B.J. Daniels - Rodeo Daddy

Isabella Trueblood made history reuniting people torn apart by war and an epidemic. Now, generations later, Lily and Dylan Garrett carry on her work with their agency, Finders Keepers. Circumstances may have changed, but the goal remains the same.

Lost

Her first and only love. Chelsea Jensen had no idea her father had been to blame for her heartbreak when Jack Shane disappeared from the Wishing Tree Ranch. Ten years later, the betrayal still burned.

Found

A check. A canceled check that explained everything. Or almost. Now she knew why he’d left her. But she didn’t know if he’d loved her. Had she just been too young and too blind to see the truth? She was determined to track Jack down—wherever he was—and find out!

“I found the check my father tried to give you,” Chelsea said, her voice barely a whisper.

“So that was it.” Jack felt his jaw tighten.

“I didn’t know, Jack.”

He looked away, the pain fresh as a new wound, past her to the sports car parked by the chutes. Her sports car. He smiled bitterly. For a moment, just looking at her, listening to her, being so close to her, he’d forgotten. Now he looked from the car to her, recalling only too well everything he’d once felt for her—and all the reasons they had been wrong for each other.

“If you’d just told me,” she said.

How many times had he questioned that decision? How many times had he thought about going back to try to straighten things out? But the memory of her father coming out that morning to the corrals with the check, the look in Ryder Jensen’s eyes, the accusations, the contempt—all had kept him moving on down the road.

“It wouldn’t have made a difference,” he said.

“I don’t believe it.”

He turned away. He definitely didn’t need this.

“Jack.”

It came out a whisper, so familiar and so intimate, he stopped in his tracks, unable not to remember that soft sound, the feel of her breath on his skin.…

“Believe it,” he said, walking away from her, just as he had ten years ago.

Dear Reader,

I grew up on old Westerns, spending many a Saturday with Roy Rogers and Dale Evans, riding the range and rootin’ for the good guys. Is it any wonder, after spending part of my youth in Texas and the rest in Montana, that I love cowboys—and rodeos?

They say that rodeo is a reaffirmation of the Old West, a celebration of life and a lifestyle that has all but passed away.

That’s why I loved writing this book as part of the Trueblood, Texas series. I like to believe that somewhere in Texas right now Chelsea and Jack and their descendants are keeping the cowboy way of life alive. A life based on a love for the land—and each other.

B.J. Daniels

www.millsandboon.co.uk

THE TRUEBLOOD LEGACY

THE YEAR WAS 1918, and the Great War in Europe still raged, but Esau Porter was heading home to Texas.

The young sergeant arrived at his parents’ ranch northwest of San Antonio on a Sunday night, only the celebration didn’t go off as planned. Most of the townsfolk of Carmelita had come out to welcome Esau home, but when they saw the sorry condition of the boy, they gave their respects quickly and left.

The fever got so bad so fast that Mrs. Porter hardly knew what to do. By Monday night, before the doctor from San Antonio made it into town, Esau was dead.

The Porter family grieved. How could their son have survived the German peril, only to burn up and die in his own bed? It wasn’t much of a surprise when Mrs. Porter took to her bed on Wednesday. But it was a hell of a shock when half the residents of Carmelita came down with the horrible illness. House after house was hit by death, and all the townspeople could do was pray for salvation.

None came. By the end of the year, over one hundred souls had perished. The influenza virus took those in the prime of life, leaving behind an unprecedented number of orphans. And the virus knew no boundaries. By the time the threat had passed, more than thirty-seven million people had succumbed worldwide.

But in one house, there was still hope.

Isabella Trueblood had come to Carmelita in the late 1800s with her father, blacksmith Saul Trueblood, and her mother, Teresa Collier Trueblood. The family had traveled from Indiana, leaving their Quaker roots behind.

Young Isabella grew up to be an intelligent woman who had a gift for healing and storytelling. Her dreams centered on the boy next door, Foster Carter, the son of Chester and Grace.

Just before the bad times came in 1918, Foster asked Isabella to be his wife, and the future of the Carter spread was secured. It was a happy union, and the future looked bright for the young couple.

Two years later, not one of their relatives was alive. How the young couple had survived was a miracle. And during the epidemic, Isabella and Foster had taken in more than twenty-two orphaned children from all over the county. They fed them, clothed them, taught them as if they were blood kin.

Then Isabella became pregnant, but there were complications. Love for her handsome son, Josiah, born in 1920, wasn’t enough to stop her from growing weaker by the day. Knowing she couldn’t leave her husband to tend to all the children if she died, she set out to find families for each one of her orphaned charges.

And so the Trueblood Foundation was born. Named in memory of Isabella’s parents, it would become famous all over Texas. Some of the orphaned children went to strangers, but many were reunited with their families. After reading notices in newspapers and church bulletins, aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents rushed to Carmelita to find the young ones they’d given up for dead.

Toward the end of Isabella’s life, she’d brought together more than thirty families, and not just her orphans. Many others, old and young, made their way to her doorstep, and Isabella turned no one away.

At her death, the town’s name was changed to Trueblood, in her honor. For years to come, her simple grave was adorned with flowers on the anniversary of her death, grateful tokens of appreciation from the families she had brought together.

Isabella’s son, Josiah, grew into a fine rancher and married Rebecca Montgomery in 1938. They had a daughter, Elizabeth Trueblood Carter, in 1940. Elizabeth married her neighbor William Garrett in 1965, and gave birth to twins Lily and Dylan in 1971, and daughter Ashley a few years later. Home was the Double G ranch, about ten miles from Trueblood proper, and the Garrett children grew up listening to stories of their famous great-grandmother, Isabella. Because they were Truebloods, they knew that they, too, had a sacred duty to carry on the tradition passed down to them: finding lost souls and reuniting loved ones.

To Judy Kinnaman, a friend and fellow writer, who has been there from the beginning. Thanks for all your support and encouragement.

Acknowledgments:

With special thanks to bull riders Colby Yates of Azle, Texas, and Canadians Blade Young of Saskatchewan and Denton Edge of Alberta.

B.J. Daniels is acknowledged as the author of this work.

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

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE EXCERPT

CHAPTER ONE

CHELSEA STOOD AT the door, her hand poised over the knob. It had been more than a month since her father’s death and yet she still didn’t want to go into his den. Unlike the rest of the ranch, with its eclectic mix of furnishings collected over many years, Ryder Jensen’s den mirrored the strong, determined man who had made the Wishing Tree one of the largest working ranches this side of the Pecos.