He made it home from a war zone.

But danger remains in the mountains of Montana…

Navy SEAL Brett Morgan has come home to recover after a disastrous deployment, desperate to remember what happened. As he struggles to find his feet as a civilian, he intervenes in an armed robbery, saving the life of waitress Anna Larkin. But there’s more to Anna’s past than meets the eye and as that past circles dangerously closer, Brett will have to draw on all of his combat experience to keep them both alive.

New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author CINDY DEES is the author of more than fifty novels. She draws upon her experience as a US Air Force pilot to write romantic suspense. She’s a two-time winner of the prestigious RITA® Award for romance fiction, a two-time winner of the RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award for Romantic Suspense and an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Award nominee. She loves to hear from readers at www.cindydees.com.

Also By Cindy Dees

Runaway Ranch

Navy SEAL’s Deadly Secret

Mission Medusa

Special Forces: The Recruit

Special Forces: The Spy

Special Forces: The Operator

The Coltons of Roaring Springs

Colton Under Fire

Code: Warrior SEALs

Undercover with a SEAL

Her Secret Spy

Her Mission with a SEAL

Navy SEAL Cop

Soldier’s Last Stand

The Spy’s Secret Family

Captain’s Call of Duty

Soldier’s Rescue Mission

Her Hero After Dark

Breathless Encounter

Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Navy SEAL’s Deadly Secret

Cindy Dees

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-008-90488-3

NAVY SEAL’S DEADLY SECRET

© 2020 Cynthia Dees

Published in Great Britain 2019

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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Please, God, let the guardrail stop her.

Slowing carefully as he approached the curve so as not to go off the road himself, he started around the bend.

No sign of the homicidal truck. And then he saw that the guardrail on this stretch of road was missing. A voice inside his skull started screaming, and the sound grew louder and louder as he stopped his truck. He jumped out before the wheels barely stopped turning. He raced over to the edge of the embankment and looked down in horror.

Long skid marks showed where her car had slid much of the way down a steep embankment. They stopped about three quarters of the way down and turned into big splat marks in the rocks. That was where her car had rolled. Heart in his throat, he traced them to the bottom of the ravine.

Anna’s little red car was upside down, at least two hundred feet below.

His heart stopped. Literally stopped. He couldn’t breathe, and a ten-ton weight crushed his chest.

* * *

Be sure to check out the rest of the Runaway Ranch miniseries later this year!

Dear Reader,

I’m delighted that you’ve joined me this month for the launch of my new series about the Morgan clan of Runaway Ranch, Montana. The Morgan family has a long history of distinguished military service, and the latest batch of Morgan boys is no exception, until Brett Morgan’s career goes up in smoke. Anna Larkin also left Sunny Creek in search of a dream and found only a horrible nightmare.

Now both of them have come home with their lives in tatters. Can they put their hearts back together and find a new life with each other in spite of past failures and the lingering secrets that follow them home?

Isn’t that a question we all face when life throws us a curveball? How will we pick ourselves up and go on? In my humble experience, it’s in our family we find our strength. It can be your blood family or intentional family, but they sustain us and lift us up when we’re overwhelmed by life.

It’s this love—this family—that the Morgan clan embodies, and why I’m so pleased to share their stories with you. So go pour yourself a beverage of your choice, curl up in a comfy spot and enjoy this book!

Warmly,

Cindy

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Note to Readers

Introduction

Dear Reader

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

About the Publisher

Chapter 1

“Hoo baby, Anna. You’ve got a hot one at booth number nine!”

Anna Larkin glanced at the back of the diner and the lone man hunched in the last booth, looking intensely uncomfortable, as if he wanted to shrink into nothingness. As if he was attempting to be invisible, or at least to blend in with the locals.

Not happening. He was tall, broad-shouldered and gorgeous, with dark hair and eyes so blue she could see their color from the other end of Pittypat’s Diner. Not the kind of guy who would ever blend in with the mere mortals of Sunny Creek, Montana.

He’d given it a good try, though. He wore a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and she would bet he was wearing jeans and cowboy boots under the scarred linoleum table.

“Well, go on,” Patricia Moeller, the Pat of Pittypat’s, urged her. “Say hello to the pretty man with no wedding ring.”

Anna rolled her eyes at her boss. But she did tug down the hem of her T-shirt before she headed over with a glass of ice water.

Hoo baby didn’t cover the half of it as she drew near her customer. His face was tanned, his features strong, his cheekbones chiseled out of Montana granite. She guessed him to be about thirty years old. A thin, red scar started near his ear and ran down into his shirt collar along the powerful neck of an athlete.

She studied him more closely. He looked familiar. But surely she would remember a face like that if she’d ever seen it before.

The old caution kicked in. She knew better than to fall for a pretty face. Much better. She’d suffered enough psychological wounds from the last pretty-faced man who crossed her path to make her skittish for a lifetime.

Maybe that was why she plunked this one’s water down a little too hard, sloshing it onto the table and into his lap. He jumped, and their hands collided reaching for the paper napkin folded under his fork.

Hot. Hard. Strong. The sensations raced through her almost too fast to name. She jerked back, scalded. “I’m so sorry!” she stammered.

“It’s just water. I won’t melt,” he said gruffly. He lifted the napkin out of her slack fingers and mopped at his crotch.

Realizing in horror that she was staring at his groin, she mumbled, “I’ll, um, get you another glass of water.”

“I’d rather have a cup of coffee.”

“Right. Uh, how do you like it?”

His gaze snapped up to hers, startled and wary, as if some alarming innuendo was buried in her question. But then a faint smirk bent his lips. “I like it hot and sweet.”

She stood there staring down at him like she’d lost her marbles until he murmured, “Coffee? May I have a cup?”

“Coffee. Right. Coming up.” She whirled away, her face flaming in embarrassment. Good Lord. She’d been standing there, staring at him like a starstruck girl. And she was neither starstruck nor a girl anymore. She’d been both when she’d left Sunny Creek at the ripe old age of eighteen, but Eddie Billingham had stolen both her innocence and the stars from her eyes long ago.

“You okay?” Patricia asked her at the coffee station. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

“No ghosts in here,” she retorted. Just ghosts in her head. The ghost of her innocent self. The ghost of her girlish hopes and dreams. The ghost of Eddie—

“I don’t know,” Patricia was saying. “Is that one of the Morgan boys? He looks mighty familiar.”

Anna glanced over her shoulder at the customer and jumped to see him staring at her. Intently. She looked away hastily, staring unseeing at the coffeemaker. The Morgan family had four sons and two daughters, but they’d all moved away from Sunny Creek in the past decade. Last she’d heard, none of them showed any signs of returning.

Pattie continued, “He’s got the look of a Morgan about him with that dark hair and those blue eyes. Good-looking like a Morgan, too.”

“If you say so.” She’d only had eyes for blond-haired, pale-blue-eyed Billie in high school. Stupid her. Anna poured a mug of coffee and piled a handful of sugar packets and containers of creamer on the saucer beside the mug. Determined not to spill hot coffee on her customer, she put the drink down carefully in front of him. “Can I get you a bite to eat?”

“Nah. Not hungry.”

“Petunia baked this morning. Sure I can’t get you a slice of her world-famous pumpkin chiffon pie?”

“No thanks.”

The guy was showing no signs whatsoever of wanting to be social with her, and God knew, she didn’t want to be social with him after making a complete fool of herself. She moved away, pausing at the next booth down to check on a retired couple passing through town in an RV. They asked for the check, which gave her an excuse to come back to this end of the dining room. She dropped off the bill and swung by the hunk’s table.

“Need a refill on that coffee?” she asked.

“Nope. The deal was I had to drink one cup. No more.”

What deal? She was tempted to ask him, but he forestalled her by frowning faintly at something over her shoulder. He muttered, “Someone just walked in and wants to be seated.”

Far be it from her to look like she was hanging around his table trying to get his attention! She turned quickly and headed for the newcomer, yet another lone guy. Except this one looked to be in his early twenties. And if she didn’t know better, she would say he was high. His entire demeanor was jittery. His hands were never still, and he tapped his booted heels incessantly. Like a flamenco dancer on crack.

God, she knew that look. Eddie used to get it when he snorted crack to hype himself up before auditions…and used his fists on her to come down from the hype after auditions.

The guy pushed past Anna toward the counter and the cash register, and she turned to ask him if he’d like a booth, determined to be polite after being such a doofus with her last single male customer.

Over the newcomer’s shoulder, she spied her customer. He was frowning heavily, his gaze shifting back and forth warily between her and the new guy. Trepidation leaped in her gut. The old panic that she would do something wrong and provoke jealous violence flared, making her insides quail.

Oh, wait. Not Eddie. She drew a breath of relief, tried to exhale away the panic attack and turned to face Flamenco Heels.

She spied a flash of silver in his fist. A knife. Her gazed riveted on the blade and time slowed around her to a strange, silent blur while her mind kept churning away.

Of course it was a knife. Karma was a bitch that way.

She watched the guy with the knife take a step toward her. Her entire world narrowed down to that lethal bit of sharpened steel with her name on it. Of course it was going to stab her in the belly. To gut her. Just like she’d gutted Eddie.

The remembered feel of the blade slipping into her husband’s flesh, the slight resistance and then the slippery slide of it, the heat of blood gushing out onto her fist, the metallic smell and taste of blood…

Relief flooded her, taking her by surprise, as the guy took another slow-motion step toward her.

Thank God it was finally over. Justice had caught up with her. There would be no more running from the truth. No more pretending she wasn’t racked by guilt. No more fake smiles when people offered condolences.

She’d had no idea she was waiting for this—for the swift and certain retribution that was owed to her—until a punk with a knife charged her.

Her hands dropped to her sides. She stood up straight, threw her shoulders back and closed her eyes.

Peace. At last. A finish to the self-loathing and constant voice of judgment in her head.

Her body jerked backward without warning and she opened her eyes, startled.

Apparently, Flamenco Heels had stepped around behind her and thrown his arm around her neck, yanking her back against him. She staggered and choked as his arm dug into her airway.

She was no stranger to being choked and went limp in his arms, not fighting the unconsciousness to come. The kid turned, putting his back to the counter, dragging her with him.

She saw her customer surge up out of his booth, sending his coffee across his table in a spill of sable. Anna stared at him in dismay as he charged toward her. There was no need for him to put himself in harm’s way! Not on her account. Particularly not since she’d been waiting for this ever since she got back to Sunny Creek. She’d known someone would come for her eventually. Eddie Billingham had always had plenty of hard-drinking friends and family in this town who were as violent as he had been.

She tried to shake her head at her customer. To warn him off. She managed only a frown, but hoped it was enough.

Nope.

He merely frowned back at her and kept on coming in a swift prowl that screamed of violence. And skill. He moved like some sort of trained killer.

“Give me all the cash in the register!” Flamenco Heels shouted in her ear. She was shoved forward violently and slammed into the edge of the counter.

Now. Kill me now, she begged the kid silently. Before my customer gets here and stops you.

The counter had slammed squarely into her solar plexus and knocked the wind plumb out of her. Gasping for air, she pushed upright just as something big and fast rushed past her. Spinning around to face her attacker, she was in time to see her customer smash into the would-be robber, shoulder first.

Both men crashed to the floor, the robber on the bottom taking the brunt of the impact.

The two men grappled, the kid’s knife grasped in both of their fists. Her customer forced the punk’s hand up over his head, but then the punk slugged her customer in the side with his free hand. Her customer grunted in pain, letting go of the kid’s knife-wielding hand and rolling away sharply. She danced back out of the way of both men as they jumped to their feet.

Her customer slid in front of her, hooking his right arm around her waist and shoving her behind him. The robber jumped forward, knife first, and her customer reacted so fast Anna barely saw him move. His fist slammed down on the kid’s elbow, and a terrible crunching sound of bone and tendon giving way accompanied the clatter of the knife on the floor. The punk screamed and collapsed around his ruined arm.

As the robber’s face went down, her customer’s knee came up, connecting squarely with the kid’s nose. Blood gushed from the robber’s face, streaming down his chin onto his white T-shirt. He staggered back, holding his face.

“Take a knee,” her customer said in a voice colder than arctic ice.

The robber was oblivious until her customer grabbed the kid’s good arm and gave it an upward wrench. “Go. Down.”

The robber dropped to his knees, and her customer maintained a grip on the guy’s good arm, holding it twisted behind his back. The look in her customer’s eyes was wild. Haunted even.

The front door burst open and she looked up sharply. The sheriff, Joe Westlake, charged in, hand on his holstered weapon. He took in the situation quickly, nodded at her customer standing over the bloody robber wannabe, and closed the snap holding the flap over his revolver.

“Helluva way to find out you’re back,” the sheriff boomed, pounding her customer fondly on the back.

Gradually, the trapped-animal terror in her customer’s eyes faded. Caution replaced his panic. Belatedly, he mumbled, “Hey, Joe.”

“Whatchya up to?”

“Doin’ your job for you.”

The sheriff laughed and cussed out her customer fondly, calling him Brett. Brett who?

Her brain clicked in recognition. Brett Morgan? Of the wealthy and powerful Morgan clan? Patricia had been right. All the Morgans were good-looking as sin, black Irish on their daddy’s side and Norwegian on their mama’s side, a big brawny bunch who owned and operated the Runaway Ranch. It sprawled north of town in the High Rockies beyond the Sunny Creek Valley. She’d never been out there, but she’d heard it was an impressive spread.

Relieved of the punk, her customer half straightened, favoring his side where he’d been punched. She lifted her hands to help him, but he subtly waved her off with the hand not pressed against his ribs.

“You okay?” he rasped.

“I’m fine. You?” she replied.

He straightened all the way, grimacing, and stared down at her, really looking at her. “Seriously. Are you all right?” he repeated.

“Yes.”

He frowned, clearly not buying her answer. But then the sheriff loomed beside him, asking loud enough for everyone in the diner to hear, “Are you okay, Anna?”

She squirmed as all eyes in the diner turned on her. Lord, she hated all this attention. “I’m fine. Um, Brett Mor—” she stumbled over his name “—Morgan—rescued me.”

“I’m going to need to interview you,” Joe told her. “Can you swing by the station when you get off work today?”

Police. Questioning. Oh, God. The panic was back, clawing at the inside of her chest cavity. “What do you need from me?” she asked Westlake cautiously.

“I’ll need a statement about what this punk said and did to you and what you saw in the fight.”

“I would hardly call that a fight,” she blurted. “It was a totally one-sided smackdown.”

Her gaze lifted to the hooded stare of her customer, and for the first time, a smile flitted across his face. Just for an instant. Then it was gone.

Petunia, Patricia’s twin, emerged from her office, waving around a shotgun awkwardly enough that Anna briefly considered hitting the floor. Brett lunged forward and grabbed the ancient weapon by the barrel, pointing it up at the ceiling while he gently lifted the weapon out of the woman’s hands.

Anna hurried over to the older woman and threw an arm around her shoulders. Petunia was shaking like a leaf. “Let me take you home, Miss Pitty.”

“No, I’ll be fine. I have to put the place back together and mop up that blood.” The woman’s legs started to give way, and Anna guided her quickly to a stool at the lunch counter.

The sheriff finished handcuffing the robber wannabe and headed for the door. “Brett, buddy. Can you take Petunia and Patricia to their place? They’re looking a bit squeamish.”

Patricia declared indignantly, “I’ll have you know we don’t get squeamish, Joseph Westlake. I remember when you fell off the roof of the hardware store and dislocated your shoulder. Who helped Mac MacGregor pop it back in and then fed you pie till you quit crying?”

Anna bit back a smile as the big, bad sheriff’s ears turned red. A rusty sound vaguely akin to a laugh escaped Brett, and she stared at him in surprise. He didn’t strike her as the kind of man who laughed often.

“Always were a jackass, Brett,” the sheriff declared good-naturedly.

“Right back atchya, Joey.”

The men traded good-natured insults as Brett escorted Petunia and Patricia out the door behind the sheriff and his prisoner. The door closed behind all of them, and suddenly the diner seemed hollow and empty.

An image of a knife flashed in her mind’s eye. It started out as Flamenco Heels’ knife but morphed into a bigger one. Clutched in her hand. Covered in blood. She shuddered all over at the gory memory. Would she never find a way to block out the image?

The remaining customers buzzed excitedly among themselves, cell phones out and texts flying. Anna winced. The gossip grapevine was one of the reasons she had run away from this town in the first place. And it was one of the main reasons why she’d dreaded coming back. What had she been thinking to come back here, anyway?

The adrenaline of the past few minutes drained away, and sudden exhaustion slammed into her. She trudged into the storeroom and filled the mop bucket, pushing it out to the dining room. Shuddering at the blood on the floor, seeing another, much larger pool of blood on a different cheap linoleum floor in her mind’s eye, she hurried to erase the evidence of the crime. But which crime she was trying to erase—of that she wasn’t sure.

A few swipes of the mop got rid of most of the robber’s blood, but she had to get down on her hands and knees to reach under the counter to get the last of it. Nauseated, she ran a sponge under the counter, seeing another counter in a small, dingy kitchen.

Her finger touched something cold and hard. Metal. Startled, she peered under the pie display case. Something circular and round glinted under there, but it wasn’t a coin. She used the mop handle to snag it and drag the object out.

It turned out to be a quarter-sized gold medal on a thin gold chain. The piece was beautifully carved on one side, the figure of a man holding a sword high over the head of what looked like a dragon. Saint George, maybe? Wasn’t he the guy who slayed dragons?

She turned the medal over. It was engraved with the words B—Always come home safe—Love, Mom.”

B for Brett, maybe? Or did this belong to the robber? She tucked it in her pocket to take to the sheriff.

The rest of her shift was busy as locals flocked to the diner to hear the story of the robbery and check out the damage—which amounted to one smashed chair and the coat stand being knocked over. Sheesh. Nosy much?

She wanted nothing more than to go home to the tiny house she’d inherited when her mother died, curl up in a ball and sleep for about a month.

Instead, she smiled and pretended she wasn’t shaken to her core, that the resurgent memories hadn’t freaked her completely out, and served up pie and coffee in a continuous stream. She had never been so relieved to hang up her apron when the supper waitress, Wanda, showed up for her shift at 4:00 p.m.

It was just as well that she had agreed to visit the sheriff today. She was too wiped out, first by the robbery and then by the continuous flow of customers who’d kept her hopping, to make the drive over to Hillsdale to check out some used windows at a junk shop as she’d planned to after work.

She stepped into the combination police office and jail, acutely uncomfortable at the overpowering atmosphere of law and order. She’d never had a run-in with the law here in Sunny Creek, but the law was the law, no matter where she was. And she had no love for police. Not after the past few years.

“Thanks for coming down to the station, Anna,” Joe Westlake said pleasantly enough.

She nodded, her throat too tight to speak. For crying out loud, she was the victim here. There was no need for her to feel like she’d just committed a murder. Still. Old habits died hard.

She perched on the edge of a chair beside the sheriff’s desk while he tape-recorded her hesitant description of the robbery.

“Oh, I forgot,” she said after he’d turned off the tape recorder. “Does this necklace belong to the robber? I found it on the floor when I was mopping up after the fight…er, robbery.” She fished out the Saint George’s medal and held it up.

“I recognize that!” Westlake exclaimed. “That’s Brett’s. His mom gave it to him just before he enlisted in the Navy. Want me to run it out to him?”

Her fist closed around the medal, warm from her pocket. “No, that’s all right. I’ll return it to him.”

Now why on earth did she go and say that? She wanted nothing to do with men at all, let alone a good-looking one capable of hair-trigger violence and who made her belly flutter in ways it had no business whatsoever fluttering.

Chapter 2

Brett sank carefully into a crappy recliner that had been crappy thirty years ago, swearing under his breath at the knives of pain jabbing his side. The punk had punched him right over the spot where he’d broken a bunch of ribs in the explosion that ended his military career and erased his memory of the last hour of said career. An hour he would give anything—anything—to recover.

Dangling a bottle of beer in his fingers over the edge of the armrest, he closed his eyes. Immediately, the events in the diner started running through his mind. Oh, sure. He could remember every single second in the diner. But could he remember a damned thing about that mountain pass with his men? Hell, no.

He didn’t even want to remember acting like a crazy man in Pittypat’s. He’d decided not to intervene in the robbery. Truly. But then the strangest look had come across that waitress’s face—certainty that she was going to die. Acceptance that her life was over. She was way too young to be killed. Just like his men had been. He hadn’t been able to stop himself from trying to save her. He’d leaped to his feet and had to be some kind of hero. Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn.

Damn his old man for making him go to town. For making him interact with human beings at least once a month as the condition for letting Brett hole up in this old hunting cabin on the family ranch. This was what came of it. He ended up busting up some kid.

Hell, the kid was lucky Brett hadn’t killed him. Lord knew, he’d been tempted. When he saw that punk slam the pretty waitress into the counter, something had snapped inside his head. The same something that was preventing him from remembering what happened on his last mission. It was that exact something that made him a menace to society and had sent him up here into the mountains to an isolated cabin to drink away his memories or die trying.

A furry head bumped his free hand, sliding under his palm until it rested on a soft back. “Hey, Reggie,” Brett muttered.

The black Lab took another slow step forward, bringing Brett’s hand to rest at the base of his tail. Brett obligingly scratched the dog’s back over the spot where the dog’s pelvis had been broken and subsequently repaired, leaving him with a permanent limp. They made a perfect pair. Both broken. Both alone in the world.

“You’re a good boy, aren’t you?” The dog’s tail thumped against the side of the recliner.

“At least I don’t have to go back to town for another month,” he told the dog. “Until then, it’s you and me, buddy. The rest of the world can go straight to hell.”

Brett took a long slug from his beer, not particularly enjoying the taste. But a man could drink only so much whiskey before he needed a change of pace. Beer didn’t provide as fast or sharp an escape from reality as hard liquor, but it got the job done eventually.

He’d downed the rest of his beer and must have dozed off because he jolted awake to a short, sharp bark of warning from Reggie.

Brett bolted from the chair and into the shadows beside the front window, hiding behind the cream-and-brown plaid curtains. His palm itched to feel the cold steel of a weapon. But his father—wisely—had removed all firearms from the cabin. Not that he needed a gun to be lethal, of course. Hell, he didn’t even need a knife. His bare hands would do the trick. Brett peered through the filthy window, his gaze predatory, seeking the slightest movement of an incoming threat.

There. A vehicle was coming slowly up the gravel switchback trail that served as a road to this place. It was one of those prissy little hybrid cars, all ecological self-righteousness and no muscle. Who in the hell was driving one of those up here? Nobody with a lick of sense came up into the high mountains without four-wheel drive and a set of chains in the back of their vehicle. The weather was unpredictable as hell, and snow was known to fall up here on the Fourth of July.

It might be sunny now, but in ten minutes, a line of storms could blow in over the mountain peaks at his back and drop a deluge of rain that turned the road into a sheet of slick mud or blow in a blizzard that made the mountain entirely impassable for days or weeks.

Apparently, his would-be visitor knew none of that because the little car continued chugging up the track toward him. More irritated than interested, he waited to see who would climb out of the car. The vehicle stopped beside his muddy pickup truck and the door opened.

The waitress from Pittypat’s? He hadn’t seen that one coming. What the hell did she want? To spill another drink on him?

Which was, of course, an uncharitable thought. He had long experience with women being flummoxed by his good looks, and she was far from the first waitress to dump a drink on him. At least she hadn’t insisted on mopping his lap for him like most of the others had.

She marched determinedly on the steppingstones across the patch of wildflowers and moss that served as a front yard and up the porch steps. Her feet hardly echoed on the old wood, though. Tiny little thing, she was.

Should he pretend not to be home? He’d already done his minimum human interaction for this month. He didn’t have to talk with her. No. He wouldn’t answer the door.

She knocked on the aged-wood panel hesitantly.

She didn’t want to be here either, huh? Then what brought her all the way out here in the middle of nowhere?

Maybe he should find out. He didn’t have to let her in, after all. He moved over to the door and opened it just as she raised her hand to knock again. Her hand fell forward awkwardly into thin air, and she looked startled. Her big brown eyes were wide and wary, like a doe’s, as she stared at him.

“Um, hi,” she said breathlessly. Was that the eight-thousand-foot altitude or his stealing her breath away? Not that he cared, of course.

“Can I help you?” he asked gruffly. Lord. When was the last time he talked with a woman? Before his last tour in Afghanistan. That would make it almost two years. He was out of practice.

“I wanted to thank you for saving me from that guy earlier.” She sounded like she’d rehearsed that line all the way up here.

His first impulse was to shrug it away. He ought to be thanking her for not freaking out completely while he pounded the punk into hamburger. But he could hear his mother threatening to tan his hide if he wasn’t polite in response to his visitor. And nobody messed with Miranda Morgan. He ended up mumbling, “No problem.”

“I think you dropped something during the fight. I found this when I was cleaning up afterward.” She fumbled in her pocket and pulled out a pile of gold chain and his Saint George’s medal. “Is this yours?”

He nodded tersely. “A gift. From my mother.”

She smiled, and her pretty face transformed in an instant to fantastically beautiful. He stared, stunned. Her smile burned as bright as the sun. Hell, he could feel its warmth on his skin. It didn’t last long, though, and was quickly replaced by a tiny frown between her gently curving brows. She murmured, back to being shy and uncomfortable, “The ring holding the chain to the clasp broke, but I fixed it for you.”

Startled, he mumbled his thanks without meeting her cinnamon gaze.

She held it out to him and he took it, his fingertips brushing against hers. The girl froze, her face turning into a careful mask. But her eyes. Good grief, her eyes. He’d seen that haunted look in the eyes of women in the worst war zones on Earth. Women who’d seen more suffering and lost more loved ones than any human soul could bear without breaking. He shook off the memory of the horrors that had made those women into ghastly specters of their former selves in time to see the waitress shiver like a dead man had just touched her. Da hell? He studied her more closely.

He’d checked her out in the diner, of course. After all, he wasn’t dead yet. He’d registered the gold-streaked chestnut hair, light brown eyes and great legs encased in tight denim. She looked athletic, rather than skinny, although she barely topped five foot four. He could imagine those juicy legs wrapped around his hips—

Ix-nay on the exy-say thoughts.

He slipped the necklace over his head and tucked the medal inside the collar of his shirt. He was surprised by the sigh of relief that slipped out of him. That medal had been to hell and back with him. It had protected him through four combat tours and brought him home in one piece, if not exactly unharmed.

“Is your side okay?” she blurted awkwardly. “That kid didn’t hurt you did he?”

He snorted in disdain. “Not hardly. It would take a hell of lot more skilled fighter than that to challenge me.” He hadn’t been a forward operator in the U.S. Army Rangers for nothing. Hell, he’d gone hand to hand against Taliban fighters who were whipcord hard and fighting for their lives. Now they were a challenge.

“Glad to hear it,” she murmured. Yet another awkward silence fell between them, and he wasn’t inclined in the least to help out his visitor. The sooner she caught a clue and went away, the better.

“My name’s Anna, by the way. Anna Larkin.”

The name was familiar. She’d been a year behind him in high school. Hadn’t she run away from home right after graduation senior year to pursue an acting career in Hollywood or something? “Did you ever go to California?” he shocked himself by asking.

The strangest thing happened. Her entire demeanor changed, and she folded in on herself, literally hugging her waist with her arms and doubling over a little as if he’d kicked her in the gut. All the light went out of her eyes, and lines of grief etched themselves around her eyes. Geez oh Pete! What did he say?

“Yeah,” she mumbled. “I made it to California.”

But she was back here, now. From that, he assumed the Hollywood dream hadn’t gone as she’d hoped. Too bad. She seemed like a nice person. He asked, “Didn’t Eddie Billingham go with you?” Eddie had been in his class in high school, and Brett had always found him arrogant and self-centered. Of course, it hadn’t helped keep Eddie’s ego in check that every girl in school seemed willing to sleep with him at the snap of his fingers.

Anna shook her head, not as if to say no, but as if to ward off the question. Huh. Bad blood between her and Eddie, maybe?

“Well, thanks for fixing my necklace and coming all the way out here to return it,” he tried, hoping she would catch the hint and vamoose.

She nodded and took a step back from him. She backed away from him quickly, her hands up defensively. What in the hell had he said to flip her out like that?

“Watch out!” he cried hoarsely. But too late. She stepped backward off the edge of the porch, missing the step with her foot and tumbling backward, arms flailing.

He lunged forward and made a grab at her, but missed. She went down, rolling heels over head and landing in a crumpled heap at the foot of the porch steps. He raced after her, dropping to his knees beside her.

Explosion. Screaming. Blood. His guys. Oh, God. His guys. Death. Loss. Agony.

He fought to breathe, fought the panic. Clawed his way back from the abyss inch by black, painful inch. He didn’t know how long it took, but he finally blinked his eyes hard, clearing the last remnants of hell from his mind’s eye, replacing them with a pretty young woman sprawled, unconscious on the ground.

Crap. Anna was out cold. He reached quickly for her throat, relieved beyond belief to feel a strong, steady pulse beating beneath her fragile, transparent skin. His fingers trailed down the slender column of her neck, reveling in the silken softness, so foreign to his hard-edged world.

He jerked his fingertips away from her neck and swore luridly. What the hell was he doing? He was damaged goods. Worthless to any woman.

Carefully, he slipped his hand under her head and felt her scalp for bumps or blood. Nothing. His palm slid ever so gently down the back of her neck, counting vertebrae and checking for any protrusions or swelling to indicate a neck injury. Nothing.

Very gently, he ran his thumbs outward from the hollow of her throat, tracing the line of her collarbones. So delicate. So feminine. And thankfully, intact. He swept his hands down her rib cage next, shocked at how much of them his hands spanned. She really was a tiny little thing. Her T-shirt was soft and worn beneath his hands and felt like…home.

He could tell by looking that her legs were lying at the correct angles. She might have wrenched a knee or ankle, but nothing was obviously broken. He sat back on his heels, frowning. She was going to get cold fast lying on the ground like this, though.

He slipped his arms underneath her shoulders and knees, and awkwardly climbed to his feet. Aw, hell. His ribs protested violently, and he gritted his teeth against the fiery agony shooting through his side. He staggered up the front steps with her and laid her down on the dry wood porch.

She started to stir and he jumped back from her as if she would bite him, hating himself for the impulse. Since when had he become afraid of small, unconscious women who meant him no harm? Was he that screwed up in the head? He was a warrior, for crying out loud. He’d stared down death and laughed in its face more times than he cared to count.

And yet, here he was, hiding from humanity. Hiding from himself. From his own memories. He backed another step away from Anna as she reached for her head and felt it gingerly. She opened her eyes, frowning faintly until she caught sight of him.

“Oh dear,” she sighed. “I am a bit of a klutz, aren’t I?”

He felt no need to restate the obvious. Of course she was a klutz. A rather adorable one, in fact.

She sat up and reached for the porch post. He offered his hand down to her. She looked startled, nervous even. But she laid her hand in his. It was soft. Fine boned. As delicate as the rest of her. And cold, too. He gave a gentle tug and she popped up to her feet. He watched, his gut turbulent as she dusted off her rear end. Her very nice rear end. Cupped temptingly in those skinny jeans. Off-limits. Dangerous.

“You’d best come inside,” he said gruffly. “Warm up and make sure you don’t have a concussion or something.”

She stared up at him as if she didn’t comprehend his words. She mumbled, “Feels like weather moving in. I’d better get off the mountain before it hits.”

“Are you sure? You hit your head hard enough to knock you out. You should stay a little while. Just to be safe—”

She cut him off. “Thanks. But I’ll be okay.”

One part of his mind chanted silently to her, Go away. Go away. Go away. But another part of it whispered, Don’t go. Don’t go. Don’t go. He wasn’t going to beg. And it was her life, after all. Still, he wished she would stay long enough to make sure she wasn’t seriously hurt.

She’d gotten that look in her eyes again. The haunted one that screamed of mistreatment and abuse at the hands of a man.

He crossed his arms over his chest, anchoring his hands to stop them from reaching out and forcing her to stay. He wasn’t about to force any woman to do anything she didn’t want to. Especially when it put that awful hurt look in her eyes.

He watched helplessly as she turned and navigated the porch steps facing forward this time, with better success than before.

She glanced over her shoulder at him as she opened her car door, her eyes wide with fear. As much as he hated the idea of a woman being afraid of him, maybe if she was scared of him, she would leave him the hell alone.

Except something painful twisted deep in his gut as he stood there, unmoving, and watched her drive away. Lonely. He was lonely.

Which was no less than he’d earned.

It was better this way. He didn’t deserve to be part of the human race.

Chapter 3

She’d made it back to the sprawling stone-and-log mansion that had literally stolen her breath when she’d passed it on her way up to Brett Morgan’s place when it started to sleet. She barely spared a glance for the massive dwelling now. She had to get down to a lower altitude and warmer temperatures that would turn this wintry precipitation back into relatively harmless rain. Her lightweight car wasn’t the least bit suited for the high Rockies.

She couldn’t stop picturing the man she’d left behind, brooding on his mountain. There was something…wounded…about him.

God knew, she’d never been able to resist hard-luck cases. She had taken in cats and dogs and wild animals—and humans—in need of healing for pretty much her entire life. There was no reason to believe that impulse would stop just because she had come home to Sunny Creek or because she was wounded herself.

Dark was falling by the time she pulled into the driveway of her bungalow—a renovation project in progress. She hadn’t grown up here; her mother had inherited the run-down house from a crazy great-uncle after Anna left town.

She could picture the finished craftsman cottage in her mind’s eye, but whether she would ever actually transform the decrepit structure before her into that homey, welcoming vision was anyone’s guess.

But hey. The new roof didn’t leak. And good Lord willing, the furnace she’d spent the past two weeks rebuilding would turn on tonight. Winter was coming, sweeping down out of the high reaches to consume the narrow valley that the Sunny Creek and town by the same name huddled in.

As she hustled inside her house on a gust of bitter wind, a few snowflakes flew past her nose. Yep. The cold was already cutting painfully through her California-conditioned body.

She called Vinny Benson, owner of the junk shop in Hillsdale, as soon as she shrugged out of her coat, scarf, sweater, and mittens. “Hey, Vinny. It’s your favorite impoverished house renovator.”

“Hey, baby. You coming to see me tonight? The windows I got are sweet. Original weighted mechanisms and everything. Dimensions are exactly what you need.”

“I’m sure I’m going to buy them, but I got hung up at the diner today and can’t make it over tonight. Looks like some weather’s blowing in anyway. I can’t risk the trip over the McMinn Pass.”

“It’s not snowing up in the pass, yet. Come on over to Hillsdale anyway. If you get snowed in, you can always shack up with me.”

A chill chattered down her spine. That was the sort of thing a teenaged Eddie would have said. Vinny was endlessly hitting on her, but so far, was harmless. So far. Not that she trusted any man to stay harmless for long. She had no intention of getting snowed in with him or anyone else. She took a deep breath and forced herself not to tell him what she really thought of him and all men. “I can head over there first thing in the morning to buy the windows. Just hold them for me, please.” She grimaced and amended, “Pretty please?”

She despised flirting with men, but if it got her the wooden replacement windows for her living room that she’d been hunting for desperately since she bought this house, she would find a way to stand it.

Vinny tried to extract a dinner date out of her in exchange for holding the stupid windows, but she made a lame excuse about having to work and dodged that bullet. Finally, he agreed to just hold the windows for her.

That unpleasant fire put out, she moved through the kitchen into the bungalow’s main room, a combination dining-living area. Might as well sand a little paneling tonight. The exercise would help keep her warm in the drafty house. Until those new windows were installed, she was resigned to more or less camping inside her home.

She set her phone on top of a cheap speaker and blasted beach music as she sighed, picked up a piece of sandpaper and went to work on the wooden wainscoting. At the current rate of progress, she figured she would complete refinishing the walls in approximately a million years.

It would go a ton faster with a power sander, but she was trying to save every penny and put all her money back into the materials she needed to restore the home. Elbow grease was free, and she had plenty of that. Besides, the mindlessly repetitive work of sanding wood lulled her brain into a state of thoughtless boredom in which she could actually, oh, sleep from time to time. And the physical labor tired her out enough that, on a good night, she wasn’t beset by nightmares that had her awake and screaming in the wee hours.

Sometimes, the enormity of the project she’d taken on got to her, though, and tonight was one of those times. In lieu of crying, she opted to sing along with a classic Beach Boys tune and dance around the spacious living room. It would be a gracious room if she ever managed to make it habitable for humans. Maybe someday she would finally put this house and her life back together. Someday. But not this day.

Brett heated up a can of baked beans and poured them over a couple of slices of toast. He was just sitting down to eat the makeshift grub when headlights flashed through the window. Reggie growled beside him.

“Now who’s come to bug us?” he grumbled at the dog.

Reggie merely glared at the front door and growled again, low in his throat.

A door slammed outside, and a familiar voice called, “Brett? You home?”

Oh dear Jesus. His mother. The original Morgan hurricane. No way in hell would she go away quietly after a few not-so-subtle hints like Anna Larkin had. And he couldn’t very well pretend not to be here. Miranda would have to walk right past his truck, parked out front as proud as you please, to get to the front porch. Swearing under his breath, he opened the door.

“Of course I’m home, Mother. My truck’s parked out front and the lights are on in the cabin.”

“I heard there was some excitement down at Pittypat’s today. Are you okay, sweetie?”

He ground his molars together at being called sweetie. He was a freaking commando, for crying out loud, and had killed dozens, or maybe hundreds, of hostiles over the years. Only Miranda Morgan had the gall to call him something so childish and insulting.

“I’m fine. Thanks for coming up to check on me.”

She stomped up the steps like a freight train gathering momentum. Nope. Not gonna take the hint to go away. Dammit. She barreled inside the tiny cabin, filling it up with her huge personality. “This place is a dump. You really should have let me redecorate it before you moved in here,” she announced.

“It’s fine for me. I don’t need anything fancy. Just a roof over my head and a dry place to lie down at night.” What he did most nights didn’t actually qualify as sleep, truth be told. He tossed and turned in between nightmares that woke him sweating in cold terror, most nights.

“Is that what you’re eating for supper?” she demanded. “Come down to the main house and let Willa cook you a proper supper.”

“Willa Mathers? Hank’s daughter?”

“Correct. She helps me out around the house and does some bookkeeping and filing for your father when she’s not studying. She’s going to school, you know. Working on a PhD in counseling or something.”

Good for her. Daughter of the ranch’s longtime foreman, he remembered Willa as a skinny kid with long black braids and a magic touch with horses.

“Seriously, Brett. I’m not letting you sit up here starving yourself to death.”

“Do I look like I’m starving?”

“All this time you’re spending alone isn’t good for you. Come down to the house and eat supper with us every day.”

Brett’s voice went flat. “No.”

He was not putting himself in the way of his father on a daily basis. No way. John Morgan was a born-again son of a bitch, and he could do without his father’s judgment and condescending crap, thank you very much. Just because his father was a decorated war hero didn’t mean his sons had to be the same.

Hell, he didn’t know if he was a hero or a traitor, anyway, after that last mission. If only he could remember—

“You sound as stubborn your father when you talk like that.”

His gaze narrowed to a cold stare. He would take that as a compliment, this time. “Don’t push me, Mom. I’m only here until I figure out what I’m doing next. If you can’t leave me alone like you agreed to, just say the word, and I’m gone.”

Miranda scowled back at him, no less stubborn than him or his father. Silence stretched between them as Brett refused to be the one to give in, and Miranda did the same. Even Reggie felt the tension, for the dog eventually whimpered and came over to bump Brett’s hand. The mutt seemed to be looking for reassurance more than a scratch, so Brett let his hand rest on the dog’s back.

“Fine. Be like that,” Miranda huffed.

He didn’t deign to speak or to let her off the hook.

She flopped down on the ratty sofa and threw up her hands. “So what happened at Pittypat’s? Joe called to tell me you broke a guy’s nose and arm.”

He ground out, “The guy was a punk who tried to rob the place. I stopped him.”

“By half killing him?”

“Trust me. If I had tried to kill him, he would be dead.”

Miranda rolled her eyes, not fazed by the remark. But then, John Morgan was an ex-Green Beret who’d killed his fair share of Vietcong.

Brett picked up a knife and fork and dug into his meal, such as it was. He didn’t invite her up here, and he felt no obligation to entertain her.

“What about the waitress? Joe said she got roughed up but you saved her.”

He shrugged, but his shoulders felt unaccountably tight. It still pissed him off that the punk had slammed her into the counter like that. The fear in her eyes—he would be dreaming about that in his nightmares for days to come. And that other thing in her eyes… He could swear it had been a death wish. What the hell was that all about? “What about her?”

“Is she okay?” Miranda asked in exasperation.

“Of course. I saved her.”

“What’s her name?”

He didn’t want to share her name with anyone. He wanted to hold it close within himself. A secret. His secret. But Miranda was, well, Miranda. Sometimes it just wasn’t worth fighting her. He mumbled, “Larkin. Anna Larkin.”

“Didn’t she go to Hollywood a while back or something ridiculous like that?”

His gut clenched at Anna being labeled ridiculous, which was weird. He hardly knew her. It was none of his business what the locals thought of her. He shrugged. “How the hell would I know what she did? I’ve been overseas for ten years.”

Miranda tapped a front tooth with a short, neat fingernail. “I think she went west with a boy. Her mother was fit to be tied. Disowned her.”

Indeed? That sucked. Although, right about now, he wouldn’t mind being disowned by his own intrusive, pushy mother. He ate in silence, not tasting a bite of his beans and toast.

“Is she all right?” Miranda startled him by asking.

“Who? Anna Larkin?”

“Of course Anna Larkin. Was she hurt today? Was she struck? Did she fall? Hit her head?”

An image of her pitching off his porch earlier leaped to mind, and he winced at the memory of her hitting her head on the ground. He really wished she would’ve stuck around for a little while so he could’ve been sure she was okay. But it wasn’t like he could have bodily dragged her into his cabin and held her against her will.

“I wonder if she’s been to a doctor. She could have a concussion or broken ribs or something.”

“She would know if she had broken ribs,” he replied drily. Lord knew, he still felt his when he exerted himself too hard, four months after he’d broken them. Of course, he’d gotten off easy. Four of his men had died.

Apparently his scowl of self-loathing finally did the trick and convinced Miranda that he had no desire whatsoever to be social with her tonight.

“Don’t stay up here too long, Brett. You need people around you. Your family loves you.” She came over to force an unwanted hug on him, which he tolerated uncomfortably.

She left, and he listened to her truck retreat down the mountain. Blessed silence settled around him once more. He didn’t deserve a family. And certainly not one that loved him.

Grimly, he gave the leftover beans to Reggie, who lapped them up eagerly and finished with a loud smack of his lips. Dogs surely had the right of it. Live completely in the moment, no past, no future. Just the simple pleasures of right now.

He turned on the television for background noise but didn’t bother to watch whatever flashed across the screen. Instead, a memory of Anna Larkin’s sweet face came to him. Her smile. Her embarrassment when she’d spilled water on him. Her terror when that kid slammed her into the counter…and her bizarre disappointment when he’d come charging to her rescue like some damned knight in shining armor. Who the hell was he kidding? He was nobody’s good guy.

He was the jerk who’d let her go away without finding out if she had a concussion.

He downed a couple of beers but didn’t much feel like getting drunk tonight. Which was a first for him since he’d come home. Maybe all the excitement had taken more out of him than he’d realized. He should call it a night early and get some sleep. Except when he eyed the bed through the open bedroom door, fear came calling, ugly and insidious, crawling inside his gut and gnawing at his insides until he doubled over in pain.

The walls began to close in on him, and his breathing accelerated until he might as well have been running for his life.

And that was exactly what he did. He bolted outside, unable to stand being confined any longer. Reggie had already settled down on his fleece bed in front of the wood-burning stove for the night, so he didn’t go back for the dog.

He climbed into his truck and pointed the heavy vehicle down the mountain without any destination in mind. Maybe he should check out the Sapphire Club. It was a strip joint that had opened up on the edge of Sunny Creek sometime since he’d joined the Army. But he had no appetite for crowds and smoke and drunks, and instead pulled over by a curb in the ramshackle part of Sunny Creek down by where the old lumber mill used to be. The neighborhood had gotten significantly more ramshackle since he left a decade ago, and a bunch of the houses were boarded up and had waist-high lawns of weeds.

He pulled out his cell phone and did a quick internet search on one Anna Larkin of Sunny Creek, Montana. Nothing. Crap. She must not have been back in town long. He debated starting a rumor, but ultimately risked calling Joe Westlake.

“Hey, Joe, It’s Brett Morgan. Can you tell me where Anna Larkin lives? I want to stop by and thank her for returning my Saint George’s medal to me.”

“Yeah, sure.” Joe rattled off the address. “She’s single, by the way.”

“Eff off, Joe,” Brett bit out. He hung up on his cousin’s laughter.

He drove past her place with the idea of just taking a quick look. Making sure she was okay.

How his truck ended up parked at the curb in front of her house, he had no clue. And how his door opened and his boots crunched down into the frosty grass, he couldn’t say. He really shouldn’t be heading up the cracked sidewalk to the wreck of a house in front of him. A pile of torn-out drywall at the end of the driveway announced that construction was ongoing inside the bungalow. That, and light showing around the cracks in the plywood covering the front windows announced that someone was home.

Turn around. Go back to the truck. Get the hell out of here. Run!

And yet, his feet kept moving, one reluctant step at a time. What was he doing? The rational side of his brain answered that he was only checking on her health, doing what he should have in the first place. The other side of his brain, the skeptical side that knew his BS for what it was, informed him he was lying to himself.

He watched in disbelief as his fist knocked on the wooden door frame.

Please, God, don’t let her answer the door, he begged her.

Light footsteps sounded behind the panel, coming close.

So much for God giving a crap about him.

The door opened, and there she was, outlined in light spilling from behind her, strains of bad disco music blaring in the background. Her hair fell in two messy braids over her shoulders, and her shirt was covered in fine brown dust.

“Oh! It’s you! What are you doing here?” she asked.

That was a hell of a good question. “You hit your head earlier,” he mumbled. “At my place.” Damned if he didn’t feel like scuffing a toe against the doorjamb. He refrained, however, mumbling, “Wanted to make sure you don’t have a concussion.”

She stared at him like he’d grown a second head.

“Should’ve done it before,” he muttered lamely. He risked a glance up from his scuffed boot toes and was blown away by how clear and soft her brown eyes were, even when filled with skepticism. And fear. He swore at himself. Coming here had been the mother of all dumb ideas.

He was careful to make no sudden moves, to keep his hands at his sides, to do nothing to spook her further. He even leaned back, even though his impulse was to move closer to her, to provide the bulk of his body to protect her from whatever was scaring her so badly. Thing was, he suspected he was the thing scaring her.

Up close, her skin looked like the finest velvet, impossibly smooth, dewy and flawless. He felt like a scarred old relic in comparison with her.

“How does one check for a concussion?” she inquired.

What? Oh. Right. His totally transparent excuse for stopping by to see her. “Pupils,” he choked out. Crap, he couldn’t even find the simplest words. Language had all but deserted him. “Uneven dilation,” he managed.

When he didn’t say any more, she finally asked, “Are mine even?”

He glanced up unwillingly once more. “Can’t tell. Too dark.”

“Oh.” She stared back at him, looking as confused as he felt.

“Porch light?” he managed.

“Not working yet,” she replied. “It has to be rewired. I, um, haven’t gotten around to that.”

It was his turn to mumble, “Oh.”

“Come inside?” she offered reluctantly. “There’s light in the living room.”

“Uh, sure.” Geez. He hadn’t been this awkward around a girl even when he was sixteen and picking up Suzy Niblock for his very first date.

His gaze drifted to that pert derriere of hers as she led him over to a work light pointing at a stretch of partially sanded wood wainscoting. Actual sweat broke out on his brow as he watched her rear end twitch temptingly. Day-um. He exhaled carefully. She might be diminutive, but she had one fine body.

How long had it been since he’d been with a woman? He couldn’t remember the last time, truth be told. It wasn’t that he was a monk by any stretch. He just hadn’t been anywhere near any women other than female soldiers who were strictly off-limits in, well, forever.

Abruptly, his hands itched with the remembered feel of soft curves, smooth skin, and the yielding strength of the female body. He remembered the scent of a woman, sweet and lightly musky, each one slightly different. The taste of clean, fresh flesh, the warmth of a woman’s arms around him, the delight of a woman’s mouth opening beneath his—

The memories flooded back so fast and hard, slamming into him like a physical blow, that he stumbled behind Anna and had to catch himself with a hand against the wall.

How could he have forgotten all of that stuff?

Anna stopped abruptly in what looked like a dining room and turned to face him, tipping up her face expectantly to the light. The curve of her cheek was worthy of a Rembrandt painting, plump like a child’s and angular like a woman’s. How was that possible?

“Well?” she demanded.

“Uh, well what?” he mumbled.

“Are my pupils all right?”

He frowned and looked into her eyes. They were cinnamon hued, the color of a chestnut horse in sunshine, with streaks of gold running through them. Her lashes were dark and long, fanning across her cheeks as lightly as strands of silk.

Pupils. Compare diameters. Even or uneven. Cripes. His entire brain had just melted and drained out his ear. One look into her big, innocent eyes, and he was toast. Belatedly, he held up a hand in front of her face, blocking the direct light.

She froze at the abrupt movement of his hand, and he did the same. Where was the threat? When one of his teammates went completely still like that, it meant a dire threat was far too close to all of them. Without moving his head, he let his gaze range around the room. Everything was still, and only the sounds of a vintage disco dance tune broke the silence.

He looked back at her questioningly. What had her so on edge? Only peripherally did he register that, on cue, the black disks of her pupils had grown to encompass the lighter brown of her irises. He took his hand away, and her pupils contracted quickly.

“Um, yeah. Your eyes look okay,” he murmured. “Do you have a headache?”

“Yes, but it’s from all the sanding I have to do and not from my tumble off your porch.”

He frowned at the wood paneling as high as his chest and extending the entire length of the long wall, not to mention the intricate molding outlining it. “You’re planning to refinish all of that by hand?” he asked dubiously.

“Power sanders are expensive, and I’ll probably never use one again after I finish renovating this place.”

His frown deepened. “You’re fixing this house up all by yourself?”

Her spine went straight and rigid. “Yes. I am. Have you got a problem with that?”

“No. Not at all. I’m just impressed that you took on such a big job by yourself.”

She shrugged. “I inherited the place. Which is to say I didn’t volunteer for this. And my needs aren’t great—a roof, a bed, a place to cook my meals.”

He tilted his head, studying her more closely. Men in his line of work were trained observers, and he used those skills now. She wasn’t lying to him. She truly didn’t want anything beyond the basics. And she craved safety, if he wasn’t reading her wrong.

“You still got any family in Sunny Creek?” he asked.

“No. My mother died about six months ago. She was the last of my family.”

She was alone, then. Lucky dog. “I’m sorry for your loss.”

“I hadn’t seen her in a long time. We had a falling-out about—” She broke off. “Well, a falling-out.”

Awkward silence fell between them, and he didn’t have a clue what to say next. Thankfully, she broke the silence. “I appreciate you stopping by to check on me.”

Humor pricked at him. She was getting rid of him the same way he’d gotten rid of her earlier. Turnabout was fair play, he supposed. Admiration for her spunk passed through him. Not too many women in Sunny Creek would be in this big a hurry to kick one of the Morgan boys out of their house. Of course, it was no less than he deserved. Not only was he unworthy to breathe the same air as someone like her, but he’d also been a jerk to her earlier.

He nodded as much to himself as to her, and spun on the heel of his cowboy boot. He muttered over his shoulder, “I’ll show myself out. Good luck with your sanding.”

Anna stood in the middle of her dining room, breathing hard. She couldn’t tell if it was fear or something else stealing the oxygen from her lungs. It had been nice of Brett to stop by and check on her. She wasn’t sure what to do with nice, however. It made her nervous. Jumpy. Mistrustful. Did he have an agenda of some kind?

But what could he possibly want from her? He came from a rich, powerful family, and she was a broke waitress.

Her better self kicked in. The entire world wasn’t made up of men like Eddie. Decent men no doubt existed out there. She shouldn’t read too much into Brett’s visit. Maybe the man truly was just making sure she was all right. Which was kind. Thoughtful. Totally nonthreatening.

She had to admit that man was beautiful. His eyes, when he’d stared into hers, had been so blue it almost hurt to look at them. And that jaw. Wowsers. His hair was a shade shaggy, just messy enough that she’d actually felt an urge to reach up and push it off his forehead.

Which was insane. She never wanted to touch another man as long as she lived. And she sure as shooting didn’t want a man to touch her. She’d barely managed not to flinch when he reached up toward her face.

Restless and disturbed by Brett Morgan’s visit, and by his overwhelmingly male presence invading the sanctuary of her home, she threw down the sandpaper and headed for the big, old cast-iron soaking tub that had been the very first thing she restored to its former glory when she moved into this place.

She filled the big tub with hot water and eased into the steaming bath, which was almost too hot to stand. Perfect. She leaned her head back and let the bath do its magic, unwinding the tension of the entire day, starting with the robbery and ending with her late-night visitor.

Strange man, Brett Morgan. Not much for talking. Not much for social interaction of any kind, in fact. How was it that a man as beautiful as he was seemed so totally ill at ease with women? From what she remembered of him in high school, he’d always had girls hanging all over him. She also remembered him laughing a lot and being plenty gregarious. How had he turned into the awkward, taciturn man in her dining room tonight?

It was a mystery. And God knew, she was a sucker for a good puzzle.

Except he was not her problem. She had enough of those in her life without some hard-luck cowboy messing with her head.

Eddie had been nearly as pretty as Brett, but he’d been completely self-centered. It was all about his desires, his pleasure. She had always been merely a means to his ends. But Brett—the way he’d stared so deeply into her eyes, the way his nostrils had flared when he’d stepped close to her—struck her as the sort of man who would take an interest in pleasuring the women in his bed.

She knew the sex with Eddie hadn’t been a shining example of how it could be. Problem was, if she was going to experience decent sex at some point in her life, that would entail an actual relationship with another man besides her ex-husband. No way sex was worth that. Brett Morgan might be nice to look at, maybe even to fantasize about, but that was as far as that was ever going to go.

She closed her eyes, careful not to let herself drift off to sleep and drown, which would be just her luck. To heck with pleasure. If only there was a way to wrest some peace from the wreckage of her life.

It had been a huge mistake to come back to Sunny Creek. Her need for self-destruction ran a lot deeper than she’d realized until today—when she actually was relieved to face death. Until Brett Morgan apparently appointed himself her guardian angel.

How was she supposed to pay for her sins with him on the job?

Chapter 4

She dreamed of Eddie. Or to be precise, of his ghost. He haunted her dreams most nights, terrifying her and accusing her, never letting her forget, never letting her move on. Not that she deserved to move on. She was already in hell. A hell of Eddie’s making that was never going to let her go.

She woke up breathing hard, as if she’d been running for her life. Which she was in a way. No matter how far she ran, she would never escape Eddie. Not now. Not ever.

While she lay huddled under the covers trying to catch her breath, she heard the new furnace working hard. But the tip of her nose felt like an ice cube. Until she got something more permanent than plywood and duct tape to seal the window openings, she supposed no furnace could possibly keep up with subfreezing temperatures outside. Urgency to solve the window problem was the only thing that got her out of bed this morning and rushing into jeans, a T-shirt, sweatshirt, thick socks,and sheepskin-lined boots.

She was huddling over a mug of hot coffee, stealing its warmth with her red, chilled fingers and willing away the unpleasant memory of Eddie, when a knock on the front door startled her into nearly dumping the scalding drink on herself. Who on earth was banging on her door like they wanted to knock it in?

“I’m coming!” she shouted. She paused with her hand on the door handle. “Who’s there?”

“Brett. Brett Morgan.”

Her stomach leaped in anticipation, then fell back in dismay.

She threw the front door open, and a burst of frigid wind gusted around her, making her shiver violently. The shape of a man wearing a cowboy hat was silhouetted against the bright white of the year’s first snow turning the weeds in her front yard into a blanket of white.

“Brett? What do you want?”

He looked intensely uncomfortable, but a determined look filled his eyes and made his jaw hard. He ground out, “I’d like to come inside and quit blowing all the cold air in Montana into your living room.”

“Oh.” Dumbfounded, she stepped back. He swept past her, his sheepskin rancher’s jacket big and cozy looking, filled to bursting with muscles and more muscles. What on earth had brought him back here at the crack of dawn? It was barely 8:00 a.m. Hardly a civilized time of day for an unannounced visit! He was darned lucky the cold had already woken her up.

“Are you here to check my pupils again?” she tried.

“No. I brought you something.”

A gift? From Brett Morgan? What on earth? He held out a plastic grocery bag, and she took it, startled at how heavy it was. She peered inside.

A rotary power sander.

“It’s old, but I cleaned and greased the motor last night, and I stopped by the hardware store this morning and picked up new sanding disks for it.”

“I can’t accept this—” she started.

He cut her off briskly. “Then consider it a loan. Do you know how to use it? If you lean on it too hard, you’ll leave swirl marks in the wood. Start light with the pressure and gradually press down harder—” He broke off and reached for the bag he’d just handed her. “Here. Let me show you.”

“I can figure it out—”

He wasn’t listening. He slung down a coiled orange extension cord that he’d been carrying over his right shoulder. “You attach the disks like this…”

In minor shock, she watched as he showed her how to operate the sander. He put the thing in her hands and guided the sander to a broad expanse of paneling. He flipped the switch, and the machine jumped in her hand. Hastily, he put his big, warm hands over hers, steadying the bucking sander. Not satisfied with that arrangement apparently, he stepped behind her and reached around her to put his hands over hers once more.

Her brain went completely blank as his arms surrounded her, and the heat of his body permeated her clothing all down her back. For a millisecond, she enjoyed the sensation of being held and protected. But then fear reared its ugly head, making her go stiff.

Oblivious to her distress, Brett guided the sander across the wall, and the old finish melted away from the wood like butter, leaving fresh, bright walnut exposed, its natural tones a mix of blond and brown. As if that was what she was concentrating on at the moment.

Man. Muscle. Heat. The simultaneous push and pull of attraction and repulsion all but paralyzed her. She could do this. He didn’t mean anything by it. He was just showing her how to sand a wall. Concentrate on the good parts. Like the scent of pine trees and mountain air rising from his clothes. It was as if the Rocky Mountains themselves had swept into her living room. She always had loved the mountains.

Brett’s hands pushed hers back across the wood in a gentle, even swath, magically clearing away another broad strip of old varnish and grime.

“Ohmigod,” she breathed. This thing was going to save her hundreds of hours of tiring, dusty, muscle-aching sanding.

“You’ll still have to do a little hand sanding to get into the crevices of the molding,” he murmured in her ear. His deep voice vibrated down her spine, terminating somewhere near her toes in a little shiver of delight. Ha! No fear that time!

“This is fantastic,” she breathed. She wasn’t sure she was talking about the power sander or about being surrounded by his heat and muscles.

He stepped back, and something deep inside her wailed at his absence. She hushed that needy part of herself sternly and concentrated fiercely on sliding the sander evenly and smoothly over the aged wood in front of her.

“Christ, it’s cold in here. Is your furnace on the fritz?”

She stood back from the wall and switched off the sander. “Actually, I just installed a new furnace last week. It’s the windows that are the problem.”

“Or the lack thereof,” he muttered.

“I was supposed to go pick up some windows in Hillsdale yesterday, but I had to go to the police station instead.”

Brett winced. “Sorry about that.”

“You didn’t try to rob the diner.”

He shrugged but didn’t look convinced. Was he the kind of person who took responsibility for things that weren’t his fault? Well, wouldn’t that be a total reversal from Eddie who never once in his life had been responsible for anything bad that ever happened to him. He’d always had an excuse or a scapegoat other than himself.

In the latter years, that scapegoat had almost always been her. It was her fault his acting career hadn’t taken off. Her insistence on him getting a job that forced him to miss the best auditions. Her selfish need for a place to live that cost him acting job after acting job. Frankly, she wasn’t sure he’d ever had any talent in the first place.

“…my truck to pick up your windows?” Brett was saying.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My truck. Do you want to borrow it?”

“Oh! Uh, no. I wouldn’t know how to drive a truck.”

He snorted. “You’re from Montana and don’t know how to drive a truck? What are you? A city slicker?”

“I grew up in Sunny Creek, not on some dude ranch.”

“Fine. I’ll drive. Where are these windows of yours?” Brett asked briskly.

“You don’t need to help with my windows. I can fit two at a time in my car.”

“That tin can you drive barely qualifies as a car.”

“Don’t be dissing my car, Mr. Cow Pie Kicker.”

“I don’t kick cow pies. We use helicopters to move the cattle on our spread.”

She blinked, startled. “Really?”

“Yeah. Runaway Ranch uses the latest in ranching techniques. Our yield per acre of beef is tops in the nation.”

“Um, congratulations?”

He shrugged. “Not my circus, not my monkeys. My old man and the ranch hands do all the work.”

“Why are you living on the ranch, then, if you don’t work on it?” she asked curiously.

Brett’s gaze went as hard and cold as the sapphires the mountains around Sunny Creek were known for. Huh. She’d hit a nerve, apparently. He strode to the front door, picked her parka off the coat rack and stood there, holding it out expectantly. “You coming?” he asked.

She started forward automatically, conditioned by years with Eddie to jump to that tone of voice. But then she realized what she’d done and stopped in her tracks a few feet out of reach of Brett. “I don’t take orders from anyone,” she declared strongly.

He studied her far too intently for far too long before saying mildly, “Okay. Please let me help you pick up your new windows so you don’t freeze to death in this shack.”

“It’s not a shack!” she exclaimed indignantly.

“What would you call it?”

She looked around at the plastic tarps, paint cans, sawhorses and general chaos. “It’s a work in progress.”

Brett grinned briefly. “An optimist, are you?”

“Not hardly.”

“Had me fooled.”

She shrugged into her coat, which he held out for her, and he lifted it onto her shoulders. If she wasn’t mistaken, his hands lingered for an instant on her shoulders. Not as if he was trying to put any kind of a move on her. More as if he was remembering what it felt like to touch a woman. And then his hands were gone, and she was left frowning to herself. Surely a man like him got all the female companionship he could possibly want.

She slipped as her sheepskin boots, which were cute, warm and left over from happier times, hit the thin layer of fresh snow. Brett’s hand shot out fast to steady her, and she flinched hard as his hand swung toward her. As soon as she was safely upright again, he pulled his hand away from her.

Rats. He was studying her like a bug under a microscope. Thankfully, he made no comment as he opened the passenger door of his truck and helped her climb up into the big truck. Again, his hand pulled back immediately.

“You need better boots,” he commented as he slid behind the wheel.

“I know. I’ve been so busy trying to make the house weatherproof before winter that I haven’t had time to go shopping for any.” And she wasn’t about to tell him that the hundred bucks she would spend on a decent pair of winter boots could better be used to by a few rolls of insulation for the attic.

“Where are these windows of yours?” he asked.

“Hillsdale. Benson’s.”

“The junk shop?” Brett asked.

“It’s an antiques store and salvage yard,” she corrected.

“Right. A junk shop.”

She rolled her eyes and didn’t bother arguing. If she’d learned nothing else from Eddie, it was that men were pigheaded and completely unwilling to listen to reason.

Brett was a good driver, handling the truck with confidence and just the right amount of caution on the wet roads. He was silent, and she was content to let the silence be.

The drive to Hillsdale took about a half hour, and she gradually relaxed into the warmth and quiet. Brett seemed to know where he was going when they reached Hillsdale, so she sat back and let him drive, enjoying being chauffeured for a change.

“Here we are,” Brett murmured as he pulled into the parking lot beside the salvage yard.

She fumbled at the door lock, and before she could get the thing opened, Brett had come around to her side of the truck and opened the door for her. He held out an expectant hand and she stared at it doubtfully. Men’s hands and she didn’t have a great track record together. His palm was calloused and hard. That hand had seen plenty of hard work in its day.

“How’d you get that scar across your wrist?” she asked.

“Knife.”

She flinched. She couldn’t help it. God, she hated knives.

“Caught one in combat. It wasn’t that bad a cut,” he said quickly. Crud. He must’ve seen her reaction to his mention of knives.

She headed into the store, which was cluttered with all manner of antiques, knickknacks, and—face it—junk. “Morning, Vinny!” she called.

“Anna!” a voice called from the back of the mess. “How’s the prettiest girl this side of the Rockies—” The voice broke off as Vinny stepped out of a back room and spied her and Brett.

“I’m fine. Do you still have those windows you said you would hold for me?”

“They’re back here. Follow me.”

She wound along a narrow path through the mountains of junk toward his voice. Brett seemed bemused, staring around like he’d entered an alien world. To a man like him, this place probably was alien.

Vinny led her to a half-dozen window frames stacked in a pile to one side of a warehouse-sized space. “You wanna measure these again?” he asked her.

“If you say these’ll fit my window frames, I believe you,” she answered.

Vinny smiled intimately and sidled closer to her. “Would I lie to you? You’re far too pretty for that.”

He was so awkward she felt sorry for him. It was sweet of him to flirt with her, but she was damaged goods.

He touched her arm lightly, innocently pointing out where to go, but she couldn’t stop the shiver that passed through her. Vinny steered her to one side of the warehouse, and she braced herself out of long habit. The windows. She needed the windows.

Without warning, a big shadow loomed beside her and a heavy arm landed across her shoulders. Brett. “Hey, darlin’. You about ready to start loading up those windows of yours? I have plans for us today, and I want to get this errand over with.” Innuendo lay thick in his voice.

She stared up at him, shocked. What was he doing?

Vinny took a quick step back, scowling up at Brett, who exuded something very male and very dangerous at the moment.

Oh.

One guardian angel to the rescue.

She leaned into Brett’s side and played along. “Can I call on all those big, strong muscles of yours to help me load my windows into your truck?”

Brett grinned down at her. “Only if you’ll give me a back rub later for my troubles.”

“Sure,” she choked out.

That did it. Vinny turned away, his face red, and stomped to the front counter to ring up the sale. Brett’s grin turned lopsided as she slipped out from under his arm.

It took Brett only about two minutes to load all six windows in his truck, layering them with cardboard boxes folded flat to act as shock absorbers and protect the original, heavy glass.

They’d started driving back toward Sunny Creek when Brett asked abruptly, “Why don’t you like men touching you?”

Oh, Lord. Did he have to be quite so observant? “What are you talking about?”

He glanced across the cab at her. “You flinched when Vinny touched you.”

“I didn’t flinch when you touched me,” she retorted.

“You went stiff as a board.”

She shrugged. It wasn’t like she owed him any explanations. Brett let the subject drop, for which she was deeply grateful.

When they got back to her place, Brett offloaded the windows with quick ease, carrying them into her house and depositing four of them in front of her living and dining room windows and one in the kitchen.

“Where do you want this last window?” he called as he came in through the front door.

“I’ll take it.”

“I’m already carrying it,” he retorted. “Just tell me where to put it.”

Men. So bossy. A girl couldn’t tell one anything. “My bedroom,” she huffed.

He barged into her inner sanctum and stopped cold as he stepped across the threshold. Fine. So she liked white lace and pink bows. Shoot her. She was, in fact, a girl. She glared at him defiantly as he emerged from her frilly bedroom, and wisely made no comment.

“Do you have the tools to install the windows?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Let’s get them into the frames so this place can be properly heated.”

“I can do it myself,” she declared.

“I’m sure you can,” he replied evenly. “But it’ll go faster if we work together.”

He was not wrong about that. She wrestled with the dilemma of accepting the help or going it alone and getting away from his disturbing presence. He took the decision away from her when he ripped down the plywood covering one of the living room windows and a blast of freezing air slammed into her.

Pesky guardian angel!

Brett lifted the window into the frame and looked over his shoulder at her expectantly. “You gonna nail it in place or not?”

Jerk. But a helpful jerk, she mentally conceded.

She had to give Vinny credit. The window was a perfect fit and took practically no shimming or shaving to fit into the slot intended for it. While Brett hammered in the last nails holding it in place, she caulked around it, sealing the opening securely for the first time since she’d lived here.

They unboarded the window openings and installed the remaining windows, working mostly in silence. With each one, her furnace caught up a bit more in its efforts to heat the house. Natural light streamed in for the first time since she’d lived here, and the cave-like gloom retreated. Her spirits lifted along with the temperature.

This house might turn into a livable home, yet. “Thank you so much for your help, Brett. You made that go a ton faster. I owe you huge. Let me pay you.”

He pulled back sharply, looking offended. “Since when don’t neighbors help each other out?”

Ah, yes. The credo of small towns. Spy on thy neighbor, gossip about thy neighbor, but help thy neighbor when they need it. “At least let me take you out to dinner or something.”

Brett stared at her doubtfully.

“Say yes,” she urged him. “Otherwise, I’ll feel guilty for taking advantage of you.”

His frown deepened. Rats. He was going to say no, and she really was going to feel bad about letting him work all morning on her house. “Fine,” he bit out.

Oh, God. Now she was the one with suddenly cold feet. Frostbit. Heck, frozen solid.

A date with Brett Morgan? Cripes. What on earth had she just done?

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