Carol Arens - Rebel Outlaw

LOOKING FOR PEACE, FINDING…TROUBLE

Colt Wesson Travers is headed for a life of tranquility in Texas. Here, he’ll finally escape the obligations demanded by his notorious outlaw family.

But when he meets his stubborn lodger, Holly Jane Munroe, his illusions of peace are shattered. Colt is thrown right into the middle of two feuding families intent on winning Holly Jane’s hand…and her grandfather’s land! He quickly realizes that life with delicious Holly Jane is going to be anything but quiet….

For the life of her, she could not look away from the sparkling liquid sluicing over his naked back.

He resembled Poseidon rising from the sea, but a thousand times more appealing in the flesh than on the printed page.

The wind came up all at once. Colt’s skin pebbled with the chill as he stepped out of the pool. She squeezed her eyes shut and buried her face in her arms.

She’d had no idea that she had it in her to be so rude.

Drops of water pattered on her hiding place. She heard one smack a leaf over her head…she felt one hit her scalp.

“Like to join me?” Colt’s voice crooned.

She opened her eyes to see ten toes wriggling in the dirt in front of the bush.

She looked up, inch by inch. A respectable woman would have fled from the scene when she first saw him, not continued to ogle him.

And now she’d been caught.

AUTHOR NOTE

I would like to tell you how much it means to me that you, in your busy life, have chosen to set aside a bit of time to escape into the world of Holly Jane and her protector Colt Wesson.

In this book we travel back in time to a place called Friendship Springs—but, reader beware: friendship has fallen by the wayside in this town.

This tale deals with a pair of feuding families, lovers dodging the crossfire, and the young people of both families who defy their elders in an attempt to bring peace to a town that has been long torn apart by hatred.

Thank you for coming with me on Holly Jane’s and Colt Wesson’s pursuit of love and a peaceful place to live.

I hope their story leaves you smiling.

Best wishes and happy reading!

Rebel Outlaw

Carol Arens

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

To my youngest child, Aileen Mary, because when I thought life could not get any sweeter the doctor placed you in my arms.

While in the third grade CAROL ARENS had a teacher who noted that she ought to spend less time daydreaming and looking out of the window and more time on her sums. Today, Carol spends as little time on sums as possible. Daydreaming plots and characters is still far more interesting to her.

As a young girl she read books by the dozen. She dreamed that one day she would write a book of her own. A few years later Carol set her sights on a new dream. She wanted to be the mother of four children. She was blessed with a son, then three daughters. While raising them she never forgot her goal of becoming a writer. When her last child went to high school she purchased a big old clunky word processor and began to type out a story.

She joined Romance Writers of America, where she metgenerous authors who taught her the craft of writing a romance novel. With the knowledge she gained she sold her first book and saw her life-long dream come true.

Today, Carol lives with her real-life hero husband, Rick, in Southern California, where she was born and raised. She feels blessed to be doing what she loves, with all her children and a growing number of perfect and delightful grandchildren living only a few miles from her front door.

When she is not writing, reading or playing with her grandchildren, Carol loves making trips to the local nursery. She delights in scanning the rows of flowers, envisaging which pretty plants will best brighten her garden.

She enjoys hearing from readers, and invites you to contact her at carolsarens@yahoo.com

Previous novels by the same author:

RENEGADE MOST WANTED

REBEL WITH A CAUSE

A CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

(part of Christmas Cowboy Kisses anthology) REBEL WITH A HEART

Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

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

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

“You’re an insult to the Travers name, Colt Wesson.” Colt watched his cousin’s hand flex then reach for the gun in his well-worn holster. “A low-down burr in the crotch of your pappy’s pants.”

He figured Cyrus wouldn’t actually shoot him any more than Colt would draw his knife from the sheath slung across his back and slice his cousin’s tongue in half.

Still, the threat deserved a response, so he reached over his shoulder and fingered the hilt of the long Arkansas Toothpick.

The last hot breath of summer settled upon the ranch. Dust covered everything from the rotting boards of the front porch to a saddle dangling over the corral fence. Even the flies spinning about manure piles seemed coated with it.

In the twelve years since he’d walked away from his boyhood home, nothing had changed. Colt glanced about the run-down buildings that made up the Broken Brand. Today, just as they had throughout his childhood, derelict-looking relatives lounged on the bunkhouse porch rolling and smoking cigarettes. They yawned, stretched and ignored the chores that would make the ranch a fit place to live.

“Pappy Travers ain’t even moldering yet and you’re lighting out again.” Cyrus took a long step forward and glared up into Colt’s face. “T’ain’t right for you to cast aside family obligation.”

He hadn’t cast aside family obligation. If he had, he’d have brought the law with him to oust out this gang of thieves. Seeing his pappy properly buried was the only thing that had brought him home...that and the old ladies.

“You take the job of head outlaw,” Colt told his cousin, returning the glare. “I don’t want it.”

Great-aunt Tillie was sitting in the buckboard only a few feet from where the two cousins faced off. “Colt never was the outlaw you are,” she called now. “It’s you your Uncle Travers would pick to lead the family.”

“Poor little Colt was such a good boy, not a bit like his daddy,” his grandmother’s voice twittered, birdlike, from her perch beside Aunt Tillie on the wagon bench.

“All due respect, Old Aunties,” Cyrus said to them. “Colt Wesson’s got a blood obligation to lead us in crime. It’s been so since Grandpappy Travers’s day.”

Colt Wesson had cut his baby teeth on the bitter taste of blood obligation. He’d have accepted that obligation if it hadn’t involved robbing innocent folks of what they had worked hard to earn.

“My only obligation is to take Aunt Tillie and my grandmother away from here.”

Hot wind blew a hank of hair into his eyes. He turned, then lifted his foot to step onto the buckboard.