Little Secrets--Holiday Baby Bombshell

by Karen Booth

  She might be smiling, but he didn’t trust that smile. He was still waiting. Waiting for her to shout recriminations at him now that they were alone. Every other time he had encountered her over the past four months it had been in public. Twice in Ace’s bar, and once walking down the street, where she had made a very quick sharp left to avoid walking past him.

  It had not been subtle, and it had certainly not spoken of somebody who was over the past.

  So his assumption had been that if the two of them were ever alone she was going to let him have it. But she didn’t. Instead, she gave him that card and then began to look...bored.

  “Did you need anything else?” she asked.

  “Not really. Though I have some spreadsheet information that you might want to look over. Ideas that I have for the layout, the menu. It is getting a little ahead of ourselves, in case we end up not liking the venue.”

  “You’ve been to look at the venue already, haven’t you?” It was vaguely accusatory.

  “I have been there, yes. But again, I believe in preparedness. I was hardly going to get very deep into this if I didn’t think it was viable. Personally, I’m interested in making sure that we have diverse interests. The economy doesn’t typically favor farms, Sabrina. And that is essentially what my brothers and I have. I expect an uphill fight to make that place successful.”

  She tilted her head to the side. “Like you said, you do your research.”

  Her friendliness was beginning to slip. And he waited. For something else. For something to get thrown at him. It didn’t happen.

  “That I do. Take these,” he said, handing her the folder that he was holding on to. He made sure their fingers didn’t touch this time. “And we’ll talk next week.”

  Then he turned and walked away from her, and he resisted the strong impulse to turn back and get one more glance at her. It wasn’t the first time he had resisted that.

  He had a feeling it wouldn’t be the last.

  * * *

  AS SOON AS Liam walked out of the tasting room, Sabrina let out a breath that had been killing her to keep in. A breath that contained about a thousand insults and recriminations. And more than a few very colorful swear word combinations. A breath that nearly burned her throat, because it was full of so many sharp and terrible things.

  She lifted her hands to her face and realized they were shaking. It had been thirteen years. Why did he still affect her like this? Maybe, just maybe, if she had ever found a man who made her feel even half of what Liam did, she wouldn’t have such a hard time dealing with him. The feelings wouldn’t be so strong.

  But she hadn’t. So that supposition was basically moot.

  The worst part was the tattoos. He’d had about three when he’d been nineteen. Now they covered both of his arms, and she had the strongest urge to make them as familiar to her as the original tattoos had been. To memorize each and every detail about them.

  The tree was the one that really caught her attention. The Celtic knots, she knew, were likely a nod to his Irish heritage, but the tree—whose branches she could see stretching down from his shoulder—she was curious about what that meant.

  “And you are spending too much time thinking about him,” she admonished herself.

  She shouldn’t be thinking about him at all. She should just focus on congratulating herself for saying nothing stupid. At least she hadn’t cried and demanded answers for the night he had completely laid waste to her every feeling.

  “How did it go?”

  Sabrina turned and saw her sister-in-law, Lindy, come in. People would be forgiven for thinking that she and Lindy were actually biological sisters. In fact, they looked much more alike than Sabrina and her younger sister Beatrix did.

  Like Sabrina, Lindy had long, straight blond hair. Bea, on the other hand, had freckles all over her face and a wild riot of reddish-brown curls that resisted taming almost as strongly as the youngest Leighton sibling herself did.

  That was another thing Sabrina and Lindy had in common. They were predominantly tame. At least, they kept things as together as they possibly could on the surface.

  “Fine.”

  “You didn’t savage him with a cheese knife?”

  “Lindy,” Sabrina said, “please. This is dry-clean only.” She waved her hand up and down, indicating her dress.

  “I don’t know what your whole issue is with him...”

  Because no one spoke of it. Lindy had married Sabrina’s brother after the unpleasantness. It was no secret that Sabrina and her father were estranged—even if it was a brittle, quiet estrangement. But unless Damien had told Lindy the details—and Sabrina doubted he knew all of them—her sister-in-law wouldn’t know the whole story.

  “I don’t have an issue with him,” Sabrina said. “I knew him thirteen years ago. That has nothing to do with now. It has nothing to do with this new venture for the winery. Which I am on board with one hundred percent.” It was true. She was.

  “Well,” Lindy said, “that’s good to hear.”

  She could tell that Lindy didn’t believe her. “It’s going to be fine. I’m looking forward to this.” That was also true. Mostly. She was looking forward to expanding Grassroots. Looking forward to helping build the winery, and making it into something that was truly theirs. So that her parents could no longer shout recriminations about Lindy stealing something from the Leighton family.

  Eventually, they would make the winery so much more successful that most of it would be theirs.

  And if her own issues with her parents were tangled up in all of this, then...that was just how it was.

  Sabrina wanted it all to work, and work well. If for no other reason than to prove to Liam Donnelly that she was no longer the seventeen-year-old girl whose world he’d wrecked all those years ago.

  In some ways, Sabrina envied the tangible ways in which Lindy had been able to exact revenge on Damien. Of course, Sabrina’s relationship with Liam wasn’t anything like a ten-year marriage ended by infidelity. She gritted her teeth. She did her best not to think about Liam. About the past. Because it hurt. Every damn time it hurt. It didn’t matter if it should or not.

  But now that he was back in Copper Ridge, now that she sometimes just happened to run into him, it was worse. It was harder not to think about him.

  Him and the grand disaster that had happened after.

  Look for CHRISTMASTIME COWBOY, available from Maisey Yates and HQN Books wherever books are sold.

  Copyright © 2017 by Maisey Yates

  Expecting a Lone Star Heir

  by Sara Orwig

  Prologue

  Afghanistan, November

  What else could go wrong?

  In the dark, under a starless sky, they had driven their Humvee straight into an ambush, and now they were barely holding on, pinned down in a firefight with nothing but a crumbling rock wall between them and the enemy. Help couldn’t arrive too soon.

  Mike Moretti was one of the lucky ones—he only had cuts and bruises. His two close friends, Noah Grant and Jake Ralston, also had non-life-threatening injuries. The other member on this US Army Rangers mission, Captain Thane Warner, wasn’t so lucky. Mike didn’t need a doctor to tell him that Thane was hurt badly with wounds to his chest and head, an injured leg and deep gashes all over his body from flying shrapnel. Mike was trying to apply pressure to the two most serious wounds, hoping his captain and friend would hang on until help arrived. Their last communication had been cut off, but before it was he’d been told a chopper was on the way.

  Thane gripped his arm and Mike leaned closer to hear him over the gunfire. His voice was raspy, his breathing shallow as he spoke through the pain that was no doubt seizing his body. “Mike, promise me you’ll take the ranch job for three months at least. Promise me you’ll work for Vivian. I want to
know she’s taken care of when I’m gone.” Coughs racked his body and he grimaced. “Promise me.”

  “I promise,” Mike said without thinking. He concentrated on trying to keep pressure on the wounds.

  Thane grabbed his arm with a strength that shocked Mike as Thane pulled him closer. “Key...in my pocket... Get it.”

  Mike heard the desperation in the captain’s voice, felt it in his grip. But he couldn’t ease up the pressure on these deep wounds or the man would surely bleed out before a medic got to him. When Thane began to struggle, trying to get to his pocket himself, the bleeding worsened, oozing over Mike’s hand.

  “Be still. I’ll get the damn key,” Mike ordered.

  He struggled to get the key out of Thane’s back pocket—he bent closer to Thane and reassured him. “I have the key.”

  Thane squeezed his eyes shut and let out a shaky breath. When he reopened them, Mike saw the gratitude and the fear as clearly as if the captain had spoken the words. “Bottom of box... Packets addressed to Vivian and to you.” He grimaced as the pain no doubt intensified, but he wouldn’t be deterred. “Get Noah... Need him.”

  Mike shook his head. “If I leave you, you’ll bleed to death.”

  As an explosion rocked the ground not twenty feet away, sending up a plume of light, Thane placed one hand over the mound of Mike’s jacket pressed against his bleeding chest wound. “Get him, dammit.”

  Swearing, Mike turned to the man next to him and punched his shoulder to draw his attention. There was no use calling out; his voice wouldn’t be heard over the gunfire.

  As Noah Grant lowered his weapon, Mike told him, “Trade places. Keep pressure on his wounds. He wants to talk to you.”

  Without hesitation, Noah sidled up to the captain and Mike took up his weapon to keep up the barrage on the enemy, all the time hoping against hope they’d be able to get the injured man on that chopper. His eyes scanned the dark sky. Where was it?

  Thane Warner wasn’t only his captain; he was a good friend. Back home, Mike had dated Thane’s younger sister. Though he’d gotten along with the divorcee’s young child, their relationship hadn’t lasted. But Mike’s friendship with Thane had.

  He glanced over his shoulder and saw Noah motioning him over.

  “He’s drifting in and out of consciousness now,” Noah said, shaking his head. “But he wants Jake.”

  Before Mike could move to get their friend, he heard it—the unmistakable sound of a helicopter in the distance. He pointed his index finger up. “Listen. Chopper.” But he still didn’t have eyes on it, and Mike couldn’t help but wonder if it would be able to get their captain out in time.

  If not, Mike admitted with a sinking realization, he had made a promise to Captain Thane Warner and he intended to keep it.

  Copyright © 2017 by Sara Orwig

  ISBN-13: 9781488011955

  Little Secrets: Holiday Baby Bombshell

  Copyright © 2017 by Karen Booth

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