Dana Mentink - Cowboy Christmas Guardian

UNDER THE RANCHER’S PROTECTION

Someone is dead set on stopping Shelby Arroyo from doing her job: assessing mineral rights in a mine in gold country. But after rancher Barrett Thorn rescues her from an attack, the handsome widowed cowboy seems to feel responsible for her. That is, until he discovers she’s from the family that he’ll never forgive for his wife’s death. As the threats against Shelby escalate, cowboy honor and an unexpected attraction keep Barrett by her side, even at his own risk. And since Shelby won’t back down, Barrett must protect the brave, loyal woman he has no business falling for...a woman someone wants to kill by Christmas.

“What just happened?” Shelby demanded.

“Dynamite.”

She gave Barrett an incredulous look. “Dynamite? As in TNT?”

He nodded. “Plenty left around here from the mining days.”

“Why would someone light up a stick and toss it at me? It has to be the guy who threatened me.”

“Maybe, unless you’ve angered somebody else.”

She folded her arms and skewered him with such a look of disdain it almost made him smile.

Whatever she had or hadn’t done, it wasn’t his business. Yet once again, he found himself trying to extricate her from a pile of trouble.

“What makes you think it’s not the man who threatened me?” she said.

“Doesn’t seem like a rational thing for him to do.”

“He threatened to kill me recently, if you remember.”

“Words don’t mean much. My father believes him to be an honorable man, deep down.”

She met his eyes, her own glimmering with unreadable emotion. “I admire that kind of familial respect.”

Something was under those words, something deep and painful and raw.

Dear Reader,

What is it about cowboy heroes? There’s a mystique about the hardworking cowboy, the tough, honorable, God-fearing man who isn’t afraid to speak the truth or fight for his family honor. I am thrilled to bring you this new series featuring the Thorn family—four brothers who will face any danger to protect their beloved Gold Bar Ranch and the women whom they will come to love along the way.

In this first installment in the series, Barrett Thorn must come face-to-face with his inability to forgive those who were responsible for the death of his wife. It’s a struggle for a man with a deep faith, who knows what God wants from him. In the course of the novel, he’ll meet a woman who challenges his beliefs and his feelings, as they both seek to solve a mystery and stay alive.

Thank you for coming on this new journey into cowboy country! I hope you will enjoy riding along with me. As always, I am blessed to hear from my readers. You can contact me via my website at www.danamentink.comand there is also a physical address there if you’d like to write. God bless you, my friends, and welcome to Gold Country!

Sincerely,

Dana Mentink

DANA MENTINK is an award-winning author of Christian fiction. Her novel Betrayal in the Badlands won a 2010 RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award, and she was pleased to win the 2013 Carol Award for Lost Legacy. She has authored more than a dozen Love Inspired Suspense novels. Dana loves feedback from her readers. Contact her via her website at danamentink.com.

Cowboy Christmas Guardian

Dana Mentink

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.

—Romans 8:28

This book is dedicated to Phil and Nancy Fay, horse lovers, baseball fans and faithful servants.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

Bible Verse

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

EIGHTEEN

NINETEEN

TWENTY

TWENTY-ONE

TWENTY-TWO

TWENTY-THREE

TWENTY-FOUR

Extract

Copyright

ONE

Barrett Thorn shouted to his younger brother between the clashes of thunder that ripped through the winter darkness. “Gonna go after her. See to the paddock.” Swanny, the runaway pregnant mare, was prone to panicking during lightning storms and, true to form, she’d broken through the paddock and bolted.

A flash of lightning illuminated Jack, sitting astride his mare, shoulders hunched against the storm. Barrett was relieved that it was not Jack’s twin, Owen, out in the treacherous night. Owen was not physically healed yet, in spite of his bravado. The war had damaged him inside and out. It would be his first Christmas back home since his return from Afghanistan.

In his typical quiet way, Jack didn’t answer, pulling his horse into a fluid turn and trotting away through the pouring rain. Their father, Tom, was back at the house where Keegan and Owen were helping him check on the other sixty horses in their care. The Gold Bar Ranch, was the finest setup in the town of Gold Bar and maybe in the entire region, in his humble opinion, but it took all of them to keep it that way. Most of their herd would be fine, Barrett figured, but the more recent arrivals they were boarding for clients over the Christmas holidays might not feel as comfortable in their newer surroundings. Horses could be almost as unpredictable as people. Almost.

From his vantage point on the bluff astride his rock-solid horse, Titan, Barrett had seen only the streak of Swanny’s white flanks moving through the undulating branches of the wind-whipped pines. He held Titan still, listening, rain collecting on his close-cut beard and funneling off his hat.

With a section of fencing failing yet again on the western perimeter of the Gold Bar’s thousand-acre ranch, the horse would have had easy access to the abutting land, a swath of ravine and hills cut through by a river swollen by yet another storm.

“Why couldn’t you stay in the stable like all the other horses?” He was suddenly struck by a memory so strong it hitched up his breath.

“Swanny doesn’t care about all your cowboy orders,” Sabrina used to say. He could picture his wife, whom he’d nicknamed Bree, so clearly in his mind. Her fringe of blond bangs fell over eyes that saw through his macho facade and right into the most tender places in his soul. Bree was the woman God meant to be his partner, his love, his best friend, riding beside him through this life.

Except that she was gone in a moment of carelessness, lost in a crushing tangle of metal.

His stomach tensed with white-hot rage at the person who had taken her away and stripped him of any kind of a future.

Titan’s uneasy shifting pulled him from the memory. He had to get to Swanny soon, before she broke a leg or got tangled up in barbed wire. He urged Titan through the gap in the busted fence and onto Joe Hatcher’s property with only a small flicker of unease.