The Marshalls Boxed Set (Texas Heroes: The Marshalls Books 1-3)

by Jean Brashear

  Josh and Elena’s own infant daughter Consuela and toddler son Eli were being rocked by Linnie Mae and Josh’s Tía Consuela on the porch right behind them.

  “Elena?” Sammie deferred the decision.

  “Perhaps later for them, niña,” Elena answered the girl.

  “They’re just babies,” Clarissa explained. “And Eli gets cranky if he misses his nap, right, Aunt Elena?”

  “You’re right. But maybe you could show me instead?”

  “Great!” Each girl took a hand and led Elena to the barn.

  “Speaking of naps,” said Case, coming up from beside Sammie. “You had a long night last night. How come you’re not taking a nap, too?” His voice wasn’t convincingly stern, and the twinkle in his eyes was anything but.

  “We have company,” she protested. “And you didn’t get any more sleep than I did. You’re the one who got up to fetch him and change him every time.”

  He waggled his eyebrows. “So you need a napping partner?”

  She smiled into his mischievous eyes. “We wouldn’t be very good hosts.”

  “Get a room, you two,” called out Josh.

  “Hey, he’s my older cousin. Gotta listen to good advice,” Case said.

  “Go on with you.” She knew her cheeks were flaming.

  Case plucked their son from her arms, pausing to dip his head and steal a kiss from her. He winked at her as he turned away, his expression tender as he cuddled his son, walking back to rejoin Josh and Quinn.

  Sammie couldn’t help a sigh, watching him.

  Lorie chuckled. “The sight of a gorgeous alpha male holding a baby in his arms is guaranteed to turn a woman’s heart to mush.”

  “It is. I am so lucky.” She’d come so close to losing all this. To sacrificing it out of fear. Thank heavens Case wouldn’t listen.

  “Case thinks he’s the lucky one. From what Quinn has told me about Case’s father, his life was no cakewalk.”

  “I’m going to make sure it is from now on.”

  Lorie sat down beside her. “So, no second thoughts about leaving the high life?”

  “Not a single one.” Sammie turned to her. “You?” Lorie had been a star in her own right, appearing on television with Josh early in his career. Now she was a midwife with a thriving practice.

  “I’d have to be crazy to give up what I have…and my mama didn’t raise a fool. There’s something about those Marshall men, isn’t there?”

  “There certainly is,” Sammie agreed. “And it’s not just the outrageous good looks.”

  “It’s not.” The woman who once took daytime television by storm and had won an Emmy nodded. “But those good looks sure don’t suck.”

  Sammie burst out laughing, and Lorie joined her.

  Three outrageously good-looking males turned to see what was so funny.

  Sammie and her fellow Marshall woman only smiled mysteriously and blew them kisses.

  When she’d been running for her life, could she have ever imagined such happiness?

  No. But was she going to cherish every second of the bounty she had?

  Absolutely.

  “Thank you for making the trip over here,” she said to Lorie. “Case needs family.”

  “He’s got us, whether he wants us or not,” Lorie responded. “Let’s go grab us each a good-looking Marshall man.” She winked. “Elena’s on her own.”

  Grinning, Lorie rose, and Sammie followed her. Maybe she’d never imagined so much happiness coming out of such danger.

  But her mama hadn’t raised a fool either.

  With a smile, Sammie walked toward the love she’d been waiting for all her life.

  Her very own dark angel smiled back at her, cradling their future in his strong arms.

  ~THE END~

  The Marshalls couples also show up in a reunion story that brings together all the Texas Heroes families: TEXAS DREAMS: The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs Book 3

  There are two more Texas Heroes series (individual book titles listed below):

  The Gallaghers of Morning Star

  The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs

  If you enjoyed THE MARSHALLS BOXED SET, I would be very grateful if you would help others find this book by recommending it to your friends on Goodreads or by writing a review on Amazon. If you would like to be informed when my next release is available, please sign up for my newsletter here.

  Thanks!

  Jean

  Get the entire TEXAS HEROES series:

  The Gallaghers of Morning Star

  TEXAS SECRETS

  TEXAS LONELY

  TEXAS BAD BOY

  The Marshalls

  TEXAS REFUGE

  TEXAS STAR

  TEXAS DANGER

  The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs

  TEXAS ROOTS

  TEXAS WILD

  TEXAS DREAMS

  TEXAS REBEL

  Please enjoy the following excerpts…

  THE GALLAGHERS OF MORNING STAR:

  Dalton Wheeler vanished from Morning Star, Texas nearly forty years ago under suspicion of murder, leaving behind him a trail of secrets, scandal and lives torn apart in the wake of his reported death. The woman he loved married another, and life went on. Now the main characters in this tragedy are all gone, and in the wake of the final man’s last will and testament, the past has roared back with a vengeance. Secrets will be revealed and the lives of four people will be shattered as they learn that who they are and where they come from is not at all what they always believed.

  TEXAS SECRETS

  (Boone and Maddie, The Gallaghers of Morning Star #1)

  Up-and-coming chef Maddie Collins finds out that her father’s life was a lie when she is bequeathed a family homeplace she never knew existed—by the husband of the only woman her father ever loved. A former SEAL, sexy cowboy Boone Gallagher arrives back in Texas to discover that the father who drove him away has struck one last blow. The only place he’s ever thought of as home now belongs to a woman who doesn’t want it, and he must keep her there for thirty days—or it will be lost to them both.

  “Who are you? What are you doing on my ranch?”

  Gray eyes went wary, studying him for a long moment that made Boone’s spine tingle with unease. Fringed with thick dark lashes, a striking black ring around the irises, her eyes softened.

  “Are you Boone or Mitch?”

  He stared at her. “I’m Boone,” he replied, frowning. “How do you know my name?”

  She stuck out one slender hand to shake his, her eyes still soft. Too soft. Almost like an apology. “I’m Maddie Collins. Your father mentioned you in his letter.”

  He forgot the extended hand. “What letter?” Boone had only gotten a telegram, and that only after Sam was dead and buried.

  “You didn’t—?” Her eyes darted to the side, looking toward the house. “He didn’t…?”

  “Didn’t what?” His stomach clenched. “Why are you here?”

  The woman named Maddie swallowed, then straightened, shaking her dark brown hair back over her shoulders as if preparing herself. In the sunlight, it glowed hints of red like the sky’s warning of storms to come.

  Then her next words wiped out all thoughts of silky dark hair and husky voices.

  “Your father left the house to me.”

  “He…what?” But even as he waited for her reply, he believed her, this stranger in too-bright gypsy colors who didn’t belong here. He’d been crazy to hope that anything might have changed between him and his father, that Sam had regretted abandoning his sons.

  “I’m sorry. I—I thought you would already know.”

  Her regrets didn’t help. At that moment, he knew only one thing. He wasn’t through losing things that mattered. He’d been a fool to think otherwise.

  Even in death, the man who’d been barely a father still denied him the only place he’d ever thought of as home.

  …Excerpt from TEXAS SECRETS by Jean Brashear © 2011.

  Buy TEXAS SE
CRETS

  Buy Boone’s long-lost brother Mitch’s story TEXAS LONELY

  Buy the secret baby’s story TEXAS BAD BOY

  Maddie and Boone are major characters also in TEXAS ROOTS and all the Morning Star couples appear in TEXAS DREAMS.

  * * *

  THE GALLAGHERS OF SWEETGRASS SPRINGS:

  Nestled in the Texas Hill Country, tiny Sweetgrass Springs was founded by four veterans of the Texas Revolution, and for over a century the town and their ranches grew and prospered. Nowadays, however, too many of the town’s children leave for the big city as soon as they can escape, and Sweetgrass is barely hanging on. The heart and soul of Sweetgrass is Ruby Gallagher, once a scandal for bearing a child out of wedlock and refusing to identify the father. Her daughter vanished from Sweetgrass right after high school, but Ruby, owner of community gathering place Ruby’s Café, remains, keeping vigil, hoping for her daughter’s return. She is fighting to save her ancestors’ legacy, but the town is dying, and it’s breaking Ruby’s heart.

  TEXAS ROOTS

  (Ian and Scarlett, The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs #1)

  When scandal and an ambitious prosecutor wreck talented chef Scarlett Ross’s life and she learns of a grandmother she never knew she had, she flees the notoriety to pay an anonymous visit to Sweetgrass Springs, Texas, a town kept alive only by her grandmother’s determination and carried on the strong shoulders of sexy Texas cowboy Ian McLaren. There she is surprised to discover a yearning to sink roots deep in the Texas Hill Country—but she is terrified that the secrets she’s hiding will endanger everyone she’s come to love.

  What had possessed her mother to keep Sweetgrass Springs a secret for thirty-two years? To tell her that they had no family?

  Scarlett Ross pressed the accelerator and tried to think about that mystery instead of the fear that tangled beneath her breastbone: would she be safe there?

  She crested the last hill, the tiny town a small diamond of light cushioned in flocked green velvet as the smudged violet of night stole over the Texas Hill Country. January here was far kinder than in New York. While the grass was a flaxen hue and some trees were only bare trunks and branches, many were still green.

  The road curved left, right, left again, while Sweetgrass Springs winked in and out of view. Dead tired from the long drive fleeing the wreckage of her life in Manhattan, Scarlett longed for a meal and a bed. Best she’d been able to tell from the limited information available online, however, only the meal would be available in this town of fifteen hundred sixty-seven. The nearest motel was an hour back the way she’d come, but after running full-speed halfway across the country, Scarlett couldn’t bear to wait another night to find out if she, in fact, was not alone in this world, after all.

  She had nowhere else to go. Her career was in ruins and the media hounded her every step, screaming for juicy details of her affair with a drug lord. For two years she’d been a meteor on the rise in the only city that mattered…and now she was a star in a tragedy. A farce, except that a cop had died in the raid.

  She wasn’t a criminal…but she was criminally stupid, no question. How could she not have seen? How could she have blithely accepted Andre’s assurances that it was his love for her that made him want to showcase her talents in the gem of a restaurant into which she’d put her heart and soul?

  Instead, Mirelle had been simply a front for illegal activities that had gone on under her nose. And she’d never once, in the whole two years, suspected. Never wanted to look. She’d simply been grateful for the focus, the distraction from her grief. His offer had come right after she’d lost her only family, and she’d boxed up her mother’s effects without a look. Instead of immediately leaving for parts unknown as her mother had always done when things got crazy, she’d tried something radical: she’d planned to stay in one place. She’d been too devastated to think straight, had been ripe pickings for Andre’s machinations.

  She’d been grateful, so grateful for the rescue. She’d lost her only compass in a life spent on the move, and she’d welcomed the chaos and endless work that allowed her not to think. The solace of someone who cared.

  Except Andre hadn’t really cared, had he? She’d been a dupe, and she’d walked into his trap with gratitude, playing her part to perfection.

  The velvet-lined trap had sprung just when her future seemed brightest, when she was at last emerging from grief and loneliness.

  Only to wind up in handcuffs, with her picture on the front page of the newspaper and featured on the evening newscast. Andre had escaped scot-free, no doubt on some tropical island drinking mai tais with a new idiot, while she stood holding the bag because he’d put her name on the more damaging documents.

  And she’d thought him so sweet to both bankroll the venture and give her Mirelle.

  She’d been trapped in New York for twelve days while the District Attorney had bled her brain dry, then she’d been freed under the stipulation that she’d testify against Andre and his cohorts—should they ever be found. On one of many sleepless nights, wandering the apartment filled with hated memories of Andre, in desperation she’d dragged out a box of her mother’s things. There, in her mother’s girlhood diary, a stunned Scarlett had discovered family. In Texas, of all places, one of the few states she and her mother had not lived.

  A grandmother, still alive, from what little Scarlett could determine…a treasure she’d longed for all her life. Why Georgia Ross had never spoken one word of Sweetgrass Springs or family was reason for caution, certainly, but Scarlett had decided that once she had her life back together, she would seek the answers she craved to the riddle of her mother’s past.

  Then came a late night visit from two very scary men there to silence her before she could testify. Thanks to her drunken neighbors’ screaming battle, the cops had shown up next door, and she’d been left with the memory of a knife to her throat and a whispered warning.

  Scarlett’s timeline had abruptly sped up. She’d left town within hours.

  Texas had been the only place she could think of to go. To pay a visit to the grandmother she’d never known existed and to buy herself a few days to think what to do next.

  She had nowhere else to go. No options.

  Okay, she still had her skills, and there might be some corner of the world where no one read the headlines. Truth to tell, New York only thought of itself as the center of the universe—there were other foodie towns like Santa Fe or San Francisco, other places where her skills could take her. Where the confidence she’d once had in spades could land her a new position.

  If only she weren’t so tired. So scared.

  What if her grandmother wanted nothing to do with her? Why had her mother kept her family a secret? A million things could be wrong, so many ways this could go bad.

  She was alone as never before in her life. Until two years ago, there had always been her mother. They had moved often, yes, but they were a team, they were solid. As long as they’d had each other, they needed little more.

  How Scarlett missed her.

  In Georgia’s place remained only a mystery.

  Who was her mother? Why did she leave here and never say one word to Scarlett about this place, when they had always been so close? Why did Scarlett have to find out about it when she could ask no questions? Was there some reason she should stay away, too? Her mother had been footloose but not foolish.

  It was only a meal. A chance to reconnoiter. She didn’t have to say anything to a soul.

  The road ran alongside a ribbon of water, and a little further she could see it wind through the town next to a three-story courthouse that formed one corner of the town square, most of the buildings dark and closed, only a handful of them taller than one story. It was surely the tiniest town she’d ever seen.

  She rounded the corner, and one building spilled out light in welcome. Ruby’s Café. Owned by one Ruby Gallagher.

  The grandmother Scarlett had never known existed.

  Scarlett sucked in a deep
breath for courage. She’d been the new kid countless times.

  But her mother had always had her back.

  Nonsense. I’ll be okay. I’m a grown woman. It won’t matter if she can’t love me.

  …Excerpt from TEXAS ROOTS by Jean Brashear © 2013.

  Buy TEXAS ROOTS

  Buy book 2 TEXAS WILD

  Buy book 3 TEXAS DREAMS

  Buy book 4 TEXAS REBEL

  * * *

  OTHER TITLES BY JEAN BRASHEAR

  THE PEARL OF PARADISE (novella)

  Five years ago, covert operative Damon Alexander became guardian of the sacred ivory carving, the Pearl of Paradise, and he sacrificed any chance for a life with the woman he loved to save her from being killed by his archenemy, Kwan. The vow curses him to die, should he leave holy ground, but his enemy is back and is picking off those Damon cares for most, taunting Damon to risk the curse to stop him.

  Lily Shen has spent five years closing off her heart from Damon after his devastating betrayal, but hearing that he means to sacrifice his life to stop the killing, she knows that she may have the only means to save him—by revealing to him that he has a son. When Kwan kidnaps their child, the love that never died draws them together in a race to find some means to break the curse and save the son Damon has never met.

  Buy THE PEARL OF PARADISE (novella)

  THE LIGHT WALKER

  Newly-minted detective Jace Carroll’s innocuous first case plunges her into a world of shifting realities. At the center of the tangled knot is the mesmerizing and mysterious Dante Sabanne, a wealthy recluse whose proficiency with ancient poisons, mystical lore and exotic sexual practices makes him by turns a crucial expert witness, a devastating lover…and possibly the man behind a cult whose profane rituals have turned from depraved to deadly.

  The powerful attraction between them complicates everything, as the Jace who thought she knew exactly who she was and what she wanted becomes both pawn and queen in a battle between the dark and the light. Innocents will die if she makes the wrong choice between the evidence before her eyes and the yearnings of a heart she is no longer sure she can trust.