Healed by Love (Love in Bloom: The Bradens)

by Melissa Foster

  “Okay, okay. I get it. Sit down and chill.” Emily was fourteen months older than Luke, and at the moment she was giving him the same narrow-eyed, knitted-brow stare he’d seen too many times growing up. “Maybe you should skip the coffee this morning.”

  “Ha-ha.” She flagged down Margie and ordered coffee. Black. Emily had always been feisty, and Luke supposed she had to be, growing up with five brothers. “So, are we just modifying the bed and bath in the apartment above the barn, or did you decide to move the kitchen to the other side of the apartment as well?”

  He knew moving the plumbing and the framing was going to be a pain in the ass for Emily and her staff. He’d never ask another builder to move the plumbing; he’d have left it as it was originally designed. But just as Emily had no issue calling him at three a.m. to discuss a dream she’d had or to show up unannounced with a bottle of wine when she needed to vent with someone she trusted, he knew she probably had expected his changes and was relieved he’d made them before the walls were erected.

  She ran her eyes down his arm. “Hey, what happened?”

  Margie brought Emily her coffee as Wes walked into the diner. “And then there were three.”

  “Hey, Margie.” Wes slid into the booth beside Emily. Each of the Bradens were blessed with thick dark hair, though Emily’s was straight and shiny, Luke’s was coarse and wavy, and Wes’s was a shade lighter and he kept it cropped much shorter than his brothers’. His cargo shorts and tank top were streaked with dirt, as was his forehead.

  “Hey, sugar. I’ll bring your usual over in just a sec.” With her hand on her hip, she looked Wes over and shook her head. “Were you out on the trails already today?”

  Wes raised his hand. “Guilty as charged. Checking out new trails. Tough life, but someone has to do it.” Wes ran a dude ranch and spent his time teaching well-paying clients how to rope and run cattle, ride horses, skeet shoot, and fish. He also took them on overnight pioneering adventures. Wes eyed Luke and Emily, then the pile of drawings on the table. “Did I miss anything?”

  “What are you doing here?” Luke had recently helped Wes on a pioneering trip with a group of clients. He’d wound up going head-to-head with one of them and was arrested for assault. Even though the charges against Luke had been dropped, Luke was still dealing with what it said about him. He’d been thinking of nothing but ever since.

  “Em said she was meeting you for breakfast.” Wes shrugged. “I was hungry.”

  “I was just asking Luke what happened to his arm.” Emily arched a finely manicured brow.

  Luke shrugged. “It’s nothing. I cut it on a fence, but I did just run into Daisy Honey, who cleaned it up for me. You guys remember her?” He thought of the way she’d ripped the tape from his arm and her snarky comment. She was feisty, and he liked it.

  “Isn’t she the girl who had that horrible rep about sleeping around in high school?” Emily drank her coffee and opened one of her folders. “God, I felt so bad for her.” Trusty was like any other small town, where gossip spread faster than weeds.

  “Hot little blond number?” Wes asked.

  “Not anymore. I mean, hot yes, but she dyed her hair darker. I guess she got tired of dealing with all the crap, and just for the record, I don’t think those rumors were true.” Luke could relate to dealing with crap, and a memory was snaking its way into his mind. He couldn’t quite grasp it, but he had the distinct feeling that it had something to do with Daisy.

  “I see that look in your eye, Luke. Careful. You’re the last thing a woman dodging a prickly past needs.” Wes held his gaze a beat too long. One of his key employees, Ray Mulligan, had quit a few weeks earlier, leaving Wes and his business partner, Chip, to lead every group that came to the ranch. Wes had been snappy and short-tempered ever since.

  Luke was all too aware of his own reputation, and the arrest didn’t help much. He wasn’t big on lasting relationships. Or rather, he didn’t connect well on deeper levels with people. Give him a horse and he could practically tell what they were thinking, but people? Women? Whole different ball game. It was only recently that he’d begun to wonder why that was.

  “Dude, what’s that supposed to mean?” Luke held his brother’s gaze. Having been raised by their mother after their father, Buddy Walsh, took off with a dime-store clerk from another town while their mother was still pregnant with Luke, all of his siblings were protective of one another. Luke was the same, and usually their fierce family loyalty served them well, but at times like this, the last thing he needed was to be judged by Wes.

  “She’s had enough of a bad rep. She doesn’t need yours following her around.”

  “Shit, Wes. You know damn well that arrest wasn’t my fault. You saw what went down.” The muscles in his jaw twitched.

  “I wasn’t talking about the arrest.”

  Emily slid a folder across the table to Luke; then she unfurled a set of architectural drawings, her eyes darting between them. “Can we not play Neanderthal today? Please? I have client meetings to attend to.”

  Margie brought Luke and Wes their breakfasts, and Emily slid the drawings to the side. “There you are, boys. Em? You want anything else?”

  “No, thanks, Margie. I’m good.” Emily watched Luke skim the file. “Want me to explain it?”

  Luke set the file down. “Nope. I just want you to do it. I don’t need to decipher the details. I want the bathroom and bedroom attached. It was shortsighted of me not to do that in the first place. I just didn’t like the idea of there not being a guest bath.”

  Wes shook his head.

  “What?” He knew damn well what Wes was thinking. His brother was a planner. He mulled over every detail of his life, which was a good thing in his profession, and he thought Luke was impetuous, that he didn’t think things through. The truth was, Luke was a pantser—hard and fast. He ran from planning too far ahead or in too much detail like a rebellious teenager. Most of the time, his gut instincts were right, but sometimes, where they might have been right at the time, after thinking things through, he realized that the next idea he had was better.

  In Luke’s eyes, those changes would have come after his decision was made even if he’d planned things out first, like Wes did. That thought process was so far from Wes’s that they often butted heads.

  “Don’t you want to go over the specifications?” Wes asked.

  “Hell no. What I want is to get home and check on my new foal. I trust Emily’s judgment, and she knows my budget. She’s banging out a few walls, moving some plumbing around.”

  “Hey. Nice to know you value my job so much, you ass.” Emily took a piece of toast from his plate and bit it, then smirked at him. “It’s a one-bedroom apartment for a ranch hand. Why on earth would it need a guest bath? If you’d only listened…”

  “Sorry, Em. You know I value what you do, and yeah, maybe I should have listened.” Luke shoveled his food into his mouth and lifted his chin in Wes’s direction. “Don’t you have a playdate?”

  “Yeah,” Wes said with a sly grin. “With a petite little brunette and a set of books.”

  “Clarissa?” Emily pointed at Wes. “I knew you two would hook up.”

  “She’s my bookkeeper, not my girlfriend, and we’ve never hooked up.” He put his arm around Emily with a sigh. “If you put as much energy into your own love life as you do mine, then maybe you wouldn’t be alone.”

  “I’m not alone. I’m dating.” She scrunched her nose. “Sort of. I think. Ugh. Do you have any idea how hard it is to date in this town?”

  Luke and Wes both laughed, deep, loud, knowing laughs.

  “Right. I guess you do, but it’s easier for guys. You guys have dated half the women in Trusty and it just makes the women you haven’t dated want you more. It’s not like that for girls.”

  “It sure as hell better not be,” Luke said. He might be her younger brother, but he’d learned from the best four older brothers a guy could have how to protect his sister. Part of protecting her meant maki
ng sure she didn’t put herself in a position to become the talk of the town. That was better suited for the men in the Braden family—or at least it had been. Luke had changed. He’d always been restless, and that included being unable to settle down with just one woman, but since buying the ranch two years ago, that restless itch had calmed, and he’d become far more focused. He liked working with his hands, being around animals, and not being told what to do. The ranch was a perfect fit, and he was finally ready to make changes in his personal life, too. He wanted to be with one woman, a woman who would understand him, love him for who he was—his inability to plan and all. Someone who valued family, loved animals, and wasn’t looking for something more than he could give. But that took opening himself in ways he didn’t even understand himself, and he had no clue how to go about any of it.

  Wes finished his food and locked his eyes on Luke. “I’ve got to run. Bro, just tread carefully with Daisy, that’s all. You know what she’s been through.”

  Twenty minutes later Luke climbed onto his Harley and headed back toward his ranch, thinking about Daisy and what she’d gone through in high school. Maybe they weren’t so different after all.

  (End of Sneak Peek)

  To continue reading, be sure to pick up the next

  LOVE IN BLOOM release:

  TAKEN BY LOVE, The Bradens

  Love in Bloom series, Book Fifteen

  Sisters in Love Excerpt - Chapter One

  Please enjoy this sneak peek of the first

  Love in Bloom novel, Sisters in Love.

  (You’ll meet the Bradens in Sisters in White,

  Book Three of the Snow Sisters)

  THE LINE IN the café went all the way to the door. Danica Snow wished she hadn’t taken her sister Kaylie’s phone call before getting her morning coffee. Living in an overcrowded tourist town could be a major inconvenience, but Danica loved that she could walk from her condo to her office, see a movie, have dinner, or even stop at a bookstore without ever sitting in a car. Every minute counted when you lived in Allure, Colorado, host to an odd mix of hippie and yuppie tourists in equal numbers. The ski slopes brought them in the winter, while art shows drew them in the summer. There was never a break. Every suit and Rasta child in town was standing right in front of her, waiting for their coffee or latte, and the guy ahead of her had shoulders so wide she couldn’t easily see around him. Danica tapped the toe of her efficient and comfortable Nine West heels, growing more impatient by the second.

  What on earth was taking so long? In seven minutes they’d served only one person. The tables were pushed so close to the people standing in line that she couldn’t step to the side to see. She was gridlocked. Danica leaned to the right and peered around the massive shoulder ahead of her just as the owner of that shoulder turned to look out the door. Whack! He elbowed her right in the nose, knocking Danica’s head back.

  Her hand flew to her bloody nose. “Ow! Geez!” She ducked in pain, covering her face and talking through her hands. “I think you broke my nose.” Each word sent pain across her nose and below her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry. Let me get you a napkin,” a deep, worried voice said.

  Two patrons rushed over and shoved napkins in her direction.

  “Are you okay?” an older woman asked.

  Tears sprang from the corners of Danica’s closed eyes. Damn it. Her entire day would now run late and she probably looked like a red-nosed, crying idiot. “This hurts so bad. Weren’t you looking where—” Danica flipped her unruly, brown hair from her face and opened her eyes. Her venom-filled glare locked on the man who had elbowed her—the most beautiful specimen of a human being she had ever seen. Oh shit. “I’m…What…?” Come on, girl. Get it together. He’s probably an egomaniac.

  “I’m so sorry.” His voice was rich and smooth, laden with concern.

  A thin blonde grabbed his arm and shoved a napkin into his hand. “Give this to her,” she said, blinking her eyelashes in a come-hither way.

  The man held the woman’s hand a beat too long. “Thanks,” he said. His eyes trailed down the blonde’s blouse.

  Really? I’m bleeding over here.

  He turned toward Danica and handed her the napkin. His eyes were green and yellow, like field grass. His eyebrows drew together in a serious gaze, and Danica thought that maybe she’d been too quick to judge—until he stole a glance at the blonde as she walked out of the café.

  Asshole. She felt the heat of anger spread up her chest and neck, along her cheeks, to the ridge of her high cheekbones. She snagged the napkin from his hand and wiped her throbbing nose. “It’s okay. I’m fine,” she lied. She could smell the minty freshness of his breath, and she wondered what it might taste like. Danica was not one to swoon—that was Kaylie’s job. Get a grip.

  “Can I at least buy you a coffee?” He ran his hand through his thick, dark hair.

  Yes! “No, thank you. It’s okay.” She had been a therapist long enough to know what kind of guy eyes another girl while she was tending to a bloody nose that he had caused. Danica fumbled for her purse, which she’d dropped when she was hit. She lowered her eyes to avoid looking into his. “I’m fine, really. Just look behind you next time.” Not for the first time, Danica wished she had Kaylie’s flirting skills and her ability to look past his wandering eyes. She would have had him buying her coffee, a Danish, and breakfast the next morning.

  Danica was so confused, she wasn’t even sure what she wanted. She chanced another glance up at him. He was looking at her features so intently that she felt as though he were drinking her in, memorizing her. His eyes trailed slowly from hers, lowered to her nose, to her lips, and then settled on the beauty mark that she’d been self-conscious of her entire life. She felt like a Cindy Crawford wannabe. Danica pursed her lips. “Are you done?” she asked.

  He blinked with the innocence of a young boy, clueless to her annoyance, which was in stark contrast to his confident, manly presence. He stood almost a foot taller than Danica’s impressive five foot seven stature. His chest muscles bulged beneath his way-too-small shirt, dark curls poking through the neckline. He probably bought it that way on purpose. She glanced down and tried not to notice his muscular thighs straining against his stonewashed denim jeans. Danica swallowed hard. All the air suddenly left her lungs. He was touching her shoulder, squinting, evaluating her face.

  “I’m sorry. I was just making sure it didn’t look broken, which it doesn’t. I’m sure it’s painful.”

  She couldn’t think past the heat of his hand, the breadth of it engulfing her shoulder. “It’s okay,” she managed, hating herself for being lost in his touch when he was clearly someone who ate women for breakfast. She checked her watch. She had three minutes to get her coffee and get back to her office before her next client showed up. Belinda. She’d love this guy.

  The line progressed, and Adonis waved as he left the café. Danica reached into her purse to pay for her French vanilla coffee and found herself taking a last glance at him as he passed the front window.

  The young barista pushed Danica’s money away. “No need, hon. Blake paid for yours.” She smiled, lifting her eyebrows.

  “He did?” Blake.

  “Yeah, he’s really sweet.” The barista leaned over the cash register. “Even if he is a player.”

  Aha! I knew it. Danica thrust her shoulders back, feeling smart for resisting temptation.

  —End of Sneak Peek—

  To continue reading, purchase

  SISTERS IN LOVE (Snow Sisters, Book One)

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  Don't miss out on this special publication:

  Love in Bloom Series Guide

  Purchase the Love in Bloom Series Guide, available in paperback and digital format. This guide includes a family tree, covers, sum
maries, character images, and pertinent character data, as well as places for readers to take notes for character and family growth.

  Hunky Heroes of The Love in Bloom Series (images of our hunky heroes & quotes)

  Full LOVE IN BLOOM SERIES order

  Love in Bloom books may be read as stand alones. For more enjoyment, read them in series order. Characters from each series carry forward to the next.

  SNOW SISTERS

  Sisters in Love

  Sisters in Bloom

  Sisters in White

  THE BRADENS (Weston, CO)

  Lovers at Heart

  Destined for Love

  Friendship on Fire

  Sea of Love

  Bursting with Love

  Hearts at Play

  THE BRADENS (Trusty, CO)

  Taken by Love

  Fated for Love

  Romancing My Love

  Flirting with Love

  Dreaming of Love

  Crashing into Love

  THE BRADENS (Peaceful Harbor, MD)

  Healed by Love

  (Coming Soon)

  Surrender My Love

  River of Love

  Crushing on Love

  Whisper of Love

  Thrill of Love