A Cold Creek Baby

A Cold Creek Baby
RaeAnne Thayne

Dare to dream… these sparkling romances will make you laugh, cry and fall in love – again and again!She’d dreamed about him coming back with a baby in his arms… And now Cisco was home.But the baby he carried couldn’t possibly be theirs. Still, Easton got part of her wish. The man she could never stop loving was back, even for just a little while – with a serious injury, a beautiful baby girl and an explanation about them both that was as flimsy as his excuse for leaving years before.And after five long years of trying to forget him, Easton was faced with a choice: love him – and that little girl – while she had them, or get out now. Because she’d never escape with her heart intact a second time…

He remembered every moment of their time together five years ago. Each sigh, each gasp. The angle of her head as he touched her, the flutter of her hands curling into his shirt. The agonizingly sweet welcome of her body.

This, though. The sheer delicious reality of having her in his arms once more—of her heat and softness against his skin, of her mouth trembling beneath his—beat the echo of those memories all to hell.

He knew it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t. In a moment, one or both of them would find a semblance of good sense and pull away. But for now, she was here in his arms and she was kissing him … and the prowling restlessness inside him quieted.

About the Author

RAEANNE THAYNE finds inspiration in the beautiful northern Utah mountains, where she lives with her husband and three children. Her books have won numerous honors, including three RITA® Award nominations from Romance Writers of America and a Career Achievement Award from RT Book Reviews magazine. RaeAnne loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website at www.raeannethayne.com.

Dear Reader,

I sincerely love every hero and heroine I’ve ever created—flaws, foibles and all—but some seem to leave a more indelible impression on my heart than others. After I finished writing A Cold Creek Baby, I must confess to a few little qualms of disloyalty toward all my other heroes when I realized that Cisco Del Norte just might be my favorite hero ever (until the next book, I’m sure!). I adored this dangerous, troubled, mysterious man from the very moment I came up with the idea for this latest series of Cold Creek books and couldn’t wait to tell his and Easton’s story. I think I’ve received more mail from readers asking when I would finally write their story than about any other characters I’ve created! Through the process of writing A Cold Creek Baby, I came to love them both even more and was so happy to help them find their happy ending together … and to show Cisco the way home for good this time.

All my best,

RaeAnne

A COLD CREEK BABY

RAEANNE THAYNE

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Chapter One

Something yanked Easton Springhill out of a sound sleep.

She rolled over and squinted at her alarm clock, which glowed the dismal hour of 4:26 a.m. Her curtains were open, as usual, so she could wake to a view of the mountaintops still covered in snow. But from her bed she could only see a bright glitter of stars pinpricking the dark sky.

With a heavy sigh, she flopped back onto her pillow. She wouldn’t be going back to sleep anytime soon, especially since her dratted alarm was set to go off anyway in little more than an hour.

What a pain. She really hated waking up before her alarm clock, especially when she had a feeling she’d been smack in the middle of some sort of lovely dream. She could only hang on to a few wispy tendrils of memory about what the dream might have been about, but she could guess that somehow he was involved.

She rolled over. Probably better, then, that she woke up. Whenever she dreamed of him, she spent the next day in a strange, suspended state—partly elated at having something of him again, even if only through her subconscious, but mostly depressed that she had to wake up and face the endless work of running an Idaho cattle ranch.

Alone, as usual.

The cotton pillowcase rustled as she shook her head a little, annoyed at herself.

She had a wonderful life here. She loved the ranch, she loved her friends, she had an honorary niece and nephew she adored.

So she didn’t have the one thing she had wanted since she was just a silly girl. Was that any reason to fret and fuss and pine over the impossible?

She sat up, wondering what had awakened her. Jack and Suzy, her border collies, were barking outside, but that could mean anything from a loose cow to a hapless rodent foolish enough to enter their territory.

Whatever it was, she knew she would never go back to sleep now. Better to just take advantage of the unexpected hour to get some work done before she had to go out and take care of the chores. The Winder Ranch accounts were always waiting, unfortunately.

She slid out of bed and was just feeling around for her robe when she heard a sound that seemed to echo through the huge, empty ranch house.

She froze in the dark, ears straining. What the heck was that? It sounded like a cross between a shriek and a yowl. A moment later, something clattered downstairs, a jangly, ringing sound, as if a hard plastic bowl had somehow fallen out of one of the cupboards onto the kitchen floor.

Her heart pounded and her stomach curled and she wished she had brought one of the dogs inside. Since Chester, her ancient border collie who had been more pet than working dog, died over the winter, she had been alone in the house.

The ranch house sometimes creaked and groaned, as old houses were wont to do, but this was more than the normal settling noises.

She shoved on her slippers and grabbed the robe by her bed to cover the ancient John Deere T-shirt one of the guys had left years ago and grabbed her uncle’s favorite old Benelli that Brant insisted she keep under the bed.

She lived alone on an isolated ranch where her nearest neighbor was almost a mile away. Only a supremely foolish woman would neglect to take basic defensive measures. She had been raised with three overprotective foster cousins and she was far from stupid.

About most things anyway.

Her heart pumped pure adrenaline as she fumbled for the shotgun shells in the drawer of her bedside table and loaded one each in the dual chambers.

As a precaution, she picked up her cell phone by the bed and slipped it into her pocket, not quite ready to call 9-1-1 yet until she checked out the situation to make sure she wasn’t imagining things. She would hate having to explain to Trace Bowman why she had called the police to deal with a raccoon in her kitchen.

She pushed open her bedroom door, chiding herself again for her stubbornness in staying in her upstairs room after Jo died. It would have been more convenient all the way around if she had moved downstairs to one of the two bedrooms on the main floor, but she had been obstinate in clinging to her routine, staying in the same room she had moved into as a grieving, lost sixteen-year-old after her parents died.

She started down the stairs and had almost reached the squeaky stair that had caused the boys such headaches back in the day when she suddenly heard that yowly sound again. The hairs on the back of her neck rose and she gripped the Benelli more tightly.

That wasn’t any raccoon she’d ever heard. Danged if that didn’t sound like a mountain lion.

That would certainly explain the dogs barking. She thought of the tracks she had seen the afternoon before, but that had been clear on the edge of the north pasture, on the other side of the fence line.

Would a cat actually come into a house, even if she might have been foolish enough to leave a window open or something, which she was almost positive she hadn’t done?

She had never heard of one of the big cats breaking into an occupied house. They were reclusive, wandering creatures who avoided human contact whenever possible.

A bit like Cisco.

See what dreaming about the man could get her? she chided herself. Even when she couldn’t remember the content of her subconscious meanderings, she still spent the entire next day thinking about him, even at ridiculously inappropriate times like this one.

That couldn’t be a mountain lion in her kitchen. She refused to believe it. Despite her usual precautions, she had probably just forgotten to close the kitchen window she’d opened to the May air and the breeze was moving the blinds, which were subsequently knocking down the hand lotion and soap she kept in the windowsill.

It was a good explanation and one she was sticking to. If it didn’t quite explain the yowly sound, well, she wasn’t going to fret about that, yet.

She reached the bottom of the steps and her pulse kicked up a notch. She could swear she hadn’t left the kitchen light on when she went upstairs to bed. Part of her nightly ritual was to walk through the house to make sure it was closed up, the lights out, the doors locked.

She wouldn’t have forgotten—and unless she was dealing with a mountain lion who had particularly dexterous paws, she doubted any animal turned the light on.

The tinkle of breaking glass sounded from the kitchen followed instantly by a muffled curse.

Not a mountain lion. Definitely an animal of the human variety.

Her hands tightened on the shotgun and she flattened herself against the hallway wall. Should she sneak into her office, bolt the door and call 9-1-1? Or stick around and hold the intruder at bay with the shotgun until the authorities arrived?