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ChapterOne
Sweetheart Mae Holiday, or Sweetie as everyone called her, was running on empty.
Literally and figuratively.
The fuel gage on the Mustang GT her daddy had bought her for her sixteenth birthday was sitting below the empty mark and had been for the last fifty miles.She’d tried to get gas in the last town, but her credit card had been declined.She wasn’t surprised.A busted car radiator, a trip to the dentist for an aching tooth, and a moment of madness while browsing the Lucchese boot website had pushed her already high credit card debt to the limit.She was tanked out on money, tanked out on gas ...and tanked out on hope.Her mama’s phone call had been the straw that broke the stubborn mule’s back.
A heart attack?
Sweetie still couldn’t believe it.She had always thought of her daddy as being invincible.Hank Holiday could lift fifty-pound hay bales and toss them off the bed of a trailer using just one hand, walk twenty miles back to the house after his horse went lame and still put in a full day of ranching, get gored by a longhorn bull and stitch himself up without anesthesia ...or saying a word to anyone.
But what he couldn’t do was give his six daughters any say in their lives when they’d been living under his roof.Which was why they had all moved out as soon as they’d turned eighteen.Daddy was just too darn stubborn for his own good.
Of course, Sweetie was stubborn too.Which was why she hadn’t been home in twelve years.She’d been waiting for her daddy to see the error of his ways.He’d been waiting for her to do the same.Now, egos didn’t matter.All that mattered was her daddy getting better.
Tears welled into her eyes at just the thought of her larger-than-life daddy falling from his horse, then lying there for who knew how long before one of the sons of the neighboring rancher had found him.He was lucky he wasn’t dead.His daddy had died of a heart attack around the same age.The image of her daddy being buried beneath the old oak, alongside her grandfather, made her push harder on the accelerator.
Through the blur of her tears, she saw a road sign up ahead.
Wilder 9
The name of her hometown caused a flood of memories to wash over her.Memories of Friday night football games, Fourth of July parades, harvest festivals, Christmas hayrides, and all the usual celebrations of a small town.But her daddy’s stubbornness wasn’t the only reason she hadn’t been home in twelve long years.Pissing off every man, woman, and child in Wilder was the other one.She didn’t doubt for a second that they were still pissed off.
Texans were a friendly lot, but there was a reasonDon’t Mess with Texaswas the state motto.If you stomped on one of their sacred traditions, they didn’t forget and forgive easily.And she had done some major stomping.Which was why she had no intention of setting foot in town while she was there.In fact, nothing short of divine intervention would get her to face the townsfolk.
A sharp blast of a siren had her glancing at the rearview mirror.A sheriff’s SUV was gaining on her with lights flashing.She quickly let up on the gas and hoped the patrol car would drive right on by.Instead, it hugged her bumper and blasted its siren again.
“Dagnabbit!”She used her Grandma Mimi’s favorite swear word as she pulled over to the shoulder of the two-lane highway.She turned off the engine so as not to use any more gas and waited for the officer to get out.He took his good sweet time.In the side mirror, she could see him sitting behind the wheel with his tan cowboy hat pulled low and his aviator sunglasses reflecting the midmorning sun.
There was something about the way he was just sitting there that made her wonder if he recognized her car.She wouldn’t be surprised.Even though Mustang Sally was fourteen years old and looked a little worse for wear, everyone in town had known Sweetheart Holiday’s candy apple-red muscle car.Especially the law enforcement officers.Sweetie had gotten more tickets in high school than she could count.Not that she’d ever had to pay one.Her daddy’s friend, Judge Hanover, had taken care of that.The law enforcement in the county had finally just given up pulling her over.
But that had been Sheriff Dauber.The man who climbed out of the vehicle wasn’t short with a potbelly and man boobs.One brown, high-polished cowboy boot hit the ground first and another followed before a tall man unfolded like a 3D image any red-blooded woman would love to have as a screensaver.
Sweetie sucked in her breath.Lord have mercy.She had forgotten just how well Texas made men.
His well-worn, soft-as-butter jeans fit him just right—snug in the lean hips and muscled thighs and loose around his boot shanks.The long sleeves of his khaki sheriff’s shirt were cuffed, revealing strong forearms dusted with dark hair.Sweetie had always had a thing for masculine forearms.There was something about the tight collection of muscles and thick veins that made her stomach feel like her mama’s famous Jell-O Surprise.
With the hat and sunglasses, she couldn’t see much of his face.Just a prominent jaw and serious mouth—a prominent jaw and serious mouth that, thankfully, she didn’t recognize.Which meant she had a chance of talking her way out of a ticket.All she needed to decrease her bank account even further was a ticket and higher insurance premiums.
As he headed toward her, she quickly took her hair out of the bun and fluffed it before rolling down the window and pinning on a smile.She had to look wa-a-ay up.Past a sexy leather holster riding nice hips.Past a flat stomach and a well-defined chest.Past the open collar of his shirt that displayed just a hint of dark chest hair.Past a prominent chin with a covering of dark stubble and serious lips.To the dark lenses that she saw her reflection in.
“Good mornin’!”she said brightly.“You want to tell me why a good-lookin’ lawman like yourself has stopped me on this beautiful Texas day, Officer—” She glanced at the gold nameplate attached to the left side of his chest, but before she could read it, he flipped up the flap of his pocket and covered it.He pulled out a citation pad and a pen, then spoke in the kind of low, husky voice that was perfect for talking dirty in the dark.
“I need to see your driver’s license and registration.”
With that sexy voice, he could have asked for just about anything and she would have given it to him.She reached for her purse in the seat next to her and pulled out her driver’s license.The car registration was a little harder to locate.When she finally found it beneath the pile of unpaid bills she’d stuffed in her glove box, she realized it was expired by seven months.Something she hoped he wouldn’t notice.
He noticed.
As soon as he looked at it, he started filling out the citation.
Her smile faded.“You aren’t gonna give me a ticket, are you?I promise I’ll get my car registered first thing.And I was only goin’ a little over the speed limit.”
“Eighty-two in a seventy-mile-an-hour zone isn’t a little over.”He continued to write.
Pinning on another smile, she reached out the window and placed a hand on his forearm right above his wrist.The warmth of his bare skin and the flex of his muscles had her stomach taking a dip.He slowly lifted his head.She couldn’t see his eyes behind the dark lenses, but she could feel his anger in the fisting of his hand.Not one man had ever gotten angry with her for touching him.In fact, her ex-boyfriend had broken up with her because she hadn’t touched him enough.But this angry man, she wanted to touch ...A LOT.
Her strong physical attraction to him set off a warning in her brain.Get a grip, Sweetie.She was not there to start something up with a complete stranger.She was there to see her daddy and help out her mama.Her life was in Nashville.Not in Wilder, Texas.
