Lisa Childs - Watching Over Her

“I’m not good at expressing my feelings,” he said apologetically.

“Just tell me...”

“I love you,” he said. “I love your sweetness and your openness. I love how you worry and care about everyone and everything.”

“You love me?”

He nodded. “I know I’m not your first choice and that you’d promised to marry another man. But Andy’s gone. And I’m here. And I will love you as much as he would have—if not more. I will take care of you and Drew. I will treat your son just like he’s mine, too, if you’ll let me.”

The tears overflowed her eyes and spilled down her cheeks. “I don’t deserve you,” she said. “And I didn’t deserve Andy. Tammy was right about that. I didn’t love him like I should have. I loved him because he was my best friend. I didn’t love him like a woman should love the man she wants to marry. And I didn’t want to marry him. But I didn’t know how to say no to his proposal without hurting him.”

And with her big, loving heart, she would have given up her own happiness to ensure someone else’s. He didn’t want her doing that for him.

“You won’t hurt me if you tell me no,” he lied. It would hurt him. But he’d heard what she’d said when she’d thought him unconscious. He didn’t think she would tell him no. But he wanted her to say yes for the right reasons. “You’ll hurt me if you say yes and don’t really love me.”

“I love you,” she said. “I love you like a woman loves a man. I love you with passion. I love you like a soul mate, not just as a friend.”

The tightness in his chest eased, and he grinned. “I love how much you talk,” he said. “I really do...especially when you’re telling me how much you love me.” But then he realized what she had yet to say. “But you haven’t answered my question.”

“Did you ask me something?” she asked with a coy flutter of her lashes.

“I will get out of this bed,” he said, but they both knew it was an empty threat at the moment.

“I don’t need the bended knee or the ring,” she said. “I just need the question.”

So he asked, “Will you marry me, Maggie Jenkins? Will you take me as your husband and as Drew’s father?”

“Yes, Special Agent Blaine Campbell,” she replied. “I will marry you.”

He used their joined hands to tug her closer, to pull her down for the kiss to seal their promise.

Someone cleared his throat above the sound of a baby crying. “Excuse me,” Truman said. “But someone was looking for his mama...” The burly agent carried the tiny fussing baby over to Maggie.

She laid the little boy on Blaine’s chest, and the baby’s cries stopped. He stared up at Blaine as if he recognized him. “Here’s your daddy,” she said.

Blaine had a perfect record—every case solved with the FBI, every criminal caught—but this—his family—meant far more to him. This woman and their child was what made his life special now and for always.

* * * * *

Read on for an extract from THE DEPUTY’S REDEMPTION by Delores Fossen.

Chapter One

Deputy Colt McKinnon caught the blur of motion from the corner of his eye.

He hit the brakes, not hard, because there was likely some ice on the road, and he pulled his truck to a stop on the gravel shoulder.

There.

He saw it again.

Someone wearing light-colored clothes was darting in and out of the trees. Since it was below freezing and nearly ten at night, it wasn’t a good time for someone to be jogging.

Colt took a flashlight from the glove compartment and got out, sliding his hand over the gun in his belt holster, and he tried to pick through the darkness to see what was going on. Thankfully, there was a full moon, and he got another glimpse of the person.

A woman.

She was running and not just an ordinary run, either. She was in a full sprint as if her life depended on it.

Colt hurried down the embankment toward her to see if anything or anybody was chasing her. There were coyotes in the woods, but he’d never heard of a pack going after a human. However, before he could see much of anything else, the woman ducked behind a tree.

“I have a gun!” she shouted.

Ah, hell.

He instantly recognized the voice. Elise Nichols. A voice he darn sure didn’t want to hear at all, much less her yelling about having a gun.

Her house was a good five miles from here, definitely not close by enough for her to be on foot. So what in the Sam Hill was she doing running in the woods in the middle of the night?

“It’s me—Colt,” he said, just in case she thought he was a stranger.

“I know exactly who you are.” Her voice was loud but very shaky. “And I have a gun.”

“So do I,” he snarled, and Colt drew it to prove his point.

Colt hadn’t exactly expected a warm, friendly greeting from Elise, but he hadn’t thought she was to the point of threatening to do him bodily harm.

“What the heck are you running from?” he asked.

She didn’t jump to answer. The only sounds were the February wind rattling through the bare tree branches and his heartbeat pumping like pistons in his ears.

“I’m running from you,” she finally answered.

Colt jerked back his shoulders. That sure wasn’t the answer he’d been expecting. Nor did it make a lick of sense.

“I’m a deputy sheriff of Sweetwater Springs,” he reminded Elise just in case she was drunk or had gone off the deep end and couldn’t remember what was common knowledge around these parts.

And he reminded her also because her comment riled him.

“People generally don’t feel the need to run from me,” he added with a syrupy sweetness that she would know wasn’t the least bit genuine.

“They’d run if you were trying to kill them.”

He tried not to let his mouth drop open, but it was close. “And you think that’s what I’m trying to do to you?”

“I know you are. You ran me off the road about fifteen minutes ago.”

He glanced around, didn’t see another vehicle. But there was a road not too far away, and it would have been the one Elise would likely take to get to and from her place located just outside town. It was possible someone had sideswiped her and maybe she’d hit her head during the collision. That was the only explanation he could think of for a fish story like that one.

“Come out so I can see you,” Colt told her, “and I’ll drive you to the hospital.”

She didn’t answer.

Didn’t move, either.

Fed up with Elise herself, her story, the butt-freezing night and this entire crazy situation, Colt huffed. “Get out here!” he ordered.

“Right. So you can kill me,” she accused. “Then I can’t testify at your mother’s trial.”

Good grief. Colt figured that subject would come up sooner or later. But he hadn’t expected it to come up like this, with Elise accusing him of trying to kill her. His mother, Jewell, was the one about to stand trial for murdering her lover twenty-three years ago.

And Elise would be the key witness for the defense.

That alone was plenty bad enough because Colt figured his mom had indeed killed the guy. Anything that Elise would say in Jewell’s defense could be a lie at best, and at worst it could tear his family to pieces.

Because Elise was expected to testify that not Jewell but rather Colt’s father, Roy, had committed the murder.

No way would Colt or his brothers let that happen.

His father wasn’t going to pay for Jewell’s sins.

But there was also no way Colt would murder a witness to stop that testimony from happening. The badge he wore wasn’t for decoration. He believed in the law. Believed that his mother, and Elise, would get what was coming to them.

Without his help.