Nicole Helm - Wyoming Christmas Ransom

A killer has been hiding for two years.

This Christmas, he’s ready to finish what he started.

He didn’t need her to care, so why did Wyoming loner Will Cooper’s world implode when Gracie Delaney quit helping him solve his estranged wife’s murder? Despite her ties to a rival family, the beautiful coroner had been the stubborn recluse’s one link to humanity—and his last chance to clear the cloud hanging over him. But when Will and Gracie become the killer’s next target, reviving their platonic partnership is the only option. If only Gracie’s lips weren’t so tempting...

Carsons & Delaneys

NICOLE HELMgrew up with her nose in a book and the dream of one day becoming a writer. Luckily, after a few failed career choices, she gets to follow that dream—writing down-to-earth contemporary romance and romantic suspense. From farmers to cowboys, Midwest to the West, Nicole writes stories about people finding themselves and finding love in the process. She lives in Missouri with her husband and two sons and dreams of someday owning a barn.

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Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk

Wyoming Christmas Ransom

Nicole Helm

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-07959-4

WYOMING CHRISTMAS RANSOM

© 2018 Nicole Helm

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

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www.millsandboon.co.uk

Version: 2020-03-02

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To my husband, who also almost always answers my

questions with “That wouldn’t happen,” but indulges me

when I say “But could it happen?”

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

About the Author

Booklist

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

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 Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Extract

About the Publisher

Chapter One

Gracie Delaney didn’t care for the nickname “Angel of Death,” but in Bent, Wyoming, it was something of the truth. If she came to a person’s door unannounced, they knew what was coming.

The fact that she was young, maybe a little girl-next-door looking, no longer fooled people. As the coroner for Bent County, Gracie’s work was death.

It wasn’t as bad as some people made it out to be. Considering her parents had died in a car crash when she’d been six, and she was the lone survivor of said crash, she’d been intimately acquainted with death her whole life.

Funny, life was a lot harder than death. Death was easy, and it was final. The cause might occasionally be a mystery, but it was a mystery she always solved.

Gracie blew out a breath as she parked her car in Will Cooper’s yard. Life, meanwhile, had a hundred mysteries she couldn’t figure out. Like why two years after she’d informed Will Cooper of his wife’s death, she still came to check in on him routinely.

She’d informed a lot of people of their loved ones’ deaths over the course of two years, and while some reactions stuck with her, maybe a few even haunted her, only Will’s reaction had ever caused her to act outside a professional capacity.

She supposed it was the fact he couldn’t accept his wife had simply skidded off the road and crashed into a tree. He insisted the detectives had missed or overlooked things. He’d become obsessed with proving foul play.

Gracie had felt sorry for him and his inability to accept the truth. So, she’d let him have access to records she shouldn’t have let him have access to. She’d shown him, over and over again, how the only thing that had killed his wife was an icy road and a tree.

Still he pushed into this theory that whoever his wife had been having an affair with had been the one to kill her.

Gracie got out of the truck and stared at the ramshackle cabin Will currently lived in. He still owned the pretty little two-story he and his wife had shared in Bent proper, but rented it out to a family with kids. He claimed it was because up here he could do his metalwork without any neighbor complaint, but Gracie figured it was something more isolating than all that.

He wasn’t a Bent native. He’d moved here after marrying Paula Carson and though he’d lived in town and been building a name for himself with his metalwork, Paula’s death had changed him. He’d isolated himself and since he had no family in Bent, no natives had been too worried about a stranger’s hermit behavior.

Except Gracie. For all intents and purposes, she was his only link to the outside world.

God, she wished she could help him.

“You’re going to,” she said to herself. “Right here. Right now.” She’d been playing into his obsession for too long, and it had to stop. No more looks at old reports. No more trips to that road to study curves and angles. She’d still be his friend, but that was it. Like a drug dealer refusing to continue to deal an addict their drug of choice.