A Cowboy SEAL's Bride

by Amity Lassiter

  With a sigh, she opened the fridge without turning on the kitchen light and scanned for a snack. Myrna had brought a homemade butter tart to their regular weekly morning meeting, so she grabbed that and settled onto the couch to try and distract herself with bad reality TV.

  —Three—

  Lane lifted his rifle, stalking slowly through the mostly burnt out building. Every breath he took rasped louder than the last, and his heart thudded too quickly as he inched forward, one boot ahead of the other. They hadn’t been able to get aerial vision on the target, so a sniper shot was out of the question. It would have been a whole hell of a lot easier. Ahead of him, a door hung half off its hinges, obscuring his view into the next room. He couldn’t hear his teammates behind him anymore, but he had to press on. He knocked the door the rest of the way off its hinges with the heel of his boot just in time to see movement near the window. He moved quickly, turning his sights to it with a sharp intake of breath, only to find a curtain flapping in the uncharacteristic breeze blowing in through the broken windowpane.

  Too late, he heard a scuffle to his right, a soft cry of fear, and swung around. Though he’d never laid eyes on him before, he recognized their target in sand camo fatigues right away. He held a young girl with her arm twisted behind her back, a handgun pressed against her temple. Wrapped in a soft jewel-toned dress, she couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, and Lane knew her from somewhere. Her dark eyes were wide, her lips pressed in a line so tight she was turning white, and her nostrils flared with each breath she took.

  “Stand down!”

  “Put your gun down or I’ll kill her!”

  “I said stand down!”

  Lane’s eyes shot open with a shuddering breath, his sweat-soaked body jerking. If his heart had been pounding in the dream, it was racing now. His breath came fast and short; he couldn’t fill his lungs. Kit’s big, furry body was pressed against the whole length of his, her nose just inches from his jaw. She whimpered and licked his cheek. It took a minute to come to and recognize where he was. Lone Oak. His grandfather’s bedroom. He had hoped, foolishly, that the dream wouldn’t follow him here.

  It was the same every night—sometimes Kit woke him before he got the door open. Sometimes he saw the whole thing. She was the girl from the market; her whole family had been kind to his team, thankful for help in light of the strong arm Hakim and his men had on the town. He had no idea how he had gotten her or why—the market was ten miles away from the building he’d eventually found the pair in, they’d been careful not to raise suspicions. In the next frame, she was dead—her blood smeared across the dust covered walls of the room before Lane could react. He’d shoot Hakim, be hailed as a hero, and then find the rest of the girl’s family slaughtered in the next room. None of it made sense, and none of it ever left him.

  Eventually, it had interfered with his ability to do his job. He’d seen a counselor for a while, tried to regulate. But it hadn’t worked. The only solution was a discharge and a service dog, and even then, every night was hell. Sometimes he could dull it with an extra beer before bed, but that didn’t always work, either.

  Finally able to draw his first full breath, Lane sat up, swinging his legs over the side of the bed. Kit watched him with soulful eyes, her chin on her paws, her ears drooping sleepily. He reached out and stroked the soft spot on her head between them. Nighttime still sucked on a large scale, but things had gotten much better since Kit had come along. During his waking hours, he could get the girl out of his head, and though he still approached bedtime with trepidation, he no longer considered killing himself a more viable option than trying to rest.

  “Good girl.”

  He wiped his hand over his face and got up from the bed, not bothering to put anything on over his boxers. He’d go doze on the couch, but there would be no more sleep tonight. Trudging into the kitchen, he poured a glass of water and settled on the small couch with one of his grandmother’s ancient knit afghans over his shoulders. There was nothing but infomercials and static at this time of night, so he switched it to an advertisement for some self-cleaning kitchen gadget that sliced, diced, and julienned—who knew!—and sat back on the couch.

  He hadn’t expected Lone Oak to be the instant fix for his PTSD, but it would have been nice. It was a complete change from his gridlocked apartment in Denver, so he hoped the laid back, quiet flow of things in Three Rivers would be good for him in the long run, but it was too early to tell, really. The jury was still out on whether having Miranda at such a close proximity would be useful.

  Miranda. He hadn’t thought about her too deeply in a long time. She’d made her decision pretty clear when she’d turned him down 10 years ago, and even more so a couple years later when he returned to find her engaged to someone else. But the existing attraction was undeniable. To him, anyway. He was a different man than the one who had clumsily gotten down on one knee to ask an 18 year old with wanderlust in her eyes to marry him and stay in Three Rivers. And he was sure she was a different woman, too. Still fundamentally the Miranda he’d loved all those years ago, but different. Probably better. None of those changes had dulled the double beat of his heart when he’d seen her for the first time.

  She looked good, anyway. Shiny hair and bright eyes, filled out in all the right places. She’d seemed happy working in the flower beds. Whatever she was doing, it felt like she’d found purpose here in Three Rivers, when she previously hadn’t been able to wait to get out of town. He couldn’t fault her for making the best life here that she could, even if he couldn’t figure out what had tied her down. Thinking about it now was a half decent distraction from the nightmare he’d just come out the other side of. He stretched his legs out and settled in to wait for dawn.

  —FOUR—

  Miranda sucked in a breath and knocked on the door of Jack’s—no, Lane’s, she reminded herself—cabin with one hand while she juggled a still-hot casserole dish of shepherd’s pie in the other. When she’d come home after work to an empty house, old habits had proven too hard to kill, and she’d made more food than she’d eat alone. So he wasn’t his grandfather, but if she knew anything about the male species, they rarely refused a meal. And this would give her a better opportunity to assess the situation than she’d had yesterday when she’d just been too shell shocked seeing him in the first place to consider the implications of him inheriting Lone Oak.

  She heard a shout from the inside of the cabin, but Kit hit the door first, barking like she wanted to chew Miranda’s head off—which might have been slightly intimidating had she not seen what a gangly goofball lie on the other side of those pearly whites. Lane followed not long after, tugging a white t-shirt over his head, but not quick enough that Miranda didn’t catch a glimpse of his chest—well-defined pecs with a sparse cover of dark hair, trailing down to the kind of six-pack you usually only saw on the cover of men’s health magazines, and a darker, thicker trail of hair that got covered by the shirt before she could follow it with her eyes and imagine where it led.

  She didn’t have to imagine—not really. She’d seen what 22 year old Lane had to offer and she knew things only got better with age, but she hadn’t wanted to be dry-mouthed and half turned on when he opened the door and flashed her one of Lane Sutton’s signature smiles. She was supposed to be thinking up a way to talk him out of the ranch, but all she could think about was talking him out of his pants.

  Through the screen door, she watched as he gave Kit a command and her hindquarters dropped to the floor in a sit almost immediately, her barking quieted. He gave an apologetic smile as he pulled the door open.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey…I’m sorry, I should have called. I just…” She held up the dish, gesturing, suddenly nervous. He had said he wanted to be her neighbor and her friend, and this is what neighbors did; she knew that much for sure. “I made too much. I’m used to feeding your granddad.”

  Lane quirked a brow upward, looking from her to the dish—had he gotten sexier since she�
�d seen him yesterday?—then he stepped back and opened the door for her.

  “Never apologize for bringing food. Come in.”

  After some hesitation, she followed him in—she’d been in the house dozens of times since Jack had passed away, but this wasn’t Jack’s house anymore. In a short day, it had changed. It wouldn’t be obvious to anyone else, but the cabin was Lane’s domain, now. It was different…but comforting, somehow. She set the dish on the small wooden kitchen table while Lane went to the fridge.

  “Can I offer you something to drink? I have beer…and water.” He turned from the fridge with two bottles in one hand, rubbing the back of his neck with the other. She might have imagined that he looked a little embarrassed, though it was hard to envision this sexy, confident, ten-years-older Lane as embarrassed or intimidated in any way. “I didn’t exactly plan to entertain.”

  “Oh, I don’t need to be entertained. The beer is fine.”

  “Have a seat.” He set the beer on the table and turned back to the cupboards, opening one, then another. “I’m still figuring out the lay of the land.”

  “Beside the sink,” she supplied, settling into a chair. “And the cutlery is in the drawer on the other side of the sink.”

  Lane retrieved two plates and forks, returned to the table and slid in. His big body looked funny in the place his granddad had once occupied, but when his knees bumped against hers under the tiny table, her mind veered sharply off that road and onto another one completely.

  “Sorry, I forgot everything is tiny here.”

  Jack had given up the big farm house at the road and built the cabin fifteen years earlier when his wife, Elaine, had passed away, downsizing everything, including his kitchen table. It might have been what drew Lane in—the perpetual camp feeling—and it was certainly appealing to Miranda after managing the enormous house her parents had left her.

  She shrugged, reaching across the table to uncover the casserole and start spooning up the still-steaming ground beef-corn-potato mixture.

  “This looks so good.”

  When she looked up, Lane’s mouth was practically watering. Jack had always been appreciative, but never quite like this. She raised a brow and heaped another spoonful onto his plate.

  “It’s nothing, really.”

  “If you had any idea how long it’s been since I’ve had an actual home-cooked meal. Not rations, not ‘home’ cooked in a restaurant, but something an actual person that I actually know cooked for me, or possibly just themselves, but is letting me have some…you’d appreciate how good I think this is.”

  “You haven’t even tried it yet,” she said, laughing as slid the full plate across the table to him and started dishing up her own.

  “I can just tell.”

  “Well, Jack never complained.”

  “He wouldn’t,” Lane said after a mouthful. “But it is good.”

  “I have had my fair share of complaints from 12 year olds. But I think that’s just a pre-teen thing and can’t be held against them.”

  Lane’s brow shot up and she realized he was doing math. It had only been ten years since they’d last seen one another, and she hadn’t had a baby when she was sixteen. It only took a second for him to relax his features, but then she’d opened a whole other can of worms.

  “12 year olds, eh?”

  Miranda swallowed a forkful of her food—it was good—and nodded.

  “I do foster respite care and occasionally take on full time foster kids when the need arises.”

  “Huh,” Lane said, pausing thoughtfully. “I never took you for the kids type.”

  “Well, I was just a kid when you saw me last.”

  “That’s true. And what does your…husband think of this?”

  That was always the question that came next. Right up there with ‘how come you don’t have your own kids?’. Miranda pressed her lips together and prayed for patience.

  “No husband.”

  “Boyfriend, then.”

  “No boyfriend, either. It’s been a few years. I gave up on that whole process when the kids started coming into my life. They take up a ton of time. And it’s way more rewarding, knowing you’re doing something good…instead of just trolling the same old pond with the same old fish in it. The kids are just so…grateful, and loving. I feel like I’ve found my purpose.”

  Lane paused thoughtfully, taking the opportunity to put away a little more of her casserole.

  “So how’d you get into that?”

  The long story meant bringing up Harvey, and her infertility issues, but the short story was an easy out.

  “I was looking for something to do and Myrna Pierce approached me. The first one was emergency newborn care,” she drew a deep breath but then smiled. That had been a challenging three weeks while they found permanent placement for the baby. But Myrna had known what she was doing, because it was just as rewarding as it had been tough, and after that, she’d been hooked on helping these kids while they had nowhere else to go. “That was a challenge. So they’re not all 12 year olds, but those ones are the most vocal about my cooking.”

  “Ungrateful,” Lane said with a shake of his head, digging into the food in earnest.

  The more she talked, the more Miranda felt like she might have found a stand-in for Jack. She hadn’t been explicitly looking for that, but it was nice to know if she kept Lane’s mouth full, he’d listen to her.

  “So that’s been going on for about five years now. And I love it. But what I really want to do is start a summer ranch camp.” She steadied her breath as another wave of disappointment washed over her at the fact that she wouldn’t be doing that on Lone Oak. “For at risk youth…so I can help more kids at once. We’d subsidize it somehow so nobody would ever have to worry if they couldn’t afford to come, they would just know they could come somewhere and be safe.”

  “You could always make it self-sufficient. Raise livestock for proteins, eggs, plant a big garden,” Lane supplied after some thought. “Then all you’d have to worry about would be staffing and utilities. Which I’m sure you could get some help with. Donors, maybe. And volunteers.”

  His thoughtful enthusiasm surprised her, but it was infectious. It was easy to keep talking when someone else was showing the same kind of excitement about her project that she had. And she hadn’t even considered that option, either. Funding had been kind of a vague point she hadn’t quite reached yet, since securing the land was the first step. And as if Lane Sutton wasn’t sexy enough, seeing him take an interest in her heart’s desire without writing it off as something silly made him all that much more attractive. She was supposed to be focusing on her future with fostering, not thinking about getting a closer look at the sneak peek she’d gotten when he answered the door.

  “That’s a good idea…is this something you’ve thought about before?”

  “Nope,” Lane said, scraping the last of his food off his plate and into his mouth. He’d made quick work of it. She’d been so absorbed in her story, in him, that she’d barely touched hers. “Did I mention how long it’s been since I’ve had a good meal?”

  Miranda smiled, shaking her head. “You might have mentioned it once.”

  “Seriously, you’re my favorite neighbor.”

  “I’m your only neighbor,” she reminded him. And it was true. Their two properties were the closest in proximity for at least five miles around; the land parcels were flanked by forest.

  “Seriously? Nobody’s bought up the land around the ranch for development?”

  “Okay, one: this is Three Rivers. Two: Jack would never have allowed it.”

  She watched as Lane leaned back from the table, folding his hands over his stomach with a smile.

  “Sounds like I have some big, cantankerous shoes to fill.”

  —FIVE—

  When Lane had been younger, he hadn’t imagined there’d be a way that Miranda Davenport could be any prettier. That dusting of freckles, those long legs…he’d been wrong. Time and experience had
given her a new kind of beauty he couldn’t quite put his finger on. She’d been about the most worldly eighteen year old he’d ever known back then, but now she was here, and she was different. And it was good.

  Even though he’d protested, she had insisted on helping him wash up the dishes and put things away. They’d never gotten that experience of domestic partnership; working together in the closed quarters of the kitchen, she’d bumped him a couple of times and it was all he could do to resist reaching for her, drawing her close, kissing her like she deserved. And there were fleeting seconds in that closeness they shared that he thought she might want that, too.

  They’d headed back out to the porch with a six pack and she’d stretched out with her long, jean-clad legs in front of her, leaning back on the double swing his granddad had installed. He’d managed to find the right combination of witty and charming and he’d made her laugh—something he hadn’t done in a long time. His last memories of her weren’t her laughter but her sadness and upset, so it was nice to be able to replace that, even if they were never anything more than just neighbors this time around.

  She’d had a beer with dinner and another now and she’d visibly loosened up. Sure, she’d been friendly, even open during dinner, but there was something guarded about her. She’d been protecting herself like she was expecting him to pop another ring out of his pocket. He didn’t plan on repeating that particular mistake.

  “I’d offer you some kind of fun Friday night in Three Rivers,” Miranda said, cracking open another beer. “But this is pretty much exactly everything there is to do on a Friday. Unless you’re interested in the dance hall or Danny’s.”