Rancher's Deadly Reunion

by Beth Cornelison

  “Well,” she started, then paused to clear the thickness from her throat, “we have a son together. We both want what is best for him.”

  He bobbed his head once, conceding the point. “Let’s leave Connor out of this for the moment.”

  She blinked her surprise. “Leave him out of this? But he’s...” She goggled at him, unable to finish her thought.

  “He’s important, yes.” Brady filled in her silence. “But aren’t you the one who said you turned down my marriage proposal all those years ago because you didn’t want a marriage based on the fact that we were having a baby?”

  She swallowed hard. “I was.”

  He narrowed his green eyes on her. “Has that changed?”

  “Well...no. It’s just that Connor—”

  “No,” he interrupted, placing a warm finger against her lips. “We put Connor over here for the moment,” he said, patting the air beside him. “Let’s talk about us. I know I’ve been thinking long and hard about our relationship and where it might go from here.”

  The shiver that chased through her was only partly due to the cold. “And?”

  He shook his head. “You first. Where do you see us at this point? You’ve spent the last seven years running from me, and the last several days having everything you believed about our past turned upside down.”

  She gave a short, humorless laugh. “That’s the truth.” She pulled her hand from his and turned to prop her arms on the top beam of the fence. “I know I hurt you terribly, Brady. But I hurt myself, too. I let my fears and my selfishness and doubts muddy up what should have been the simplest decision of my life.” She cast a glance to him. “And I’ve been paying for it ever since.”

  He said nothing, letting her gather her thoughts, obviously wanting her to lay out her feelings before he’d share his.

  She took a deep breath before plunging in. “I should have married you when you offered before. I loved you, and I wanted to be with you. I wanted you beside me not just to face parenthood together, but to build a life together. Yet I somehow talked myself into believing that you’d only offered to marry me to be noble. And that the noble and loving thing for me to do was to let you go. To release you from the burden of a wife and child and bills and shattered dreams for an education and...” She paused, fighting back tears. “Anyway... I’ve spent the last seven years punishing myself for the mistake I made.”

  He gave a sad-sounding sigh, and his breath formed a gray cloud that wafted through the night air. “Don’t do that anymore.”

  “Then...you forgive me?” she rasped and held her breath while her pulse pounded in her ears.

  He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment before turning and pulling her into his arms. “God, yes. Enough is enough, Piper. It’s time to stop living in the past and move on.”

  Her heart slammed to a stop. Move on? What did he mean? Was he saying goodbye?

  She clutched the back of his coat as she held on to him, her face buried in his chest. She had to do something, say something before she lost the chance, before she messed up again and lost him for good.

  “Brady, I—I never stopped loving you. I never stopped thinking about you or wanting to find our way back to what we had. I only avoided you because I didn’t think I deserved a second chance after...after what I did to you. After I gave our baby away.”

  He tightened his arms around her. “Piper, don’t.”

  “Please, Brady,” she said as tears dripped from her eyes. “If you can forgive me, then...can you give me another chance? Can we go back to the way we were?”

  His brow dipped, and he scoffed softly. “No, Piper. We can’t go back.”

  Pain lanced her chest, and she took a half step back, her head reeling. She had no one to blame but herself. She’d made bad choices and hurt him so deeply. Perhaps it was karma that he’d reject her now that she knew what she’d tossed away, knew how desperately she wanted him back.

  She forced her tight throat to work. “Okay. I...understand.” Her voice cracked, and she turned to flee, but he caught her arm.

  “No, I don’t think you do understand.” With a hand on each of her shoulders, he gave her a small shake. “Piper, look at me.”

  As hard as it was, she raised her gaze to meet his. In his eyes, she saw a fiery passion that made her heart kick.

  “We can’t go back to the way we were because we are different people now. We’ve lived through heartache and betrayal and secrets and separation. We’ve grown and changed and experienced life’s ups and downs. You’ve been off on your own, learning about yourself and gaining independence. I’ve had to take the helm of my family when my brother died and my dad crawled into a bottle to deal with his grief. Back then, we were starry-eyed kids with idealistic notions of what love was. Maybe your leaving was a good thing.”

  She jolted. “What?”

  “I’m not saying it didn’t hurt, but I don’t want to rehash all that has happened. I’m just saying, in hindsight, the last few years have given us both time to...mature. To learn what real love and commitment means.”

  Her heart throbbed, thrashing painfully against her ribs. “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying our love has stood the test of time and turmoil. I’m saying I’m more sure than ever that you are the one woman I want in my life forever.”

  She drew a trembling breath. “Brady...”

  He dropped to one knee and withdrew a leather pouch from his pocket. “I’ve been carrying my mother’s engagement ring around with me for a couple days now, waiting for the right time.”

  Tears slipped from her eyes, and a laugh bubbled up from her soul.

  “Piper McCall, I’ve waited a long time for you. Don’t make me wait any longer. Please say you’ll be my wife.”

  She fell to her knees and lunged at him, knocking him over as she hugged him, laughing. “Oh, my gosh, yes! Yes, yes, yes!”

  She kissed his face, and happy tears dripped onto his cheeks. Or maybe they were his. They shared several deep, hungry kisses before she raised her head and gasped, “Oh, no! What happened to your mother’s ring?”

  He sat up, mumbling a curse, and they searched the ground for a moment, laughing. When they found it, he fumbled the small solitaire from the pouch and slid it on her shaking hand. She breathed a sigh. “Perfect.”

  “Well, almost perfect,” he said. “There’s one more thing.” He curled his hand as if grabbing something and brought the invisible item back between them. “Putting Connor back in the mix.”

  She squeezed Brady’s arm. “Right.”

  “Thing is...even though we are his biological parents, Scott and Pam legally adopted him. So now we have to adopt him to make him legally ours again.”

  “Then we’ll do that. I want us to be a family in every way.”

  He nodded and smiled. “Equal custody. We raise him together. Our family, the way it was meant to be.”

  She smiled and kissed his lips softly. “Yes. We were meant to be.”

  * * *

  Don’t miss Josh McCall’s story,

  Rancher’s High-Stakes Rescue

  Available November 2018,

  And Zane’s story,

  Rancher’s Covert Christmas

  Available December 2018!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from Soldier Bodyguard by Lisa Childs.

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  Soldier Bodyguard

  by Lisa Childs

  Chapter 1

  Crazy like a fox. Cooper Payne had never understood that phrase until now. He stared across his desk at Xavier Bentler. This wasn’t Cooper’s first experience with an interfering grandfather; his wife’s guardian/grandfather had been a control freak who had manipulated his granddaughters even from beyond the grave.

  “I can’t lie to one of my employees,” he told the elderly man.

  Xavier Bentler was eighty-six years old, but he looked like he was in his sixties. Cooper couldn’t believe that he’d had a heart attack a few months ago. Had he really had one? Or just how manipulative was the old man? The heart attack had compelled Cooper’s friend and employee, Cole Bentler, to fly home for the first time in years—although he hadn’t been gone very long.

  Was this assignment just another ploy for Xavier to get his grandson Cole home to California again?

  “I’m not asking you to lie to him,” Xavier said with a cagey grin. “Maybe you can just withhold some information so that he’ll accept the job.”

  Cooper shook his head and ran his hand over his military-short black hair. He was not going to do that again. The last time he’d sent off one of his bodyguards without briefing him fully on the assignment he had nearly lost him—for good. It wasn’t a risk he was willing to take again, especially as all the bodyguards who worked for Cooper’s franchise of the Payne Protection Agency were his friends and—in the case of Nikki Payne—family.

  Hell, after what he’d gone through with his friends, who had all served in the same Marine Corps unit that he had, they were family, too.

  “I can’t do that,” Cooper said. He wouldn’t betray a friend...again.

  Of course last time it had been more of a joke. But there had been nothing funny about nearly losing Jordan “Manny” Mannes. And this time the danger was even greater.

  “You said that a man already died,” Cooper reminded the older man.

  Xavier Bentler uttered a weary-sounding sigh. “That was most unfortunate. But what’s more unfortunate is that his won’t be the last death. I am certain that someone else is going to die.”

  And Cooper was afraid that person would be his friend if he assigned this job to Cole. He narrowed his eyes as he studied the old man, suspicious of how he could be so certain someone else was going to die. He doubted the guy had what Cooper’s mother did—her uncanny ability to just know that something was going to happen. Everybody had pretty much envied that ability until now. At least Cooper didn’t envy it since he sometimes possessed the ability himself.

  Like now...

  “Cole can prevent that murder, though,” Xavier Bentler continued, “if he protects her.”

  Cooper had that feeling again—a bad feeling—that he knew who that person was. But still he had to ask, “Shawna?”

  The older man nodded and grinned, obviously delighted that Cooper knew who she was. But that was not a good thing. He also knew what she’d already put Cole through. If she died...

  Cole would be devastated, no matter what he felt for her yet.

  “So you understand,” Xavier said, as if he’d successfully argued his case, even though the old guy was a businessman, not a lawyer. “And you will make Cole take this assignment.”

  Cooper sighed before bobbing his head in a reluctant nod of acquiescence. He did understand that if something happened to Shawna, no matter how badly she’d hurt him, Cole would never forgive himself. Even if Cole didn’t want to personally protect her, Cooper had to make sure that nothing happened to her. He just hoped that he wouldn’t lose his friend. Either Cole would refuse to take the job and resign from the Payne Protection Agency. Or he would accept the assignment and...

  Cole would be the next person to lose his life.

  * * *

  Seeing Shawna Rolfe like this, dressed all in black with tears streaming down her face, was why Cole had ended their engagement. He’d worried that one day she would wind up mourning him like this. Instead she was mourning another man, the one who had become her husband. There was a hollow feeling in Cole’s chest as if he’d lost something, as well.

  But he had never had it, not for real. If Shawna had ever loved him, she wouldn’t have fallen so quickly for someone else. She wouldn’t have let another man put a ring on her finger within months of taking off Cole’s. And that hadn’t been just another engagement ring. It had been the wedding band that she still wore. The yellow gold reflected the sunshine glinting through the stained-glass windows of the church as she lifted her hand to wipe away the tears streaking from beneath her dark glasses. She didn’t need the glasses inside the church, so she was probably using them to hide her swollen eyes. But they couldn’t hide the fact that she’d been crying and still was.

  And that hollowness inside Cole turned to an intense ache. He had never been able to handle Shawna’s tears, even when they were just kids in elementary school. He had always beaten up the boys who’d made her cry.

  But he couldn’t beat up her husband. There was nothing left of him except the ashes in the urn sitting on a podium at the front of the church. There hadn’t been much left of him to cremate. A car bomb had blown him to bits.

  Why? What reason would anyone have to murder a high school band teacher? Many of those students now played a medley of what they’d claimed had been their beloved teacher’s favorite songs. The arrangement was rough as several of them stopped to dissolve into sobs. If Cole believed what he was seeing, then he had to accept that everyone had loved Emery Little. But Cole had grown up knowing how deceptive appearances could be.

  Grandfather didn’t think the car bomb had been meant for Little. He thought it had been meant for Shawna. It made no more sense to kill a nurse than it did to kill a band teacher. Just a short while ago—as he’d been getting pressed into this assignment—Cole had asked that question. “What reason would anyone have for wanting either of them dead?”

  All the Payne Protection bodyguards had been gathered around the conference room table. Cooper had probably called them all in for reinforcements as he’d told Cole what his next assignment would be: protecting his former fiancée.

  Thinking it was some sick joke like they sometimes played on each other, Cole had laughed.

  But his laughter had evaporated when Cooper had informed him what had happened—and that Cole’s grandfather had flown from his estate in northern California out to River City, Michigan, to request their protection services.

  “What reason?” Cole had asked again because none of it made sense. It must have been a horrible mistake. “What’s the murderer’s motive?”

  “Jealousy,” Nikki Payne had offered, and her auburn brows had arched over her brown eyes as she’d studied him.

  He was the only one who would have a reason to be jealous. But maybe Lars Ecklund, Nikki’s fiancé and Cole’s friend, hadn’t shared his history with her. So Cole told her, “I broke my engagement to Shawna a long time ago.”

  They had been engaged a long t
ime as well—first with the promise ring he’d given her when they’d graduated high school and then with the engagement ring he’d given her when he’d returned from boot camp. When he’d broken up with her six years ago, before his unit’s most dangerous mission, Shawna had tried to give back the engagement ring—a two-karat solitaire he’d bought after he’d inherited his father’s estate. But he hadn’t wanted it back. He hadn’t even thought he’d make it back from that mission. But he had—to find her already married to another man.

  “I have no reason to be jealous,” he’d insisted.

  But he was.

  As he stood there and watched Shawna weep over another man, jealousy churned his stomach into an acidic pool of bile. No. Everyone hadn’t loved Emery Little. He hated the man, for making Shawna cry. Most of all he hated him for making Shawna love him, the way she hadn’t really loved Cole.

  He shouldn’t have lied in that meeting—because his boss had used that lie against him. “If you have no reason for jealousy, then you have no reason to refuse this assignment,” Cooper had pointed out. “You better file a flight manifest. You need to fly out right away so you don’t miss the funeral.”

  Now he wished like hell that he had. He couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t bear listening to everyone sing praises about Shawna’s husband while she wept over him. At least he wasn’t suffering alone. When Cooper had turned the tables on him, Cole had spun it back around on all of his friends.

  “I’ll take it on one condition,” he’d said.

  Much like his little sister, Cooper had arched one of his dark brows. Maybe he’d been silently reprimanding an employee for placing conditions on a job or maybe he’d just wanted to know what that condition was.

  “You all work this assignment with me.” Maybe Cole had been counting on Cooper refusing because he’d never wanted his friends to know much about his old life. And he’d certainly never intended to show it to them.