Lone Star Protector Read online

  Lone Star Protector

  A Calamity Valley Romance

  Jennie Jones

  Lone Star Protector

  Copyright © 2019 Jennie Jones

  EPUB Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  First Publication by Tule Publishing Group 2019

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN: 978-1-949707-46-5

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  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  The Calamity Valley series

  Excerpt from Lone Star Hero

  About the Author

  Chapter One

  Not many women worried about retribution from their long-dead great-grandfather, but Lauren Mackillop was no ordinary woman.

  “Heading to Texas, are you?” the man standing next to her said as they queued for the check-in counter. “You won’t know what’s hit you.”

  Oh, but she would.

  Born under the stars, with a curse on her head to boot, she was well versed in rugged living and hadn’t wanted to go back to any of it. But here she was at LAX, flight booked.

  “It’s hotter than a stolen tamale in Texas,” the man said.

  Lauren ran her eyes over the top of his shiny, bald head and smiled her appreciation of his Texan-resident joke. “I know.” She flicked the tip of her tongue over her lips, enough to moisten them without disturbing her neutral-blush lipstick. It had cost a fortune and she’d have to make it last now.

  “You are not defined by one thing.”

  Lauren closed her eyes. “Grandmother, get out of my head.”

  “Get your skinny butt back home now.”

  Skinny butt? It was true, she was slim. Mostly genetics, but she didn’t eat much anyway, and in the future she might not be able to afford to eat at all—a fact her grandmother obviously wasn’t concerned about. Given what had just happened to her, she was already having nightmare visions of her future. Sad and lonely, eating packet after packet of pretzels. She didn’t like to depend on junk food to cure her miseries though, so she hardly ever ate them. Even though they were her absolute favorite.

  “Don’t dally around the airport,” Ava said. “Or you’ll get yourself into more trouble than you can deal with.”

  Lauren attempted to shut out the telepathic mental communication she had with her grandmother, but she’d been born with it and it wasn’t easy to silence. Especially when Ava wanted to voice her opinions. She’d probably been polishing her runes and knew something Lauren didn’t. Not that Ava needed accoutrements to portend someone’s fate.

  As for trouble! She had a Louis Vuitton suitcase full. Secondhand Louis Vuitton, but still…

  “Do you know what the delay is for?” she asked the little man with the bald head.

  The line was at least fifty people long. A check-in person at the counter was moving his hands in explanation of something, but she was so far back she couldn’t hear what was being said.

  “Something to do with a bird flying into the engine of a plane as it was taxiing. Threw a wrench into the takeoffs and landings. Everyone’s circling.”

  Lauren tapped the heel of her ankle boot on the tiled floor.

  “Been in California long?” the man asked.

  “Six years.” Couldn’t he tell by the perfect barely there tan? The hazel highlights woven through the chestnut-brown layered bob, lengths of which framed her face and swung down her back? Couldn’t he see the Vogue look, played down with a dash of Hollywood urban chic?

  Or did he just see a woman wearing another woman’s castoffs?

  If only she were going home as the successful woman she’d hoped to be when she’d left. Someone who hadn’t had her business taken from her. Someone who appeared poised and a little mysterious—although not in an eerie way.

  She cast a quick glance at her clothes. She’d needed a classy veneer for her clients and customers but not anymore. So, she’d chosen low-key with her outfit today. She was heading for her hometown of Surrender in Calamity Valley in the Texas Panhandle. There’d be little need of couture.

  She sported dark-wash denim jeans, a large leather, stitched-and-tasseled tote bag that had cost its original owner two-thousand dollars and Lauren a hundred bucks, and matching pale lilac suede ankle boots.

  “I was doing so well with my business,” she told the man, needing to voice it out loud because she still couldn’t understand how she’d let disaster through the door and shatter everything she’d worked so hard for.

  She’d owned and run the In Need of Loving boutique in Santa Ynez, Santa Barbara County. A mere one hundred twenty-five miles from Los Angeles—she couldn’t afford anything in LA, although Santa Ynez was pricey enough. Still, her shop slotted beautifully between the historic facades of the businesses on the main street. She’d even acquired a few select customers in LA. Obscenely wealthy women who bought on a whim and discarded on a sigh of discontent. She picked up their preloved, sometimes never-worn, clothing and accessories for a song and sold them in her boutique.

  “What happened to your business?” the bald man asked.

  “I lost it.”

  Her shop was boarded up now. Traded on and about to be turned into a steakhouse. They’d probably make a fortune, since it was two doors down from the saloon where her trashy business partner had lost In Need of Loving in a card game.

  She never wanted to see another saloon as long as she lived. She never wanted to be reminded of backroom poker games, where sharks with laid-back demeanors bet for fun on people’s livelihoods.

  She rotated her shoulder, the soft jersey of her pearl-gray scoop-neck top sliding off a little. She pulled her aviators off the top of her head and onto her nose, covering her eyes and resisting the urge to look behind her. She felt as though someone was watching her, and she didn’t want to be seen. It was probably just the disturbance of her grandmother being in her head, and everything she now faced—the unknown.

  “The name’s Frankie,” the bald-headed man s
aid, sticking out his stubby hand. “Frankie Caruso.”

  He didn’t look like a Frankie Caruso. He looked like a plain old Bob Smith.

  Lauren accepted his handshake. It wasn’t his fault he was irritating, it was Lauren’s mood. But it might be best to remain anonymous. “Scarlet Juliette Barrett-Bernard,” she said, making up the name on the spur of the moment.

  His eyebrows shot up. “Is that so? What a fancy name.”

  It was as far from Lauren Mackillop as she could get.

  “Child,” her grandmother said. “Don’t put yourself in a situation you can’t easily get out of.”

  What did that mean? The problem was Ava wasn’t a typical granny. She and her sisters were mystics, oracles, and soothsayers and a force to be reckoned with. What Ava had was the gift of insight at its finest. Precognition of the future. Prophetic predictions.

  Unnerving, since she’d warned Lauren about the trashy business partner, but had Lauren listened?

  She was supposed to have this ability, too, and obviously didn’t! Although she’d never wanted the Mackillop gift and was content with the telepathic conversations with her grandmother—which she never spoke about. She didn’t want to believe she had greater powers loitering inside her, ready to burst out. She wouldn’t know what to do with them, for a start.

  “So what’s sending you to Texas, Miss Barrett-Bernard?” Frankie Caruso asked.

  She offered a wan smile. “I just buried my thieving business partner.” The funeral costs had taken a fair whack of her remaining money. “He lost my business in a poker game.” He didn’t deserve to be buried; he deserved to be left to rot in the street. But Lauren had a conscience. “He was shot in the back by underworld crime lords.” That was a lie, but what did a little fib matter now? He’d died choking on a chunk of pineapple—just desserts, if anyone wanted Lauren’s opinion. He’d forged her signature on a new contract that gave him 78 percent ownership of In Need of Loving and the means to dispose of it in any way he saw fit.

  A poker game!

  Frankie Caruso’s jaw went slack. “Right. Well—best of luck, and all that.”

  “I won’t need luck. I have my grandmother.”

  “Looking out for you, is she?”

  Lauren wasn’t sure if Ava was so much looking out for her as forcing her hand. “Something like that.” Her bottom lip trembled and she bit it. She blinked through unexpected tears and turned her head away.

  Going back to Surrender under such demoralizing circumstances hurt. But Donaldson’s Property Development had been hounding the ninety-seven Calamity Valley residents to sell their land, so her family was working on a last-ditch effort at increasing tourist interest, to prove to people there was no need to sell. Lauren was supposed to come up with an idea for Surrender, since she had a small amount of cash and no pressing engagements in life.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t love the valley and her hometown—she did, with every beat of her heart. It was just that she’d left on a high, business plans pouring out of her. Now, she’d lost that business. Who in Surrender would want to listen to her suggestions for commercial growth? She was nothing but a fake, with a suitcase full of other women’s designer clothing and exclusive one-offs.

  She glanced down at the Manolo Blahnik boots she’d bought from a producer’s wife for fifty bucks. Maybe shoes didn’t count…

  At least she wouldn’t be alone in the valley. Her cousin Molly was back in her hometown of Hopeless. Their cousin, Pepper, refused to budge from Arizona though, let alone return to her hometown of Reckless. And here was Lauren, on her way to Surrender, to do—what? She didn’t have a clue, but she had a niggling feeling her grandmother was up to something.

  A movement in the queue brought her out of her thoughts. A guy in an airline uniform was walking along the line of people, explaining something.

  Thank goodness! It looked like they’d be underway soon. All this waiting around wasn’t doing anything for her nerves.

  She squared her shoulders and inhaled deeply. That wasn’t the way to think. She was going home and she had a job to do. Just because she’d made a huge error of judgment in the recent past didn’t mean she’d make another.

  “I’m sorry, people,” the airline employee said, apologetic and defensive all at once. “Traffic is experiencing gate hold and taxi delays are long. There’s nothing we can do about it. You’ve got a five-hour holdup.”

  Lauren sighed. Great start to the rest of my life.

  *

  Mark Sterrett was used to dealing with whatever came his way. He took life in his stride. But the job he was about to embark on had been forced on him, and he wasn’t in the best of moods. Not that his grim expression had made any difference to the guy with the bald head now sitting opposite him.

  “It’s hot in Texas,” the guy said, continuing a conversation that had been mostly one-sided and going on for a few minutes.

  Mark picked a pretzel from the bag he’d bought and munched on it. The little guy had taken a seat at the café table in Terminal One, LAX without asking but Mark pushed the packet of pretzels toward him, not wanting to be selfish just because his life had hit the pits.

  “We get all kinds of weather, mind you. Not just heat, you know?”

  “I know.” Mark wasn’t a true Texan, but he’d been living in Laredo for six years after moving from California and had recently discovered what heat could do to a man. Although he wasn’t referring to the weather.

  He glanced at the departure board. There was still over a three-hour delay to get through before he boarded for Amarillo, picked up a rental car and got himself to Surrender in Calamity Valley, nestled against the Palo Duro Canyon. Lost and forgotten. But apparently with valuable real estate potential.

  “If you’re heading to west Texas,” the jokester said, digging into the packet of pretzels, “it can be drier than the heart of a haystack and windier than a fifty-pound bag of whistling lips.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  “Or you might find yourself in the middle of panhandle rain. That’s what we call a dust storm. We get four seasons in Texas—all of ’em big ones.”

  “Thanks for the advice,” Mark said and spun the packet of pretzels his way again.

  “Wherever you’re going, you’ll want to watch your back ’cause of the heat.”

  Mark had cause to take very good care of his back and was only heading to the panhandle in order to protect everyone else’s.

  “So what were you doing in LA?” the bald guy asked.

  “Family issues.”

  “What business are you in?”

  Up until a month ago he’d been a ghostwriter—making up stories for others. More recently—“Property development.”

  “Looks like business is good,” the guy said, raising his eyebrows at Mark’s attire.

  He resisted the urge to straighten his shoulders beneath the soft leather bomber jacket. Some author had given it to him as added repayment for ghostwriting a biography about a relative who’d flown in World War II. He also owned a cowboy hat purportedly belonging to some cowpoke who’d run a cattle drive from Texas to the railroads in Kansas, and other gear handed over to him in appreciation of his services. He kept these gifts packed away like souvenirs on a high shelf that no one ever dusted, but the jacket he was fond of. He’d worn it so often, it was at that perfect lived-in stage, although it was designer and pricey, and that obviously still showed. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d normally buy for himself.

  He didn’t see money as the be-all and end-all—although he liked that he had some. He worked hard for what was in his bank account, on his own terms and under his own steam. Some might say it was a wasted talent, giving all those plots and storylines to someone else who’d reap the reward, but that was his preference. Grab a good deal, dollarwise, prove his worth with the written word, then move on. Life was meant for living, not sweating. And after a hard day’s writing, there was nothing like a visit to the local bar, or a friendly li
ttle poker game with the boys in the back room, to clear a man’s head and make him forget about the trials of the day.

  But his father had put a halt to all that, so here he was, heading to Surrender. No longer working under his own conditions. The quick trip to LA had been necessary to ensure his mom and three sisters were okay and that they had no idea what was going on, or what might happen to them if Mark messed up in the next couple of weeks.

  “Think I’ll take a walk,” he said to the bald-headed guy. “Keep them,” he added as he pushed his chair back to stand and nudged the packet of pretzels the man’s way.

  “Thanks. See you around, maybe.”

  Mark smiled but didn’t answer. It was unlikely. He’d get this job in Surrender done, ensuring his mom and sisters were safe, then attempt to not go find his father and kill him.

  Twenty minutes later, he was leaning against a pillar, feet crossed at the ankle, arms folded over his chest, trying not to look at the departure board for the fiftieth time hoping for a positive update.

  All around him, people were dozing on hard chairs, mouths open in sleep. Kids were getting scratchy and tired. Parents were making further demands of the now frazzled airline staff as to when they’d get to board a plane.

  He ran his gaze over the heads of the many weary travelers until his sight settled on a distant corner and a woman sitting on a row of plastic chairs someone had just put out.

  For a second he thought he was seeing things. Was it her?

  Lauren Mackillop—the woman he was going to be snooping on.

  His heart rate picked up, and any frustration he’d been experiencing got washed away in a rush of adrenaline. Donaldson’s Property Developers had given him photos of her, taken from press releases when she’d opened her boutique. They’d given him a brief dossier on all the Mackillop women after he’d agreed to do business with them—like he’d had a choice.

  There were three grandmothers, each with a granddaughter, and someone called Momma Marie who ran a hair salon and a takeout in one of the towns. There was a lot of superstition surrounding these grandmothers. Three sisters, known as Wild Ava, Crazy Alice, and Mad Aurora, all with some ability to tell fortunes or weave spells.