The Rancher and the Runaway Bride and The Bluest Eyes in Texas Part 1

TEXAS BRIDES.

JOAN JOHNSTON.

Dear Reader, I had no idea when I wrote The Rancher & the Runaway Bride that I was starting a dynasty that would encompa.s.s three generations of Whitelaws in Texas. I grew up in a large family-six girls and one boy-and I always wondered what it might have been like to have older brothers. For heroine Tate Whitelaw, her brothers Garth, Jesse and Faron, turn out to be a little more protective than she would like. When they set boundaries that she finds too constraining, she heads off on an adventure that lands her in trouble-and leads her to her one true love.

I hope you'll enjoy this book in my HAWK'S WAY series, which follows the lives and loves of a powerful and prolific Texas ranching family.

Long after writing The Bluest Eyes in Texas, I'm still writing about Texas Rangers and making them my heroes. They're a fascinating, elite breed of modern-day lawmen who remain renegades and lone wolves. Burr Covington is one of my favorites!

I have no trouble picturing "the bluest eyes in Texas" because my heroine's eyes aren't really blue-they're the color of Texas bluebonnets, which are actually a striking lavender. I have pictures of my children playing among those glorious Texas wildflowers, which blanket the hill country in south Texas each spring.

I invite you along as Burr Covington, a Texas Ranger from the wrong side of the tracks, rescues the governor's "ice princess" daughter from kidnappers, and then falls head over heels for The Bluest Eyes in Texas.

I love hearing from you! You can contact me through my Web site at www.joanjohnston.com. Be sure to sign up on my mailing list if you'd like to get notice of upcoming t.i.tles.

Happy reading!.

THE RANCHER & THE RUNAWAY BRIDE.

Chapter 1.

"MAY I KISS YOU good night, Tate?"

"Of course you can, Hank."

"Your brothers-"

"Forget about them! I'm a grown woman. I certainly don't need permission from Faron or Garth to give you a simple little good-night kiss." Tate Whitelaw stepped closer to the tall cowboy and slipped her arms around his neck. The bright light over the front door didn't quite reach to the corner of the railed porch where she was standing with Hank.

Hank took advantage of Tate's invitation, drawing her into his arms behind one of the ma.s.sive fluted columns that graced the front of the house and aligning their bodies from breast to hip. She was uncomfortably aware of his arousal, since only two layers of denim-her jeans and his-separated their warm flesh. His mouth sought hers, and his tongue thrust inside. It was more than a simple good-night kiss, and Tate suddenly found herself wis.h.i.+ng she hadn't been quite so encouraging.

"Hank-" she gasped, pulling her head back and trying to escape his ardor. "I don't think-"

Hank's arms tightened around her, and Tate found herself in a wrestling match. She struggled to get the heels of her hands to his shoulders to push him away. He gripped her short black hair with one hand and angled her face for his kiss.

"Hank! S-stop it!" she hissed.

Caught up in his l.u.s.t, Hank was oblivious to Tate's urgently whispered entreaties. Tate had already decided it was time to take desperate action when the issue was taken out of her hands. Literally.

Tate knew someone had arrived on the scene when Hank gave a grunt of surprise as he was jerked away from her. Her brother Faron had a handful of Hank's Western s.h.i.+rt in his grasp and was holding the young man at arm's length.

"What the h.e.l.l do you think you're doing with my sister?" Faron demanded.

Hank blinked owlishly. "Kissing her?"

"Who the h.e.l.l gave you permission to kiss her?"

"I did!" Tate said through gritted teeth. Fisted hands on hips, chin up, she faced her brother defiantly. "Who gave you permission to interfere!"

"When I see my kid sister getting mauled-"

"I can take care of myself!"

Faron arched a brow, and Tate knew it was because she hadn't denied the fact she was being mauled. Hank had just been a little exuberant, that was all. She could have escaped her predicament without her brother's interference.

To Tate's horror, Garth shoved open the front screen door and asked, "What in blue blazes is going on out here?"

"I found this coyote forcing his attentions on Tate," Faron said.

Garth stepped onto the porch, and if the sheer size of him didn't intimidate, the fierce scowl on his face surely would have. "That true?" Garth demanded of Hank.

Hank gulped. "Perspiration dripped at his temple. The color left his face. "Well, sir..." He looked to Tate for rescue.

Tate watched Garth's lips flatten into a grim line as he exchanged a decisive look with Faron. Hank had been tried and convicted. All that was left was sentencing.

"Get your b.u.t.t out of here," Garth said to Hank. "And don't come back."

Faron gave Hank a pretty good shove in the right direction, and Garth's boot finished the job. Hank stumbled down the porch steps to his pickup, dragged open the door, gunned the engine and departed in a swirl of gravel and choking dust.

There was a moment of awful silence while the dust settled. Tate fought the tears that threatened. She would never let her brothers know how humiliated she felt! But there was nothing wrong with giving them the lash of her tongue. She turned and stared first into Garth's stern, deep brown eyes, and then into Faron's more concerned gray-green ones.

"I hope you're both happy!" she snapped. "That's the fourth man in a month you've run off the ranch."

"Now, Tate," Faron began. "Any man who won't stand up to the two of us isn't worth having for a beau."

"Don't patronize me!" she raged. "I won't be placated like a baby with a rattle. I'm not three. I'm not even thirteen. I'm twenty-three. I'm a woman, and I have a woman's needs."

"You don't need to be manhandled," Garth said. "And I won't stand by and let it happen."

"Me neither," Faron said.

Tate hung her head. When she raised it again, her eyes were glistening with tears that blurred her vision. "I could have handled Hank myself," she said in a quiet voice. "You have to trust me to make my own decisions, my own mistakes."

"We don't want to see you hurt," Faron said, laying a hand on Tate's shoulder.

Tate stiffened. "And you think I wasn't hurt by what happened here tonight?"

Garth and Faron exchanged another look. Then Faron said, "Maybe your pride was p.r.i.c.ked a little, but-"

"A little!" Tate jerked herself from Faron's grasp. "You're impossible! Both of you! You don't know the first thing about what I want or need. You can't imagine what it's like to have every step you take watched to make sure you don't fall down. Maybe it made sense when I was a baby, but I'm grown-up now. I don't need you standing guard over me."

"Like you didn't need our help tonight?" Garth asked in a cold voice.

"I didn't!" Tate insisted.

Garth grabbed her chin and forced her face up to his. "You have no idea what a man's pa.s.sions can lead him to do, little sister. I have no intention of letting you find out. Until the right man comes along-"

"There's no man who'll come within a hundred miles of this place now," Tate retorted bitterly. "My loving brothers have seen to that! You're going to keep me a virgin until I dry up and-"

Garth's fingers tightened painfully on her jaw, forcing her to silence. She saw the flash of fury in his dark eyes. A muscle flexed in his jaw. At last he said, "You'd better go to your room and think about what happened here tonight. We'll talk more about this tomorrow."

"You're not my father!" Tate spat. "I won't be sent to my room like a naughty child!"

"You'll go, or I'll take you there," Garth threatened.

"She can't go anywhere until you let go of her chin," Faron pointed out.

Garth shot a rueful look at his brother, then released Tate. "Good night, Tate," he said.

Tate had learned there were only two sides to Garth's arguments: his and the wrong one. Her stomach was churning. Her chest felt so tight it was hard to breathe, and her throat had a lump in it that made swallowing painful. Her eyes burned with tears that she would be d.a.m.ned if she'd shed!

She looked from Garth to Faron and back again. Garth's face was a granite mask of disapproval, while Faron's bore a look of sympathetic understanding. Tate knew they loved her. It was hard to fight their good intentions. Yet their love was smothering her. They would not let her live!

Her mother had died when she was born, and she had been raised by her father and her three brothers, Garth, Faron and Jesse. Their father had died when Tate was eight. Jesse had left home then, and Garth and Faron had been responsible for her ever since. It was a responsibility they had taken very seriously. She had been kept cloistered at Hawk's Way, more closely guarded than a novice in a convent. If she went anywhere off the ranch, one of her brothers came along.

When Tate was younger she'd had girlfriends to share her troubles with. As she got older, she discovered that the females she met were more interested in getting an introduction to her brothers than in being her friend. Eventually, she had simply stopped inviting them.

Tate hadn't even been allowed to go away to college. Instead she had taken correspondence courses to get her degree in business. She had missed the social interaction with her peers, the experience of being out on her own, that would have prepared her to deal with the Hanks of the world.

However, Garth and Faron had taught her every job that had to be done on a ranch, from branding and castrating to vaccinating and breeding. She wasn't naive. No one could be raised on a ranch and remain totally innocent. She had seen the quarter horse stallions they raised at Hawk's Way mount mares. But she could not translate that violent act into what happened between a man and a woman in bed.

So far, she had found the fumbling kisses of her swains more annoying than anything else. Yet Tate had read enough to know there was more to the male-female relations.h.i.+p than she had experienced so far. If her brothers had their way, she would never unravel the mysteries of love.

She had come to the dire conclusion over the past few months that no man would ever pa.s.s muster with her brothers. If she continued living with them, she would die an old maid. They had given her no choice. In order to escape her brothers' overprotectiveness, she would have to leave Hawk's Way.

This latest incident was the final straw. But then, kicking a man when he's down is sometimes the only way to make him get up. Tate took one long, last look at each of her brothers. She would be gone from Hawk's Way before morning.

When the front door closed behind Tate, Faron settled a hip on the porch rail, and Garth leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb.

"She's too d.a.m.n beautiful for her own good," Garth muttered.

"Hard to believe a woman can look so s.e.xy in a man's T-s.h.i.+rt and a pair of jeans," Faron agreed with a shake of his head.

Garth's eyes were bleak. "Wha're we going to do about her?"

"Don't know that there's anything we can do except what we're already doing."

"I don't want to see her get hurt," Garth said.

Faron felt a tightness in his chest. "Yeah, I know. But she's all grown up, Garth. We're going to have to let go sometime."

Garth frowned. "Not yet."

"When?"

"I don't know. Just not yet."

THE NEXT MORNING, Garth and Faron met in the kitchen, as they always did, just before dawn. Charlie One Horse, the part-Indian codger who had been chief cook and bottle washer at Hawk's Way since their mother had died, had coffee perking and breakfast on the table. Only this morning there was something-someone-missing.

"Where's Tate?" Garth asked as he sat down at the head of the table.

"Ain't seen her," Charlie said.

Garth grimaced. "I suppose she's sulking in her room."

"You drink your coffee, and I'll go upstairs and check on her," Faron offered.

A moment later Faron came bounding into the kitchen. "She's not there! She's gone!"

Garth sprang up from his chair so fast it fell over backward. "What? Gone where?"

Faron grabbed Garth by the shoulders and said in a fierce voice, "She's not in her room. Her bed hasn't been slept in!"

Garth freed himself and took the stairs two at a time to see for himself. Sure enough, the antique bra.s.s double bed was made up with its nubby-weave spread. That alone was an ominous sign. Tate wasn't known for her neatness, and if she had made up the bed, she had done it to make a statement.

Garth headed for the closet, his heart in his throat. He heaved a sigh of relief when he saw Tate's few dresses still hanging there. Surely she wouldn't have left Hawk's Way for good without them.

Garth turned and found Faron standing in the doorway to Tate's room. "She probably spent the night sleeping out somewhere on the ranch. She'll turn up when she gets hungry."

"I'm going looking for her," Faron said.

Garth shoved a hand through his hair, making it stand on end. "h.e.l.l and the devil! I guess there'll be no peace around here until we find her. When I get hold of her, I'll-"

"When we find her, I'll do the talking," Faron said. "You've caused enough trouble."

"Me? This isn't my fault!"

"Like h.e.l.l! You're the one who told her to go to her room and stay there."

"Looks like she didn't pay a whole h.e.l.luva lot of attention to me, did she?" Garth retorted.

At that moment Charlie arrived, puffing from exertion, and said, "You two gonna go look for that girl, or stand here arguin'?"

Faron and Garth glared at each other for another moment before Faron turned and pressed his way past Charlie and down the stairs.

Charlie put a hand out to stop Garth. "Don't think you're gonna find her, boy. Knew this was bound to happen sooner or later."

"What do you mean, old man?"