Wyoming Strong

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author DIANA PALMER returns with a fiery new couple!

Wolf Patterson and Sara Brandon are archenemies from ages ago, but mischievous fate has brought the tall rancher with the pale blue eyes together with the dark-haired beauty—on nearby Wyoming and Texas ranches. At first, sparks fly, but despite Wolf’s misguided notions about the spirited Sara and her indignance over the assorted injustices he has thrown her way, a truce—of sorts—forms. Suddenly Sara notices Wolf’s face, while not conventionally handsome, draws her like no other man has ever attracted her. And Wolf sees into the vulnerable soul that Sara hides from the rest of the world.

They are two passionate people with a talent for falling out. Will love be the spark they need to create what they both want the most…a family?

Praise for the novels of New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author DIANA PALMER

“The popular Palmer has penned another winning novel, a perfect blend of romance and suspense.”

—Booklist on Lawman

“Diana Palmer is a mesmerizing storyteller who captures the essence of what a romance should be.”

—Affaire de Coeur

“Readers will be moved by this tale of revenge and justice, grief and healing.”

—Booklist on Dangerous

“Diana Palmer is one of those authors whose books are always enjoyable. She throws in romance, suspense and a good storyline.”

—The Romance Reader on Before Sunrise

“Lots of passion, thrills, and plenty of suspense…Protector is a top-notch read!”

—Romance Reviews Today on Protector

“A delightful romance with interesting new characters and many familiar faces. It’s nice to have a hero who is not picture-perfect in looks or instincts, and a heroine who accepts her privileged life yet is willing to work for the future she wants.”

—RT Book Reviews on Wyoming Tough

Wyoming Strong

Diana Palmer

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Dear Reader,

I am plagued with insomnia. It seems to run in my family. Some nights I don’t sleep. One morning at 3:00 a.m. when I was wide-awake, I saw a young man with dark eyes and beautiful long hair in a shot on YouTube, auditioning for Britain’s Got Talent. Beside him was a lovely young woman. The caption was something about a shy boy captivating the judges. So I clicked on it. Mr. Antoine was picked on in school. This video is every hurt child’s triumph.

I bawled the first time I heard it. To date, I have watched it at least fifteen times (along with 48 million other people). The young man’s name is Jonathan Antoine. His partner was Charlotte Jaconelli, a fellow music student. They auditioned as Charlotte and Jonathan on Britain’s Got Talent in 2012. Both have recording contracts now. I sincerely hope that Mr. Antoine has the attention of the Metropolitan Opera. I have never in my life heard such a voice.

This book which you are about to read is one that virtually wrote itself. It is about two very damaged people who grow together out of their own tragedies. Wolf Patterson and Sara Brandon were introduced in Texas Born, My Mills & Boon Cherish story, where he accused her of harboring flying monkeys and using a broom for transport. Unknown to each, they play World of Warcraft together and are friends there, but enemies in real life. When Wolf is targeted by a psychotic former lover, Sara is drawn into the crosshairs with him.

Also out soon is The Morcai Battalion: The Recruit, for the first time in mass market paperback, with added scenes. It continues the turbulent relationship of the Morcai’s Dr. Madeline Ruszel and Dtimun, the mysterious alien Cehn-Tahr commander of the feared Holconcom. I am indebted to Mills & Boon HQN for giving me the opportunity to see it in print.

I am also indebted to all of you, who read my books.

I am still your biggest fan.

Diana Palmer

To Becky Hambrick, a dear woman who never missed a signing. She crocheted little scrubbers for my sink, which I still have. I think of her every time I use them.

And to J. L. Smith, who served Cornelia, Georgia, for many years as a police officer. James went to school with him. He was a good and kind man. And he was our friend.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

Dear Reader

Dedication

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

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

IT WASN’T THE long line so much as the company in it that was irritating Sara Brandon. Not only the company, but the way she was being watched, too.

He was lounging back against the nearby counter at the Jacobsville pharmacy, arrogant and amused, watching her with those icy Arctic-blue eyes that seemed to see right through her. As if he knew exactly what was under her clothing. As if he could see her creamy skin. As if...

She cleared her throat and glared at him.

That amused him even more. “Am I disturbing you, Ms. Brandon?” he drawled.

He was elegant. Devastating, physically. Lean-hipped, tanned, broad-shouldered, with big, beautiful hands and big feet. His Stetson was pulled low over his eyes, so that only their pale glitter was visible under the brim. His long, powerful legs in designer jeans were crossed, just the feet of his expensive tan boots peering out from under the denim. His chambray shirt was open at the throat. Thick, black, curling hair was exposed in the narrow vee.

The beast knew he was...stimulating. That’s why he did that, why he left those top buttons unbuttoned, she just knew it. She couldn’t completely hide her reaction to him, and he knew that, too. It drove her mad.

“You don’t disturb me, Mr. Patterson,” she said, her voice sounding a little choked as she tried to keep it steady.

Those eyes slid down her slender, elegant body in narrow black slacks topped by a black turtleneck sweater. His smile widened as she pulled her black leather coat closer and buttoned it, so that her sweater didn’t show. Her long, thick black hair dropped to her waist in back, waving around her exquisite face. Perfect, pouting lips led up to a straight nose and wide-spaced black eyes. She was a beauty. She wasn’t conceited about it. She hated her looks. She hated the attention she drew.

She crossed her arms against her breasts over the coat and averted her eyes.

“Oh, I wonder about that,” he drawled in his deep, slow voice. “You don’t look at all calm to me.”

“Do tell me what I do look like, then.”

He shouldered away from the counter and joined her. He was tall. He moved a little closer, as if to force her to look up and see how much he towered over her. She retreated a step, nervously.

“You look like a young filly, just taking her first steps out into the pasture,” he said quietly.

“I’ve been out in the pasture for a long time, Mr. Patterson, and I’m not nervous.”

He just cocked an eyebrow. He pursed his sensuous lips. “Well, you look nervous to me. Left the flying monkeys at home, did we?”

Her mouth flew open. “You listen here...!” She winced at the sudden turning of heads and quickly lowered her voice. “I do not keep...flying monkeys at my house!”

“Oh, I know that. You probably have them hidden out in the woods. Along with the broom.”

She ground her teeth together.

“Miss Brandon?” Bonnie called from the cash register. “I have your refill.”

“Thanks,” Sara said, and quickly moved away from the tall threat of Wofford Patterson’s body. They called him Wolf as a nickname. She could see why. He was really predatory. And it was something of a bit of luck that he didn’t like her.

She paid for her acid reflux medicine, smiled at Bonnie, glared at Wofford Patterson and started for the front door.

“Fly at a safe speed now,” he cautioned in a good-natured tone.

She whirled, her long black hair whipping. “If I really had flying monkeys, I’d have them drop you in the biggest manure lagoon in the whole state of Texas, and then I’d throw a match in it!” she flashed at him.

Everybody started laughing, especially Wofford Patterson. Red-faced, Sara almost ran out of the building.

* * *

“I WILL HAVE him shot,” she muttered to herself as she stalked to her white Jaguar. “I will have him shot, and then I’ll have them dismember him, and then...”

“Talking to yourself. Tsk, tsk,” she heard behind her. He was following her.

She turned around. “You are the most obnoxious, unbearable, tedious, irritating, vicious man I have ever known in my life!” she raged at him.

He shrugged. “I doubt that. You do inspire people to dislike you.”

Her small fists were clenched at her sides, the paper pharmacy bag gripped in one of them. She was almost on fire with anger.

She glanced beside her and saw Cash Grier, the Jacobsville, Texas, police chief, just coming up on the sidewalk. “I want him arrested!” she yelled, pointing at Wofford.

“Now, what did I do?” Wofford asked with a straight face. “I was only asking you to drive safely, because I worry about your health.” He gave her an angelic smile.

She was nearly shaking with anger.

Cash tried to hide a grin. “Now, Ms. Brandon,” he began gently.

“What exactly is a Miz?” Wolf wondered aloud. “Is it like a Mr. Woman sort of thing?”

She threw the bag of pills at him.

“She assaulted me!” Wolf exclaimed. “Assault is a felony, right?”

“Oh, I’d love to assault you,” she muttered under her breath.

“You really would, honey,” he drawled as he watched her come back up with the sack of pills. “I am a legend in my own time.” He even smiled.

She drew back a little foot in a pretty shoe.

“If you kick him, I really will have to enforce the law, Sara,” Cash reminded her.

She looked as exasperated as she felt. “Couldn’t you just...well, wound him?” she asked plaintively. “A little?”

Cash tried not to laugh and failed. “If I shoot him, I’ll have to arrest myself. Think how that would look.”

“You should go home,” Wolf told her with mock concern. “I’ll bet you haven’t fed the flying monkeys all day.”

She stamped her foot. “You pig!”

“Last week I was a snake. Is this a promotion?” he wondered aloud.

She took a step toward him. Cash got in between them. “Sara, go home. Right now. Please?” he added.

She blew a tendril of hair out of her face and turned back to the Jaguar. “I should have moved to hell. It would have been more peaceful.”

“The flying monkeys would have felt at home, too,” Wolf mused.

“One day,” she said, raising a fist.

“I am always at home,” he pointed out with a grin. “Come on over. I’ll find some boxing gloves.”

“Will they stop a bullet?” she asked hotly. She added a few choice words in Farsi. In fact, she added a lot of them, in a high, provoked, angry tone. She stamped her foot to emphasize that she meant them.

“Your brother would be shocked, shocked I tell you, to hear such language coming out of his baby sister’s mouth,” Wolf said haughtily. He glanced at Cash. “You speak Farsi. Can’t you arrest her for calling people in my family names like that?”

Cash was looking hunted.

“I’m going home,” Sara said furiously.

“I noticed,” Wolf replied lazily.

She told him what he could do in Farsi.

“Oh, it takes two for that,” he replied in the same tongue, and his pale eyes absolutely howled.

She got into the car, revved it up and roared off down the street.

“One day,” Cash told Wolf, “she’ll kill you, and I’ll have to appear at her trial to say it was justified self-defense.”

Wolf just laughed.

* * *

SARA BROKE SPEED LIMITS. She was still shaking when she pulled up outside the house her brother, Gabriel, had bought in Comanche Wells, just down the road from Jacobsville. She wished Michelle was home from college, if only briefly. Michelle would listen and commiserate with her. She would understand. She knew more about Sara than local people did.

Michelle knew that Sara’s stepfather had assaulted her, almost to the point of rape when Gabriel had all but broken her bedroom door to get to him. Sara had to testify at the trial that sent her stepfather to prison, sit in the witness chair and tell total strangers exactly what the animal had done to her. And about the disgusting things he’d said while he was doing it. She couldn’t force herself to tell it all.

The defense attorney had been eloquent about Sara, a young girl teasing an older man and getting him so worked up that he had to have her. It wasn’t that way, but she was sure some people on the jury listened.

Her stepfather had gone to prison. He’d died when he got out. Sara shivered violently, remembering how and why. Sara and Gabriel’s mother had shoved them out the door after the conviction and left them on the streets. One of the public defenders who was in Sara’s corner at a second trial, when her stepfather was shot by police, had a maiden aunt who took them in, spoiled them rotten and left them most of her enormous estate.

She was worth millions, and the public defender refused to hear a word about Sara and Gabriel turning down the inheritance. They still thought of him as family. He’d been kind to them when the world turned against them.

The Brandons’ mother moved away, grieved herself to death over her second husband and refused to have any contact afterward with either of her children. It had been devastating, especially to Sara, who felt responsible.

The experience had sickened her, turned her into a recluse. Sara was twenty-four, beautiful and all alone. She didn’t date anybody. Ever.

The way Wolf Patterson looked at her, though; that was new and unsettling. She...liked it. But she couldn’t afford to let him know. If he pursued her, if things heated up, he’d figure out her secret. She couldn’t hide her reactions to any sort of physical intimacy. She’d tried once, just once, with a boy she liked at school. It had ended with her in tears and him leaving in a temper, calling her a stupid tease. So much for dating.

She locked the door behind her, tossed her purse onto the side table and went upstairs. She’d had a light lunch before she left for the pharmacy, so the rest of the day was hers to do as she pleased. She was rich. She didn’t have to work. But she had no social life. At least, not in the real world. In the virtual world, however...

* * *

SHE TURNED ON her state-of-the-art gaming computer and pulled up the World of Warcraft website. Sara was a secret gamer. She didn’t tell anybody about her habit. Gabriel knew, but nobody else did. She had a beautiful Blood Elf Horde toon, a character with almost white-blond hair and blue eyes—sort of a reverse Sara, she liked to think, chuckling. It was a world away from the black-haired brunette that she really was.

She pulled up her character, Casalese, a powerful warlock, and walked into the game. The minute she came online, she was whispered.

Want to do a raid with me? he asked. “He” was a level 90 Blood Elf death knight named Rednacht. The two had met at an in-game holiday event, started talking and had been online friends for a year or so. They didn’t do the Real ID thing, so she had no idea who he really was. She didn’t want a lover. She only wanted a friend. But they did friend each other, using the generic ID she used for her account, so she knew when he was online. And vice versa. They’d both turned level 90 at the same time. They’d celebrated at an in-game inn with cake and juice, and shot off the fireworks they were gifted with out in the countryside of the new area, Pandaria.

It had been a magical night. Rednacht was fun to be around. He never made really personal remarks, but he did mention things that were going on in his life from time to time. So did she. But only in a generic way. Sara had real issues with her privacy. Because of Gabriel’s profession, she had to be especially careful.

Most people didn’t know what her brother did for a living. He was an independent military contractor who worked frequently for Eb Scott. He was a skilled mercenary. Sara worried about him, because they only had each other. But she understood that he couldn’t give up the excitement. Not yet, anyway. She did wonder how that might change when Michelle, who had become their ward with the sudden death of her stepmother, graduated from college. But that was sometime in the future.

I feel more like a battleground, she typed. Rough morning.

He typed back lol, laughing out loud. Same here. Okay. Shall we slay Alliance until our blades are no longer thirsty?

She laughed back. That sounds very nice.

* * *

A COUPLE OF hours of play, and she felt like a new woman. She signed off, told her friend good-night, had a light dinner and went to bed. She knew that she was hiding from life in her virtual playground, but it was at least some sort of social life. In the real world, she had nothing.

* * *

SARA LOVED OPERA. The local opera house in San Antonio had been closed earlier in the year, although a new opera company was being founded. However, she had to have her opera fix. The only remaining one within reach was in Houston. It was a long drive, but the Houston Grand Opera was performing A Little Night Music. One of the songs was “Send in the Clowns,” her absolute favorite. She was a grown woman. She had a good car. There was no reason that she couldn’t make the drive.

So she got in the Jaguar and took off, in plenty of time to make the curtain. She’d worry about coming home in the dark later.

She loved anything in the arts, including theater and symphony and ballet. She had tickets to the San Antonio Symphony and the San Antonio Ballet companies for the season. But tonight she was treating herself to this out-of-town spectacular performance.

She was looking at her program when she felt movement. She turned as a newcomer sat down, and she looked up into the pale, laughing eyes of her worst enemy in the world.

Oh, darn, was what she should have said. What she did say was far less conventional, and in Farsi.

“Potty mouth,” he returned under his breath in the same language.

She ground her teeth together, waiting for his next remark. She’d stomp on his big booted foot and march right out of the building if he said even one word.

But he was diverted by his beautiful companion before he could say anything else. Like the other woman Sara had seen him with, at another performance, this one was a gorgeous blonde. He didn’t seem to like brunettes, which was certainly to Sara’s advantage.

Why in the world did he always have to sit next to her? She almost groaned. She bought her tickets weeks in advance. Presumably so did he. So how did they manage to sit together, not only in San Antonio at every single event she attended, but in Houston, too? Next time, she promised herself, she’d wait to see where he was sitting before she sat down. Since the seats were numbered, however, that might pose a problem.

The orchestra began tuning its instruments. Minutes later, the curtain rose. As the brilliant Stephen Sondheim score progressed, and dancers performing majestic waltzes floated across the stage, Sara thought she’d landed in heaven. She remembered waltzes like this at an event in Austria. She’d danced with a silver-haired gentleman, an acquaintance of their tour guide, who waltzed divinely. Although she traveled alone, she’d shared sights like this with other people, most of them elderly. Sara didn’t do singles tours, because she wanted nothing to do with men. She’d seen the world, but with Gabriel or senior citizens.

She drank in the exquisite score, her eyes closed as she enjoyed the song that was one of the most beautiful ever written, “Send in the Clowns.”

* * *

INTERMISSION CAME, BUT she didn’t budge. Wolf’s companion left, but he didn’t.

“You like opera, don’t you?” he asked her, his eyes suddenly intent on her, drinking in her long black hair and the black dress that fit her like a glove with its discreet bodice and cape sleeves. Her leather coat was behind her in the seat, because the theater was warm.

“Yes,” she said, waiting with gritted teeth for what she expected to follow.

“The baritone is quite good,” he added, crossing one long leg. “He came here from the Met. He said New York City was getting to him. He wanted to live somewhere with less traffic.”

“Yes, I read that.”

His eyes were on her hands. She had them in her lap, with a death grip on her small purse, her nails digging into the leather. She didn’t seem to have a care in the world, but she was wired like floodlights.

“You came alone?”

She just nodded.

“It’s a long way to Houston, and it’s night.”

“I did notice.”

“Last time, in San Antonio, it was with your brother and your ward,” he recalled. His eyes narrowed. “No men. Ever?”

She didn’t reply. In her hands, the purse was taking a beating.

To her shock, one big, beautiful, lean hand went to her long fingers and smoothed over them gently.

“Don’t,” he said tersely.

She bit her lip and looked up at him unguardedly, with the anguish of years past in her beautiful dark eyes.

He caught his breath. “What the hell happened to you?” he asked under his breath.

She jerked her hands away, got to her feet, put on her coat and walked out the door. She was in tears by the time she reached her car.

* * *

IT WAS SO UNFAIR. She hadn’t had a flat tire in years. She had to have one tonight, of all nights, on a dark street in a strange city many miles from her San Antonio apartment. When Gabriel and Michelle were gone, she didn’t like staying by herself on the small property in Comanche Wells. It was remote, and dangerous, if any of Gabriel’s enemies ever set themselves on retaliation. It had happened once in the past. Fortunately, Gabriel had been at home.

She’d already called for a tow truck, but the account she used was briefly tied up. It would be just a few minutes, they promised. She hung up and smiled ruefully.

A car approached from the direction of the theater, slowed and then whipped in just in front of where she was parked. A tall man got out and came back to her window.

She froze until she realized who it was. She powered the window down.

“This is a hell of a place to be sitting with a flat tire,” Wolf Patterson said shortly. “Come on. I’ll drive you home.”

“But I have to stay with the car. I’ve called the tow truck, and they will be here in a few minutes.”

“We’ll wait for the wrecker in my car,” he said firmly. “I’m not leaving you out here alone.”