Her Guardian Rancher. Brenda Minton

on nights like this. Nights when sleep was as distant as Afghanistan, but the memories were close. Too close.

      On nights like this he took a drive rather than pace restlessly. A year ago he would have woken Boone and the two of them would have talked. But Boone had recently married Kayla Stanford and the happy couple had built a house on the opposite side of the Wilder property.

      Daron had his own place, a small ranch a few miles outside of Martin’s Crossing. He rarely stayed there. The house was too big. The space too open. He preferred the close confines of the camper. Not that he wanted to admit it, but he liked Boone’s dog. He also didn’t mind Boone’s large and raucous family.

      His own family was a little more restrained and not as large. And his appearance sometimes bothered his mom. He didn’t shave often enough. He preferred jeans and boots to a suit. His dad, an attorney in Austin, wanted his son to join the family law firm rather than run the protection business he’d started with friends Boone Wilder and Lucy Palermo. His mom wanted him to attend functions at the club and find a nice girl to marry. His sister, Janette, was busy being exactly the person her parents wanted her to be. She was pretty, socially correct and finishing college.

      Daron was still coming to terms with his tour of duty in Afghanistan, with the knowledge that he could lead friends into an ambush.

      One of those friends had died. Andy Shaw had only been in Afghanistan a few months when Daron and Boone followed an Afghan kid who claimed his sister was in trouble. The sister. Daron pulled onto the highway, gripping the steering wheel, getting control of the memories. He’d thought he loved her, so when her brother came to him and said their family needed the help of the American soldiers, Daron had agreed to go.

      He’d been young and stupid, and because of him, Andy had died. At thirty he didn’t find it any easier to deal with than when he was twenty-six.

      The truck tires hummed on the damp pavement. He headed his truck in the direction of Braswell, a small town in the heart of Texas Hill Country and just a short distance from Martin’s Crossing. He cranked some country music on his stereo and rolled down the truck windows to let cool, damp air whip through the cab of the truck.

      A few miles outside Braswell he turned right on a paved county road. He slowed as he neared the older farmhouse that sat just a hundred feet off the road. Only one light burned in the single-story home, the same light that was typically on when he made his midnight drives.

      And he made this trip often. When he couldn’t sleep. When he felt the need to just meander by and make sure everything looked okay. It always did.

      But not tonight. Tonight a truck was pulled off the road on the opposite side as the farmhouse. The parking lights were on. There was no one inside. He cruised on by, resisting the urge to slam on the brakes. A few hundred feet past the house, he turned his truck, dimmed his headlights and headed back, pulling in behind the other truck and reaching in his glove compartment for his sidearm. Unfortunately it was locked in the gun cabinet at the trailer.

      With quiet steps he headed toward the house, staying close to the fence, in the dark and the shadows. He kept an eye on the house, scanning the area for whoever it was who owned the abandoned truck. If it hadn’t been idling, he might have thought it was just broken down and that the driver had decided to walk. But the engine running meant the driver planned to return fairly soon.

      He was near the back of the house when he heard the front door slam open. He moved in close to the side of the house and rounded the corner and then he stopped. The front porch light was on and caught in its glare was a too-thin Pete Shaw with a ball bat swinging in his direction. The younger brother of Andy Shaw jumped back quick, avoiding the aim of the woman advancing on him.

      “Get out. And don’t come back. Next time I’ll have more for you than this baseball bat, Pete. Stay away from my house. Stay away from my family. We don’t have anything.”

      Pete lunged at her, but she swung, hitting his arm with the bat. He let out a scream. “You broke my arm!”

      “I don’t think so. But next time I might.” She raised the bat again. She might be barely five feet tall, but she packed quite a punch. Daron resisted the urge to laugh. Instead he took a few quiet steps forward, in case she needed him.

      “I’m not going to let you hit me, Emma.”

      “You’re not coming back inside this house.” Emma Shaw swung again and Pete fell back a pace, still holding his injured left arm.

      It looked as if he planned to leave. Daron remained in the shadows, watching, waiting and hoping Pete would walk away. When the other man lunged, Daron stepped out of the shadows. “Pete, I think you ought to listen to her.”

      Pete turned, still holding his left arm, still looking kind of wild-eyed. He was thin. His hair was scraggly. Meth. It was easy to spot an addict. The jerk of the chin. The jumpiness. The sores. A person couldn’t put poison in his body and expect it to be good for him.

      “This isn’t your fight, Daron.” Pete held up his right hand, showing he still had half a brain. “But I’ll make it your fight.”

      Or maybe he didn’t have half a brain. Andy’s younger brother took a few steps in Daron’s direction.

      “Really, Pete?” Daron remained where he stood. “Get in your truck and get out of here. Get in a program and get some help.”

      “I don’t need help. I just need the money. I know she’s got it hid somewhere.”

      “I don’t have money, Pete. I don’t have anything but bills. You blew through the money Andy left. You bought that truck and you bought drugs.”

      “None of us were at the wedding,” Pete countered. “I doubt you were even married to my brother.”

      “Go away, Pete. Before I call the police.” Emma advanced on the other man, as if she were taller than her five-foot-nothing height. Daron stepped forward, coming between her and danger.

      “Pete, you should go.” Daron said it calmly, glancing back at the woman who didn’t appear to be in the mood to appreciate his interference. He wasn’t surprised. For three years she’d been telling him to go back to his life, that they weren’t his responsibility.

      Pete backed away, his eyes wild as he looked from one to the other of them. “Yeah, I’m leaving. But I’ll be back. I want what belongs to my family.”

      “Go. Away,” Daron repeated.

      He followed the other man to the road and watched him get in his truck and speed off into the night. When he returned to the house, Emma was gone and the front porch light was off. He grinned a little at her bravado and knocked on the door anyway.

      He didn’t mind that she kept up walls with him on the outside. It certainly hadn’t kept him from watching over them. Them meaning Emma, her aging grandfather and the little girl, Jamie. Even with their limited contact he was starting to think of her as a friend.

      A friend who didn’t mind closing the door in his face. He grinned as he lifted his hand to knock a second time.

      * * *

      Emma leaned against the door, needing the firm wood panel to hold her up. Her legs still shook with fear and adrenaline. She’d barely gotten to sleep when she heard a window opening, the creaking sound alerting the dog that slept on the foot of her bed. Fortunately her grandfather and Jamie had slept through the racket.

      Racket? No, not really that drastic. She’d pounced on Pete as he climbed through the window. He’d pushed back, hitting her into the china cabinet, but she’d steadied it and herself, managing to get a good grip on the baseball bat she’d carried from her room.

      Pete wasn’t healthy and it had been easy to back him out of the house and take control. Or at least it had felt like she was in charge. She’d had it handled.

      The last thing she needed was Daron McKay in her home and in her business. But there he’d been, standing in the shadows like some avenging superhero, ready to rescue