Sheltered by the Cowboy

by Carla Cassidy

  He stared back at her, his dark eyes filled with emotions she couldn’t begin to discern. “First of all, I want to talk about me,” he said.

  Really? He’d broken her heart and now had pulled her out into a wintry night to talk about him and not them? Was he intentionally trying to torture her?

  “Mandy, I love me.” The words seemed to explode from him.

  “Then I hope the two of you will be very happy,” she replied.

  Even in the dim lighting, she could see a deep red filling his cheeks. “That’s not the way I mean to say it. I... I need to start over. Mandy, I’ve been afraid for years that I would become the brutal abuser that my father was. My belief got so bad a couple of months ago, I started seeing Ellie Miller.”

  “That’s good, Brody. I admire that you sought help.” With each of her words the tiny flicker of hope that had filled her dimmed. Was this what he’d wanted to tell her? That he was getting help for himself?

  “I went to see Ellie this evening and something clicked inside me. I realized I need to love myself before I could love us.” He took her by the shoulders, the emotion shining from his eyes one she recognized, and the flame of hope inside her burned brighter.

  “I am a good man, Mandy. I will never be like my father. It’s not in me. I’m a good man and I deserve to love and be loved. I deserve happiness.”

  “And now you love you?” she asked, her heart swelling in her chest.

  He nodded. “And I love you, Mandy. If you’ll give me a second chance I will never, ever leave you again.”

  “You have to be sure, Brody. You have to be very sure,” she replied, her voice holding a tremor. “I don’t want you to break my heart again.”

  “I’ll never break your heart again,” he replied with a fierceness. “I love you and I want to marry you. I want you to have my babies and to fill that old house with love and laughter. I am your prince, Mandy. Please tell me it isn’t too late for us.”

  Joy exploded inside her. “Oh, Brody, it’s not too late.” She raised her arms around his neck and leaned into him. “You’re right. You’re the prince I’ve been waiting for all my life.”

  “And you’re my princess.”

  Before she could say anything else his lips were on hers, speaking of his love for her in the warmth of his mouth against hers, in the arms that held her so tightly against him.

  A happiness she’d never felt before filled her heart and soul. The knowledge that she was where she belonged shot a wonderful sense of peace through her.

  When they finally broke the kiss it had begun to snow, which was fitting. They had first found each other during a snowstorm and now they’d sealed their love with a kiss while a gentle snow fell.

  “Let’s go home,” he said, his eyes shining with the same kind of happiness that warmed her heart. “Ride with me and I’ll bring you to pick up your car in the morning. Now that I have you I don’t want to lose a minute of our time together tonight.”

  Oh, this cowboy took her breath away and she knew he would continue to take her breath away for many years to come. He was her best friend and her lover, and hopefully soon he would be her husband.

  * * *

  Brody stood at the front door of the big house, now home, and stared out at the empty driveway. Before long, cars would be arriving as friends attended the official housewarming party.

  Mandy was in the kitchen, fixing all kinds of fancy finger food for people to enjoy. She had banished him from that room an hour ago, telling him he’d just get underfoot.

  He smiled. He’d been doing that a lot since the night almost two months ago that he’d driven to the café with his love for her burning in his heart.

  It was amazing to realize all he had to do to be truly happy was to claim a love of himself. He’d moved past his old memories instead of wallowing in them. He’d recognized on both an intellectual and an emotional level that the sins of the father were just that.

  The past two months had been busy ones as they tackled getting the house ready for them to move in. Walls had been painted and furniture had been bought. Oak floors had been sanded and refinished and new curtains hung at all the windows.

  They had decided George’s old bedroom would make a great playroom for the children they hoped to have one day. They’d taken the largest bedroom upstairs as their master, and it was in the decorating of that room that they’d had their first fight as an official couple. He’d insisted there be no pink.

  He smiled again as he remembered telling her no self-respecting cowboy would sleep under a black-and-pink bedspread. They’d finally compromised on a black spread with coral-colored throw pillows and coral curtains at the windows. The pink was now in one of the guest bedrooms.

  He’d told Cassie he would continue to act as foreman for the time being, but eventually he’d be ranching this property and no longer working for her. She’d been happy for him and Mandy.

  He’d also introduced Mandy to Ellie. The two women had hit it off, and he and Mandy were now considering asking Ellie to be a witness at the small, private wedding they were planning.

  He straightened as he saw several familiar pickup trucks driving down the lane toward the house. The Holiday cowboys would be here in force to help celebrate.

  He left the window and hurried into the kitchen, where Mandy was taking cheese-and-crab-stuffed mushrooms from the oven.

  “We’re about to be invaded,” he said.

  As she set the mushrooms down he grabbed her from behind and nuzzled her neck. “Stop,” she said with a laugh and swatted at him with a pot holder. “Quick, help me get these on the server platter and on the table.”

  “Turn around and give me just a minute,” he said.

  “Okay, but just one minute.” She turned to face him. Her cheeks were flushed and the red blouse she wore emphasized the rich darkness of her hair and her caramel eyes.

  As always, the sight of her filled him with hot desire and tender love. “Mandy, we’ve been through a lot together and we’ve come out on the other side. We’ve fixed up this old house and managed to get through it with a minimum of fussing, but there’s one thing I haven’t done.”

  He pulled a ring box from his pocket and dropped to one knee. Her eyes opened wide and then began to mist with what he knew were happy tears.

  “Mandy Wright, will you wear this ring and marry me and be my girl forever?” He opened up the ring box to reveal a beautiful one-karat round diamond with smaller gems on either side.

  “Yes, you know my answer is yes,” she replied breathlessly. “Oh, Brody, it’s so beautiful.”

  He stood, took the ring out of the box and then slid it onto her finger. “I wanted a ring fit for a princess,” he said.

  She held her hand up in the air, gazed at the sparkling ring and then threw her arms around his neck. “I love you, Brody Booth.”

  “And I love you. It took us a while to get here, but all’s well that ends well, right?” He gazed at her teasingly.

  She laughed and then they were kissing and the doorbell was ringing. Brody knew the night would be filled with celebration and friends, and best of all was the sweet knowledge that he was finally home.

  * * * * *

  Don’t forget previous titles in the

  COWBOYS OF HOLIDAY RANCH series:

  KILLER COWBOY

  OPERATION COWBOY DADDY

  COWBOY AT ARMS

  COWBOY UNDER FIRE

  COWBOY OF INTEREST

  A REAL COWBOY

  Keep reading for an excerpt from SINGLE MOM’S BODYGUARD by Lisa Childs.

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  Single Mom’s Bodyguard

  by Lisa Childs

  Chapter 1

  The crying awoke Emilia—as it always did. But it sounded as if it were coming from a great distance instead of just down the hall. Why did it seem so muffled?

  She knew better than to put anything in the crib with the infant. She wouldn’t take any risk with him ever again. “Blue...” she murmured as she jerked fully awake.

  Throwing back the blankets, she jumped from the bed and ran from her room, hitting her shoulder against the jamb as she exited. Pain radiated down her arm.

  This was real. This wasn’t a dream like all the times before she’d heard that faint cry, when she had reached for her stomach, for her child—only to find her womb empty, her baby gone...

  Except that hadn’t been a dream, either. That had been the horror she’d lived for weeks until she and her son had been rescued.

  Her feet slipped on the hardwood floor as she hurried down the hall toward the bedroom on the other side of the bath. She banged into that jamb, too, while rushing into the nursery. A breeze rustled the wispy blue-and-white-striped curtains and rattled the blind pulled over the window.

  The open window.

  She hadn’t left that window open. She was always so careful to make sure that it was shut and locked. She wouldn’t have...

  She could barely hear the crying now. It was far in the distance. “Blue...”

  Was he gone, too?

  Her legs trembled, nearly folding beneath her, as she walked toward the crib. Dread gripped her. She was afraid to look, afraid that it was happening all over again.

  She had lost her little boy once. She couldn’t lose him again. Her hands shook and she wrapped her fingers around the top rail of the white-painted crib. And finally, she forced herself to look.

  Her heart lurched, swelling with love, as it did every time she gazed upon her child. He lay on his side, his eyes closed, his little fist clenched as if he was ready to start fighting bad guys—just like his uncle.

  Relief slipped from her lips in a long, shuddery breath. He was fine. Blue was fine, sleeping peacefully. There were no tears on his cheeks, which had finally begun to fill out. He looked happy and healthy.

  And she’d thought she was, too, now that she had him back. But she could still hear the crying. Maybe it was coming from another house. But it hadn’t sounded that way when she’d first heard it. It had seemed to come from down the hall.

  And it sounded that way again but now the direction had changed, as if it were coming from her room. She had cried herself to sleep a few nights, thinking of the mistakes she’d made, the mistakes that had nearly cost her Blue and her brother and the woman he loved and Emilia’s own life, as well.

  She had almost lost everything. But thanks to her brother, Lars, and Nikki Payne and Lars’s friends, Blue was safe. Emilia was safe. She had lost nothing.

  The sound of crying persisted. It sounded like Blue’s cry. But he was still asleep. She reached down for him, tempted to hold him and assure herself he was all right. As her fingers brushed across his back, he murmured and a soft sigh slipped through his rosebud-shaped lips.

  He was too peaceful. Disturbing him would be selfish. She had promised herself she wouldn’t be that kind of parent, the one her father had been when he’d deserted his sick wife and kids.

  No. She had to leave him alone, had to let him sleep. Most new parents would have been envious of how much her son slept. But she knew he did that because he hadn’t had anyone there for him those first few weeks of his life. He hadn’t had anyone that cared enough to come when he’d cried. And her heart broke over that, over knowing that she had already let down her son. She wouldn’t do it again.

  She forced herself to step away from his crib. Along with the crying, the breeze reached her, stirring her nightgown as it did the curtains and the blind. Shivering, she lifted the blind and slid the window closed, locking it. As she did, she remembered checking that lock earlier—when she had first put Blue down in his bed. The window had definitely been closed and locked.

  Who had opened it?

  Lars wasn’t home. He’d moved in with Nikki nearly a week ago. Emilia had had to convince him that it was okay, that she would be fine without him.

  But she wasn’t fine. She was scared. Someone must have been inside the house. Who and why?

  Was someone after her baby again? She turned back toward the crib. She wanted to lift Blue from it, wanted to hold on so tightly to her little boy that no one could get him away from her—ever.

  But she resisted that temptation. Instead she settled into the rocker recliner in the corner of the nursery. With that crying echoing inside her head, she wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep anyway. She would sit vigil, watching her son to protect him.

  But from what? If someone had unlocked and opened the window, they would have had to be inside the room. So why hadn’t they just taken Blue if he was what they really wanted?

  She was probably just being paranoid because of what had happened. The adoption lawyer who’d stolen her baby was dead. To save Nikki, Lars had been forced to kill him. Myron Webber wasn’t coming back. He wasn’t taking her baby or anyone else’s.

  Maybe his was the crying she heard—as he burned in hell. Maybe he was haunting her. What he’d done to her had certainly been haunting her. Maybe that was all it was: flashbacks and nightmares from what had happened.

  Because why would someone break in only to open a window? It made no sense.

  It made more sense that she had left it open, that she hadn’t locked it.

  But that wasn’t the case. Was it?

  Had she kept everything she’d thought she was losing only to lose her mind instead?

  * * *

  He must have lost his damn mind. That was the only reason Dane Sutton had for deciding not to quit the Payne Protection Agency. He’d been all set on turning in his resignation to Cooper Payne, his boss and a fellow former Marine. But Cooper had persuaded him to give the job a chance.

  Yet it wasn’t the job Dane didn’t like: it was everything else that encompassed the Payne Protection Agency. Family. Romance. Love.

  He had vowed long ago to have nothing to do with any of those things. He’d tried family once, although it hadn’t been his choice. Abandoned as an infant by a teenage mom who left him in a school bathroom, he’d been adopted by an older couple. But like his young mother, they had also realized they weren’t really interested in being parents. So because he’d had this example, Dane had no idea what a family was actually supposed to be.

  He hadn’t liked wh
at he’d witnessed with the Paynes. They interfered in each other’s lives and even in the lives of the people who worked for them. They tried to bring everyone into this family of theirs. He suspected it was probably more like a cult, though. He shuddered just thinking of it. It wasn’t safe for him to stay.

  But something had compelled him to stick around River City, Michigan, and the Payne Protection Agency.

  Friendship.

  That, he was very familiar and comfortable with. The guys from his unit were his best friends. Now his boss and coworkers. He hadn’t been able to leave them behind during a mission. And he couldn’t leave them now.

  But he would just have to be very, very careful he didn’t wind up like Lars, the blond giant of a man who was sitting beside him in a Payne Protection Agency vehicle, holding a ring over the console. Dane was behind the wheel of the black SUV.

  “So tell me—what do you think?” the guy eagerly asked him, his pale blue eyes bright with something almost like giddiness.

  Dane sighed. “You know I love you, man, but only as a friend. I gotta turn you down.”

  Lars swung his free hand into Dane’s shoulder. The tap probably would have knocked a smaller man through the driver’s door, but Dane was nearly as big as his friend. “I’m damn well not proposing to you.”

  “Phewww,” Dane said. “You made me nervous. I thought I was going to have to go through that whole ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ speech.”

  Lars chuckled. “Yeah, you’ve given that speech a few times.”

  “So have you,” Dane reminded him.

  Lars hadn’t been any more eager for romance or love than Dane was. In fact, with his sister missing, falling in love had been the last thing on Lars’s mind.

  Until he started at Payne Protection.

  The security agency might guard people’s lives but they were hell on hearts.

  Lars glanced down at the ring he held out, and for a second the brightness of his eyes dimmed. “Do you think she’ll give me that speech?”