Boneyard Ridge

His leg was bad. It couldn’t do the same things he’d once asked of it. But he was stronger now than he had been in the middle of that burning hell.

He’d never known that level of utter helplessness before in his life. He prayed to God he’d never know it again.

He willed Susannah to step back from him, to take away her soft warmth, her sweet scent, her gentle, disarming gaze.

Of course, being Susannah, she stepped closer, her hands lifting to his cheeks, ensnaring him. “I have no idea what to say to you,” she said, her voice a whisper. “I don’t know what you need.”

You, he thought with growing dismay. I just need you.

Boneyard Ridge

Paula Graves

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Alabama native PAULA GRAVES wrote her first book, a mystery starring herself and her neighborhood friends, at the age of six. A voracious reader, Paula loves books that pair tantalizing mystery with compelling romance. When she’s not reading or writing, she works as a creative director for a Birmingham advertising agency and spends time with her family and friends. She is a member of Southern Magic Romance Writers, Heart of Dixie Romance Writers and Romance Writers of America. Paula invites readers to visit her website, www.paulagraves.com.

For all the wounded warriors who put their lives and their bodies on the line every day to make the world a safer place.

God bless you, and thank you for all you do.

Contents

Cover

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Smoky Joe’s Saloon had never pretended to be anything more than a hillbilly honky-tonk, a hole in the wall on Old Purgatory Road that served cold beer, peanuts roasted in the shell and a prodigious selection of Merle Haggard hits on the ancient jukebox in the corner.

At the moment, “The Fightin’ Side of Me” blasted through the jukebox’s tinny speakers, an apt sound track for the bar brawl brewing around the pool table in the corner.

Two men circled the table like a pair of wary Pit Bulls, eyes locked in silent combat. The older of the two was also the drunker, a heavyset man with bloodshot eyes and a misshapen nose, mottled by red spider veins. He seemed to be the aggressor, from Alexander Quinn’s vantage point at a table in the corner of the small bar, but the younger, leaner man had shown no signs of trying to de-escalate the tension.

On the contrary, an almost frantic light gleamed in his green eyes, a feral hunger for conflict that Quinn had noticed the first time he’d ever laid eyes on the man.

His name was Hunter Bragg, and he’d finally found the trouble he’d been looking for all night.

“Come on, Toby, you know he’s going to beat the hell out of you the second you take a swing. Then I’m going to have to call the police and you’ve already got a couple of D and Ds on your record this year, don’t you?” The reasonable question, uttered in a tone that wavered somewhere between sympathy and annoyance, came from the bartender, a burly man in his early sixties with shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair and a gray-streaked beard. He was dressed like most of the patrons, in jeans and a camouflage jacket over a T-shirt that had been through the wash a few times, dulling its original navy color to a smoky slate blue.

He was the “Joe” of Smoky Joe’s Saloon, Joe Breslin, an Army vet who’d opened the bar with his savings after deciding not to re-up decades earlier when the trouble in Panama was starting to heat up. He’d packed on a few pounds and lost a few steps since his military days, but Quinn had seen him in action a few nights earlier when another loudmouthed drunk had taken the angry young man’s bait and lived to regret it.

“He’s askin’ for an ass-kickin’, Joe!” the man named Toby complained, shooting a baleful look at Hunter Bragg. “I don’t care if he is a damn war hero.”

“I’m no hero,” Bragg growled, the feral grin never faltering.

“Bragg, I don’t want to kick you out of my bar, I really don’t,” Joe said. “But if you don’t shut your damn trap and stop picking fights, I’m gonna. You think your sister needs any more trouble?”

Bragg’s gaze snapped toward the bartender at the mention of his sister. “Shut up.”

Breslin held up his hands. “Just sayin’. She’s already got enough on her plate, don’t she?”

“Shut up!” Bragg howled, the sound of a wounded animal. Chill bumps scattered down Alexander Quinn’s spine and, on instinct, his hand went to the pistol hidden under his jacket.

Toby took a couple of staggering steps backward until he bumped into the wall, dislodging some darts from the board that hung near the pool table. “You’re crazy, man.”