by Jo Ann Brown
Thanking Liam, Daniel walked over to where Hannah stood by their buggy. “Where’s Grossmammi Ella?”
“At the time we left your family’s house, she was trying to teach your mamm to make snitz pie.”
“My mamm makes the best snitz pie in the county.” He grinned. “Maybe the whole world.”
“You know that. I know that. Wanda knows that, though she’d never be so prideful as to admit it. But my great-grandmother doesn’t know that, and she’s sure Wanda can learn a lot from her.”
“We all can.”
“And we’ll have the time to do that, thanks to you saving her.”
He tapped her nose as if she were no older than Shelby. “Don’t you remember what I’ve said so often? Let’s leave the past in the past?”
“I agree. I’d rather look to the future, too.” She glanced at her home which was leaning from where the strong current had pushed it off its foundation. A tree trunk had impaled itself in the center of the porch, and branches and other debris tumbled out the front door.
But the three hives had escaped the flood in the barn along with the other animals. The chickens hadn’t left their roosts under the roof. Judging by their hoofprints, the two cows had gone no farther than the field beyond the barn. Both had returned by the time Hannah was able to check on them.
“Do you want to look in the windows?” he asked.
“I already did. There’s nothing left inside worth saving. Everything either washed away or is ruined beyond repair.” She set Shelby on the buggy seat and smiled as her little sister cuddled her stuffed bumblebee. “I’m so grateful Shelby had Buzz-buzz with her when Grossmammi Ella took her to the mill.”
“Grossmammi Ella saved our lives.” He rested his elbow on the side of the door. “If your great-grandmother hadn’t rushed off so we had to give chase, we could have been in the house and never known what was coming at us until it was too late to escape.”
“I’ve thanked her, but I don’t think she understands why. And I’ve thanked God for keeping us safe.”
“As I have.” He slipped his arm around her waist. “You know, I’ve been thinking.”
“Uh-oh, that could mean trouble.”
He chuckled. “Usually, but this time you’ll like what I’m thinking. The house is cramped with your family living with mine, so you and Shelby and your great-grandmother should move to my house.”
“Didn’t you build it for your brother and his future wife?”
“That wife is further in the future every day because he can’t get up the nerve to talk to her.” He curved his hand along her face. “Hannah, I built the house for a family. So why don’t you move in? I’ll join you after we get married.”
“Married?” she gasped.
“Isn’t that what people in love do? Get married?” He leaned into the buggy. “I love you, Hannah Lambright. I always have. I was too young and foolish and proud to admit it three years ago.”
“But your business—”
“Will always be secondary to my wife and our family. I believed owning a business was my dream, but I never realized the best reason for having my own company was being able to provide a gut home for the ones I love. You and Shelby and Grossmammi Ella. We’ll take care of each other and watch over each other. Will you marry me, Hannah?”
“Ja, because I love you, too, Daniel,” she whispered as she stood on tiptoe and pressed her lips to his.
He swept his arms around her and kissed her, knowing all his dreams were finally coming true.
* * * * *
Don’t miss these other AMISH HEARTS stories from Jo Ann Brown:
AMISH HOMECOMING
AN AMISH MATCH
HIS AMISH SWEETHEART
Find more great reads at www.LoveInspired.com.
Keep reading for an excerpt from HER GUARDIAN RANCHER by Brenda Minton.
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Dear Reader,
It’s easy to get caught up in obligations and forget that there are others who are willing to help us. For those with a volunteer’s heart, the ones who always are there to help, it’s sometimes difficult to accept assistance from others. Learning that it’s important to let others relish the joy of helping you can be a hard lesson. I know it was for Hannah...and for me. But once I discovered that givers must learn to receive as well, I found my friendships were deepened and I got more satisfaction from helping because I came to understand what it meant to be helped. Both Hannah and Daniel do as well, and their lives are enriched with love.
Stop in and visit me at www.joannbrownbooks.com. Look for my next story in the Amish Hearts series coming soon.
Wishing you many blessings,
Jo Ann Brown
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Her Guardian Rancher
by Brenda Minton
Chapter One
The moonless sky was dark and heavy with clouds and a promise of rain that would be welcome, since most of November had been dry and December promised more of the same. Daron McKay eased his truck down the driveway of the Wilder Ranch, away from Boone Wilder’s RV, where he frequently crashed on nights like this. Nights when sleep was as distant as Afghanistan, but the memories were close. Too close.
On nights like this he took a drive rather than pace restlessly. A year ago he would have woken Boone and the two of them would have talked. But Boone had recently married Kayla Stanford and the happy couple had built a house on the opposite side of the Wilder property.
Daron had his own place, a small ranch a few miles outside of Martin’s Crossing. He rarely stayed there. The house was too big. The space too open. He preferred the close confines of the camper. Not that he wanted to admit it, but he liked Boone’s dog. He also didn’t mind Boone’s large and raucous family.
His own family was a little more restrained and not as large. And his appearance sometimes bothered his mom. He didn’t shave often enough. He preferred jeans and boots to a suit. His dad, an attorney in Austin, wanted his son to join the family law firm rather than run the protection business he’d started with friends Boone Wilder and Lucy Palermo. His mom wanted him to attend functions at the club and find a nice girl to marry. His sister, Janette, was busy being exactly the person her parents wanted her to be. She was pretty, socially correct and finishing college.
Daron was still coming to terms with his tour of duty in Afghanistan, with the knowledge that he could lead friends into an ambush.
One of those friends had died. Andy
Shaw had only been in Afghanistan a few months when Daron and Boone followed an Afghan kid who claimed his sister was in trouble. The sister. Daron pulled onto the highway, gripping the steering wheel, getting control of the memories. He’d thought he loved her, so when her brother came to him and said their family needed the help of the American soldiers, Daron had agreed to go.
He’d been young and stupid, and because of him, Andy had died. At thirty he didn’t find it any easier to deal with than when he was twenty-six.
The truck tires hummed on the damp pavement. He headed his truck in the direction of Braswell, a small town in the heart of Texas Hill Country and just a short distance from Martin’s Crossing. He cranked some country music on his stereo and rolled down the truck windows to let cool, damp air whip through the cab of the truck.
A few miles outside Braswell he turned right on a paved county road. He slowed as he neared the older farmhouse that sat just a hundred feet off the road. Only one light burned in the single-story home, the same light that was typically on when he made his midnight drives.
And he made this trip often. When he couldn’t sleep. When he felt the need to just meander by and make sure everything looked okay. It always did.
But not tonight. Tonight a truck was pulled off the road on the opposite side as the farmhouse. The parking lights were on. There was no one inside. He cruised on by, resisting the urge to slam on the brakes. A few hundred feet past the house, he turned his truck, dimmed his headlights and headed back, pulling in behind the other truck and reaching in his glove compartment for his sidearm. Unfortunately it was locked in the gun cabinet at the trailer.
With quiet steps he headed toward the house, staying close to the fence, in the dark and the shadows. He kept an eye on the house, scanning the area for whoever it was who owned the abandoned truck. If it hadn’t been idling, he might have thought it was just broken down and that the driver had decided to walk. But the engine running meant the driver planned to return fairly soon.
He was near the back of the house when he heard the front door slam open. He moved in close to the side of the house and rounded the corner and then he stopped. The front porch light was on and caught in its glare was a too-thin Pete Shaw with a ball bat swinging in his direction. The younger brother of Andy Shaw jumped back quick, avoiding the aim of the woman advancing on him.
“Get out. And don’t come back. Next time I’ll have more for you than this baseball bat, Pete. Stay away from my house. Stay away from my family. We don’t have anything.”
Pete lunged at her, but she swung, hitting his arm with the bat. He let out a scream. “You broke my arm!”
“I don’t think so. But next time I might.” She raised the bat again. She might be barely five feet tall, but she packed quite a punch. Daron resisted the urge to laugh. Instead he took a few quiet steps forward, in case she needed him.
“I’m not going to let you hit me, Emma.”
“You’re not coming back inside this house.” Emma Shaw swung again and Pete fell back a pace, still holding his injured left arm.
It looked as if he planned to leave. Daron remained in the shadows, watching, waiting and hoping Pete would walk away. When the other man lunged, Daron stepped out of the shadows. “Pete, I think you ought to listen to her.”
Pete turned, still holding his left arm, still looking kind of wild-eyed. He was thin. His hair was scraggly. Meth. It was easy to spot an addict. The jerk of the chin. The jumpiness. The sores. A person couldn’t put poison in his body and expect it to be good for him.
“This isn’t your fight, Daron.” Pete held up his right hand, showing he still had half a brain. “But I’ll make it your fight.”
Or maybe he didn’t have half a brain. Andy’s younger brother took a few steps in Daron’s direction.
“Really, Pete?” Daron remained where he stood. “Get in your truck and get out of here. Get in a program and get some help.”
“I don’t need help. I just need the money. I know she’s got it hid somewhere.”
“I don’t have money, Pete. I don’t have anything but bills. You blew through the money Andy left. You bought that truck and you bought drugs.”
“None of us were at the wedding,” Pete countered. “I doubt you were even married to my brother.”
“Go away, Pete. Before I call the police.” Emma advanced on the other man, as if she were taller than her five-foot-nothing height. Daron stepped forward, coming between her and danger.
“Pete, you should go.” Daron said it calmly, glancing back at the woman who didn’t appear to be in the mood to appreciate his interference. He wasn’t surprised. For three years she’d been telling him to go back to his life, that they weren’t his responsibility.
Pete backed away, his eyes wild as he looked from one to the other of them. “Yeah, I’m leaving. But I’ll be back. I want what belongs to my family.”
“Go. Away,” Daron repeated.
He followed the other man to the road and watched him get in his truck and speed off into the night. When he returned to the house, Emma was gone and the front porch light was off. He grinned a little at her bravado and knocked on the door anyway.
He didn’t mind that she kept up walls with him on the outside. It certainly hadn’t kept him from watching over them. Them meaning Emma, her aging grandfather and the little girl, Jamie. Even with their limited contact he was starting to think of her as a friend.
A friend who didn’t mind closing the door in his face. He grinned as he lifted his hand to knock a second time.
* * *
Emma leaned against the door, needing the firm wood panel to hold her up. Her legs still shook with fear and adrenaline. She’d barely gotten to sleep when she heard a window opening, the creaking sound alerting the dog that slept on the foot of her bed. Fortunately her grandfather and Jamie had slept through the racket.
Racket? No, not really that drastic. She’d pounced on Pete as he climbed through the window. He’d pushed back, hitting her into the china cabinet, but she’d steadied it and herself, managing to get a good grip on the baseball bat she’d carried from her room.
Pete wasn’t healthy and it had been easy to back him out of the house and take control. Or at least it had felt like she was in charge. She’d had it handled.
The last thing she needed was Daron McKay in her home and in her business. But there he’d been, standing in the shadows like some avenging superhero, ready to rescue her.
He’d been playing the role of guardian since he got home from Afghanistan. He’d been at the hospital when she had Jamie. He’d brought gifts and food in the years since her daughter’s birth.
No matter what she said or did, she couldn’t convince him she didn’t need his help. They were making it. She, Jamie and Granddad. They’d always made it and they would continue to do so.
Yes, it would have been nice to have Andy’s help. But Andy was gone. No use crying over what couldn’t be changed.
The door behind her vibrated with a pounding fist knocking just about where her shoulders touched the wood. She jumped back, letting out an unfortunate squeal.
“I know you’re there,” Daron called out, his voice muffled through the thick wood.
She didn’t move, didn’t speak. Surely he would take the hint and go away.
“I want to check and make sure everything is okay. And I’m not going anywhere until we know Pete isn’t coming back.”
Pete might return. She should have thought of that. Of course he would return. Usually he came during the day, demanding money she didn’t have. Andy had divorced her just prior to deploying and he’d made Pete his one and only beneficiary.
She’d called him after he deployed, to tell him he was going to be a dad. He’d made promises about the two of them and she’d told him they could talk when he got home, not when he was thousan
ds of miles away and she was still hurt by his betrayal and him walking away from their marriage. Slowly, hesitantly, she touched the lock, took a deep breath and opened the door. Her gaze slid up, her eyes locking with the gray eyes of the man standing on her front porch. Drat, but the man made her feel safe. As much as he annoyed her. As much as she wanted him to go away.
“Well, you opened the door.” His voice was low and rumbled, sliding over her, causing goose bumps to go up her arms. She hugged herself tight, her hand touching a spot on her opposite arm and feeling a sticky dampness.
“Ouch.” She glanced down. Her hand came away stained with blood.
“You’re hurt. Did he do that?”
“I backed into the china cabinet. But I’m fine.”
“We need to call 911 and let them look for him.” He took her by the uninjured arm and started through the house with her, guiding her as if he knew the way.
“We don’t need to call the police. He won’t be back tonight. He’s just a stupid, messed-up kid.”
“A stupid, messed-up kid who’s on drugs and breaking into homes. Let me look at your arm.”
“I’m fine. You can go.” Bravado didn’t work when her voice shook, from fear, from aftershock.
“Let me take a look anyway. Even though we both know you’re fine. Is this the first time he’s broken in?”
She nodded as he led her into the kitchen. Without warning, his hands went to her waist and he lifted, setting her on the counter.
“Would you stop manhandling me?”
He grinned at that, as if he thought she didn’t truly mean it, and he went about, rummaging through cabinets until he found salve and bandages. He wet a rag under the sink and returned. Without looking at her he took hold of her and wiped at the gash on her arm. She flinched and he held her steady, smiling a little but still not looking at her.
That gave her time to study his downturned face, his eyelashes, the whiskers on his cheeks, the column of his throat.