Protective Lawman (Warrior Peak Sanctuary), page 1
About the Author
Janie Crouch writes passionate romantic suspense for readers who still believe in heroes. After a lifetime on the East Coast—and a six-year stint in Germany—this USA TODAY bestselling author has settled into her dream home in the Front Range of the Colorado Rockies. She loves engaging in all sorts of adventures (triathlons! two-hundred-mile relay races! mountain treks!), traveling and surviving life with four kids. You can find out more about her at janiecrouch.com.
Booklist
Books by Janie Crouch
Mills & Boon
Warrior Peak Sanctuary
Protective Assignment
Protective Lawman
San Antonio Security
Texas Bodyguard: Luke
Texas Bodyguard: Brax
Texas Bodyguard: Weston
Texas Bodyguard: Chance
The Risk Series: A Bree and Tanner Thriller
Calculated Risk
Security Risk
Constant Risk
Risk Everything
Omega Sector: Under Siege
Daddy Defender
Protector’s Instinct
Cease Fire
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk.
Before you start reading, why not sign up?
Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!
SIGN ME UP!
Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.
Protective Lawman
Janie Crouch
www.millsandboon.co.uk
ISBN-13: 9780008948207
Protective Lawman
Copyright © 2025 by Janie Crouch
Published in Great Britain 2025
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Enterprises ULC.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.
Without limiting the exclusive rights of any author, contributor or the publisher of this publication, any unauthorised use of this publication to train generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is expressly prohibited. HarperCollins also exercise their rights under Article 4(3) of the Digital Single Market Directive 2019/790 and expressly reserve this publication from the text and data mining exception.
www.millsandboon.co.uk
Note to Readers
This ebook contains the following accessibility features which, if supported by your device, can be accessed via your ereader/accessibility settings:
Change of font size and line height
Change of background and font colours
Change of font
Change justification
Text to speech
Certain portions of text this ebook are set in a specific font type to make it easier to distinguish between the different types of content in the book. It may not be possible to change the font for these pieces of text.
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the little girl who came up to me at a restaurant and told me I was “so pretty”… Kid, you have no idea how your sweet words made my heart sing. May we all remember to be so kind.
Contents
Cover
About the Author
Booklist
Title Page
Copyright Page
Note to Readers
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
About the Publisher
Prologue
Officer Aaron Ward sighed in frustration as he closed another case file. He rubbed his eyes, which were gritty with exhaustion, and decided he was going to need another cup of coffee—or seven.
For a few months he had suspected that something not quite aboveboard was going on in North Carolina’s Kings Mountain Police Department, where he worked. He had started poking around as inconspicuously as he could. Paying attention to what certain officers were—or weren’t—doing, and taking a closer look at the ones he thought might be involved in suspicious activities.
Of course, he couldn’t do this during normal work hours because he had his actual job to do, plus he didn’t want anyone to know what he was doing yet. So, he’d been putting in extra hours, staying at the station long into the night when he should have been home sleeping. Hence the need for more coffee.
He knew he would need to take this up the chain of command eventually, but he wanted to gather more concrete evidence first. He couldn’t request a meeting with his captain or the chief of police and only present his own opinions and suspicions. He had sworn an oath to serve and protect the community of Kings Mountain, and he intended to do that, even from other officers who didn’t take that oath as seriously as he did.
He was getting close to gathering enough evidence. There was a group of officers that he suspected were corrupt—taking bribes, withholding important investigative information, and bullying witnesses, among a laundry list of other shady things. He needed to make sure that he knew which officers were involved and in what capacity.
He saved the most recent case file he’d looked at to a folder on his computer and decided to call it a night. He’d have to be back at the station in just a few hours, and he was going to need some rest if he was going to be able to work a full day and then put in more hours afterward again. Plus, he got to work with Bailey tomorrow. She was new to the force but she was a good officer and he enjoyed working with her. There were other feelings there too that he refused to acknowledge, especially while he was her superior.
He powered down his computer, turned off the lamp on his desk, and walked toward the parking lot, his mind still running through the information he’d found. He was about halfway across the lot when he heard the sound of another car door shutting. He didn’t think much of it; it was a police station, after all, and people were around at all hours of the day and night. But when he looked in the direction of the sound, he saw that there were several men approaching him quickly.
Warning bells went off in his mind. This wasn’t normal. He continued walking to his car, hoping that if he didn’t engage them, they would continue on without bothering him.
No such luck.
He squinted as the men got closer, trying to make out who they were.
“Hello, Ward,” one of them sneered.
Ziegler.
“Hey, guys. What brings you here at this hour?” Aaron asked.
Ziegler laughed humorlessly. “We could ask you the same thing.”
Aaron shrugged. “Just finishing up some work.”
Ziegler moved closer, getting in Aaron’s face and pinning him against his car. His cronies—Moore, Benning, and Lee—flanked him. “Yeah, that’s why we’re here, snitch.”
Aaron’s stomach dropped. So he’d been right. These guys were crooked.
“We know you’ve been keeping tabs on us and doing your own little investigation.” Ziegler poked a finger hard into Aaron’s chest. “You’re not as sneaky as you think you are.”
Z iegler pulled his arm back and slammed it into Aaron’s gut. He doubled over in pain, gasping for air. “And just so you know,” Ziegler spat, “we have eyes on your precious Bailey right now. She’s at home, reading a book. And we could take her out in a second if you don’t get out of town, and pretend none of this ever happened. You understand?”
Before he could reply, Moore jerked Aaron back upright and Ziegler hit him again, this time in the jaw, knocking him to the ground. All bets were off as soon as he went down. Before Aaron could attempt to regain his footing, Benning started kicking him in the chest while Moore jammed his boot repeatedly in his back.
Aaron tried to fight back, but once the other men joined in, he knew there was no way he could win. Ziegler, not to be left out of their fun, focused on his face and head. The more they beat him, the more he wondered if he’d even survive. Pain was radiating throughout his entire body and he was pretty sure they broke some ribs, among other things. His last thought before everything went black was that he had to get Bailey away from these men, before she got hurt too.
Chapter One
Six Years Later
Bailey Masters smiled to herself as she rounded the corner, and the small town of Kings Mountain came into view. Finally. After all this time, she was back home again.
It felt like a lifetime since she had left Kings Mountain and, in some ways, it had been. Her life here had been so different from the one she’d led before, sometimes it was hard to remember that she had lived here, worked here, and made a name for herself here when she had been a rookie cop.
She could still remember the first day she stepped into the station, that flood of pride and excitement that hit her like a ton of bricks. She had wanted to be a cop for as long as she could remember, arresting her toys and reading them their rights before she put them in a little makeshift prison made from her toy box when she was a kid. It had always been in her blood, and she had been determined to make it as soon as she found out it was a career option for her.
But that had been before—before she’d been kicked out and moved across the country, before she had faced up to the fact that the man she had idolized—and almost loved, too—had turned his back on her and made it clear what he really thought of her.
Sometimes, she struggled even thinking about him. She grimaced as she drove down into the town, through the familiar streets she had called home for so long. How long had it been? Six years? Just over that now. There had been a time when she was sure she would never get back, but the relief of finally having returned to her hometown wasn’t going to be ruined by the memories of the man who had thrown her out of it in the first place.
Aaron.
She tried not to think about him. The two of them had been assigned to work together when she had first been starting out, and she had been so excited. Working with someone like him, someone with his reputation and impressive backlist of cases, she knew she was going to learn so much.
And she did. Because the two of them worked together really well. Or, at least, that was what she’d thought, before reality had slapped her in the face. They would spend most of every day together, driving around and helping out with whatever small cases the people around the town needed them to look at. They got to know each other really well, because how could you not in those circumstances? They understood each other better than anyone else in the world. Even now, knowing what he had done, she still missed him.
She had developed a crush on him, of course. All the time they spent together, combined with his charming personality, made it impossible not to fall for him. At least a little bit. She told herself it would fade with time, but if anything, it had just grown more insistent. She couldn’t deny how she felt about him, and she didn’t want to. No, she wanted to spend even more time with him, get to know him even more deeply than she had. She could tell from the way he looked at her sometimes that the thought had at least crossed his mind, too.
And then he’d betrayed her. Written a scornful report that had landed her being stuck at a desk job across the country for years now. She still didn’t know exactly what he’d put in there, but it had been enough to get her blackballed from her old position and moved into a new one she would never in a million years have asked for. Almost in the blink of an eye, too.
The added kicker of it was, he hadn’t even had the guts to face her and do it himself. He’d just turned in the report and called out of work—faking sick—and had someone else do his dirty work. She’d even had a weak moment after the shock of it wore off and tried to contact him, with no response. Not that she had been surprised by then.
Sometimes, she still had a hard time believing it. She had turned it over a thousand times in her head, trying to figure out what had caused him to turn on her the way he had, but she had never been able to figure it out. Either way, that wasn’t the problem now. He was out of her life, and she wanted it to stay that way. Anyone who would stab her in the back the way he had wasn’t the kind of person she wanted in her life.
She focused her gaze on the road ahead, and took the turn at the end of Main Street to take her to the police station. It was going to be so weird, being around all the people she had started out with when she was a rookie cop. She had been so young when she’d first begun her tenure here, just out of training and ready to take on the world. She could still remember the excitement she had felt, how much she had looked forward to every day at work. Her other friends from high school were in college or had started to settle down and raise families, but her career was the only thing she gave a damn about.
She pulled the truck to a halt outside the station, and paused for a moment before she turned off the engine and got out. How would she be greeted? Would they be friendly or skeptical of her being back after all these years? What were they going to say when they saw her again? Of course, they knew she was coming, but seeing her in person was going to be different.
What if they thought she had gone soft from being behind a desk for so long? She hoped they knew that she’d been struggling the whole time, wishing she could get back out in the field as she filed endless stacks of paperwork. She had fantasized all day long about getting back out there, about actually making a difference and helping people in the real world again. There might have been cops who were happy behind a desk doing paperwork, and that was fine for them, but that was not her. She wanted more.
She always had.
She climbed out of her truck, strode toward the door, and mustered up all her courage. She wasn’t actually starting work until the next day, but she wanted to check in and see what was happening right now and say hello to whoever was inside. She was looking forward to seeing the people she used to work with again.
She had been invited back to a couple of events around the holidays the first year after she left, but honestly, she couldn’t stand the thought of facing them after the embarrassment of being ousted and forced to ride a desk instead of being out in the field doing real cop work. She knew she was better than that, and she hated even the idea of being seen as some pencil pusher locked away in an office all day long instead of on the streets, working cases and helping others. Living her dream.
But now? It was different. She was back on the beat again. Back out and ready to take on the world. She could hardly wait to see what it had to offer. Pushing open the door, she stepped inside, and was greeted by a round of hellos from the cops she had worked with as a younger woman.
“Wow, Bailey, I can’t believe you actually made it,” Philip Benning exclaimed, jumping up from his desk and hurrying over to her. “Thought you would have been safer behind that desk in Pallas Bay.”
“Safer, but way more bored,” Bailey replied with a chuckle, and she reached to give him a hug. She normally wasn’t a hugger, but seeing these guys again after so long had her feeling sentimental.
Brian Lee, one of the older cops who served as the muscle for the station, emerged from his office and grinned when he saw Bailey standing there.
“You made it back,” he said.
She nodded. “Took me long enough.”
