Jodi Thomas - Rustler's Moon

On a dirt road marked by haunting secrets, three strangers caught at life’s crossroads must decide what to sacrifice to protect their own agendas…and what they’re each willing to risk for love.

If there’s any place that can convince Angela Harold to stop running, it’s Ransom Canyon. And if there’s any man who can reveal desires more deeply hidden than her every fear, it’s Wilkes Wagner. Beneath the rancher’s honorable exterior is something that just might keep her safe...or unwittingly put her in danger’s path.

With his dreams of leaving this small Texas town swallowed up by hard, dusty reality, all Wilkes has to show for his life is the Devil’s Fork Ranch. Though not one to let false hope seduce him, he can’t deny the quiet and cautious beauty who slips into his world and changes everything.

Lauren Brigman finally has freedom at her fingertips. All she needs is Lucas Reyes’s attention—a look, a touch, some sign that she’s more to him than a girl he rescued one dangerous night. But now it’s her turn to rescue someone, and the life-altering decision may cost her more than a chance with Lucas.

Praise for Jodi Thomas

“Jodi Thomas is a masterful storyteller. She grabs your attention on the first page, captures your heart, and then makes you sad when it’s time to bid her wonderful characters farewell. You can count on Jodi Thomas to give you a satisfying and memorable read.”

—Catherine Anderson, New York Times bestselling author

“Thomas sketches a slow, sweet surrender.”

—Publishers Weekly

“Compelling and beautifully written, it is exactly the kind of heart-wrenching, emotional story one has come to expect from Jodi Thomas.”

—Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author

“Tender, realistic, and insightful.”

—Library Journal

“Once I started [Ransom Canyon], I quickly found myself unable to put down this book.”

—Night Owl Reviews

“This book is like once again visiting old friends while making new ones and will leave readers eager for the next visit. A pure joy to read.”

—RT Book Reviews

“This is terrific reading from page one to the end. Jodi Thomas is a passionate writer who puts real feelings into her characters.”

—Fresh Fiction

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Praise

Title Page

PROLOGUE

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

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

Anna Marie Island, Florida

September

ANGELA HAROLD SAT in her father’s cluttered office, still wearing the black dress she’d worn to his funeral. She stared at the framed picture on his desk. The one she’d given him when she was seven. Their first fishing trip. He was smiling, the sun shining off his glasses. She stood by his side holding up a fish half her length.

A memory saved forever in the heart. For Angela, this one photo had come to signify the time before the fall. Before Florida. Before her mother’s illness. Before her father started withering inside. Before she’d felt trapped in her life.

Only now the bars that held her here were crumbling like columns of sugar in the rain. She should feel free, but all Angela felt was fear. A trapped bird staring at an open cage door. Afraid to fly. Afraid to stay.

The police had explained to her the night they’d found his body that he’d been mugged as he left his office. Neither the blows he’d suffered nor the gash on his head when he’d fallen had killed him. But his heart hadn’t been strong enough to survive the attack. Benjamin Harold’s heart may have stopped three days ago, but he’d stopped living years ago, one unfulfilled dream at a time.

“Who robs the bookkeeper on a Sunday night?” Angela whispered to the smiling man in the picture. The antiques store had been closed that day. Her father had said he was going in to straighten out the books. Whoever attacked him couldn’t have gotten more than a few hundred dollars from his wallet. They couldn’t have known about his weak heart.

Out of curiosity, she flipped open her father’s ledger book. He’d kept the books for his brother’s business since they first moved to Florida when she was seven. Her uncle Anthony owned the multimillion-dollar antiques business and he trusted no one with the books but her father. After all, Anthony might be the head of the company, but his brother had loaned him the money to get started. The last entry was a transfer from the store’s account to a numbered bank account.

She stared at the logbook and recalled the family story. Her father had loaned his younger brother, Anthony, fifty thousand dollars and the priceless necklace that was his inheritance for display once the store was built. The necklace was an heirloom and had been in the family for generations: an ancient Greek coin set in a cradle of gold and diamonds. Her grandparents’ will had stipulated the necklace go to the oldest son and never be sold off for profit.

In those early days, it was the one draw to an antiques store full of otherwise questionable treasures.

In exchange for the loan and letting the store display the necklace, Anthony agreed that her father would always be the bookkeeper. He’d have a job as long as he lived. Her father, who’d lost half a dozen jobs in his thirties and been injured at his last employment site, saw the offer as too good to turn down, even though he and Anthony had never been close.

Only, her father had grown tired of his brother’s questionable practices, even though the company flourished, opening stores all along the East Coast. Her father wanted no part of the profits and took only his salary as Uncle Anthony grew rich selling early colonial antiques that came on a boat from China.

Angela knew her father would have quit years ago if her mother hadn’t been ill. A slow-moving cancer had eaten away at her body. At first they fought with operations and treatments between short periods of remission, until she was finally too weak to fight any more. Angela stayed with her, missing proms and dating and sleepovers through her teen years.

For a few hours each day, the tiny office became her father’s refuge from the constant reality of his wife’s illness. Once out of college, Angela got a job at a local museum and moved in with her parents to help. By then, her mother needed constant care and Angela and her father managed the night shift.

When her mother passed peacefully in her sleep at home, Angela felt as if she lost her father, too. Within weeks, he was working six, sometimes seven, days a week in his office, usually late into the night. At first, she’d thought he was simply catching up, but finally she understood he was hiding away, living a little less each day.

“Something’s not right,” he’d sometimes mutter when he came home late. He mentioned more than once his concern over the company’s accounting.

She asked if he’d talked to Anthony about it and her father had simply smiled and told her not to worry, that his brother didn’t want to hear about problems.