Joanna Wayne - Cowboy Swagger

Cowboy Swagger

Joanna Wayne

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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JOANNA WAYNEwas born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, and received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from LSU-Shreveport. She moved to New Orleans in 1984, and it was there that she attended her first writing class and joined her first professional writing organization. Her debut novel, Deep in the Bayou , was published in 1994.

Now, dozens of published books later, Joanna has made a name for herself as being on the cutting edge of romantic suspense in both series and single-title novels. She has been on the Waldenbooks bestseller list for romance and has won many industry awards. She is also a popular speaker at writing organizations and local community functions and has taught creative writing at the University of New Orleans Metropolitan College.

Joanna currently resides in a small community forty miles north of Houston, Texas, with her husband. Though she still has many family and emotional ties to Louisiana, she loves living in the Lone Star State. You may write Joanna at PO Box 852, Montgomery, Texas 77356, USA.

To all my readers who love cowboys.

To my grandsons, who have taught me what it means to

totally lose your heart to a child—though they

are growing up fast.

And to my hubby who will spend many hours driving

me around the beautiful Texas Hill Country to research

the setting for the books in the SONS OF

TROY LEDGER.

Murderer’s kid! Murderer’s kid! Murderer’s kid!

The taunts reverberated inside Dylan Ledger’s brain as he approached the Mustang Run Elementary School. Seventeen years after his father’s conviction, distant echoes of the mocking still tied knots in his stomach.

Or maybe it was the significance of the day that brought the old rancor home to roost. His father’s homecoming. The murderer’s return to the scene of the crime, as one radio news announcer had so bluntly put it.

Dylan slowed and stared out the window of his truck. The flagpole was topped with the American colors, and just below that the Lone Star State banner waved in the gentle breeze. Cows grazed the fence line that kept them off the playground.

Kids were filing out of the building to board the yellow school buses that had lined up in front of the building. It was late May, but apparently classes were still in session.

Cars formed another line, mothers waiting to take their children home. Memories flooded his mind. He and his brothers had waited in that line on the fatal day eighteen years ago this September. His mother had never come.

He grimaced and pushed the memories back to the dark crevices of his mind, the way he’d learned to do years ago.

Only now that he was back in the town where his life had been ripped apart, he realized he wasn’t nearly as detached from the past horrors as he’d thought. Even worse, he wasn’t sure why he’d come back or what he really hoped to gain from this.

The traffic light in front of the school turned red. His gaze drifted to a woman who’d just stepped from her vehicle and was waving frantically, probably trying to get the attention of her kid. The woman’s hair was so red it looked like fire in the bright sunlight.

She turned his way for a second. His gaze was riveted on her, not only because she was a knockout. She reminded him of someone, though he had no idea whom.

The light turned green. He lowered the truck’s window as he drove slowly through the town and then turned onto the narrow dirt road that led to the family ranch. The odors of earth, grass and even the occasional whiff of manure were a welcome change from the smells of car exhaust and fish from the open market a few steps from his tiny apartment back in Boston.

Rolling hills stretched in all directions as far as he could see. A grouping of magnificent horses stood in a fenced pasture, mingling with a few young colts. A cluster of persimmon trees gave shade to some longhorns. A dog barked in the distance, and a flock of coal-black crows cawed noisily from their perch atop a weathered gate. In a few miles he’d be home.

Who was he kidding? He had no real home. Not in Texas and certainly not back in Boston where he’d never really fit in.

A tractor bounced and rumbled along the road in front of him. Dylan slowed. The driver of the tractor pulled to the edge of the road and gave a two-fingered wave as Dylan passed him.

A minute or two later, a red Jeep Wrangler bore down on him from behind, passing the tractor and riding the tail of Dylan’s truck for a minute before passing him, as well. The driver of the vehicle appeared to have a cell phone glued to her ear. He couldn’t be sure due to the mass of wild, red curls that tumbled to her shoulders.

Same hair. Same vehicle. It had to be the woman who’d captured his attention at the school, but there was no child in the Jeep. Her car disappeared around the next curve. She was in a damn big hurry to get somewhere.

Another vehicle came up behind him, chased Dylan’s bumper around a curve and then passed him. The van had the name of an Austin TV channel emblazoned on the door. It hit Dylan then that they were rushing to the same place he was heading. The media were once again gathering at the Ledger ranch with teeth bared.

Fury burned in Dylan’s veins as he drove the rest of the way. Did the media never have the decency to just back off?

The metal gate was propped open. The wheels of his truck rattled over the cattle gap, and he kept driving. There was no need to latch the hook; the varmints were already inside.

A sense of gruesome déjà vu attacked him as he drove the quarter of a mile to the house. But he wasn’t a kid any longer. He’d handle whatever came his way.

COLLETTE MCGUIRE GAVE UP on finding a decent parking spot and left her Jeep in a grassy area just north of the house. She grabbed her camera, then pushed through the dozen or so reporters and photographers who were clumped around the front door of the Ledger ranch house.

A lot like vultures, she thought, guilt surfacing that she was one of them.

She shivered and looked around her, always wary, hating the unfamiliar fear that had crawled inside her over the past few weeks.

“There you are. I’ve been looking all over for you.”

She turned to find her friend, Eleanor Baker, maneuvering through the restless reporters and heading her way.

“Thanks for answering my SOS,” Eleanor said.

“Next time could you give me a little more notice? I had already told Alma I’d pick up Georgia from school on my way home and take her shopping. Her eleventh birthday is this weekend.”

“Your niece is already eleven?”

“Yes. Can you believe it?”

“Not really.” Eleanor glanced around. “Where is she?”

“I got to the school in time to have her catch the bus. I postponed the shopping trip.”