by Susan Fox
“Dave, will you keep this a secret? I want to surprise her, and there are some things I need to do first.”
“Like buy a ring?”
“Yeah, like that.”
Dave studied him, his face solemn. “Be sure about what you’re doing. Don’t hurt her, Evan.”
The “again” hovered in the air between them, unsaid. “I won’t. I promise you.” An impulse made him stick out his hand.
Dave paused a mere second before shaking it firmly. Then he said, “Sit down. Tell me what you’re planning.”
Evan paused. Could he really talk to Dave about this? But the guy had made the offer, basically an offer of friendship, and Evan wasn’t about to turn that down.
Chapter Eighteen
Jess smiled tiredly as she walked out of the hospital late in the afternoon. It was always tough dealing with Robin when she was sick or injured. The poor kid never wanted to acknowledge how bad she felt and always wanted to be back on her feet.
She glanced around, hunting for Dave. It was sweet of him to suggest a quiet dinner at the little Italian bistro. She had lots to tell him. Besides, it was another way of distracting her mind from the knowledge that Evan was on a plane, winging his way back to New York. The love of her life would be her e-mail penpal and business associate. Oh well, it could be much, much worse.
Ev had dropped by to meet Robin. When Rob had told her, Jess hadn’t known what to think, but she did know Evan was a man of his word. He wouldn’t go back on his promise to keep the secret of Robin’s parentage.
Jess looked around again. Where was Dave? His truck sat at the front of the parking lot, the cab empty. She was tired and knew the doors would be unlocked, so she walked over and climbed into the passenger seat. She stretched, resting her head on the headrest, and closed her eyes.
She barely stirred when noise and motion told her he’d climbed in beside her. “Hey, good-looking,” she murmured, but he didn’t reply.
He was making a clumsy job of starting the truck and backing it out of the parking spot, and normally she’d have teased him, but right now she didn’t have the energy to bother. She would just let herself drift until he parked at the restaurant. “You’re going to buy us a very fine bottle of red wine,” she said.
“Actually, I had something else in mind.”
The voice was Evan’s. She jerked upright and gaped. “You’re not gone!”
He glanced down at himself. “Apparently not.”
He was wearing jeans and his boots, which were polished to a gleam. His crisp white shirt had the sleeves rolled up and several buttons undone. He was tanned, healthy-looking, and there was a twinkle in his eye when he grinned at her.
She frowned, not comprehending. “You’re here, and you’re stealing Dave’s truck.”
He laughed. “And I’m kidnapping his ex.”
She glanced out the window. He was on the highway, heading north. She couldn’t get her head around this. “What’s going on?”
“Relax. All will be revealed.”
He turned onto a dirt road. The old twisty, turny road that led to Zephyr Lake. Evan Kincaid was here in Caribou Crossing and he was taking her to Zephyr Lake. Did she dare hope . . . ?
The lake came in sight, flashing blue through a screen of aspens. Theirs was the only vehicle.
He parked and she climbed out, her knees weak. When he handed her a wicker picnic basket, she took it automatically and followed him. He carried a plaid rug that looked brand new, and a blue and white cooler with a Wild Rose Inn sticker on it.
She wanted to ask again what this was all about. On the other hand, if she didn’t ask, she could let herself hope.
He led her to a level spot by the lake and spread the blanket. She set down the picnic basket, tugged off her boots, and sank down. He pulled off his boots, too, and sat beside her. He lifted the lid off the cooler and extracted two crystal flutes, which he handed to her.
“It’s not red wine,” he said, pulling out a bottle of champagne. Dom Pérignon. She recognized the label from her parents’twenty-fifth anniversary party. He ripped off the foil that covered the cork.
Zephyr Lake and champagne. Had she fallen asleep in Dave’s truck, and this was all a crazy dream?
The cold glasses sweated in her hands. The chilly dampness convinced her she was awake.
But her hands trembled and her heart thumped so fast she could hardly breathe. Now, fear was warring with hope. This was still Ev, the New York guy, the one who wouldn’t let himself love. She had to know before she exploded from tension. “Evan?”
He eased the cork out. “I thought we might do it right, this time around.”
“It?” Her voice squeaked. She cleared her throat. “Last time we had take-out chicken and beer, and I seduced you.”
He concentrated on filling the glasses so the bubbles frothed but didn’t overflow.
“Let me guess,” she said, her voice wavering. “This time you’re seducing me?”
He stowed the bottle back in the cooler, took one glass from her hand, then set it on top of the cooler lid. “That comes later. First, I’m going to propose.”
The breath rushed out of her. “Propose?” Marriage? Was there any other kind of proposal? Well, a business proposal, but—
“Hey, don’t spill the champagne.” He reached out quickly to rescue her tilting glass, and set it beside his own. “I had a little talk with Rusty this morning. You know what they say about horse sense? Well, that old boy has more than his fair share.”
Yes, she’d been right to hope. Jess began to laugh as tears rolled down her cheeks, trickled over her lips. When she smiled, she tasted salt on her tongue. “Do you mean . . . ?”
He smiled gently. Lovingly. “I love you, Jessica Bly Cousins. You’re my once-in-a-lifetime love. You’re my dream. I want to move back to Caribou Crossing and marry you.”
“Oh, Evan . . .” Could she believe in this? Tentatively, she said, “But you love New York.”
“I do. And you will, too, when I take you and Robin to visit. But I can love Caribou Crossing. The last two weeks have shown me that.”
She’d seen him changing in front of her eyes. “I know you can,” she breathed.
He took her hand, gripping it between his, and she felt him shaking. He was actually scared she wouldn’t accept.
“You said you loved me, Jess. Is it true? Will you marry me and be my best friend and only love, forever and ever?”
“I . . .” Her heart wanted to say yes, but she had one question. “What about Robin?”
He smiled. “She’s wonderful. I’d be honored to be her stepfather.”
“Oh, Evan. Yes. Yes, I’ll marry you.” She hurled herself into his arms, knocking him over backward.
His arms came around her, pressing her so tight she could barely breathe. “Jesus, Jess, I love you so much. I’ve been such a fool.”
“Yes, you have. But I love you anyhow, Ev. Forever and ever.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
I grew up in a city (Victoria, British Columbia) and have lived in both Victoria and Vancouver, so maybe it’s natural that I’ve mostly written about urban settings. However, I’ve also spent a lot of time in the country and I love it, and I was one of the many girls who fell in love with horses as a child and never lost that feeling. So now I figure it’s high time to indulge my adult self with a little country-style romance.
Rather than set the story in a real town, I made up Caribou Crossing. It’s a composite of a number of small towns in the interior of British Columbia. Set along the old Cariboo Wagon Road, it has a gold-mining history and now its economy is based on ranching and tourism. (And if you’re wondering if there’s a typo in the last sentence, no, it’s just one of our weird BC things. The animal is a caribou and the region was named after it, but it’s spelled Cariboo.)
Home on the Range is a departure for me in a second way. Usually, my muse has led me to write about strangers who meet and fall in love, but this time she pointed me in the
direction of a reunion story. I found that there’s a different dynamic when the heroine and hero have a shared past (and one big unshared secret). I had a lovely time writing Jess and Evan’s story and I hope you enjoy reading it.
I hope you’ll also look for Jessica’s parents’ love story, in the novella Caribou Crossing, and for Evan’s mother Brooke’s brand-new romance, in Gentle on My Mind.
I’d like to thank all the people who helped bring this book to life: Audrey LaFehr and Martin Biro at Kensington; Emily Sylvan Kim at Prospect Agency; and my critique group, Michelle Hancock, Betty Allan, and Nazima Ali.
I love sharing my stories with my readers and I love hearing from you. I write under the pen names Susan Fox, Savanna Fox, and Susan Lyons. You can e-mail me at [email protected] or contact me through my website at www.susanfox.ca, where you’ll also find excerpts, behind-the-scenes notes, recipes, a monthly contest, my newsletter, and other goodies. You can also find me on Facebook at facebook.com/SusanLyonsFox.
If you enjoyed Home on the Range,
you won’t want to miss Susan Fox’s next deliciously sexy Caribou Crossing romance:
GENTLE ON MY MIND.
Read on for a little taste of this exciting romance.
A Zebra mass-market paperback
on sale in September 2013.
Brooke Kincaid hung up the phone and hugged herself. Beaming, she danced a few steps across the kitchen floor in time to Glen Campbell’s “Wichita Lineman,” the song playing on Caribou Crossing’s country and western radio station. Her marmalade cat, Sunny, watched from a windowsill, tail twitching, golden eyes asking a question.
“A grandmother!” Brooke told him. “I’m going to be a grandmother.”
Well, in fact she’d become a grandmother last fall when her son, Evan—newly returned to Caribou Crossing—married Jessica and became stepdad to her daughter, Robin, a wonderful ten-year-old. But now Jess was pregnant!
Oh Lord, Jess was pregnant. Brooke stopped dancing as all the fears rushed into her mind. Would Evan let her near the baby, given what a terrible mother she’d been to him? And would the baby be okay? What if Evan did have a predisposition for bipolar disorder even though the disease had never manifested itself in him, and he passed it on to the baby?
Sunny yowled, breaking Brooke’s train of thought. He hopped down from the sill and came to wrap himself around her ankles.
The gesture calmed her, and so did bending to stroke his sun-warmed fur. She’d acquired Sunny four years ago as a rescue cat, but the rescuing really worked the other way around.
“You’re right,” she told him. “I need to focus on the positive.” Evan and Jess had made the decision to have a child, they knew about her own bipolar and alcoholism, and the decision was theirs to make. And yes, of course they would let her be involved. Her son had called her right away, the morning after Jess had shared the news with him and Robin. Brooke beamed again, remembering the joy in his voice.
As for her, at the age of forty-three she’d been granted a second chance, and she’d do things right this time.
She was fourteen when she got pregnant. Naively, she’d expected a pink-and-white girl doll, but what she’d received was a bellowing, demanding boy-child. She had messed up royally with Evan, and she blessed him for being generous enough to forgive her.
After ten years of estrangement, she had her son back, plus a wonderful daughter-in-law, a delightful granddaughter, and now a brand-new baby on the way. No clouds of worry were going to spoil this amazing day.
Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line” came on the radio and she smiled. “So do I, my friend, so do I.” She had stayed sober, gone to A.A. meetings, and taken her bipolar meds for almost five years. Now, she had even more motivation.
She ran her hand down her cat’s golden coat and tugged gently on his tail. “It’s all good, isn’t it, Sunny?”
He pulled his tail from her grip and narrowed his eyes in mock annoyance, then began to purr.
Brooke laughed at his game. Until Evan had come back, she hadn’t laughed—not this way, with genuine pleasure—in at least a dozen years. Now laughter came easily. “Life just couldn’t be more perfect,” she told the cat, reaching out to stroke him again.
But Sunny’s ears twitched and he shook her hand off. His hair rose, his eyes slitted, and he stared intently into space, at nothing visible to her.
Jake Brannon clung desperately to the handgrips of his Harley, fighting to stay conscious. He’d been losing blood for going on an hour now. Thank God for the fierce pain in his side; it helped him focus.
When he’d made his getaway he’d left his helmet behind, and now the wind made his eyes water and whipped strands of hair across his face. He squinted to see the road. It twisted away in front of him like a snake. A rough-skinned snake. Every time he hit a pothole the bike jerked and a fresh wave of pain radiated from the wound.
He hoped to hell the bullet wasn’t still in there. If only he could stop to examine the injury and staunch the bleeding. But the man in the black truck was chasing him, and by now there were probably others.
His own fault. He’d been sloppy. Should have been in and out without anyone seeing him. Should be back in his motel room right now, sound asleep. Instead of riding the never-ending snake in the frail light of dawn toward, toward . . .
Damn, he was losing focus again. Where the hell was he? He’d avoided the main highway in hopes of evading his pursuers, but the roads out here in the middle of British Columbia’s Cariboo country were a maze. Would he ever find his way to the Gold Rush Trail Motel, to the sanctuary of that kitschy little room where sepia photos from gold rush days decorated the walls?
Jake narrowed his eyes against a pale rising sun. The sun was off to his right, which meant he was riding . . . north? He groaned. His brain was so damned fuzzy.
The bike’s tires skittered over a spill of gravel and jounced into another hole. Pain slammed through him and he let loose with a string of curses. The wind whipped them away, and he imagined them streaming behind him in a series of little balloons like the speech in cartoons.
Focus, damn it. Best as he could figure, he needed to head northeast. The sun rose in the east, and the sun was hitting the corner of his aching right eye, so northeast had to be straight ahead. As the crow flies. If only the Harley were a crow . . .
Straight ahead. He tried to grasp that thought and hang on to it. But damn, his vision was as blurry as his mind. He blinked but the view got foggier, not sharper. There was something white . . . vertical white shapes marching in a row straight ahead of him. A fence? Oh, Jesus, the road curved and he was heading straight for a fence!
He tried to yank the bike around the curve, but his sweaty hands had no strength. His world was turning gray and he was barely aware of the bike going down, spilling him free. Screaming pain roused him momentarily as his leg and hip scraped along the road. His head hit next and the gray turned charcoal. He heard his bike crash into something, then the engine abruptly cut out.
His eyes closed and the blackness took him.
“Sunny, what’s wrong?” Brooke asked, just as the peaceful country morning was shattered by a horrible screech of metal, then a crash. Not metal on metal but metal on . . . wood?
Wood? “My white picket fence!” She dashed to the front door, flung it open, and darted down the steps in her bathrobe and flip-flops.
A huge black motorbike was jammed partway through her fence amid a confetti of shattered white wood. Where was the rider?
Brooke rushed through the gate and found him sprawled on the gravel verge of the road, facedown, like a broken, abandoned toy. He was dressed in black—sneakers, jeans, and leather jacket. No helmet over that tumble of shoulder-length black hair.
Mo. He looked just like Mo. She flashed back to the age of fourteen, when she’d been utterly fascinated by the sexy nineteen-year-old bad boy. Back then, she’d had no idea how bad he’d turn out to be.
“Get a grip,” she told herself. This man
was not Mo, and he might be dying. She had to call 911. But what if he died while she was phoning?
Staring at the biker, she forced herself to take a deep breath. Although she’d taken a first-aid class, she couldn’t remember a blessed thing. Another breath. She had to control the crippling panic.
Pulse. Yes, make sure he was breathing. If not, she’d have to start mouth-to-mouth and CPR.
Kneeling, she stroked his hair out of the way and slipped two trembling fingers around his neck to press against his throat. His pulse leaped strongly, so strongly that she jerked back in shock. Then she let out her breath in a low whistle of relief.
The man groaned and his body moved convulsively, turning so he lay on his back.
No, despite having bronzed skin, he didn’t look like Mo, who’d been half Indo-American. He didn’t look like a thuggish biker either. In fact, he was strikingly handsome, with strong, carved features. His mouth, framed by a dark beard, added contrast with full, sensual lips. If she’d had to administer the kiss of life . . .
Her cheeks burned. The thought of touching a man’s lips with her own was shocking. It had been more than fifteen years since she’d shared any degree of physical intimacy with a man. Her ex-husband had soured her on men so thoroughly that she was positive she’d never be attracted to another one.
And yet there was something enticing about this particular face, this mouth.
She shook her head briskly, trying to recall the checklist the first-aid trainer had taught them. Immediate danger. Make sure he wasn’t in immediate danger.
There was blood—he’d scraped himself up pretty badly—but no arterial spurts. He wasn’t bleeding to death. He wasn’t likely to be run over either, as he was well onto the gravel shoulder of the road. This end of Wellburn Road was quiet, down past the entrance to Bly Ranch. Her little patch of rented land was on Jessica’s parents’ ranch, and past her there was only Ray Barnes’s place and a couple of other small spreads. Horses and riders often used this road, and people knew to drive cautiously.
