B.J. Daniels - Stampeded

“It was just a nightmare,” she whispered to herself as she stepped to the window hoping for a breath of air … That’s when she saw him.

He wore nothing but jeans and boots, a towel draped over one shoulder as he sauntered toward the pond.

He disappeared behind the trees. A moment later she heard a splash.

The sound pulled her—just as the thought of the cowboy in the cool water of the pond.

She knew what could happen if she continued down to the pond. Just the thought sent a shiver through her. She took a step, then another. As she walked through the deep shadows of the trees, she felt excitement stir within her—and desire. She began to run.

At the edge of the trees, she stopped. She could see him swimming through the dark water, droplets washing over his brown skin, his back and shoulders shimmering in the moonlight.

She’d never seen a more beautiful man.

USA TODAY bestselling author BJ DANIELSwrote her first book after a career as an award-winning newspaper journalist and author of thirty-seven published short stories. That first book, Odd Man Out , received a four-and-a-half-star review from RT Book Reviews and went on to be nominated for Best Intrigue for that year. Since then she has won numerous awards, including a career achievement award for romantic suspense and many nominations and awards for best book.

Daniels lives in Montana with her husband, Parker, and two springer spaniels, Spot and Jem. When she isn’t writing, she snowboards, camps, boats and plays tennis. Daniels is a member of Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, International Thriller Writers, Kiss of Death and Romance Writers of America.

To contact her, write to BJ Daniels, PO Box 1173, Malta, MT 59538, USA, or e-mail her at bjdaniels@mtintouch.net. Check out her website at www.bjdaniels.com.

Stampeded

BJ Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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This book is dedicated to Deb Lorene Mallory, a fan and fellow writer who has become a good friend. Thanks again for being such a wonderful guide that weekend in Billings. I had a great time and it was a treat to get to know you better.

“Alexa? Alexa, wake up.”

The five-year-old came awake with a start to find her mother beside her bed. Her heart thumped in her tiny chest.

“What is it, Mommy?” she asked, her voice breaking. Just the sight of her mother beside her bed in the middle of the night filled her with panic. She struggled to come out of her sleep. Had she been screaming in her sleep with another nightmare?

Sometimes when she had nightmares, she would wake up to find her mother beside her bed, standing motionless, staring down at her. Like now, her mother would have that strange, eerie look in her eyes, the one she got when she was working with her clients.

“Honey, I need you to sit up and do something for me.”

Alexa loved her beautiful mother with her long, curly black hair, her wide violet eyes so like her own and the face of an angel. But she couldn’t help the shiver that ran through her. Sometimes her mother scared her.

She rubbed sleep from her eyes and pushed herself up, blinking at the shaft of golden light that spilled across the floor from the hallway. Her mother always left the hall light on and the door cracked open a few inches because of Alexa’s nightmares. The light from the hallway illuminated the empty, dark walls of her cavelike room.

“What were you thinking, Tallulah?” Alexa’s father had demanded. “She’s a child, a little girl , she should have a room painted pink with stuffed animals on the bed and clouds painted on the ceiling—not horrible black walls.”

“The black walls will keep away the nightmares,” her mother had argued.

But they hadn’t. And her father had finally given up arguing and left before Alexa’s baby brother had come along, and he’d never come back.

“It wasn’t his spiritual path to be with us,” her mother had told her when Alexa cried for her daddy. She missed the way he would hold her when she was frightened, the way he would smooth her long, wild dark hair with his big hand and the way he would rock her with soothing words until she fell back to sleep.

He used to call what Tallulah did for a living total nonsense. “Don’t let it scare you, Alexa. It’s all just mumbo jumbo, stuff your mother makes up for the fools who are silly enough to pay her.”

“Alexa?” There was impatience in her mother’s tone now.

She loved her mother and would do anything for her. The last thing she wanted was to disappoint her.

But she had seen how happy it made her mother when everyone commented on how much Alexa looked like her. Tallulah Cross wanted her daughter to be just like her in every way, and that was what frightened her more than the nightmares.

“Honey, I need you to look down at the end of your bed. What do you see?”

Her tiny stomach turned. She sensed how important this was to her mother. But Alexa didn’t want to look. She wanted to close her eyes tight and make her mother and whatever might be at the end of the bed go away.

But she always did what her mommy asked her. She was her mommy’s good girl, her precious girl.

Alexa sat all the way up and took a breath, wrinkling her nose. The air smelled funny and she felt the way she did when she rubbed a balloon on her hair—her skin tingly, the space around her filled with static. Her body began to tremble under the covers as she slowly turned to look toward the end of her bed.

Tallulah Cross made her living in a small room at the front of their house. She told fortunes to the tourists who came through town by looking into the future and talking to those who’d gone to the other side. Dead people.

Alexa had overheard her mother telling her friends that her greatest hope in life was that, along with her beauty, she had passed her “gift” on to her daughter. For a long time, Alexa hadn’t known what gift she was talking about.

Tonight, she knew. Just as she understood that this was a test and that if she wanted to be her mommy’s “precious little girl,” she must not disappoint her.

“What do you see, sweetie?” her mother asked, hope and something close to desperation in her voice.

Alexa tried not to flinch as she looked at the man standing at the end of her bed. He was tall. He stood funny, as if one leg was shorter than the other. But it was his face she would never forget, awake or asleep. Half of it was gone.

“You see the man, don’t you, sweetie?”

A sob caught in her throat. “No, Mommy.” It was the first lie she’d ever told and she instinctively knew it would come at a very high cost. But she didn’t want to be just like her mother, even though it would mean she was no longer her mommy’s special girl.

Alexa couldn’t bear to see her mother’s disappointment. Her heart ached as she closed her eyes, lay back down and pretended to go to sleep. It wasn’t until she heard her mother leave the room that she opened them again and looked toward the end of her bed, knowing the man was still there. Nor had he been fooled.