The Hero of Hope Springs
Maisey Yates
FICTION/Romance/Contemporary
Mass Market | HQN Books
On Sale: 7/21/2020
9781335013514
$8.99
$12.99 CAN
SUMMARY:
For as long as brooding cowboy Ryder Daniels has known
Sammy Marshall, she has been his sunshine. Her free spirit and bright smile
saved him after the devastating loss of his parents and gave him the strength
to care for his orphaned family. Only Ryder knows how vulnerable Sammy is, so
he’s kept his attraction for his best friend under wraps for years. But what
Sammy’s asking for now might be a step too far…
Something has been missing from Sammy’s life, and she thinks she knows what it is. Deciding she wants a baby is easy; realizing she wants her best friend to be the father is…complicated. Especially when a new heat between them sparks to life! When Sammy discovers she’s pregnant, Ryder makes it clear he wants it all. But having suffered the fallout of her parents’ disastrous relationship, Sammy is wary of letting Ryder too close. This cowboy will have to prove he’s proposing out of more than just honor…
EXCERPT
CHAPTER ONE
For as long as
Ryder Daniels had known Sammy Marshall she had been his sunshine.
She had come
into his life golden and bright and warm at a time when everything had seemed
dark and cold.
And like anyone
who had been lost in the dark for a long while, he’d squinted against the light
when he’d first seen it. Had felt like it was just too damned much.
At first he’d
wrapped himself up in a blanket of his own anger and bitterness. But soon all
her gentle warmth had broken through and he’d shed some layers. Some. Not all.
And only for
her.
Much like the sun, he never got used to her
brightness. Time didn’t dull the shine.
Even now as she
spun circles out in the middle of the dance floor at the Gold Valley Saloon, he
could feel it. Down in his bones. Her blond hair swung around with every
movement, tangled and curling, her arms wide and free, the bangles on her
wrists glittering in the light with each turn. The white dress she wore was
long and loose, but when it caught hold of her skin it was somehow more
suggestive and revealing than any of the short, tight dresses out on the dance
floor could have ever been.
Ryder looked,
because he was only a man.
But Sammy was
his sun.
His source of light. His source of warmth.
And much like
the sun, he knew that getting close enough to touch it was impossible.
There were two
men dancing with her, spinning her back and forth between them, and she was
laughing, her cheeks red and glowing. Then with a light pat—one for each of
their shoulders—she abandoned them and made her way back over to the table
where Ryder was sitting with his siblings, most notably his sister Pansy, and
her brand-new fiancé, West Caldwell.
They had called
them all out tonight to make the announcement. But Ryder already knew.
West had come
and spoken to him like he was Pansy’s father.
And in many
ways, he supposed that he was.
When their
parents had died, it had been up to him to take care of his siblings.
When their
parents had died, all the light in his world had gone out.
It had left him
frozen.
Sammy had gotten
him through.
And he knew that
Sammy would say something entirely different. That he was her guardian, her
protector. And that was true in a way. But she had saved him. Had saved him in
ways that she would never fully understand.
Laughing, Sammy
plopped down at the table, right beside him, her shoulder brushing up against
his, the touch a sort of strange familiar torture to him.
It nearly went
by unnoticed.
Nearly.
“Does anybody need another drink?” she said,
pushing her mane of hair out of her face and treating him to a smile.
“Your friends
might want one,” he pointed out. She cast a glance back at the dance floor.
Then she made a dismissive noise. “They’re not in the running to becoming my
friends,” she said.
He was relieved
to hear it, even though he wouldn’t ever say.
Sammy was everything wild and free. Everything
that he never would be.
He had no
desire—ever—to try and bottle up that freedom and use it for himself. To limit
it. Whatever he thought about it sometimes.
“I’ll get the
drinks,” Colt said, getting up from his seat.
One of the cousins that had grown up with
them, Colt was only a couple years younger than Ryder. He’d been fifteen when
their parents had been killed. His brother Jake had been seventeen.
Reining in the
older kids had been one of the harder parts of the whole thing. Because how did
you tell someone who was basically your age that they needed to quit staying
out all night and maybe try a little bit harder at school?
Well, you just
said it, but it didn’t always go down well.
Ryder had been a
teenager, not a parent. It wasn’t like he’d been a model for anything good or
decent. The only reason he had kept his grades up when he was in high school
was because he wanted to stay on the football team. That had been his life.
And he had been
untouchable. Golden.
Until he wasn’t.
Until he had
discovered that his family was more than touchable. They were breakable.
Until he had to give up college scholarships
and other aspirations so that he could take care of everyone.
Not that he would have made it into the NFL
after college. He just would have been able to use football to get through
school.
It didn’t
matter. He had never wanted to be a rancher. He wanted to get out. He wanted to
leave home and see the world and have something different. Different than his
uncle, who had lived on one plot of land for his whole life.
Different than
his father, who had been the police chief of the town he was born in. The town
he’d never left.
And here he was.
The same. Just the same. And only about ten years younger than his dad had been
when he’d died, too.
That was a real
parade of cheer.
It didn’t take
Colt long to return with drinks, and he passed around bottles of beer. Pansy
took one and stood.
His younger
sister was pocket-size. A petite anomaly in a family that was otherwise of
above average height. Pansy had followed their father’s footsteps. She was
currently the youngest police chief Gold Valley had ever had. And the first
female. He was damned proud of her. But he didn’t believe for a moment that it
was down to something he’d done right.
Pansy was just
good all the way through. Determined and strong. She’d had to be.
She’d only been
ten when their parents had died.
Poor Rose had
been seven.
Yeah. It had been a certain kind of hard to
deal with the teenagers. But comforting children who were crying helplessly
over mothers who would never hold them again…
That was a hell
he didn’t like to remember even now. So instead he just looked at Pansy, a
grown woman with a man by her side.
That had been
the first time he had to deal with something like that, too.
West Caldwell
had come and asked him for permission. And Ryder had a feeling that he should
have rejected that. Told him he didn’t need it.
But he felt like he did. He felt like he
needed it for each and every one of them. Because they were his.
Even Sammy.
Because while
she might be the sun in his life, he was her protector. It was his job to make
sure nothing bad ever happened to them.
“West and I have
an announcement,” Pansy said, smiling. “We’re getting married.”
AUTHOR BIO:
Kristin Rockaway is a native New Yorker with an insatiable
case of wanderlust. After working in the IT industry for far too many years,
she traded the city for the surf and chased her dreams out to Southern
California, where she spends her days happily writing stories instead of
software. When she's not writing, she enjoys spending time with her husband and
son, and planning her next big vacation.
SOCIAL LINKS:
Facebook: /MaiseyYatesAuthor
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