Texas Heartthrob

by Jean Brashear

  “Jean Brashear’s portrait of two wounded souls who find each other just when they most need someone is beautifully, gently drawn. Brashear’s smooth style and attention to detail make [this] story quietly captivating.”

  ~RTBookclub 4 ½ of 5 stars

  Discover the first book in New York Times bestselling contemporary Texas romance author Jean Brashear’s TEXAS HEROES: Lone Star Lovers series about three brothers, the first an emotional movie star romance where two unlikely lovers come together to heal both their hearts.

  Hollywood’s hottest heartthrob Liam Sullivan has escaped the paparazzi and celebrity gossips after a sensational tragedy, reexamining his high-flying lifestyle and his priorities. In disguise, traveling through the Smoky Mountains of North Carolina, he encounters a rail-thin, starving woman who has lost everything but the dilapidated cabin where she once lived with her grandmother in happier days. Raina Donovan is determined to make her stand there, but winter is coming, and Liam cannot desert her until he can make her safe, however much she tries to make him leave.

  Day by day, they draw closer, but Raina has secrets and so does Liam. Before they can trust enough to confide in each other, the world catches up with them. Can they overcome the stunning shock of their deceptions to find a way to be together, or will the price of their lies ruin any chance they might have for a future?

  Lone Star Lovers

  Texas Heartthrob

  Texas Healer

  Texas Protector

  Texas Deception

  Texas Lost

  Texas Wanderer

  Texas Bodyguard

  Texas Rescue

  Texas Heartthrob

  Texas Heroes: Lone Star Lovers Book 1

  (Texas Heroes 19)

  Jean Brashear

  Copyright © 2016 Jean Brashear

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  About Texas Heartthrob

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Excerpt from Texas Healer

  Books by Jean Brashear

  About the Author

  Connect With Jean

  Prologue

  Manhattan

  “Liam, is it true that you and Gisella had a secret wedding last weekend in Cancún?” the blond reporter from the Star shouted. The noise level rocketed as camera crews and microphones crowded the hotel ballroom at the press conference for Liam Sullivan’s latest film.

  Liam resisted a groan. He’d known that the snapshot of him with the supermodel would be fresh meat for the tabloids. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, Heather, but I just met the woman a week ago when we attended the same preview party.” He winked. “I’m sure a famous beauty like her can do better than some ole small-town Texas boy.”

  The assembled reporters hooted. The blonde named Heather batted her eyelashes at him. Fresh off an Oscar nomination and just named “Sexiest Man Alive” by People magazine, Liam Sullivan was the hottest star in Hollywood at the moment. Life was sweet. He was enjoying the heck out of it, but the man who’d been a skinny, brainy runt of the litter was only too aware of what life could be like on the flip side of good looks and fame. And if he forgot, his older brothers, Rafael, Alejandro and Dane, would gladly bring him back to earth.

  He missed them, missed his mother and father, his pesky younger sister, Jilly. Two more stops on this publicity tour for his new release, then he had six weeks off before his next film. He couldn’t wait to head home to Texas and hibernate for a while.

  As the director fielded questions, Liam listened with half an ear, scanning the crowd without really seeing. He was so tired. His ex-girlfriend Kelly’s middle-of-the-night call had kept him tossing in his bed. They hadn’t been an item in months, not since he’d finally realized that she didn’t want to kick her cocaine habit, that no matter what help he offered, she wasn’t ready to accept. It frustrated the hell out of him. The waste of it sickened him. He’d seen too many people in his business dragged down by the fast life. Kelly was well on her way to being another casualty, no matter how hard Liam had fought to save her.

  “Liam has no comment on that.”

  The tension in his publicist Annie Schaefer’s voice alerted Liam that he’d missed a question.

  That the room had fallen unnaturally silent.

  “So she’s just another disposable girlfriend?” jeered a voice from the back.

  “What?” Liam turned to Annie. “What’s he talking about?”

  “Get up and leave—now,” she whispered, hand over Liam’s microphone. “I’ll handle this.”

  Liam almost obeyed—he’d had plenty of experience with the landmines the press could plant—but something in the gathering buzz of the audience, something about the shock in Annie’s eyes, kept him in place. “Tell me what’s going on,” he demanded.

  A reporter spoke up first. “Her brother says it’s your fault, Liam. That Kelly Mason killed herself because you abandoned her when she told you she was pregnant. Not exactly what we’ve come to expect from All-American Liam Sullivan, is it?”

  Dead? Liam couldn’t speak. Kelly…pregnant? His mind went white. How could—Last night she’d cried on the phone but refused to tell him why. She’d begged him to come back, but she’d been high and hysterical and—

  He jerked the mike toward him. “When she called, she never mentioned—”

  The buzz leaped to a roar.

  “You mean she called you before she did it?”

  “What did you say to make her kill herself?”

  “You didn’t want the baby?”

  How could it be his? They hadn’t made love in—

  Annie grabbed the mike back. “This news comes as a terrible shock to all of us. Mr. Sullivan will have a statement later.” She flipped off the microphone, nudging him none too gently to his feet. “You know better than to hand them something like that. Let’s get out of here.”

  “But—” Liam looked out at the crowd as though somewhere in it lay the answers.

  “Forget them—” she snapped. “They’re piranhas, ready to feed.” Her tone gentled. “You’re rattled. I don’t blame you. I’ll phone some sources from the suite, see what I can find out.”

  He turned blind eyes to her. “She never said—” He glanced away. “I didn’t let her finish. I thought it was just the same old—”

  The crowd still clamored, shouting questions as he walked through the door in a daze.

  He’d hung up on Kelly in disgust only hours ago. Given up on her, at last.

  In so doing, had he driven her to give up on herself?

  Chapter One

  Great Smoky Mountains

  North Carolina

 
; Two weeks later, a man who looked very little like Liam Sullivan drove down the deserted road he’d taken off the Blue Ridge Parkway on his way south to Asheville. Brushing an unfamiliar, newly-dark mustache with one finger, hair shaggy and no longer blond, he contemplated the dense thickets of rhododendron, the towering beeches and maples bearing hints of coming scarlet and gold. The Appalachians were ancient compared with the mountains he knew out West, and time had been a pumice stone, wearing steep peaks down to round, blue-shadowed waves extending as far as he could see. Near at hand, endless green slopes on either side of the road would break for a bald knob of charcoal rock.

  Stunning, it was, but almost too rich for the eye. With a sudden ache, he longed for the starkness of the Davis Mountains of Texas, which were home.

  His parents and siblings had called him every day since Kelly’s death. Abuelita, the wise old healer who was as much his grandmother as if they shared genes, had even made one of her rare forays on the telephone, performing a long-distance diagnosis.

  “Cielito,” she’d said. Little sky, the pet name she’d given him as a child. She’d always said his sunny nature made her think of a cloudless sky, cielito sin nuves. “Come home. You should be with those who love you.” Ordering him, in no uncertain terms, to present himself with all haste for a limpia, or spiritual cleansing.

  His sky was no longer cloudless; he had blood on his hands that would never wash out. Thank God Kelly’s brother had been lying about her being pregnant, but that relief didn’t lessen Liam’s responsibility for her death. He carried the weight of it on his chest until he couldn’t sleep at night for the smothering press of it.

  He should have realized the last episode was different. He should have stopped her. Should have—

  All the reassurances others offered dissolved to nothing in the face of knowing that he was the last person who had spoken to Kelly, the one to whom she’d reached out while her demons dug their claws into her throat and choked the life out of her. He could hardly remember the sunny, energetic starlet whose joy had attracted him so on the set of his first big hit.

  Damn drugs. Try as he might, he could not understand how a person could know the damage they wreaked and still keep using them. He’d been there for Kelly, paid for rehab twice, would gladly have spent whatever necessary to fix her.

  But he couldn’t understand what it was that needed fixing, not really. Life threw things at you. You dealt with them. Sure, a beer now and then was nice, but—

  Too damn wholesome, Liam, a friend had leveled the charge once. You’ve never been tested in your entire charmed life.

  It was true. His half-brother Rafael had almost died in a Special Forces ambush and still bore scars and a limp. His other half-brother, Alejandro, was a hostage negotiator, had seen the darker side of life in his years in law enforcement. Even his photographer brother, Dane, had faced dangerous animals and treacherous mountain peaks.

  And here Liam was, with more money and women than any man should have, simply because of his looks. Dodging only reporters, not bullets. Disguising himself with dark-brown dye on hair long past its usual razor cut, he was reduced to driving down back roads, seeking some time to think without the constant questions, the screaming headlines.

  His brothers were the heroes. He just played them.

  Ladyville, the sign up ahead said. Gratefully, Liam turned from pondering the demise of the All-American Boy to wondering if this burg would have a café where he could take a leak and grab a bite to eat. His jeans were loose on his waist, the casualty of too many sleepless nights and no appetite.

  He hadn’t even been able to attend the funeral to say goodbye to Kelly for fear of turning it into a circus. Her grieving family had deserved better.

  Suddenly, Liam longed for his own family, wanted a taste of his mother’s biscuits badly enough to whip the car around and catch the nearest plane to Texas. Wanted to forget the time alone he’d thought he needed and instead sit in her sunny kitchen and let her fuss over him, listen to his kid sister Jilly’s early-morning grumbles. Walk out to the barn and hook a boot heel over a fence while comparing notes on the livestock with his dad.

  But home was a good eighteen hundred miles away yet, and he had to buy gas and make a pit stop. This one-horse town was no bigger than tiny La Paloma, where Abuelita and Rafael lived, and there’d be nowhere to spend the night. Best to gas up and go, then get serious about heading straight to Texas in the morning.

  That decided, he swerved into the parking lot of the only store in Ladyville and pulled up to the lone pump.

  Raina Donovan placed her purchases on the scarred wooden counter and waited for the ancient, beak-nosed proprietor, Noah Crabill, to turn around. She opened her cheap billfold with shaking fingers and counted the meager funds inside. Debated if she should spend the money on the gas required to drive to a bigger town with discount stores.

  But she couldn’t leave, not yet. Couldn’t go back into the world, not this soon. Deep in her bones, she knew that making a stand here was her last chance. Gran’s ramshackle cabin was in no condition for winter, but with enough hard work, Raina could render it so, and thereby prove that she was worthy of surviving.

  She stood on the edge of a crumbling cliff, and she would hang on—

  Or she would fall. For the last time.

  Raina fingered the sturdy leather gloves she’d chosen over the meat her body needed for strength. Gran’s old shotgun and her .22 rifle stood in a corner of the cabin; until Raina could force herself to use them, the remaining home-canned goods in the root cellar would have to suffice, rationed with the corn, beans and other staples on the counter.

  “Excuse me?” she said.

  Noah didn’t respond. Maybe he’d grown hard of hearing in the long years since she’d been back.

  “Excuse me?” A little louder. “Noah?”

  No sign he’d heard her. She started to move down to the end where he stood, when the screen door opened with a squeak.

  Noah swiveled toward the sound and, despite being barely six feet away from her, never looked at her once. Instead, he fixed his gaze on the newcomer. “Can I help you with something?”

  The stranger, a tall, too-handsome man with unkempt dark hair and a mustache, hesitated, nodding at her. “She was here first.”

  “She can wait,” Noah said.

  The stranger frowned. “Ladies first is how I was raised.”

  “She ain’t no lady.”

  The stranger cast her a questioning glance.

  Raina ducked her head, shame a burn in her throat. “It’s all right. I don’t mind.”

  “I do,” the stranger replied.

  Noah shook his head. “Left a good woman to die alone. Too fancy for the likes of us,” he said, in that graveled voice he’d had since she could remember. “Do her good to be taken down a notch.”

  Raina’s whole body quivered with the need to hide, to seek sweet oblivion for a little while, just for—

  No. This was where it all stopped. She touched the interrupted scar on her left wrist as if it were a magic totem. Held on tight.

  Life. She’d chosen life.

  One tanned arm reached past her, lifting her burdens. “Then I’ll pay for my gas and these,” the stranger said.

  “No—” she managed.

  “That’s not your—” Noah began.

  The stranger’s jaw tightened. “I already pumped my gas. You take the money for it, you take the money for my groceries.” His stance dared Noah to argue.

  Raina couldn’t move. “I can’t let you—”

  A wink from him rendered her mute from shock. In the midst of tension so thick she could sink her fingers into it, a dimple appeared in his cheek.

  Winked.

  Raina whirled away, shame riding hard alongside fury. This was a game to him? She was almost to the door, blindly searching for—

  “Ma’am? Wait a minute, ma’am—”

  At that moment, Raina thought she might burst into laughter. Not becau
se any of this was funny, but because it was the ultimate indignity that he would speak to her in tones of respect like some dowager. Ma’am. She knew she looked a thousand years old. Now she felt them.

  Stop. Just…stop.

  She needed those items on the counter. Gran’s cabin was falling down around her ears. She’d walked down the mountain because her ancient pickup was nearly out of gas. She had no job, no friends, no home. She’d spent too much of the morning trying to remember which plants Gran had once taught her were edible and which would kill. In her former life as Ben Chambers’s trophy wife, she’d had no use for hunting and foraging skills.

  For a moment, the urge to lie down and give up was almost more than she could resist.

  “Ma’am?” came a voice, gentle now. “Are you all right?”

  The tears rose then; with clenched jaw, she willed them back. Straightened her spine and tried to remember the elegant lady she’d once thought to be.

  “Fine,” she managed, but couldn’t yet turn around.

  His hand gripped her upper arm.

  Raina flinched as though he’d struck her.

  He dropped his hand immediately. “Where’s your car? I’ll carry these for you.”

  At the edge of her vision, she saw two paper sacks held in one muscled arm. Her reach was tentative; a quick move might make him snatch them away. “How much?” she murmured, stilling her trembling fingers.

  He didn’t answer, and finally, she had to look up. Kind, worried green eyes met hers. “How ’bout if you have supper with me, and we’ll call it even.” He grinned so easily, as if nothing serious had happened here. As though she wouldn’t have a worse encounter with Noah the next time, thanks to his meddling.

  Her fingers tightened on a worn brown bag. “How much?”

  His smile faded. “Forget it. It was nothing.”

  Nothing? The amount was a huge chunk of her sparse funds. She gazed out at the luxury SUV he was driving, and knew he hadn’t lied. To him, the money was probably no big deal at all. Once it would have been the same for her.