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“Any sign of the men or the hostages?”
“None.” Josh put down his hands but didn’t move off the bed. He stayed right there looming over her.
And he was naked.
Jaycee did a double take.
Okay, not naked. Just shirtless.
She had a good view of not just those toned abs and pecs but also the scar. It was several inches long and gashed across his otherwise perfect body. Even though it was well healed, she figured the ashy white line would never go away.
The memory of it certainly wouldn’t.
Josh
Delores Fossen
Imagine a family tree that includes Texas cowboys, Choctaw and Cherokee Indians, a Louisiana pirate and a Scottish rebel who battled side by side with William Wallace. With ancestors like that, it’s easy to understand why USA TODAY bestselling author and former air force captain DELORES FOSSEN feels as if she were genetically predisposed to writing romances. Along the way to fulfilling her DNA destiny, Delores married an air force top gun who just happens to be of Viking descent. With all those romantic bases covered, she doesn’t have to look too far for inspiration.
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Contents
Chapter One
This was exactly the kind of homecoming that Deputy Josh Ryland had wanted to avoid.
Just the sight of the guy with the gun caused his head to start pounding, and his heartbeat crashed in his ears. The flashbacks came.
Man, did they.
Flashbacks of another surveillance, another gunman. And the three .38 jacketed slugs that the gunman had fired into Josh’s chest. The wounds had healed, for the most part anyway, but still the flashbacks came.
“You okay?” his cousin whispered.
His cousin was Grayson Ryland, sheriff of Silver Creek, Josh’s hometown where he’d been born and had spent his childhood. Not a town where Josh had expected to see a man carrying an assault rifle. It wasn’t exactly a standard weapon for a Texas cattle rancher.
“I’m fine,” Josh lied. And he tried to level his breathing. Tried also to ignore the healing gunshot wounds on his chest that had started to throb like a bad toothache.
“I can call one of the other deputies to come out here,” Grayson offered.
There was no shortage of them. Like Grayson, four of the deputies were Josh’s cousins, too. And if Grayson had thought for one second that he would encounter a rifle-toting man on what should have been a routine call, then he would have almost certainly brought one of the others and not Josh.
“You made me a deputy,” Josh reminded him. “This is part of the job.”
That sounded good. Like something a small-town deputy should say to his boss.
It was pretty much a lie, though.
The truth was, Josh had come back home after taking
