An Ellora’s Cave Romantica Publication
www.ellorascave.com
Lone Star Lycan
ISBN 9781419921940
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Lone Star Lycan Copyright © 2009 Regina Carlysle
Edited by Helen Woodall
Cover art by Syneca
Electronic book Publication July 2009
The terms Romantica® and Quickies® are registered trademarks of Ellora’s Cave Publishing.
With the exception of quotes used in reviews, this book may not be reproduced or used in whole or in part by any means existing without written permission from the publisher, Ellora’s Cave Publishing, Inc.® 1056 Home Avenue, Akron OH 44310-3502.
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This book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locales is purely coincidental. The characters are productions of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously.
Lone Star Lycan
Regina Carlysle
Dedication
For critique partners old and new. Where would I be without you? And to my very patient and supportive family, I love you guys.
Trademarks Acknowledgement
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
Google: Google Inc.
Stetson: John B. Stetson Company
Texas Tech Red Raiders: Texas Tech University
Walmart: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
Chapter One
Quinn Harlow tightened her hands on the steering wheel and squinted behind the lenses of her Walmart sunglasses. Nerves skittered along her spine and despite the blast of the air conditioner in her little compact car, sweat beaded along her forehead. Reaching into the one really good, black leather bag she owned, she grabbed a tissue and dabbed at the wetness gathering along her hairline. The big limestone archway stretching across the dusty road featured an iron-worked sign that read Wolf Creek Ranch. Yep. This was it. She pulled to a stop and stared at it as the implications set in.
The father she’d never known was being buried today.
A nagging sadness balled tightly in her chest. How she’d longed for a father who actually loved and wanted her. Instead she’d suffered the cruelties of Decker Harlow, who’d never failed to remind her she was something to be tolerated but never loved. Now, at age thirty-two, she’d finally learned the identity of her real father and that he’d wanted her all along. But now it was too late. He was dead and she’d never know what kind of man he was or be accepted as a daughter.
Tears burned behind her eyes but she blinked hard, refusing to let them fall. Self-pity wasn’t her way. Time to pull up the big girl panties and play the cards she’d been dealt. One hand at a time. That was her motto and right now she had to face the unpleasantness of death and its aftereffects on those left behind.
Dealing with a bunch of strangers would be her mission for the foreseeable future. She wasn’t the kind of woman who liked being thrust into the spotlight this way and there was no doubt in her mind that those attending the service of Bartholomew Fitzpatrick would wonder just who the hell she was. They’d try to figure out why she was there. They’d speculate and stare. No, she wasn’t a coward but being gawked at had never been her idea of fun. For the millionth time since leaving her little town in east Texas, she wished Graham were with her. Her best friend and sometime lover would have her laughing at something dumb and forgetting that today she was facing a part of her mother’s past she’d known zero about.
Putting off the inevitable, Quinn reached up and flipped the car mirror to check her make-up. It was fine. She smoothed the skirt of her black linen halter dress hoping it wasn’t too wrinkled from the long drive. A hard seven-hour drive with only two or three stops. Yeah, she had more stamina than just about anyone she knew but this was ridiculous.
When the phone rang, she reached into a cup holder and snatched up the cell. It was Graham. She sighed and pressed the button. “Hey! How’d you know I’d need to hear a friendly voice right about now?”
“Hell, honey, I know you. Don’t be nervous okay? You there yet?”
Quinn blew out a breath, knowing she had to keep this conversation short and sweet. “Yeah, just now. I wish you could’ve come with me.”
“Sorry. Too much work,” he said. “I’ll come out next week though if you want. I’m due some time off. I know your father’s attorney said you should plan to stay for a while. They’ll be reading a will. Hm. Think the old man might’ve left you something?”
“This isn’t about money, Graham, though lord knows with me about to lose my business, it would sure come in handy. No, the big thing is that I never even knew about this man. I Googled him the other night. Did I tell you?”
She heard the whinny of a horse and realized he was probably doing something in the barn. Graham Jones was the ranch foreman at one of the biggest ranches in the piney woods. A real man’s man. It was unfortunate they’d been friends too long for anything other than an occasional weekend of recreational sex. “I already told you, darlin’, Wolf Creek is a pretty well-known ranch. A nice big spread from what I’ve heard. Wonder why Miss Virginia never told you about him?”
Quinn leaned back and closed her eyes. She and her mom had always been close and it was hard to believe her mother had never said much about the man who’d fathered her. Every time she’d asked, she would note the look of pain that would cross her sweet mother’s face and finally she’d stopped with the questions. Virginia Harlow had died over a year ago and Quinn had long ago been through all the papers and there was nothing there to indicate the identity of the man who’d fathered her. “Well, she must’ve had her reasons but I swear, I’ll never understand. Now everything’s coming down around my ears and I don’t know how I’ll get through the next week without you.”
Graham chuckled. “You will. You’re a tough little cuss.”
“Little? Surely you jest.”
“With you? Always.”
“Gotta go, sugar. Wish me luck.”
“You know it,” he said before disconnecting.
Now that her lifeline was off the phone, she drew in a deep breath and started the car again. She had no clue what was facing her, what animosity she might feel from the ranch hands or other friends and neighbors. She was a stranger, an outsider and an intruder. At least that’s how it felt. Driving down the dusty ranch road, she saw a clearing off to the right and headed down the well-worn trail. The funeral would be over by now but she’d planned it that way. She’d never been a coward but the idea of coming of grips with the death of the father she’d never known wasn’t something she wanted to face while in the midst of a crowd.
Quinn squinted behind the lenses of her sunglasses and spotted the private cemetery on a rise sheltered by the shade of several huge cottonwood trees. A lone cowboy stood there, a mountain of a man, his shoulder length, russet-colored hair snapping in the breeze. He wasn’t wearing a suit but his posture was one of mourning. He stood with his head slightly bent in front of a flower-covered grave. With it’s newly turned earth, she was pretty sure her father rested t
here. The giant wore faded jeans and a long-sleeved black shirt rolled up along his sturdy forearms, perhaps his idea of funeral clothes. A black Stetson dangled from one massive hand.
Alarm bells flashed in her brain and she sucked in a breath. The weird intuition she’d always possessed cried out at the waves of fury and grief that surrounded him.
When she drew closer, his head went up and he turned. Savage, fierce beauty marked his rough-hewn face as looked her, giving her an eyeful of his heavily muscled chest and shoulders. Wavy hair that she’d thought was a simple brown was liberally streaked by shades of gold around his deeply tanned face.
She sucked in a breath and stopped the car, wondering at the sudden pounding of her heart, the rapid acceleration of her pulse. Never once did the cowboy move, but he continued to watch her. A shiver that had nothing to do with the air conditioning in the car whipped over her suddenly clammy skin.
As a feeling of destiny held her in its grip, she faced it like she’d faced everything else in her life…with grim determination accompanied by a healthy dose of fear.
Turning off the ignition, she stared through the windshield at this hotter-than-hell man and removed her sunglasses. Though she didn’t think he was dangerous, there was a predatory air about him that put her senses on alert. She’d greet this stranger head-on without hiding behind the cheap plastic lenses. Quinn tossed the sunglasses into the passenger seat and grabbed up a bouquet of yellow daisies she’d picked up at a small floral shop in the tiny town of Cloverfield before she’d headed out to the ranch.
Clutching her meager offering to the dead, she opened the car door and stepped out into the flat grassy field.
“Hi, I’m—”
“Quinn. Bart’s daughter.” The low-growling baritone voice didn’t surprise her coming from such a big man. Unsmiling, he nodded once, placed the battered black Stetson on his head and shoved the brim back.
“Um, yeah. That’s what they tell me.”
“I’m Joe McKinnon, ranch foreman here at Wolf Creek. I’ve been waiting for you.”
“I’m sorry about missing the service.”
He shook his head and she noticed that with the brim of his cowboy hat tilted back that way she had a great glimpse of his interesting gold-colored eyes. “Don’t worry about it. Bart wouldn’t have given a damn. A funeral is just a show, after all. I wasn’t there either. Don’t like crowds.”
Figured. Finally, she smiled and offered her hand. “Something we have in common, cowboy. Nice to meet you.” She took a step toward him but the heel of her black patent pumps hit the bottom of a hole in the ground. Crying out, she stumbled. Her knee started to buckle but before she could even blink, Joe had an arm around her and was effortlessly holding her upright.
How had that happened? He’d stood several yards away and she hadn’t seen anything but a blur before he’d saved her from falling on her butt. Maybe the heat was getting to her. Quinn shook her head. “Sorry. Clumsy.”
“Doubt there’s a clumsy bone in your body considering who you’re related to, darlin’,” he murmured. His breath was warm against her ear as his arm tightened incrementally around her waist. He smelled like sunshine and heat. Utterly delicious.
She glanced up, surprised to see his gaze focused on her lips. Realization hit her like a punch and the flash of lust that whipped through her body was beyond inappropriate considering where they were but she just couldn’t help it. Heat seeped into her core, drenching her panties. She clutched the rapidly wilting daisies close to her chest wondering briefly what the hell she’d gotten herself into. “Thank you.”
“Careful now,” he said. “This land isn’t meant for ladies wearin’ high heels. We’ll just take it slow.” Joe didn’t give a damn what she might think about him wrapping his arm around her waist to hold her close. Minutes before she’d arrived, he could smell her in the wind, taste her in the air. Her nearness taunted him with what awaited. She was the future of his clan. The survival of their species.
With purely animal senses, carefully honed as he’d grown into his place in the Wolf Creek Clan, Joe McKinnon lifted his face to the sunlight as they walked to the grave. He was the foreman here where they all lived and hunted together. A trio of tumbleweeds dipped and rolled through the hot, dusty breeze to finally bounce and settle along the aged tombstones in the family cemetery.
When they reached it, he finally let her go and watched as she bent to place her offering among the other flowers. Giving her space to pay her respects, he stepped back and drank in the sight of her. A whole helluva lot of woman! Bart’s daughter and his destined lupa, stood at well over six feet in the dumb high heels, and she had curves. Lots and lots of curves. Damn, but he wanted to sink his fingers into the flesh of her nice ass and run them over her belly and generous breasts. Lust and heat flared to life in his gut and despite the current situation and the fact they were standing at her father’s grave, his cock twitched and grew. She was a pretty thing and the kind of woman who made his blood heat to dangerous levels. Whoever said a stick-skinny woman was the model of female perfection ought to be fucking shot.
The midafternoon sunlight caught and reflected on her streaked golden blonde hair. She wore it back at the nape of her neck in some kind of twist but it was thick, heavy stuff. Her cheekbones were high, her mouth lush and kissable and those piercing aqua-colored eyes could drop a man at twenty paces. What a woman like her could do to a man like him sent a blast of vivid imagery through his brain. His gums tingled and the hair on his arms stood at attention. His cock throbbed.
She was the best kind of comfort for a lonely man.
Finally she turned, brushed back a few strands of hair that whipped around her face and Joe caught his breath at the knowledge he saw in her eyes. Nervously, she sank her teeth in her bottom lip and he watched her focus on his chest. Yeah, he was a helluva big man and he scared women silly, for the most part but it wasn’t fear he sensed or smelled. It was lust. Heat. Passion.
His body responded violently until his cock thickened. A low growl hummed in his throat but he caught himself in time. She didn’t yet realize she was dealing with someone who was more beast than man. Soon. “Finished?”
“Yeah. I think so,” she looked back at the grave, her expression suddenly sad and a little lost. “I wish I’d known him. I hope he’d—”
“Be proud?”
She looked back, her eyes went soft with that look that women get when emotion is riding hard and deep. “You understand a lot, don’t you?”
Since he wanted to grab her up, he shoved his thumbs in the back pockets of his jeans. “I knew Bart. Man raised me from the time I was a pup. He didn’t know about you.”
“That’s what I figured.”
“Wasn’t going to stop looking until he found you but by the time he did and sent the private investigator to contact you, he was gone.”
“The lawyer, um…Mr. Mann, told me it was sudden.”
Joe went still as the memory of blood and death whipped through his mind. A single shot to the head would kill any one of them. Despite the length of a wolf’s life and their natural healing abilities, a shot to the heart or a headshot was too much even for those of their species. “Yeah.”
Waves of grief mixed with anger hit him hard.
Suddenly Quinn gasped softly and went to him. One hand went fearlessly to his cheek and the warmth of that touch threatened to bring him to his knees. “You’re hurting,” she whispered. “I can feel it.”
If he hadn’t known she was his destined mate before, he knew it now. Her empathic abilities would’ve been minimal until now and would only become full-blown when she met her true mate. Joe’s heart pounded at his newfound knowledge. A rush of acknowledgment tore through his system as he settled his face in the palm of her hand. He smelled her compassion blended wildly with lust and sucked in a breath at how damn good it felt to have her hands on him.
Too soon. Couldn’t risk freaking her out and sending her running back to east Texas befor
e he’d mated with her, made her his. And she was. She just didn’t know it yet.
Joe’s eyes connected with hers and without warning the air changed. Energy whipped and popped like a current between them. He was a man. But he was also a wolf. He’d take what was his. Quinn’s pupils dilated, her gaze focused sharply. “I don’t un—”
“You don’t have to understand.” The words came out raw and rough but she didn’t flinch. “Not now. Just feel it, Quinn. Do you? Feel it?”
“Yeah. Yes, Joe.”
Her hand left his face to thread up through his hair. His battered, banged up Stetson fell from his head but he didn’t give a shit. All he wanted was more of her touch, the balm of her compassion, tenderness mixed with sexual hunger. With a low sound, he reached out, grabbed her close. Standing before Bart’s grave, he wanted to howl at the seductive pleasure of her breasts pressing against his chest. Her nipples had gone hard and they stabbed against him. Her breath, sweet and warm, brushed against his throat and then she looked up, knowledge as old as time, branded there.
As his blood roared he took her face and kissed her, savored her, taking what should have been a simple thing to another level. His tongue swept the recesses of her mouth as he tasted her fully, hungrily. And she returned each stroke. It was like a homecoming, a joining like he’d never experienced in his whole fucking long life. He drew her closer as his hands took a journey over her soft ass and he did what he’d wanted to do from the moment he’d seen her bending over that damn grave.
He sank his fingers deep and worked her flesh, bringing her closer to his hard cock. Growling, he jerked her against him. Her pussy, pressed close against the denim fly of his jeans, was hotter than the fires of hell. The scent of her instant arousal teased him, made him wild to take her. Right out here in the middle of the damn prairie. With the sun beating down. With the wind moaning in tandem with the sounds they made.
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