The Rancher's Legacy and the Texan's Secret Daughter by Jessica Keller

Author:Jessica Keller
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2021-01-27T14:03:50+00:00

Chapter Two

Standing alone, Elijah tried to clear his brain. The hum of the commercial refrigerators gave him something safe to focus on, anything other than the curve of her face. The rust colored freckles that dusted her cheeks over soft mahogany skin. The need to reach out and touch her, to make sure she was real had been a punch to the gut. He buried his fingers in his hair and dropped his head.

For over five years, he had practiced his apology, holding each word tightly in his mind until the day he could tell her. He had written letter after letter, flooding her parents’ mailbox with them. Not that she had seen any of them—her parents had made that clear—but he had been desperate to make things right. And now the day had come, and he hadn’t uttered a word of his apology. He’d blown it. Anger soured his stomach.

Because she had stolen his child. Digging his fingers into his scalp, he dropped into a crouch, elbows dug into his knees. Did she actually believed he was homeless? He laughed. Alone in the pantry, he laughed out loud.

And then he stopped. Took a few deep breaths. Right now, he needed to be calm and steady. He couldn’t afford to lose his grip.

The Daniels were powerful people in the state of Texas. Elijah couldn’t imagine Judge Nelson James Daniels III ever being weak. The man ruled his world with an iron fist. There was only one person Elijah knew with a stronger will—Azalea Daniels, his wife, Jazmine’s mother. She and her husband had hated him from the first moment he had stepped on their porch to take their daughter to a beach party to kick off the summer season.

He was only two years older, but at the time, his twenty to Jazmine’s eighteen was too big of a gap for them. He wasn’t in school or planning to attend. Plus, they knew his uncle.

Frank had stood in front of Judge Daniels’s bench more times than Elijah wanted to think about.

The Daniels family had faced their own tragedy, losing a young son to a drunk driver. Elijah was an idiot. Leaning his forehead against the door, he planted his fist against the wall. This was 100 percent his fault. Why had he tried to overstep and reach for something he didn’t deserve?

With his program and counseling, he’d finally been in a place to let it go, to let her go. Making amends and apologizing was all he’d had left, but everything had just changed.

Jazmine, the Daniels’s only surviving child, had had a bright future. Even before her senior year had started, she had been accepted to three Ivy League schools on the East Coast. Elijah, on the other hand, had barely gotten out of high school.

He preferred the outdoors. On a horse, working with cattle, or on a boat out in the Gulf fighting the elements. Both of those were a thousand times more fulfilling than sitting behind a desk at the job Judge Daniels had gotten him.

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