crushed, she said, “I let you down and I’m sorry.”
“You think you let me down?” he asked incredulously. Maybe she was the one hallucinating. “I let you down.”
She shook her head. “No, you didn’t. You probably saved my life. I was just too stupid to see it. But I see it now, and I’m begging you to give me another chance.”
She was the one begging? “Gracie, I should be begging you. And I would have, but I didn’t think... I just assumed you would never want to speak to me again.”
“Like the last time,” she said, and he nodded. “This is different. I know that, deep in my soul. You’re my forever. My home.”
He cradled her face in his hands and kissed her softly. “And you’re mine. You always have been.”
She gazed up at him with a smile. “So does that mean you’ll give me a second chance?”
“Yes, of course I will,” he said, pulling her into his arms. And a third and a fourth and a fifth chance. Anything to keep her in his life, because she was his everything. “I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to marry you, and have a family with you. It’s what I’ve always wanted.”
“Me, too,” she said. “And if that’s a proposal my answer is yes.”
He grinned. “Sweetheart, when I formally propose you’ll know it. I’m pulling out all the stops. I want to do this right.”
She deserved the best, and that’s what he would give her. And though he’d thought for sure that he’d ruined it, she was giving him another chance, too. A second chance at the love of a lifetime.
* * * * *
The Texan’s One-Night Standoff
Charlene Sands
One night leads to a pregnancy bombshell! Only from USA TODAY bestselling author Charlene Sands.
Chicago real estate hotshot Brooks Newport is on a quest to find his true father. But tracking him to a small Texas town puts Brooks on a collision course with horse trainer Ruby Lopez. After a no-strings-attached night together, he’s on his way.
When Brooks finally meets the father he never knew, he must come to grips with the past—and the very shocking present. Because Ruby works for the man. And she has a secret of her own—not only is Brooks finding his father, he’s about to become one!
The Texan’s One-Night Standoff is part of the Dynasties: The Newports series.
To my very talented editor, Charles Griemsman,
who is also a wonderful person and someone
I call friend. Thanks, Charles, for all you do!
Brooks Newport swiveled around on the bar stool at the C’mon Inn, his gaze fastening on the raven-haired Latina beauty bending over a pool table, challenging her opponent with a fiercely competitive glint in her eyes. With blue jeans hugging her hips and a cropped red plaid blouse exposing her olive skin, the lady made his mouth go dry. He wasn’t alone. Every Stetson-wearing Texan in the joint seemed to be watching her, too.
His hand fisting around the bottle, Brooks took a sip of beer, gulping down hard. The woman’s moves around the pool table were as smooth and as polished as his new Justin boots.
“Five ball, corner pocket,” she said, her voice sultry with a side of sass, as if she knew she wasn’t going to miss. Then she took her shot. The cue ball met its mark and sure enough, the five ball rolled right into the pocket.
She straightened to full height, her chest expanding to near button-popping proportions. She couldn’t have been more than five-foot-two, but what she had in that small package was enough to make him break out in a sweat. And that was saying something, since he’d come to Texas for one reason, and one reason only.
To meet his biological father for the first time in his life.
He’d spent the better part of his adulthood trying to find the man who’d abandoned him and his twin brother, Graham in Chicago. Sutton Winchester, his bitter older rival and the man Brooks thought might be his biological father turned out not to be his blood kin after all. Thank God. But Sutton had known the truth of his parenthood all along, and the ailing man, plagued by a bout of conscience—or so Brooks figured—had finally given up the information that led to the name and location of his and Graham’s father.
Brooks would have been speaking with his real father at Look Away Ranch in Cool Springs right now if he hadn’t gotten a bad case of nerves. So much was riding on this. The trek to get to this place in time, to solving the mystery surrounding the birth of the Newport twins, as well as his younger brother Carson, would finally come to fruition.
So, yeah, the powerful CEO of the Newport Corporation from Chicago had turned chicken. Those bawking noises played out in his head. He’d never run scared before and yet, as he was breezing through this dusty town, the Welcome sign and Christmas lights outside the doors of the C’mon Inn had called to him. He’d pulled to a stop and entered the lodge, in need of a fortifying drink and a good night’s rest. He had a lot to think about, and meeting Beau Preston in the light of day seemed a better idea.
He kept his gaze trained on the prettiest thing in the joint. The woman. She wielded the pool cue like a weapon and began wiggling her perfectly trim ass in an effort to make a clean shot. He sipped beer to cool his jets, yet he couldn’t tear his gaze away. He had visions of bending over the pool table with her and bringing them both to heaven.
Long strands of her hair hung down to touch her breasts, and as she leaned over even further to line up her shot, those strands caressed green felt. She announced her next shot and bam, the ball banked off the left side and then ricocheted straight into the center pocket.
The whiskered man she was playing against hung his head. “Man, Ruby. You don’t give a guy a chance.”
She chuckled. “That’s the rule I live by, Stan. You know that.”
“But you could miss once in a while. Make it interesting.”
So her name was Ruby. Brooks liked the sound of it, all right. It fit.
He had no business lusting after her. Woman trouble was the last thing he needed. Yet his brain wasn’t doing a good job of convincing his groin to back off.
The game continued until she handed the older guy his vitals on a silver platter. “Sorry, Stan.”
“You’d think after all these years a man could do better against a teeny tiny woman.”
She grinned, showing off a smile that lit the place on fire, then set a sympathetic hand on the man’s shoulder and reached up to kiss his cheek.
The old guy’s face turned beet red. “You know that’s the only reason I endure this torture.
