Wrangling the Rancher
Page 24
Cole met Taylor’s eyes before she slid off his lap onto the chair next to him. Max sidled closer, acting as if she’d never left. Taylor bent down and hefted the cat onto her lap. He butted his head against her chin and started purring as Jancey headed for the coffeepot, Chucky at her heels. “I’m pouring. Is everyone in?”
“Yes. I think we’re all in,” Cole said.
Jancey glanced over her shoulder. “And the ranch?”
Cole leaned back in his chair, feeling more relaxed and happy than he’d felt in weeks. “I think we’ll keep the ranch.” And before she could say anything else, he took Taylor’s hand in his and said simply, “Thank you.”
EPILOGUE
“YOU GUYS TOOK good care of this place.” Karl gave an approving nod as he stopped at the neatly organized and much-reduced boneyard.
“Least I could do,” Cole said.
They continued on to the barn, where Cole showed Karl how he’d upgraded the old harness room for seed storage, making it as vermin-proof as possible, and then on to the bunkhouse, which he and Taylor had made cozy for those times that she wanted to visit her grandfather.
“I like this,” Karl said, rocking back on his heels as his gaze swept over the place. “Elise can stay here, too, when she comes to visit with that beau of hers.”
After his sister had come to grips with her grief and started putting her life back on track, she’d released Karl from his promise to live nearby and had even agreed to move onto the farm if she needed family to be close again. “Wish she’d agreed to that in the first place,” Karl muttered, then catching sight of Taylor coming out of the house, he added, “or maybe not.”
“I’m going with maybe not,” Cole answered.
Had Karl not moved, then Cole wouldn’t have met Taylor and they wouldn’t be starting their new lives on the Bryan Ranch. His Bryan Ranch, with no ties to Miranda’s hoity-toity operation. He and Taylor had torn down the sign reading Bryan Working Ranch and replaced it with one that showed the brand—the Quarter Circle Slash B—which he owned and Miranda had no right to.
She was still his neighbor, but all the legal t’s were crossed and i’s dotted. She was out of his life. And the improvements made to his ranch were all his.
Damn but he loved a happy ending.
“Are you sure you want to keep farming the place?” Karl asked as Taylor approached. “Lots of miles between the ranch and here.”
“Taylor and I have a task calendar worked out. We’d like to try, at least for this year.” He held out his hand as Taylor approached, and she slid her fingers into his.
“Talking calendars?” she asked.
Karl smiled at her. “Your favorite topic.”
She laughed. “I made you a copy, so you’ll know where we are at all times and what we’re doing—at least for farm season.”
Having made the leap to rural life, Taylor had immersed herself. She did a lot of tractor work during the day, and three days a week, she did books for a farm accounting firm in anticipation of eventually hanging out her own shingle.
“The sandwiches are ready,” Jancey called from the porch. “Chucky didn’t get them this time.”
“Be right there, sweetheart.” Karl headed off across the driveway, while Cole and Taylor followed at a slower pace.
“I think this is all going to work out,” he said, turning to face her. Taylor lifted her eyebrows and smiled. Then she reached up, took his face in her hands and answered him in the best way possible.
“Yes, babe. It’s totally going to work.”
* * * * *
Be sure to check out the other books in the
BRODYS OF LIGHTNING CREEK
miniseries by Jeannie Watt!
TO TEMPT A COWGIRL
TO KISS A COWGIRL
TO COURT A COWGIRL
MOLLY’S MR. WRONG
All available now from
Harlequin Superromance.
And look for the next
BRODYS OF LIGHTNING CREEK
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Keep reading for an excerpt from MONTANA UNBRANDED by Nadia Nichols.
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Montana Unbranded
by Nadia Nichols
PROLOGUE
EVER SINCE THE SHOOTING, his nights had been fractured with brief moments of consciousness, coming up out of the darkness to remember things he’d rather forget. The awful struggle to breathe. Marconi’s face bending over him. Marconi’s voice, taunting him. The taste of copper in his mouth and the smell of rotting garbage. The cold pelt of rain washing his blood into the city gutter. Rico finding him, the sound of sirens. Darkness and pain... How long that lasted, he didn’t know, but it felt like forever before the tormented struggle between life and death finally became a deep, healing sleep.
The ringing of the telephone brought him awake with an upward lunge, a movement that exploded in pain as his hand stabbed beneath his pillow for a weapon that wasn’t there. The room was dim. Shades drawn. The illuminated hands on the bedside clock read nine a.m. He’d been sleeping for twelve straight hours. Not possible, not in a hospital. He reached for the phone, his voice hoarse from sleep. “Ferguson.”
“Hey, it’s Rico, hope I didn’t wake you. I figured you’d have been up for hours, flirting with the nurses. Thought you’d want to know, the date’s been set for the court hearing. June 23. Thought you’d also want to know, Cap said you should get out of town until the hearing. Thinks it’d be safer. So do I. We all do.”
He moved his head on the pillow, back and forth, as if Rico were in the room. “I’m not running from those bastards.”
“I wouldn’t, either—I’d fly. A Boeing 747’d get you a whole lot farther a whole lot faster.”
“They won’t try anything now.”
“No? You dusted three of Marconi’s henchmen in that shoot-out, and it’s your testimony that’s going to put him away for life. You’re messing with the Providence family here, Joe. This is serious stuff.”
“Tell me about it. I’m the one lying here looking like a piece of Swiss cheese.” The door swung inward. A nurse entered briskly, opened the shades and gave him a brief, professional smile as she lifted the plate cover on his breakfast tray. He hadn’t heard breakfast being delivered. Slept right through it. Jesus, Marconi himself could’ve crept in here and smothered him with a pillow, except f
or the two badges stationed outside his door.
The nurse frowned at the untouched food before replacing the plate cover.
“What about that pretty red-haired sister of yours?” Rico pressed. “Stay with her.”
The nurse was taking his vital signs, jotting them on the clipboard that hung at the foot of the bed. He waited until she left before responding. “Molly’s busy planning her wedding. She doesn’t need her big brother hanging out.”
“Molly won’t have a big brother and your son won’t have a father if you don’t wise up.”
“Find Marconi.”
“We will. Meantime, go visit your sister.”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Time’s up. Dead men don’t make good witnesses. And, Joe? I mean it. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going, not even your mother. Cap’s hand-delivering a new ID for you this morning. He’s making the flight reservations and providing transportation to the airport.”
Rico hung up. The nurse had returned with a syringe in her hand and was preparing to draw blood, something nurses did 24/7 and seemed to enjoy. She put a rubber tourniquet on his arm, swabbed briskly with an alcohol-drenched cotton ball, pinched him with the needle. Blood flowed into the tube, as if he hadn’t lost enough already.
“Rumor has it I’m being discharged today,” he said.
She tucked the syringe and vial of blood into a little tray. “Not if you don’t eat your breakfast,” she said with all the warmth of the military police, though she softened her words with a smile before departing the room. He lifted the plate cover to study the contents. Lowered it. Looked around the drab room he’d come to hate over the past two weeks. Rain streaked the window, blurring his view. It hadn’t stopped raining since the night he was shot. He was sick of the rain. Sick of lying in a hospital bed and counting the holes in the ceiling tiles. Sick of this city.
Maybe Rico was right. A few weeks in Montana with his baby sister might not be such a bad idea. She was always asking him to visit, and he’d always wanted to see just how much wild was left in the West.
Copyright © 2017 by Penny R. Gray
ISBN-13: 9781488017216
Wrangling the Rancher
Copyright © 2017 by Jeannie Steinman
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