Harlequin Romantic Suspense: March 2022 Box Set by Lisa Childs

Author:Lisa Childs
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

As Mac sat in the hearing room waiting for the judge to return from her chambers, his heart was pounding wildly and he was sweating in his suit. Emotions tumbled through him, so jumbled he could not begin to sort one from the next.

Where are my kids right now? Waiting in the next room? Or have the powers that be already spirited them off to some foster home across the county? If they think for one damned minute I’ll stand for it—

“Easy there,” urged a deep voice beside him. A voice he hadn’t heard much from in months, since the last time he and his brother Hayden, who looked especially sharp today with his sheriff’s uniform freshly pressed and his often unruly dark brown hair neatly combed back, had interacted. He had taken time out from his duties this afternoon to show support for his older brother on the day when Mac had been promised he would at last get real news about the children.

“Focus on taking deep, steady breaths there, brother,” Hayden advised, “and keeping your reactions nice and fatherly-like for the judge.”

“What do you mean ‘fatherly-like’?” Mac snapped, his nerves strained to the breaking point at being treated like some abusive monster when he’d done absolutely nothing wrong. “I am their father, and they’re being kept from me for no damned reason. No dog and pony show is gonna change that.”

“You need to calm down and cool that temper,” whispered Ryan, the youngest of the three Hale-Walker brothers. A ranch foreman who competed on the rodeo circuit on weekends for prize money, the tawny-haired bronc rider looked even more stiffly unnatural than Mac did in his suit—which was usually reserved for attending funerals only, since around here, even weddings tended to be casual denim-and-lace affairs.

After a cautious look around, Ryan surreptitiously pulled out a scuffed and slightly dented silver flask that Mac recognized as having belonged to their late father. Though Ryan hadn’t willingly sat in the same room with Mac for maybe two years, he said, “Here you go, bro. Maybe a little nip of this’ll help to take the edge off?”

Bristling at the sight, Mac said, “For heaven’s sake, put that away before someone reports me as an unfit drunkard.” He had no doubt that everyone in the courtroom would be watching to see the three, mostly estranged brothers, one-time heirs to a thriving ranch legacy, in such a rare show of solidarity, all for the sake of the children whose abduction had torn their family apart.

Before he could decide whether the looks he was receiving were damning or supportive, the diminutive yet commanding figure of Judge Willa Cartwright finally returned from chambers, her age-lined face stern but her dark gaze filled with compassion.

Neither eased Mac’s anxiety a bit, but all three brothers rose as one, only to have Judge Cartwright cluck at them, “Sit please, everyone.”

As they did, another arrival caught his eye: her again, that little snoop of a social worker who had submitted a report to the court.

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