by Nicole Helm
He reminds her of a past she’s spent a long time trying to forget...
Jen Delaney kept her romance with Tyler Carson secret—along with her broken heart after he left Bent. Now the army ranger is back and convinced a madman is targeting Jen to get to him. When the stubborn woman doesn’t heed his warnings, Ty is forced to take extreme measures. But nothing he does seems to deter their dangerous stalker, and time is running out...
“I need you to be careful.” He was so solemn, so serious.
Her throat constricted and her heart beat so hard she was sure her whole body vibrated from the violence of it.
His grip on her chin softened, his fingertip moving along the line of her jaw. She wanted to melt into a puddle, but she wasn’t seventeen anymore, and with that frisson of delight she was reminded she hated Ty Carson.
She slapped his hand away, raising her chin at him, trying for regal instead of panicked. “Don’t manhandle me.”
He only raised an eyebrow.
“I don’t know what you want from me,” she said, with more feeling than she should have shown him.
“I want you to be aware. Take precautions. Keep yourself safe and protected.” He moved out of the way of the door and her exit. “It’s that simple.”
Simple? Sure. As if anything to do with Ty Carson was simple.
WYOMING COWBOY RANGER
Nicole Helm
Nicole Helm grew up with her nose in a book and the dream of one day becoming a writer. Luckily, after a few failed career choices, she gets to follow that dream—writing down-to-earth contemporary romance and romantic suspense. From farmers to cowboys, Midwest to the West, Nicole writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons and dreams of someday owning a barn.
Books by Nicole Helm
Harlequin Intrigue
Carsons & Delaneys: Battle Tested
Wyoming Cowboy Marine
Wyoming Cowboy Sniper
Wyoming Cowboy Ranger
Carsons & Delaneys
Wyoming Cowboy Justice
Wyoming Cowboy Protection
Wyoming Christmas Ransom
Stone Cold Texas Ranger
Stone Cold Undercover Agent
Stone Cold Christmas Ranger
Harlequin Superromance
A Farmers’ Market Story
All I Have
All I Am
All I Want
Falling for the New Guy
Too Friendly to Date
Too Close to Resist
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CAST OF CHARACTERS
Tyler “Ty” Carson—Former army ranger. He’s now home in Bent, Wyoming, for good, but is receiving letters threatening his family and his first love, Jen Delaney.
Jen Delaney—Ty’s secret high school sweetheart. Runs the Delaney General Store in Bent. She was heartbroken when Ty left town without a word, so she’s determined to avoid him as much as possible. Members of their families marrying each other is making it difficult. She thinks Ty is paranoid about her being in danger, until she starts to receive unnerving visits from a stranger.
Thomas Hart—A sheriff’s deputy with the Bent County sheriff’s department. Dated Jen a few times.
Braxton Lynn—The writer of the threatening letters to Ty. No one can figure out what connection he has to Ty or Jen.
Zach Simmons—Ty’s cousin, whom he’s only recently learned about, and a former FBI agent working for Jen’s brother. He helps Ty and Jen with some security measures.
Laurel Delaney-Carson—Jen’s sister and a detective with the sheriff’s department. She’s on desk duty due to pregnancy.
Grady Carson—Ty’s cousin and Laurel’s husband. Grady runs Rightful Claim, Bent’s saloon—where Ty lives in the apartment above.
For anyone who found the courage to go home again, and those who had the bravery to stay.
Contents
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
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Epilogue
Excerpt from Within Range by Janice Kay Johnson
Chapter One
Jen Delaney loved Bent, Wyoming, the town she’d been born in, grown up in. She was a respected member of the community, in part because she ran the only store that sold groceries and other essentials within a twenty-mile radius of town.
From her position crouched on the linoleum while she stocked shelves, she looked around the small town store she’d taken over at the ripe age of eighteen. For the past ten years it had been her baby with its narrow aisles and hodgepodge of necessities.
She’d always known she’d spend the entirety of her life happily ensconced in Bent and her store, no matter what happened around her.
The reappearance of Ty Carson didn’t change that knowledge so much as make it...annoying. No, annoying would have been just his being in town again. The fact their families had somehow intermingled in the last year was...a catastrophe.
Her sister, Laurel, marrying Ty’s cousin Grady had been a shock, very close to a betrayal, though it was hard to hold it against Laurel when Grady was so head over heels for her it was comical. They both glowed with love and happiness and impending parenthood.
Jen tried not to hate them for it.
She could forgive Cam, her oldest brother, for his serious relationship with Hilly. Hilly was biologically a Carson, but she’d only just found that out. Besides, Hilly wasn’t like other Carsons. She was so sweet and earnest.
But Dylan and Vanessa... Her business-minded, sophisticated older brother impregnating and marrying snarky bad girl Vanessa Carson... That was a nightmare.
And none of it was fair. Jen was now, out of nowhere, surrounded by Carsons and Delaneys intermingling—which went against everything Bent had ever stood for. Carsons and Delaneys hated each other. They didn’t fall in love and get married and have babies.
And still, she could have handled all that in a certain amount of stride if it weren’t for Ty Carson. Everywhere she turned he seemed to be right there, his stoic gaze always locked on her, reminding her of a past she’d spent a lot of time trying to bury and forget.
When she’d been seventeen and the stupidest girl alive, she would have done anything for Ty Carson. Risked the Delaney-Carson curse that, even with all these Carson-Delaney marriages, Bent still had their heart set on. She would have risked her father’s wrath over daring to connect herself with a Carson. She would have given up anything and everything for Ty.
Instead he’d made promises to love her forever, then disappeared to join the army—which she’d found out only a good month after the fact. He hadn’t just broken her heart—he’d crushed it to bits.
But Ty was a blip of her past she’d been able to forget about, mostly,
for the past ten years. She’d accepted his choices and moved on with her life. For a decade she had grown into the adult who didn’t care at all about Ty Carson.
Then Ty had come home for good, and all she’d convinced herself of faded away.
She was half convinced he’d returned simply to make her miserable.
“You look angry. Must be thinking about me.”
Her head whipped up, the jolt of surprise having nothing on the white-hot flash of fury. “I never think about you, Tyler.” She definitely wasn’t about to admit she had been.
His cocksure grin faded somewhat. He hated his full first name with a passion she’d certainly never understood, but it was one of the few tools in her arsenal she had to get under his unflappable demeanor.
He wasn’t the only person who made her want to lash out, but considering what he’d done to her, she didn’t make an effort to curb that impulse like she did with everyone else.
She slowly rose from where she’d been crouched, dusting her hands off by slapping them together. “Don’t you have anything better to do than stalk me?” she asked haughtily, sailing past him in the narrow aisle with as much grace as she could muster.
“Don’t flatter yourself, babe.”
Babe. Oh, she’d like to knock his teeth out. Instead she scooted behind the checkout counter and smiled sweetly at him. “Then might I kindly suggest you make your purchases.”
“You really think I’d be talking to you if I didn’t have to be? I’ve got ample time to corner you if I wanted to at a family gathering with all the recent Carson-Delaney insanity going around.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. He’d always been tall, rangy, dangerous. Age only enhanced all of those things. It was hardly fair he looked even better now than he had then. Certainly unfair he was talking to her as if she’d been the one to disappear in the middle of the night a decade ago.
“So what is it you want?” she demanded, but the fact he had a point had fear sneaking past her Ty-defenses. “There’s not more trouble, is there?” Bent had been a beacon for it lately.
Laurel and Dylan and even Vanessa dang Carson might be going around town yapping they didn’t believe in curses or love solved curses or whatever, but trouble after trouble didn’t lie. Jen was convinced there had to be something to the old curse that said a Carson and Delaney falling in love only spelled trouble.
“No trouble,” Ty said casually. “Just a concern. We’ll call it a gut feeling.”
Develop those off army rangering, did you? She bit her tongue so the words wouldn’t escape and reveal how many scraps of information she’d collected about him over the years.
“How can I help?” Mr. Army Ranger should take care of his gut feelings himself, shouldn’t he?
“I just need you to give me a heads-up if you get any new people in the store. You can even send the info through Hilly or Addie, if you’d rather.”
Jen raised her chin. It’d be a cold day in hell before she gave this heartless, careless jerk any clue she still had feelings for him. “I don’t need to go through anyone, but surely you don’t need to know every single stranger I get in here.”
“And just how many strangers do you typically get in here?” Ty asked drily.
“Enough.”
He didn’t respond right away, though she could tell by the tiniest firming of his mouth that he was irritated with her. It nearly made her smile. Ty was not an easy man to irritate—at least not visibly.
“This isn’t about us,” he said in low, heavy tones.
Any twitch of a smile died. Us. They did not acknowledge us, and hadn’t since his return. There’d been no mention that they’d ever sworn their love for each other. They’d been stupid teenagers, yes, but she’d so believed those words.
“We’ve had enough trouble lately,” Ty said, and she hated that she could see the stiffness in his posture. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed the change, but she knew him too well even all these years later to miss that slight tightening in the way he held himself. “If there’s going to be more, I want to head it off at the pass. You run the most visited place in Bent. All I’m asking is for you to—”
“Yes, I understand what you’re asking,” she replied primly. “Consider it done. Now, feel free to leave.” Because she hated him here. Hated breathing the same air as him. Hated looking into those blue eyes she knew too well, because his build could change, the skin around his eyes could crinkle with the years, but the sharp blue of tropical ocean would always be the exact same.
And it would always hurt, no matter how much she tried to exorcise that pain.
He rapped his knuckles against her counter lightly, his lips curved into something like a wry smile. “See you around, Jen.”
Not if I can help it.
* * *
TY COULDN’T EXPLAIN the feeling that needled along his spine. It had nothing to do with the heavy weight that settled in his stomach. The needling was his gut feeling, honed as an army ranger, that told him the strange, threatening letters he’d been receiving weren’t a prank or a joke.
The hard ball of weight was all Jen. Regrets. Guilt. Things he’d never, ever expected to feel, but adulthood had changed him. The army and army rangers had changed him. All the regrets he swore to himself at eighteen to never, ever entertain swamped him every time he saw her.
He tried not to see her, but his family was making it even harder than this small town.
All that was emotional crap he could at least pretend to ignore or will away. Which was exactly what he could not do with the latest letter that had been mixed in with the other mail to Rightful Claim, the bar his cousin owned and where Ty worked.
Vague. Ominous. Unsigned. And addressed to him. He had his share of enemies in Bent. Being a Carson in this town lent itself toward Delaney enemies everywhere he went. But though he’d love to pin it on a Delaney or a crony of theirs, it wasn’t.
This was something outside, which meant it likely connected to his time in the army. Yeah, he’d made a few enemies there, too. He wasn’t a guy who went looking for trouble. In fact, he could get along with just about anyone.
Until he couldn’t.
He blew out a breath as he crossed Main. Away from the prim and tidy Delaney side of the street, to the right side. The rough-and-tumble Carson side with Rightful Claim at the end—with its bright neon signs and assurance that nothing in this town would ever be truly civilized like the Delaneys over there wanted.
Except the lines weren’t so clear anymore, were they?
Dylan Delaney was standing in the garage opening to Carson Cars & Bikes. Vanessa and her swell of a baby bump stood next to him, grinning happily up at the man she used to hate.
What was wrong with his cousins? He could give a pass to his brother. Noah’s wife was barely a Delaney. Oh, somewhere along the line, but Addie hadn’t grown up here. Dylan and Laurel? Born and bred rule-abiding proper Delaney citizens, and somehow Vanessa and Grady were head over heels in dumb.
Ty should know, shouldn’t he? He’d been there first. He’d just had the good sense to get the hell out of that mess while he could.
But that only conjured images of Jen, who hadn’t had the decency to change in his near decade away. Once upon a time he’d been stupid enough to count the freckles on her nose and commit that number to memory.
It wasn’t the first time he wished he could medically remove the part of his brain still so in tune to that long past time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
He didn’t nod or greet Dylan as he passed and felt only moderately guilty for being rude. Until Vanessa’s voice cut through the air.
“Hey, jerkoff.”
He heaved out a sigh and slowly turned to face her. Her baby bump was so incongruous to the sharp rest of her. “Yes, Mrs. Delaney,” he replied.
She didn’t even flinch, just slid her arm arou
nd Dylan’s waist. As though a Carson and a Delaney—opposites in every possible way—could be the kind of lifetime partners real marriages were made out of.
If he could erase four years of his adolescent life, it would have been funny. He would have had a heck of a time making fun of all of the fallen Carsons. But since he’d given all that up once upon a time, and no one had any clue, all this wedded bliss and the popping out of babies was hard to swallow.
“You coming to the baby shower?” Vanessa demanded. Marriage and pregnancy hadn’t softened her any. At least there was that.
“Do I look like the kind of man who goes to baby showers?”
“Oh, don’t be a wuss. It’s coed.”
“It’s co-no.”
“Noah’s coming.”
Hell.
“You’re way more of a baby shower guy than Noah.”
“I take offense to that.”
She grinned. “Good. I’ll count you down for a yes.”
“I don’t think—”
“Give him a break, Van,” Dylan said, his arm resting across her shoulders, as if just a few months ago they hadn’t hated each other’s guts. “It’s only because Jen’s going to be there.”
Ty stiffened, fixing Dylan with an icy look. “What’s Jen got to do with anything?”
Vanessa’s smile went sly, but she nodded agreeably to her husband’s words. “It’s no secret you two hate each other.” She enunciated the word hate as if it didn’t mean what it ought.
But it darn well had to. “I can’t stand the whole lot of you, but I’ve suffered through a few weddings now—a lot better than the two of you did on that first one,” he replied, nodding toward Vanessa’s expanding stomach.
Vanessa rubbed her belly. “That was fate.”
“That was alcohol. Now, I have things to do.”
“One o’clock tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
He grunted. He could disappear for the night, easily enough. Even his brother wouldn’t be able to find him. But Noah would be disappointed if he baled. Worse, Noah’s wife, Addie, would be disappointed in him. She’d give him that wounded deer look.
