Under the Cowboy's Protection Read online

  He’ll need help from his ex-lover

  To bring a killer to justice.

  A young mother is murdered and her newborn is kidnapped. Now Sheriff Raleigh Lawton must enlist the help of the only witness: his ex-lover, Deputy Thea Morris. As the investigation—and their undeniable attraction—heats up, the killer dangerously raises the stakes. With Thea in the crosshairs, Raleigh will risk everything to save her. Because this cowboy’s heart can’t survive losing her again.

  “You’ll need a protection detail for the drive back and forth, too.”

  More manpower. But Raleigh’s tone seemed to suggest something else. “You don’t want me here for the interviews?”

  “No. I do. You know more about Hannah’s case than I do, and you know Warren. You might hear something that helps us figure this out.” He paused, groaned softly. “If and when we eventually make it out of here tonight, you could stay at my place. It’s not far.”

  “With you?” she blurted out.

  The corner of his mouth lifted, but the slight smile didn’t last long. “We’re former lovers. I can’t change that. But I don’t want it to get in the way of us doing what needs to be done.”

  UNDER THE COWBOY’S PROTECTION

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  Delores Fossen

  Delores Fossen, a USA TODAY bestselling author, has sold over one hundred novels, with millions of copies of her books in print worldwide. She’s received a Booksellers’ Best Award and an RT Reviewers’ Choice Best Book Award. She was also a finalist for a prestigious RITA® Award. You can contact the author through her website at www.deloresfossen.com.

  Books by Delores Fossen

  Harlequin Intrigue

  The Lawmen of McCall Canyon

  Cowboy Above the Law

  Finger on the Trigger

  Lawman with a Cause

  Under the Cowboy’s Protection

  Blue River Ranch

  Always a Lawman

  Gunfire on the Ranch

  Lawman from Her Past

  Roughshod Justice

  The Lawmen of Silver Creek Ranch

  Grayson

  Dade

  Nate

  Kade

  Gage

  Mason

  Josh

  Sawyer

  Landon

  Holden

  HQN Books

  A Wrangler’s Creek Novel

  Lone Star Cowboy (ebook novella)

  Those Texas Nights

  One Good Cowboy (ebook novella)

  No Getting Over a Cowboy

  Just Like a Cowboy (ebook novella)

  Branded as Trouble

  Cowboy Dreaming (ebook novella)

  Texas-Sized Trouble

  Cowboy Heartbreaker (ebook novella)

  Lone Star Blues

  Cowboy Blues (ebook novella)

  The Last Rodeo

  A Coldwater Texas Novel

  Lone Star Christmas

  Lone Star Midnight (ebook novella)

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

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  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Sheriff Raleigh Lawton—When this Texas sheriff discovers he’s the illegitimate son of a respected lawman, it unleashes a series of deadly events that puts Raleigh and everyone around him in the path of a killer.

  Deputy Thea Morris—She’s torn between her ex, Raleigh, and Warren McCall, the man who raised her, but now Thea must turn to both of them to stop them from being a killer’s next target.

  Warren McCall—Even though he regrets the longtime affair that he had with Raleigh’s mother, he doesn’t regret having a son, and he wants to steer the killer away from Raleigh and Thea.

  Alma Lawton—Raleigh’s mother, who kept the identity of his father a secret. She loves her son and would do anything to protect him.

  Sonya Burney—The surrogate at the center of an attack that seems to be directed at Warren. Someone could be using Sonya to carry out their own agenda.

  Yvette O’Hara—A wealthy businesswoman who hired Sonya to be her surrogate. It’s possible that Sonya had second thoughts about handing over the baby to Yvette. Was that why Sonya was attacked?

  Nick O’Hara—The only reason he agreed to be a father and have Sonya as their surrogate was to save his rocky marriage. But Nick seems to have some secrets of his own.

  Simon Lindley—Alma’s longtime friend. Everyone knows that Simon is in love with Alma, but just how far would he go to have her?

  Contents

  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

  Excerpt from In Self Defense by Debra Webb

  Chapter One

  Sheriff Raleigh Lawton didn’t like the looks of this.

  The glass on the front door of the house had been shattered, and the chairs on the porch were toppled over. Both could be signs that maybe there’d been some kind of struggle here.

  That kicked up his heart rate a huge notch, and he drew his gun, hoping he didn’t need to use it. While he was hoping, he added that maybe there was some explanation for the glass and chairs. Maybe the woman who lived in this small one-story house was okay. Raleigh had a double reason for wishing that.

  Because the woman, Sonya Burney, was nine months pregnant.

  He’d known her all his life, and that’s why Raleigh hadn’t hesitated to go check on her when the doctor from the OB clinic had called him to say that Sonya had missed her appointment. In a big city, something like that would have gone practically unnoticed, but in a small ranching town like Durango Ridge, it got noticed all right.

  The rain spat at him when he stepped from his truck. It was coming down hard now, with an even heavier downpour in the forecast. He had a raincoat, but he didn’t want to take the time to put it on. However, he did keep watch around him as he hurried up the steps and onto the porch.

  “Sonya?” he called out and immediately listened for anyone or anything.

  Nothing.

  He tested the doorknob. Unlocked. And he cursed when he stepped inside. The furniture had been tossed here, too. There was a broken lamp on the floor, and the coffee table was on its side. Raleigh reached for his phone, ready to call one of his deputies for backup, but something caught his eye.

  Drops of what appeared to be blood on the floor.

  Raleigh had a closer look. Not blood. Judging from the smell, it was paint. And he soon got more proof of that. There was a still-open can in the hall just off the living room, and a discarded brush was next to it. However, it wasn’t the can or brush that grabbed his attention. It was what someone had scrawled on the wall.

  This is for Sheriff Warren McCall.

  Hell.

  That felt like a punch to the gut. Because he’d seen a message identical to that one almost a year ago. A message that’d been written in the apartment of a woman who had been murdered. Unlike Sonya, that particular w
oman had been a stranger to him.

  The memories came. Images Raleigh wished that time would have blurred. But they were still crystal clear. The woman. Her limp, lifeless body, and the baby she’d been carrying was missing—it still was.

  He prayed that Sonya and the baby wouldn’t have similar fates.

  Raleigh didn’t have any proof of who’d killed that other woman, stolen the child or written that message. But he had always thought the message had been left for him. And Warren, of course.

  Warren was his father.

  Biologically anyway. Raleigh had never considered the man to be his actual dad. Never would.

  He made the call for backup and used his phone to take a quick picture of the message. Actually, it was a threat. Raleigh just hoped that Sonya hadn’t gotten caught up in this tangled mess between Warren and him.

  “Sonya?” he called out again.

  Still nothing, but Raleigh continued to look for her. The house wasn’t huge, a combined living and kitchen area, two bedrooms and a bath. He went through each one and didn’t see her. But there was another message, and it’d been slopped in red paint on one of the bedroom walls. A repeat of the other one.

  The repeat hadn’t been necessary. Raleigh had gotten it the first time.

  This is for Sheriff Warren McCall.

  Warren was retired now, but he’d once indeed been the sheriff of McCall Canyon, a town one county over. He’d also carried on an affair with Raleigh’s mom for nearly three and a half decades. Or rather, Warren had carried on with her until his secret had come out into the open after someone had tried to kill him. Raleigh’s mother had been a suspect in that attack. And Warren’s “real” family—his wife, two sons and his daughter—hated Raleigh and her.

  Was one of them responsible for this?

  Maybe. That was something he would definitely investigate, but first he had to find Sonya.

  Since it would take a good twenty minutes for his deputy to get all the way out to Sonya’s house, Raleigh kept looking, and he made his way out through the kitchen and to the back porch. The moment he stepped outside, he heard something. At first he thought it was the cool October rain hitting the tin roof.

  It wasn’t.

  There was a woman dressed in jeans and a raincoat. She was facedown, on the end of the porch, and she was moaning. Raleigh ran to her and turned her over, but it wasn’t Sonya. However, it was someone he knew.

  Deputy Thea Morris.

  Seeing her gave his heart rate another jolt. Of course, Thea usually had that effect on him. Not in a good way, either, and it certainly wasn’t good now. What the hell was she doing here, and what was wrong with her?

  Raleigh didn’t see any obvious injuries. Not at first. Then he pushed aside her dark blond hair and saw the two small circular burn marks on her neck. Someone had used a stun gun on her.

  “Where’s Sonya?” he asked.

  Thea opened her eyes, but she was clearly having trouble focusing because she blinked several times. Then she groaned again. She didn’t answer him, but he saw the alarm on her face, and she started struggling to sit up. He helped her with that. Too bad it meant putting his arms around her to do that.

  And Raleigh immediately got another dose of too-clear memories that he didn’t want.

  Of Thea being not just in his arms but in his bed. But that was an old water, old bridge situation.

  “Where’s Sonya?” Raleigh repeated. “And what happened to you?” He had other questions, but those were enough of a start, since finding Sonya was his priority right now.

  “Sonya,” Thea repeated in a mutter. She lifted her hand—not easily because it was practically limp—and she touched her fingers to her head. “Sonya.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. Sonya. She’s pregnant, and I’m worried about her.” Worried was an understatement. “What happened to her? What happened to you?”

  Thea blinked some more, looked up at him, and the concern was obvious in her deep green eyes. “A man. I think he took her.”

  That got Raleigh’s attention, and he fired glances around them, trying to see if he could spot her. But there was still no sign of Sonya.

  “The man had a gun,” Thea added, and she groaned, trying to get to her feet. She failed and dropped right back down on the porch. She also reached for her own gun, but her shoulder holster was empty. Since she was wearing her badge, Raleigh doubted she’d come here without her gun.

  “What man?” Raleigh demanded. “And where did he take her?”

  Thea groaned again and shook her head. “I don’t know, but he said he was doing this because of Warren.”

  Raleigh hadn’t actually needed that last bit of info to raise the alarm inside him. With the signs of struggle and those stun gun marks on Thea’s neck, he decided it wasn’t a good idea for them to be out in the open like this. Sonya’s place was an old farmhouse with a barn and a storage shed, but the woods were only a short walk away. It would give an attacker plenty of places to hide.

  If the man was indeed hiding, that is. If someone had actually taken Sonya, he could be long gone by now.

  “We need to get inside.” Raleigh hooked his arm around Thea’s waist, pulling her to her feet. She wobbled, landing against him. Specifically against his chest. He shoved aside the next dose of memories that came with that close contact.

  “You have to go after the man,” Thea said. Her voice was as shaky as the rest of her. “You have to get Sonya.”

  “I will.”

  His deputy would be here in ten minutes or so, and Raleigh would start searching as soon as he had someone to watch Thea. She wasn’t in any shape to defend herself if her attacker returned. At the moment though, he was much more concerned about Sonya. After all, Thea was alive and okay, for the most part anyway, but Sonya could be in the hands of a kidnapper.

  Or a killer.

  But that didn’t make sense. Who would want to hurt her, and what did any of this have to do with Warren? Unless...

  A very unsettling thought came to mind.

  “Did this happen because Sonya’s a surrogate?” Raleigh asked. He helped Thea into a chair at the kitchen table and then went back to the window to see if he could spot any sign of the woman or the person who’d taken her.

  “I don’t know. Maybe...” Thea’s voice trailed off, and that’s when Raleigh noticed that Thea’s attention had landed on the painted message on the wall. She shuddered, but she didn’t turn away. “I don’t suppose you put that there?” But she shook her head, waving off her question. “No. You and Sonya were friends.”

  Raleigh wasn’t sure how Thea knew that, but then he wasn’t sure of a lot of things right now. “Start talking. I want to know everything that happened.” Though it was hard to stand there and listen to anything Thea had to say when his instincts were screaming for him to go after Sonya.

  Thea didn’t jump right into that explanation; instead, she got to her feet. “We can talk while we look for her. Do you have a backup gun you can lend me?”

  Raleigh frowned. Thea didn’t look at all steady on her feet, which meant her aim would probably suck, too. Still, she was a cop.

  Warren’s star deputy, in fact.

  Warren had not only trained her and given Thea her start in law enforcement, his father had made it clear that he loved Thea like a daughter. That was convenient, since Thea loved him like a father.

  Raleigh wasn’t sure how Thea had managed to overlook the fact that Warren was a lying, cheating snake, and he really didn’t care. Heck, at the moment he didn’t care if Thea was having trouble standing. She had the right idea about looking for Sonya as they talked, so Raleigh gave her his backup gun from his boot holster.

  “I got here about a half hour ago,” Thea said, glancing at the clock on the microwave. While she held on to the kitchen counter, she made her way to the back door. “Sonya didn’t answer
my call this morning, so I came over to check on her.” She paused. “I’ve been checking on her a lot lately.”

  “I didn’t know Sonya and you were that close,” Raleigh commented. Sonya had only moved to Durango Ridge about ten years ago, so it was possible she’d known Thea before then. Or maybe they’d recently become friends. But after one look in Thea’s eyes, he knew that wasn’t the case.

  Raleigh groaned. “This has to do with Sonya being a surrogate.”

  Thea nodded and managed to get the back door open. “I haven’t given up on finding Hannah Neal’s killer.”

  Neither had Raleigh. And he especially wasn’t forgetting her now, because that message on Sonya’s wall was identical to the one found at Hannah’s apartment a year ago. Hannah had been murdered only a couple of hours after she’d given birth. That same person who’d killed Hannah had almost certainly been the one who had taken the newborn.

  “Sonya didn’t know Hannah,” Thea continued, “but they were both surrogates, and they used the same doctor for the in vitro procedures that got them pregnant.”

  Raleigh’s gut twisted. Because he’d known that. And he had dismissed it as being something unimportant. Of course, he sure wasn’t dismissing it now.

  Still, it didn’t make sense. Why would someone go after two surrogates to get back at Warren? Especially since Sonya had no personal connection to Warren.

  Or did she?

  Raleigh didn’t have the answer to that, either, but he soon would.

  Thea stepped out onto the back porch, and like Raleigh, she looked around. She also caught on to the porch railing to keep herself from falling. Raleigh nearly had her sit down on the step, but babysitting Thea wasn’t his job. His job was to find Sonya.

  “Tell me about this man who took Sonya,” Raleigh demanded. “Was he here when you arrived?”

  Thea nodded and followed him into the yard. Not easily, but she made it while still wobbling and using every last inch of the porch railing. “I saw him. He wore a ski mask and was holding her at gunpoint. He was about six-one and about two hundred pounds.”

  That tightened his stomach even more. Sonya was barely five-three and had a petite build. She wouldn’t have stood a chance against a guy that size. Especially if he had a gun.