“That ranch you own? It’s worth exactly what you paid for it,’ Jake said. ‘Unless, of course, you put a higher price on what you gave old Charlie than those services were truly worth—”

Addison slapped his face.

Hard.

The imprint of her hand stood out on his cheek in crimson relief. His dumbfounded expression told her she’d just scored a perfect shot.

Why hang around and ruin it?

Addison turned her back and faced the crowd.

“Move,” she said, and a path opened like the parting of the Red Sea.

She stomped down that path … and stopped halfway to the front door. What the hell? she thought, and turned to face him one last time.

“You’re also a nasty, egotistical, despicable jerk.”

The crowd gasped again, then erupted in a frantic buzz of delighted whispers.

She’d given Wilde’s Crossing enough to talk about for the next decade.

THE WILDE BROTHERS

Wilde by name, unashamedly wild by nature!

They work hard, but you can be damned sure they play even harder! For as long as any of them could remember, they’d always loved the same things: Danger … and beautiful women.

They gladly took up the call to serve their country, but duty, honour and pride are words that mask the scars of a true warrior. Now, one by one, the brothers return to their family ranch in Texas.

Can their hearts be tamed in the place they once called home?

Meet the deliciously sexy Wilde Brothers in this sizzling and utterly unmissable new family dynasty by much-loved author Sandra Marton!

Look out for Caleb’s and Travis’s stories in 2013

About the Author

SANDRA MARTON wrote her first novel while she was still in primary school. Her doting parents told her she’d be a writer some day, and Sandra believed them. In secondary school and college she wrote dark poetry nobody but her boyfriend understood—though, looking back, she suspects he was just being kind. As a wife and mother she wrote murky short stories in what little spare time she could manage, but not even her boyfriend-turned-husband could pretend to understand those. Sandra tried her hand at other things, among them teaching and serving on the Board of Education in her home town, but the dream of becoming a writer was always in her heart.

At last Sandra realised she wanted to write books about what all women hope to find: love with that one special man, love that’s rich with fire and passion, love that lasts for ever. She wrote a novel, her very first, and sold it to Mills & Boon® Modern™ Romance. Since then she’s written more than sixty books, all of them featuring sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life heroes. A four-time RITA® Award finalist, she’s also received five RT Book Reviews magazine awards, and has been honoured with RT’s Career Achievement Award for Series Romance. Sandra lives with her very own sexy, gorgeous, larger-than-life hero in a sun-filled house on a quiet country lane in the north-eastern United States.

Recent titles by the same author:

SHEIKH WITHOUT A HEART

THE REAL DIO D’AQUILLA (The Orsini Brides) THE ICE PRINCE (The Orsini Brides) NOT FOR SALE

Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

The Dangerous
Jacob Wilde
Sandra Marton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

ALL HIS LIFE, Jake Wilde had been a man women wanted and men envied.

At sixteen, he was a football hero. He had his pilot’s license. He dated the Homecoming Queen … and all the princesses in her court, one at a time, of course, because he had scruples—and because, even then, he understood women.

He was smart, too, and ruggedly good-looking, enough so that some guy had once stopped him on the street in Dallas to ask if he’d ever considered heading east to sign as a model.

Jake almost decked him until he realized it wasn’t a come-on but a serious offer. He thanked him, said, “No,” and could hardly wait to drive his truck back to his family’s enormous ranch so he could laugh about it with his brothers.

In a word, life was good.

Time blurred.

College. Three years of it, anyway. Then, for reasons that made sense at the time, he’d enlisted.

One way or another, all the Wildes had served their country, Travis as a hotshot fighter pilot, Caleb as an operative in one of those alphabet-soup government agencies nobody talked about. For Jake, it had been the army and a coveted assignment, flying Blackhawk helicopters on dangerous missions.

Then, in a heartbeat, everything changed.

His world. His life. The very principles that had always defined him.

And yet—

And yet, some things did not change.

He hadn’t quite realized that until a night in early spring as he tooled along a pitch-black Texas road, heading for home.

Jake scowled into the darkness.

Correction.

He was heading for the place where he’d grown up. He didn’t think of it as home anymore, didn’t think of any place as home.

He’d been away four long years. To be precise, four years, one month and fourteen days.

Still, the road seemed as familiar as the back of his hand.

So had the drive from the Dallas-Fort Worth airport.

Fifty miles of highway, the turn onto Country Road 227, the endless length of it bordered on either side by fence posts, the cattle standing still as sentinels in the quiet of night and then, almost an hour later, the bashed-in section of fence that seemed to have always marked the juncture where a nameless dirt road angled off to old man Chambers’s spread.

And he’d only stopped to check for IEDs once.

A record.

Jake made the turn onto the road, even after all these years automatically steering the ‘63 Thunderbird around the pothole by the bashed-in fence that marked the Chambers boundary. It was on the old man’s land, which was why nobody had filled it in.

“Don’t need nobody messin’ with my property,” Elijah Chambers would mumble if anyone was foolish enough to suggest it.

Jake’s father despised the old guy but then, the General despised anybody who wasn’t into spit and polish.

Even his own sons.

You grew up with a four-star father, you were expected to lead a four-star life.

Caleb used to say that when they were kids. Or maybe it had been Travis.

Maybe it had even been him, Jake thought, and came as close to a smile as he had in a very long time, but he squelched it, fast.

A man learned to avoid smiling when the end result might scare the crap out of small children.

Jake drummed his fingers against the steering wheel.

Maybe his best move was to turn the car around and head for …

Where?

Not D.C. Not the hospital. If he never saw another hospital in his lifetime, it would be too soon. Not the base or his town house in Georgetown. Too many memories and besides, he didn’t belong on the base or in D.C. anymore, and he’d sold the town house, signed the papers just yesterday.

The truth was, he didn’t belong anywhere, not even here in Texas and absolutely not on the half million acres of rolling hills and grassland that was El Sueño.

Which was why he had no intention of staying very long.

His brothers knew it and were doing their best to talk him out of leaving.

“This is where you belong, man,” Travis had said.

“This is your home,” Caleb had added. “Just settle in, take it easy for a while, get your bearings while you figure out what you want to do next.”

Jake shifted his weight, stretched his legs as much as he could. The Thunderbird was a little cramped for a man who stood six foot three in his bare feet, but you made sacrifices for a car you’d rebuilt the summer you were sixteen.

Caleb made it sound easy.

It wasn’t.

He had no idea what he wanted to do next, not unless it involved turning back time and returning to the place where it had stopped, in a narrow pass surrounded by mountains that needled into a dirty gray sky….

“Stop it,” he said, his voice sharp in the silence.

None of that.

He was going to spend a couple of days at the ranch. See his sisters. His brothers. His father.

Then he’d take off.

Seeing his sisters would be great, as long as they didn’t do anything stupid like tear up. The General? That would be okay, too. He’d probably give him a pep talk and as long as it didn’t go on forever, he’d survive it.

As for his brothers …

To hell with it. There was nobody here to see what passed for a smile on his scarred face and the simple truth was, thinking about Caleb and Travis always made him smile.

The Wilde brothers had always been close. Played together as little kids, got into scrapes together as teens. For as long as any of them could remember, they’d always loved the same things. Fast cars. Beautiful women.

Trouble, with a capital T.

Peas in a pod, their sisters teased. Half sisters—the General had been married twice and the brothers and sisters had different mothers—and it was true.

Peas in a pod, for sure.

They were still close, even now, otherwise they wouldn’t have been able to talk him into this visit—

Except, he’d done it on his own terms.

Well, more or less.

They’d wanted to send a jet for him.

“We have two of the damned things at El Sueño” Travis had said. “Hey, you know that better than we do. You’re the guy who bought them, supervised their interior design, that whole bit. Why fly commercial if you don’t have to?”

Why, indeed?

The part Travis hadn’t mentioned was that Jake hadn’t only bought the Wilde planes, he’d piloted them.

Not now.

A pilot with one functional eye wasn’t a pilot anymore, and the thought of returning home as a passenger on a jet he’d once flown was more than he figured he could handle.

So he’d told his brothers he didn’t know when he’d be able to leave, blah, blah, blah, and finally, they’d eased off.

“It’ll be simpler all around if I just get in Friday evening and rent a car.”

As if, he thought now, and smiled again.

He’d been paged as soon as he stepped into the Dallas-Fort Worth airport. He’d considered ignoring the page but finally he’d gritted his teeth and marched up to the arrivals desk.

“Captain Jacob Wilde,” he’d said briskly. “You’ve been paging me.”

The clerk behind the counter had her back to him. She’d turned, professional smile in place …

And blanched.

“Oh,” she’d stammered, “oh …”

It had taken all his determination not to tell her that, yeah, despite the eye patch, she was looking at a face that was better suited to Halloween.

He had to give her credit. She’d recovered, fast. Got back her phony smile.

“Sir,” she’d said, “we have something for you.”

Something for him? What? It had better not be what some of the guys in the hospital had told him about, a welcoming committee of serious-faced civilians, all wanting to shake his hand.

No.

Thank God, it hadn’t been that.

It had been a manila envelope.

Inside, he’d found a set of keys, directions to a particular parking garage…

And a note, his brothers’ names scrawled at the bottom.

Did you really think you could fool us?

They’d left him his old Thunderbird to drive home.

It had been a crazy thing to do.

A damned crazy thing, indeed, Jake thought, and swallowed past a sudden tightness in his throat.

The car had made the miles through the endless expanse that was North Texas easier….

And, suddenly, there it was.

The wide gate that marked the northernmost boundary of El Sueño.

Jake slowed the car, then let it roll to a stop.

He’d forgotten what it was like, seeing that huge wooden gate, the weathered cedar sign that spelled out El Sueño—The Dream—in big bronze letters.

It was all the same, except for the fact that the gate stood open.

His sisters’ idea, he was certain, a sweet way Lissa, Em and Jaimie had thought of to welcome him and remind him that this was his home. They’d be hurt when they realized home was the last place he wanted to be but he didn’t see any way around it.

He had to keep moving.

He stepped hard on the gas and drove through the open gate, a rooster tail of Texas dust pluming out behind him.

He wouldn’t even have come this weekend, except he’d run out of excuses.

“Yeah. Well, I’ll see what I can do,” Jake had replied, and Caleb had said, very calmly, fine, good plan, and if he decided that what he couldn’t do was come home for a visit then, by God, he and Travis would have no choice but to fly to D.C., hog-tie him and drag his sorry ass home.

For all he knew, they would have.

Jake had thought it over and decided it was time to show his face—and wasn’t that one hell of an expression to use, he thought grimly.

It wouldn’t come as a surprise to his family. They’d all been at the hospital, waiting, when the transport plane first brought him back to the States. His sisters, his brothers, even the General, reminding everybody he was John Hamilton Wilde, General John Hamilton Wilde, United States Army, and he damned well wanted a private room for his wounded son and the attention of the best surgeons at Walter Reed.

Jake had been too out of it to argue but as the days and weeks crawled by, as he came off the painkillers and his head began to function again, he’d laid down the law.

No more special treatment.

And no more family visits.

There was no point, no reason, no way he wanted to watch Em and Lissa and Jaimie trying to be brave, his brothers pretending he’d be back to himself in no time, his father being, well, his father.

That was one of the reasons he’d taken so long to come home, even for a visit.

“You’re an idiot,” Travis had growled.

Maybe.

But he didn’t want to be fussed over, poked at, stroked and soothed and told nothing had changed, because everything had. His face. His sense of self.

Was he even a man anymore?

It was a damn good question.

A better one was, How did you dance between the reality that everything was normal and the brutal knowledge that it wasn’t?

Forget that for now.

Tonight, his job was to put on a good show. Smile, as long as he didn’t terrify anybody. Talk, even though he didn’t have anything to say civilians would want to hear.

Behave as if time had not passed.

He’d figured coming to the ranch by himself would give him the chance to acclimate. Immerse himself in familiar things. Smell the clean Texas air and listen to the coyotes making their beautiful music in the night.

All of that without an unwanted rush of emotion engulfing him in a place like an airport.

Every solider he knew said the same thing.

Coming home was tough.

You went off to war, you were carried away by the excitement of it, especially if you’d been raised on stories of bravery and battles and warriors.

He sure as hell had.

Their mother was dead, gone when Travis was six, Caleb four, Jake two. Housekeepers, nannies and a stepmother, who’d only stayed long enough to bear three daughters, had raised them.

The General, the rare times he was home, regaled them with stories about their ancestors, a hodgepodge of men who’d marched on Gaul with Caesar, raided the British Isles from longboats, crossed the Atlantic in sailing ships and then conquered a vast new continent from the Dakota plains to the Mexican border.

The stories had thrilled him.

Now, he knew they were nonsense.

Not the part about the warriors. He’d been one himself these last years, fighting alongside honorable, brave men, serving a nation he loved.

But his father had left things unsaid. The politicians. The lies. The cover-ups.

Jake stood on the brakes. The Thunderbird skidded, slewed sideways across the dirt road and came to a hard stop. He crossed his hands on the steering wheel, wrist over wrist.

He could hear his heart thumping.

He was heading straight back into that dark place he’d sworn he wouldn’t visit again.

He waited. Let his heartbeat slow. Then he opened the door and stepped from the car.

Something brushed against his face. A moth.

Good. Moths were real. They were things a man could understand.

He took a long gulp of cool night air. Tucked his hands into his trouser pockets. Looked up as clouds hid the stars, as cold and distant as the polar ice caps.

Minutes passed. The stars came out from behind the clouds, along with the moon. He got back into the ‘Bird and drove on until, finally, he could see the outline of the house, standing on a rise maybe an eighth of a mile away.

Light streamed from its windows.

Panic twisted in his gut.

He pulled onto the grass, stopped the car again and got out.

There was a stand of old oaks to his left, and a footpath that led through them.

Jake set out along the path. A breeze carrying the gurgling sound of Coyote Creek winding, unseen, alongside, accompanied him. Dry leaves crunched under the soles of the cowboy boots he’d never given up wearing.

There’d been a time he’d loved nights like these. The crystalline air. The distant glitter of the stars.

Back then, he’d look up at the sky as he just had and wonder at the impossibility of standing on a planet spinning through space.

His hand went to his eye socket. The taut skin below it.

Now, the only thing a night like this meant was that the cold made his bones, his jaw, the empty space that had once been an eye, ache.

Why would the eye hurt when it didn’t exist anymore?

He’d asked the doctors and physical therapists the question half a dozen times and always got the same answer.

His brain thought the eye was still there.

Yeah. Right.

Jake’s mouth twisted.

Just went to prove what a useless thing a man’s brain could be.

The bottom line was that it was cold and he hurt and why he’d got out of the ‘Bird and set off on this all-but-forgotten ribbon of hard-packed dirt and moldy leaves was beyond him. But he had, and he’d be damned if he’d turn around now.

The trail was as familiar as the gate, the road, his old Thunderbird. It had been beaten into the soil by generations of foxes and coyotes and dogs, by ranch hands and kids going back and forth to the cold, swift-running waters of the creek.

Jake had walked it endless times, though never on a cold night with his head feeling as if somebody was inside, hammering to try and get out.

He should have taken something. Aspirin. A couple of pills, except he didn’t want to take those effing pills, not even the aspirin, anymore.

By the time he emerged from the copse of trees and brambles, he was ready to turn around, get in the car and head straight back to the airport.

Too late.

There it was.

The house, the heart of El Sueño, a brightly lit beacon. Sprawling. White-shingled. Tucked within the protective curve of a stand of tall black ash and even taller oaks, and overlooking a vast, velvety lawn.

Somewhere in the dark woods behind him, an owl gave a low, mournful cry. Jake shivered. Rubbed his eye. The skin felt hot to the touch.

The owl called out again. A faint, high scream accompanied the sound.

Dinner for the owl. Death for the creature caught in its sharp talons. That was the way of the world.

Some lived.

Some died.

And, goddammit, he was getting the hell out of here right now …

You can’t run forever, Captain.

The voice was clear and sharp in his head.

Somebody had told him that. A surgeon? A shrink? Maybe he’d told it to himself. It wasn’t true. He could run and run and never stop—

The big front door of the house flew open.

Jake took a quick step back, into the shelter of the trees.

There were people in the doorway. Shapes. Shadows. He couldn’t make out their faces. Music floated on the night air.

And voices.

Many voices.

He’d made it clear he wanted to see nobody but family.

A useless request.

His sisters would have invited half the town. The other half would have invited itself. This was Wilde’s Crossing, after all.

Okay.

He could do this. He would do this.

Just for tonight because the truth was, deep in his heart, he still loved this place more than any other on earth. El Sueño was part of him. It was in his DNA as much as the Celtic ice-blue of his eyes, the Apache blackness of his hair. Centuries of Wilde blood pulsed through him with each beat of his heart.

“Dammit,” he said in a soft growl.

He couldn’t deny it—but he couldn’t understand why it should matter. The past was the past. What did it have to do with the future?

Two different army shrinks had given him the same answer. The past was the basis of the present, and the present was the basis of the future.

Jake hadn’t returned for any more lie-on-the-couch-and-vomit-out-your-secrets crap. He’d never given up his secrets to start with. What was the point of having a secret if you handed it off?

Besides, the shrinks were wrong.

The pain behind his eye, his nonexistent eye, had become a drumbeat. He rubbed the bone around it with a calloused hand.

He thought again of the stories he and his brothers had grown up on.

“Never forget,” the General would say. “Everything we are, everything we have, we owe to the courage and convictions of all those brave men who came before us.”

The brothers had all grown up waiting for the chance to carry on the tradition. College first, because their mother would have wanted it. Business management for Jake, law for Caleb, finance for Travis.

But Jake had been the only one who decided to become a soldier. He’d joined the army, longed for, and snagged, training flying Blackhawks, often on covert missions.

He’d loved it.

Taking out the enemy. Saving lives when nothing and nobody else could do it.

Suddenly, with gut-wrenching speed, he stood not in the dark Texas countryside, but in a place of blood and fire. Fire everywhere …

“No,” he said sharply.

He drew a shaky breath. Straightened his long, tautly muscled frame and stood as tall as his aching head would permit.

He was not going to make that mental journey tonight.

Tonight, he would be the son his father had wanted, the man his brothers had known, the guy his sisters had adored.

The owl called out again. The bird was a hunter. A survivor.

Yeah, well, so was he.

He set off briskly over the night-damp grass, toward the house and the family that waited for him there. The moon was climbing higher. He felt its cool ivory light on his face.

The figures in the doorway grew clearer.

“Jake?”

Jaimie and Lissa cried out his name.

“Jake?”

Caleb and Travis shouted it.

“Jake,” Emma shrieked, and just as he reached the house, they all came racing down the porch steps and engulfed him, laughing, crying. He felt dampness on his cheeks.

His brothers’ tears. His sisters’.

Maybe even his.

CHAPTER TWO

A PROMISE MADE was a promise kept.

That was Addison McDowell’s credo.

It was the only reason she was at this damned party tonight. She’d promised her financial advisor and her attorney—her Texas advisor and her Texas attorney—that she’d show up, so she had.

Doing what you said you would do was The Proper Thing. And doing The Proper Thing was important. She’d stuck with that ever since she’d decided that she was an Addison, not an Adoré.

Girls who grew up in run-down trailer parks might be given that awful name, but she’d left those days far, far behind.

She had become all that the name Addison implied.

She was successful. Sophisticated. She owned a Manhattan condo. Well, she had a fat mortgage on one, anyway. She had a law degree from Columbia University. She dressed well.

Only one fly in the ointment the last few months.

Her reputation was better suited to an Adoré than an Addison, and wasn’t that one hell of a thing after all her efforts to escape that miserable trailer park and its sad heritage of silly, round-heeled women?

Addison raised her glass to her lips and took a sip of merlot.

If only Charlie had not left her that damned ranch.

If only he hadn’t died.

He’d been the best friend she’d ever had. The only friend she’d ever had. He hadn’t wanted her for her body, he’d wanted her for her intelligence, and to hell with what people thought.

Charles Hilton, the multimillion-dollar lawyer, had liked her. Respected her.

They’d begun as business associates, though she’d been only a junior member of his legal team, but as they’d gotten to know each other, Charlie had looked past the obvious: the glossy, dark hair she wore severely pulled away from her face; the silver eyes; the curvy figure she did her best to disguise within severely tailored suits.

Charlie had seen the real her, the one with intelligence and the determination to succeed. He’d become her mentor.

She hadn’t trusted his interest. Not at first. But as she’d gotten to know him, she’d realized that he loved her as the daughter he’d never had. In return, she’d loved him as the father she’d had and lost.

And when he’d grown frail and ill, she’d loved him even more because he’d needed her, and being needed was a wonderful feeling.

There had never been anything even remotely intimate between them, unless you counted rubbing his aching shoulders near the end of his life.

It was obscene even to consider.

But blogs and gossip columns didn’t care about truth, not when fiction was so much more juicy, not in Manhattan or, as it had turned out, not in Wilde’s Crossing, Texas.

She’d kept a low profile since coming to Wilde’s Crossing, but that didn’t mean a thing.

People watched her whenever she showed up in public.

She’d known tonight would be the same, no matter what the Wilde brothers said.

People would stare. Or try to be stealthy about it.

Either way, eyes would be on her.

“Wrong,” Travis Wilde had said.

Addison sipped at her wine.

The one who’d been wrong was Travis.

She was getting lots of looks. And, hell, maybe she deserved them.

She’d started out wearing a business suit. Too New York, she’d decided; she’d stand out like the proverbial sore thumb.

So she’d ditched the suit for jeans, a silk blouse and boots.

A glance in old man Chambers’s cracked bathroom mirror told her she looked like a New Yorker dressed for a Western costume party….

And wasn’t it amazing that she’d fallen into calling Charlie’s ranch, her ranch, by its former owner’s name the way everybody else still did?

Finally, she’d looked in the mirror and said, “To hell with it.”

The sound of her voice had set a mouse to scampering in the walls.

Good thing she wasn’t afraid of mice, she’d thought, or bugs, or the big snake she’d swept off the porch of the miserable pile of shingles she now owned.

She wasn’t afraid of anything.

That was what had taken her from Trailer Park, USA, to Park Avenue, New York City.

So she’d changed to a black silk Diane von Furstenberg wraparound dress. It was very ladylike until you noticed how low the neckline dipped, and how the silk clung to her when she moved. Black kid, sky-high Manolo Blahniks were the finishing touch.

Another look in the mirror and she’d tossed her head.

Stories about her had reached Wilde’s Crossing before she did.

When she’d questioned the Wildes, they’d both blushed.

The sight of grown men blushing had some charm, but Addison wasn’t interested in charm. She was just damned tired of people talking about her.

Tonight, no matter what she wore, people would stare. Why not give them something to stare at, never mind that her dress and stilettos wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow back home.

She’d suspected that most of the women would wear jeans or what she thought of as tea dresses—frilly, flowery prints that only looked good on six-year-olds.

Right on all counts, Addison thought now, as she swapped her empty wineglass for a full one from the tray of a passing server.

Right about the women’s clothes and the town’s attitude. The women were the real pains in the ass because they weren’t just judgmental, they were holier-than-thou.

Like the one watching at her right now.

Frilly dress? Check. Too much lipstick? Double check. And big hair. Did Texas wives not know that big hair looked good on Dolly Parton and nobody else?

Addison flashed the smile a cat might offer a mouse.

The woman flushed and looked away.

Pleased to meet you, too, Addison thought coldly, and then she also thought, Why did I come here tonight?

Because Travis and Caleb Wilde had asked her.

Back to square one.

They’d asked, and in a moment of uncharacteristic weakness, she’d told them she’d do it, she’d go to their brother’s homecoming party, which wasn’t supposed to be a party at all.

“Just family and a couple of old friends,” Caleb had said.

“Well, maybe one or two more,” Travis had added.

Right, Addison thought, with a mental roll of her eyes.

Just family and old friends. She should have known better. When Travis fell into that good-ole-boy drawl of his, anything was possible.

What looked like a zillion “old friends” had gathered in the enormous great room at El Sueño.

El Sueño. The Dream.

Addison hid a wry smile in her wineglass as she lifted it to her lips.

In Spanish or English, that was a pretty fanciful name for half a million acres of scrub, rolling grassland, flower and vegetable gardens, dusty roads, expensive horseflesh and gushing oil wells, but one of the things she’d discovered during the time she’d been here was that Texans could wax poetic about their land as easily as they could raise a sweat working it.

Even Charlie, who had not been a Texan at all, but like her was a born and bred Easterner, though from a very, very different background, even he had somehow let the poetic part draw him in.

Not the sweat part.

It was impossible to imagine Charlie had ever raised a sweat on anything more labor-intensive than his stock portfolio.

Addison sighed.

Perhaps if he had, if he’d flown down to take a hard look at the Chambers ranch, ridden its seemingly endless dusty acres instead of relying on a picture-book spread in a fancy real-estate catalogue, he wouldn’t have bought it.

But he had bought it, sight unseen, and died a week later.

Losing him had just about broken her heart—and then had come the shock of learning he’d willed her the ranch.

She’d done nothing about it for a while. Then, because the place had obviously been important to Charlie, she’d done what he hadn’t.

She’d strung together all the vacation time she hadn’t taken in two years, added this year’s allotment and flown down to see it.

What she’d found wasn’t a ranch at all, not if you watched old John Wayne movies on late-night TV.

The Chambers place was umpteen thousand acres of scrub, outbuildings that looked as if a strong wind would topple them, a ranch house that had its own wildlife population, half a dozen sorry-looking horses and not very much else.

Which was the reason she had the Wildes as her advisors and—

“Now, little lady, how come you’re drinkin’ red wine when there’s champagne flowin’ like a stream to the Rio Grande?”

A big man wearing an even bigger Stetson, a flute of champagne in each oversize paw, flashed her a big smile.

Oh God, she thought wearily, not again.

“Jimbo Fawcett,” he said. “Of the Fawcett Ranch.”

How could somebody manage to tuck an entire pedigree into six words? Another Jimbo Fawcett look-alike already had, with the clear expectation that she’d want to spend the rest of the evening listening to him explain—with some modesty but not much because, after all, this was Texas—how incredibly lucky she was that he’d picked her out of the herd.

Except for the Stetsons, big-shot New York attorneys and Wall Street tycoons did it much the same way, so she was used to it.

“How nice for you,” she said pleasantly.

“You jest got to be Addie McDowell.”

“Addison McDowell. Yes.”

Fawcett gave a booming laugh. “We’re not so formal down here, little lady.”

What the hell, Addison thought, enough was enough.

“Mr. Fawcett—”

“Jimbo.”

“Mr. Fawcett.” Addison gave him a bright smile. “In the next couple of minutes, you’re going to tell me that I’m new to Wilde’s Crossing and what a sad thing it is that we haven’t met before.”

Fawcett blinked.

“And I’m going to say yes, I’m new and we haven’t met because I’m not interested in meeting anyone, and then I’ll tell you that I prefer red wine and that I’m sure you’re a nice guy but I’m not interested in champagne or anything else. Got it?”

Fawcett’s mouth dropped open.

Addison took pity on the man and patted his arm.

“Thanks anyway,” she said, and she turned her back to him, wound her way through the crowd until she found an empty bit of wall space near a big Steinway grand piano and settled into it.

Dammit, she thought, glancing at her watch, how much longer until the local hero showed up? Five minutes more, and then—

“Why do I suspect you’re not having a good time?”

Addison turned around, ready to provide a sharp answer, but when she saw the tall, good-looking man who’d slipped up next to her, she fixed him with a narrow-eyed glare instead.

“Travis Wilde,” she said, “you owe me, big-time.”

“Well, that answers your question,” Caleb Wilde said as he joined them. “You suspect she’s not having a good time because she isn’t. Right, Addison?”

“Considering that I’ve spent the last months turning down invitations from the country club, the ranchers’ association, the ladies’ sewing league—”

“Not the sewing league,” Travis said in shocked tones.

“The sewing league,” Addison said, and when she saw the brothers’ mouths twitch, she relented, if only a little. “You said he would be here by eight.”

“Jacob.” Caleb cleared his throat. “That’s what we figured.”

“It’s almost eight-thirty. And there’s still no sign of the mystery man.”

“Jake’s not a mystery man,” Travis said quickly. “And he’ll be here. Just be patient.”

Addison made a face. The last few months, her patience had been in increasingly short supply.

“You need an expert to take a long, hard look at the Chambers place, figure out if it makes sense to fix it up before you put it on the market or not. In today’s economic climate—”

Addison held up her hand.

“I’ve heard this speech before.”

“It’s still valid. Jake’s recommendations could make hundreds of thousands of dollars’ difference to you.”

She could hardly scoff at that. Those Manhattan mortgage payments, the tuition loans …

Besides, the ranch had meant something to Charlie and he’d left it to her. That was a kind of obligation. She had to do the right thing with it, if only out of respect for his memory.

“Ten minutes. He’ll be here by then,” Caleb said. “Okay?”

“He’d better be,” Addison said, but she softened the words with a smile.

She could spare another ten minutes, partly because she liked and respected Caleb, her attorney, and Travis, her financial consultant—

And partly because she was curious.

She was increasingly certain the Wildes weren’t telling her all there was to tell about the mysterious Jacob.

She knew he was, or had been, in the army. That he’d been wounded. That he was some kind of hero. His brothers hadn’t said so but she’d heard the rumors from the one lonely cowboy who worked her ranch part-time. Caleb and Travis simply talked about his ability to assess the place.

“You sell it without his advice,” they’d said, “you’ll regret it.”

“Couldn’t someone else do it?” Addison had asked.

The brothers had exchanged a glance so quick she might not have noticed it if she hadn’t been looking at them from across her desk—old man Chambers’s desk—in what passed for the ranch office.

Addison’s eyebrows had risen. “What?”

“Nothing,” Caleb had said.

“Nothing at all,” Travis had added.

“Bull,” Addison had said calmly. “You’re up to something and I want to know what it is.”

Another of those quick looks. Then Travis had cleared his throat.

“Jake truly is the man you want, Addison.”

Addison had been tempted to point out that she didn’t want any man. She had a career she’d worked her tail off to obtain. But that wasn’t what he’d meant, and she knew it.

“He’s the best there is.”

“But?”

Travis had shrugged. “But, he’s not plannin’ on stayin’.”

“Here we go. The drawl. The smile. The famous Wilde charm—and you both know damned well how much good that will do you.”

She’d said it just lightly enough so the brothers had chuckled.

“Heck,” Travis had said, sitting back and crossing one boot-clad foot over the other, “it works with every other female in this part of Texas.”

“I bet,” Addison had said sweetly. “But I’m not from this part of Texas. I’m not from any part of Texas.” She’d paused for emphasis. “And I’m not ‘every other female,’ I’m your employer.”

“Our client,” Travis had said, his drawl as lazy as Caleb’s.

The brothers had grinned. So had Addison. It was a familiar routine and it still surprised her that she felt comfortable enough with them for relaxed banter.

“And because you’re our client,” Travis had said, “and we have your best interests at heart….”

“Try telling me all of it,” Addison had said. “Or I’ll put this place on the market tomorrow.”

The brothers had exchanged a long look. Then Caleb sighed.

“Jake’s been in the army.”

“So?”

“So, he was, ah, he was wounded. And he, ah, he’s not sure if he wants to stay at El Sueño or maybe move on. And—”

“And he needs a solid reason to stay,” Travis had said bluntly, no charm, no drawl, nothing but the cool voice of the financial advisor Addison had come to know and respect. “He knows your land almost as well as he knows ours. He’s smart, he’s pragmatic, and he was born knowing horses and ranching.”

“We promise you,” Caleb had said in that same no-nonsense way, “you won’t regret working with him.” And then, before she could say anything, he’d added, “Have you had any regrets, dealing with us?”

Thinking back to that conversation, Addison sighed, brought her glass to her lips and drank some more wine.

No. She most definitely had no regrets. She’d learned not just to like the Wildes, but to trust them.

Travis had been her financial advisor pretty much since she’d arrived in Wilde’s Crossing. Caleb had been her attorney close to the same length of time. Using a New York lawyer and a New York financial guru just hadn’t made much sense.

The point was, she took legal advice from one Wilde and financial advice from the other.

It might make sense to take ranching advice from the other.

Which was why she was here, tonight.

Travis had greeted her; he’d taken her on the obligatory rounds, introduced her to his three sisters.

Apparently, no one had told them that her relationship with their brothers was strictly professional.

Not that they hadn’t been pleasant, even gracious, but a woman could always tell when other women were sizing her up.

Listen, she’d almost said, you can stop worrying. I do not, repeat, do not intend to sleep with either of your brothers. They’re hunks, all right, and I like them, but I have no interest in getting involved with any man, no matter how handsome or sexy or rich or charming, not even if hell should freeze over.

She wasn’t interested in waiting another minute for the Hero to show up, either. The Wounded Hero, she reminded herself, but the wound could not have been much.

Jacob Wilde was a famous man’s son. He would have grown up rich and spoiled—girls from trailer parks knew the type. So, why on earth was she still standing around, waiting for a man she would undoubtedly dislike on—

“Jake?”

“Oh, my God, Jake!”

Someone had opened the front door ten or fifteen minutes ago. Now the entire Wilde crew was trying to fit through it at once.

The sisters were shrieking and bouncing like yo-yo’s. Caleb and Travis were laughing. The bunch of them exploded onto the porch, and the crowd moved in behind them for the show.

Addison sighed with resignation. Too late. She was stuck here, at least until she shook the hero’s hand, or maybe he’d be so engulfed by the crowd that she’d be able to slip out without anybody noticing….

And then Jacob Wilde stepped into the room.

The breath caught in her throat.

She had expected him to be good-looking.

He wasn’t.

He was—there was no other word for it—beautiful.

Tall. Broad-shouldered. A long, tautly muscled body, strong and straight in a uniform that bristled with ribbons. His hair was the color of midnight.

Corny, all of it, but true.

He had a face a sculptor might have chiseled.

A sculptor with a cruel sense of irony.

Because Jacob Wilde’s face was perfect….

Except for the black patch over one eye, and the angry, ridged flesh that stretched across the arch of his cheek beneath it.

CHAPTER THREE

JAKE STOOD frozen in the open doorway.

The momentary rush of euphoria at seeing his sisters and brothers drained away as fast as the water from Coyote Creek in a dry Texas summer.

No party, he’d said. No crowd. And, yes, he’d figured there’d be people there anyway….

His belly knotted.

From where he stood, it looked as if the entire county had showed up.

He took a quick step back, or tried to, but his sisters threw themselves at him.

“You’re here,” Em said happily.

“Really here,” Jaimie said.

“You’re home,” Lissa added, and what could he finally do but close his arms around them all?

Caleb pounded him on the back.

Travis squeezed his shoulder.

Despite everything, Jake began to grin.

“Is this a welcoming committee?” he said, “or a plot to do me in?”

They laughed with him, his sisters weeping, his brothers grinning from ear to ear.

For a few seconds, it was as if nothing had changed, as if they were all still kids and the world was a wonderland of endless possibilities….

Then Caleb cleared his throat.

“The General sends his best.”

Jake checked the room. “He’s not here?”

“No,” Travis said uncomfortably. “He said to tell you he’s sorry but he got hung up at a NATO meeting in London.”

Reality returned in a cold, hard rush.

“Of course,” Jake said politely. “I understand.”

There was a moment of silence. Then Jaimie touched his arm.

“Everyone’s waiting to say hello,” she said softly.

Jake forced a smile. “So I see.”

Caleb leaned in closer. “Sorry about the crowd,” he murmured.

“Yeah,” Travis said. “Trust me, bro. We didn’t plan any of this.”

“It’s just that word got around,” Lissa said. “And people were so eager to welcome you home….”

“You don’t mind, Jake,” Em said, “do you?”

“No,” he said, “of course not.”

His brothers saw right through the polite response. They exchanged a look.

“You ladies can have him later,” Caleb said. “What he needs right now is a cold brew. Right, my man?”

What he needed was to get the hell out of here, especially because he knew what would happen once he stepped fully inside the room, where the lights were brighter and the crowd could get its first good look at him, but why add cowardice to his other sins?

“Unless,” Travis said quickly, “baby brother wants champagne. Or wine.”

Jake looked at his brothers. They were throwing him a lifeline, a way to grab hold of the past by segueing into an old routine.

“Champagne’s for chicks,” he said, the line coming to him as readily as his next breath. “Wine’s for wusses.”

“But beer—” Travis said solemnly.

Caleb finished the silly poem. “—is for real men.”

Jake could almost feel his tension easing.

They’d come up with the doggerel years ago. It had been valid when they were in their teens. Not anymore. They’d all grown up; they’d traveled the world and, in the process, their tastes had become more sophisticated.

Travis even had a wine cellar, something they teased him about unmercifully.

Still, a cold beer sounded good, almost as good as the memories dredged up by the silly bit of shtick.

“A cold beer,” Jake said wistfully. “A longneck?”

“Does real beer come in any other kind of bottle?”

The three Wildes smiled. And moved from the porch into the room.

“Hell,” Jake muttered.

He’d forgotten the crowd. The lights.

The reaction.

People gasped. Slapped their hands to their mouths. Whispered to the person beside them.

Jake could have sworn that all the air in the big room had been siphoned away on one deep, communal inhalation.

“Crap,” Caleb muttered. Travis echoed the sentiment, though with a far more basic Anglo-Saxonism.

“It’s okay,” Jake said, because if ever there’d been a time when a lie was a good thing, it was now.

A surge of partygoers surrounded him.

He recognized the faces. Ranchers. Their wives. The couple who owned the hardware store, the town’s pharmacist. The owner of the local supermarket. The dentist. Teachers who’d known him in high school, coaches, guys he’d played football with.

Most of them had recovered their equilibrium. The men stuck out their hands. The women offered their cheeks for kisses.

All offered variations on the same theme.

Jake, it’s wonderful to have you home.

“It’s wonderful to be home,” he answered.

Another lie, but what was he going to say? No, it’s not wonderful? I can’t wait to get the hell out of here? I don’t belong here anymore, I don’t belong anywhere?

“Just keep moving,” Travis muttered.

Jake nodded. One foot in front of the other …

Who was that?

A woman. Standing all the way in the rear of the big room, near Em’s piano.

He’d never seen her before.

If he had, he surely would have remembered her.

Tall. Slender. Dark hair pulled away from her face. An oval face that held a faint look of amusement.

In a sea of blue denim and pastel cotton, she wore black silk. Sexy black silk …

The crowd swelled, shifted, and he lost sight of her.

“You ready for this?”

“Ready for…?”

“The next bunch,” Travis said, jerking his chin toward the larger crowd ahead.

“The cheers of your million fans,” Caleb added, working hard for a light tone.

Jake forced a laugh, as he knew he was meant to do.

“Sure.”

Two lies in two minutes. Had to be a record, even for him.

“Then, let’s do it,” Caleb said. “’Cause the sooner we make it to the end zone, the sooner we can get those beers.”

A second laugh was more than he could manage. He smiled instead, took a deep breath and let his brothers lead him forward.

The crowd swallowed him up.

He shook more hands, returned more smiles, did his best to ignore the glitter of tears in the eyes of some of the women, said, Yeah, it was good to be back and Absolutely, it had been a long time and finally, mercifully, he, Travis and Caleb reached the long trestle table that held platters of barbecued ribs and chicken wings alongside tiny sandwiches and bowls of tiny grilled vegetables.

“Real food and girl food,” Caleb said, and this time, Jake’s laughter was genuine.

“And the holy grail,” Travis said, pulling three long-necked bottles from an ice-filled copper tub.

Jake took one, nodded his thanks and raised the bottle to his lips.

“Wait!” Caleb touched his bottle first to Travis’s, then to Jake’s. “Here’s to having you home, brother,” he said softly.

Was it time to point out that the toast was a little premature? No, Jake thought, and they clinked bottles, then drank.

The beer was cold and bitter, maybe what he needed to head off the still-throbbing ache behind his eye. Tension, the docs had said, and told him, earnestly, he had to learn to avoid stress.

Right, Jake thought, and took another long swallow.

“We’ve missed you.”

He looked at Travis. “Yeah. Me, too.”

“Hell,” Caleb said, his voice gruff, “it just wasn’t the same with you gone. This is where you belong, Jacob.”

Okay. Jake could see where this was going.

“About that,” he began, but Travis shook his head.

“We know. You’re not staying. But you’re here tonight. Let’s just celebrate that, okay?”

The suggestion was harmless; it changed nothing. And the truth was, right now, it felt good to be with his family.

“Okay,” he said, and then he smiled and touched his bottle to theirs again. “A toast to The Wilde Ones.”

The old nickname made the brothers grin. And when Bill Sullivan from the feed store came up, clapped him on the shoulder and said, “Hey, Jake, great to see you,” Jake shook hands, said whatever he was supposed to say….

Until, in a sudden break in the crowd, he saw the woman again.

He had a clearer look at her now, and more time to savor it.

Her hair was the color of rich coffee, thick and shiny; she’d pulled it back with something he couldn’t quite make out, pins or maybe combs.

The style, if you could call it that, was simple …

So was the image that came into his head.

He could see her brushing those lush locks into submission. Her arms were raised, her breasts were thrust up so the nipples were elevated—

Elevated and ready for the whisper of a man’s tongue, for the heat of his mouth …

“Jake?”

His groin tightened.

And that face.

Sculpted bones beneath creamy skin. Gray eyes. No. They were more silver than gray. A straight, no-nonsense nose above a mouth made for things best dreamed of in the deepest dark of the night….

“Jake?”

A hot rush of lust drove through his belly, so quick and fierce that it stunned him. He hadn’t felt anything like it for a long time.

A very long time.

“Hey, man, where’d you go?”

He blinked himself back to reality, swung toward Travis, saw the plate of food he was holding out. Food was the last thing he wanted right now, but he took the plate and forced a smile to his lips.

“Just what I needed,” he said briskly. “Thanks.”

Travis and Caleb began eating. He did, too, though nothing he put in his mouth had any taste.

He wanted to turn around and look at the woman with the silver eyes.

Ridiculous, really.

What would be the point? Forget that moment of lust or hunger or whatever in hell it had been.

At most, it had been an aberration.

The unbelievable truth was that he wasn’t into sex anymore, wasn’t into wanting it or even thinking about it. His sex drive had gone south.

Like the eye, it simply wasn’t there anymore.

Besides, he knew what he looked like. A guy with a Halloween mask for a face …

“… and damned if Lissa didn’t say, ‘Barbecue? Barbecue?’ In that way she has, you know, of making you feel as if it’s you who’s crazy, not her?”

Travis laughed, so Jake laughed, too, but his thoughts returned to the woman.

And to the sudden certainty that she was watching him.

Slowly, with what he hoped was an elaborate show of disinterest, he glanced over his shoulder.

His pulse jumped.

She was. Watching him. Not with curiosity. Not with disgust.

With interest.

And she was alone.

Not in the sense that she was here by herself, though he was sure she was. What man would bring a woman who looked like this to a party and walk away from her?

What he meant was that she was alone in the full sense of the word, separate and apart from everyone and everything….

Except him.

He felt the sudden leap of his blood. And, once again, that urgent pull of desire.

Which was crazy.

Now? he thought. In a room full of people? His long-dormant libido was going to kick in and—holy hell—kick in and add a boner to the fright mask that already made him a standout in the crowd?

God knew, he’d tried to get a rise out of himself—no pun intended—once his wounds had healed.

And fright mask or not, there’d been women who’d made it clear they’d have enjoyed his attention. Nurses. Therapists. A couple of pretty MDs. He had no idea whether it was out of pity or curiosity, or if, as one woman had whispered, that eye patch made him look hot….

The thing was, women had shown interest.

His reaction?

Nothing.

He might as well have been a monk. No erections, no steamy thoughts, not even an X-rated dream.

A few weeks ago, one of his doctors—the Shrink of the Month, was how Jake thought of it—had apparently figured out that he wasn’t fully back in the land of the living.

“So, how’s sex?” the shrink had suddenly asked.

Jake had given the kind of answer he’d hoped would end the discussion.

“Hey, Doc,” he’d said with what he’d hoped was a careless grin, “you’re over twenty-one. Find out for yourself.”

His pathetic attempt at humor hadn’t worked.

“Takes time for everything to function again,” the doc had said. “Not just physically. Emotionally. Trauma takes a toll, Captain, but you’re young. You’re healthy. Give yourself time and, you’ll see, your sex drive will return.”

“Sure,” Jake had said.

But it hadn’t.

Maybe he’d had too many other things to think about. What to do about his future. What to do about his past. How to get through the long days and longer nights.

Whatever the reason, sex—for a man who’d always had his pick of beautiful women—had suddenly become unimportant.

Desire, lust, call it what you liked, had not returned. He hadn’t been with a woman since he’d been wounded, hadn’t wanted to be with one….

Until now.

He took a deep breath. Told himself to look away from the brunette with the silver eyes, but he couldn’t.

Not while she was looking at him.

He searched hard for that oh-you-poor-thing expression half the women in the room had showed him tonight.

It wasn’t there.

She was simply watching him, assessing him with a steadiness that was unsettling.

His jaw tightened.

Now she was smiling, her lips curving in a way that reached deep into his gut.

She mouthed a word.

Hi.

And lifted her wineglass in … what could it be but invitation?

“Her name is Addison. Addison McDowell.”

Caleb’s voice was low. Jake looked at him.

“What?”

“The woman you’re looking at.”

“I wasn’t looking at anybody.”

Caleb raised an eyebrow. “Yeah, well, just in case you were—”

“I just told you, I wasn’t.”

“My mistake,” Caleb said calmly. “I only meant—”

“What’s she doing in Wilde’s Crossing?”

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