Janet Tronstad - Wildflower Bride in Dry Creek

Runaway bride

Marry a secure businessman, or become a bunkhouse cook for twenty hungry cowboys on a cattle ranch? When Angelina Brighton chooses the ranch, she runs from the wedding her billionaire father arranged. Angelina won’t marry a man she doesn’t love. Then along comes former special ops soldier Tyler Stone, barreling into Dry Creek to bring her back home. Or so she thinks. But Big Sky country is full of surprises for everyone—especially for a faithful gal and rugged cowboy who discover what home really means.

“I’ve grown up. I don’t flit from thing to thing like I did in high school,” Angelina said.

Tyler nodded, his eyes measuring her.

“You can trust me,” she whispered. “I know what my feelings are. They’re not going to go away tomorrow because some new and exciting thing happens.”

Angelina watched the emotions roll across Tyler’s face. His disbelief. His uncertainty. Followed by something she thought was hope. And then it was all gone. There wasn’t a flicker of anything left.

“You don’t believe me,” she said, her voice flat.

He swallowed and looked at her. “No, I think maybe I do believe you.”

He didn’t look very certain about it, though, and Angelina blinked back the dampness in her eyes. “I’ll prove it to you. Wait and see. I’m a changed person.”

“But I’m not,” he said.

She could not argue with that. Only God could change the heart of a man. She knew without asking that there would be no more confiding in each other tonight.

Grant me patience, Lord, she prayed silently. Help Tyler to see he needs to change, too.

JANET TRONSTAD

currently lives in Pasadena, California, but she grew up on a farm in central Montana so she knows how dusty the back roads can be in those rural areas. She’s driven down many of them, although not in a red convertible as Angelina Brighton does in this book. Maybe someday. In the meantime, she drives a modest car and enjoys travel, plays and spending time with friends and family.

Wildflower Bride in Dry Creek

Janet Tronstad

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Honor thy father and thy mother:

that thy days may be long upon the land

which the Lord thy God giveth thee.

—Exodus 20:12

I dedicate this book to my buddies in the

East Valley Authors group, my local chapter within the Romance Writers of America organization. The writers in this Azusa, California, group are unfailingly encouraging and persistent. Each year we have an “Outwrite Janet” contest and everyone tries to get down more words than I do in the month. One year a team of two even won the challenge, which delighted me. To call out just some of their names—there’s Beth, Charity, Alison, Shannon, Laura, Julie, Debra, Joy, Riccarla, Carol, Roberta, Mary, Maria, Erin, Sherry and Marlene.

Contents

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

Epilogue

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

Chapter One

Tyler Stone loosened his grip on the steering wheel and eased his pickup to a stop at the edge of the small town of Dry Creek, Montana. He would never call this place home again and yet, here he was, looking down the street with a longing he hadn’t expected. All of the old clapboard houses stood silent, their cement steps leading to doors that were firmly closed against the July heat.

“Nothing has changed,” Tyler muttered to himself as he kept staring at the empty street.

It seemed impossible that the betrayal his family had experienced in this town hadn’t left some outward mark on the buildings themselves. But none of the windows were boarded up. Not one house was deserted. Ten years ago, reporters had been knocking on the doors of all the buildings, demanding to know what kind of a woman Tyler’s mother had been that she could kill her husband. The media had little compassion as she went on trial for her life, and Tyler wished he knew which of these doors had opened to spill the gossip about the Stone family. His father’s drunken abuse, their general unhappiness, even the time their electricity had been turned off for lack of payment had all made it into the news.

Suddenly, Tyler saw a flash of movement out of his left eye. A tremor raced through his hands until he realized it was only the reflection of the afternoon sun on his windshield.

“Easy now,” he said to himself as he wiped his hands on his jeans. He didn’t have time to worry about which neighbor had done what in the past. He had enough problems in the present. He had been hired to escort Angelina Brighton back to her home in Boston. If he couldn’t convince her to go, he’d be out of a job. And not a newspaper in the world would even care.

This wasn’t the first time he had been hired to babysit Angelina. She had been his last assignment with Brighton Security, the one right before he went into the military. Her father had received some kidnapping threats regarding her so Tyler had been assigned to serve as one of her bodyguards during her senior year of high school. At nineteen years old, he’d been chosen for the job because he could blend in with the other students and stay close to Angelina. All he was supposed to do in a bad situation was to summon the older Brighton guards who were there in the distance. No one had expected him to stop the kidnapping, identify a stalker and then dance with Angelina at the prom after her date waltzed off with another girl.

He remembered her father had barely blinked an eye at the kidnapping attempt, but he’d almost fired Tyler over the dance. Mr. Brighton had coldly informed Tyler that he had higher aspirations for his only child than for her to marry some half-breed Native American boy with criminal blood flowing through his veins. Tyler didn’t mind what the man said about his heritage; he had always been proud that he looked like his Cherokee ancestors and nothing much could change that.

But he never talked about his mother or the fact that she was in prison for murdering his father. The shame of that burned deep inside him because, when all was said and done, Tyler knew the tragedy had somehow been his fault. He had been twelve years old, which in the Cherokee world was grown enough to be considered a man. But he hadn’t had the nerve to go into the barn that awful day when he overheard his father throwing things and cursing his name. The man had a violent temper, and Tyler still had the bruises from his last beating. So he ran away, back to the house, where he hid. He never knew what his mother had said in response to his father or how long they argued or how she happened to strike that fatal blow. All Tyler knew was if he had gone inside that barn, things would have ended differently.

He glanced down at the photo of Angelina that he had taped to his dashboard. He hadn’t asked for the photo, but her father, his boss, had given it to him anyway. Blonde, blue-eyed and petite, Angelina looked like a fashion doll at twenty-three years old. Tyler was only a year older than her, but he felt like he had been dragged through the bottom mud long enough to be many times her age. Of course, being in the military could do that to a man, especially when he was a special ops guy trying to infiltrate the Pashtun tribal region with only his wits for backup.

Just then a faint humming sound made Tyler look up into his rearview mirror. A car was approaching from behind. His left arm was still healing so he reached over with his right hand to roll up the window on his pickup, hoping whoever it was would drive by. Then the car got closer, and he saw it was a shiny red convertible—one that he recognized all too well.