Renegade: A Taggart Brothers Novel Read Free

brewing at home. Bronte had thought that if she had time alone with her girls, she could mend the brittleness that had invaded their relationships. Then, when the opportunity arose, she could explain that the move from Boston was permanent.
    As well as the separation from their father.
    “Ring it again!” Kari shouted from inside the car.
    Forgoing the doorbell, Bronte opened the screen and pounded with the knocker. Annie could have grown hard of hearing. She had to be . . . what? Eighty-five? Eighty-six?
    Why hadn’t Bronte kept in touch more? Why hadn’t she pushed aside Phillip’s overwhelming demands and reached out to her grandmother? Instead, Bronte had grown so ashamed of her situation and her inability to make it better,that she’d limited her contact to cheery phone calls and the “too, too perfect” letters tucked into family Christmas cards.
    The grumble of a distant engine drew her attention. Allowing the screen to close with a resounding bang, she wiped the moisture from her face as a pair of headlights sliced through the gathering gloom.
    For a moment, she was exposed in the beams as a pickup rolled from behind the barn and headed toward the lane. At the last minute, the driver must have seen her, because the path of the truck altered, veering toward Bronte and her children.
    A growl of thunder vied with the sound of the engine as the vehicle jounced to a stop. It was a big truck, purely utilitarian, with a stretch cab and jacked-up wheels with shiny rims unlike anything Bronte had ever seen in Boston. The window to the passenger side slid down and a man leaned closer so that she could see his shape like an indigo cutout against the pouring rain. Much like the truck, he was built for hard work, with broad shoulders and powerful arms.
    “Do you need some help?”
    His voice was deep enough to carry over the drumming of the rain and something about its timber caused her to shiver.
    Using the map as her makeshift umbrella, Bronte ran closer. “Yes, I’m looking for Annie Ellis. I can’t get an answer at the door. Do you know if she’s expected back anytime soon?”
    The stranger in the truck removed a battered straw cowboy hat, revealing coffee-colored hair tousled by rain and sweat and eyes that were a pale blue-gray. A faint line dissected his forehead—whiter above, a deep bronzed tan below, conveying that he spent most of his time in the sun. He had features that could have been carved with an ax, too sharp and square to be considered handsome, but intriguing, nonetheless.
    “Exactly who are you?” he asked bluntly.
    Normally, she would have bristled at such a tone, but she was tired—emotionally and physically. All she wanted was a hot cup of tea and sleep. Deep, uninterrupted sleep.
    “My name is Bronte Cupacek. Annie is my grandmother.”
    The man’s gaze flicked to the van, the Massachusetts license plates, and the children who were pressed up against the windows watching them intently.
    “Ah. The Boston contingent.”
    Something about his flat tone rankled, but before Bronte could decipher his mood, he delivered the final blow to an otherwise devastating few months.
    “Your grandmother fell down the stairs yesterday afternoon. She’s in a local hospital.”

T WO

    J ACE Taggart watched as the woman’s face fell in disappointment. Then her eyes widened and she blinked at him with a Bambi-in-the-headlights stare rimmed in ridiculously dark lashes. Even wet and bedraggled, she was pretty in that Bostony, high-maintenance sort of way.
    But the look of horror that crossed her features couldn’t be feigned.
    “Is she all right?”
    Jace hesitated before responding. The woman’s posture had grown so brittle that he wondered if any more bad news would cause her to shatter.
    “She’s . . . not doing too well,” he said reluctantly. “She’ll be in the hospital for a while.”
    She grew even paler.
    “Th-the hospital . . . it’s still . . . uh . . .” She pressed a