Her Cowboy Defender

He was the last thing she expected—and everything she needed

From the moment he finds himself staring down the barrel of her gun, Rancher Cade McClain knows Piper Lowry isn’t just another stranded tourist. Armed and desperate, she’s prepared to do whatever it takes to carry out her mission. A mission she claims only he can help her with. Knowing it would be impossible to walk away from this tempting, determined woman, Cade offers her a place to hide from the gunmen on her trail. Despite his broad shoulders and intimidating gaze, it isn’t long before the straight-shooting cowboy realizes he can’t guarantee Piper’s safety. Even if his heart is beginning to tell him he has no choice but to try....

He knew he had no choice but to help her.

“Come on,” Cade said roughly. “Let’s get out of here.”

Piper frowned. “Where are we going? Back to my car?”

“No. My ranch isn’t far from here. It’ll be safer there. We can figure out what to do next.”

“‘We?’” she echoed faintly. “Why would you want to help me?”

It was a good question, one he would have asked if he was in her shoes, one he was still asking himself.

A smart man would get away from this woman and her mess as fast as humanly possible. But it seemed he wasn’t that smart.

So, he gave the only answer he could. “Because somebody needs to.”

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

A lifelong mystery reader, Kerry Connor first discovered romance suspense by reading Harlequin Intrigue books and is thrilled to be writing for the line. Kerry lives and writes in New York.

CAST OF CHARACTERS

Piper Lowry—On a desperate mission to save her sister, she finds an unexpected defender in the form of a long, tall cowboy.

Cade McClain—The rancher’s honor demands that he offer his help, even if it means risking everything for a stranger.

Esteban Castillo—A man who wants information…and vengeance.

Matt Alvarez—Cade’s right-hand man warns him not to get involved—for more than one reason.

Pamela Lowry—Piper’s twin sister is in a coma.

Tara Lowry—Piper’s younger sister is a pawn in a dangerous game.

Jay Larson—He’s on Piper’s trail, but what are his true motives?

To Jodi, who introduced me to New Mexico,

for being the kind of friend who’s there when I need her, even when she’s on the other side of the world.

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

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter One

This can’t be happening.

Piper stared in disbelief at the black smoke billowing from the engine of the rental car. She’d barely managed to pull over to the side of the road before the giant plume erupted from beneath the hood, along with a crackling she suspected might be outright fire. Any hope the car would keep running long enough to make it to her destination evaporated into the air much faster than the smoke.

She shot a glance at the clock on the dashboard. The digits glared back, relentless, unforgiving.

Thirty-four minutes. She had thirty-four minutes to be at the rendezvous point. If she wasn’t—

No.

She cut off the thought before it could form. She couldn’t afford to think about that, couldn’t think about anything but what she was going to do now, how she was going to make the deadline.

But when she tried to come up with a solution to this latest hurdle, her mind remained stubbornly blank except for the words that had been running through her head nonstop for the past two days.

This can’t be happening.

The words raced together in a constant loop, picking up speed along with her pulse, her heart pounding so fast and so hard in her chest she found it tougher and tougher to breathe.

It couldn’t end like this. She couldn’t come this close only to fail.

This can’t be happening.

Beneath the shock clouding her brain, some preservation instinct forced her limbs into motion, recognizing the fact that it wasn’t safe to remain in the car. For all she knew, the engine could explode at any moment. She had to get out of there.

Numbly, she switched off the key, then grabbed her bag and the map. Lurching from the vehicle, she slammed the door shut behind her. It was all she could do not to give the door an angry kick. She’d known as soon as she heard the knocking sound that something was wrong, but couldn’t stop. Even if time wasn’t an issue, she knew nothing about cars. She had no choice but to keep pushing on and hope she made it to her destination.

So much for that.

Which just left what she was going to do now.

The sun beat down from directly overhead, her fair skin already beginning to tingle under the unrelenting beams. Raising a hand to shade her eyes, she glanced around. The desert road stretched endlessly in either direction, disappearing into the horizon on both sides with no indication where it stopped. She had no idea where she was, other than that it was somewhere in New Mexico. She’d been following the map that had been provided to her, having no other choice. She hadn’t passed a single vehicle or building on the road in at least a half hour, had no reason to believe she would find any the same distance up ahead if she started walking. She’d known that she was being sent to the middle of nowhere, but she was more aware of that fact now than ever before.

She checked her watch, already knowing what it would show, painfully aware of how quickly time was slipping away.

Thirty-two minutes.

The backs of her eyes began to burn, and she immediately squeezed her eyelids together to keep the tears that threatened from falling. She wasn’t going to cry. She refused to. She hadn’t one bit since this ordeal had begun. She hadn’t cried when she’d learned of Pam’s accident. She hadn’t cried when she’d received the horrible call two days ago. She hadn’t cried during the long journey, even knowing what awaited her at the end.

But never had she been as close to giving in to the tears as she was right now.

A sob rose in her throat.

This can’t be happening.

With her eyes shut, it was the sound of an engine that reached her first, the sound so faint she didn’t immediately recognize it. When she did, she froze in disbelief, afraid to open her eyes, afraid she was hallucinating. It seemed too much to hope for, too much to believe possible, that a vehicle could pass by at this particular moment when she needed it most.

Her heart pounding anew, she slowly opened her eyes and turned toward the sound.

The vehicle was still far enough away that she could barely make it out, its shape shimmering in the sun, almost like a mirage. She held her breath as it approached, gradually gaining enough substance to confirm that it was very real. It was a pickup truck. Red, she guessed, though it hardly mattered. All that did was that it was here.

The black cloud rising from the hood made her car pretty hard to ignore, but she still stepped out into the road, waving her arms above her head to grab the driver’s attention. She couldn’t risk that the driver was the kind of person to ignore someone in trouble. A breath of relief worked its way from her lungs when the truck began to slow long before it reached her, easing onto the shoulder behind the rental car.

Now she just had to figure out what to do.

Thinking quickly, she watched as the driver’s door slowly opened. Moments later, two boots hit the dirt beneath the bottom edge of the door, one after the other. Then a hat appeared as the driver ducked his head out of the truck. It was a Stetson, the shape unmistakable and instantly recognizable.

It was a cowboy. A genuine cowboy. A near-hysterical laugh bubbled in her throat. She didn’t exactly come across too many of them back in Boston, though they were probably fairly common around these parts. And here he was, coming to her rescue like something out of the Old West, except that instead of on horseback, he was arriving in a truck.

A truck.

Her eyes slid past him, narrowing on his vehicle, the burst of humor instantly forgotten.

Cold, hard resolve settled over her, and she slowly lowered her hand into her bag, closing her fingers around the object there.

And suddenly she knew exactly what she had to do.

CADE MCCLAIN SWALLOWED AN impatient sigh as he climbed out of the cab of the truck. He really didn’t have time for this. The trip to Albuquerque had taken longer than he’d expected, and he’d wanted to get back to the ranch as early as possible. There was too much he had to do. There always was.

But as soon as he’d spotted the smoke on the road up ahead and seen the car, he’d known he would have to pull over. Even if the woman hadn’t flagged him down, he couldn’t have simply driven past a smoking car without stopping. Not only would it have been a lousy thing to do, but there was no telling when someone else might have come along to help. This desert road didn’t see much traffic. He wondered how long she’d been here, or what she was even doing here for that matter.

She’d moved out of the road to stand behind her car. He gave her a quick once-over. She was a slim woman with black hair that brushed her shoulders, dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. She carried a bag of some kind, the strap slung crosswise over her body from one shoulder to the opposite hip so the bag itself was almost entirely out of view. She didn’t look familiar. Probably just a lost tourist who’d made a wrong turn somewhere and ended up far down a road she had no business being on.

He did his best to keep his annoyance from showing. It wasn’t her fault she was having car trouble. It had to be a lot tougher on her than it was on him.

“You okay?” he called, stepping around the door without closing it.

After a moment, she gave her head a shaky nod. “Yeah, I’m fine. I don’t know what happened. The engine started making this noise, and then all this smoke started coming out of it....”

Her voice quivered, almost like she was about to start crying or something, and he nearly groaned.

Oh, God. Please don’t let her burst into tears. The car he might be able to handle, but the last thing he knew how to deal with was a crying female.

He took a deep breath, hoping if he remained calm his coolness would have an effect on her. “Do you have a phone? Did you call anybody?”

“N-no,” she said slowly, taking a step toward him. “My battery’s dead.” She chuckled, the sound ringing false. “Just my luck.”

“Well, you can borrow mine. Let me get it out of the cab.” He turned away to do just that.

“I have a better idea.”

Her tone immediately put him on edge, the hardness in her voice completely different from how she’d sounded just moments before. He froze, knowing before he looked at her that something was wrong.

He slowly turned back to face her.

She was standing in exactly the same place.

Except now she held a pistol in her hands.

Aimed square at his chest.

Chapter Two

“Throw your keys on the ground in front of my feet,” she ordered. “Don’t try anything tricky.”

Cade did his best to ignore the gun, meeting the eyes behind it. Only now did he recognize the desperation in her voice. Earlier he’d mistaken it for the understandable distress of a woman whose car had caught fire in the middle of nowhere. But this went way beyond that. The woman was seriously on edge.

That still didn’t make her actions any more comprehensible.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” he demanded.

“Taking your truck.”

“It’s not much. Certainly not worth stealing.”

“It runs, which is more than I can say for that car. That’s all that matters.”

“And you’re just going to leave me out here in the middle of nowhere? No water? No shelter? Nothing to do but hope somebody else comes along?”

“I’m sorry about this. I really am. But I have to be somewhere in less than thirty minutes, and it really is a matter of life and death. I know how clichéd that sounds, but in this case, it couldn’t be more true. Now toss your keys over toward me.”

He didn’t move, the weight of his keys suddenly heavy in his fingers. He quickly considered his few options. Maybe if he pretended to throw them, distracted her long enough to dive back into the truck—

She cocked the weapon, her expression hard as stone.

“I told you, don’t even think of trying anything. If you don’t think it’s worth stealing, then it’s certainly not worth getting shot over.”

“But it is worth shooting somebody for?”

“If I have to.”

He stared at her, gauging her seriousness.

The way she handled the gun, her grip tight and unwavering, told him she knew exactly how to use it.

The way she looked at him, her eyes cold and unflinching, told him she wouldn’t hesitate to.

Damn. It didn’t look like he had a choice.

Biting back a curse, he slowly swung his arm and tossed the keys toward her. He didn’t bother to see where they landed.

She flicked her gaze down for only a second, not nearly long enough for him to make a move if he was crazy enough to try. When her attention was back on his face, she bent slowly at the knees, never losing her aim on him. As soon as she was close enough to the ground, she lowered one hand from the gun just long enough to scoop up the keys which had landed practically at her feet. As soon as she had them, she immediately started to rise again, gesturing toward him with a jerk of her chin. “Step away.”

He did as ordered, slowly moving backward, one frustrating step following another. After his first few steps, she was again on her feet and began to match his motions, stepping forward to the truck. Finally he was standing well behind the tailgate and she came to a stop next to the still-open door.

She glanced inside, then began to climb into the truck. Her movements were awkward, since she was still keeping the gun on him with one hand, but her aim remained true enough. “I really am sorry about this,” she said. “I’ll toss your phone out the window on the other side. You can call someone to come and get you.”

“You aren’t worried we’ll catch up with you?”

“By the time you do, it won’t matter anymore,” she said flatly.

Before he could wonder what she meant by that, she started to straighten in the seat, only to stop. A second later, she glanced back at him. “This is a manual.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I can’t drive a stick shift.”

He snorted. “Well, that’s too bad for you.”

She didn’t say anything for a moment, staring at him long and hard. “You’re going to have to drive.”

“Excuse me?”

She jerked her head toward the cab. “Get in.”

An incredulous laugh burst from his mouth. “You’ve gotta be kidding me. It’s not enough you want to steal my truck. Now you want to hijack me into being your driver?”

“I don’t have a choice. The way I see it, neither do you.”

“Or what? You’re going to shoot me? Then who’s going to drive you?”

“If you refuse to drive me, then I’m not going to be where I need to be in time and somebody very important to me is going to die. So I might as well shoot you, because you will have just killed someone I love.”

The seriousness in her voice killed the last traces of dark humor inside him. He hadn’t considered her earlier words too deeply, but the intensity in this statement left no doubt she meant everything she said. Something was going on here. Someone she cared about was in very real danger. She believed that much.

Still, Cade hesitated. If anything, her words gave him more of a reason to want out of this. Whatever this mess was, it wasn’t something any sane person would want any part of.

She motioned with the gun. “If you think I won’t do it, I sincerely suggest you think again.”

And he saw the truth in her eyes. She would shoot him without a second thought. If he wanted to keep breathing, his only chance was to go along with her demand. And as much as he didn’t want to be killed, he didn’t really want to be responsible for it happening to someone else, either.

Matching her glare, he started forward slowly. After a few moments, she disappeared inside the cab. When he reached the open door, he found she’d slid across the seat and was backed up against the passenger door. The gun in her hands instantly adjusted so the barrel was centered right on his head.

Climbing in, he glanced down to find the keys already in the ignition. No point delaying the obvious, he supposed. With a grimace, he tugged the door shut, then reached forward and started the engine.

“All right,” he said, shifting the truck into gear. “Where are we going?”

HOLDING THE GUN STEADY with her right hand, Piper pulled the map from her bag and held it out to him. “Here.”

He took it from her with some reluctance, giving it a perfunctory glance. “What is this?”

“Where I need to go.”

He looked at it again, frowning slightly. “This is Cartwright.”

“What’s that?”

“An old ghost town in the middle of the desert. There’s not much there now.”

“Well, there will be in twenty-five minutes.” At the very least someone. Several someones most likely, but there was only one she truly cared about being there. “If you know where it is, then you must know how to get there.”

“Yeah.”

“Then drive.”

Clenching the map in his hand, he pulled back onto the road and started forward.

“Can we get there in twenty-five minutes?” she asked.

“Probably.”

“That isn’t good enough. Drive fast—but not fast enough that anything bad should happen. Neither of us wants this gun to go off accidentally.”

The muscles on his neck bulged from his clear tension, but he didn’t respond. The truck accelerated smoothly, picking up speed without jostling her.

She kept her eyes on him, not about to let her guard down when so much depended on him cooperating and getting her where she needed to be. He stared straight ahead, his jaw clenched. It was a strong jaw, perfectly fitting his plainly masculine profile. He had to be in his late thirties, his skin tanned from the sun, faint laugh lines worn into the corners around his eyes. It was a nice face. She suspected he was a nice guy. She remembered the clear thread of concern in his deep voice when he’d first pulled over. All he’d wanted to do was help her. And she’d pointed a gun at him and threatened to kill him.

Guilt, sharp and painful, stabbed at her. She ruthlessly pushed the feeling aside. The people she was dealing with weren’t letting anything stop them from getting what they wanted. She couldn’t afford to, either. And given a choice between Tara and this stranger, there was no question what she would do. The only thing that mattered was getting to the rendezvous on time, whatever it took.

Then it hit her. No, that wasn’t all that mattered. What happened at the meeting also mattered a great deal. She’d had a plan, a risky, dangerous, improbable plan, but the only one—the only chance—she had. The rental car had been a key part of that plan. Without it, this wasn’t going to work.

Unless…

She sharpened her gaze on the man behind the wheel, studying that hardened face. He’d wanted to help her once. He must be a good person, or at least good enough for what she needed him to do.

“I need to ask you a favor,” she said.

“Lady, you’re holding a gun on me. You’re not asking, you’re ordering.”

“Not with this. This is for when I’m gone and don’t have the gun on you anymore. I need you to do something for me then.”

“Why the hell would I do anything else for you, lady?”

“Because I’m hoping that the kind of guy who couldn’t drive by and leave a woman standing on the side of the road won’t leave an innocent woman in danger, either.”

He snorted. “I hate to break it to you, but you’re kidding yourself if you think you’re innocent.”

“I’m not talking about me. My sister’s been kidnapped. We’re making the exchange at this location. I’m not going to give them what they want until my sister is safely out of there. My original plan was for her to drive away, but obviously that’s not an option anymore. So I need to ask you to please stay long enough to get her out of there.”

“What about you?”

“Don’t worry about me. She’s all that matters.”

His frown deepened. “Who are these people? Why did they kidnap your sister?”

“That’s not important.”

“The hell it’s not. If you want me to stick around these people, I need to know what I’m up against.”

“They kidnapped her to force…me to provide them…with some information they want.”

“Even if they let your sister go before you give it to them, what do you think they’re going to do to you after you give it to them?”

“I told you, don’t worry about me.”

“It sounds like somebody needs to. What’s going to happen to you after you give them what they want?”

“Her name is Tara,” she said as if he hadn’t spoken. “She’s only twenty years old. She has her whole life ahead of her.”

“And you don’t? You can’t be much older than thirty, if that. What about your life?”

“Please. I know I don’t have the right to ask you for anything, but I’m doing it anyway. Please save my sister. If you want me to beg, if that’s what it will take to get you to agree, then I will do it. It should be clear by now that I am willing to do anything to save her. So I’m asking you, begging you, please save my sister.”

Something in his face softened slightly, and hope burst in her chest at the indication that she might have swayed him.

He never had a chance to answer.

The rear window suddenly shattered. Glass sprayed into the interior of the truck. Piper cringed, instinctively turning away from the blast. Almost immediately, she whipped her head back to see what had happened.

A car had pulled up behind them without her noticing. She hadn’t been paying close enough attention while she’d been speaking to him, hadn’t even considered that she would need to.

Then she saw the arm reaching out of the driver’s side window, the glint of a gun clutched in a hand, just before a dull thud struck the metal of the truck.

Realization struck as hard as the impact of a bullet. Someone was shooting at them, trying to force them off the road before she could even get to the rendezvous point.

Oh, God.

She should have known they wouldn’t play fair.

Chapter Three

The sound of another bullet hitting metal knocked Piper out of the shock holding her in place.

The driver of the other car wasn’t the only one with a gun.

Gritting her teeth, she turned all the way around in her seat, just as the cowboy shouted, “Friends of yours?”

“Just keep driving!” she yelled, pushing her arms out the shattered back window and taking aim. As soon as she had her target, she pulled the trigger.