To Hold and Protect, page 1
Also available from Sandra Owens and Carina Press
K-9 Defenders Series
In His Protection
Her Delta Force Protector
Operation K-9 Brothers Series
Operation K-9 Brothers
Keeping Guard
Mountain Rescue
Also by Sandra Owens
Blue Ridge Valley Series
Just Jenny
All Autumn
Still Savannah
Caitlyn’s Christmas Wish
Dark Falls Series
Dark Terror
Dark Memories
Aces & Eights Series
Jack of Hearts
King of Clubs
Ace of Spades
Queen of Diamonds
K2 Team Series
Crazy for Her
Someone Like Her
Falling for Her
Lost in Her
Only Her
To Hold and Protect
Sandra Owens
I’m dedicating this one to my husband because he’s the inspiration for all my heroes.
Contents
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
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Excerpt from Operation K-9 Brothers by Sandra Owens
Chapter One
“Arson,” Parker told his brother, Marsville’s police chief, as they walked through the house once the fire was out. It had been up for sale and was thankfully empty.
Tristan frowned. “That’s three now.”
“Yep.” Parker kneeled next to Ember, his fire-accelerant detection dog, who’d alerted on several spots in the house. “Good girl.” He held out his hand, and the red Labrador delicately took the treats from his palm. She was food motivated, the treats a reward for a job well done.
He’d collect samples to send to the lab, but he didn’t need the results to know the accelerant was gasoline that had been poured on the floor. Gasoline burned downward and was the reason for the hole in the wood. It also formed a volatile air and vapor mixture above the origin of the fire that would then ignite. He looked up and noted the expected severe ceiling damage over this hot spot.
“So we got us a firebug,” Tristan said. “What’s the profile on an arsonist?”
Parker stood and stretched. “Young white male. Craves attention and power. Might get sexual gratification from the fire.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah, some do. But that profile doesn’t mean our firebug is a young white male. Could be older, could be a woman—although that’s rare—or it could be kids. Statistically there are arrests in only about 10 percent of arson fires nationally.”
“That’s not encouraging.”
“Nope. I’m going to collect samples, then head home. You and Skylar still on for dinner tonight?”
“Yeah, we’ll be there.”
“Great. See you then.”
Although the fires could be unrelated, Parker doubted it. He hadn’t pinpointed why yet, but these fires felt personal, like someone was...teasing him? No, taunting him. That was the word he was looking for.
He’d felt watched while his crew had been fighting the fire. As the fire chief, his responsibility was to direct the activities of his firefighters on the scene, and while he’d been doing that, the hairs on the back of his neck had stood up. He knew most everyone in Marsville at least by sight if not by name, and although he’d searched, he hadn’t seen any strangers in the crowd who’d gathered to watch.
“Let’s go home, Ember,” he said after collecting his samples. They’d go to the lab tomorrow.
He made a stop at the station to drop off the samples. He was the chief of a small-town station located in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina. The idea that they might have an arsonist working in Marsville was worrisome since the station operated with only a small crew, barely enough for the twenty-four-hours-on and forty-eight-off shifts. Normally that wasn’t a problem, but it could become one if the arsonist kept starting fires at the rate he or she was going.
The two Marsville fire engines and their two ambulances were back in their bays, and his crew were in the kitchen, throwing something together for dinner. He poked his head in. “Good job out there today, people.”
“Wanna join us, Chief?” Eric said. “Drummond’s got plenty of pork chops on the grill.”
“Sounds good but can’t today. Next time.” If he didn’t get busy painting, he wouldn’t have enough pieces ready for his upcoming New York show. Leaving his official fire chief’s SUV in its bay, he and Ember got in his black-on-black Dodge Challenger Hellcat and headed home. Normally, he’d drive the SUV home since he was on call 24/7, but one of the city’s motor pool mechanics was picking it up to take it in for service.
As he passed the house next door to his—which had been an empty eyesore even before Bob Landry had died—he noted a bright yellow VW Bug convertible in the driveway. Parker loved cool cars, but bright yellow was not a cool car color. His eyes were drawn to the woman on the porch and...his daughter? He slammed on the brakes.
“Sorry,” he said when Ember gave him a dirty look from the passenger seat. He pulled in behind the VW. “Stay.” He exited the car. “Everly Isabella Church, who gave you permission to leave the yard?”
“Uh-oh.” Everly scooted next to the woman. “Daddy called me three names. That means he’s mad at me.” She sighed. “I probably won’t get any pickles.”
She had that right. The most effective punishment he could give his pickle-loving daughter was to take her pickles away. “Does Andrew know where you are?” Andrew, their everything—housekeeper, cook, and Everly’s manny—would blame himself for letting a willful little girl escape his watchful eye. He shouldn’t, because Parker himself had lost track of his sneaky daughter a time or two.
“No.” She hung her head, then lifted the same brown eyes he saw every time he looked in a mirror. “I’m sorry, Daddy. I just wanted to meet Miss Willow.”
His baby girl had him wrapped around her little finger, and although he wanted nothing more than to scoop her up and pepper kisses all over her face until she giggled, he didn’t. She couldn’t just go off on her own to her heart’s content. The world wasn’t safe, and nothing meant more than making sure his reason for living stayed safe. “Go home, Ev.”
She peeked up at him through honey-colored bangs that needed trimming. He needed to take her to get a haircut, should have a week or two ago. “But, Daddy—”
“Now, Everly.”
“Don’t you think you’re being a little harsh, Everly’s dad?” said the woman, Miss Willow he supposed, after Everly ran from her yard to his.
“She’s five years old. It’s not safe for her to traipse around the neighborhood by herself.”
“I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.” She stood and held out her hand. “I’m Willow Landry.”
Landry? A relative of Bob’s then. Although he was irritated with her because she was a stranger and how could he know whether she’d let something happen to his daughter, he couldn’t bring himself to be rude and ignore her outstretched hand.
Free spirit was his impression as he took in the straw hat, flowery dress, and cowboy boots. Long, curly, strawberry blond hair, green eyes, a splash of freckles across her nose, and...well, she was striking. Not that she was his type. He inwardly snorted. Like he even had a type anymore. He hadn’t since bringing his baby girl home from France.
He put his hand around Willow’s. His first thought was how small and soft hers was, his second was here she is, and a weird charge raced up his arm. What the hell? He snatched his hand away.
“Parker Church,” he managed to say. “Gotta go.”
“Nice meeting you,” she called after him.
He waved his hand over his shoulder, refusing to look at her again, and reminded himself that she drove a bright yellow VW Bug. He could not be interested in a woman who drove a bright yellow anything, no matter how cute those freckles dotting her nose were.
* * *
Since he had a few hours until his family was getting together for a c ookout, Parker left Everly under the watchful eye of her manny and closed himself inside his studio to paint. The studio was the first thing he’d spent money on when he’d sold enough paintings. He’d built it behind the house of horrors he’d grown up in. Now it was a house filled with love that he and his brothers had made their own.
Only his family and a few Marsville citizens knew he was the artist known as Park C. His dream as a boy had been to make enough money from his art to take care of his two older brothers. Well, he’d accomplished that beyond his wildest dreams. Not that Tristan and Kade didn’t contribute their fair share, but yeah...his wildest dreams meant his bank account had surpassed anything he could have ever imagined.
The surprise was that he’d also ended up a fire chief, making him the firefighter who painted. That amused him. After returning home from Paris, he’d signed on as a volunteer firefighter. The volunteer position became a paid one, and when the previous fire chief had retired last year, no one else had wanted the job.
At the time, one of his brothers was the police chief and the other was a Delta Force operator, so he’d decided he, too, should do his part to make the world a safer place. There might have also been a competitive impulse involved in that decision.
It was an odd combination of jobs, but that suited him. He knew himself, and if he did nothing but paint all day and into the night, he’d lose himself in what he thought of as his painting fog. He’d forget to eat, bathe, forget he had a daughter, brothers, forget that a world existed outside his studio. Having to go to the firehouse each day saved him from that. Strangely enough, his firefighter job turned out to be good for his art, too. Time away from his studio gave his creative mind time to rest and reenergize.
But the last thing he needed was an arsonist on the loose. He had a show in New York in a little over two months, and he still had five more pieces to paint. Although he was a fast painter, able to finish a canvas in a week between his time at the fire station and his daddy duties, he couldn’t finish the final painting at the last minute since he needed to give it at least a week to dry and time to ship the canvases to New York.
Before he lost himself in a new piece, he went to Everly’s space in the studio to see what she was painting. Even at five, his daughter was proving to be quite the little artist. She had more talent than he’d had at her age. Her favorite subjects were animals, and they had plenty of those for her inspiration. Her cat, Jellybean, was her favorite, and his brother Kade’s dog came in second, probably because Duke was a clown. But Ember and Tristan’s police dog, Fuzz, had their fair share of canvases.
She had an eye for the absurd, and her paintings always brought a smile to his face. In her current work, Jellybean was in attack mode, his rear in the air, his ears pinned back, and his eyes slitted as he prepared to attack Duke. She’d painted Duke with hearts hovering above his head and cartoon hearts in his eyes as he stared back at his favorite cat. She’d perfectly captured the relationship between the dog and cat. Duke loved Jellybean, and Jellybean lived to torture Duke.
As he did with each of her paintings, he added a tiny ladybug that she’d have to find. Once that was done, he returned to his easel. He’d already stretched the canvas and primed it so it would be ready for him to paint tonight.
He never knew what he was going to paint before he started. Sometimes it might be something he’d recently seen, and other times he had no idea where a piece came from. He never painted from a photo. He’d tried to once, a sunset he’d taken a picture of, and when he finished, he likened his effort to paint by numbers. For whatever reason, his art had to come straight from his imagination, and he often didn’t realize exactly what he’d painted until he stepped back and looked at it.
After connecting his phone to the speakers, he selected one of his playlists, and with music blaring, he painted. When he came out of his creative fugue, he stepped back.
Standing in a field of cheerful sunflowers and wearing a flowery dress, cowboy boots, and a straw hat, a woman with strawberry blond hair, green eyes, and a splash of freckles across her nose smiled back at him.
“Well, hell.”
Chapter Two
“Rude,” Willow muttered as the black car backed out of her driveway, its powerful engine rumbling. The man’s little girl was adorable, though.
Too bad he was grumpy because he sure was easy on the eyes. Most men looked silly with a ponytail—in her opinion anyway—but those few who could pull it off...well, it was sexy. And Parker Church definitely pulled off a ponytail. If she was honest with herself, the man checked off most of her boxes.
Tall. Check. Broad shoulders but not too big. Check. Narrow waist and lean hips. Check. Muscled but not too muscly. Check. Chocolate brown eyes and just the right amount of scruff on his face. Check. He did not get a check for being pleasant to be around, so that was something to keep him from being perfect.
He’d really be grouchy if he knew how much she’d learned about him from his chatty daughter. Everly had been a font of information. He was a famous artist—well, according to his daughter, but children tended to embellish things, so he’d probably sold a few paintings to friends or at a local arts and crafts festival. He was also a fireman, which supported her theory that he wasn’t famous. Why would a famous artist be a fireman?
Everly had shared that she didn’t have a mommy but wanted one, so he wasn’t married. “My two uncles have girlfriends, and I’m going to be the flower girl when they get married,” she’d said. “If my daddy had a girlfriend and they got married, I’d have a mommy,” the sly girl had said, looking at her with innocence in her eyes that Willow didn’t believe for a minute.
Willow smiled, wondering what the grouchy man would have to say about his daughter playing matchmaker. He’d probably need his mouth washed out with soap. As much as her new little friend wanted a mommy and seemed to be considering Willow for the job, Willow was off men for a while. Thank you for that, Brady. She’d take the little girl but not the father.
It was too bad Everly wouldn’t be allowed to come over for visits. Not only had she enjoyed talking to the girl but spending time around children was beneficial to her job.
Speaking of said job, she needed to get to work if she was going to meet her deadline. She went inside to eat dinner before she lost herself in the story.
The house had been willed to her by an uncle she hadn’t seen in years—her father’s brother, and a man her father despised. The call from her uncle’s lawyer had been a surprise and had come a few days after she’d ended a two-year relationship. Since Brady—the rat bastard cheater—owned the Cincinnati condo they lived in, she’d suddenly found herself homeless.
If that phone call had come before she’d caught her fiancé sticking his penis into her best friend, she would have put the house in Marsville up for sale without coming here. But in one night, she’d lost her future husband, her home, and her best friend of fourteen years.
Willow didn’t get Ella’s betrayal. Not in a million years. No matter how hot she thought a guy was, she never would touch her bestie’s boyfriend. They’d both blamed it on too much alcohol, which in Willow’s mind made it even worse.
They’d also denied it had happened before that night, but she knew Brady’s tells, and the left side of his deceitful mouth had twitched, something it did when he was uncomfortable. He was lying through his twitchy mouth. Ella had refused to even look at her when she’d sworn it had never happened before.
If Brady and Ella had come to her and told her they were in love, it would have hurt, but she would have found it within herself to wish them the best. Well, she liked to think that was what she would have done.
To blame their cheating on too much booze was a cop-out. In a matter of seconds, she’d lost respect for the two people she’d loved most in the world. Funny that she thought she’d miss Brady more than she did. After she’d gotten over the initial shock and had a good cry, she’d realized she was more angry than hurt. That was a good thing.
Maybe it was because this was her second broken engagement that she didn’t think it was the end of the world the way she had the first time around, like she was now immune from that kind of hurt. She’d loved Brady, but not in the all-consuming way she had Austin. When Austin had ended things a week before their wedding, he’d broken her. It had taken a long time before she could smile again. At least she and Brady hadn’t set a wedding date, and she hadn’t had to face the painful and embarrassing task of returning wedding gifts.
