Harlequin Special Edition January 2015 - Box Set 1 of 2: Never Trust a Cowboy\The Homecoming Queen Gets Her Man\Romancing the Rancher by Kathleen Eagle

Author:Kathleen Eagle
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2014-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

Icy heart.

Those two words stayed with Jack. Stayed like a thorn in his thumb. She didn’t know. She didn’t understand. And he wasn’t about to slice open that slab of iceberg sitting in his chest and explain what had changed.

He pounded through the streets of Stone Gap, ignoring the heat of the rising sun, the thick humidity that forced his lungs to work overtime. He ran, down streets, in and out of parks, through parking lots. He ran and ran, as if a demon was chasing him.

He hadn’t paid attention to his path or his route. Partly because he knew Stone Gap like the back of his hand, and partly because he’d figured he’d run until the words icy heart stopped ringing in his head. Then he rounded a corner, and his steps faltered, and the masochistic side of him laughed.

The Stone Gap cemetery loomed in front of him, its wrought-iron gates propped open, revealing a shady, flower-lined path that curved like a mistress.

He cursed, and lowered his head. But when he tried to power forward, to run past it like he had the mailbox on Juniper Street and the bike rack at the Publix, his feet refused to go straight. Instead, his steps veered right, off the sidewalk and down that shady path.

He didn’t need a map. Didn’t need a guide. He knew where to turn, which of the winding paths to take. He hadn’t been inside this cemetery in more than five years, not since his grandmother’s funeral, but it was as if he’d been here yesterday.

A hill crested in front of him, lush green lawn leading up to a rhododendron that had gotten overgrown. At the back stood a thick, tall oak tree, its branches spreading like arms over the granite stones beneath its shade.

A stone mausoleum stood to the right of the tree. It dominated the hill and the landscape with its ornate carved angels perched atop pillars that sat on three granite steps. Stone flowerpots held blooming annuals, so well-tended not a single bloom had faded. Letters carved into the top generations ago were beginning to darken with age, but the name was clear.

Prescott.

Beside it, a smaller gravestone, still shiny and unblemished, less elaborate and far more simple, reading Delacorte. The families flanking each other in death as they did in life.

Jack took a step. Something crunched under his foot, and he froze. His heart stilled, his breath held. His brain whirred like an engine skipping a beat. It was a stick, just a stick.

But his mind didn’t see or hear stick. In Jack’s mind, the snap had been a mine, a trigger tripped by a careless footstep. Get down, get down, his mind screamed.

He clenched his fists. Forced a breath in. Out. Another.

There was no danger here. He was safe. There were no troops behind him, no men waiting for him to signal their next move. Nothing but a shady oak tree that had lost a branch. He was safe.

Then he glanced up the hill again, at the small, simple stone with Eli’s name etched across the front.

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