Treasure and Protect_a small town romantic suspense novel

by Lori Ryan

  Treasure and Protect

  Book Seven in the Heroes of Evers, Texas Series

  Lori Ryan

  Contents

  Heroes of Evers, Texas Series

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Epilogue

  Also by Lori Ryan

  About the Author

  Copyright 2017, Lori Ryan.

  All rights reserved.

  This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this material is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author / publisher. This book may not be resold or uploaded for distribution to others in any form.

  This is a work of fiction. Any references to people, places, persons, or characters are all intended as fictional references and are the work of the author.

  Heroes of Evers, Texas Series

  Love and Protect

  Promise and Protect

  Honor and Protect

  Serve and Protect

  Desire and Protect

  Cherish and Protect

  Treasure and Protect

  1

  Cora Walker wasn’t a stupid woman, but it was beginning to dawn on her that she was foolish at times.

  Now was one of those times.

  She had just caught herself fantasizing about Justin Kensington. Again.

  She wondered if she’d ever get past her inane obsession with the blond-haired god. Sure, he had the kind of body that made you want to lick him like a lolly-pop, and yes, his eyes were mesmerizing in the extreme, but still. She should have more control than this, shouldn’t she?

  When he walked into the diner while she was waiting for her friend Laura Kensington to arrive, she’d caught herself imagining he might walk up to her. Instead of seeing the reality—which had been him saying hello to Presley and James across the room—she’d pictured him ignoring all the greetings from friends as he walked through the room to get to her. That kind of intense, single-minded focus you saw on a man’s face in a movie when he saw the woman he wanted across a crowded room.

  When he reached her, he’d put out his hand and draw her up from the table, then step into her space, standing just inside the line that said they were more than friends. He’d put one arm around her waist, letting his hand slide along her hip and around to her back. He’d press her to him, blue eyes sparkling with heat, and bend to whisper a personal hello in her ear.

  She often had fantasies like this about Justin, despite the fact that he’d shown her time and again he had no interest in her other than as a friend.

  Her sister was the romance novelist in the family. Somehow, Ashley always came up with these steamy, suspenseful plots filled with twists and turns that boggled Cora’s mind. If Cora was writing a romantic suspense, she’d have lame little narrations, like: in a stupidly handy turn of events, the heroine stumbled on a loaded weapon and turned to fire at her pursuer. She was a miraculously good shot for someone with no experience with a gun.

  Yeah, Cora wasn’t an author for a reason. But with her fantasies about Justin, Cora could have given Ashley a run for her money.

  They’d be at a party and she’d invent scenes where Justin drew her into a closet and stripped her bare, whispering for her to be quiet as he ravished her. In another, he’d dropped his beer bottle and lifted her so he could set her on a nearby table to kiss her properly.

  “Properly” being with her legs and arms wrapped around him as he ground between her thighs.

  She was welcomed back to the real world when Justin slid into the seat across from her.

  “Hey, Cora. Meeting someone?” His dimples got her every time. He was like Robert Redford back in the ’70s when he was super hot, only modern, not wearing shirts with big collars unbuttoned halfway to his knees.

  Not that she’d mind his shirt unbuttoned halfway to his knees.

  She mentally slapped herself. “Laura. We’re having lunch.”

  Our heroine has resorted to stating the painfully obvious in an attempt at witty repartee with the hero.

  He grinned at her.

  “We have lunch sometimes,” she mumbled. Lord, she couldn’t stop herself.

  Gina, one of the two sisters who owned and ran Two Sisters diner came to the table giving Cora the reprieve she badly needed.

  “Still waitin’ on one more?” she asked. Cora had already told her she was waiting for Laura.

  “I can’t stay. Tina’s making me a sandwich to go,” Justin said, with a nod of his head toward Tina, the other sister, who could be seen through the pass-through window that led to the kitchen.

  It wasn’t a surprise. When Justin first came to town, people hardly saw him. He stayed holed up in his house or office all the time. If you did see him, he wore a scowl that warned people away. Nowadays, he smiled more and he had friends, but he still worked much of the time. There was also a bit of the scowl left in him. It wasn’t always on his face, but it was there. It was almost like he carried a heaviness with him wherever he went.

  “That’s a pretty necklace, Gina,” Cora said. She leaned in. The necklace was heart shaped with small gems of various colors studding the heart.

  Gina blushed, a hand going to the jewelry on her neck. “Thank you. The General got it for me.”

  No one had to ask who the General was. General Brophy came to town frequently nowadays, both to visit his daughter, Phoebe Joy, who was dating Shane Bishop, and to see his favorite waitress, Gina.

  When Gina had moved on to a table across the room, Justin leaned in. “Do you think she calls him General in—”

  Cora slapped her hands over her ears. “Don’t say it. You’re horrible!”

  “What’s horrible?” Laura asked, plopping herself on the seat next to Cora.

  Justin was laughing as he got up and walked away.

  Laura looked to Cora. “What did I miss?”

  “You don’t want to know.” She searched for another topic. “Did you hear that Ron Knight filed his lawsuit?” The whole town had known the suit was coming.

  “I did.” Laura switched her seat to sit across from Cora now that Justin was gone. “I heard everyone talking about it the minute I walked through the door.”

  Two Sisters Diner was not only in the center of town physically, it was the center of town gossip. Cora didn’t doubt that everyone there was talking about Mr. Knight and his lawsuit.

  She sighed. “I’ll find out how he’s doing later today.” She’d started visiting him on Sundays when he’d been diagnosed with a rare type of cancer. She hadn’t stopped when
he started telling everyone that Caufield Furniture had made him sick by mishandling the chemicals they used at an old storage facility near his land.

  Sadly, his suit against the company was upsetting a lot of people. The company was one of the major employers in the area. People had depended on it for their livelihoods for decades. Seeing it threatened wasn’t going over all that well, even if people felt for Mr. Knight and his neighbors, who’d all been diagnosed with significant illnesses.

  Cora watched Justin pay for his sandwich and walk out. She knew he would be going back to the offices of the nonprofit he ran with Laura. He worked most weekends.

  “Can I ask you something?” Cora asked, refocusing on Laura.

  “Always.”

  “Do you think a person can just decide to get over someone they’ve been hung up on for a long time?”

  Laura didn’t try to pretend she didn’t know who they were talking about. “I’d like to think he’s going to wake up one of these days and see what he’s missing. I happen to think you guys would be great together.”

  Laura was more than a friend of Justin’s. Justin was her former husband’s brother and they worked closely together running the nonprofit they’d started. If anyone knew Justin, it was Laura.

  “I sense a but coming,” Cora said.

  “But,” Laura said, with emphasis, “Justin has some issues and I don’t know when he’s going to get past those.”

  “Yeah,” Cora said. She slumped down in her seat, sipping her club soda.

  Laura tilted her head. “Can I ask you something now?”

  “Always,” Cora said, mimicking her friend’s earlier response.

  “Do you think you’ve been waiting all this time for him to notice you because you want him, or do you think maybe you’re focused on him because he’s unattainable and you know it?”

  Laura’s words were soft but they cut just as if she’d put venom behind them.

  Cora’s denial was immediate. “Of course not.”

  Laura waited.

  Cora laughed at her. “Really, it’s not. I mean, that makes no sense.”

  There was no denying Laura was perceptive. She’d been taught to read other’s emotions at a high cost during her previous marriage. Still, she was wrong here.

  They were interrupted briefly when Gina came to take their orders, but Laura didn’t let the subject drop. “Just think about it. It’s just that, sometimes, people who have lost people early on in their lives do things to make sure they don’t have to go through that again.”

  Cora was silent but she would be lying if she said Laura’s suggestion didn’t stick with her through the rest of the meal.

  Even though her gut response had been that Laura was wrong, some part of her wondered if her friend might be right. Maybe it was time for a little more soul searching instead of just pouting over the fact her crush clearly saw her as nothing more than a friend. A completely platonic, asexual friend.

  2

  Justin tossed his keys onto the desk in his office and looked at the stack of mail waiting for him. He had planned to eat his sandwich while he worked his way through the pile, but the idea held little appeal now.

  He wanted something, but he didn’t know what. Something to take the edge off.

  Cora Walker smiling and laughing as he joked with her came to mind.

  Yeah, Cora would take the edge off.

  Not an option.

  He tossed his sandwich on the desk and pulled his shirt off over his head. There was no one in the office with him and the door to the building was locked. He’d do some pushups to burn off the energy skittering through him.

  He hit the floor of his office, trying to shut down his mind, focusing instead on the sound of the count in his head. One, two, three, four, five.

  Sweet red lips curved into a tempting smile.

  He shut the image out.

  It had taken all his will to stay away from Cora Walker for the last three years. As far as their friends were concerned, her interest in him was one-sided. It was far from that, but since he wouldn’t act on his attraction under any circumstances, it would be unwise to let his feelings show.

  He growled as he added a clap between each pushup. The impromptu workout wasn’t doing shit to blot her out of his mind, but it had taken the edge off a little. He might be able to focus if he kept this up a while longer. He’d be sweaty and grungy, but he’d get his focus back.

  Cora walked through town after lunch, heading for her duplex so she could start on the muffins she’d take to Mr. Knight later that day.

  She turned when she got to Elm Street, though, veering off and heading for the park.

  It hadn’t come as any surprise when Laura referred to her childhood loss. Her background wasn’t a great mystery. The histories of the Walker kids were no secret. The main details were known by everyone in town.

  People might not know what it was like for her as a six-year-old kid to wait on a park swing where her mom had left her. They wouldn’t know the panic she’d experienced when darkness fell and her mom didn’t return.

  But they all knew the rough details of the story. That she’d been found by a stranger who took her to the police. That her mom had never returned. That her mom hadn’t cared enough to even leave her in a safe place like outside a hospital or at a fire station.

  Cora stood now, in front of the park swings. This wasn’t the park her mom had left her in, but it was close enough to dredge up the memories.

  As if some unseen force took hold of her body, she moved forward and sat on the nearest swing.

  Her feet reached the ground now.

  She took her phone out, pulling up an internet browser and typing in the phrase: abandonment issues. She’d gone to therapy. She knew what issues she might face as an adult, but she’d honestly thought she’d defeated all of them. She didn’t think she was affected the way she might have been if she hadn’t been adopted by the Walkers.

  There was a bitter taste in her mouth as she remembered how bad things had been the year before when the full revelations of Ashley’s history had come out. Cora hadn’t ever overtly thought the words, but some small piece of her had been grateful she’d dodged the bullet of the emotional scars Ashley had borne.

  Maybe she’d just never realized she was scarred.

  She looked at the list of things someone who had been abandoned as a child might do.

  Jumping from relationship to relationship. She laughed. She certainly hadn’t been doing any of that. Her dating life had been nonexistent lately.

  Looking for flaws in every partner. What partners?

  Attaching too quickly.

  Settling for unhealthy relationships. Again, what relationships?

  Being overly controlling or jealous. Nope.

  Choosing unavailable partners.

  Oh.

  Cora frowned as she looked at the last one in the list and wondered if Laura had read it.

  She went on to read about people who were so frightened of being left, they made sure they didn’t get into a position where someone could leave.

  She had close friends, family who loved her, people in her world she trusted to be there. Still, she had to admit, she hadn’t ever had a serious boyfriend. She hadn’t dated a ton, but the men she’d dated just hadn’t turned out to be the one for her, right?

  She remembered the way one of her exes laughed and joked about not being ready for a ball and chain. Another had always said there was no need to talk about marriage before the two-year anniversary. At the time, she had thought when they fell in love, they’d change their minds. She thought she was mature for not worrying about it before then. They hadn’t fallen in love, though.

  Maybe, on some level, the way her past boyfriends had resisted marriage had been a comfort for her. If they didn’t get married, she wouldn’t have to worry that he might someday decide he didn’t want her. That they would someday want to end that marriage.

  She closed the browser feeling a little s
ick as she began to question just how mentally healthy she’d been all these years, then opened it again, this time navigating to a search page. She entered: internet dating, and scrolled through the online dating options.

  She didn’t know if Laura was right about her wanting Justin because she knew on some level that he wasn’t available. Maybe it was nothing more than a coincidence that several of her boyfriends had been vocal about not wanting to get married yet.

  She didn’t know, but she did know she didn’t want to feel this way anymore. She didn’t want to be the one at the party who wasn’t part of a couple. Whatever her reasons for being attracted to Justin, it was time to put a stop to it because it was clear, Justin Kensington wasn’t into her and she would have to be an idiot to keep telling herself, maybe someday.

  3

  Justin walked into Pies and Pints, wondering why he’d let Laura talk him into coming out. She’d been getting on him to hire a deputy director at the foundation they ran together, arguing he worked too much.

  She thought Justin was a martyr, trying to work himself into the ground to make up for the fact he hadn’t known she was being abused when she was married to his brother. He’d heard the lecture just the other day. It didn’t mean it made it any easier to find the right deputy director for the center. Still, convincing her of that seemed like a lost cause.

  Laura was over by the two dart boards with most of their other friends. His eyes automatically scanned the group for the brown-eyed woman with the chocolate hair he wanted to see, but Cora didn’t seem to be among them.