Her Montana Cowboy

by Jeannie Watt

  Julie gasped and Lillie Jean quickly said, “Not on purpose. He was driving and the truck slipped and I wasn’t wearing a shoulder harness.”

  She pressed her lips together tightly as she thought about Gus and how gently he’d dealt with her wound, even though he didn’t like her all that much at the time. “He put the adhesive suture on. Did a good job, too.”

  Julie brushed Lillie Jean’s hair away from the scar. “Yeah. I’d say he did. You’ll hardly see the mark a year from now.”

  “There was so much about him I liked.”

  “But you left.”

  She let out a breath. “Every time I thought about selling, I’d think of him and how much it would hurt him and...” It scared me. “How can I make business decisions with that kind of a mentality?” She turned to Julie. “I want the capital from the ranch to build some security here at home. To grow my business and to buy a house and a car that isn’t the size of two cars.”

  She brought her hands up to massage the back of her neck. “But I don’t want to ruin his life. Which made me realize that I was probably in love with him.” Just as she’d told Thad. “I’m not ready to be in love.”

  “So you came back to what’s familiar.”

  “Rather successfully, too.” Although her success wasn’t making her particularly happy or keeping her warm at night.

  “I think you should talk to him.”

  “To what end? Getting myself back into the same mess I was in with Andrew? Mixed up with another business partner?”

  “The situation may be similar, but are the men the same?”

  “No.” Not even close. “But if things don’t work out—”

  “You sell the ranch.”

  “And stomp on his dreams.”

  Julie rubbed Lillie Jean’s shoulder, then gave it one last squeeze before dropping her hand. One of the twins toddled closer and started patting Lillie Jean’s bare leg with a sticky palm and Lillie Jean pulled the little girl up onto her lap, snuggling her close.

  “I think I’ll leave things as they are for the time being. Build my business. Focus on things I have half a chance of controlling.”

  “Whatever you think’s best.”

  “It’s best.” She hadn’t told Julie about Thad and her grandmother, or the deep sadness in his voice when he’d spoken about Nita and Lyle and how empty the ranch had felt after they’d gone. He’d seemed to think that she was doing the same thing to Gus, even though he hadn’t said so in so many words. And he’d seemed to think that it would be better if she’d left sooner rather than later. It’d made sense to leave, but the fact that Gus was no more out of her head than he’d been the day she’d left, feeling as if she was leaving a little part of her soul in Montana, made her wonder if she had done the best thing.

  And if she hadn’t, what was she going to do about it?

  * * *

  CLEANING THE NEW workplace was a job and a half, the “half” part coming from the mayhem the twins created while Lillie Jean, Kate and Julie scrubbed and washed and repainted. Julie had an evening job at a local drugstore, but she always helped during the day.

  “We should strip this floor,” Kate said, peeling off a loose flake of paint to show a solid wood plank below. “Whoever painted it should be beaten with a newspaper.”

  “There might be damage elsewhere you don’t know about,” Julie said as she measured the window casings.

  The mother-daughter banter always made Lillie Jean feel like smiling—and made her even more aware of how much she missed her own mom. What would Janice Ann say about the direction her daughter had taken in her life?

  She’d be proud of the business, but would she be proud of the way she’d run away from her feelings? Lillie Jean’s mom had never really had a man in her life. She’d done just fine without one. Or so Lillie Jean had assumed.

  Had her mom been lonely? Did she have regrets? She paused to lean on the broom she was using, watching Julie and Kate wrangle over whether the windows would look better with blinds or pull-down shades when her phone buzzed.

  She took a look, then almost dropped it.

  I’m in town.

  Why was Gus in town? Lillie Jean shot Julie a suspicious look, then looked back at the phone. Julie didn’t work that way. She was the sort who would have told her, “I’m contacting this man for your own good.”

  Instead of texting back, Lillie Jean stepped out onto the sunny sidewalk and pushed the call icon. A second later Gus answered.

  “You’re in Texas.”

  “Yeah. I am.” His voice was rougher than she remembered. Or maybe he was as nervous as she was. “Long drive.”

  “You drove?”

  “I needed thinking time.”

  That was not a good sign. “Did Julie have anything to do with this?” Lillie Jean asked suspiciously, just in case she’d read the woman wrong.

  “Who’s Julie?”

  “Never mind.” Lillie Jean’s thoughts tumbled over themselves. Gus was in Texas. There could only be one reason for that. The reason she’d been trying to talk herself out of ever since she got back home.

  There was a moment of utter silence before he said, “Can we meet?”

  “You kind of set things up so that we have to meet, didn’t you?”

  “Yeah. I did.” And he didn’t sound one bit repentant about it.

  She gave him the address of the shop, then sank down on one of the wooden benches that flanked the door. Gus was in Texas. She needed to come up with a plan of action—fast—but her brain seemed stalled out on the fact that in a few minutes she was going to see the guy who’d been haunting her dreams. A guy who’d driven all the way to Texas to see her. A guy who—

  The thought went unfinished as a dark pickup truck with Montana plates pulled to the curb. Lillie Jean felt a burst of nerves as Gus got out and started toward her like a guy on a mission. Lillie Jean rose to her feet, wondering why he looked more angry than happy to see her.

  Instead of saying hello, Gus stopped a few feet away and said, “One person shouldn’t make the decisions for two.”

  Lillie Jean’s chin dropped and her eyebrows rose. “Excuse me?”

  “I said, one person—” he pointed at her “—shouldn’t make decisions for two.” He moved his finger back and forth between them. “I’m excluding Thad from the equation, because this should be between just you and me.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Yeah. You did. I know Thad was trying to save me from myself, but, what the hell, Lillie Jean? Did you think you were saving me, too?” His voice dropped to something close to a growl. “Because I don’t need anyone doing my thinking for me.”

  It took Lillie Jean a moment to find her voice and say, “I thought I was saving both of us.”

  “What about communication?”

  Good point. Excellent point. But once she’d made her decision to leave, she’d been afraid of being talked out of it, plain and simple. Afraid of the consequences—and that was what she needed to make clear.

  She met his eyes, willing him to understand that she hadn’t been trying to hurt him. That she’d chosen the less of two evils. “I was scared, Gus. I wasn’t ready to fall in love. I convinced myself that if I didn’t see you every day, I’d move on.”

  “And did you?”

  Lillie Jean swallowed. “No.” The word hung in the air, but she couldn’t think of anything to add.

  Gus stared at her, his mouth hard, then he shoved a hand through his hair and shifted his gaze down the street toward the quiet intersection. He held himself so tautly, seemed so uncertain as to his next course of action that an unexpected sense of calm settled over Lillie Jean.

  He was angry at being left out of the loop. Angry that she and Thad had made decisions without him. Rightly so. She’d thought she was saving them both. She’d been wrong. But now he
was here. In Texas. With her. And it felt utterly right.

  She folded her arms over her chest. “Why did you drive down here instead of calling?”

  Gus brought his attention back to her, and there was something in his expression that made her breath catch. “Because some conversations need to take place in person.”

  “Without warning.”

  “Yeah,” he said in a low voice. “Without warning. What would that be like?”

  It wasn’t hard to follow his meaning.“This is different than when I showed up at the ranch.”

  “How so?”

  Lillie Jean didn’t hesitate, even though saying the words aloud took courage. “I didn’t go to the ranch because I cared about you.”

  Gus’s eyes narrowed ever so slightly. “You think I came down here because I care?”

  His words should have given her a heart attack, but instead they only made her more certain. “Yes. I think you did.”

  Gus went still, and then, after a long second he asked, “And how do you feel about me?” There was just enough of an edge to his voice to tell her how important her answer was to him.

  “I love you.”

  And there it was. The thing that bound them together. The thing they’d have to work their lives around, because now that he was with her, Lillie Jean wasn’t about to let him go. What she hadn’t realized was a possibility that morning was now a certainty. She was going to figure out a way to be with this man.

  “Lillie Jean...”

  For one frozen moment, they faced off, then he reached for her and Lillie Jean went home, wrapping her arms around the man she loved, pressing herself against his solid chest. Beneath her cheek, his heart beat a steady rhythm. One she wanted to hear for the rest of her life.

  “I missed you so much,” he murmured against her hair. “The ranch wasn’t the same after you left.”

  “That was one of Thad’s worries.”

  Gus leaned back to look down at her. “It didn’t matter about the ranch. It was me feeling empty that made me climb into the truck and drive.” He gave her a serious look. “That and Thad confessing that he’d kind of eased you on your way.”

  “It wasn’t all Thad. I was scared of my feelings, and it felt like the right thing to do. I thought I was stopping a situation that could hurt us both. And I really did have unfinished business down here.”

  “Are things settled now?”

  “The important things.”

  Gus stepped back and let his hands slide down Lillie Jean’s arms until they reached her fingers, which he laced with his own. “Are you still afraid of being in love?”

  “I think this is the first time I’ve ever been in love, Gus. I’ve never felt anything like this before.”

  He brought his forehead down to lightly touch hers. “I love you, too, Lillie Jean. It happened fast. I wasn’t expecting it, but I do.”

  She rose up on her toes to meet his lips in a kiss that seemed as much a healing of the past as it was a promise for the future. When she let her heels touch the ground again, she stroked the side of his face, loving the rough feel of the scruff beneath her palms, and said, “Come on inside. There are some people I want you to meet.”

  Six months later.

  DUE TO THE wonder of digital communication and overnight delivery, Lillie Jean Designs was taking off in a big way in little Serenity, Texas, while the designer lived sixteen hundred miles away on a cattle ranch that no longer felt as if its heart was missing. A heart Gus never knew existed until the night he’d come upon the old Cadillac stuck in the mud, and now couldn’t imagine living without.

  The beauty part was that he didn’t have to. Lillie Jean Hardaway had agreed to become his wife in the spring. They’d chosen the date she’d arrived on the ranch for their wedding day, and Gus couldn’t be happier.

  Thad was getting used to the idea. It probably wasn’t easy on him, having a full-time reminder of his lost wife, but Lillie Jean wasn’t Nita, and Thad didn’t live on the ranch. They’d be okay. And Thad had taken an interest in Lillie Jean’s business partner, Julie, when she and Kate and the twins had come to visit during the summer. He’d done the tour guide thing, and then he and Julie had slipped away for a quiet dinner the night before she was due to fly back to Texas.

  Was a long-distance romance a-brewing?

  He had no idea...but he was hopeful. And in the meantime, he had a romance of his own to maintain.

  Lillie Jean came out of her house, pulling on her gloves, and Henry pressed his little nose against the window. She smiled as she saw him waiting for her near the gate.

  “You’re late.”

  “Finishing a sketch and I lost track of time.” They walked to the idling tractor and Lillie Jean climbed the steps first because it was her turn to drive.

  “Are you still going to help me cut the silk this afternoon?” she asked.

  “I’m a man of my word.” He was also a man who’d learned a great deal about fabric—like the fact that silk was hard to handle and cutting involved a labor-intensive process of laying out tissue paper and cutting a single piece at a time.

  “Yeah, I know.” She sent him a cheeky smile as she reached for the gearshift. “That’s why I love you.”

  “Lillie Jean?”

  She glanced his way, and he placed a gloved hand lightly on her cheek, holding her steady as he leaned in to kiss her lips. Then he smiled at her and settled back in his seat as Lillie Jean put the tractor in gear.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Lawman’s Secret Vow by Tara Randel.

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  The Lawman's Secret Vow

  by Tara Randel

  CHAPTER ONE

  A STRONG HAND clasped Eloise Archer’s upper arm, yanking her toward a deserted hallway in the Palm Cove, Florida, police department. She glanced at the hand and then looked up at the serious dark blue eyes of fellow detective Dante Matthews.

  “Chambers is on the warpath. Pretend we’re having a work-related conversation.”

  She clutched the file folders in her arms tighter to her chest, ignoring the shimmers of attraction that came with Dante’s touch. It was bad enough she worked with the handsome man, was it too much to ask that she not...notice him so much? They had a professional relationship, end of story. But Dante, with lush dark hair, recently cut short after his last undercover operation, stood tall and lean, filling out his button-down shirt and jeans—very much a dream ma
n.

  Or hers, anyway.

  She spied over her shoulder to see Lieutenant Chambers standing in the doorway of his office across the wide, busy squad room, arms crossed over his barrel chest. Dante was right on the mark with his assessment. Their superior officer did not look happy.

  “What did you do now?” she asked, returning her gaze to his. She knew the answer. Wanted his version.

  “Nothing serious.”

  “Really? I heard your last case had a bit of a hiccup,” she returned, showing him she wasn’t clueless. In fact, she probably knew more about the results of his undercover operation than he thought she did.

  His eyes crinkled in the corners when he smiled at her. “Hiccup is an understatement.”

  “Jumped in to make the arrest too soon?”

  “Not by design. Six months of undercover work down the drain, but at least I got one arrest in the end.”

  “Tell me what went wrong.”

  “It’s not important.” His fingers repeatedly squeezed and released her bicep in a rhythm she doubted he was aware of. That was Dante, always moving. “What is important is that I need your help.”

  One eyebrow rose. She knew what was coming.

  “I’ve been relegated to desk duty until Chambers decides to give me a break. I’m behind on paperwork. Any chance I can talk you into a late-night catch-up session?”

  “Reviewing reports? Why would I do that when I have my own to manage?” She held up the folders to prove her point, immediately missing the warmth of his grasp on her blouse-clad arm when he dropped his hand.

  “We can go out for drinks afterward.”

  “I don’t think—”

  “That’s right. You don’t drink. How about grabbing some food?”

  “I haven’t even agreed.”

  A slow smile spread over his lips. “Come on, Ellie. Help a coworker out here.”

  Eloise’s face burned. He was the only person in her life to have ever given her a nickname. “Eloise will do.”

  “But you look like an Ellie.”

  Did she? Her name happened to be a bit old-fashioned, probably the reason why her parents had given it to her when she was born. Literary professors, they loved classics from centuries past. But Ellie? The woman who dressed in a white blouse and navy or black skirt every day? Pulled her hair back in a no-nonsense bun to keep it out of her face? She was an Ellie?