Taming the Rancher: Mail Order Bride (Brides and Twins Book 2)

by Natalie Dean

  “I dunno. I just saw it and thought of you.”

  “You saw a man’s smoking pipe and thought of me? I’m not sure what that says about our relationship….is that a good thing? A bad thing?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Adrianna got off the interstate towards the restaurant. The place was called Trees. It was a lovely Italian restaurant that was absolutely top notch- the servers all wore suits or dresses, the entrees were outrageously expensive, and classical music was always playing quietly in the background. Adrianna had only been there a couple times in her life. Every time, she’d been blown away.

  That night, Trees was packed as always. Adrianna had honestly been surprised they had even been able to land a seat. Generally, they were sold out for at least a week. Turns out, someone had canceled right before they called, so they got lucky.

  The night air was crisp and cool, not enough to make Adrianna shiver but enough to make her feel alive. She could faintly hear the traffic on the interstate, but Trees was far enough from the road to feel tucked away.

  David jumped out of the car when they first arrived, hustled over to her, and opened the door for her like a true gentlemen. “M’lady,” he said, ushering her out.

  And with those words, their night on the town began.

  Chapter 3

  Adrianna had been hoping for a lovely time- some relaxation, to be able to have an adult conversation, eat some great food, and just enjoy being with David.

  She had completely underestimated how nice it would be.

  They’d gotten a corner booth in Trees, so they were close enough to be in the buzz without being overwhelmed by conversation. Nobody near them was drunk. Everyone was polite and proper.

  “Hey,” David said. “Look how in love that young couple looks…”

  It was true- a young couple was sitting at the bar, making conversation with awkward, happy little quips. It was nice to see someone like them, just two people trying to find someone to love. It made the atmosphere even better to Adrianna. She leaned her head against David’s shoulder. She could feel his rippling musculature under his shirt.

  “I’m glad we did this,” she told him, nuzzling up against him.

  “Me too. I think this could be a very fun night for us.”

  The waitress came up and introduced herself. She was professional, genial, and receptive- the perfect server. Adrianna and David both just ordered water to drink, which seemed to surprise her. Nearly every other couple was drinking wine. David tended to be a violent drunk, so he’d sworn off it years ago, and Adrianna never found a need to even try drinking.

  As they waited for the food, they talked.

  “Look,” David said. He reached for her hand, and when she gave it to him, he opened it, palm up. With an entirely serious expression, David grabbed the straw wrapper, crumbled it up, and put it in the center of her palm. Without blinking or saying a thing, he rolled her fingers up against the wrapper. “Treasure it forever.”

  “Wow, I don’t know what to say,” she said.

  “Treasure it forever.” His eyes were sparkling with amusement. “Or at least until the food gets here.”

  “Consider it treasured forever,” she told him. She was kidding. There was no way that she could treasure a piece of trash for longer than five minutes, much less forever. Looking at him, though, she could think of something that she did want to cherish for eternity.

  “I’m about to publish my book,” he told her.

  “Already?” That was quick. He’d just started it last month. She’d always figured people needed years to finish writing anything of quality, but when she’d read it, there was no doubt- he was a quality writer, and he’d pumped it out in a matter of weeks, not years.

  “Yes.”

  “I want the first autographed copy.”

  “It won’t even by under my own name. I need help thinking up a good name. I was thinking Francis Fakename.”

  Adrianna tried to keep a smile down and failed. “I, uh, I believe that you need to put some more thought towards that.”

  “You don’t like ole’ Francis Fakename?”

  “Well…it’s a little ridiculous.”

  “I’m a little ridiculous.”

  “You’re a lot ridiculous.”

  “We gotta keep it going. It’s ridiculous how many times we just said the word ridiculous in a row.”

  “You’re right. It’s ridiculous how many times we said that.”

  “That was weak. I’d give it a three out of ten.”

  She shrugged. “I’m not good at that stuff. What can I say?”

  “Are you still treasuring the wrapper?”

  She opened her palm to show it. “Still treasuring.”

  The waiter arrived with the food, effectively cutting off the conversation.

  The food itself was marvelous. It tasted like literal heaven: well cooked, perfectly seasoned, and overall just a masterpiece. Adrianna was tense at the beginning of the night, worrying sick about Ellie, but after John had texted to let them know everything was okay, she relaxed and let herself enjoy the night. Oh, and enjoy it she did. David was simply on. He was cracking jokes that made her laugh when the mood was right, but he was soft and gentle when he needed to be. He could tell she was stressed, so he tried his best to make her feel happy and at peace. He was quite successful.

  At one point, he accidentally spilled some sauce onto his lap. He didn’t even do anything. He just hung his head with a loud, exaggerated sigh. “Well, drats.”

  Adrianna had been going for a beautiful, sophisticated look the whole night, but she failed right then. Looking at his resigned expression as he stared at the sauce was just too funny. She laughed, but she’d been drinking her water, so water ended up going up her nose and nearly choked her.

  “Sorry,” she choked out.

  “Can you give me a hand?” he asked.

  “What, with cleaning it?”

  “Yeah.”

  She felt color rising to her cheeks for some idiotic reason. She was an FBI agent for heaven’s sake, and here she was, getting embarrassed by David’s flirting. “I can’t do that….”

  “I love you,” he told her later, looking directly into her eyes. “Really, I’m just crazy about you.”

  She leaned towards him. He accepted, and they met lips for one long, passionate moment. When she pulled away, she looked into his eyes for an answer. Should they go all the way? They’d been keeping pure, as pure as they could, but maybe the time was right.

  He nodded once, silently.

  David raised up his hand to get the attention of the waiter, who hurried over and asked if they needed dessert. David paid and, five minutes later, they were in the car. Their apartment was a short drive away, but it felt like an eternity and a mere second to Adrianna at the same time. Was she making a good choice? Was it the right time? They’d talked about waiting until they were married…but it just felt so right.

  Like a couple young lovebirds, they giggled the entire way up to the apartment. Adrianna felt like she could just float away with joy. She’d expected her emotions to be running wild. She hadn’t expected to be so excited and happy about it.

  David tried to put the key in and missed. It took him a second or two to get it right and unlock the door. The door swung open to his apartment, where they hurried into the bedroom.

  David frantically unbuttoned his shirt, so quick that Adrianna felt sure he busted at least a couple different buttons. Her heart was hammering in her chest. This was really happening.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked her urgently. He didn’t want to feel as though he’d rushed her, which she had appreciated at every other time but not right then.

  “Of course I’m sure!”

  And then David’s phone rang. David completely ignored it. He was staring at Adrianna in a sort of adoration. They were on the bed together by this point, right up against each other. They were breathing hard, fast. Adrianna barely registered the phone ringing, but
she hardly cared. Let it ring. They were busy. But then she remembered- it could be John. She pulled away from David just the slightest bit.

  “Who is it?”

  “Who cares?” he asked in response.

  “No, it could be John.” She wriggled away. “Just check, please.”

  He groaned and checked the phone. His eyes widened. “It’s John.”

  “The party shouldn’t be over for an hour or two,” Adrianna said. Suddenly, fear overwhelmed her. “Answer!”

  He brought the phone up to his ear. “Hello?”

  Immediately, his face went ashen gray. His whole body tensed, which was especially noticeable because he was virtually unclothed. “We’re on our way,” he said.

  Uh-oh.

  David didn’t get that tone unless something was wrong. He immediately left Adrianna on the bed and pulled on his pants. “Get dressed, now,” he snarled. “Ellie’s missing.”

  Chapter 4

  Adrianna pulled on her clothes as fast as she could. Her dress slipped right on, but when she tried to put on her shoes, she lost her balance and nearly wiped out. She caught herself before she could fall, but her brain wasn’t working properly. Ellie, her sweet Ellie, was missing.

  She’d been dumb to leave her alone. It must have been the guy. John stayed on the phone with David, telling him everything he knew as they ran to the car and jumped inside, leaving Adrianna to stew in her own thoughts. It was like her own little personal torture- to know that something had happened but to not know anything else. Was Ellie taken? Did she just walk off? Was she okay? What had happened?

  She’d probably driven faster before, but she couldn’t remember when. A less talented driver would have swerved off the road at least five times by now.

  “What happened?” she demanded the moment that he ended the call.

  “Someone took her,” he said. His lips were tight and angry. His entire body was hard as a rock. “They don’t know who. She got away from the other girls, and someone put her in a truck before driving off. He said it was a big man and a driver.”

  Adrianna felt dread wash through her body. Everything she’d been afraid of, everything she’d feared, had come true. Someone, probably that guy, had stolen their baby girl. Sure, Ellie wasn’t blood-related to Adrianna, but it felt like she was. She’d never forgive herself if something happened to her. She felt her blood start boiling as she imagined what she’d do to whoever had kidnapped her.

  They zoomed up into the parking lot to see two police cars with their lights on and parents all around, comforting their kids and leaving. The police officers looked up at them when they pulled in, looking like they might start shooting. Adrianna slammed on the brakes, sending the car screeching to a halt across the gravel parking lot.

  The cops were there to greet her, but when they saw she wasn’t armed, they let her go. She had no idea if David was near her, but she was steaming mad. She spotted John from across the lot. He was speaking to some officers, who were taking notes on what he said.

  He saw her coming and stepped towards her. “I’m so sorry. I tried to keep tra-“

  Adrianna wasn’t interested in hearing what he had to say. He’d failed. He had said he’d keep track of Ellie and he’d let her get taken. She reared back a fist and popped him in the mouth. She heard herself screaming something at him, but honestly, she couldn’t even hear her own words. When she got genuinely angry, she somehow blacked out. The next thing she knew, the officers were trying to hold her back, and John was holding a broken nose.

  David was there a moment later. He stepped in front of her, eyes dark and angry. The moonlight wasn’t comforting like earlier at Trees. It was dark, ominous, and eerie. The cold winter air had kicked into a full, chilling breeze that made her very bones shiver.

  “This won’t help anything,” she could hear him saying. He was holding her shoulders, trying to calm her down. His fingertips were digging into her soft skin. He was as angry as she was, but he wanted to contain it.

  It took her upwards of thirty minutes to switch back to her professional mind. That had never happened before. She rarely, if ever, stayed emotional for more than a few moments. Usually, at the first sign of distress, she’d analyze and figure it out. Even when she was a kid, when people would bully her for being so boyish, she’d consider it intelligently. She’d grown a thick skin, a kind of skin that rarely got punctured.

  But when she finally did switch, she had no emotion whatsoever. She felt numb. Even the cold air didn’t do anything to her. She used her senses to search for recent auras. There were so many people there that it was hard to isolate any particular aura, but the twisted one from the huge man at the mall was certainly present. He’d been there. She couldn’t track him. Her mind was entirely too spaced out right then. She needed to be able to focus to track auras, but right then her emotions were so wild that she couldn’t.

  She saw a familiar face about an hour later- Agent Stone, her supervisor at the FBI. He was a man mountain and about as rough as his name. He arrived in a small black car driven by someone else. As usual, he acted like he was in charge immediately. His two lackeys spread out to do something else while he walked up to her and David.

  “Whetmore,” he said, looking down at her. He was huge, probably about as big as the hooded man. His gray suit must have taken some incredible adjustments. “The FBI’s here. We’re taking over this case. We know the perpetrator.”

  He held out a phone that she took. She almost cracked the screen clenching it so hard. It was him- the hooded man in a mugshot. He had the same broken stance, the misshapen bulge on his back. But this time she could see his face. He looked distinctly like a Neanderthal, with an enormous square jaw, small eyes, and a brutish expression. He was as big as he had looked in the mall- the sign next to him said 6’9”, but not skinny. Just… massive.

  “His name is Jacob Jackson,” Stone said, who suddenly looked rather frail compared to Jacob. “Arrested eight years ago for the murder of a child. He just got out.”

  “Why’d he do this?” David said. “Why Ellie?”

  Stone looked at David with a scowl. He’d never liked David. He’d seen him as a distraction to his best agent. All of a sudden, the FBI wasn’t the only thing in Adrianna’s life. That wasn’t good to him. “Looks like he had quite a relation with The Owl. I’d be willing to bet he came for revenge for you two putting him up.” He paused. “But I didn’t come to tell you that. I came here to tell you, Agent Whetmore, to stay away from this case.”

  Adrianna must have misheard him. “I know you didn’t tell me that.”

  “This case is too personal. We’ll catch the perp, but we can’t compromise the case with having you in it.”

  “But I’m the best tracker you have!”

  He snorted. “You’re the best damn Hound we have, Whetmore, but I can’t send you on this one. I’ve already put Smith and Johnson on it.”

  “Smith and Johnson?” She swore. “Those idiots can’t find anyone!”

  “They’re the best we have apart from you,” he said with a tone in his voice that warned against any argument. Stone could arrest her if he thought she’d disobey him. “I’m warning you, Whetmore. Stay away from this case.” He loomed over her like a mountain. “Understand?”

  “I can’t promise you anything,” she growled.

  Stone nodded. He knew she was going to ignore him, and he also knew he wasn’t going to stop her. Even if Stone arrested her, she’d bust out somehow and chase the guy. He’d given up trying to control her. In a backward sort of way, he was trying to protect her. He wasn’t telling her to stay away near as much as he was trying to warn her that he wouldn’t take it easy on her if she ignored his advice.

  He acknowledged David silently and lumbered away to question some of the locals to see what had happened. The FBI would get him, all right…but without Adrianna’s tracking abilities, they had to rely on facts. It could take hours, days, or even weeks to get a lead. As soon as she calmed down, Adr
ianna could start tracking him with nearly impeccable accuracy.

  “So,” David murmured beside her, “When do we start?”

  “We need weapons,” she said.

  “We got those at the apartment,” he replied.

  “Let’s go.”

  It wasn’t the time for long, drawn-out conversations. Neither David nor Adrianna felt terribly compelled to have an in-depth discussion. They didn’t have the time to wait around. More precisely, Ellie didn’t have the time. Jacob could be trying to scare them by kidnapping her, or Ellie could be in real danger. A murderer had their sweet little girl.

  Adrianna couldn’t believe any of this was happening. It made sense. She’d heard of stuff like that before- revenge killings or revenge kidnappings geared toward officers of the law that had gotten someone locked up, but she’d never once imagined that she’d be in the middle of such a tale. The Owl had wide-spread influence when he’d been out, so it made plenty of sense that he had at least a few goons around still.

  She’d gone through all her emotion. She’d gone from terrified for the girl to furious at the kidnapper to simply numb. Now, she was starting to level out. She knew the facts of the game. Now she just had to play better than Jacob Jackson. In a few minutes, her emotions would have cooled down enough for her to start tracking, for them to start tracking Jacob. Her emotions would probably be back to normal by the time she got to the apartment.

  On the way out of the parking lot, Adrianna caught Stone’s disapproving eye. He could tell she was going to ignore him. She was way too easy to read, and Stone had known her for years. He probably had no doubt that she was off to get weapons to chase him down. Very solemnly, he tipped his head in respect. He’d probably give her a day to get started before he “realized” she was gone. He was a good friend. A bit of a jerk, and quite a blowhard, but someone that she could count on in a firefight.

  It wouldn’t be easy. Tracking in a more populated area never was. There were just too many auras to pick out one and follow it. As Adrianna drove them back to the apartment, she tried to figure out a good way to find Jacob. He must have had help. John had told David that someone had driven the truck, so there were at least two people to worry about. The bowling alley was right by a stop light, and kidnappers rarely stop for a red light, so they could probably identify the truck’s license plate through the cameras above the light.