Cowboy Defender (Cowboys 0f Holiday Ranch Book 9)

by Carla Cassidy

  He nodded as huge gulping sobs overtook him. “If I hadn’t been drunk so much of the time I might have known what she was up to. Someplace in the back of your mind you have to be blaming me, too.”

  “Hank, please pull yourself together,” she replied. “I don’t blame you for anything that woman did. She was sneaky and none of us thought it could be her behind the attacks. Even if you’d been stone sober, I don’t think you would have known anything.”

  He swiped at his wet cheeks and drew in several deep, steadying breaths. He stared at her for a long moment and then sighed. “I’m glad about you and Clay. I’m glad that you found a man worthy of your love. I want you to be happy always, Miranda.”

  “I know that, Hank. And I wish you’d find some happiness for yourself.”

  He stared at her once again with his tortured eyes. “I’m not just a drunk. I’m an alcoholic and I came to tell you and the kids goodbye.”

  “Goodbye?” She looked at him in alarm.

  “I’m driving down to Texas. There’s a place there that has agreed to take me into their ninety-day program. I need to do this for the kids.”

  She smiled at him. “You need to do it for yourself. I’m so proud of you for doing this.”

  “Yeah, I feel pretty good about it.” He stood. “I’m all packed up and ready to hit the road. I just needed to stop by here and let you know what I was doing.”

  She walked him to the door. “Good luck on this new venture and you know we’ll all support you here.” He looked so vulnerable. She drew him into a hug. “Be well, Hank.”

  She released him and he smiled, the first real smile she’d seen from him in a very long time. “I’m going to be well.”

  Together they walked out the front door where Hank hugged the kids and told them how much he loved them but that he needed to go away for a little while.

  He shook Clay’s hand once again and then got into his truck and pulled away from the curb. When he was gone, Clay walked over to her and threw his arm around her shoulders. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “He’s going to a rehab in Texas.”

  “That’s good. You know I love your children, but they need their father involved in their lives,” he said.

  “Speaking of...aren’t you supposed to meet your mother for lunch?”

  He looked at his watch and gasped. “The morning got away from me.”

  “Go get cleaned up and get out of here,” she said.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come with me?”

  She shook her head. “There will be time for me and the kids to enjoy your mother’s company eventually. But for right now, I think it’s important you have more quality alone time with her.”

  In the last two weeks he’d met with Violet twice, once sharing breakfast at the café and the second time eating lunch together.

  He now pulled Miranda into his arms. “Have I told you today that I love you?” He smiled down at her.

  “You might have mentioned it, but it never hurts to say it again,” she replied.

  He reached up and framed her face with the palms of his hands. “I love you, Miranda Silver, and I can’t wait to change your name to Miranda Madison. Tell me you’re going to marry me and make an honest man out of me.”

  “I’m going to marry you and make an honest man out of you,” she said with a laugh.

  “Are you guys going to get married?” Jenny’s voice turned them around.

  “Are you?” Henry asked with excitement lighting his eyes.

  “Yes, we are,” Clay said. “And after we get married we’re going to talk to your mom about getting you a baby brother or a baby sister.”

  As the kids cheered and danced around them, Miranda knew her heart couldn’t get any fuller. Her children’s excited laughter, coupled with the intense love shining from Clay’s eyes, made her feel as if she were the luckiest woman in the entire world.

  If Clay Madison was Romeo, then she was just glad that out of all the women in Bitterroot, she was his Juliet. When she looked into his beautiful blue eyes, she saw her future of love and laughter. She saw her future with him filled with tenderness and passion. Finally she saw her dreams of the kind of family she’d always wanted coming true.

  When he leaned down and took her mouth with his in a sweet, tender kiss she knew she was going to love this cowboy for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  Don’t forget previous titles in the

  Cowboys of Holiday Ranch series:

  Guardian Cowboy

  Sheltered by the Cowboy

  Killer Cowboy

  Operation Cowboy Daddy

  Cowboy at Arms

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  Special Ops Cowboy

  by Addison Fox

  Chapter 1

  Her mother had always said gossip was the devil’s work. That the idle prattle of small towns had no place in their lives. Of course, Reese Grantham thought reflectively, her mother had offered up those pearls of wisdom before her father had turned into the devil incarnate, doing far worse than some dismissive chatter over produce bins at the market.

  Whatever disaster Serena Grantham had hoped to avert by diligently avoiding discussion of the misfortunes of others throughout her life had all been for naught.

  That fact became abundantly clear to Reese two months earlier, when Russ Grantham was transported to the morgue due to a self-inflicted gunshot to the head. Officers from the precinct he’d served for thirty years had solemnly carried out the transfer. And it was only that self-inflicted gunshot that had kept those same officers from hauling him into the police station on murder charges stemming from Russ’s serial rampage killing drug dealers.

  Some said Russ had snapped over the loss of his own son to drugs years before. Others whispered that it was bad blood, finally letting loose, hidden away all these years behind the noble facade of police captain. Still others—the ones who whispered in solemn tones—said it was a public service. Their small Texas border town, Midnight Pass, had been overrun by the drug trade and it was high time someone did something about it. So really, Reese acknowledged to herself as Tabasco Burns set down a beer and a whiskey chaser in front of her, what was a little gossip compared to all that?

  “You sure you want this? I can still fix you a white wine spritzer like you usually order. Won’t charg
e you for this.” Tabasco waved a hand over the beer and whiskey, like a magician who could make it all go away.

  Reese thought longingly of chardonnay but shook her head. She needed to forget and a watered-down glass of wine wasn’t going to get her where she needed to go. It was the very reason she’d come to The Border Line for the evening. “I’m good, but thanks.”

  Tabasco looked about to argue but only nodded instead, his grizzled features going soft as he stared at her across the scarred bar. “I am glad to see you. It’s been too long.”

  She nodded and reached for the beer, unable to acknowledge him with anything more for fear the lump in her throat would turn too swiftly to tears.

  Tabasco took a few more beats to look at her before he moved on. He knew his customers well and had a keen sense for when they needed an open ear or a blind eye.

  With the same determination that had her calling a car and heading to The Border Line bar on a hot summer Tuesday, Reese took a sip of her beer. No time like the present. She’d numb the pain while facing the gossip and maybe give half the damn town something to talk about other than her father’s crimes and subsequent suicide.

  She was done with being the perfect daughter in a family that seemed functionally unable to be halfway normal. Or what she had left of one.

  Even if that meant she now had a life she’d worked hard for, a job that she loved teaching high school English and a small house on the opposite end of town from her parents, decorated to her exact specifications and bearing the stamps of her own self-sufficiency. A lawn mown each week by her own hand. Address stamps that had no one’s name on them but hers. And a Christmas tree in her garage she’d put up the past two seasons all on her own.

  Who knew it could feel so damn good to pay a mortgage each month?

  And it did feel good. She wasn’t a woman who drowned her sorrows—she’d always found the mental fortitude to deal with what life tossed her way, reading, thinking of her students and their future, or finding new interests to explore—but for some reason the little whisper that tantalized her earlier that day, suggesting a night away from her cares was in order, had taken root.

  With that thought in mind, she reached for her drinks. Although she preferred wine, the beer went down smooth enough, a cool respite from the heat outside and the perpetually ashy, bitter taste that had coated her tongue for the better part of two months. She’d nearly convinced herself the whiskey would be as good, only to shoot the glass and nearly fall off her barstool in a choking fit.

  “Hey there.” A large hand covered her back while another steadied her arm. She jumped at the contact, even as a line of fire coated her throat, burning away anything that had been there.

  Wide warm circles smoothed over her back and Reese accepted the gentle touch as one last racking cough shook her shoulders. The worst behind her, she lifted her gaze off the scarred wood and straight into the deep green eyes of Hoyt Reynolds.

  Compelling, mysterious eyes, she thought, as their edges crinkled with a gentle smile. “You okay?”

  “Sure.” Her voice was still strained from the coughing. “Wrong pipe.”

  Hoyt’s gaze shifted to the empty shot glass. “Wrong drink, I’d say.”

  Right drink, wrong drinker, her conscious taunted, but she kept it to herself, pushing bravado into her tone as her voice grew stronger. “It’s what I wanted. And I think I’ll have another.”

  The smile faded, replaced with something she didn’t want to think about.

  Pity.

  She’d seen the same expression on the town’s faces more than once in her life and she refused to get comfortable with it. This was her battle to fight and her long walk to take. She would get through this.

  And still, something inside of her persisted. If she could only understand the reasons for her father’s choices maybe she could push aside the awful well of sadness and anger and fury that came from the fact that Russ Grantham had thought it was acceptable to torture and kill others. Maybe she could push past the frustration that once again, her life had been thrown into chaos by the choices of her family and somehow, see her way past the wreckage.

  Only she hadn’t seen past anything. Not for one single minute in all the minutes that had come since the day her father kidnapped Annabelle Granger, a fellow police officer, for getting too close to the truth. The fact that he’d ultimately done the right thing and let Belle go hadn’t mattered.

  Nor had the gun he’d placed to his head.

  In the blink of an eye, Reese was right back to those days in high school when all the effort in the world to do the right thing and get good grades and act perfect still couldn’t make up for her older brother’s drug addiction. When the sound of her mother’s crying could be heard late at night, muffled softly from the living room in their small ranch house at the edge of town. When her father’s stiff back and broad shoulders set beneath a uniform that bore captain’s bars still couldn’t keep Jamie Grantham out of trouble.

  “You sure about that?” Hoyt asked, effectively cutting into her memories far better than her first shot.

  “I am.”

  Hoyt let out a long sigh before taking the empty seat next to her. “Then I can’t let you do it alone.”

  “I don’t—” She broke off as Hoyt waved down Tabasco, circling his fingers in the signal for another round.

  Undeterred by her protest and big enough that she knew he’d be immovable once he sat down, Reese took the opportunity to look at him instead. She knew Hoyt Reynolds—they’d grown up in the same town—but she’d never spent much time with him beyond an occasional night out with mutual friends or enough to say hi at town functions. He was a loner by nature and had a grumpy, affectionately surly personality that had become somewhat legendary in the Pass.

  Even without her personal connection—her father’s last potential victim, Belle Granger, was engaged to Hoyt’s brother, Tate—she’d have known Hoyt anywhere.

  Everyone knew the Reynolds boys. The trio—along with their sister, Arden—ran Reynolds Station, one of the largest working beef ranches in the state. They’d run free as young men, but all had quickly settled down after their father’s poor business practices had come to light about a decade before. Hoyt had been away in the service—marines, she thought—but had eventually come back, joining his family in the work of restoring the Reynolds name.

  In the time since, the four of them had worked diligently to reclaim their role in the beef industry, all while carving a new path into the twenty-first century. They used sustainable practices, methods that were as humane as possible and focused on quality over quantity. She’d even taken a few of her high school classes to the ranch on field trips, pleased with the opportunity to both show off hardworking members of their town and help her students understand there were many paths available to them for their life’s work.

  She’d heard more than one teenage girl sigh on those tours over the cowboys who worked the land, but few had garnered as many sighs as the stoic, grim-faced man who blended the best of bad boy with cowboy.

  Which made the gentle eyes and insistence on keeping her company that much more surprising.

  Hoyt didn’t do gentle. Or kind. Or congenial. He wasn’t nasty, per se. He was just aloof. Separate.

  Alone.

  Hoyt Reynolds kept to himself. He wasn’t a gossip and he wasn’t prone to nosing into anyone’s business.

  Which, Reese figured, probably made him the perfect companion for her evening’s adventure.

  * * *

  Hoyt Reynolds ignored the small licks of attraction that sizzled through his nerve endings, willing himself to focus on the bigger picture. Reese Grantham might be a gorgeous companion over a few drinks, but she was clearly in pain and it didn’t take a genius to figure out that the way she was managing it wasn’t the brightest idea.

  Russ Grantham had surprised them all when hi
s sins came to light this past spring. Hoyt’s future sister-in-law had almost paid the biggest price, but something of the good man they’d all believed Russ to be must have finally shown through. Russ had let Belle go, taking his own life, and the secrets he’d buried deep along with him.

  Hoyt didn’t spent much time in town, but he’d seen Reese a few times, once at the gas station filling up her car and another over produce at the market. She’d been too many bays over at the gas station for him to say anything, but he hadn’t missed the vacant look in her eyes or the emptiness that seemed to hover around her. A fact that was reinforced when he’d attempted conversation over the oranges.

  She’d been polite and pleasant, but the wariness in her eyes was hard to miss. Whether it was from personal grief or their connection over Belle, he wasn’t sure, but she’d hightailed it out of there with her cart as soon as she could politely flee.

  Which brought them here. The drink she’d already had seemed to suppress the flight instinct, but there was a determination in her hazel gaze that was unmistakable.

  Which meant he’d keep an eye on her, prevent her from drinking too much and see that she got home safe and sound.

  Tabasco caught his eye as he set down two more beers along with two more whiskey chasers. Hoyt didn’t miss the clear warning in the man’s gaze, or the equally clear directive to watch out for her, and he simply nodded as Tabasco cleared Reese’s empties.

  He wasn’t a hound dog. He might find her attractive but he hadn’t done anything about it up to now; he sure as hell wasn’t going to take advantage of her at a weak moment. He wasn’t particularly successful at relationships—he preferred his own company and no one prying into his most personal thoughts—so he kept his dating out of the Pass and far away from local acquaintances.

  But damn, she looked good.

  Her hair fell in long dark waves down her back, the color a rich sable. She’d lost weight and was edging toward too skinny, but it didn’t diminish the round swells of her breasts beneath a sleeveless tank or the lush curve of her hips beneath her jeans. Although she was seated, he knew the long, long legs that currently ended in sexy flip-flops that bared purple-painted toenails were a spectacular sight, whether she wore one of her conservative dresses for teaching or a pair of shorts for a town picnic.