Don't Ditch a Detective

by Cami Checketts

  Jed fell into step with Cassie, wrapping an arm around her. “Hi, beautiful,” he said by way of greeting.

  “Hey.”

  They followed everybody out the door, cheering with the crowd as Trey and Ella got in the back of a limousine, already kissing before the driver could shut the door.

  “I think I’ll keep the privacy glass up,” the driver said to the crowd.

  Everybody laughed and cheered some more.

  Jed and Cassie rode with Heath up to the party, getting more details about his past week with Hazel and her family. It sounded like they’d accepted the “American bloke.” Cassie was excited for Hazel to return and get to know their family better. She’d never officially met the woman of Heath’s dreams.

  The dinner was delicious. Jed was close by at all times, holding her hand, brushing her leg under the table, putting his arm around her waist, and pulling her close against his side. They listened to the toasts, and she soaked in this perfect day for her sister, but she knew, it was time to tell Jed her plans. He and Gavin had both put the ideas out there, and Heath had talked with her about some other thoughts when he came home, but none of the men in her life had pushed her or questioned her since.

  She was ready to get Jed alone and see what he thought.

  After the dinner finished, she and Jed were dancing along with the rest of the crowd when she felt like she was going to burst if she didn’t talk it out with him. The song finished, and she tugged on his hand and tilted her head to Gavin’s office. “I need to talk to you.”

  His blue eyes had been lit up and happy all day, but they grew serious. “Okay.”

  They walked together to the office, and she punched in the code. Settling into the leather couch, she turned to him. “I think I know what I want to do with my life.”

  He nodded and licked his lips. He loosened his tie and said quietly, “Please say it includes me.”

  She smiled and gave him a quick kiss. “No life plan would be complete without you.”

  “Oh, thank you,” he breathed out.

  “Were you worried I was going to ditch you?”

  “Well, you haven’t said anything all week, and ditching me was your original plan. Never settling down. Right?”

  “True, but I never wanted to ditch you. I think you’ll like the new plan.” But she was nervous. She didn’t want to direct his life. “But it can change. If you need it to.” He studied her, so she continued, “That’s what I worked out with the Lord. It doesn’t have to be some set plan. If I continue to serve and love, that’s what He wants me to do.”

  “You’ll always do that.”

  “I hope so.” She took a deep breath. “So I’ve talked with most of the missions I’m set to go with over the next few months. The ones that have an abundance of help, I’ve canceled on.”

  His eyebrows rose.

  “There are a few that really needed me, though, and I’m hoping …” She bit at her lip. “If you want to take the time off and go, that would be amazing, but if not, Gav, Heath, or Nick when he gets home could go with me.”

  Jed silenced her with a kiss. It wasn’t brief like the one she’d just given him. It was long, drawn out, thorough, and beautiful. She felt lit up from the inside out, and she knew he’d follow her around the world if she asked it of him. “You name the weeks and I’m there,” he said breathlessly.

  “Thank you.” She squeezed him tight and then drew back. “And I’m taking Gavin and Heath up on their idea of funding me. What I want to do is a house for those in need, whether it be for one night or a few months, in downtown Denver. The people will be expected to help out and earn their keep as much as possible, and there will be security to keep everyone safe and employment and education specialists to help them get back on their feet, and have a better future.”

  His eyes widened. “I didn’t even know … where’d you get the idea?”

  “I’m patterning it off a similar house in Ogden, Utah, run by Brody and Kaimbrey Jepson.”

  “I like it.” His voice lowered. “But you’re sure you don’t want to be traveling the world?”

  She shook her head. “I’ve done that, and it was a worthwhile cause. I’m sure I’ll do trips occasionally, and when we have children, I want to take them on some trips. With their daddy protecting us all, of course.”

  Jed’s grip on her tightened. “Excuse me, did you just say ‘when we have children’?”

  Cassie smiled shyly at him. “I guess I did.”

  A slow grin covered his face. “Are we talking about these children soon?”

  Cassie laughed. “Well, that’s another part of the plan I hoped you’d agree to.” She bit at her lip. “We can live in Park City and travel down here for my family and to do things with the house, but after I finish my next few missions, I want to figure out how to adopt Izzy and Will.”

  Jed looked like he was in shock. Cassie worried she’d asked too much, pushed too far too fast. Eventually, he said, “Adopt Izzy and Will? I mean, I’d love to. It would be crazy—and are you ready for an instant family, and are you seriously saying you’ll marry me?”

  “I think that needs to come first.”

  Jed dropped to his knees in front of her and clasped both her hands with his. “I didn’t want to rush you. We’ve only been together a little over a week. Then Gavin threatened me with a vicious thumping if I moved too fast. I mean, I know I could take him, but I didn’t want to have to.”

  Cassie laughed and threw her arms around his neck, drawing him closer. “You aren’t rushing me. I love you.”

  “Please marry me, Cassie. Please say you’ll marry me.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  Jed whooped, stood quickly, and lifted her off the couch. He swung her around and then kissed her long and slow. Cassie forgot about all her life plans and every worry in the world. She was going to be married to this man. That was all that mattered right now.

  Don’t miss any of the Strong Family Romances:

  Don’t Date Your Brother’s Best Friend

  Her Loyal Protector

  Don’t Fall for a Fugitive

  Her Hockey Superstar Fake Fiance

  Don’t Ditch a Detective

  Excerpt - Don’t Date Your Brother’s Best Friend

  Ella Strong drove her new Camry down the mountain pass that led to her Colorado valley and sighed with relief, “Home.” The little town of Lonepeak was all there like a postcard in front of her. Downtown still boasted wide tree-lined streets and quaint little shops, all cookie-cutter with a faux wrought-iron railing on the second story and their own light post. Houses and farms were spread throughout the valley. Honest, hardworking people she’d known and loved her entire life occupied those spots just like she’d remembered—and, in her mind, just as they should be.

  She strained for a peek at the spot she loved most in all the world, without running her new car off the road. There. Straight across the valley, she could make out the lodge rising above the pine trees, with ski lifts and runs twisting up the mountain behind it. In June, the lifts were used for mountain biking instead of skiing, but she loved that too.

  The Strong family had owned and operated Angel Falls Retreat since before Ella was born. Her mama’s family roots were here, and they’d owned the property and a small ski lift and bed and breakfast. Her parents had met snow-skiing in Aspen as college students. They’d both dreamed and schemed of making the mountain into something incredible. Many years and hours of work later, it was a thriving year-round retreat. Her oldest brother, Gavin, mostly ran the resort now. Ella’s second-oldest brother, Heath, had even expanded the concept and had resorts of his own in Utah, Wyoming, Connecticut, and West Virginia.

  Ella pushed the pedal down. The car responded, and she bypassed town and made it home in record time. She pulled into the main lodge parking lot. There were smaller villas scattered away from the main lodge, and the newer spa and ski and bike shop was to the east. Her family’s home was west, in a smaller canyon. Their can
yon was private and gated, hidden from the resort, but she knew Gavin was a workaholic. She’d find him here and maybe Austin and Mama, then go see her papa.

  Sliding into a parking spot, she jumped out and hurried toward the lodge. A man whizzed through the parking lot on a mountain bike. He must not have seen her, as he almost buzzed her.

  “Watch out!” Ella called.

  “Excuse me,” he said, braking to a stop. He spun around and pedaled back to her. Stopping right in front of her, he leaned over his handlebars. His eyes swept over her, letting her know he was interested, but it was a little over the top. She didn’t even know him, yet he gazed at her like he had paid for the right to gawk. “I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going.”

  “Apparently,” she sassed back, putting one hand on her hip and tossing her long, dark curls.

  He grinned. “Can I gain your forgiveness by buying you dinner?”

  Ella took a quick inventory, not sure if she wanted to spend more time with this guy or not. He was a built dude and his bike was top of the line, Emonda. His high-end bike clothes reeked of wealth. Not that she was opposed to wealth, as long as the guy had earned it. Hardworking and fun were qualities at the very top of her list for the man who would snag her heart.

  “No, you can’t,” a voice said at her shoulder.

  Ella knew that voice. She loved the depth and timbre of it. Quite often, she heard it in her dreams. She turned slightly, and there he was. Trey Nelson. The man who had defined everything that she’d wanted in a man since the day she’d realized boys and girls were different creatures.

  Unfortunately, Trey had never wanted her in return. He was the best friend of her oldest brother, Gavin, and since he was six years older than her, Trey had always treated her like his little sister. He was protective of her, liked to tease her, and had probably never once envisioned dating her like she dreamt about daily. Correction: used to dream about.

  She was a successful college grad now, all finished with Stanford and three months into her first job, a marketing specialist at a fabulous start-up company based in Salt Lake City. They specialized in electronic billboards and were growing like mad. Her job was to get them even more contracts, and she was killing it, if she did say so herself. Her boss seemed pleased, and she enjoyed the work, though the sprawling Salt Lake valley was too populated for a backwoods girl like her. She’d come home for Labor Day weekend to enjoy family and her mountains, and then she’d be back to the real world. At least the mountains east of Salt Lake had some great hikes and bike paths she could escape to after work and on the weekends, after she navigated through traffic for a miserable hour.

  “I think the lady can decide for herself,” Rich Guy said.

  “Back off, Marcus. This one’s mine.” Trey’s eyes swept over her, and for a second, she really thought he meant it, really wanted her to be his. Then he acted like the annoying, possessive big brother, putting his hand on her lower back and escorting her toward the lodge without giving her a chance to choose for herself. She’d choose Trey every time, but she was an independent woman and he needed to know that.

  The Richie—Marcus, she supposed—grunted something annoyed and not very appropriate behind them, but Ella was having a hard time focusing with Trey’s warm palm on her back, seeping through her thin shirt, and his words. “‘This one’s mine’? What kind of bull crap is that?” she asked.

  Trey smiled down at her, but his blue eyes had something different in them than she’d ever seen. It was almost like he was finally seeing her, but that was probably just wishful thinking on her part. “It’ll get that loser to leave you alone. He’s with a corporate retreat out of Denver, and most of them are stand-up guys, but Marcus Traegger thinks he owns the world and every woman in it.”

  “Maybe I prefer guys like that.” She arched a challenging eyebrow. The truth was that no man had ever compared to Trey, but he didn’t know that. Hopefully, he would never know that. How humiliating would that be?

  He opened the lodge’s door and ushered her inside. “I’d say too bad for you, because Gavin and I are not letting it happen.” He glowered down at her. It was odd to see anything but a smile on Trey’s handsome face. He was just one of those contagiously happy people. Add to that his good-looking face with the slightly longer curly golden-brown hair and the bright blue eyes she couldn’t resist and she could understand why every woman flung herself at him. No matter how jealous it made her.

  Ella stopped just inside the door, taking in the huge open room welcoming her and a pretty blonde she didn’t know manning the front desk. They were far enough away that they still had a small measure of privacy. She whirled on Trey, ready to give him a piece of her mind. He had plenty of women after him, and she could choose if she wanted to go to dinner with some rich yahoo.

  A deep voice said, “What aren’t we letting happen?”

  Ella pushed away her frustration with the bossy, too-handsome Trey and turned. Her oldest brother, Gavin, was striding down the grand staircase as if he owned the world, or at least owned this corner of it. He pretty much did, though her mama still had her hand in everything. From what Ella had seen on her brief trips home, Gavin was taking over more and more. He was brilliant at it, though it had always baffled her that he’d never left the valley. He’d had a full-ride scholarship to Texas A&M, planning to play cornerback and get his undergrad before going on to law school. Ella had only been twelve at the time, so her memory was a little fuzzy, but she did remember her parents going from thrilled and proud to withdrawn and sad. Papa’s accident had happened around the same time, so Gavin never went away to college; he just got his degree online and worked night and day to make the resort even better than anyone could’ve dreamed. Stetson, their twenty-year-old brother, was fulfilling Gavin’s dream, playing defensive end for Purdue and making everybody proud.

  “Gavin!” Ella rushed to the stairs.

  He met her at the bottom and lifted her off her feet, swinging her around. “Hey, Cinderella,” he teased. “Come home to clean the chimney?”

  “Yes, sir. Put me to work, big brother.”

  He released her from the hug and looked her over. “You’re too pretty to be working.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Trey said from behind her.

  Ella caught a glimpse of a warning in Gavin’s eyes before she rounded on Trey. “Like you’d ever look at me as anything but a sister,” she hurled at him.

  Trey’s eyes widened, and she almost faltered. The color of his eyes could go from teal-blue to a more true blue depending on what he was wearing or his mood. His eyes had always mesmerized her.

  “He’d better not,” Gavin growled. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Protective and in charge of everybody, that was her big brother. She adored him, but she quite often balked at him telling her what to do. She was very unlike her twin, Cassandra, who was obedient and sweet. If Trey had any inclination to realize she was a woman, she didn’t want Gavin scaring him away.

  Trey said nothing, and that frustrated her even more. So he gave a secondhand compliment, but then when she called him out, gave him the chance to say he didn’t think of her as a little sister anymore, he clammed up. What did she expect? She’d been around Trey all of five minutes, and of course she’d imagined something different in his eyes; she’d been praying to see a glimmer of interest for years. The fact that he’d probably never see her as anything but a little sister made her want to punch him in the gut, but that was unfair. This was all on her.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” she demanded of Trey. “Don’t you have Instagram videos to shoot for your admirers to gawk over?” Trey was an Instagram and YouTube hotshot. He made videos showing and instructing how to do insane, borderline idiotic tricks on mountain bikes and snow skis. Ella followed him. How could she help it? But she’d noticed that most of his followers seemed to be female and were enthralled with his perfect face and tough body more than learning how to do any of his tricks. She didn’t blame the w
omen, but she could still admit it annoyed her.

  “I hired him,” Gavin said.

  “You can afford him?” Ella asked. It sounded more like something their brother Heath, would do. His four resorts were even more lavish than this one, and he was always doing some kind of interesting promotion.

  Trey chuckled. “I gave him a discount.”

  Gavin cracked half of a smile. “You’d better not have, you idiot.”

  Trey just gave them a self-satisfied smirk and stepped closer. “To answer your question, beautiful Cinderella, Gavin hired me to impress a bunch of corporate yuppies who have booked the resort this weekend to teach them tricks so they can impress their friends when they go home.”

  “So you’re only here for the weekend?”

  “Not long enough for you?” Trey arched an eyebrow.

  No, it would never be long enough for her. She’d be happy to spend the rest of eternity with Trey, but she clamped a lid on that fantasy. Trey was no Prince Charming, and she was better suited to clean the chimney than campaign for Trey’s affections. Judging by the way he appeared to flit from one gorgeous woman to the next, she should be glad he wasn’t interested. He’d reel her in, maybe finally kiss her like she’d always dreamed about, and then he’d dump her and move on. She’d be in a worse position than ever.

  Keep reading Don’t Date Your Brother’s Best Friend here.

  Excerpt - Don’t Fall for a Fugitive

  “Do you have a novel, or seven, that you could leave with me to get through the day?” Hazel asked. “I hate to be the one to break this to you, but the books on your Kindle app were ruddy lame, and I don’t dare open my own phone for fear some technology will track me down faster than a police dog.”

  Heath smiled but pretended to be affronted. “My books are lame? You don’t like Marketing Rebellion and Mind Your Business?”

  “Blimey, no! I should care about reading those kinds of books. Maybe I’d find something that would help my own business grow, but I can’t stand nonfiction.”