Mae Nunn - A Texas Ranger's Family

This situation with Erin was a no-win wrapped up in a heartache. There was so much on the line. But his daughter was bursting with the pride of finally meeting her mama, and discovering Erin’s accomplishments.

At only thirty-four, Erin was a gifted photographer who had been awarded some of the world’s highest honors for her work. Daniel was not immune to the impressive allure of Erin Gray and her talent.

True, this Erin might be different from the young woman who’d stood before the justice of the peace with him over sixteen years ago, but when Daniel looked into her eyes, a glimmer of that skittish girl still existed.

He knew her fears, knew her past and knew she would run away to catch up with her future as soon as she got well again.

And that was exactly what he wanted. Or was it?

MAE NUNN

grew up in Houston and graduated from the University of Texas with a degree in communications. When she fell for a transplanted Englishman who lived in Atlanta, she hung up her Texas spurs to become a Georgia Southern belle. Mae recently retired after thirty years of corporate life. When asked how she felt about being a full-time writer, Mae summed her response up with one word, “Yeeeeeha!”

www.millsandboon.co.uk

A cord of three strands is not quickly broken.

—Ecclesiastes 4:12

A Texas Ranger’s Family is for my darlin’ Michael. Thank you for taking care of me, putting up with me and loving me completely as only you can do. Our twenty-year marriage is proof that happily-ever-after endings occur outside of fairy tales and romance novels. Psalms 37:4 tells us to “Delight yourself in the Lord and He will give you the desires of your heart.” Honey, with God as the third strand of our braided cord, I have more than I ever dreamed of. You make it all worthwhile. I adore you.

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

Epilogue

Questions for Discussion

“Erin, are you awake?”

It was only four words, yet the man’s accent was vaguely familiar.

“Yes, I am.” Erin Gray’s heart lurched at the first recognizable voice she’d heard since regaining consciousness in the ICU of Walter Reed hospital.

The thud of footsteps brought him closer.

“I can’t open my eyes!” Her cry was not much more than a raspy whisper, excruciating at that.

“It hurts to move, to talk, to breathe. Hurts everywhere!” She’d give in to the panic rising from her gut but even a single wrench would be too painful.

Tight strips of gauze covered her eyes blocking out all light. Her head and shoulders thumped like the blades of a Blackhawk. Bandages weighed her torso down like a lead blanket. She licked sore lips with a dry tongue. Her mouth was desperate for moisture. Her throat raw.

Respirator.

That’s right, a nurse had explained something about being on a respirator for almost three weeks.

Three weeks in a medically induced coma!

Accustomed as Erin was to a military cot, the soft contours of a hospital mattress had produced a throbbing low in her back. She was desperate to sit up or roll to one side. But even the smallest voluntary muscle twitch took her breath away, and if she hadn’t been told otherwise, Erin would swear she was in a straightjacket.

“Try to take it easy.” The kind man gave a gentle pat to her left hand, the only area of her upper body that seemed free of restraints. “It’s not as bad as it seems right now and nowhere near as bad as it coulda been. The heat from the truck bomb that hit your convoy in Kirkuk should have blinded you, but you’re only dealin’ with scorched corneas. The best ophthalmologist in this place says your healin’ is right on schedule.” His words were reassuring.

“Thank you, Lord,” she mouthed. Her one and only talent was photography. Without work behind the camera lens, she’d have no work at all. God was good, her life and vision had been spared.

“What about my arm?” She needed the truth. “I can’t move my arm.” A disability would end her imbedded service in Iraq, her limb just one more casualty of a foreign war. “Will I—” she couldn’t get the words out the first time “—lose it?”

“God was watchin’ over you. Any muscle-bound marine would have bled out from that kind of tissue damage, but I hear your commanding officer got you to the medics in time. You’re not out of the woods yet, but all signs are positive.”

It was critical, but nothing she couldn’t overcome.

A plastic straw pressed to her lips and she sipped carefully, then breathed her first sigh of relief since awakening a few hours earlier.

“Thank you…” She waited for him to say a name she felt she would recognize.

“Daniel.”

The surprise caught in her ragged airway.

“Yeah, it’s me, Erin. Your bureau chief notified us you’d been critically wounded.”

Daniel Stabler was the emergency contact she’d listed on the application when she’d first gone to work for World View News. She would have left the form incomplete but the human resources police had insisted. So her ex-husband’s name was the one she’d used to fill in the blank.

“I’m so sorry J.D. troubled you, Daniel,” she rasped, thinking she’d give her boss a piece of her mind once she was able to yell again. “He should have known you were only to be contacted in case of a life or death situation.”

“Erin, it was life or death. Nobody expected you to make it.” He delivered the news in the steady, calm Texas accent she recalled as pure Daniel. “Your lungs shouldn’t be workin’ after the fumes you inhaled, and there was enough staph in your body to kill a Dallas Cowboy linebacker. The fact that you’re here today is nothin’ short of miraculous.”

She knew a little something about miracles. She’d tried countless times to trap one in the viewfinder of her Nikon, to capture one on film. She was grateful to be alive, and surely God spared her for a purpose. For work she still needed to do in this world.

“So, if I’m back from the brink of death, whatever possessed J.D. to notify you now?” She wheezed out the long sentence.

“He called me weeks ago while you were on the flight to the States. We arrived in Washington the day after you did and we’ve been here ever since.”

She swallowed another sip of water, careful not to choke on the revelation. Why would Daniel come? After the way she’d run out on their marriage he had every reason and every right to stay away, no matter the severity of her circumstances. Maybe he needed something?

The lanky young man she’d married so many years ago stood tall in her mind’s eye. He was a portrait of good intentions and Southern manners in worn-out boots. He hadn’t seemed much more than a boy but he knew his heart’s desire just as well as Erin had known her demons. No man ever wanted a family with a happily-ever-after ending more than Daniel. And he’d been willing to give his best shot at what she’d known for a fact was only a fairy tale.

He’d begged her to marry him and keep the child they hadn’t planned. Erin was just a college sophomore when she agreed. She tried to buy into the illusion Daniel spun about a happy family, a foreign concept for an orphaned girl raised in foster care. And after seven more months of pregnancy and twenty-three hours of labor, she gave birth to a daughter.