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Against The Odds
Laura Drake
A love stronger than fear…Ex-Army sniper Douglas “Bear” Steele wants only to be left alone to live a quiet, peaceful existence in the small town of Widow’s Grove. So his attraction to Hope Sanderson is unexpected and inconvenient. Having recently survived a violent bank robbery, Hope has vowed to seize each day and leave behind her safe, ordered life. As Hope and Bear help each other heal, their desire turns to love. But with their lives moving in opposite directions, can they find a balance to let go of the past and embrace the future…together?
A love stronger than fear...
Former army sniper Douglas “Bear” Steele wants only to be left alone to live a quiet, peaceful existence in the small town of Widow’s Grove. So his attraction to Hope Sanderson is unexpected and inconvenient. Having recently survived a violent bank robbery, Hope has vowed to seize each day and leave behind her safe, ordered life. As Hope and Bear help each other heal, their desire turns to love. But with their lives moving in opposite directions, can they find a balance to let go of the past and embrace the future...together?
The flush Hope felt had nothing to do with the sun.
The engine growl changed pitch as the bike slowed. Bear put his feet down and stopped. Her foot was off the peg and reaching for the ground before she realized what she was doing. It was instinct—to help balance and connect with the sweet, sustaining earth.
“Feet up.” His deep voice rolled like thunder through his back and kept going, reverberating through hers.
“Right. Sorry,” she squeaked. They were at the stop sign corner of King’s Highway and Foxen Canyon Road.
“You’re not smiling.”
Her lips were pulled back from her teeth, but it wasn’t quite a smile. “I’ll try.”
“Look at it this way. You wanted to push the envelope, right?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t want to fall off it.”
“I won’t let you fall, Hope.” He took a hand from the grip and patted the arm that was locked around his waist. “Nothing bad will happen to you when you’re with me. I’ll see to it.”
Dear Reader (#ulink_42029302-dba7-547b-b527-6122139392e2),
I never dreamed when I wrote my first book that I’d ever see it in print—much less that it would become a four-book series!
Widow’s Grove has become so real to me (and, I hope, to you) that I feel like I could walk downtown to Hollister Drugs and order one of those great shakes that Sin makes. Or run out to The Tippling Widow Winery. And while I’m out there, I could visit Sam in that beautiful Victorian on the hill…
But this story belongs to Bear. I gave him his very own Angel, as you’ll see when you turn the page.
Now that the last book has been written, I can tell you that you can visit Widow’s Grove! Well, not exactly, but pretty close. I based Widow’s Grove on the central California town of Los Olivos. Sadly, you won’t find the Bar None or The Farmhouse Café, but you will see the Victorians lining the road into town and the flagpole that graces the intersection at the center.
And somewhere, out in those rolling golden hills, is the run-down graying Victorian that began all this so many years ago. I saw it from the back of my husband’s motorcycle in the ’90s. I wouldn’t even know how to find it now, but maybe someday I’ll go back, on my own motorcycle, and cruise the back roads until I do.
I’d like that very much.
Laura Drake
PS: I enjoy hearing from readers. You can contact me and sign up for my newsletter through my website, www.lauradrakebooks.com (http://www.lauradrakebooks.com).
Against the Odds
Laura Drake
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
LAURA DRAKE is a RITA® Award–winning author of romance and women’s fiction. She’s put a hundred thousand miles on her motorcycles, riding the back roads, getting to know the small Western towns that are her books’ settings. She gave up the corporate CFO gig to retire in Texas and is currently working on her accent. In the remaining waking hours, she’s a wife, grandmother and motorcycle chick.
Contents
COVER (#u906bce96-48f9-5c75-bbeb-263f8c8f86b7)
BACK COVER TEXT (#u96d5dcbe-f01b-5158-aefc-dcb2052acdee)
INTRODUCTION (#ueb25e3a3-adf2-5ece-95a0-faa39fc01169)
Dear Reader (#ulink_c554cda9-3a4a-5348-b193-0b03aadd682a)
TITLE PAGE (#ufcf658a7-9bcd-52e0-90b1-c4a773c63a48)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#uae7dbd29-7c18-5d86-8fd1-41cbda326841)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_7f5befdf-a996-57bc-8f09-ed031bb9ca74)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_9b341f4c-2f83-5919-b5e2-bd676449cc50)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_1605edc6-cc09-5f03-a0ca-bc482bdd4e4e)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_559eda9f-7e64-50fb-8880-e510c7f1418d)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ulink_806a2daa-ece9-58f1-84a9-cbeb69b7c52f)
CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_c807c76d-059c-50d2-9958-a6baf9cfaf80)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
EXTRACT (#litres_trial_promo)
COPYRIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_82bbe99a-eb9a-553a-9eb1-d4dd5e3b53fb)
HOPE SANDERSON WOKE to her worst nightmare.
The hand clamped over her mouth smelled of garlic and sweat. She gagged, struggling to get away. A cold circle at her temple made no sense until fetid breath washed over her. “Stop. I have a gun.”
She froze, trying to see through the dark, her heart throwing panicky rabbit beats. Her breath, whistling through her nose, was the only sound in the room. If her body hadn’t screamed for oxygen, she’d have held it, to hear better. A lone intruder? That rustling in the corner, was that another?
What do they want?
Her muscles were strung so tight she thrummed with their vibration. Clamped knees wouldn’t stop them for long, if they intended rape. Her stomach roiled. She locked her jaws tight and swallowed. What would he do if she threw up on him? “Please, no.” It came out muffled by his sausage fingers.
“You promise not to scream, I’ll let go.” A deep scratchy whisper abraded her face.
Her head jerked up and down in a spasm that once started, wouldn’t stop.
The offensive hand withdrew, but the cold circle pressed harder. How did it stay cold, held against a head superheated with speeding thoughts?
Menace emanated from corners unlit by the weak moonlight spilling over the sill. A scuff of carpet in one corner, a wheezing breath from the foot of her bed.
Three of them?
Rape wouldn’t be the worst they could do. Her throat worked, trying to swallow the drought in her mouth.
“Get up.”
When the gunman pushed a finger into the soft underside of her breast, Hope fought the tangle of covers and leaped out of bed. She pulled at her nightgown, trying to cover everything at once, thanking God she wore a floor-length gown. Wishing it covered more.
“Get dressed.”
“Wh-what do you want?”
“You’re taking us to the bank to make a withdrawal. A very large withdrawal.”
A bronchial chuckle from the shadow at the foot of the bed.
They only want money. Of all the scenarios pinging against her skull, that hadn’t been one of them.
Her brain shifted from personal torture to bank manager mode. Procedures outlined what to do in the case of a bank robbery, but were woefully silent on home invasion and kidnapping.
“I can’t get in.” She jumped when the cold circle touched her breast.
“Do you think I’m stupid? You’re the manager. You telling me you don’t have keys?”
“I mean the vault. It’s on time-release. No one can open it until seven.” She snuck a look at the red digital display clock. One ten.
He turned to the shadows. “Fuck. You idiot! How could you not have known that?”
“The guy I talked to didn’t—”
“Shut up, you fool. Jesus, if there was a brain between the two of you...”
The room fell silent enough to hear the spring wind outside the window, whipping the trees to a frenzy. It was nothing compared to the wind that whipped around the corners of her mind. She lived so carefully, tiptoeing around her own life...to have it end like this? “I—I’m sorry.”
“Then we wait. Sit.”
The menace in the corner spoke. “I can think of a way to entertain ourselves for a few hours.”
Hope’s heart convulsed, then throttled up, just short of fibrillation.
The gunman growled, “That is not happening. Now shut the hell up.”
“C-can I put on my clothes?”
“Do it here.”
She pushed down a whimper that scrabbled at her throat, knowing that if it escaped, it wouldn’t be the last, or the loudest. And that would get her killed.
For the first time grateful for the shadows, she fumbled, hands shaking, doing the junior high school gym class quick-change, putting on clothes under her gown, praying all the while that the man with the cold circle could keep his dogs under control. The power that cold circle could have over my life. Or death.
When she was dressed, he led the way to her neat living room. He demanded darkness, docility and dead silence. Silence that made her thoughts scratch and skitter like manic rats in an unsolvable maze.
As it turned out, it was possible to be pee-her-pants terrified for five straight hours.
At six thirty, he stood, and with a gun prod, informed her she was driving them to the bank. She led the way to the carport, and her Camry. Black velvet overhead, but a strip of deep charcoal at the eastern edge of the sky was proof this night wouldn’t be interminable after all.
Hands in a death grip on the wheel, she drove to Santa Maria precisely, conscious that rather than a rescue, a traffic cop’s stop would mean death. His, hers, someone’s.
In the shifting spotlights of the streetlamps, she saw her captors for the first time. The gunman beside her was swarthy with a three-day beard, broad nose, narrow eyes topped by a watch cap. In the rearview mirror the bronchial one was extremely thin, his hollow cheeks gray with straggly stubble. The one who’d wanted to be entertained in the bedroom was large, bald and mean-looking—a mug shot poster child.
They’re not worried about you identifying them. Hysteria ricocheted through her, looking for a way out.
“Park around back. We’ll go in there.” He held the gun in his lap, the deadly cold circle at the end pointed at her.
Hands clenched white on the wheel, Hope pulled into the rear parking lot of her Community Bank building sitting cockeyed on the corner, a strip mall at its back.
