Archer's Angels

Epilogue

Prologue

Love at first sight? Yes. Love over time? Yes. But there are no shortcuts to the heart.

—Maverick to his sons one night, after their mother had passed, when they wondered how a man ever knew he’d found the one woman for him

From: TexasArcher

To: AussieClove

Howdy, AussieClove. What’s shaking Down Under? I just got home from riding a bull at the rodeo in Lonely Hearts Station. After the events me and some of my bros decided to drink some of the wildest concoction on the planet. We ended up baying at the moon beside Barmaid’s Creek, with some crazy gals for company. You should have seen me ride that bull—if he hadn’t come back around to the left, I would have been the first brother in my family to stay on that cursed piece of cowhide, Blood-thirsty Black.

From: AussieClove

To: TexasArcher

G’day, TexasArcher. Nothing shaking here except maybe my head. My older sister, Lucy, is devastated tonight. She and her husband have learned they can probably never have children. So I threw myself into work, hoping to stay positive.

The stunt tonight involved a boat, some fire, a shark and two guys wearing what I would call thongs. I think guys should never wear swim clothes that are smaller than their…well, you know. What do cowboys wear under those Wrangler jeans?

From: TexasArcher

To: AussieClove

Man alive, AussieClove. Sorry to hear about your sister—that’s too bad. Around our ranch, we’re having a population explosion. We’ve got babies popping out all over the place. I’m never having kids. In fact, I’m never getting married. Too complicated.

One time, I was stuck in a truck with my twin brother, Ranger, and his now-wife, Hannah, and they griped at each other for days. I finally escaped, but Ranger wasn’t so lucky. He rolled down an arroyo and demanded that a medicine man marry him and Hannah because he was convinced he had to get married to live. My twin’s weird. By the way, I wear briefs and sometimes nothing. What do Aussie girls wear under their clothes? (I can tell you right now, floss-size drawers would never hold everything of mine.)

From: AussieClove

To: TexasArcher

I’m sure.

Chapter One

Clove Penmire’s heart pounded as she got off the bus in Lonely Hearts Station, Texas, suitcase in hand. For all her fascination with cowboys and the lure of the dusty state she’d read so much about, she had to admit small-town Texas was nothing like her homeland of Australia.

A horse broke free from the barn across the street, walking itself nonchalantly between the two sides of the old-time town. A cowboy sprinted out of the barn and ran up the street after his horse, laughing as he caught up to it.

Clove smiled. From the back she couldn’t tell if the man was handsome, but he was dressed in Wrangler jeans and a hat, and, as far as she could tell, the cowboy was the real thing.

That’s what she had traveled to Texas for: the real thing.

That sentiment would have sounded shallow, even to Clove, just a month ago. But having learned that her sister, Lucy, could not have a child, Clove’s thought processes had taken a new course, one that included fantasies of tossing her brother-in-law into the Australian ocean.

All over the world there were people who couldn’t conceive when they wished. They adopted, or pursued other means of happiness. She hadn’t been overly worried, until Lucy confessed that she thought her husband might leave her for a woman who could bear children.

Lucy had laughed a little sadly and said that perhaps she was only imagining things. Clove had murmured something reassuring, but inside, fear struck her. Lucy loved her physician husband. He’d always seemed to adore her. Men didn’t leave women because they couldn’t bear children, did they? Robert was a wonderful man; Clove had been surprised, and distressed, at the turn of events.

So she’d taken drastic measures. She’d come to America for Archer Jefferson.

The cowboy hauled his horse around, leading it back toward the barn. Clove could hear him lightly remonstrating his wayward beast, but the horse didn’t seem too concerned.

The cowboy caught her interested gaze, holding it for a second before he looked back at his horse. The man was extremely handsome. Breathtakingly so. Not the cowboy for her, considering her mission, and the fact that she was what people politely referred to as…the girl with the good personality.

The girl everybody loved like a sister.

The girl men liked to be friends with.

And the worst, the Nerdy Penmire.

She sighed. If Lucy had gotten all the beauty, their mother always said with a gentle smile, then Clove had gotten all the bravery. Which was likely how she’d ended up as a stuntwoman.

A stuntwoman with thick glasses.

Had she the face of other Australian exports like Nicole Kidman, for example, she might have been in front of the camera. But instead, she was a stunt double. Lucy said Clove had the life other people dreamed of.

Maybe.

Clove watched the cowboy brush his horse’s back with his hand and fan a fly away from its spot-marked face. He was still talking to the animal; she could hear low murmuring that sounded very sexy to her ears, especially since she’d never heard a man murmur in a husky voice to her.

“Archer Jefferson!” someone yelled from inside the barn. “Get that cotton-pickin’, apple-stealin’, dog-faced Appaloosa in here!”

“Insult the man but not the sexy beast!” he yelled back.

Clove gasped. Archer Jefferson! The man she’d traveled several time zones to see! Her TexasArcher of two years’ worth of e-mail correspondence!

He was all cowboy, she realized, more cowboy than she’d come mentally prepared to corral. “Whoa,” she murmured to herself.

Okay, a man that droolworthy must not lack for female friends. So why had he been writing her for two years? She wrinkled her nose, pushed her thick glasses back and studied him further. Tight jeans, dirty boots. Long, black, unkempt hair under the black felt hat—he’d never mentioned long hair in their correspondence. Deep voice. Piercing eyes, she noted as he swung around, catching her still staring at him. She jumped, he laughed, and then tipped his hat to her as he swung up onto the “dog-faced” Appaloosa, riding it into the barn in a manner the stuntwoman in her appreciated.

Just how difficult would it be to entice that cowboy into her bed? Archer had put the thoughts in her mind about his virility, with his Texas-size bragging about his manliness and the babies popping out all over their Union Junction ranch—affectionately known as Malfunction Junction.

Seeing him, however, made her think that perhaps he hadn’t been bragging as much as stating fact. Her heart beat faster. He had said he wasn’t in the market for a relationship.

But a baby, just one baby…one stolen seed from a family tree that bore many…from a man she trusted more than a stranger from a sperm bank.

Maybe she wasn’t brave.

“Howdy!”

She jumped as Archer strode across the street to where she stood.

“Are you lost?” he asked.

“No,” she said, her gaze taking in every inch of him with nervous admiration. “Yes.”