by Heidi Rice
The bar stilled all of a sudden, having gotten a little over merry after the second baby announcement in one night, to wait for his answer.
He could have sworn he could hear the snow falling outside, as if the whole of Marietta was holding its breath in anticipation, like a child tiptoeing down the stairs on Christmas morning—accompanied by the muted strains of Kenny Rogers on the juke singing “When a Child Is Born.” Surely that had to be a coincidence because Reese Kendrick, Grey’s bartender, wasn’t known for his sentimental side.
He stroked his chin as if considering her request. “I guess now I’ve knocked you up…” he rasped, barely able to get the words out because the boulder of emotion in his throat had swollen to the size of Copper Mountain. “I’m gonna have to say yes, aren’t I?”
The cheer went up, echoing round the bar and out into the night, as Charlotte leapt into his arms.
“If it’s a boy, we should call it Lyle,” she whispered in his ear, because she wasn’t done messing with him.
He choked down a laugh, then kissed her with all the passion and protectiveness and joy exploding in his heart. The kiss quickly got very indecent. But he didn’t give a damn, even if he had to give himself a citation.
*
An hour later, after they’d said goodbye to all their friends, her sister and his brother, they drove home to The Double T through the falling snow discussing the wedding they were having in a couple of weeks. They didn’t need fancy, all they needed was each other. And he wanted his ring on her finger like yesterday.
He insisted on carrying her out of the truck and up to the porch. She protested of course, but she was going to have to get used to him fussing over her for the next year at least.
While Charlotte shot off to hang her new Australian Firefighters calendar in her darkroom, because he’d banished it from the kitchen—no way was he having his wife, and the mother of his baby, hell, he hoped babies eventually, look at other buff guys and their puppies right in front of him—he headed out to the barn to feed and water the stock. And contemplate how the hell he’d gotten to be the luckiest sucker in the whole damn universe.
When he returned from the barn, they settled on the couch together in front of the living room fire.
The blue spruce tree they’d bought from Gallagher’s Christmas Tree Farm on the weekend filled the room with the woody perfume of fresh pine, its lights adding a colorful sparkle to the view of the Marietta River winding past the back of the ranch house, illuminated by a hunter’s moon. He stroked his hands over Charlotte’s flat belly in the golden glow of the firelight, not quite able to believe that his son—or daughter—was already growing inside her. And marveling at how her lean, hot, responsive body was going to become even more gorgeous when it got ripe and heavy with his child in the summertime.
“Are you having a merry Christmas, Deputy Hardass?” she whispered in the darkness, sounding serious for once despite the cheeky nickname.
“Sure am, Mrs. Hardass.” He kissed the top of her head and inhaled the sultry scent of her hair. “But if this baby is a boy, no way are we calling it Lyle. One Lyle Tate in my life is more than enough.”
The End
Merry Christmas and a happy New Year to our wonderful Tule readers from Heidi, Kate, Jeannie, Patricia and Kaylie. xx
PS: If you would like to buy yourself one of the five versions of the Australian Firefighters 2019 calendars to keep yourself warm next year just like Gabriella and the women of Marietta—and support some wonderful causes into the bargain—check out this link!
The Men of Marietta series
When there isn’t enough money to make Harry’s House a functional afterschool center, the Montana First Responders decide they need to step up, and really turn up the heat. The Men of Marietta Calendar is created with pages filled of sexy guys willing to do just about anything for a great cause….
Book 1: Tempting the Deputy by Heidi Rice
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Book 2: Flirting with Fire by Kate Hardy
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Book 3: Daring the Pilot by Jeannie Moon
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Book 4: Falling for the Ranger by Kaylie Newell
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Book 5: Burning with Desire by Patricia W. Fischer
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Enjoy an exclusive excerpt from
Tempting the Deputy
Heidi Rice
Book 1 of the Men of Marietta series
Keep reading below or buy now!
The stretch of I-89 winding down the mountain pass into Marietta was one of the prettiest stretches of highway in the whole of Montana. Hell, the whole of the USA. With Yellowstone fifty-four miles to the south and Bozeman twenty-four miles to the north, the two-lane road crossed over the Marietta River and had the towering snow-capped peak of Copper Mountain staring down on it like a slumbering giant in hues of purple and gray as the sun sunk toward the horizon.
Logan Tate hated every damn inch of it.
But especially the inches that snaked through Copper Canyon, and then hit the lowland, as the Douglas firs gave way to Ponderosa pines and grasslands.
His hands tensed on the steering wheel of his squad car as he came round the bend in the road near where Harry Monroe had died one dark, rainy night during Labor Day weekend while changing a tire for an elderly couple on the roadside.
He steeled himself against the flood of memories.
“Go on, Logan. You look beat. I’ve got this. I can change a damn tire without help, buddy.”
And the flood of guilt that followed.
Nothing good had ever come of driving down this damn road, for Logan. He could still remember another dark, rainy night when he’d been squished in between his daddy and his baby brother Lyle in the front seat of the family’s beat-up old pickup truck. The moment when the lights of the ambulance just ahead of them had stopped flashing—and his daddy had started cussing, with tears leaking out of his eyes.
Lyle had started bawling because he was scared and tired and only four years old. And Logan had been left frozen, terrified to cry in case it made his daddy even madder. He’d never heard his daddy swear before, let alone cuss God like that. Logan knew his mommy would be mad to hear his daddy talk that way. But he didn’t want to think about his mommy. Or why his daddy had gotten him and Lyle out of bed in the middle of the night. Or how his mommy had looked so pale and still as the men in navy pants and button-up shirts had carried her into the ambulance.
Sometimes he felt as if he’d been frozen ever since.
Logan pressed his foot on the gas, allowing his speed to creep up to just below the legal limit after clearing the bend in the highway. He rubbed the scar on his chest beneath his deputy’s badge. Funny to think he’d once been shocked to hear his father cuss.
The sun was lowering now over the ridge, but it was a good two hours before night would fall. He needed to get back to Marietta, report to the Sheriff and then clock off his shift as a reserve Sheriff’s Deputy, before heading back to the ranch to feed the cows they’d already moved into the calving field, then make it to Grey’s by eight. Lyle better damn well be there tonight—Marietta’s First Responders had an important meeting about what to do with the shortfall in the funding for Harry’s House. The house they were rehabbing on Church Avenue to honor their friend’s memory, which would house teenagers and troubled kids who needed a place to feel safe.
He hadn’t seen Lyle in four days, after his smoke-jumping brother had been called up out of fire season to assist at an emergency over in Gallatin County. But Logan had gotten word from one of the First Responders in Bozeman the smoke jumpers had been called off the job over ten hours ago. So where the hell was Lyle? Because he hadn’t bothered to call and let his brother know he was okay. Probably busy working off the adrenaline rush in some bar in Livingston. As soon as he saw Lyle, he was going to give his kid brother a hug to make sure he was still whole, still solid—and then he was going to give him hell.
As he drove p
ast the exact spot Harry had died, Logan’s eye caught sight of something—or someone—crouching on the edge of a clump of Ponderosa pines thirty yards away. He eased his foot off the gas and braked.
Parking the car on the shoulder, he searched the roadside for a vehicle but couldn’t see one in either direction.
He pulled his weapon out of the glove compartment and stepped out of the car, securing the weapon in the holster on his belt as per regulation. Then he fished out the binoculars to be sure what he thought he’d seen was actually real, and not a figment of his sometimes too vivid imagination. But as he focused in on a heart-stopping face he didn’t recognize, short unruly hair, and slender limbs dressed in jeans and boots and a checkered shirt, his heart skipped a couple of beats.
And then annoyance kicked in.
What the hell? Where had that girl come from? And what the hell was she doing ten miles from town without any means of transportation? Night was coming in fast and when it did, the temperature would drop like a stone. They’d had an unseasonably warm spell in the last couple of weeks, which had melted all the snow in the lowlands, but the nights could still be brutal.
She had to be a tourist. Nobody from Marietta would be dumb enough to get stranded out here without a vehicle. He watched her for a moment.
Yup, definitely a damn tourist.
She was taking pictures. Who knew what of, out here in the middle of nowhere.
Well, she wouldn’t be taking them for too much longer.
He stuffed the binoculars back in the glove compartment. Then radioed it in.
“Hey, Betty. I’m gonna be late in off shift.”
“Is there a problem, Logan? Anything I need tell Sheriff Walton about?” Betty, the Sheriff’s Office dispatcher patched back.
“Just a lost tourist out on I-89. I’ll handle it.”
“A lost tourist? On I-89? Where on I-89?” Betty said, because as well as being a top-level dispatcher she was also a top-level gossip.
“Quarter mile past the bend out of Copper Canyon. There’s no sign of a vehicle, so I’ll offer her a ride into town.” A ride he would make damn sure she accepted. No one else was going to die out here on his watch. Not if he could help it.
“Her? So it’s a lady?” Betty asked, her interest clearly piqued.
“Uh-huh, gotta go. Over and out,” Logan barked and hung up the radio, before he could get drawn into an in-depth discussion that would get broadcast all over town before nightfall.
After pulling his shearling jacket out of the car, because there was already a substantial chill in the air, that the girl seemed to be unaware of, he shrugged the jacket on and began the trek toward her, determined to keep his face impassive, and his temper in check.
That the girl didn’t have the sense God gave a gopher was obvious. That she’d chosen the wrong place and the wrong time to get lost even more so, because Deputy Logan Tate was so not in the mood to rescue pretty tourists today.
*
Charlotte Foster adjusted the f-stop on her Leica and fired off another ten shots of the mountain. The pine boughs framing the shots added a splash of vibrant green to the deep turquoise blue of the sky, the stark juniper green of the wintry pasture, and the mulberry wine glow of the rocky edifice in the background. Standing up, she checked her viewfinder and felt her heartbeat slow and her breath squeeze in her lungs. A sure sign she’d taken a perfect shot.
She squinted back up at the mountain. The light was glorious here. She’d never encountered anything quite like it. And they were still at least forty minutes from magic hour: that enchanted sixty minutes just before full dark fell when the natural landscape became suffused in a golden glow.
She rubbed her arms, and then breathed into her fingers, noticing the dropping temperature for the first time. Screwing her camera back onto its tripod, she reached into her pack and rummaged around for a sweater and her fingerless gloves. The cold didn’t scare her, the exhilarating thought of all the amazing pictures she was going to take more than enough to stave off the threat of frostbite.
“Hey there, Miss.”
Charlotte’s head shot up, and for the first time she noticed the man approaching her from the road, his tall, broad frame cast into shadow by the sinking sun. Panic kicked in for a nanosecond and she touched the can of mace she kept in her pack, until she spotted the squad car behind him and the badge pinned to his shirt. She dropped the mace and straightened. He had to be some kind of law enforcement officer despite the battered jeans and boots and thick leather jacket with a sheep fur collar. Which was good on one level—he was unlikely to be a serial killer. Not so good on another. Charlie had never been great with authority figures.
“Hi,” she said, shrugging on her sweater. Was she trespassing? She hadn’t even thought to ask the bus driver who’d finally agreed to drop her off here. She’d been way too busy concocting a story about the mythical rancher boyfriend who was due to pick her up and was running a bit late.
Men in Montana took the whole weaker sex thing way too seriously for her liking.
“Can I ask what you’re doing out here, Miss?”
He stepped out of the shadow and into the light, and Charlie’s breath seized. Just like it had when she’d checked her viewfinder a few moments before. Like the rugged scenery, the man’s face was beautiful in a rough-hewn way. The granite-hard jaw, dark brows, broken nose, and strikingly blue eyes complemented by the most sensual pair of lips she had ever seen. Full and bowed and surrounded by the shadow of stubble, they should have looked girly but didn’t. Every molecule of saliva in her mouth dried up, her heart pounding so hard in her chest she felt a bit light-headed.
“Miss?” he murmured.
She jerked her gaze away from those tantalizing lips. And saw knowledge and intensity and the hint of frustration in his eyes, which she suddenly realized were as deep and pure a blue as the Montana sky. And two things occurred to her at once.
I want to photograph you—and jump you, too.
“Nothing illegal,” she said, suddenly feeling besieged.
The badge on his chest—his very impressive chest—glinted in the dying sunlight. What a shame Deputy Sexy Lips was a lawman. Charlie’s natural instinct to rebel against any kind of constraint had got her into no end of trouble as a teenager, when she’d been expelled from every fancy boarding school in the UK her parents had sent her to. And some of the unfancy ones, too.
Down, girl, you do not want to jump him. He’d be way too much work—and probably boring in bed. The type who always insisted on being on top.
But her fingers still itched to pick up her camera. That face. She definitely wanted to photograph that face. She did a quick once-over of his impressive build. And she could just imagine what an amazing body he would have. She would definitely love to photograph that body too, preferably sans clothing. And sans badge.
“Then it won’t be a problem telling me what it is you were doing?” he said, in that I’m-the-boss-of-you tone that should have been pissing her off. But was turning her on a little bit. Annoyingly.
“Right, no. I’m just…” For God’s sake, Charlie, stop acting like an escaped convict. “Taking some shots of your mountain. The light here’s incredible.”
He tipped his head to glance up at the mountain, almost as if he’d forgotten it was there, then cast that penetrating gaze back on her. “That’s as may be,” he said, as if he doubted it. “But it’ll be dark in an hour or so, and I can’t let you stay out here on your own.”
I can’t let you?
Okay, forget those kissable lips—that was not going to endear him to her. “As long as I’m not breaking any laws, Officer…?” She waited politely for him to fill in his name.
“Deputy Logan Tate,” he said.
“Deputy Logan Tate,” she said, going the full obsequious. “I’m fairly sure that’s not your decision. It’s mine.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, Miss…?” He waited in turn. Forcing her to give up her name, too.
&
nbsp; “Charlotte Foster.” Not that anyone ever called her Charlotte. All her friends called her Charlie, but somehow she did not think she and Deputy Sexy Lips were ever going to be friends.
“Miss Charlotte Foster,” he said, sounding the opposite of obsequious. “Once the sun goes down out here, the temperature will drop to below freezing. I don’t see a vehicle anywhere—so I’m giving you a ride into town, where you can get a warm bed for the night.” His eyes narrowed, daring her to contradict him. Unfortunately even she couldn’t make up a car that clearly did not exist. And somehow she didn’t think her mythical boyfriend would stand up to that laconic scrutiny either—which left her with only one option. Get snotty back.
“Really, that won’t be necessary,” she said, smiling through gritted teeth. “I can always hitch into town when I’m ready.”
“Hitch?” His eyebrows shot up, as if she’d just said she was planning to sprout wings and fly into town. “I can’t let you do that either. It’s not safe.”
There he went with the not-letting-her-do-stuff thing again. Her back muscles locked as her spine stiffened.
She didn’t think mentioning she’d hitched a couple of times already with no ill effects, or telling him about her trusty mace, was going to wipe the judgmental frown off his face, so she changed tack.
“If you don’t think hitching is safe in this area, I’d be foolish not to take your advice, Deputy.” She resisted the urge to bat her eyelashes at him. Somehow she didn’t think he was the type to appreciate sarcasm. “But not to worry, I’ve got a tent and a sleeping bag.” She indicated her pack. “I can always camp out.”
She noticed the ticking muscle in his jaw, but his gaze didn’t falter. “From your accent, I’m guessing you’re not from around here.”
“I’m British, originally, but I’ve been touring the US for the last six months and I’ve lived in Manhattan for a number of years.” And she was a professional photographer with exhibitions in London, New York, and Paris and several prestigious awards under her belt, not to mention a contract to do a coffee table book on America’s Hidden Heartlands and regular commissions with Vanity Fair, Vogue, and a long list of other glossy magazines. But she decided not to mention any of that. Somehow she didn’t think Deputy Sexy Lips was a Vanity Fair subscriber.