A Cold Creek Secret

A Cold Creek Secret
RaeAnne Thayne

The soldier and the society princess… Just back from a tour of duty, all Major Brant Western wanted was a hot meal and a warm bed. What he didn’t need was a stunning socialite in disguise who’d just shown up at his family’s ranch. Scandal trailed bad girl Mimi everywhere she went. But once Brant discovered her secret, how could he turn her away?Being stranded in the middle of nowhere in a blizzard was not Mimi’s idea of fun. Until she started to realise that sexy soldier Brant could offer her more than just shelter from the storm.

A man was staring at her.

Not just any man, either. He was tall, perhaps 6'1” or 6'2", with short dark hair and blue eyes, powerful muscles and a square, determined sort of jaw. He was just the sort of man who made her most nervous, the kind who didn’t look as if they could be swayed by a flirty smile and a sidelong look.

He was staring at her as if she had just sprouted horns out of the top of her head. She frowned, uncomfortable with his scrutiny though she couldn’t have said exactly why.

She had no clear memory of arriving here, only a vague sense that something was very wrong, that someone was supposed to help her sort everything out.

She looked at the man again, registering that he was extraordinarily handsome in a clean-cut sort of way.

Had she been looking for him? She blinked, trying to sort through the jumble of her thoughts.

Then suddenly she remembered.

Baby. The baby. Her baby.

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,

From the very first moment I came up with the idea for my latest Cowboys of Cold Creek trilogy, I fell in love with Brant Western and couldn’t wait to write about him. He’s deeply honourable but conflicted, grieving the loss of several people close to him and in dire need of a little peace between deployments. Part of me would have loved to give him that … but what kind of boring story would that have been?

Instead, I decided to shake up his world by sending him the most unlikely of heroines, Mimi Van Hoyt, heiress, celebrity, tabloid princess du jour. Mimi is a complicated woman. Like all of us, she’s made mistakes but she’s finally at a place in her life where she’s ready to learn from them. From the beginning I knew she would be the perfect woman for Brant, that she would teach him to laugh again, to not take himself so seriously, to squeeze every drop of joy he could from life. I loved writing their story and helping these two people find each other!

All my best,

RaeAnne

A COLD CREEK SECRET

RAEANNE THAYNE

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

To the wonderful writers of Utah RWA for your support, encouragement and friendship.

Chapter One

No matter what exotic parts of the world he visited, Brant Western hadn’t forgotten how the cold of a February evening in Idaho could clutch at his lungs with icy claws that refused to let go.

In the past hour, the light snow flurries of the afternoon had turned vicious, intense. The active storm front forecasters had been warning about since he arrived for his mid-tour leave two days earlier had finally started its relentless march across this tiny corner of eastern Idaho toward Wyoming.

Icy flakes spit against his unprotected face with all the force of an Al Asad sandstorm. Somehow they found their way to every exposed surface, even sliding beneath the collar of his heavy shearling-lined ranch coat.

This was the sort of Idaho night made for hunkering down by the fire with a good book and a cup of hot cocoa.

The picture had undeniable appeal, one of the many images of home that had sustained him through fierce firefights and long campaigns and endless nights under Afghan and Iraqi stars.

After, he reminded himself. When the few cattle at the Western Sky had been fed and all the horses were safe and snug in the barn, then he could settle in front of the fire with the thriller he’d picked up in the airport.

“Come on,Tag.We’re almost done, then we cans go home.”

His horse, a sturdy buckskin gelding, whinnied as if he completely understood every word and continued plodding along the faint outline of a road still visible under the quickly falling snow.

Brant supposed this was a crazy journey. The hundred head of cows and their calves weren’t even his cattle but belonged to a neighbor of the Western Sky who leased the land while Brant was deployed.

Carson McRaven took good care of his stock. Brant wouldn’t have agreed to the lease if he didn’t. But since the cattle were currently residing on his property, he felt responsibility toward them.

Sometimes that sense of obligation could be a genuine pain in the butt, he acknowledged as he and Tag finished making sure the warmers in the water troughs were functioning and turned back toward the house.

They hadn’t gone more than a dozen yards when he saw headlights slicing weakly through the fusillade of snow, heading toward the ranch far too quickly for these wintry conditions.

He squinted in the murky twilight. Who did he know who would be stupid or crazy enough to venture out in this kind of weather?

Easton was the logical choice but he had just talked to her on the phone a half hour earlier, before he had set out on this fool’s errand to check the ranch, and she had assured him that after the wedding they had both attended the night before, she was going to bed early with a lingering headache.

He worried about her. He couldn’t deny that. Easton hadn’t been the same since her aunt, his foster mother, had died of cancer several months earlier. Even longer, really. She hadn’t been the sweet, funny girl he’d known and loved most of his life maybe since around the time Guff Winder had died.

Maybe Easton wasn’t acting like herself, but he was pretty sure she had the good sense to hunker down at Winder Ranch during a storm like this. If she did venture out, he was pretty sure she was smart enough to slow down when conditions demanded it, especially since he and his foster brothers had drilled that into her head when they taught her to drive.

So if that driver wasn’t Easton, who was barreling toward his ranch on the cusp of a ferocious winter storm?

Somebody lost, no doubt. Sometimes these remote canyon roads were difficult to negotiate and the snow could obscure landmarks and address markings. With a sigh, he spurred Tag toward the road to point the wayward traveler in the right direction.

He was just wishing for a decent pair of optics so he could get a better look at who it might be, when the vehicle suddenly went into a slide. He saw it coming as the driver took a curve too fast and he pushed Tag faster, praying he was wrong. But an instant later the driver overcorrected and as Brant held his breath, the vehicle spun out on the icy road.

It was almost like some grisly slow-motion movie, watching it careen over the edge of the road, heading straight for Cold Creek, at the bottom of a maybe five-foot drop.

The vehicle disappeared from view and Brant smacked the reins and dug his heels into the horse’s sides, racing as fast as he dared toward the slide-out.

When he reached the creek’s edge, he could barely make out in the gathering darkness that the vehicle wasn’t quite submerged in the creek but it was a close thing. The SUV had landed on a large granite boulder in the middle of the creek bed, the front end crumpled and the rear wheels still on the bank.

Though he tried not to swear as a habit, he couldn’t help hissing out a fierce epithet as he scrambled down from the horse. In February, the creek was only a couple feet deep at most and the current wasn’t strong enough to carry off an SUV, but Brant would still have to get wet to get to the vehicle. There was no other way around it.

He heard a faint moan from inside and what sounded, oddly, like a tiny lamb bleating.

“Hang on,” he called. “I’ll get you out of there in a minute.”

Just in the minute or two he had stood surveying the scene and figuring out how to attack the problem, darkness had completely descended and the snow stung at him from every direction. The wind surged around him, taunting and cruel. Even as cold as he was from the storm, he wasn’t prepared for the frigid shock of the water through his boots and his lined Wranglers as he waded up to his knees.

He heard that moan again and this time he isolated the sound he had mistaken for a bleating lamb. It was a dog, a tiny one by the sound of it, yipping like crazy.

“Hang on,” he called. “Won’t take me but a minute and I’ll have you out of there, then we can call for help.”