A Rancher to Remember--A Clean Romance Read online

  They can’t change the past...

  but they can choose their future

  Globe-trotting journalist Cassidy Fulton is back in Carbondale, Colorado. Only she can’t remember why—or the accident that killed her estranged sister. Helping her piece together this mystery is her brother-in-law and former fiancé, Daryl Loveland. Overcoming their grief seems impossible. Yet one thing is clear: Cassidy can’t imagine her life without Daryl or her adorable niece and nephew. But can the ranch ever really be her home?

  Leanne was gone.

  Cassidy trembled with the sudden, chasm-opening realization.

  Daryl’s wet lashes lifted, and his eyes searched hers. “What happened?”

  “I don’t know. How am I in America?” She clutched her blanket. “In Carbondale?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me.”

  The image of Leanne’s number appearing on Cassidy’s cell phone flashed in her mind’s eye. “She—she called me.”

  A strangled noise escaped him. “When?”

  “What’s today?”

  He named the date and she froze. Six days ago. She was missing almost a week of her life. The conversation she’d heard outside her door returned: whiplash, concussion, post-traumatic amnesia. Short-term memory loss brought on by an injury. In her case, an unexplained car accident with her estranged sister.

  Her dead sister.

  Oh, God.

  “What did she want?”

  “I don’t remember. What happened to Leanne?” Cassidy had to know, had to understand her sister’s last moments, their final time together. Why couldn’t she remember?

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to stories about the Cade and Loveland clans you’ve gotten to know and love over the last five books in the Rocky Mountain Cowboys series. The ranching neighbors have finally solved the mystery surrounding their one-hundred-and-thirty-year-old feud’s origin, resolved their water-access dispute and even became related when the heads of each household finally wed. They should be living in peace and harmony...right?

  Not so fast! There’s plenty of drama ahead in this Western family saga, and it continues with Daryl Loveland in an emotional book about loss, redemption and second chances. Daryl is a single father and a widower struggling to make sense of the disturbing end to his troubled marriage. When his first love, his estranged sister-in-law Cassidy, reenters his life, he discovers a path to forgiveness, healing and lasting happiness.

  I hope you enjoy Daryl and Cassidy’s one-of-a-kind love story and will return to the Rocky Mountain Cowboys series in summer 2019 to find out if champion bull rider Maverick Loveland can find his happily-ever-after with Ella Parks. She’s a fiercely independent sheep rancher who’s got too much on her plate for love, including being pregnant with twins!

  I love to hear from my readers. Feel free to visit me on my website at karenrock.com or write me at [email protected].

  Happy reading!

  Karen Rock

  A Rancher to Remember

  Karen Rock

  Award-winning author Karen Rock is both sweet and spicy—at least when it comes to her writing! The author of both YA and adult contemporary books writes sexy suspense novels and small-town romances for Harlequin and Kensington Publishing. A strong believer in happily-ever-after, Karen loves creating unforgettable stories that leave her readers with a smile. When she’s not writing, Karen is an avid reader who also loves cooking her grandmother’s Italian recipes, baking and having the Adirondack Park wilderness as her backyard, where she lives with her husband, daughter, dog and cat, who keep her life interesting and complete. Learn more about her at karenrock.com or follow her on Twitter, @karenrock5.

  Books by Karen Rock

  Harlequin Heartwarming

  His Kind of Cowgirl

  A Heartwarming Thanksgiving

  “Thankful for You”

  Winter Wedding Bells

  “The Kiss”

  Raising the Stakes

  A League of Her Own

  Someone Like You

  His Hometown Girl

  Wish Me Tomorrow

  Bad Boy Rancher

  A Cowboy’s Pride

  Winning the Cowboy’s Heart

  Visit the Author Profile page at www.Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

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  To Anne, my grandmother, who lost the love

  of her life at a young age. Thanks for sharing

  your romance novels with me, along with

  your faith in true love and happily-ever-after.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  EXCERPT FROM HOLIDAY KISSES BY ANNA J. STEWART

  CHAPTER ONE

  “THIS WAY! QUICKLY!”

  Cassidy Fulton scrambled after her gesturing guide through the Philippines’ tropical forest on unsteady legs. In the distance, another round of rapid-fire blasts from semiautomatic weapons peppered the sticky-hot night. Screams followed it. Her breath rasped in her throat and her blood raged. Something wet and scaly slithered over the top of her boots. Cicadas buzzed in her ears. From a strap slung around her neck, her trusty Canon Rebel T5i banged against her jumping belly. It traveled with her on every journalism assignment, from the frigid heights of Siberia to the sandy shores of the Dead Sea.

  Her guide held up a hand and they halted to crouch on the edge of Quezon City, their position hidden by thick vines and ferns. She lifted her camera, aimed it through a gap in the foliage and pressed the shutter-release button in quick, muffled bursts.

  Do not think.

  Do not feel.

  Document.

  Through her lens, she recorded officers tossing limp-bodied men onto a truck. Some of the policemen joked. Others smoked. None seemed in any rush to transport the injured to the hospital in accordance with their “official” protocol for battling suspected drug dealers. As part of her investigative piece about the rumored executions of suspects—a secret policy to rid the island of its drug trade—she’d traveled the Philippines for the past month, interviewing government officials, locals and hospital personnel to uncover the truth.

  And here it was...in black-and-white. The knowledge was like getting hit by a speeding train, and then getting stuck under the wheels and dragged down a bumpy track. Her camera captured the stained ground and the wide-eyed children clinging to their wailing mothers’ skirts. Behind them stood crumbling industrial complexes serving as makeshift living quarters for this drug-riddled community. Stray dogs scurried into dark alleys.

  “What’s she saying?” Cassidy whispered in her guide’s ear, her camera trained on a gesticulating young woman. Her bare feet peeked from beneath the ragged hem of a sundress and tears rolled down her sunken cheeks.

  “He is innocent. My husband is innocent,” the guide murmured.

  “And that woman?” Cassidy captured image after image, her heart breaking despite her resolve to remain detached. Regardles
s of her ten years as a conflict journalist and despite having exposed some of the most heinous crimes against humanity, she’d failed to acquire the hard shell other professionals adopted. Her heart had not yet turned to stone...though she wished it would in times like this.

  “Why? Why? Why?” the guide relayed. “Another is calling the officers murderers.”

  “Those are close-range shots.” As she zoomed her lens, the evening’s meal rose back up to the base of her throat. Think of the greater good...not what you see...but what you will expose. Change. “They had no time to defend themselves.”

  “I see no weapons other than the police’s.”

  Sweat broke out across her hairline. At the guide’s astute observation, Cassidy swapped her lens for a wide angle to capture the crucial shot. Such pictures brought worldwide condemnation against brutal regimes like this. Consequences. Sanctions. She leaned forward, and a twig snapped beneath her foot. Cassidy’s heart tumbled as officers froze at the loud crack. Heads snapped in their direction, and narrowed eyes scanned their hiding place. At a shouted order, a trio of rifle-carrying officers raced their way.

  No!

  A tremor coursed through her as the guide grabbed Cassidy’s hand and yanked her back through the thick bramble.

  “Pagagil! Pagagil!” the officers shouted behind them.

  Halt! Halt!

  Her body sparked like a live wire, humming and crackling with the adrenaline zipping through her. If caught, she’d either meet the same fate as the victims she documented or worse, languish in a Filipino prison for the rest of her life. Death or imprisonment. Neither was uncommon in her dangerous career, yet she’d never quit. She’d worked too hard to let fear drive her away. This tale of corruption, violence and cover-up had to be shared with the world. Too many lives depended on it. Too many lives had been lost already.

  Shoving aside prickly branches, stumbling over slippery, moss-covered ground, she charged through the forest. Her heartbeat raged in her ears. Faster. Faster. Faster.

  The sound of large bodies crashing through the foliage behind them grew louder. Closer. More shouts then—

  —something whistled past Cassidy’s ear and struck the trunk of a palm tree just ahead. Scorched black encircled the embedded bullet. Another blast of gunfire shredded the overlapping fronds and leaves around her. Her heart thundered in her chest and each rapid breath grew shallower and more painful as she hurtled after her guide. A brief glimpse of his T-shirt appeared to her left and she swerved to follow. Without him, she’d be lost. Even if she managed to evade the shooters, she’d never make it out of this lethal wilderness on her own.

  Her eyes stung, and her muscles screamed as she labored up a hill, gunshots raining through the air. A piercing scream rang out and her guide crashed to the ground. In three steps she was upon the writhing man. He clamped a hand to his ragged ear. He’d been shot, but not seriously. Her own war injuries included a knife scar in the stomach, shoulders marked by shrapnel spray and a bullet embedded in her left hip.

  “Get up!” she urged. With every ounce of reserve strength, she dug her heels in the spongy earth and pulled the guide to his feet. “Hurry!”

  The man swayed slightly before recovering. “This way!” He lurched forward, and they resumed their headlong flight.

  The officers’ shouts grew louder still, the barrage of bullets unrelenting. Something sliced her upper arm, sharp as a wasp’s sting. Pain bloomed and spread. Sticky warmth gushed from the wound. She’d been shot, she thought, with a strange sense of detachment, her adrenaline keeping her from feeling too much. When they crested the hill, the guide yanked her down, then scuttled backward into a shallow hollow in the embankment. A downed tree shrouded the entrance.

  A moment later, footsteps pounded overhead. Cassidy held her breath as the men conferred with each other. The world’s spin seemed to slow. Time stopped. So did her heart. Then, after what seemed like an eternity, they moved on. Their agitated babble growing fainter and fainter until it quieted altogether.

  Still, she and her guide remained motionless until her muscles cramped, and her body grew prickly, then numb. The guide mumbled a prayer beneath his breath. The rosary. She’d heard it in enough languages to recognize it. The rank smell of their sweat and blood permeated the cramped space.

  After peeling back her sleeve to examine the wound, she tied a bandanna around it, one-handed. Her teeth clamped on one end as she pulled it tight. She’d been grazed, not struck. A relieved breath flew from her. She would tend to it later in her hotel room, since seeking medical treatment wasn’t an option. Not if she hoped to live anyway, because they would be scouring the hospital within the hour.

  After what seemed like an eternity, her guide poked out his head, then led them down the hill. All around, the forest pulsed, alive and deadly in the dark. They moved cautiously, but swiftly, following the glimpses of the moon through the thick canopy overhead. At last, they reached the Jeep hidden in the brush, flung themselves inside, then raced down the back road, holding their breaths. After several glances in the empty rearview mirror, Cassidy sank back in her seat.

  “We did it.” She traced her camera with trembling fingertips. Its critical memory card had survived...as had she...this time.

  How many more assignments before her luck ran out?

  She tipped her forehead out the window to let the rushing air cool her flesh. No time to think about that now.

  Or ever.

  Growing up near Carbondale, Colorado, she’d worked on enough cattle ranches to know the only thing stopping a beast from killing you was convincing it to fear you instead.

  It was mind over matter.

  Courage over danger.

  An hour later she hunched before her laptop inside her hotel room. Her fingers flew as she transcribed the day’s notes.

  “It’s not possible they were alive,” said Mahalia Cruz, 39, whose husband, Danilo, was among the dead. “We saw them thrown in the back of a truck.”

  Cassidy stopped typing, brought up the images she’d downloaded from her camera and studied the last one. A picture was worth a thousand words, especially when it corroborated witness statements. She dropped the picture into a digital folder, attached the folder to a brief email and sent it to her editor. She’d be arriving at her Manhattan office soon. Cassidy minimized the screen and resumed writing.

  “In police operations, we don’t know where the bullets may hit,” Police Chief Torres said. “Some suspects retaliate, fight us. We are only defending ourselves.”

  “Didn’t look like that to me,” she muttered. When she reached for her coffee, pain lanced in her arm. Little more than a scrape, the wound should heal on its own. Her guide hadn’t been so lucky. He’d lost his ear tip.

  “The police do the shooting, they do the killing—and they investigate themselves,” Rosaria Del Mortel, a forensic scientist and chair of the University of the Philippines Manila Pathology Department, said. “Impunity, that’s what’s happening. Such practices can leave the system open to abuse.”

  Cassidy pressed the tip of her tongue to the roof of her mouth and nodded, every nerve ending afire. The familiar sensation accompanied every important story she’d ever broken. Every journalist lived for this...if nothing else...

  Bereaved relatives and other witnesses said the bodies were taken to a hospital an hour or more after the shooting, and that none of the victims showed signs of life. “They weren’t moving. They weren’t breathing,” said Fernando Reyes, the local district medical director. “They were cold to the touch.”

  She stared at the screen, picturing the doctor’s anguished face, the widow’s grief. Her vision blurred, and her head dipped. So much injustice in the world and not enough time to expose it all in one lifetime.

  Her cell phone buzzed, and her editor’s number flashed on-screen. “Hey, Brenda.”

  “Quite the scoop!” Brend
a crowed. “If you don’t win the Pulitzer this year, I’ll eat my Birkin.”

  “Would that count as a protein?” Despite her fatigue, Cassidy’s lips curved up in a smile.

  A Pulitzer. She’d been striving to win the highest recognition of her profession since she’d declared herself a journalism major her freshman year in college. Growing up in poverty, her father’s difficulty holding on to jobs amid layoffs meant they’d sometimes had to choose between rent, food or heating. Lying in bed, her empty stomach growling in the dark, she’d vowed to fulfill her pa’s unshakable faith. She’d break the cycle and achieve greatness someday. He’d spent every extra dime he’d scraped together on her, from her first camera, a battered, secondhand Nikon, to the uniforms required of the private school she’d attended on scholarship.

  “You were robbed last year,” Brenda said, then swore a blue streak about suing Starbucks over third-degree burns after what sounded like a scorching sip of coffee. “Your work on Erdogan’s strong-arm tactics should have beat that New York Times Ebola series. I’m so sick of sickness stories.”

  “Maybe this year.” Cassidy’s fingers dented her jeans. When a work injury caused her father’s permanent disability, she’d vowed to prove his sacrifices weren’t in vain, that his belief in her was warranted and she was worthy of all he’d given her, especially his love.

  Her eyes flitted to the framed family photo she carried with her on every assignment. Only an arm showed of the person she’d carefully snipped out...her younger sister, Leanne, who’d betrayed her in the worst way imaginable.

  “How much longer before you send the final piece?”

  Cassidy ignored the pressure banding around her chest and scrolled through the text-filled screen. “By noon. Your time.”

  “That’s my gal. I owe you a bottle of Pinot when you get back.”

  Cassidy’s eyes closed as she imagined the crisp white wine. “I’ll hold you to that. So what’s my next assignment?”

  “You mean after we hate-watch Season Sixteen of I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant?”