Nikki Logan - Slow Dance with the Sheriff

THE LARKVILLE LEGACY

A secret letter…two families changed for ever

Welcome to the small town of Larkville, Texas, where the Calhoun family has been ranching for generations.

Meanwhile, in New York, the Patterson family rules America’s highest echelons of society.

Both families are totally unprepared for the news that they are linked by a shocking secret.

For hidden on the Calhoun ranch is a letter that’s been lying unopened and unread—until now!

Meet the two families in all eight books of this brand-new series:

THE COWBOY COMES HOME

by Patricia Thayer

SLOW DANCE WITH THE SHERIFF

by Nikki Logan

TAMING THE BROODING CATTLEMAN

by Marion Lennox

THE RANCHER’S UNEXPECTED FAMILY

by Myrna Mackenzie

HIS LARKVILLE CINDERELLA

by Melissa McClone

THE SECRET THAT CHANGED EVERYTHING

by Lucy Gordon

THE SOLDIER’S SWEETHEART

by Soraya Lane

THE BILLIONAIRE’S BABY SOS

by Susan Meier

My Dear Fabulous Reader,

This story challenged my ideas of what makes family, and made me look closely at my own life. It’s a hard thing not quite belonging. Being the half- or step-sibling. You’re one foot in and one foot out all the time. Never quite fitting . And whether or not you acknowledge it, and whether or not those around you mean it, there are always subtle ways that’s reinforced.

So imagine what it would do to you if it was your primary family you felt you didn’t belong in. And never understood quite why. For thirty years.

Meet Ellie Patterson. Days before this story begins, dancer Ellie discovers that the man she thought was her father is not, and that she has a whole second family in small-town Texas. Despite the fact she’s never left New York, she jumps in a rental car and heads south to find the family she never knew she had. She’s more than ready to leave money and privilege behind in exchange for people who she might fit with.

Except then she meets Jed…a man who’s learned to live with his own demons. And for the first time family isn’t the biggest thing on her mind.

This was a hard story to write, but the more I got to know Ellie and Jed (and Deputy!) the more I grew to love and understand them. When ‘the end’ came it was quite hard to let them go.

I hope you enjoy meeting them as much as I did. Enjoy!

Nikki

NIKKI LOGANlives next to a string of protected wetlands in Western Australia, with her long-suffering partner and a menagerie of furred, feathered and scaly mates. She studied film and theatre at university, and worked for years in advertising and film distribution before finally settling down in the wildlife industry. Her romance with nature goes way back, and she considers her life charmed, given she works with wildlife by day and writes fiction by night—the perfect way to combine her two loves. Nikki believes that the passion and risk of falling in love are perfectly mirrored in the danger and beauty of wild places. Every romance she writes contains an element of nature, and if readers catch a waft of rich earth or the spray of wild ocean between the pages she knows her job is done.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Lesley—because mothers are always mothers, birth or otherwise.

And for Cil—because so are sisters.

SHERIFF JED JACKSON eased down on the brake and slid one arm across to stop his deputy sliding off the front seat.

‘Well,’ he muttered to the grizzly bear of a dog who cocked an ear in response, ‘there’s something you don’t see every day.’

A sea of loose steer spilled across the long, empty road out to the Double Bar C, their number swollen fence-to-fence to seal off the single lane accessway, all standing staring at one another, waiting for someone else to take the lead. That wasn’t the unusual part; loose cattle were common in these parts.

He squinted out his windscreen. ‘What do you reckon she’s doing?’

Adrift right in the middle of the massing herd, standing out white in a sea of brown hide, was a luxury sedan, and on its roof—standing out blue in a sea of white lacquer—was a lone female.

Jed’s mouth twitched. Ten-fifty-fours weren’t usually this entertaining, or this sizeable. This road didn’t see much traffic, especially not with the Calhouns away, but a herd of cattle really couldn’t spend the night here. His eyes lifted again to the damsel in distress, still standing high and dry with her back to him, waving her hands shouting uselessly at the cattle.

And clearly she couldn’t.

He radioed dispatch and asked them to advise the Calhoun ranch of a fence breach, then he eased his foot off the brake and edged closer to the comical scene. The steer that weren’t staring at one another looked up at the woman expectantly.

He pulled on the handbrake. ‘Stay.’

Deputy looked disappointed but slouched back into the passenger seat, his enormous tongue lolling. Jed slid his hat on and slipped out the SUV’s door, leaving it gaping. The steer didn’t even blink at his arrival they were so fixated on the woman perched high above them.

Not entirely without reason.

That was a mighty fine pair of legs tucked into tight denim and spread into a sturdy A-shape. Not baggy denim, not the loose, hanging-low-enough-to-trip-on, did-someone-outlaw-belts, de-feminising denim.

Fitted, faded, snug. As God intended jeans to be.

Down at ground level, the length of her legs and the peach of a rear topping them wouldn’t have been all that gratuitous but, from his steer-eye view, her short blouse didn’t do much to offset, either.

The moaning of the cattle had done a good job disguising his arrival but it was time to come clean. He pushed his hat back with a finger to the rim and raised his voice.

‘Ma’am, you realise it’s a state offence to hold a public assembly without a permit?’

She spun so fast she almost went over, but she steadied herself on bare feet, and then lifted her chin with grace.

Whoa. She was…

His synapses forgot how they worked as he stared and he had to will them to resume sending the signals his body needed to keep breathing. He’d never been so grateful for his county-issue sunglasses in his life; without them she’d see his eyes as round and glazed as the hypnotised steer.

‘I hope there’s a siege happening somewhere!’ she called, sliding her hands up onto her middle. Her righteousness didn’t make her any less attractive. Those little clenched fists only accentuated the oblique angle where her waist became her hips. Her continuing complaint drew his eyes back up to the perfectly even teeth she flashed as she growled at him with her non-Texan vowels.

‘Because I’ve been on this rooftop for two hours. The cows have nearly trebled since I called for help.’