A Ranch For The Runaway Bride
Weeks before her wedding, Emily Weber walks away from her planned society shindig and her cheating fiancé—straight to her cousin’s New Mexico ranch. Everyone’s advice: Emily’s got to work it out of her system, and her childhood acquaintance—all six feet of dark good looks—is just the guy to help.
Colin Talbot recognizes someone on the run from their life. Hell, the rootless photojournalist hasn’t been on his ranch in years, till now. But he’s not about to indulge in a promise of pleasure, not with a potential for disaster. Emily still wants marriage and babies; he can’t wait to bolt. So he’ll keep his distance before she has him wanting what he can’t have: a family and a forever love.
“I’m your man.”
She laughed. “Actually, I’m your woman. I’m here if you need someone to talk to. In the past few weeks you’ve let me be me more than anyone else ever has. Only fair to return the favor.” She leaned back on the picnic table, stretching the fabric across her breasts. “And the best part? Once we go back to our lives, we’ll probably never see each other again. But even a momentary connection is better than nothing.”
He had a feeling there was an underlying meaning to that last part. “Are we still talking about...talking?”
Emily turned to him, giving him a glimpse of gorgeous leg.
“This is me going with the flow.” She drew in a deep breath. “Seizing the moment.”
“Being reckless.”
“That, too. But the great thing about knowing what the possibilities are—or aren’t—from the get-go is that there are no expectations. So you can relax and enjoy the moment.”
His blood pumped so hard he could hardly hear her. He didn’t need to; he knew what she meant. Still... “Emily, I can’t take advantage of you.”
“I’m not asking you to. But hey, if you don’t want to—”
“Want has nothing to do with it.”
She leaned in close to him. “Actually, it has everything to do with it.”
WED IN THE WEST: New Mexico’s the perfect place to finally find true love!
Dear Reader,
Home is a concept I find myself exploring in all my stories, since home is so much more than simply an address. Because how and what we think of as home so often defines us as people, shaping our personalities, our ability to relate to our other humans and our outlook on life.
After major shake-ups in both their lives, Colin and Emily are forced to rethink what home means to them—Colin as he questions the pull back to his roots, and Emily as she discovers that she can’t even define what home means to her until she comes to terms with who she really is. And both of them have some serious thinking to do about family, as well. As in, what it’s always been...or what it could be going forward. On the surface, it’s not exactly the best soil for love to grow...or is it?
I hope you enjoy watching the last of the four Talbot brothers find his perfect match as much as I loved helping him along the path to happily-ever-after.
Blessings,
Karen
Falling for the Rebound Bride
Karen Templeton
Karen Templeton is an inductee into the Romance Writers of America Hall of Fame. A three-time RITA® Award–winning author, she has written more than thirty novels for Harlequin. She lives in New Mexico with two hideously spoiled cats. She has raised five sons and lived to tell the tale, and she could not live without dark chocolate, mascara and Netflix.
Books by Karen Templeton
Harlequin Special Edition
Wed in the West
Back in the Saddle
A Soldier’s Promise
Husband Under Construction
Adding Up to Marriage
Welcome Home, Cowboy
A Marriage-Minded Man
Reining in the Rancher
A Mother’s Wish
Jersey Boys
Meant-to-Be Mom
Santa’s Playbook
More Than She Expected
The Real Mr. Right
Summer Sisters
The Marriage Campaign
A Gift for All Seasons
The Doctor’s Do-Over
The Fortunes of Texas: Whirlwind Romance
Fortune’s Cinderella
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
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To my five guys
Who made our home more than we could have ever imagined.
Love you.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Epilogue
Excerpt from How to Steal the Lawman’s Heart by Kathy Douglass
Chapter One
The young woman had been eyeing him from the other side of the luggage carousel for several minutes, her pale forehead slightly crimped. Far too wiped out to be paranoid—or return her interest, if that’s what it was—Colin instead focused on his phone as he reflexively massaged an unyielding knot in the back of his neck. Although truthfully his entire body was one giant screaming ache after nearly two days either on a plane or waiting for one—
“Um... Colin? Colin Talbot?”
Instinctively clutching his camera bag, he frowned into a pair of sweet, wary blue eyes he was pretty sure he’d never seen in his life. Clearly he was even more tired than he’d realized, letting her sneak up on him like that.
With a squeaky groan, the carousel lurched into action, the contents of the plane’s belly tumbling down the chute, bags and boxes jostling each other like a bunch of sleepy drunks. The other passengers closed in, ready to pounce, many sporting the standard assortment of cowboy hats and beat-up boots you’d expect to see in New Mexico. Colin squinted toward the business end, keeping one grit-scraped eye out for his beat-up duffel, then faced the young woman again. Crap, his backpack felt like it weighed a hundred pounds. Not to mention his head.
“Have we met? Because I don’t—”
“I was a kid, the last time I saw you,” she said, a smile flicking across a mouth as glossy as her long, wavy hair, some undefined color between blond and brown. “When I visited the ranch.” She tucked some of that shiny hair behind one ear, the move revealing a simple gold hoop, as well as lifting the hem of her creamy blouse just enough to hint at the shapely hips her fitted jeans weren’t really hiding. Hell. Next to this perfect specimen of refinement, Colin felt like week-old roadkill. Probably smelled like it, too, judging from the way the dude next to him on that last leg from Dallas kept leaning away.
The smile flickered again, although he now saw it didn’t quite connect with her eyes. She pressed a slender, perfectly manicured hand to her chest. “Emily Weber? Deanna’s cousin?”
Deanna. His younger brother Josh’s new wife. And their dad’s old boss’s daughter. Now, vaguely, Colin remembered the gangl
y little middle schooler who’d spent a few weeks on the Vista Encantada that summer more than ten years ago. Vaguely, because not only had he already been in college, but she was right, they hadn’t talked much. If at all. Mostly because of the age difference thing. That she even recognized him now...
“Oh. Right.” Colin dredged up a smile of sorts, before his forehead cramped again. “You don’t look much like I remember.”
Humor briefly flickered in her eyes. “Neither do you.”
He shifted, easing the weight of the backpack. “Then how’d you know it was me?”
A faint blush swept over her cheeks. “I didn’t, at first. Especially with the beard. But it’s hard to ignore the tallest man in the room. Then I noticed the camera bag, and I remembered the photo I spotted at your folks’ house, when I was there a few months ago for the wedding. Josh’s wedding, I mean.” She grinned. “There’s been a few of those in your family of late.”
Seriously, his brothers had been getting hitched like there’d been a “buy one, get two free” sale on marriage licenses. First Levi, then Josh—his twin younger brothers—and soon Zach, the oldest, would be marrying for the second time—
“In any case,” she said, “enough pieces started fitting together that I decided to take a chance, see if it was you. Although you probably wondered who the creeper chick trying to pick you up was.”
Colin glanced back toward the carousel. “Thought never crossed my mind.”
Out of the corner of his eye, he caught her gaze lower to her glittery flat shoes. “Crazy, huh?” she said, looking up again. But not at him. “After all this time, both of us being on the same plane to Albuquerque.”
“Yeah.”
This time the sound that pushed from her chest held a definite note of exasperation. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to intrude on your privacy or whatever. I just thought, since I did recognize you, it’d be weird not to say anything. Especially since we’re probably both headed up to the ranch. Unless...” Another flush streaked across her cheeks. “You’re not?”
Colin shut his eyes, as if that’d stop her words’ pummeling. True, he was exhausted and starving and not at all in the mood for conversation, especially with some classy, chatty chick he barely remembered. A chatty chick who clearly didn’t know from awkward. Or didn’t care. But she was right, he was being an ass. For no other reason than he could. Cripes, his father would knock him clear into next week for that. Not to mention his mother.
“No. I am,” he said, daring to meet her gaze. And the you’ve-gone-too-far-buster set to her mouth under it. A mouth that under other circumstances—although what those might be, God alone knew—might have even provoked a glimmer of sexual interest. Okay, more than a glimmer. But those days were long gone, stuffed in some bottom drawer of his brain where they couldn’t get him in trouble anymore. “And I apologize. It was a rough flight. Part of it, anyway.”
Although not nearly as rough as the weeks, months, preceding it.
Emily’s gaze softened. Along with that damn mouth. Yeah, sympathy was the last thing he needed right now.
“From?”
Since his name was plastered all over the magazine spread along with the photos, it wasn’t exactly a secret. “Serbia.”
A moment of silence preceded, “And why do I get the feeling I should leave it there?”
His mouth tugged up on one side. “Because you’re good at reading minds?”
She almost snorted, even as something like pain flashed across her features. “As if. Then again...” Her gaze slid to his, so impossible to read he wondered if he’d imagined the pain in it. “Perhaps some minds are easier to read than others?”
Nope, not taking the bait. Even if he’d had a clue what the bait was. His arms folded across a layer of denim more disreputable than his yet-to-appear duffel, he said, “You get on in DC? Or Dallas?”
“DC.”
“And nobody’s picking you up?”
Her mouth twisted. “It was kind of last-minute. So I told Dee I’d rent a car, save her or Josh the five-hour round trip. They’ve got their hands full enough with the kids and the ranch stuff this time of year, and I can find my own way.” Her eyes swung to his again. “What about you?”
“They don’t know I’m here.”
That got a speculative look before she snapped to attention like a bird dog. “Oh, there’s one of my bags—”
“Which one?”
“The charcoal metallic with the rose trim. And there’s the two others. But you don’t have to—”
“No problem,” Colin said, lugging the three hard-sided bags off the belt. Gray with pink stripes. Fancy. And no doubt expensive. His gaze once more flicked over her outfit, her hair and nails, even as his nostrils flared at her light, floral perfume.
Rich girl whispered through his brain, as another memory or two shuffled along for the ride, that his new sister-in-law’s mother had hailed from a socially prominent East Coast family, that there’d been murmurings about how Deanna’s aunt hadn’t been exactly thrilled when her only sister took up with a cowboy and moved to the New Mexico hinterlands. Something about her throwing her life away. A life that had ended far too soon, when Deanna had only been a teenager.
Not that any of this had anything to do with him. Didn’t then, sure as hell didn’t now. Never mind the knee-to-the-groin reaction to the charmed life this young woman had undoubtedly led. The sort of life that tended to leave its participants with high expectations and not a whole lot of understanding for those whose lives weren’t nearly so privileged—
“Hey. You okay?”
Colin gave his head a sharp shake, refusing to believe he saw genuine concern in those blue eyes. Apparently the long trip had chewed up more than a few brain cells.
“I’m fine. Or will be,” he said as he grabbed his bag off the belt, dumping its sorry, chewed-up self on the airport’s floor beside the shiny trio. “Nothing a shower, some food and a real bed won’t fix.” Not to mention some sorely needed alone time. “And the sooner we get—” home, he’d started to say, startling himself “—back to the Vista, the sooner I can make that happen.” Slinging the duffel over his shoulder with the camera bag and commandeering the smaller two of Emily’s bags, he nodded toward the rental car desk across the floor. “So let’s go get our cars and get out of here.”
Jerking up the handle of the larger bag, Emily frowned. “Um...why rent two cars? Wouldn’t it make more sense to share one? Besides, don’t take this the wrong way, but you do not look like someone up for driving through a couple hundred miles of nothing. In the dark, especially. So I’ll drive, how’s that?”
That got a momentary sneer from the old male ego—because Old Skool Dude here, the man was supposed to drive—until weariness slammed into him like a twenty-foot tidal wave. And along with it logic, because the woman had a point. Didn’t make a whole lot of sense to rent two separate vehicles when they were going to the same place.
Not to mention the fact that passing out and careening into a ravine somewhere wasn’t high on his to-do list. However...
“You might not want to be confined with me in a closed space for two-and-a-half hours.” Her brows lifted. “I think I smell.”
She laughed. “Not that I’ve noticed. But it’s warm enough we can leave the windows open.”
“Once we get up past Santa Fe? Doubtful. Spring doesn’t really get going good until May, at least.”
A shrug preceded, “So I’ll put on another layer—”
“But what’ll you do for a car once you’re there?”
“Dee said there’s a truck I can use, if I want. So I was gonna turn in the rental tomorrow in Taos, anyway...”
First off, that shrug? Made her hair shimmer around her shoulders, begging to be touched. So wrong. Second, the image of Emily’s perfectly polished person collided
in Colin’s worn-to-nubs brain with whatever undoubtedly mud-caked 4x4 her cousin was referring to. The ranch vehicles weren’t known for being pretty.
Unlike the woman with the shimmery hair who’d be driving one of them.
So wrong.
Then he dragged his head out of his butt long enough to catch the amused smile playing around her mouth. “You really have a problem sharing a ride with me?”
Colin’s cheeks heated. “It’s not you.”
“Actually, I got that. No, really. But I’m beginning to understand what Josh said about you being a loner—”
“I’m not—”
“Even I know you haven’t been home in years,” she said gently. “That you’ve barely been in touch with anyone since you left. And then you don’t even tell your family you’re coming back? Dude. However,” she said, heading toward the rental desk, her hair swishing against her back. Glimmering. Taunting. “My only goal right now is to get to the ranch.” She glanced back over her shoulder at him, and once again he saw a flicker of something decidedly sharp edged. “Expediency, you know? Your issues are none of my business. Nor are mine yours. In fact, we don’t even have to talk, if you don’t want to. I won’t be offended, I promise. So. Deal?”
With the devil, apparently.
“Deal,” Colin grumbled, hauling the rest of the bags to the desk, wondering why her reasonableness was pissing him the hell off.
* * *
An hour later, Emily had to admit Colin had been right about two things: the farther north they went, the colder it got; and he was definitely a little on the gamey side. Meaning she’d had no choice but to keep the windows at least partly down, or risk suffocation.
Also, it was dark. As in, the headlight beams piercing the pitch blackness were creepy as all get-out. To her, night meant when the street lamps came on, not that moment when the sun dived behind the horizon and yanked every last vestige of daylight with it. Her heart punched against her ribs—so much for her oh-I’ll-drive bravado back there in the airport, when for whatever reason it hadn’t occurred to her she’d never actually driven the route before. Somebody had always ferried her to and from Albuquerque. Sure, she would’ve made the trek herself in any case, but being responsible for another human being in the car with her...
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