Rancher's High-Stakes Rescue

by Beth Cornelison

  The tears she’d held at bay, suppressed with her anger, sprang to her eyes. “Forgiven.”

  He took a deep shuddering breath and smiled, as if she’d lifted the weight of the world from him.

  The thrashing of her heart stilled, and her breath stuck in her lungs. Hope beat fragile wings inside her. But then his eyes darkened, and his expression grew so pained, it frightened her. “There’s something else. The most important reason I came here.”

  Chapter 18

  “Oh?” Kate rasped, and Josh hated the apprehension in her eyes. A look that spoke of how much he’d wounded her, how she’d been betrayed in the past, how fragile her heart was. His gut clenched. He had to get this right. He couldn’t stand to let her be hurt any more than she already had. If he messed things up now...

  He gritted his back teeth and shoved the negativity down. Even if he left with nothing in return, he would give her his heart and soul. No strings. No reservations.

  “When you asked if I loved you—” He paused to swallow hard, and he heard her breath hitch. “I was afraid of how I felt, Kate. There it was again. Fear. And I didn’t like it. Not one bit. The sense of helplessness and vulnerability. The unknowns. I mean, what did I know about love? And...I was afraid of failing you. Letting you down. Hurting you. I was afraid of going somewhere in our relationship I’d never been before. Going there without a safety harness or net. No belay. So much for ‘you only live once,’ huh?” He twitched a weak grin.

  “Josh—”

  He held up a hand to stop her, then forged on. “But after you left, my fear changed. I was afraid of spending my life without you. I was afraid I’d lost the woman I’d been waiting for all my life. The woman I was meant to grow old with.”

  He moved off the couch to kneel in front of her. “Kate, I came here because you deserved to hear the truth. In person. From the depths of my heart.” Her eyes grew damp, and he had to blink when his own vision blurred. “Kate Carrington, I love your courage and your compassion, your wit and your determination. I love that you’re not a morning person and the way your eyes get that spark of fire when you kiss. I want to spend the next fifty or sixty years learning all your quirks and secrets and virtues. So while I do like you and care about you, as I so ineptly put it before, I can honestly say, with everything I am, I love you.”

  She sucked in a sharp breath and let a tear roll onto her cheek.

  He wiped it away with his thumb. “I know my future, the future of the Double M, is pretty murky right now. There’s no telling what will happen in the coming months. But if you’re willing to face the risks with me, I know I can survive anything with you beside me.” He swallowed hard and pulled a small diamond solitaire ring from his back pocket. “So what do you say, Kate? Do you want to be a rancher’s wife?”

  She laughed and wrapped her arms around his neck. “I do. So long as that rancher is you.”

  Epilogue

  Three months later

  “Are you scared?”

  “Terrified.” Kate sat next to Josh on the end of the bed she’d been sharing with him for the last few weeks. Thanks to technology, she was able to do ninety-five percent of her PR job from the ranch, traveling to Dallas every few weeks for in-person business. Now she gave her fiancé a nod. “And you?”

  “I’d be lying if I said no.” He laced his fingers with hers and lifted her hand to his lips. “But it’s what I want, and we can do this together. Remember that.”

  She nodded again, buoyed by his reassurances. “Well, then...a December wedding it is.”

  “You only live once,” he replied with a lopsided grin.

  They rose as one and stepped over to the wall calendar, where they flipped to December.

  “Which weekend? I told Piper I’d watch Connor the first weekend so she and Brady could go into Denver to drive Roy home from the rehab clinic.”

  Josh cupped a hand against her cheek. “The next two weeks will be busy with sorting the herd and taking them to the sales auction. That leaves the week after Christmas.”

  She gave a wry chuckle. “I’m planning my wedding around the ranch schedule.”

  He winced. “I’m sorry.”

  Kate dragged him close for a kiss and murmured, “Don’t be. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  * * *

  Michael checked the hallway and, seeing it was clear, closed his office door and took out his cell phone. When his call was answered, he said, “Hi, it’s Michael McCall. I’ve reconsidered. I don’t know where I’ll find the money, but...I’m desperate.”

  He listened for a moment, shaking his head. “No. That won’t be necessary.” Then, “I’ll send the first payment right now. Can I wire you the money? No, not a check or draft. I don’t want my wife to know.” He sighed wearily. Defeated. “Do you remember what I said about the terms? How I want this handled?”

  He listened a moment. Then said, “I’m not sure. I’ll make up a reason. Something plausible.” His hand tightened on the phone. “No! This is a deal breaker. No one can know about this. Don’t trust anyone until this is over. Do I have your word? If you say anything to anyone, I’ll rip up our agreement.” He closed his eyes and nodded, satisfied with the answer he received, even if the whole arrangement made him ill. “All right then. I’ll be in touch again when everything is set.”

  He thumbed the disconnect on his phone and tossed the device on his desk. He hated that the situation had come to this. He hated hiding things from his family, being forced to make the hard choices, because he’d run out of options. His back was to the wall. Time was quickly running out. This was a matter of survival. He would save his ranch...or die trying.

  * * *

  Look for Zane’s story,

  Rancher’s Covert Christmas

  the final installment of The McCall Adventure Ranch trilogy, coming in December 2018!

  And don’t miss Piper and Brady’s story,

  Rancher’s Deadly Reunion

  Available now wherever Harlequin Romantic Suspense books and ebooks are sold.

  Author’s Note

  If you’ve read my books in the past, you know that I include a cat or two somewhere in every story. Oftentimes, the cats belong to readers who have won the opportunity to have their furry friend immortalized in print. Sometimes I include kitties that are especially near and dear to my heart. In the McCall Adventure Ranch series, I introduce you to Zeke, a part–Maine coon, and Sadie, a short-haired black-and-white cat. I’ve been saving these two for just the right books, because they are just that special. You guessed it, Zeke and Sadie are my cats. They’re every bit as goofy, loving, naughty and curious as they are described in the books. Galloping races up and down the halls and fur-flying wrestling matches (all good fun) happen daily with these two. They bring us lots of joy. To honor them, a portion of my proceeds from the sales of the McCall Adventure Ranch series will be donated to help my local Humane Society for Cats to assist in their rescue efforts. Meow!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Killer Smile by Marilyn Pappano.

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  Killer Smile

  by Marilyn Pappano

  Chapter 1

  When Daniel Harper was a kid, he had decided on two career options for the future: he would become the President of the United States, and in his first term, with his great wisdom, foresight and people-pleasing skills, he would solve the country’s problems once and forevermore.

  Or he would become a doctor—not the medical kind; he had an aversion to sick people and preferred to avoid their spores when at all possible—and by the time he was thirty, he would discover a little known gene that, with slight manipulation, would cure all of humanity’s ills.

  Instead, he became a cop.

  In Cedar Creek, Oklahoma, with a population of twenty-five thousand—comprised of farmers, ranchers, cattle people and horse people; country folk and city folk; sports fans, foodies and good ol’ boys; stubborn men, stubborner women and pretty young things; cowboys, Indians, oil people and church people; winemakers, meth makers and troublemakers.

  And beset by the most diverse weather he’d ever experienced, everything from drought to flood to blistering heat and subzero freezes, windstorms, hailstorms, ice storms, tornados and, lately, earthquakes that made his home state of California look like a slacker.

  Life in Los Angeles hadn’t prepared him for this.

  A snort ahead of him drew his attention to his fellow detective, Ben Little Bear, standing on the first of the six broad steps that led into the Cedar Creek Police Department. “You gonna stand there and soak up a little more water? Isn’t stepping in the puddle enough for one day?”

  Daniel scowled at Ben, then at the water that had collected in the low spot in front of the steps from the downpour that didn’t appear to plan on stopping anytime soon. He knew the low spot was there. Knew it filled with water with the lightest sprinkle. Knew because he’d worked there five years, and because he’d stepped in it on the way out two hours ago. The water had finally drained from his shoes and his feet had stopped squelching with every step, and now...

  Still scowling, he climbed the first step, shook the excess water from his shoes and his trouser legs, pulled his raincoat closer and swore mildly. His father cussed like the proverbial sailor and had made him cringe more than a few times as an impressionable kid. Now, at thirty-one, he rarely said anything harsher than damn himself.

  This rain deserved more than a damn.

  Finished shaking, he trotted up the remaining steps and followed Ben inside the station. It had been a post office back in the day and was as stately a building as any he’d ever been inside. The floor was marble, and so were the panels that went four feet up the walls. Here in the lobby, the ceiling was fourteen feet high, with the original chandelier still in operation. Sound echoed out here, but as soon as he walked behind the tall counter and into the station proper, with its lower ceilings and ugly industrial rugs, the echoes faded.

  A row of brass hooks mounted on a gleaming oak plank hung on the wall just inside the doorway. He hung his soppy coat there and picked up the towel he’d left earlier, making half an attempt to dry his face and hair.

  “Dan’l, you had a visitor,” Cheryl called from her desk. She was the chief’s secretary, but she pretty much handled the entire office. Though taking messages and making notes on comings and goings wasn’t technically her job, what was the use of working for the police chief, she declared, if she didn’t get to poke her nose into everyone’s business?

  “Daniel,” he muttered under his breath.

  She looked over her glasses at him. “I thought you’d given up trying to correct me years ago.”

  He had. The best way to deal with annoying people, his dad had taught him, was to ignore them. Once they saw that their actions were no longer annoying, they stopped.

  The best way to deal with annoying people, his father had disagreed, was to knock the crap out of them every time they annoyed you. Eventually they learned to leave you alone.

  Both of his fathers were right. Ignoring people worked fine sometimes. Body-slamming them to the ground was sometimes the better option. But Cheryl was on their side, more or less, and Chief Douglas wouldn’t take kindly to Daniel body-slamming her.

  “Who was it?” he asked, hanging the towel back on its hook so it could dry.

  “She didn’t say.”

  Hmm. He knew an awful lot of shes, though most of them wouldn’t just drop in on him at work. “What did she want?”

  “She didn’t say.” Cheryl slurped the last of her coffee from a giant mug that proclaimed her Queen of the World, and then wheeled her chair off the mat behind her desk and across the floor to what she called the beverage center. It was only fifteen feet. She could have walked with less effort.

  “Was it about a case?”

  “She didn’t say.”

  He ground his teeth as he watched her fix her coffee. Wishing that someone else, even one of the inmates in the jail in the back, had talked to this visitor, he gritted out, “What did she look like?”

  “She didn’t—Oh. She was pretty if you like size twos who look like they just strolled in off the beach, and what man doesn’t? I’m pretty sure she was wearing tinted contacts because I don’t believe anyone has eyes that shade naturally. Oh, and she was wearing the cutest dress, sleeveless, scooped neck, with a fitted bodice and a drop waist with a little pleating that gave it really nice movement when she walked. And her shoes! OMG.”

  Bewilderment joined Daniel’s annoyance. All this talking, and had she actually said anything? He didn’t know what size two meant in women’s clothing. Small, he presumed. He would also presume the unnatural eye color was blue, green or some shade of purple. But scooped neck? Fitted bodice? Drop waist?

  “So, she was a small woman in a cute dress?”

  Cheryl scowled at him. “Isn’t that what I just said?”

  From his desk in the back, Ben snorted again. Daniel was glad he provided entertainment for the guy. That could be his new purpose in life. Or he could just go ahead and strangle Cheryl like he’d wanted to since fifteen minutes after meeting her. He would even write up the inventory of his own personal possessions, take his own fingerprints and lock himself in the holding cell. No jury who’d ever met Cheryl would find him guilty.

  “Next time someone comes in, get a name, would you?” he groused, heading past her desk to his own in the back.

  “I asked, but—”

  Everyone else in the room—three detectives, five uniformed officers preparing for shift change and two dispatchers in their alcove to the left—all chimed in together, “She didn’t say.”

  Sometimes he hated this place.

  No one in the department had a private office besides the chief and the assistant chief, who was out of town for training. The detectives had desks clustered in the rear of the large room and conducted interviews in the conference room off to the right. Normally, he was okay with that, but there were days when a person needed a little privacy and right now, as he kicked off his wet shoes and peeled away his dripping socks, was one of those times.

  “She makes LA look better every day,” Ben said from his desk a few feet away.

  “I thought you’d never been to LA.”

  “I haven’t, but I don’t need to see it to know it beats working with Cheryl.”

  Wringing first one sock, then the other, ov
er the trash can, Daniel scowled at him. “She likes you.”

  “No, she just has more fun with you.”

  Ben turned back to his computer, where he was making one of his infamous lists. He had one for everything, probably even sex, and reviewed them regularly. It was the way he worked. Daniel preferred keeping information in his head and staring into space while letting his subconscious brain piece it together. It was the way he worked.

  Though in his lifetime there had been no shortage of people pointing out that his way looked an awful lot like daydreaming. He didn’t care. He produced results. That was what mattered.

  Footsteps echoed in the lobby, but he didn’t turn to look at the newcomer. They had a desk sergeant for that—and, of course, Cheryl. Plus Morwenna, one of the dispatchers, was nearly as nosy as the secretary, just in a much more pleasant manner.

  Ben’s chair creaked as he swiveled to face Daniel. “Do you want to interview the suspect or the victim in the morning?”

  “Victim.” It was an easy choice. Ben was more comfortable with suspects, and he’d handled far more domestic assault cases. Daniel had too much experience with bullies and related far better to the victims. It was odd that empathy was one of his better traits as a detective when most people thought he came down on the lacking side of the emotional scale.

  “Deal. So...you don’t know any pretty size-two blondes with a fondness for black dresses with fitted bodices?”

  “What do you know about fitted bodices?” Then Daniel stopped typing mid-word, and he looked up at Ben. “Cheryl didn’t say the dress was black.”

  “That’s some good detecting there, son.” Ben nodded toward the front counter.