Overprotective Cowboy: A Mulbury Boys Novel (Hope Eternal Ranch Romance Book 2) Read online

Emma simply stared after him, her mind whirring like a blender. He wanted her to call Robert and see if he was interested in having another relationship with her? Was he insane?

  “No,” she murmured to herself as he rounded a corner and disappeared from her sight. “He just broke up with you.”

  The next couple of days passed in a haze. Friday morning, Emma woke to two texts. One from Missy, who’d asked if she could call Emma after school. She didn’t say what for, but Emma said, yes, of course, sweetie. Just tell me what time so I can make sure I’m available.

  The other text was from Robert Knight. Her stomach flipped and her eyebrows drew down as she looked at the text. The words were in English, but she didn’t understand them. See you at twelve-thirty for lunch. Can’t wait!

  “Twelve-thirty for lunch?” she looked up, as if someone would be standing there in her bedroom to remind her that she’d texted Robert earlier in the week—mere minutes after Ted had broken up with her, in fact—and set up this lunch with him.

  She scrolled back up through the conversation, and everything came flooding back to her. She’d reached out to him to tell his son congratulations on his graduation for her. Things had gone from there, and she’d been the one to suggest lunch on Friday.

  She supposed she thought Friday would never come. Every minute on the ranch with Ted was torture, and stringing sixty of them together to make an hour made her head ache. Then the hours became days, and as time marched on, Friday had arrived.

  Someone knocked on her door, and a moment later, Ginger eased through it. “Hey, Sunshine,” she said, her voice low and her smile high. “How are you today?”

  “Okay,” Emma said, wondering why Ginger was treating her like a wounded animal. “I’m getting up.” She stood, realizing how much actual sunshine was pouring through the slats in her blinds. “What time is it? I’m so late.” She thought of the foals, and she wondered if she could skip showering.

  It wouldn’t be the first time. Wait. Yes, it would.

  She turned toward Ginger, who she now noticed held a cup of tea, which she extended toward Emma. “What’s going on?”

  “You’ve kind of…disappeared?” Ginger guessed.

  “Where did I go?” Emma sat back down on the bed and sipped her tea.

  “You just…well, here’s an example. Yesterday, I got a call that we had a rogue tourist on the ranch, walking through the stables in their pajamas.”

  Emma looked up from her teacup, so many memories flashing through her mind. Horror filled her as her eyes rounded.

  “It was you, Em,” Ginger said, sitting next to her and patting her leg. “Bill didn’t even recognize you.”

  “That’s because I’ve been hiding behind makeup and jewelry and cute clothes for a long time,” Emma said.

  “Mm,” Ginger said. “Are you sure that’s it?”

  “What else would it be?”

  “Maybe you fell in love with Ted Burrows.”

  “Please,” Emma said, scoffing. “With everything else I have going on, Ted is at the bottom of the list.”

  “Okay,” Ginger said, but her tone suggested that she didn’t believe Emma.

  The words scraped against Emma’s own feelings besides. She knew the reason she’d given up putting on her perfect persona was because of Ted. Unhappiness filtered through her, but she didn’t know what to do about it.

  Yes, she told herself, and she had the distinct feeling she would’ve said it out loud had Ginger not been in the room with her. You know what to do. Work things out with Robert. Get Missy here. Talk to Ted.

  That was why she’d texted Robert—to get Ted back.

  “Thanks for the tea,” she said, handing the cup back to Ginger. “I’m going to shower.” She went through all the motions, and today, she did plait her hair just so, and paint on the pretty eyeliner, and put the perfect smile on her face.

  She didn’t do much in terms of working in the office, and by the time the alarm on her phone went off, the West Wing was quiet and empty. No fanfare for Emma as she took her keys from the hook by the door and left the house. No one to wish her luck. No one to say a prayer with her.

  So she wished herself good luck, and she kept a steady stream of silent prayers running through her mind as she made the solitary drive to town. Somehow, she knew where she and Robert had agreed to meet, and she saw him waiting beside a huge black truck when she turned into the parking lot, driving her decade-old car.

  Everything about the two of them was opposite, and she wondered what she’d ever seen in him. Had she once envisioned a future with him? If so, how had she thought that would work?

  When she thought of next year, or five years from now, she wanted just two things: Ted and Missy.

  Well, and her job at the ranch, and maybe that teacup piglet.

  She’d never looked forward to the future the way she was now, and she knew that switch had been flipped by Ted Burrows.

  Emma got out of the car and approached Robert, her pulse pounding in her ears.

  “Emma.” Robert laughed, and his deep, rich voice struck a chord in Emma. She let him swoop her into a hug, as if no time at all had passed between them. As if he hadn’t simply left town one day without a word. As if she hadn’t then hidden her pregnancy from everyone and lived the last ten years as a near-hermit while she paid someone else to raise her daughter.

  “Hello, Robert,” she said. “Should we go in?” It was much too hot to stand around outside, and she wanted to get down to business.

  “Sure.” He tried to take her hand as they walked toward the restaurant, but Emma deftly slipped it away from him.

  “How long are you going to be in town?” she asked while he held the door open for her.

  “Oh, I don’t know.” He blew his breath out, and Emma had heard that before. I don’t know for Robert meant he wasn’t there to stay. He could come or go, according to his whims—and he did.

  “Jason’s graduating,” Emma said.

  “Yes.” He signaled to the hostess that there would be two of them, and she led them to a table. Emma kept breathing in and out while they settled down, looked at the menu, and ordered drinks.

  Then she leaned toward him and said, “Listen, Robert, the reason I wanted to meet with you is because I have to tell you something.”

  He reached for his water glass, his keen eyes missing nothing. “Okay.”

  Emma swallowed, finding her throat beyond dry. She too reached for her water and took a small sip. Her stomach raged at her to flee from this place. Keep her mouth shut, and just go back to the system they’d been using before. It had worked. No one had gotten hurt.

  At the same time, her heart wailed at her that it had been hurt. She was terribly lonely, and she wanted her daughter with her. She wanted to build a family with Ted.

  In that moment, she realized just how right Ginger had been. Maybe she had started to fall in love with Ted Burrows.

  That thought gave her the confidence and strength she needed to open her mouth and say, “We have a ten-year-old daughter, and I thought you should finally know.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ted’s phone rang as he put the last bite of his turkey sandwich in his mouth. Paula huffed and laid down, and Ted felt a bit bad that he hadn’t shared with the dog. He’d meant to, but his mind had been a maze the past few days.

  The only thing anchoring him to the earth right now was his job. And Nate and Connor.

  He looked at his phone, his heartbeat stuttering over itself. Emma’s name sat on the screen.

  He knocked the phone off his leg in his haste to answer it, and he muttered under his breath as he picked it up and swiped the call on. “Emma?”

  “…I just think you should try to see reason,” Emma said, her voice quite high-pitched. “Think about it, Robert. What are you going to do? Keep me locked up in your huge house? Until when? My friends will know I’m gone. They know I went to lunch with you today.”

  Ted hadn’t known that, but he sprang to his
feet and started toward the homestead. He needed another phone to call the police, because Emma was in trouble.

  Emma was with Robert.

  Robert was not happy, if the curt, blunt tone of his voice was any indication. “I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said. “But you don’t get to make decisions for me, Emma.”

  Ted wasn’t sure what that meant, and he broke into a jog. “Get him to say where you are,” he said, hoping Emma could hear him but Robert couldn’t. “I need an address, Emma.”

  “How long have you had this house?” she asked him. “It’s nice, out here in the hills.”

  Out in the hills.

  Huge house.

  There couldn’t be that many of those, could there?

  Ted had obviously forgotten he lived in Texas.

  “Rockwood Estates,” Emma said. “These are new. How long have you lived here?”

  “I don’t live here,” Robert said, his voice dark and cold. “I have fractional ownership in a cabin here. My son and I are staying here for a couple of days until he leaves on his senior trip with his mother.”

  “Fractional ownership?’

  “Yes, it means I can use the cabin for seventeen weeks out of the year. I just have to arrange it with the other owners.”

  Ted didn’t know how to call for help on one phone and listen to the conversation on the other. But he picked up the landline in the Annex and dialed 911 anyway. “Hang on, Emma,” he mumbled, muting his end of the call. He could still hear her, but she couldn’t hear him.

  “Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?’

  “Yes, hi,” Ted said, pacing in the kitchen. The run from the river to the Annex had taken something from him too. “My…this woman I know is being held against her will.”

  “She is?” the operator asked. “Did she get abducted?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. It was entirely possible that she’d gotten into Robert’s truck of her own volition.

  “You don’t know?”

  “I don’t know,” Ted said, and he wasn’t sure of anything anymore. “She called me on my other phone, and she sounds afraid, and she said things like he’s going to lock her up in his huge house in the hills.”

  “Wow, this place is nice,” Emma said while the emergency services operator asked Ted another question. But he couldn’t hear it, because he needed to listen to Emma.

  “Fishing Run Cabin,” she said. “Did you name it that?”

  “You really have forgotten everything about me,” Robert said. “I don’t fish, Emma.” He said it in a sarcastic, cruel voice, and Ted needed to get emergency help there quickly.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” the woman said. “But if she hasn’t actually been abducted, I can’t send an officer out.”

  “I think she’s in trouble.”

  “Okay,” the woman said. “Why do you think that?”

  “Gut instinct,” he said.

  “Do you know where she is?”

  “Fishing Run Cabin?”

  The woman sad something and started tapping on her keyboard, the strokes of it so loud in his ear. “No Fishing Run Cabin,” she said. “Sir, this line is for emergencies only. Do you have an emergency?”

  “Yes,” he said, practically barking the word. “My friend has been taken to Fishing Run Cabin.”

  “Wow, Robert,” Emma said on the other line. “Look at this place.” He paused, because she didn’t seem to be talking or acting like a woman scared for her life.

  “Sorry,” Ted said. “I have to go.” He hung up while the operator attempted to say something.

  He looked to the bowl where the other cowboys kept their keys. Technically, Ted wasn’t supposed to leave the ranch. But, he could leave with Emma. So he’d get to her, and then they’d be together, and it wouldn’t matter that he’d broken the rules—again.

  Without second-guessing himself, he grabbed a set of keys and went out to the garage. Emma had gone silent on the call, though the timer indicating how long they’d talked continued to tick.

  He wasn’t even sure whose keys he’d grabbed. He used the fob to honk the horn, and that was how he got behind the wheel of a ratty, once-white pickup. He couldn’t think too hard about what he was doing, or he’d turn around and go back inside.

  Instead, he drove past the gate, over the bridge, and off the ranch.

  Twenty minutes later, no one had pulled him over. He’d even passed a police cruiser going the other way, and he hadn’t suddenly spun around, spit gravel behind his tires, and come after Ted.

  His phone had told him to turn right, and Ted eased the ancient truck off the highway and onto a dirt road. His heart pounded in the back of his throat, because he couldn’t see very far down the road, and trees stood tightly against it.

  Anyone could be anywhere, and they’d surprise him. His muscles bunched, and tension radiated from the front of his body to the back. He’d felt like this before—during the fight in the office, at his trial, on the way to the federal correctional facility. The low-security prison had very few fights, but there had been a couple, and Ted thought of his friends still in River Bay.

  Determination filled him. He would always fight for what was right, and going to Emma’s aid was right.

  “She called you,” he told himself. The call had ended only a few minutes after he’d left Hope Eternal Ranch, and he hadn’t dared call her back.

  He eased around a corner, and a gate loomed ahead. Made of red and brown bricks, it stood sentinel on both sides of the dirt road, and the Texas flag protruded from the top of it on the left. On the right, a sign said Fishing Run Cabin.

  A brief moment of relief calmed him, because he’d made it. Funny how his app on his phone had found this address, but the emergency operator hadn’t.

  He turned another corner, and a massive cabin came into view. Made of logs and glass, it was easily the biggest house Ted had ever seen. A set of stairs led up to the wide front deck that wrapped around the sides of the cabin, and that shiny, black truck Ted had seen before sat out front.

  Ted pressed on the brake and stopped. The entire front of the three-story cabin sat in front of him, and if anyone looked out of any of the windows, they’d see him. “They probably already have,” he muttered, and he pulled right up next to Robert’s truck.

  Ted got out of the truck, his cowboy boots crunching against the gravel and dirt beneath them. He looked around, trying to see everything at once. The trees had been cleared around the cabin, and anyone could come out of the thicket at any time.

  Ted stayed behind the black truck and his open door, listening. He couldn’t hear anything but the rustling of leaves with the breeze and something else he couldn’t identify. Perhaps the distant sound of music playing from somewhere inside the house.

  Ted left his door open so the slam of it wouldn’t disrupt the silence out here, and he edged away from the front of the cabin. Around the back, a set of double doors entered the cabin on the bottom level, and the music became louder.

  It came from down the hall to the right, and something whispered to Ted that he wouldn’t find Emma that way.

  He started up the steps, moving slowly and wondering what he was going to do when he ran into someone. He’d just broken into their house.

  Panic filled him, and he nearly ran back out the double doors, leaving them open behind him. “Stupid,” he muttered under his breath as he went back around to the front of the house. He was playing this all wrong, and he was going to go back to prison because of it.

  “Not happening,” he told himself. He was allowed to be off the ranch with Emma. He was. He went straight to the pickup he’d arrived in and slammed the door shut. He walked up the front steps of the cabin, trying to think of a reason why he’d have come down this deserted road to this luxury cabin in the woods.

  He lifted his hand and knocked, his pulse racing. He didn’t expect anyone to answer, because why would a criminal who’d just kidnapped a woman come to the door?

  No one did
come, and Ted wasn’t sure what to do. This was a big place, and maybe no one had heard his knock. He looked for and found a doorbell, not a moment’s of hesitation before he reached for it.

  He could hear it peal through the whole house, and he waited, his heart knocking against his ribcage. Leaning closer, he could hear a man’s voice, then footsteps coming closer, and Ted pulled away just as the door opened.

  Robert Knight stood there, and though Ted had never met him face-to-face, his was a face Ted knew well. He’d looked at it in enough files to have it memorized, even if he didn’t have an affinity for remembering every face he saw.

  A growl filled the man’s expression, and he asked, “What do you want? This is private property.” He leaned into the doorway, not letting Ted see past him at all, the door only open a couple of feet at most.

  Ted would not put his hands on another human being, though his fingers fisted as he stared into the other man’s dark eyes.

  He forced a chuckle from his mouth. “My truck ran out of gas. I managed to push it down here, and I was wondering if you could give me a ride back to town.” He kept the smile on his face and hooked his thumb over his shoulder to the ratty pickup truck.

  Robert narrowed his eyes, never looking away from Ted. “Don’t you have a phone?”

  Ted’s smile slipped, his phone in his pocket suddenly very heavy. “It died,” he said, his throat so dry. Robert wasn’t going to let him in the house, and if he had Emma here, he wasn’t going to drive him back to town.

  The two men stood there, staring at one another, and Ted’s fear multiplied. He was bigger than Robert—slightly, but definitely taller, with more bulk in his muscles thanks to the time he’d had to work out over the past six years in prison.

  Robert seemed to know Ted was lying, and he finally said, “I can’t help you,” and started to close the door.

  Ted stuck his boot out and stopped the movement. “Where’s Emma?” he demanded.

  Robert’s eyes widened, and Ted pushed against the door, sending the other man backward into the house. Ted took a step inside, then another, trying to assess the situation, where entrances and exits were, furniture he could put between him and Robert, all of it.