplished, and Quinn wanted him to savor it.

  Quinn only wished his brother would leave him alone in the canyons to seek his own peace. But Josh and Tía Consuela had conspired to corner Quinn into paying Josh a visit in New York, and Quinn had run out of excuses.

  He hated cities. The years he’d spent as a Houston homicide detective couldn’t be forgotten so easily, but he damn sure tried. Visiting New York brought back too many unwelcome memories of crowded streets. Of danger, of darkness.

  “Here we are.” The driver’s voice broke into his thoughts.

  Quinn paid the fare and stepped from the cab, looking around him. God, the noise. A pang of longing for the crisp, clean air of the High Plains, the endless stars in the Texas nighttime sky, squeezed his heart.

  It was only a few days. He squared his shoulders and entered the building.

  …Excerpt from TEXAS REFUGE by Jean Brashear © 2012.

  Buy TEXAS REFUGE

  Buy book 2 TEXAS STAR

  Buy book 3 TEXAS DANGER

  * * *

  THE GALLAGHERS OF SWEETGRASS SPRINGS:

  Nestled in the Texas Hill Country, tiny Sweetgrass Springs was founded by four veterans of the Texas Revolution, and for over a century the town and their ranches grew and prospered. Nowadays, however, too many of the town’s children leave for the big city as soon as they can escape, and Sweetgrass is barely hanging on. The heart and soul of Sweetgrass is Ruby Gallagher, once a scandal for bearing a child out of wedlock and refusing to identify the father. Her daughter vanished from Sweetgrass right after high school, but Ruby, owner of community gathering place Ruby’s Café, remains, keeping vigil, hoping for her daughter’s return. She is fighting to save her ancestors’ legacy, but the town is dying, and it’s breaking Ruby’s heart.

  TEXAS
ROOTS

  (Ian and Scarlett, The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs #1)

  When scandal and an ambitious prosecutor wreck talented chef Scarlett Ross’s life and she learns of a grandmother she never knew she had, she flees the notoriety to pay an anonymous visit to Sweetgrass Springs, Texas, a town kept alive only by her grandmother’s determination and carried on the strong shoulders of sexy Texas cowboy Ian McLaren. There she is surprised to discover a yearning to sink roots deep in the Texas Hill Country—but she is terrified that the secrets she’s hiding will endanger everyone she’s come to love.

  What had possessed her mother to keep Sweetgrass Springs a secret for thirty-two years? To tell her that they had no family?

  Scarlett Ross pressed the accelerator and tried to think about that mystery instead of the fear that tangled beneath her breastbone: would she be safe there?

  She crested the last hill, the tiny town a small diamond of light cushioned in flocked green velvet as the smudged violet of night stole over the Texas Hill Country. January here was far kinder than in New York. While the grass was a flaxen hue and some trees were only bare trunks and branches, many were still green.

  The road curved left, right, left again, while Sweetgrass Springs winked in and out of view. Dead tired from the long drive fleeing the wreckage of her life in Manhattan, Scarlett longed for a meal and a bed. Best she’d been able to tell from the limited information available online, however, only the meal would be available in this town of fifteen hundred sixty-seven. The nearest motel was an hour back the way she’d come, but after running full-speed halfway across the country, Scarlett couldn’t bear to wait another night to find out if she, in fact, was not alone in this world, after all.

  She had nowhere else to go. Her career was in ruins and the media hounded her every step, screaming for juicy details of her affair with a drug lord. For two years she’d been a meteor on the rise in the only city that mattered…and now she was a star in a tragedy. A farce, except that a cop had died in the raid.

  She wasn’t a criminal…but she was criminally stupid, no question. How could she not have seen? How could she have blithely accepted Andre’s assurances that it was his love for her that made him want to showcase her talents in the gem of a restaurant into which she’d put her heart and soul?

  Instead, Mirelle had been simply a front for illegal activities that had gone on under her nose. And she’d never once, in the whole two years, suspected. Never wanted to look. She’d simply been grateful for the focus, the distraction from her grief. His offer had come right after she’d lost her only family, and she’d boxed up her mother’s effects without a look. Instead of immediately leaving for parts unknown as her mother had always done when things got crazy, she’d tried something radical: she’d planned to stay in one place. She’d been too devastated to think straight, had been ripe pickings for Andre’s machinations.

  She’d been grateful, so grateful for the rescue. She’d lost her only compass in a life spent on the move, and she’d welcomed the chaos and endless work that allowed her not to think. The solace of someone who cared.

  Except Andre hadn’t really cared, had he? She’d been a dupe, and she’d walked into his trap with gratitude, playing her part to perfection.

  The velvet-lined trap had sprung just when her future seemed brightest, when she was at last emerging from grief and loneliness.

  Only to wind up in handcuffs, with her picture on the front page of the newspaper and featured on the evening newscast. Andre had escaped scot-free, no doubt on some tropical island drinking mai tais with a new idiot, while she stood holding the bag because he’d put her name on the more damaging documents.

  And she’d thought him so sweet to both bankroll the venture and give her Mirelle.

  She’d been trapped in New York for twelve days while the District Attorney had bled her brain dry, then she’d been freed under the stipulation that she’d testify against Andre and his cohorts—should they ever be found. On one of many sleepless nights, wandering the apartment filled with hated memories of Andre, in desperation she’d dragged out a box of her mother’s things. There, in her mother’s girlhood diary, a stunned Scarlett had discovered family. In Texas, of all places, one of the few states she and her mother had not lived.

  A grandmother, still alive, from what little Scarlett could determine…a treasure she’d longed for all her life. Why Georgia Ross had never spoken one word of Sweetgrass Springs or family was reason for caution, certainly, but Scarlett had decided that once she had her life back together, she would seek the answers she craved to the riddle of her mother’s past.

  Then came a late night visit from two very scary men there to silence her before she could testify. Thanks to her drunken neighbors’ screaming battle, the cops had shown up next door, and she’d been left with the memory of a knife to her throat and a whispered warning.

  Scarlett’s timeline had abruptly sped up. She’d left town within hours.

  Texas had been the only place she could think of to go. To pay a visit to the grandmother she’d never known existed and to buy herself a few days to think what to do next.

  She had nowhere else to go. No options.

  Okay, she still had her skills, and there might be some corner of the world where no one read the headlines. Truth to tell, New York only thought of itself as the center of the universe—there were other foodie towns like Santa Fe or San Francisco, other places where her skills could take her. Where the confidence she’d once had in spades could land her a new position.

  If only she weren’t so tired. So scared.

  What if her grandmother wanted nothing to do with her? Why had her mother kept her family a secret? A million things could be wrong, so many ways this could go bad.

  She was alone as never before in her life. Until two years ago, there had always been her mother. They had moved often, yes, but they were a team, they were solid. As long as they’d had each other, they needed little more.

  How Scarlett missed her.

  In Georgia’s place remained only a mystery.

  Who was her mother? Why did she leave here and never say one word to Scarlett about this place, when they had always been so close? Why did Scarlett have to find out about it when she could ask no questions? Was there some reason she should stay away, too? Her mother had been footloose but not foolish.

  It was only a meal. A chance to reconnoiter. She didn’t have to say anything to a soul.

  The road ran alongside a ribbon of water, and a little further she could see it wind through the town next to a three-story courthouse that formed one corner of the town square, most of the buildings dark and closed, only a handful of them taller than one story. It was surely the tiniest town she’d ever seen.

  She rounded the corner, and one building spilled out light in welcome. Ruby’s Café. Owned by one Ruby Gallagher.

  The grandmother Scarlett had never known existed.

  Scarlett sucked in a deep breath for courage. She’d been the new kid countless times.

  But her mother had always had her back.

  Nonsense. I’ll be okay. I’m a grown woman. It won’t matter if she can’t love me.

  …Excerpt from TEXAS ROOTS by Jean Brashear © 2013.

  Buy TEXAS ROOTS

  Buy book 2 TEXAS WILD

  Buy book 3 TEXAS DREAMS

  Buy book 4 TEXAS REBEL

  * * *

  OTHER TITLES BY JEAN BRASHEAR

  THE PEARL OF PARADISE (novella)

  Five years ago, covert operative Damon Alexander became guardian of the sacred ivory carving, the Pearl of Paradise, and he sacrificed any chance for a life with the woman he loved to save her from being killed by his archenemy, Kwan. The vow curses him to die, should he leave holy ground, but his enemy is back and is picking off those Damon cares for most, taunting Damon to risk the curse to stop him.

  Lily Shen has spent five years closing off her heart from Damon after his devastating betrayal, but hearing that he means to sacri
fice his life to stop the killing, she knows that she may have the only means to save him—by revealing to him that he has a son. When Kwan kidnaps their child, the love that never died draws them together in a race to find some means to break the curse and save the son Damon has never met.

  Buy THE PEARL OF PARADISE (novella)

  THE LIGHT WALKER

  Newly-minted detective Jace Carroll’s innocuous first case plunges her into a world of shifting realities. At the center of the tangled knot is the mesmerizing and mysterious Dante Sabanne, a wealthy recluse whose proficiency with ancient poisons, mystical lore and exotic sexual practices makes him by turns a crucial expert witness, a devastating lover…and possibly the man behind a cult whose profane rituals have turned from depraved to deadly.

  The powerful attraction between them complicates everything, as the Jace who thought she knew exactly who she was and what she wanted becomes both pawn and queen in a battle between the dark and the light. Innocents will die if she makes the wrong choice between the evidence before her eyes and the yearnings of a heart she is no longer sure she can trust.

  A scorching tale of suspense, passion and magic from USAToday bestselling author Jean Brashear.

  Buy THE LIGHT WALKER

  THE CHOICE

  Deep-cover FBI agent Drake Cullinane is driven by guilt over a terrorist attack he couldn’t prevent. It’s taken him years to become the trusted head of security for arms dealer Klaus Hafner, the man responsible for that attack, and he’s within days of taking down Hafner and his whole network.

  Jillian MacGregor found a splashy way to apply to be one of Klaus Hafner’s bodyguards, and she’s out to kill the man the mysterious Cullinane is sworn to protect, seeking revenge for her sister’s death at Hafner’s hands.

  White-hot attraction flares between them, but both are hiding dangerous secrets. Only one of them can win—and if they cannot learn to trust each other, both of them could die.