The Rancher Next Door. Susan Mallery

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      Growing up, Katie had been Jack’s fantasy.

      Despite time and distance and good sense, he found himself wondering how it would be between them. They were different. Not children who had fallen in love, but adults who understood how good it could be.

      “You could have asked me to stay,” Katie commented, interrupting his thoughts.

      He knew what she meant. That summer, when she’d been leaving for college and had wanted him to go with her. Instead of refusing, he should have asked her to stay here…with him. “No,” he said. “Your world was out in front of you, waiting to be explored. You knew everything there was to know about Lone Star Canyon. You deserved more than this. You wanted more than this.”

      “Interesting that despite your plans for my destiny, I ended up right back here,” she said. “I wish you hadn’t been so self-sacrificing. I think we could have made it.”

      He dismissed her comment. “It doesn’t matter.” But what he wanted to say was, “Don’t talk about it.” Because revisiting the past would start to hurt. He might not remember his hopes for the future, but the pain was still fresh. The pain of giving her up…

      The Rancher Next Door

      Susan Mallery

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      SUSAN MALLERY

      is the bestselling author of over thirty books for Silhouette. Always a fan of romance novels, Susan finds herself in the unique position of living out her own personal romantic fantasy with the new man in her life. Susan lives in sunny Southern California with her handsome hero husband and her two adorable-but-not-bright cats.

      Contents

      Prologue

      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

      Prologue

      The bright red bike beckoned Katie Fitzgerald. It lay abandoned in a heap of other more battered bikes, all left behind the ice cream parlor where Katie’s older brother and his friends had gone for an afternoon snack. The pocket of her jeans jingled with the coins her father had given her to keep her out of trouble, and she knew that fresh peach ice cream, her favorite, had been made that morning.

      But even more tempting than the thought of cool, creamy ice cream melting on her tongue and slipping down her throat was the realization that this might be her only chance with the bike. The twins, younger by two years, could both ride two-wheelers already, but she couldn’t. Not because she wasn’t coordinated enough but because her parents had never let her try.

      It wasn’t her fault that she had been born small, she thought balling her hands into fists. Her father laughingly called her the runt of the litter, which hurt her feelings, but she never let him see the tears in her eyes. Instead she kept her head high and chin thrust out, because she was a Fitzgerald and ten years old, which was practically grown-up.

      Katie glanced at the back of the ice cream shop and knew that her brother David would be in there for hours. Once he and his friends got to talking—bragging was more like it—they could waste a whole afternoon. Her dad wasn’t going to be finished with his business until three, and it was barely past one. All she had to do was make sure no one saw her.

      Easier said than done, she thought glumly. Lone Star Canyon wasn’t much of a town, and everyone around knew everyone else by sight if not by name. Besides, she was a Fitzgerald, and her father always told her that Fitzgeralds were looked up to by other folks and had a responsibility to act right.

      But it’s not as if she were stealing the bike, she told herself even as she walked over and grabbed the handlebars. It was her brother’s, and she was just borrowing it. David would understand.

      Even she didn’t believe that lie, so she ignored the feeling of guilt in favor of the excitement growing in her belly. If she could learn to ride a bike on her own and then show her mom when she got home, they’d have to stop treating her like a baby. Just because she’d been sick a lot as a little girl, both her parents made her avoid sports and bikes and be careful all the time. She had rules that her brothers and sisters didn’t. It was humiliating that the twins had more freedom than she did.

      It all came down to learning to ride the bike. Then her parents would have to see it was okay for her to be outside and playing, just like every other kid around. So if she borrowed the bike for a really good reason, that didn’t make taking it such a bad thing, right?

      She pressed her lips together and figured she was going to get into trouble anyway, so why not enjoy the process? Then she steadied the bike by putting her hands on the handlebars and straddled the crossbar.

      The seat was too high for her to sit on and still touch the ground, even on tiptoe. Katie walked over to the driveway, then down to the street, where she could balance on the curb while perched on the seat. She settled herself, shifted to get her balance, then pushed off the curb.

      Thirty minutes later she’d skinned both knees and one elbow, and had yet to ride more than five feet at a stretch. Despite the tears of frustration and the pain burning her knees and elbow, she refused to give up or admit defeat. “I can do this,” she whispered fiercely.

      “You’re going about it all wrong,” a voice said from behind her.

      Katie spun, then caught her breath as she saw Jack Darby. The boy rode lazily toward her, his battered bike looking as if it had been run over and left for dead more than once. He rode off the curb with the easy grace of a natural athlete, then skidded to a stop three feet in front of her.

      Although only a year older, Jack was about five inches taller and twenty pounds heavier. Like all the Darbys he had dark hair and eyes. Katie swallowed her fear. She wasn’t about to let any Darby know she was scared of him.

      “You want me to hold the bike steady?” Jack asked, letting his bike drop to the ground. He moved next to her and reached for the seat. “You need to get your balance, Katie. Once you learn that, the rest of it’s easy.”

      “I’m fine,” she said stiffly, wishing she could ride to safety, but she was trapped. “I don’t need help from you.”

      Something flashed in his eyes—something that she might have thought was hurt, except he was a boy and from what she’d seen with her brothers, boys didn’t have any softer feelings.

      He stood beside her, studying her. Katie stared right back. Jack Darby didn’t look like he was gonna hurt her or anything. In fact he looked friendly. But Darbys hated Fitzgeralds from their first breath to their last…didn’t they? Darbys and Fitzgeralds had been feuding for about as long as Texas had been a state—at least that’s what her father always said.

      Jack pointed at her bleeding knees. “You keep falling, you’re gonna scrape off all your skin. You’ll end up looking like a plucked chicken, and then what?”

      Despite her fear and the pain from