Mikey hugged him back. Tears started to prick at Tammy’s eyes. Mom sniffed and even Tara seemed to be touched.
“I have to talk to your mom some more,” Clarence said, setting Mikey down. “You need to go to sleep, okay?”
Mikey gave him a stern look even as he was still clinging to Clarence’s hand. “You’re not going to leave us, are you?”
“No, son, I’m not.”
Son. It was the sort of thing a father might say to his child. Her heart tightened. If only . . .
Then Clarence appeared to realize that this exchange was taking place in front of the entire household. He patted Mikey on the head and said to Tammy, “Can I talk to you?”
Tammy shot a look to Mom, who got the hint faster than Tara. “Come on, sweetie, I’ll read you another story.” She picked up Mikey and carried him back to the bedroom.
Tara lingered a moment longer before she headed back to her room with a superior look. Clarence rolled his eyes and then smiled at Tammy. Yeah, they both still had to deal with Tara come tomorrow morning.
Then they were alone. Tammy wasn’t sure what she wanted to say at this point. Yes, it was wonderful that he’d come back. But he’d left her hanging for a few hours and she was drained from dealing with Mikey and Ezra and the whole stinking mess. She didn’t know if she was mad at him or thankful or what. All of the above, more than likely, and that was hard to put into words.
Suddenly, Clarence moved. He closed the distance between them in two massive steps, grabbed her by the shoulders and kissed the hell out of her.
Tammy was so surprised at first that she jerked her head up and caught his nose on hers. But then he pulled her into his chest and held her tight. She relaxed into his embrace. He’d come back for them. For her.
“I wasn’t trying to run away—not from you,” he said when the kiss ended. “I just—well, I had to think.” He gave her a sad sort-of smile as he cupped her cheek in his palm. “I shouldn’t have disappeared. I’m sorry. I would have been here sooner, but . . .”
“I was worried about you,” she told him. She touched the lines on his forehead. “Mikey was so upset and then Ezra didn’t show and you weren’t here and I felt . . .”
“Alone. I know. And I know Ezra is a part of your life and of Mikey’s whether he’s here or not.”
She rested her head against his chest. “I don’t want you to disappear. I know I might not have the right to ask that of you, but I don’t want you to go away. Not like tonight, not like Ezra did.” She knew she could survive on her own—well, with the help of her sister and mother, that was—but she didn’t want to be alone again. Not even for an evening.
He tilted her head back and gave her a small smile. “You know what I was going to do tonight, before it all went to hell in a handbasket?” She shook her head no. There was something in his eyes that was different—more serious. “I was going to go into town and do some Christmas shopping. But I don’t think I can wait for Christmas anymore.”
With that, he stepped back and dropped to his knees. Tammy’s eyes went wide. “Clarence?”
He took her hands in his. Such large hands—they surrounded hers with their strength. “Will you marry me, Tammy Tall Trees?”
She gaped at him, too stunned to speak. Her thoughts were a jumble. Married? After today? Christmas?
After a long second, during which her brain refused to process, Clarence’s confidence faltered. “I’ll understand if the answer’s no,” he hurried to say. “I’m not a young man and—”
That was as far as he got before Tammy threw her arms around his neck and kissed the words out of his mouth. So she didn’t have the words. Actions spoke louder.
He folded her into his arms again as he stood. “I’m not too old for you?”
“No, Clarence. You don’t mind being a father to Mikey?”
“Naw, he’s a great kid.” He grinned down at her as if he wasn’t sure if this were real or a dream. “You haven’t answered the question yet.”
She felt her own smile answering his. “You’re everything I wanted but I didn’t want to let myself hope. I’d hoped once and it’d blown up in my face. I didn’t want to risk myself again. And tonight I was afraid maybe I’d hoped too much. I want you so much.”
He hugged her harder than he’d ever hugged her before. “You’re perfect for me, Tammy. I promise I’ll never bail on you.” He kissed her again, and this time it packed more heat. “Let me make coffee for you every single morning for the rest of our lives. I’m yours.”
She started laughing and crying at the same time. To know that he’d be there for her—for their family—not just now, but forever. “Yes. Yes.”
Then they went to tell Mikey, because the rest of their lives started right now.
About the Author
Readers can find out more about Sarah’s love of cowboys and Indians at:
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Sarah M. Anderson
200 N 8th ST #193
Quincy IL 62301-9996
Award-winning author Sarah M. Anderson may live east of the Mississippi River, but her heart lies out west on the Great Plains. When she started writing, it wasn’t long before her characters found themselves out in South Dakota among the Lakota Sioux. She loves to put people from two different worlds into new situations and see how their backgrounds and cultures take them someplace they never thought they’d go.
She’s sold over twenty-five books to Harlequin Desire and Superromance, as well as Samhain. She won RT Reviewer’s Choice 2012 Desire of the Year for A Man of Privilege.
When she’s not helping out at her son’s school or walking her rescue dogs, Sarah spends her days having conversations with imaginary cowboys and American Indians, all of which is surprisingly well-tolerated by her wonderful husband.
Other Books by Sarah M. Anderson
Men of the White Sandy
Mystic Cowboy
Masked Cowboy
Nobody
Lawyers in Love
A Man of His Word
A Man of Privilege
A Man of Distinction
The Boltons
Straddling the Line
Bringing Home the Bachelor
Expecting a Bolton Baby
Rich, Rugged Ranchers
A Real Cowboy
The Texas Cattleman’s Club
What a Rancher Wants
His Lost and Found Family
Rodeo Dreamers
Rodeo Dreams
The Beaumont Heirs
Not the Boss’s Baby
Tempted by a Cowboy
A Beaumont Christmas Wedding
Billionaires and Babies
The Nanny Plan
Acknowledgements
I could not have written this book without the generous help of the following people: Kurt Riggs, for making sure my Navy terms were shipshape, Amy Short for reading Clarence first, Melissa Jolly for being continually awesome, and Heidi Moore and Jill Marsal. Deepest thanks go to Mary Dieterich for editing and Leah Hanlin for designing the book.
Mystic Cowboy (Men of the White Sandy #1)
© 2013, 2014 by Sarah M. Anderson
From Samhain Publishing
The White Sandy Reservation needs a doctor, and Madeline Mitchell needs to do a little good in the world. It seems like a perfect fit, until she meets the medicine man, Rebel Runs Fast. As far as Madeline can tell, Rebel's sole mission is to convince her patients that modern medicine can't help them. And the fact that he makes her heart race every time he looks at her only irritates her more.
Rebel swore off the white man's world—and women—years ago. But he's never met a woman like Dr. Mitchell. She doesn't speak the language, understand the customs, or believe he's anything more than a charlatan—but she stays, determined to help his people. He tries to convince himself that
his tribe doesn't need her, but when patients start getting sick with strange symptoms, he realizes that he needs her more than ever.
Excerpt from Mystic Cowboy
And suddenly, it got a whole lot less boring. Tara gasped in shock as the fan was kicked out of the door. Now what? Madeline spun around in her pitiful supply closet.
Two men stood in front of Tara. Well, one man stood. He was tall and straight, all the more so compared to the broken people she’d looked at all day. His jet-black hair hung long and loose under a straw cowboy hat, all the way down to his denim-clad butt. Even though he was supporting the other man, he was moving from one black cowboy boot to the other, his hips shifting in a subtle-but-sexy motion. He was wearing a T-shirt with the sleeves torn off, revealing a set of honest biceps that looked like carved caramel—the best kind of delicious.
“Find a nice cowboy.” Mellie’s voice floated back up her from their last conversation. “Ride him a little. Have fun!”
Now, Madeline wasn’t exactly a thrill-seeking adrenaline junkie. On more than one occasion, she’d been accused of being the party pooper, the stick in the mud, a real-bring-me-downer in the room. Several times, it had been pointed out that she wouldn’t know fun if it walked up and bit her in the ass. And that was just what Mellie said to her face. God only knew what everyone else said behind her back.
But there he was, standing in her waiting room. Fun in cowboy boots. No biting in the ass required, because she knew him immediately, and all she wanted to do was find a horse and ride. With him. The heat started at her neck and flashed southward. She could feel her curls trying to break free into a full-fledged frizz with the sudden temperature change, which only made things that much worse.
“Jesse!” Tara said in a voice that was just one small step below shouting. “What did you do now?”
“Give me a hand, will you?” Fun in Cowboy Boots called back to Clarence. He pivoted just a little, revealing the other man who was leaning all of his weight on Fun’s right side.
Not good. The second guy’s leg was being held together with what looked like broomsticks and duct tape. His right arm hung limp, and his scratched face was contorted in pain.
“Damn, Rebel, what happened?” Clarence was already hefting the broken man—Jesse?—onto the nearest free table, leading to a volley of clenched grunts from the injured man. “I thought we might get through this month without you trying to kill yourself, you know.”
Did Clarence really just call this guy Rebel? Well, it was official. She’d heard it all today.
Rebel—if that was his real name—was shaking his head when he caught her staring. He had beautiful black eyes, the kind of black that didn’t so much show you the window to his soul, but reflected yours back on you. Those eyes widened in surprise. “You know how it goes, Clarence,” he said, his gaze bearing down on her with enough heat that the rest of the clinic felt suddenly cool by comparison. “Life with Jesse is always an adventure.”
Tara was next to the exam table now, holding Jesse’s hand as she felt his head. “Do I even want to know?”
“Not really,” Rebel replied, taking his time as he looked her over. His thumbs were hanging from his belt loops, which only made the shifting thing he was doing look more intentional. Aside from the long hair, he looked like every cowboy fantasy she’d ever had. Did he have a horse, or was her imagination way out of control? “You must be the new doctor, ma’am.” He took off his hat and nodded. All that black hair, so straight it made her jealous, flowed around him like a cape.
Oooh, her first ma’am. From an honest-to-God cowboy, no less. She felt the sudden urge to curtsey, but then realized what he’d said right before the ma’am. She was the doctor, and she had a job to do. Wrenching her eyes from the caramel-colored cowboy to the patient, Madeline tried to regain her professional composure. “Dr. Mitchell, please. And this is Jesse?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
That wasn’t helpful. “I need to know how this happened, Mister…”
“Rebel,” he said, those hips still moving.
She was not staring like a schoolgirl at this man. “Excuse me?”
“Just Rebel, ma’am.”
A shiver ran down her spine. One more ma’am and she might swoon. “Dr. Mitchell,” she said with more force as she turned to her patient.
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Nobody (Men of the White Sandy #3)
© 2014 by Sarah M. Anderson
Nobody Bodine is a nobody who came from a nobody and will always be a nobody.
He disappears into the shadows—no one sees him if he doesn’t want them to. He exists in neither the white man’s world nor the tribe’s, dispensing vigilante justice when he sees fit. There’s no other place for a man like him in this world.
Until Melinda Mitchell shows up on the rez. From the first moment he lays eyes on her, he can tell there’s something different about her. For starters, she’s not afraid of him. She asks where his scars came from, and why he has so many. But more than that, she sees him. For the first time in his life, Nobody feels like a somebody in her eyes.
Melinda has come west to run the new day care on the White Sandy Reservation. She’s intrigued by this strange man and his tattered skin, and when she discovers that he’s a self-appointed guardian angel for the boy in her care, she realizes that there’s more to Nobody than meets the eyes. But how far will he go to keep the boy safe? And will she be able to draw him into the light?
Excerpt from Nobody
Nobody stood in the shadows, watching her.
She wasn’t leaving. Melinda Mitchell normally closed up shop and drove off by this point in the evening, but not tonight. It had to be close to eight—two hours after she normally left. Was that because it was Friday?
What was she doing? Light streamed out of both the front and back doors of the center as she did something inside. He was tempted to edge closer and steal a look in.
She couldn’t be painting. In the two weeks since she’d left him the last note, the inside of the center had gone from concrete gray to plain white to rainbows. Maybe that’s what she’d meant by creative chaos? Because it was still chaos. He wasn’t sure if it was beautiful, but it was definitely wild.
The rainbow colors went vertically up over the walls—even over the foam she’d managed to hang from the ceilings. The foam covered the top four feet of the walls. Not that Nobody made a lot of noise, but even he could tell that the center was more hushed now. Less echo-y.
At the height he’d come to think of as her eye-level, she’d hung bulletin board strips. Papers, splashed with finger paint and crayon scribbles, were tacked up along the wall now, some with kids’ names neatly printed at the bottom, others with names that were barely readable.
Then, at kid level, the wall had been covered with tiny handprints. Each set of prints had a name and an age painted onto the wall underneath it. Jamie’s hands were up there—no last name, though.
He’d been right. Melinda had taken the boy in. Good.
But that didn’t explain what she was doing here now. Didn’t she know this wasn’t the safest place on the rez? True, he hadn’t caught any junkies trying to break in recently, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t try again.
She appeared in the front door. Light streamed from behind her, giving her an otherworldly glow.
He felt himself breathe at seeing her again. The two weeks since she’d almost walked right into him at Rebel’s place had felt long. Time, as marked by days and weeks, didn’t have much meaning for him. His world was divided into light and dark, warm and cold. He cleaned the clinic every day. There were no Mondays, no weekends.
But the last two weeks had moved by at such a slow pace that he’d begun to feel . . . uneasy about it. Not his usual sense of when someone was in trouble. This had been different. He’d wanted to see her just because. Not because he had to keep her safe or anything. Just . . . because.
But he’d forced himsel
f to stay away from Rebel’s. She’d looked right at him, walked right toward him as if he were standing in broad daylight. If she hadn’t gotten distracted . . . no. He didn’t believe she could actually tell he was there. Something else had attracted her attention. That was all.
Backlit, she stretched, her body reaching for the dusk sky. Something else began to make Nobody feel uneasy and that something was obvious—Melinda Mitchell had a hell of a body. Part of what had been bothering him had been those curves—those generous breasts, those hips.
How would her body feel? Would she be terrified if he filled his hands with those breasts? Would she be afraid of him if he grabbed her hips and pulled her into him?
Onto him?
Or would she like it? Would she think it exciting to do it with someone dangerous? Would she moan or cry out?
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