Settling an Old Score - Delores Fossen Page 0,71
pulled into the yard. He just kept kissing her until what he felt for her washed away some of the ugliness of the night. Heck, it was the cure for a lot of things, because he felt a whole lot better.
Ashlyn gave “better” a notch up. “Good. Because I’m still very much in love with you.”
Their gazes connected, and they shared another smile. Another kiss. Eli hadn’t thought there could be any more notching up, but he was wrong. Ashlyn took Cora when Gloria handed her to Ashlyn, and suddenly Eli had a beautiful, smiling baby in both their arms.
“Cora and I are a package deal,” Ashlyn reminded him.
Eli didn’t have to think how he felt about that. He knew. He gathered both Ashlyn and Cora close and kissed them both. Because this was one package deal that made everything perfect.
* * *
Look for the final book in
USA TODAY bestselling author
Delores Fossen’s
Longview Ridge Ranch miniseries when
His Brand of Justice goes on sale next month!
And don’t miss any of the
previous books in the series:
Safety Breach
A Threat to His Family
Available now wherever
Harlequin Intrigue books are sold!
Keep reading for an excerpt from Unraveling Jane Doe by Carol Ericson.
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Unraveling Jane Doe
by Carol Ericson
Chapter One
The smell of burning rubber assailed her nose and woke her with a jolt. Her head snapped up. Pain seared through her skull.
Her eyelids flew open. She blinked at the upside-down tree.
She clenched her teeth at the sound of a wheel spinning around and around, squealing with every turn. Her jaw throbbed.
The seat belt dug into her neck, and she reached down to tug on it. Her fingers crawled to the side of her head to probe the area that screamed with pain. The tips slid through strands of sticky hair.
She pulled her hand away and held it in front of her face. She tried to focus on the red streaks running down her arm. Blood. Her blood.
She swallowed and gagged. Swallowing and hanging upside down had its difficulties. She snorted out a laugh. People stuck on an amusement park ride must feel something like this—only this was no amusement park.
Her hand followed her seat belt to the latch. If she released too quickly, her head would bang against the roof of the car. It already hurt like hell. She didn’t need any more injuries.
She braced one hand on the roof of the vehicle and unsnapped the seat belt with her other hand. Her body slumped and curled in on itself in a fetal position as she rolled to her side.
She felt for the car door handle, but when she reached it, the handle wouldn’t release. Her fingers scrabbled to find the button for the door locks, and she clicked them open. She tried the handle again. This time, the door opened but not all the way. Repositioning herself, she shoved at the door with her feet, the edge of it scraping through dirt and sand.
When just enough of a space opened, she started to slither through it. Voices above her caused her to freeze with her feet just outside the car.
A man’s voice carried through the air, over the sound of the spinning wheel. “Should we go down?”
Another man answered him in accented English. “What do you think? I haven’t seen a thing move since it crashed.”
Terror seized her. Their words, their tone, their something pumped adrenaline through her system, revving up her sluggish, aching body.
She wriggled the rest of the way through the car door and crouched in the dirt beside the mangled, upended car. It lay at the bottom of a gully on the desert floor.
She peered over the top of the wreck at the ridge above and at two pairs of boots standing at the edge. The owners of those boots couldn’t see her, and for some reason, she wanted to make sure they never did.
One pair of boots, black with silver tips that glinted in the sun, made a move, and several pebbles tumbled down the embankment.
The owner of the boots said, “We have to be certain.”
“You go, man. I’m not going down there. What if the car explodes?”
“I’d rather be in a car explosion than face El Gringo Viejo and tell him we’re not sure she’s dead.”
“I have an idea. You see that gasoline leaking?”
The