The kiss deepened without any help on his part.
He wanted more. And he couldnât have stopped himself from taking it.
And then she was gone. Ripped away.
She bolted from the rocker, her chest rising and falling as she backed up against the split-pine railing surrounding the porch. âIâm sorry. I shouldnât have done that.â
âBut you did.â
âI got caught up. That canât happen again.â
Her expression glittered with undisguised longing. So why was she stopping?
âI heartily disagree. Itâs practically a requirement for it to happen again.â
âAre you that clueless, Kyle? Iâm your daughtersâ case-worker,â she reminded him with raised eyebrows. âWe canât get involved.â
His body cooled faster than if sheâddumped a bucket of ice water on his head. âYouâre right.â
Of course she was right. This wasnât about whether she was interested or not; it was about his daughters. What had started out as a half-formed plan to distract her from work had actually distracted him far more effectively.
And he wanted to do it again.
* * *
The SEALâs Secret Heirs
is part of the series The Texas Cattlemanâs Club:
Lies and Lullabiesâ Baby secrets and a scheming sheikh rock Royal, Texas.
KAT CANTRELL read her first Mills & Boon novel in third grade and has been scribbling in notebooks since she learned to spell. What else would she write but romance?
Kat, her husband and their two boys live in north Texas. When sheâs not writing about characters on the journey to happily-ever-after, she can be found at a football game, watching the TV show Friends or listening to â80s music.
Kat was the 2011 Mills & Boon So You Think You Can Write contest winner and a 2012 RWA Golden Heart>® Award finalist for best unpublished series contemporary manuscript.
One
Royal, Texas was the perfect place to go to die.
Kyle Wade aimed to do exactly that. After an honorable discharge from the navy, what else lay ahead of him but a slow and painful death? Might as well do it in Royal, the town that had welcomed every Wade since the dawn of timeâexcept him.
He nearly drove through the center of town without stopping. Because he hadnât realized he was in Royal until he was nearly out of Royal.
Yeah, it had been ten years, and when heâd stopped for gas in Odessa, heâd heard about the tornado that had ripped through the town. But still. Was nothing on the main strip still the same? These new buildings hadnât been there when heâd left. Of course, heâd hightailed it out of Royal for Coronado, California, in a hurry and hadnât looked back once in all his years as a Navy SEAL. Had he really expected Royal to be suspended in time, like a photograph?
He kind of had.
Kyle slowed as he passed the spot where heâd first kissed Grace Haines in the parking lot of the Dairy Queen. Or what used to be the spot where heâd taken his high school girlfriend on their first date. The Dairy Queen had moved down the road and in its place stood a little pink building housing something called Mimiâs Nail Salon. Really?
Fitting that his relationship with Grace had nothing to mark it. Nothing in Royal proper anyway. The scars on his heart would always be there.
Shaking his head, Kyle punched the gas. He had plenty of time to gawk at the town later and no time to think about the woman who had driven him into the military. His shattered leg hurt something fierce and heâd been traveling for the better part of three days. It was time to go home.
And now he had a feeling things had probably changed at Wade Ranchâalso known as homeâmore than heâd have anticipated. Never the optimist, he suspected that meant theyâd gotten worse. Which was saying something, since heâd left in the first place because of the rift with his twin brother, Liam. No time like the present to get the cold welcome over with.
Wade Ranchâs land unrolled at exactly the ten-mile marker from Royal. At least that was still the same. Acres and acres of rocky, hilly countryside spread as far as Kyle could see. Huh. Reminded him of Afghanistan. Wouldnât have thought thereâd be any comparison, but there you go. A man could travel ten thousand miles and still wind up where he started. In more ways than one.
The gate wasnât barred. His brother, Liam, was running a loose ship apparently. Their grandfather had died a while back and left the ranch to both brothers, but Kyle had never intended to claim his share. Yeah, it was a significant inheritance. But he didnât want it. He wanted his team back and his life as a SEAL. An insurgentâs spray of bullets had guaranteed that would never happen. Even if Kyle hadnât gotten shot, Cortez was gone and no amount of wishing or screaming at God could bring his friend and comrade-in-arms back to life.