Praise for the novels of Maisey Yates

  “[A] surefire winner not to be missed.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Slow Burn Cowboy (starred review)

  “This fast-paced, sensual novel will leave readers believing in the healing power of love.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Down Home Cowboy

  “Yates’ new Gold Valley series begins with a sassy, romantic and sexy story about two characters whose chemistry is off the charts.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Smooth-Talking Cowboy (Top Pick)

  “Multidimensional and genuine characters are the highlight of this alluring novel, and sensual love scenes complete it. Yates’s fans…will savor this delectable story.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Unbroken Cowboy (starred review)

  “Fast-paced and intensely emotional…. This is one of the most heartfelt installments in this series, and Yates’s fans will love it.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Cowboy to the Core (starred review)

  “Yates’s outstanding eighth Gold Valley contemporary…will delight newcomers and fans alike…. This charming and very sensual contemporary is a must for fans of passion.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Cowboy Christmas Redemption (starred review)

  Her First Christmas Cowboy

  Maisey Yates

  Dedication

  To all the Western historicals I read as a child, which made me want to bring an outlaw into modern times.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  IT WAS A dark and stormy night. The thought made Tala Nelson grin ruefully to herself.

  Thoughts like that were a hazard of grading English papers far too late into the night. But she was the teacher, principal and... Well, all faculty at Four Corners Ranch one-room schoolhouse, and that meant she had to stay up late getting work done sometimes.

  Especially if she’d spent the earlier part of the night baking lemon squares and watching murder mysteries.

  It was chilly outside, the air crisp and cold enough that she wondered if the rain that was falling might turn to snow at some point during the course of the night.

  This was her second December in Pyrite Falls, Oregon, and on the ranch, and while she wasn’t the biggest fan of being out in cold weather, she loved being in during cold weather. Wrapped in blankets, with a hot cup of tea, feeling cozy even in the midst of the chill.

  Winter made her feel wistful and nostalgic for Christmases she’d never even celebrated. But then, she didn’t have to grow up with the magic of the holidays to have absorbed the feeling. The lights, the songs.

  Maybe she should decorate this year.

  Her mother might not have approved of holiday celebrations, but her life was her own now, and that meant if she felt like celebrating, she could.

  She took the teakettle off of the stove and carried it over to the coffee table, where her cup of tea and all of her papers were sitting, then she poured herself some more hot water.

  On her way back to the kitchen, she grabbed another lemon bar. Then she went back and sat down on the floor in front of the coffee table, trying to make sense out of the essay in front of her that made some very... Factually inaccurate claims about Mark Twain.

  She sighed.

  Sometimes she wondered if the kids—especially the high schoolers—listened in class at all.

  When she’d taken the job at the beginning of the last school year, she really hadn’t known what to expect. A massive ranch in the middle of nowhere in Oregon, Four Corners was almost its own town. A couple hundred people worked the ranch and those families lived on or around the property. There was no school close by and a hundred and ten years earlier they’d built the schoolhouse on the grounds to teach all of the kids.

  Some kids, it was her understanding, had been there all their lives. Some rotated in and out quickly, their families more transient in nature than the others.

  One thing was certain—it wasn’t boring.

  And this was...

  Well, it was a life. One far away from Kansas and free from her overbearing mother and all of her sisters, who were still so deeply entrenched in their mother’s neuroses and control that they fluttered around her like hens in modest dress, constantly seeking to please her, never putting a foot out of line...

  Tala had gone to college.

  Her mother had hated that. She’d been naturally suspicious of higher learning, especially for women.

  In fairness, her mother was suspicious of everything.

  Movies, TV, sugar, food coloring, men, the postal service, books...

  The list went on.

  But Tala had always felt like it was wrong.

  They’d only gone to school for one year that Tala could remember, but it had changed her life. Miss Taylor had been the sweetest, most wonderful woman Tala had ever met. And she’d answered Tala’s questions.

  She hadn’t told her that questions led to judgment. She hadn’t made her feel like she was bad or guilty for wanting answers about the world.

  Miss Taylor had made Tala certain, at eight years old, that she wanted to be a teacher too.

  So she would know things. So she could tell other people.

  “And now all this is mine.” She lifted her teacup and waved it around the room.

  Maybe her life wasn’t particularly glamorous, but it never had been. It was hers. That was what mattered.

  She heard a resounding thump outside and jumped. It was the wind, she reassured herself. Of course it was the wind.

  Her little cottage was nestled into the back corner of Sullivan’s Point, which was a horse ranch and farm, one of the four parcels of land that made up the larger ranch. Many of the cabins on the property were rustic, but her place was a cute little cottage with flower boxes on the windows and yellow shutters and she loved it.

  And if a tree branch landed in her flowers she would...

  Well, she’d be mad.

  She stood up and she heard the thump again. She really needed to stop watching murder mysteries this late.

  But too bad, she already had.

  It was the wind, which could get crazy during storms, and that was all it was.

  Except then the next thump was accompanied by a groan.

  She looked across the space at her bright blue front door and saw she hadn’t turned the lock. She stood there frozen. Should she jump for the dead bolt?

  She would if her feet worked.

  But the ranch was full of people who lived and worked here and it was possible someone had gotten displaced during the storm and...

  The front door swung wide-open and there was a man standing there. A tall, broad man with a long black coat and black cowboy hat. Hs eyes were dark, glittering in the light, and his jaw was unshaven with dark stubble covering it.

  An outlaw.

  The man took two steps into the room, then stumbled down onto the floor.

  CHAPTER TWO

  WELL, HE WAS in the shit now.

  He really was.

  He’d thought he’d left Jake and all his bullshit behind years earlier, but he supposed his brother was right. In the end you couldn’t escape family. They were blood. And they’d think nothing of spilling that blood in an aim to protect themselves.

  Clayton added that last part himself. As he bled onto a stranger’s carpet.

  He’d managed to shake Jake about a mile or so down the road, and he’d ditched his car in a secluded overhang of foliage and gone it on foot, into the woods.

  He had reason to be in these woods anyway.

  He and his brother had grown up over in Copper Ridge, but Jake had left a long time ago and moved to a ranch farther east. But Clayton had made a hideaway here, and he’d been careful to make sure there was no paper trail and that his brother didn’t have any idea.

  But it had been a mistake. The bullet had only grazed his side, but he was bleeding like hell and he was starting to feel light-headed. He was disoriented, and he had not found his way to the place he’d needed to get. He’d had no idea where in hell he was at all. Every step he took, he bled more. He needed to sit and put pressure on the damn thing, but with his brother actively trying to kill him...

  Yeah, that made it hard.

  He hoped Jake would think he’d kept on driving. In the end, Clayton had known he was running out of time, and continuing to run wouldn’t work.

  So he’d figured he’d hunker down, and hope Jake wouldn’t expect that. Hope Jake figured Clayton was too scared to do anything but run.

  Sadly for Jake, Clayton wasn’t a six-year-old boy anymore who could be bullied into running drugs or guns in his backpack.

  He wasn’t afraid.

  Well, not in the general sense, but this whole bleeding-out thing was an experience he wasn’t looking to repeat. Then, it may not be an issue if he succeeded in bleeding all the way out.

  “What are you doing in my house?”

  The question was shrill and it pierced through the fog in his brain, the weird slowing of time.

  “Bleeding,” he said.

  “Oh.”

  He looked up as best he could and saw a woman in a nightgown.

  She was frilly.

  Her dark hair was in a braid, and she was holding a teakettle like it might be a weapon. If it weren’t for the electric lights behind her, he’d have thought he’d gone back in time.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, ma’am,” he said.

  Ma’am.

  He didn’t know where the hell that had come from, except some long-ago memory of his mother telling him to be polite and hold the door. Which was some weird past life stuff.

  “I’m going to call...”

  He shot up off the floor, adrenaline pumping through his veins. “No. Don’t call anyone.” He stumbled again and looked around the room.

  Couch. There was a couch.

  He pressed his hand against his side and walked to the couch, where he sank heavily onto the cushions and leaned to the side.

  “Oh my gosh!” Gosh. Like she was a cartoon character.

  “You got blood on my homework!”

  He looked back at her. Well, she was fresh-faced, but he hadn’t thought fresh-faced enough she’d be in here doing homework.

  “That’s a new one,” he said. “I always told the teacher the dog ate it.”

  “I am the teacher,” she said, in a tone that was terse enough he believed it. “I have to call someone.”

  “No,” he said, his tone fierce. “You call the cops, they’re going to arrest me. Or worse, take me to a hospital first, and if that happens I’m dead.”

  “You are an outlaw.”

  Well, she wasn’t far off. He had been. He hadn’t known better, not for most of his life. Then when he was twenty, his brother had taken over entirely for his father and things had... Taken a turn. It didn’t matter he’d been raised to look the other way over smuggling illegal goods, he couldn’t overlook violence. He knew that was wrong. There was no level of indoctrination about the Everett family and their long history of rebellion against the government to do business as they saw fit that would cover violence.

  He’d gotten out. Gone into the rodeo. Made his own way.

  Now, some twelve years later, Jake had crashed back into his life, bringing guns, violence and the law to his doorstep, culminating in tonight’s rain of bullshit.

  “It’s not that simple,” he said. “My brother shot me.”

  “He shot you.” Her brown eyes had gone round.

  “Yes, and it’s starting to sting. And I’m losing a lot of blood. And you have to understand that my brother is a dangerous man.”

  She looked over her shoulder. “I should close the door.”

  He hadn’t realized it was still open.

  She went over to it and closed it, locking it tight.

  “He doesn’t know I’m here,” Clayton said.

  “How do you know?”

  “I know how he thinks.”

  “Are you going to hurt me?”

  “If I was in any position to hurt someone, I would have stayed and dealt with Jake.”

  She seemed to be weighing that, as if it was reasonable.

  “Okay. I have first aid training. You have to have it out here, and I teach kids.”

  “You know what to do with a bullet wound?”

  She laughed. She actually laughed. “I do. They trained me. Because...you never know out here. It’s the Wild West. I just didn’t think I’d end up with an actual outlaw in my house.”

  “Lady,” he said, flipping his hat back off his head. “You have an overactive imagination.”

  “Says the bullet-riddled man on my couch. Hang on...”

  She swept out of the room and he looked up at the ceiling. What the hell was happening? Was he hallucinating? Why else would he have ended up in the house of an angel rather than dead in a rain-filled ditch.

  The worry was that he was dreaming. That this was a dream. That she was a dream.

  She returned a minute later. “Get your muddy boots off my couch.”

  And without thinking, he swung his feet right down to the floor. He wasn’t dreaming. In his dreams the pretty angel wouldn’t be worried about his muddy boots.

  She sat down on the edge of the couch, right by his head. “Can you... I... I can’t see where you’re hurt.”

  He sat halfway up and started to shrug his coat off. Dammit all, he was wet and muddy and peeling the fabric off was tantamount to torture.

  “I can’t,” he said, lying back, his brow covered in a cold sweat, his heart pounding hard.

  This was lowering.

  Clayton Everett had never said “I can’t” in all his life.

  “I...” She breathed out hard, and then her hands went down to the bottom of his T-shirt and he...

  Hell. His body responded.

  Not with the enthusiasm it might have if he weren’t bleeding and in insurmountable pain, but it wasn’t neutral. Maybe because it knew it was dying.

  So it was thinking it might as well have a few more jollies.

  And she was...

  Well, she was exceptionally pretty. So close like this, his vision—which was dark around the edges—honed right in on that. On her.

  Dark eyes, dark lashes. She had freckles on her cheeks, and her lips were a natural sort of rosy pink.

  Her face was shaped like a heart, her hair sleek and glossy.

  She smelled like something sweet and nostalgic he couldn’t name, along with soap and skin.

  She pushed his shirt up and he could tell that her hands were shaking. “Sorry,” she said. “Never undressed a man before.”

  He sat up as best he could to help her get the shirt up over his shoulders and he groaned as he lifted his arms to get it off the rest of the way.

  But getting the shirt off exposed the wound fully, and he let out a vile curse when he saw it.

  She looked... She looked terrified.

  She pressed a towel to his side. “Can’t do anything till we get this stopped. I wish you’d let me call someone.”

  “Can’t,” he said, through gritted teeth. “My brother is fixing to disappear. So he’s doing his best to pin everything he’s done for the past twenty years right onto me. He can’t do it if he can’t find me, if they can’t find me.”

  “What is it your brother does?” she asked, pushing harder into his side. “Other than shoot you?”

  She was asking questions, and thinking of answers was irritating when what he wanted to do was let unconsciousness win and let the darkness pull him under. Which meant he couldn’t. Which meant he was going to not only listen to her questions but answer them. To keep from blacking out. To keep from letting the pain win.

  “He’s a drug runner, primarily. But he dabbles in weapons too. I’m sure lately also in people. He’s a bad dude. But our dad was a pretty bad guy too. Though he was a gentleman about it. Didn’t like for there to be any blood if there didn’t have to be. And he ran a pretty tight ship that way. People knew you didn’t want to piss Dad off, and that if you did, you’d messed up. But Jake... Jake’s a loose cannon. He spends all his life half-cocked and ready to go off.”

  He looked up at her angel face. “For the record, I haven’t been involved with them for years, and the only reason I ever was was that I was born into it. Family business. You don’t question it when it’s all you see, and when everything you learn is so...twisted.”

  She nodded slowly. “I understand that. My mom isn’t a drug runner but she’s...not conventional. She’s very scared of the world. And everything in it. Afraid of what will happen to us. It got worse when my dad left. I don’t even remember him. But he left and she was blindsided. It made her fear turn into outright paranoia. If she couldn’t trust her husband, who could she trust? I understand it, in a sad way. But I couldn’t live like her either.” She laughed. “But then, I have a bleeding man on the run from the law lying on my couch, so maybe she had a point. Maybe the world is scarier than I gave it credit for.”

  “Are you scared?” he asked, his voice sounding thin and husky even to his own ears.

  She looked mystified. “No. I’m not.”

  Something she’d said a moment before echoed in his head, something that had passed by because he’d been so focused on his pain.

 

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