Texas Heroes: Volume 1 (80 page)

“They’re playing our song, sweetheart.” He held out a hand.

She swallowed back tears and went into his arms. “Oh, Dev. What you’ve given me…”

He held her close. She snuggled against him, wanting never to leave. Then he pulled away gently and looked down into her face, stroking her cheek.

“It was a selfish move on my part, getting everyone you love together in one place.” Dev grasped her hand, then dropped to one knee before her. He reached in his pocket and withdrew a small square box. “This comes a lot of years later than it should have, but not too late, I hope.”

Then his eyes grew very serious. “Lacey, will you do me the honor of becoming mine for the rest of my life? Will you build a family with me, starting with Christina?”

Tears flooded her eyes. She glanced quickly around her at all the dear faces, then she fixed her gaze on the only man she would ever love.

“I never want to be apart from you again, Dev.” She smiled through her tears. “I’d love to marry you. Just say when.”

“Would after this dance be too soon?” Dev grinned, those devil’s green eyes sparkling. “Quick—somebody bring back the minister.”

There was laughter at his teasing, but Lacey saw tears and heard a few sniffs.

Dev rose and slipped the ring on her finger, gazing down into the silvery eyes that had bewitched him so many years ago and always would.

“Dance with me, my love.” He pressed a kiss to the hand that bore his ring. Never taking his gaze from her, lest this dream vanish as had a young man’s dreams so long ago, he swept her onto the dance floor.

Eyes locked on one another, they danced to the strains of the song that described who she was to him, who she’d always been.

His past. His present. His future.

His forever.

My Girl
.

~THE END~

The Marshalls

The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs

Maddie and Boone are major characters also in
TEXAS ROOTS
and all the Morning Star couples appear in
TEXAS DREAMS
.

If you enjoyed TEXAS HEROES VOLUME 1, I would be very grateful if you would help others find this book by recommending it to your friends on
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or by writing a review on
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. If you would like to be informed when my next release is available, please sign up for my
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.

Thanks!

Jean

TEXAS SECRETS

TEXAS LONELY

TEXAS BAD BOY

TEXAS REFUGE

TEXAS STAR

TEXAS DANGER

TEXAS ROOTS

TEXAS WILD

TEXAS DREAMS

TEXAS REBEL (
upcoming
)

Please enjoy the following excerpts…

(Quinn and Lorie, The Marshalls #1)

Wounded hero Quinn Marshall is haunted after nearly dying in a failed attempt to save his sister. The last thing the former homicide detective wants is another woman to watch over, but someone important to his brother is in trouble, and Quinn’s basic nature is to protect. Soap opera star Lorie Chandler has already lost her husband to an obsessed fan and now her son is the madman’s new target.

While the police hunt the killer, Quinn’s rugged Texas ranch is the ideal hiding place for Lorie and her child. Neither Quinn nor Lorie expects the explosive heat or the powerful emotion that flares to life in his canyon refuge, yet there is no future for them and both are painfully aware that their time together can only be temporary. When the madman finds them, Quinn’s sole focus is on keeping Lorie and the boy he’s come to love safe, even though his success will mean that he will have to give them up to a life where he cannot belong.

Quinn Marshall jolted awake in his seat.

The acrid scent of candle smoke seared his nostrils. He glanced around and remembered he was on a plane. Took a deep breath.

The passenger beside him still slept.

But the flight attendant’s gaze was locked on his.

Had he cried out in his sleep?

“Sir?” she whispered, dark curls falling forward. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine.”

“Can I get you something?”

My old life back.
“No. Thank you.”

She hesitated. He flattened his gaze and sat still, willing her to give up. What he needed was beyond even her best intentions.

She worried her bottom lip between her teeth, then nodded her head. “Well, let me know if you change your mind.”

“I will.”

After she retreated, he shook his head hard, as if that would dislodge the sense of evil clinging to the curves inside his skull. Why had the dreams started again? First the dark-haired boy, now this. For months after he’d left the force he hadn’t experienced any.

He never wanted another one. After the first one, his sister had been murdered. He’d been too late to save her, nearly died himself.

But now they were back. Who was the little dark-haired boy around whom he felt such danger? Who was the blond woman in the picture?

A blonde…. Like Clarissa.

I don’t want this
.
It’s useless. I didn’t save her.

Let me be
.

To settle himself, he visualized the table rock at the canyon’s edge where he’d found respite. Grounded by earth, the only sound the constant wind sweeping his mind clean of shadows, he could find rest for his troubled mind.

Peace he didn’t deserve.

He felt the change in the engines and stirred, raised his seat back and prepared for the landing. When they touched down and rolled to a stop, he uncoiled his tall frame and rose to grab his carry-on. The flight attendant caught his eye, her expression intimating that this didn’t have to be the end. With regret, he shifted his gaze to stare at the ceiling. She had no clue what she’d be tackling.

“56 West 66th,” he told the cab driver a few minutes later, then settled back into the seat of the taxi, gathering himself for the charade he must act out. He hated to be less than honest with his younger brother, but Josh knew nothing about this crack in the steadiness he’d always counted on from Quinn, how it had swallowed him up, how damned scared Quinn was that the darkness seemed to have become a permanent part of him.

Once they had shared practically everything, the three orphaned siblings, but Clarissa was gone, and Josh had a new life and a bright future. Their one surviving relative, their grandmother’s sister whom they called Tía Consuela, was aging and carried her own burdens.

This was his battle to fight.

Things were looking up for his brother now, and Quinn wasn’t going to screw it up. Josh’s grief over Clarissa had faded in the demands of his new leading role. He’d worked hard for what he’d accomplished, and Quinn wanted him to savor it.

Quinn only wished his brother would leave him alone in the canyons to seek his own peace. But Josh and Tía Consuela had conspired to corner Quinn into paying Josh a visit in New York, and Quinn had run out of excuses.

He hated cities. The years he’d spent as a Houston homicide detective couldn’t be forgotten so easily, but he damn sure tried. Visiting New York brought back too many unwelcome memories of crowded streets. Of danger, of darkness.

“Here we are.” The driver’s voice broke into his thoughts.

Quinn paid the fare and stepped from the cab, looking around him. God, the noise. A pang of longing for the crisp, clean air of the High Plains, the endless stars in the Texas nighttime sky, squeezed his heart.

It was only a few days. He squared his shoulders and entered the building.

…Excerpt from
TEXAS REFUGE
by Jean Brashear © 2012.

Buy
TEXAS REFUGE

Buy book 2
TEXAS STAR

Buy book 3
TEXAS DANGER

*   *   *

Nestled in the Texas Hill Country, tiny Sweetgrass Springs was founded by four veterans of the Texas Revolution, and for over a century the town and their ranches grew and prospered. Nowadays, however, too many of the town’s children leave for the big city as soon as they can escape, and Sweetgrass is barely hanging on. The heart and soul of Sweetgrass is Ruby Gallagher, once a scandal for bearing a child out of wedlock and refusing to identify the father. Her daughter vanished from Sweetgrass right after high school, but Ruby, owner of community gathering place Ruby’s Café, remains, keeping vigil, hoping for her daughter’s return. She is fighting to save her ancestors’ legacy, but the town is dying, and it’s breaking Ruby’s heart.

(Ian and Scarlett, The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs #1)

When scandal and an ambitious prosecutor wreck talented chef Scarlett Ross’s life and she learns of a grandmother she never knew she had, she flees the notoriety to pay an anonymous visit to Sweetgrass Springs, Texas, a town kept alive only by her grandmother’s determination and carried on the strong shoulders of sexy Texas cowboy Ian McLaren. There she is surprised to discover a yearning to sink roots deep in the Texas Hill Country—but she is terrified that the secrets she’s hiding will endanger everyone she’s come to love.

What had possessed her mother to keep Sweetgrass Springs a secret for thirty-two years? To tell her that they had no family?

Scarlett Ross pressed the accelerator and tried to think about that mystery instead of the fear that tangled beneath her breastbone: would she be safe there?

She crested the last hill, the tiny town a small diamond of light cushioned in flocked green velvet as the smudged violet of night stole over the Texas Hill Country. January here was far kinder than in New York. While the grass was a flaxen hue and some trees were only bare trunks and branches, many were still green.

The road curved left, right, left again, while Sweetgrass Springs winked in and out of view. Dead tired from the long drive fleeing the wreckage of her life in Manhattan, Scarlett longed for a meal and a bed. Best she’d been able to tell from the limited information available online, however, only the meal would be available in this town of fifteen hundred sixty-seven. The nearest motel was an hour back the way she’d come, but after running full-speed halfway across the country, Scarlett couldn’t bear to wait another night to find out if she, in fact, was not alone in this world, after all.

She had nowhere else to go. Her career was in ruins and the media hounded her every step, screaming for juicy details of her affair with a drug lord. For two years she’d been a meteor on the rise in the only city that mattered…and now she was a star in a tragedy. A farce, except that a cop had died in the raid.

She wasn’t a criminal…but she was criminally stupid, no question. How could she not have seen? How could she have blithely accepted Andre’s assurances that it was his love for her that made him want to showcase her talents in the gem of a restaurant into which she’d put her heart and soul?

Instead, Mirelle had been simply a front for illegal activities that had gone on under her nose. And she’d never once, in the whole two years, suspected. Never wanted to look. She’d simply been grateful for the focus, the distraction from her grief. His offer had come right after she’d lost her only family, and she’d boxed up her mother’s effects without a look. Instead of immediately leaving for parts unknown as her mother had always done when things got crazy, she’d tried something radical: she’d planned to stay in one place. She’d been too devastated to think straight, had been ripe pickings for Andre’s machinations.

She’d been grateful, so grateful for the rescue. She’d lost her only compass in a life spent on the move, and she’d welcomed the chaos and endless work that allowed her not to think. The solace of someone who cared.

Except Andre hadn’t really cared, had he? She’d been a dupe, and she’d walked into his trap with gratitude, playing her part to perfection.

The velvet-lined trap had sprung just when her future seemed brightest, when she was at last emerging from grief and loneliness.

Only to wind up in handcuffs, with her picture on the front page of the newspaper and featured on the evening newscast. Andre had escaped scot-free, no doubt on some tropical island drinking mai tais with a new idiot, while she stood holding the bag because he’d put her name on the more damaging documents.

And she’d thought him so sweet to both bankroll the venture and give her Mirelle.

She’d been trapped in New York for twelve days while the District Attorney had bled her brain dry, then she’d been freed under the stipulation that she’d testify against Andre and his cohorts—should they ever be found. On one of many sleepless nights, wandering the apartment filled with hated memories of Andre, in desperation she’d dragged out a box of her mother’s things. There, in her mother’s girlhood diary, a stunned Scarlett had discovered family. In Texas, of all places, one of the few states she and her mother had not lived.