Her Cowboy Distraction(35)

He couldn't stand it any longer. He had to touch her in some way. He  reached for her hand, and she took it and squeezed as if she never  wanted to let it go.

"I think Mom's goal with wanting me to do the bucket list was really a  ruse to make me stop and take stock of the life I was leading when she  died. She worried about me having nothing but work in my life, worried  that I was getting closer and closer to thirty and didn't have any hint  of a meaningful relationship with anyone. I know now exactly what Mom  wanted for me, and it wasn't singing on a corner in Times Square. It's  you, Daniel."

"That's nice, but I need to hear what you want, what you need," he  replied. He'd waited for what felt like a lifetime for the words to come  from her, the words he'd longed to hear.

The light that shone from her eyes was near-

blinding and he fell into the flames, loving her so much he wondered how he'd lived a day of his life without her.

"I love you, Daniel, and I'm not afraid anymore. I trust in our love. I  need you. I want to share your life with you, fill that house with  babies and be with you to watch our grandchildren play in the yard."

For a moment he couldn't speak. His chest was so filled with his heart  it held the air in his lungs captive. He released her hand and stood and  then pulled her up and into his arms, and their lips met in a kiss that  tasted of cinnamon and apples, of passion and laughter and, most of  all, love.

The people in the café cheered, and as the kiss finally ended Lizzy  looked up at Daniel and smiled. "I'm home, Daniel. I'm finally truly  home."





Epilogue

Mary Mathis gasped for air and sat up, her  heart pounding a thousand  beats a minute. Anxiety pressed tight in her chest, a  familiar but  unwanted enemy.

Telling herself to relax, to breathe in and out in slow,  measured  breaths, she felt her heart slowing to a more normal pace, the   sickening anxiety beginning to fade.

When would these episodes fade? When would the dreams of the  past  finally leave her alone? Allow her to sleep and stop worrying?

She got out of bed and as always went to the doorway of Matt's   bedroom, comforted by the sight of him sleeping soundly. She returned to  the  living room, turned on the end table lamp and curled up on the  sofa.

It had been almost a month since Candy's death and still nobody  was  in jail for the crime, and Mary couldn't stop the faint niggling feeling   that something else bad was coming.

She'd dismiss it as nothing more than a foolish woman's  intuition,  but at one time years ago Mary had been quite adept at forecasting   danger. She'd been able to feel it in the air, taste it in the terror  that  welled up in the back of her throat.                       
       
           



       

She felt that now, but this time the terror didn't have a name,  it  didn't have a face, and that scared her as much as anything.

Think about something positive, she commanded herself as she  pulled  an afghan from the back of the sofa and covered her bare legs.

She'd managed to hire a new waitress, a young woman named  Lynette  Shiver, who was taking Lizzy's place and had the same kind of bright,   cheerful personality.

A smile curved Mary's lips as she thought of Lizzy. Although  she  missed her working in the café, it had been wonderful watching Daniel  and  Lizzy's love grow stronger every day. They came into the café  twice a week for  dinner, and it was obvious a wedding was in the  near future.

A wave of loneliness struck Mary. Most of the time she stayed  too  busy to miss the presence of a male in her life. She had her work at the   café and Matt to keep her busy, but there were moments when she  longed for  something she could never have, for somebody to wrap her  in his strong arms and  talk to her of love.

But, the actions she'd taken years ago, the decisions she'd  made for  herself and for Matt, made it impossible for her to invite a man in,   especially the man who looked at her with desire.

Sheriff Cameron Evans had made it clear in a million ways that  he  was interested in her. But, even though the sight of him created a warm  pool  of desire inside her, even though she admired him more than  anyone else she'd  ever met in her life, he was off-limits now and  forever.

A shiver whispered through her, and it had nothing to do with  her  thoughts of Cameron Evans. Rather, it was the feeling that evil had come  to  Grady Gulch, and it wasn't about to move on any time soon.

* * * * *

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Chapter 1

The Wyoming woods atop the tall mountains that cradled the town of Cold  Plains were just beginning to take on a fall cast of color. This worked  perfectly with the camouflage long-sleeved T-shirt and pants that Micah  Grayson wore as he made his way through the thick brush and trees.

Although a gun holster rode his shoulder, he held his gun tight in his  hand. Despite the fact that he had only been hiding out in the  mountainous woods for two days and nights, he'd quickly learned that  danger could come in the blink of an eye, a danger that might require  the quick tic of his index finger on the trigger.

Twilight had long ago fallen but a near-full moon overhead worked as an  additional enemy when it came to using the shield of darkness for cover.

As an ex-mercenary, Micah knew how to learn the terrain and use the  weather to his advantage. He knew how to keep the reflection of the  moonlight off his skin so as not to alert anyone to his presence. He  could move through a bed of dry leaves and not make a sound. He could be  wearing a black suit in a snowstorm and still figure out a way to  become invisible.

The first twenty-four hours that he'd been in the woods he'd learned  natural landmarks, studied pitfalls and figured out places he thought  would make good hidey-holes if needed. He'd also come face-to-face with a  moose, heard the distant call of a wolf and seen several elk and deer.

He now moved with the stealth of a big cat toward the rocky cliff he'd  discovered the night before. As he crept low and light on his feet, he  kept alert, his ears open for any alien sound that might not belong to  the forest.

Despite the relative coolness of the night, a trickle of sweat trekked  down the center of his back. During his thirty-eight years of life,  Micah had faced a thousand life-threatening situations, the latest of  which had been a bullet to his head that had sent him into a coma for  months.

When he finally reached the rocky bluff he looked down at the lights  dotting the little valley, the lights of the small town of Cold Plains,  Wyoming. His brother Samuel's town. Micah reached up and touched the  scar, now barely discernible through his thick dark hair on the left  side of his head, the place where Samuel's henchman, Dax Roberts, had  shot him while Micah had sat in his car. Dax had left him for dead.                       
       
           



       

Fortunately for Micah he hadn't died, but had come out of a three-month  coma with the fierce, driving need for revenge against the fraternal  twin he'd always somehow known was a dangerous, narcissistic sociopath.

Unfortunately, Samuel was also charming and slick and powerful, making him a natural leader that people wanted to follow.

Five months ago Micah had been sitting in a small-town Kansas coffee  shop where he'd landed after his last mission for a little downtime when  he'd seen a face almost identical to his own flash across the  television mounted to the wall.

Stunned, he'd watched a news story unfold that told him his brother  Samuel was being questioned by the FBI and local police in connection  with the murders of five women found all across Wyoming. All the women  had one thing in common: Cold Plains, the town where his wealthy,  motivational-speaker brother wielded unbelievable influence and power.

Micah had immediately contacted the FBI and been put in touch with an  agent named Hawk Bledsoe. The two had made arrangements to meet the next  day but, before Micah could make that meeting, he'd caught the bullet  to his head.