Rocky Mountain Dreams & Family on the Range by Danica Favorite (summer beach reads txt) 📕

feeling that engulfed her and left her speechless. She touched his cheek. His unshaved skin scraped against her fingers as she cupped his jaw and held his gaze.

“I’m happy you’re keeping the ranch. You have been my hero in so many ways,” she began. “And yet I feel as though my hand is still being held.” He started to shake his head, but she stopped him with a bit of pressure from her fingers.

A rueful smile crept across his lips.

She smiled back, her riotous emotions blending together, harmonizing into a single feeling that spread through her in rich pulses of energy. “I am not going to be your housekeeper anymore. I am going to open a business and thrive.”

He reached for her hand, removed it and laced his fingers through hers. So gentle. He drew their entwined fingers against his chest.

“You are free to be whomever you want. To choose your way. I only want you happy.” His fervent words touched a place deep inside her, bringing to life a longing she finally felt free to embrace.

Without hesitating, she placed her free hand on his back, pushed upward on her toes and kissed him. Their lips met in a union of warmth that blazed into a blistering heat, burning away any reservations she may have held. His mouth slanted against hers, minty and firm. He pressed her against the wall, and she melted beneath his love.

For that was what she felt. Love radiating from him. Care. Her own blood lit with a passionate joy she hadn’t expected to ever experience.

And then everything ended. He pulled away, his breath ragged, his head hanging so she couldn’t see his face.

But that was okay. She smiled despite her own uneven breathing and the rapid pounding of her heart. She stroked the top of his head, relishing the strands beneath her fingers. It had taken twelve years, but her heart had finally healed enough for her to accept the truth.

“I love you,” she said. The words came out clear. Grinning, she said it again. “I love you, Lou Riley.”

“I know,” he groaned.

She stopped stroking his hair, her fingers lingering in a painful pause. He knew? And then it came to her that she had been foolish. Laying out her affections, thinking he returned them. Her heart strangled beneath her breastbone. She chose not to speak. She dropped her hands to her sides and waited.

He lifted his head, his eyes piercing. “I haven’t done you right, Mary. I don’t deserve your love.”

She shook her head, surprised at his words. “But of course you do—”

“No.” He gripped her shoulders. “I should have been there for you. Protected you.”

“But you did.” She touched his cheek again, amazed by the contrast of masculinity and vulnerability on his face. “God led you to us.”

He shook his head, but she stopped him from speaking by holding up a palm. “I doubted God, you know. Words can do that, dig deep holes that are not easily filled. God seemed to forsake me. Now, when I needed Him with Langdon, and so long ago, when Mendez came for me. But then you showed up. Both times, you have been there. If you hadn’t tossed your hat into that building, you may have continued past. I may have huddled with Josie in a corner until that man found us. I can’t deny how God has used you to protect me.”

“I don’t know if I can believe that.” A grimace passed across his face. “He wasn’t there with Sarah and Abby. He could have spared them, but He didn’t.”

She tried to hide her flinch. “I am truly sorry for your loss.”

Perhaps he saw something in her face that she hadn’t successfully hidden, for his features softened. “I’m not saying I’m not glad you were spared. I am, more than you can believe. You and Josie are... You’re special. I guess I’m just struggling with why God helps some but not others.”

She had no answer for him and perhaps it would be unwise to speak anyway, because her emotions tangled within and skewed her perspective. She’d confessed her love, and he’d ignored that, even bringing up his wife and daughter. She’d thought what stood between them was his job, but too late she saw she’d been wrong.

It was so much more. What she’d felt in his kiss hadn’t been love, it had been a normal, physical attraction. Her face burned at her naïveté.

He released her shoulders and took a step back. His face shuttered. “You deserve more than a washed-up agent who can’t get over the fact God gets to make all the rules. If God cares, He’ll give you someone wonderful to love.”

He already has, but the man is too stubborn to realize it. She swallowed her reply. “Will you still be going to Asia?”

“In two weeks.”

“And Langdon?”

“I’ll track him before then.”

So he planned to find Langdon after all. Frustration welled. “Shouldn’t you let objective agents look for him?”

“No, this is too important.” He cast a fervent look to the door, then leaned close to her. “The man put out a contract on me. He wants me dead, and I don’t aim to give him that pleasure. I haven’t worked out why yet, but that’s not important.”

“He and Mendez were cousins.” She watched as shock etched slackness across his features.

“Who told you that?”

“He took pride in sharing that information with me, but I also noticed a resemblance in their bone structure.” It was hard to speak over the pain of Lou’s rejection, but she forced a calm facade. “From what I can piece together, Langdon was behind Mendez’s obsession with me. The man worked for him and carried out his orders.”

“Did he tell you anything else?”

“A little more.” Only that because of her mother’s part in this drama, she’d been kidnapped for one week and the course of her life had been forever altered. “Langdon met me when I was a child. I remember him as a boy who stared too much. I suppose