Nicole Helm - Wyoming Cowboy Ranger

“You look angry. Must be thinking about me.”

Her head whipped up, the jolt of surprise having nothing on the white-hot flash of fury. “I never think about you, Tyler.” She definitely wasn’t about to admit she had been.

His cocksure grin faded somewhat. He hated his full first name with a passion she’d certainly never understood, but it was one of the few tools in her arsenal she had to get under his unflappable demeanor.

He wasn’t the only person who made her want to lash out, but considering what he’d done to her, she didn’t make an effort to curb that impulse like she did with everyone else.

She slowly rose from where she’d been crouched, dusting her hands off by slapping them together. “Don’t you have anything better to do than stalk me?” she asked haughtily, sailing past him in the narrow aisle with as much grace as she could muster.

“Don’t flatter yourself, babe.”

Babe. Oh, she’d like to knock his teeth out. Instead she scooted behind the checkout counter and smiled sweetly at him. “Then might I kindly suggest you make your purchases.”

“You really think I’d be talking to you if I didn’t have to be? I’ve got ample time to corner you if I wanted to at a family gathering with all the recent Carson-Delaney insanity going around.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. He’d always been tall, rangy, dangerous. Age only enhanced all of those things. It was hardly fair he looked even better now than he had then. Certainly unfair he was talking to her as if she’d been the one to disappear in the middle of the night a decade ago.

“So what is it you want?” she demanded, but the fact he had a point had fear sneaking past her Ty-defenses. “There’s not more trouble, is there?” Bent had been a beacon for it lately.

Laurel and Dylan and even Vanessa dang Carson might be going around town yapping they didn’t believe in curses or love solved curses or whatever , but trouble after trouble didn’t lie. Jen was convinced there had to be something to the old curse that said a Carson and Delaney falling in love only spelled trouble.

“No trouble,” Ty said casually. “Just a concern. We’ll call it a gut feeling.”

Develop those off army rangering, did you? She bit her tongue so the words wouldn’t escape and reveal how many scraps of information she’d collected about him over the years.

“How can I help?” Mr. Army Ranger should take care of his gut feelings himself, shouldn’t he?

“I just need you to give me a heads-up if you get any new people in the store. You can even send the info through Hilly or Addie, if you’d rather.”

Jen raised her chin. It’d be a cold day in hell before she gave this heartless, careless jerk any clue she still had feelings for him. “I don’t need to go through anyone, but surely you don’t need to know every single stranger I get in here.”

“And just how many strangers do you typically get in here?” Ty asked drily.

“Enough.”

He didn’t respond right away, though she could tell by the tiniest firming of his mouth that he was irritated with her. It nearly made her smile. Ty was not an easy man to irritate—at least not visibly.

“This isn’t about us,” he said in low, heavy tones.

Any twitch of a smile died. Us. They did not acknowledge us , and hadn’t since his return. There’d been no mention that they’d ever sworn their love for each other. They’d been stupid teenagers, yes, but she’d so believed those words.

“We’ve had enough trouble lately,” Ty said, and she hated that she could see the stiffness in his posture. Anyone else wouldn’t have noticed the change, but she knew him too well even all these years later to miss that slight tightening in the way he held himself. “If there’s going to be more, I want to head it off at the pass. You run the most visited place in Bent. All I’m asking is for you to—”

“Yes, I understand what you’re asking,” she replied primly. “Consider it done. Now, feel free to leave.” Because she hated him here. Hated breathing the same air as him. Hated looking into those blue eyes she knew too well, because his build could change, the skin around his eyes could crinkle with the years, but the sharp blue of tropical ocean would always be the exact same.

And it would always hurt, no matter how much she tried to exorcise that pain.

He rapped his knuckles against her counter lightly, his lips curved into something like a wry smile. “See you around, Jen.”

Not if I can help it.

* * *

TY COULDN’T EXPLAIN the feeling that needled along his spine. It had nothing to do with the heavy weight that settled in his stomach. The needling was his gut feeling, honed as an army ranger, that told him the strange, threatening letters he’d been receiving weren’t a prank or a joke.

The hard ball of weight was all Jen. Regrets. Guilt. Things he’d never, ever expected to feel, but adulthood had changed him. The army and army rangers had changed him. All the regrets he swore to himself at eighteen to never, ever entertain swamped him every time he saw her.

He tried not to see her, but his family was making it even harder than this small town.

All that was emotional crap he could at least pretend to ignore or will away. Which was exactly what he could not do with the latest letter that had been mixed in with the other mail to Rightful Claim, the bar his cousin owned and where Ty worked.

Vague. Ominous. Unsigned. And addressed to him. He had his share of enemies in Bent. Being a Carson in this town lent itself toward Delaney enemies everywhere he went. But though he’d love to pin it on a Delaney or a crony of theirs, it wasn’t.

This was something outside, which meant it likely connected to his time in the army. Yeah, he’d made a few enemies there, too. He wasn’t a guy who went looking for trouble. In fact, he could get along with just about anyone.

Until he couldn’t.

He blew out a breath as he crossed Main. Away from the prim and tidy Delaney side of the street, to the right side. The rough-and-tumble Carson side with Rightful Claim at the end—with its bright neon signs and assurance that nothing in this town would ever be truly civilized like the Delaneys over there wanted.

Except the lines weren’t so clear anymore, were they?

Dylan Delaney was standing in the garage opening to Carson Cars & Bikes. Vanessa and her swell of a baby bump stood next to him, grinning happily up at the man she used to hate.

What was wrong with his cousins? He could give a pass to his brother. Noah’s wife was barely a Delaney. Oh, somewhere along the line, but Addie hadn’t grown up here. Dylan and Laurel? Born and bred rule-abiding proper Delaney citizens, and somehow Vanessa and Grady were head over heels in dumb.

Ty should know, shouldn’t he? He’d been there first. He’d just had the good sense to get the hell out of that mess while he could.

But that only conjured images of Jen, who hadn’t had the decency to change in his near decade away. Once upon a time he’d been stupid enough to count the freckles on her nose and commit that number to memory.

It wasn’t the first time he wished he could medically remove the part of his brain still so in tune to that long past time, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.

He didn’t nod or greet Dylan as he passed and felt only moderately guilty for being rude. Until Vanessa’s voice cut through the air.

“Hey, jerkoff.”

He heaved out a sigh and slowly turned to face her. Her baby bump was so incongruous to the sharp rest of her. “Yes, Mrs. Delaney,” he replied.

She didn’t even flinch, just slid her arm around Dylan’s waist. As though a Carson and a Delaney—opposites in every possible way—could be the kind of lifetime partners real marriages were made out of.