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Guarding The Soldier's Secret
Kathleen Creighton
A sexy soldier comes back from the dead to protect his daughter and her beautiful guardian.Desperate to save his young daughter’s life, widowed soldier Hunt Grainger tasked war correspondent Yancy Malone with smuggling Laila to the U.S. Now, years later, Yancy and Laila are back in Afghanistan—and face to face with the man they both thought was dead.Hunt is desperate to reconnect with the child he barely knows and the headstrong redhead he never forgot. When Laila and Yancy are targeted by a group hell-bent on revenge, Hunt’s protective instincts kick into overdrive. Their only option: hide out at Yancy’s family ranch until the threat subsides. But Hunt’s own secrets might lead everyone he loves into even more danger!
A sexy soldier comes back from the dead to protect his daughter and her beautiful guardian.
Desperate to save his young daughter’s life, soldier Hunt Grainger tasked war correspondent Yancy Malone with smuggling Laila to the US. Now, years later, Yancy and Laila are back in Afghanistan—and face-to-face with the man they both thought was dead.
Hunt is desperate to reconnect with the child he barely knows and the headstrong redhead he never forgot. When Laila and Yancy are targeted by a group hell-bent on revenge, Hunt’s protective instincts kick into overdrive. Their only option: hide out at Yancy’s family ranch until the threat subsides. But Hunt’s own secrets might lead everyone he loves into even more danger!
“What kind of person do you think I am?”
“I don’t really know that,” Hunt said. “Do I?”
“You know a whole lot more about me than I do about you.” Yancy threw that at him, tight and quivering with emotions, three years worth of fear and uncertainty and unanswered questions. “I live my life in the public eye. You live yours in the shadows. You’re a—a—”
“Ghost?” A single word, spoken softly in the darkness.
Her chest constricted with the pain of remembering. She gave a helpless whimper of a laugh and turned away from him.
“Why did I keep Laila with me, and not hand her off to some stranger?” She paused, then took a careful breath and answered truthfully. “At first, I guess it was because she seemed so…lost. So scared. The way she looked at me…as if she trusted me.”
“I told her she could.”
How different his voice sounded. Did she only imagine it was emotion she heard? Or was she projecting her own inner turmoil onto him? Surely the Hunt Grainger she knew would never allow himself to be caught in such an unguarded moment.
But then, I really don’t know him at all.
* * *
Stay tuned for the next book in Kathleen Creighton’s Scandals of Sierra Malone miniseries.
If you’re on Twitter, tell us what you think of Harlequin Romantic Suspense! #harlequinromsuspense (https://twitter.com/hashtag/harlequinromsuspense)
Dear Reader (#ulink_b299003c-63a6-5638-af9a-540ca9555edc),
It’s been a while since I last asked you to journey with me to beautiful June Canyon, California, where reclusive eccentric billionaire “Sierra” Sam Malone is attempting to atone for a lifetime of scandalous and reckless behavior. It was not my intention to stay away so long. After all, there are stories yet to be told, at least two more heirs for Sam to meet, two more granddaughters who may, possibly, come to forgive him. Maybe even learn to love him.
What is it someone supposedly has said? Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans?
Sometimes unexpected events can turn your life in a whole new direction, and it’s not always easy to find your footing on this new and often rocky path. In a way, that’s what happens to Yancy Malone and Hunt Grainger, as something neither of them could have foreseen turns their lives upside down, and sends them on a journey neither of them could have imagined. In the course of this journey they must experience tragedy and danger, duty and sacrifice, heartache and loss, before they can finally come to a place where both can accept, forgive…and love.
This is Yancy and Hunt’s love story, true. But it’s the story of another sort of love, too. The story of how “the soldier’s secret” brings unexpected light and joy to an old man’s heart.
Journey with me now, back to June Canyon…
Kathleen
Guarding the Soldier’s Secret
Kathleen Creighton
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KATHLEEN CREIGHTON has roots deep in the California soil but has relocated to South Carolina. As a child, she enjoyed listening to old-timers’ tales, and her fascination with the past only deepened as she grew older. Today, she is interested in everything—art, music, gardening, zoology, anthropology and history—but people are at the top of her list. She also has a lifelong passion for writing, and now combines all her loves in romance novels.
This book is for my children.
I am never so proud of you as
when life knocks you down,
and you somehow manage to
pick yourselves up and go on,
stronger than ever.
Contents
Cover (#udee035df-2e2d-5e6a-a224-8d7afae200b0)
Back Cover Text (#ua919ed06-238d-5297-a801-e6784bcb2d54)
Dear Reader (#ulink_a998b35b-ccec-5a53-b004-14d5f79883ae)
Title Page (#uce3522f6-f441-5517-820d-ae58cf833858)
About the Author (#uec0e2c1a-370f-5e6c-a43d-f72ecad31e28)
Dedication (#u474db279-5318-54d9-bb47-a2924fe0de22)
Introduction (#ulink_90a84a09-f5d9-5805-95ad-35d14f7915eb)
Prologue (#ulink_8f51e9ec-41c8-51fa-8322-bf048ea36889)
PART I (#ulink_874a016c-943b-5eca-97f2-dca77561a9ee)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_bc3ca139-2e10-5e50-973b-2910991217fe)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_ea2a7e85-0eae-5e78-9f7a-3bcb604754b7)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_6d0683bc-64f3-5d7e-a4d5-52b20788a4a8)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_79a008d7-5d10-585e-a056-baf7fb425c91)
Chapter 5 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 6 (#litres_trial_promo)
PART II (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 7 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Introduction (#ulink_cc606a01-bcb7-57ed-b8cb-49391f121931)
From the Memoirs of Sierra Sam Malone:
The day the railroad bulls beat me to a pulp and threw me off the train in the middle of a California desert, I wouldn’t have bet a wooden nickel on my chances of living to see another sunrise. Who would have thought I’d live to become one of the richest men in the country and make movies and hobnob with the biggest and brightest stars in Hollywood. Hobnob, hell, I bought and sold ’em.
Married one, too.
Barbara Chase wasn’t the first beautiful woman fool enough to marry me, but after she left her baby girl with a sitter and her clothes on a Malibu beach and walked into the sunset, I swore she’d be the last. The way I’d treated my first wife, Elizabeth, causing her to want no part of me in her life or our son’s, and now Barbara taking the way out she did, made it pretty clear to me I was not fit husband material. Or father material, either, for that matter. Which is why I sent my baby daughter off to be raised by Barbara’s folks in Nebraska.
Which turned out to be another mistake, but that’s another story.
So, I had sworn off love, after Barbara, though not off women. No...never off women. Of those there was always a plentiful supply, easily available and more than willing to please me. Mine for the taking. And I took without conscience or regrets.
When Katherine came to me with a sensible business proposition, I thought it seemed like a good idea at the time. Power and prestige, in exchange for the thing that mattered the least to me—money. The funny thing was, we were a good match, Kate and I, and we lasted longer than either of us expected.
But when tragedy struck, we lacked the one thing that might have seen us through the storm. And that was love.
Prologue (#ulink_a30d7cf2-50ad-543d-a15c-b5cf5edb6d6a)
Somewhere in eastern Afghanistan
Three years previous
Laila loved puppies. She was sure there wasn’t anything in the whole world cuter than puppies. Except maybe baby goats. And lambs, of course. She liked the way the lambs sucked on her fingers when they were just born and hadn’t figured out there wasn’t any milk there for them to drink.
Laila’s mother said she liked puppies, too, but not in the house. She said the puppies and their mother had to stay outside, but she made them a nice bed from one of her old tshaaderis, behind the storage house where part of the neighbor’s wall had fallen down and made a sort of cave. It was just big enough for Laila to squeeze inside when she wanted to visit the puppies. It was nice and warm in there, but it was also cool when the sun got too hot. The mother dog liked it, too, because she could see what was outside but nobody could see her or her puppies.
It was a good place. A safe place.
On that day, Laila went one last time to say good-night to the puppies. She knew it was time to go inside for supper and to learn the lessons her mother was teaching her. Someday she would go to school—her mother had told her so—and she must be ready so the other children wouldn’t think she was stupid. But it was so much fun to hold the puppies under her chin and feel them tickle her neck with their little wet noses and hear the cute grunting sounds puppies make, while the mother dog watched, not minding at all. Laila’s mother had already called her once, but...oh, just a few more minutes, she told herself, and then she would go.
She heard a new sound and caught a breath and held it so she could listen. Yes—it was a truck coming along the dirt road, coming to their house! Not very many people came this way, especially not in a truck. Laila’s heart gave a little bump. Maybe it was Akaa Hunt! It had been such a long time since he had come to visit.
Carefully she put the puppy she was holding back beside its mother. She was about to crawl out of her hiding place when something stopped her.
The mother dog was growling. It was a scary sound, one Laila had never heard her make before. The yellow hair on the back of the mother dog’s neck was sticking up, and her teeth were showing. They were very big teeth. Slowly Laila backed up and shrank into the shadows, and the mother dog stopped growling and licked her muzzle and whimpered softly, almost, Laila thought, as if she was saying I’m sorry.
Now Laila couldn’t see the truck because it had stopped in front of the house. She wanted to go and find out who had come to visit, but when she started to crawl out of her hiding place, the mother dog put her paw on Laila’s leg and growled even more loudly than before. Laila didn’t want to see those big teeth again, so she crept back farther into the shadows. She stayed very still and quiet, and the mother dog and even the puppies were quiet, too.
Then she heard a new sound. It wasn’t like anything she had ever heard, but it made her more frightened than she’d ever been in her life before. It was high and sharp and terrible, and it made her feel cold inside, like she was going to throw up. It came again and again and again, and Laila put her hands over her ears to shut out the noise.
The worst thing was it sounded like her mother’s voice. But how could that be? Why would her mother make such a terrible sound?
She whimpered, “Ammi, Ammi!” and curled up in a ball and huddled close to the mother dog and the puppies. The mother dog growled softly, way down in her throat. Laila shivered and shivered and couldn’t stop, and after a while she heard the truck doors slam and the truck drive away.
Laila waited for her mother to come and tell her it was time for lessons and supper. But her mother didn’t come.
Laila didn’t want to be a baby, but she couldn’t help it. She cried and whimpered, “Ammi... Ammi...”
The mother dog whined and licked the tears from her face, and after a long, long time, Laila slept.
PART I (#ulink_4f65f62f-57f3-5a06-a11e-c8f3c7b4cfc7)
Afghanistan
Chapter 1 (#ulink_532ec34b-fbb9-59b9-bda4-e21d08a093b9)
The room was dark, but the darkness was not absolute. By staring with wide-open eyes, Yancy could make out shapes against the whitewashed mud-brick walls: the foot of her narrow cot with the slight mound of her feet beneath the blanket; the pile in the far corner that was her personal gear; the table opposite the door and the water jug from last night’s supper.
Nothing appeared out of place. Nothing appeared to be amiss.
But something had awakened her.
Tense and alert, she listened for the faint rustle of clothing, the barely discernible sounds of breath and heartbeat. She heard nothing but her own. And yet she was absolutely certain she was not alone in that room.
Then...a lightning flurry of movement...a sudden sense of bulk and heat...and before she could draw breath to scream, a hand clamped over her mouth. Adrenaline flooded her body and coiled through her muscles, but even as she recognized the futility of struggle, a stirring of breath warmed the shell of her ear, carrying with it the softest of whispers.
“Yankee...it’s me. It’s me.”
The adrenaline froze in her veins. There was a rushing of wind in her ears. She felt an easing of the pressure of the hand covering her mouth and turned her face to escape it before drawing a shallow breath, making an effort to keep her voice light and steady even though she knew he could feel her body’s shaking.
