Silver Creek Bodyguard

Book 4: Silver Creek

by Lindsay McKenna

Genres: Military Romance; Western Romance

Synopsis

New York Times bestselling author Lindsay McKenna returns to Silver Creek, Wyoming, where a veteran SEALwho is now one of  a security team’s finest, is assigned to guard a beautiful woman haunted by her family’s dangerous past. . . .

With a fresh start in the heart of big sky country, Sara Romano is thrilled to bring her herbal remedies to the lovely people of Silver Creek, Wyoming.  But when her dark past follows her, and  Sara is nearly killed, she knows she is in imminent danger. Reluctantly accepting the bodyguard her mother hires, Sara opens her home to Wes Paxton. Trained to protect, the ruggedly handsome stranger soothes her fears, making Sara feel cared for in a way she has not felt in a long time.  If only she had the courage to tell him her family’s secrets. . . .

A former orphan who found family in the military, Wes can’t ignore the feeling that Sara is holding back.  The more time he spends with her, the more he understands how afraid she is—which only sends his well-honed protective instincts into overdrive.  So when danger finally closes in, Wes is an army of one, ready to do anything to protect the woman he’s falling hard for . . .

“Lovers of action-packed romantic suspense will delight in this intense tale.”
—Publishers Weekly on Wind River Undercover

 

Release date: March 29, 2022

Publisher: Zebra Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

April 2

Alone. What had changed? Nothing.

Wes Paxton had always been alone from the day his unknown mother had placed him on the doorstep of a fire station in Fort Worth, Texas, and abandoned him to a heartless world. No one wanted him, passing him from one foster family to another. In his teens, he was always in trouble, rebelling, angry because he got the message, every day, that he was seen as worthless. No one wanted a dark-haired, gray-eyed lanky kid. His only claim to fame was that he was damned good on the football field, a high school quarterback, his team taking the state championship, with him at the helm in his senior year. Not even that win could fill the hole in his heart that had been there for as long as he could remember.

The stars twinkled and danced above Wes. Standing momentarily outside his Fort Worth, Texas, apartment where he’d stayed and lived during a year-long rehab from a wound, he looked up at the sky, which had always been a comfort to him. Maybe because there were so many stars, all crowded and packed together like one big, happy family that got along with one another, was the reason.

Remembering many times when it became intolerable in the next foster family he’d been passed on to, he would go outside and lie down on the grass, hands behind his head, and get lost in his star family, as he silently thought of the Milky Way, which covered the sky. There, he felt a kinship. Stars did not kick you out of their family. Nor did they care if he was an orphan no one wanted.

Outdoors, it was quiet compared to inside the next foster home. He needed the quiet. Craved it, because it settled his roiling inner life and shut up that yapping voice inside his head that reminded him that no one had ever really wanted him. He was seen by the family he lived with as nothing more than a check every month from the state. He’d been nine years old when he realized he was a body that was worth so much money, and that was all. He also knew there were good foster families around. It was just his bad luck, was all, not to get one.

Lifting his tan Stetson, moving his fingers through his short dark brown hair, he settled it back on his head. Despite being a perennial problem child growing up, he’d managed to graduate with a high school degree. He’d made friends with a police officer, Tom Harvey, who had spent ten years as a US Navy SEAL, got out of the military and then went into law enforcement. Wes had been a rebellious fourteen-year-old, and he had given him something he’d secretly craved: care and attention. Tom was like a father to him, although Wes never said those words to him. He had always daydreamed of what a real, loving father would be like.

Tom, who was in his forties and had a family of his own, took him under his wing when he was a freshman in high school. For the first time in his life, Wes felt wanted and he lost his angry, rebelling disposition. He became a member of a city-wide project called Tom’s Boys in Fort Worth. For once in his life, he knew that someone cared about him. At times, it felt like he was a drug addict, high on the praise and sincere attention. A smile or a pat on the shoulder from the policeman made his heart burst with joy. And how he looked forward to when he would wrap his arm around his shoulders and give him a bear hug. Tom introduced him to football, where Wes not only bloomed, but fiercely excelled beneath his tutelage, attention, and genuine care.

He was responsible for teaching him to be a quarterback. The police officer had been one himself as a teen in high school, and told Wes that he had the smarts to do the job and do it well. How much Wes looked forward to the thrice weekly workout times with him! It fed his starving, thirsty soul, and salved his shattered heart, and for the first time in his life, he felt like he wasn’t worthless, after all. He likened himself to a potted plant that was slowly dying due to no water being given to him; and that three times a week, Tom watered him emotionally, giving him hope, his care and attention, feeding his deeply scarred soul. For the first time, Wes had hope, his life steadying out beneath Tom’s quiet, gentle nature, watering him symbolically, and he began to grow into a strong, thriving man, his confidence and self-esteem soaring.

How lucky he’d been those last four years of his young life. Turning, Wes looked at the darkened building one last time. His mind moved back to after graduation when Tom suggested he go into the Navy and become a SEAL; that he was a good fit for it.

He’d managed to survive BUD/S, the first step in becoming a SEAL. Tom and his wife proudly looking on in the audience at Coronado, clapping for him as he graduated. The SEALs became his new family, one that embraced him, fed his hungry soul, and once more, he excelled. At twenty-nine, he was shot in a battle. The upper part of his right lung was damaged and had to be removed; and he was forced to leave the community.

Mouth tightening, Wes turned, walking toward his black Ford pickup in the parking area. In the truck was the next chapter in his life, and all his possessions were in the back. He was moving to Wyoming, employed by a global security company, hired by his old friend Steve Carter, from his SEAL days, who had offered it to him after Wes completed a year of medical therapy and transition. He was still adjusting to the loss of one-third of his right lung, but improving every day to the point that he could work once more and earn a hefty paycheck.

As he slid into his truck, the black and silver cab on the back of it holding his life’s belongings, he slowly drove through Fort Worth, where he’d been born thirty years earlier, looking for an exit that would take him west, and later on north, to Wyoming. His mind wandered back to that fateful day when he lay in the hospital, recuperating from the lung surgery.

While in the San Diego naval hospital, his cell phone had rung one day, and it was from Steve Carter, owner of Guardian Security, whose headquarters was in Silver Creek, Wyoming. The phone call was like a lifeline to him.

Carter had spent ten years in the Navy, and been the Chief of his SEAL team. He had left the military at twenty-eight, and created the world-renowned security company. Guardian Security seemed like a good name. But Steve was born and bred in Wyoming cattle country, grew up on a ranch, was a wrangler, and he wanted to hire women and men with that kind of background. The term “guardian,” Steve told him, referred to a special group of cowboys who rode around a cattle herd at night, keeping them safe from predators. And his business was hiring security contractors who kept their clients safe from another form of predator.

As a teen, Tom used to take him and a group of “at risk” boys out to a nearby cattle ranch outside of Fort Worth every summer during school break. They lived, slept, and worked as a team, and learned the rudiments of becoming a wrangler. Riding horses, branding, vaccinating, and herding cattle was something Wes grew to love. Being out in Nature, out of the suffocating city, gave him a new appreciation of ranching, which was big in Texas. And with that background, Carter had met him shortly after he got out of the naval hospital and had separated permanently from the Navy.

Steve had filled him in on his popular security company. Wes liked the fact that they shared not only a wrangling background, but were part of the brotherhood of SEALs. And SEALs took care of their own, which is why Steve flew into San Diego to talk to him about a future job with his company, urging him to join it. Wes decided to throw his lot in with Steve and the other military vet men and women whom Steve employed at Guardian Security. Wes had had a year of rehab to undergo in order to get back to full strength. Steve had been willing to wait to hire him after he’d successfully completed them at a VA Hospital in Dallas, Texas.

Now? Steve had called him as soon as he’d successfully finished the strenuous challenge. He’d said, “An interesting first assignment has just come up, and I think you’re a perfect fit for it. Let’s talk.”

The light from the dash reflected into his thought-filled gray eyes as he continued to drive west. It was April and where he was going, it was going to be damned snowy and cold. And icy. Or both. Wes had gotten used to warmer climates, most of his SEAL assignments having been in jungle and warmer climes where Spanish was spoken and it was a second language to him. Rubbing his jaw, he knew that when Steve used “interesting,” it was probably going to be an offbeat assignment. The SEAL Chief only used that word sparingly when his team was under his command. Wes found out quickly when Steve said it, it was going to be a mission that was really outside the normal boundaries their black ops unit operated within.

Steve reminded him that a wrangler was someone who could do anything with nothing. They were hardwired MacGyvers who could figure out what was broken and how to fix it; or if trapped, how to get out of the situation, alive. Baling wire and chewing gum, Carter drilled into them. Two really good items to have in one’s arsenal, that was for sure. One corner of his mouth hooked upward. What SEAL didn’t have black humor as part of their stockin-trade. Well, pretty soon, he’d find out about this “interesting” first assignment that Steve thought he was the “right fit” to take on by the horns.

April 4

“Welcome home,” Steve told Wes as he came in several days later to Silver Creek, Wyoming. Wes shook his hand and sat down in the man’s cramped, super-neat office. “And welcome to Guardian Security. I just got a call from Amy, our Human Resources gal, that all your papers are in order and you’re ready to go.”

Wes said, “Good to hear.” He looked around the spare room painted a light blue. On one wall was evidence of Carter’s many accomplishments. As a SEAL, Steve had taken college courses, coming out with a master’s in business administration. There was no question his former chief was one of the best in the SEAL community; a stickler for organization, discipline, and creative thinking outside the box. “It’s damned cold up here, Steve. We’re jungle rats, not cut out for this kind of thing.”

“Yeah, I know.” The ex-SEAL chuckled darkly, pouring them each a hot mug of black coffee. “I was born here in Silver Creek, Wyoming, so I grew up with this snow, ice and cold. After going into the Navy and joining the SEALs, my next ten years was spent in the jungles and highlands of Central and South America. Go figure.” He grinned and sat down. “But let’s talk about you. About this ‘interesting’ assignment. I needed someone with a variety type of background on this one.”

Sipping the hot brew, Wes liked that every time he saw Steve, he was wearing cowboy clothes, a black leather vest over the long-sleeved red shirt, and his black Stetson was always hanging nearby off a wall peg. “You used ‘interesting’ and that got my attention.”

“Why did it?”

Lifting a brow, Wes said wryly, “You never used them lightly with our team when we were preparing to go on an op. It was the kind of mission that required the baling wire and bubblegum. Every time.”

“Yeah, I’m a wordsmith at heart,” he agreed, giving him an evil grin. “I see you as a Jack-of-all-trades, Wes. Able to take on a more offbeat kind of assignment than most. Generally speaking, SEALs are really good at that type of mission situation. I know you probably thought you’d have bodyguard jobs involving businessmen going overseas and protecting their arses.”

“Right.”

“How do you feel taking on a female client right here in Silver Creek for a first assignment?”

Shrugging, he said, “Is that why you used the word ‘interesting’? It involves a woman instead of a man? Or, you want to ease me into the security business due to my lung issue and see if I can cut it?”

Chuckling, Steve passed a file to Wes. “Wounds like yours take time to heal, and it doesn’t hurt to ease into contracting. Silver Creek has a top-rated hospital. Should you need anything, it’s nearby. And to be honest, the first man I assigned to our client, they did not get along. He was an ass-kicking ex–Delta Force type, and he couldn’t fit into the job that the client demanded of him. About a third of our clients are women. And forty percent of my employees are female, as well. We do a lot of business with both genders.”

“No one can say you’re patriarchal,” Wes deadpanned. That always got Steve going. He was part Eastern Cherokee, raised in the old ways of his mother’s people, whose reservation was in North Carolina. His mother had married a very rich rancher, Robert Carter, in Silver Creek, Wyoming, and she had raised and trained him in a matriarchal culture. That meant that Steve viewed both sexes as equals, as well as giving them respect. Males raised in a patriarchal society mostly demeaned women, disrespected them, and never treated them the same. Wes didn’t even know the word until Steve told him what it meant when in the SEALs. He’d gone through so many foster homes that he really hadn’t been imprinted, or maybe brainwashed, into a patriarchal male mold.

Wes felt that his own raising was neither, which pleased him immensely. Maybe by being left to his own means, his own genetic matriarchal inner knowledge pushed him in that direction without him ever realizing it. He’d had DNA testing done and it showed he was fifty percent Native American. Maybe that’s why he and Steve had such a tight working relationship when in the SEALs. Steve recognized his own kind. Wes saw his friend’s light blue eyes sparkle over his dryly asked questions.

“No, never patriarchal, that’s for sure,” Steve replied with a short laugh. Becoming serious, he pinned Wes with a stare. “But we know at least one of your parents was Native American. We’d talked about this before a number of times when you were a SEAL. There were ops where I needed someone who didn’t leave a footprint in the earth. I often gave you those types of assignments that involved having to gain trust from those who distrusted us. Plus, your skin color is brown, which fit into the Central and South American missions our team were given. And you delivered every time.” Steve slid him a file across the desk. “Open the file. Let’s sit with it and I’ll fill you in on what’s going on with my unhappy client.”

Opening it, there was a color photo of her. His heart leaped, which caught him off guard. There was a young woman, maybe in her late twenties, braided black hair and an oval face with high cheekbones, staring back at him. “Is she Native American, Steve?”

He rocked back in his chair, giving Wes a pleased look. “Sure is. Not only that? She’s part Eastern Cherokee, like me. So, we share something in common. And”—he sighed—“when things went south with the first bodyguard, she trusted me enough to try and find a special someone who she could relate to the second time around.”

“That’s pretty synchronistic that she shares the same nation’s blood as you do, Steve.”

“Well, I come from the Wolf Clan,” he said. “She’s from the Paint Clan.”

“What’s the difference?”

“Paint Clan produces the healers, medicine women and men. The Wolf Clan produces the leaders and the various chiefs for the nation.”

“And here you are, in another career, leading,” Wes noted. The woman was very attractive, but Wes kept that comment to himself. “What do you want me to know about her?”

Putting his booted feet up on his desk, fingers laced together across his waist, Steve said, “She’s not the normal client a security firm would see walking through their front door. She’s interesting for many reasons. Her name is Sara Woya Romano.”

“What does ‘woya’ mean? That’s certainly not Italian like her last name.”

“Very astute,” Steve praised. “It’s an Eastern Cherokee word and it means ‘dove.’”

“She looks very much at peace,” Wes agreed. “Does she live on the reservation in North Carolina?”

Shaking his head, Steve said, “Her mother is Tsula Romano, and she is a full-blood Eastern Cherokee. Tsula is a very rich and a super successful business woman. She created an organic soapmaking company seven years ago in Dallas and it’s gone global. Her ex-husband, Leo Romano, is a piece of work. He’s sitting in a US prison right now for fraud and money laundering for the Cosa Nostra in Sicily. Tsula divorced him years earlier when she found out he was involved in illegal and criminal activities. She married him thinking he was the owner of a software company. He lied to her, of course.”

Wes nodded, and Steve continued speaking, reading from the file. “Tsula didn’t want to bring up her daughter, Sara, in a household like that and she divorced him, but stayed in the same city, and Sara lived full-time with her mother, but her father had visitation rights. Sara would spend her summers, when school let out, with her grandmother Adsila, a healer and herbalist in Cherokee, North Carolina. She was out daily with her grandmother, in the Smoky Mountains and hills of their huge reservation, learning about herbal medicine. That long lineage of family knowledge had been passed on to Adsila, who passed it on to Sara. Later, she went to the University of North Carolina in Asheville, getting a degree in botany and a minor as a paramedic. In her spare time, she served her local volunteer fire department on the reservation, taking classes by day, volunteering her medical services on weekends when on summer breaks.”

Steve broke from reading, and gave Wes a pleased look. “Sara is the epitome of a Paint Clan healer; she’s gentle, kind, and compassionate. She’s also armed with a medical background, plus all her years of being schooled in herbs by her grandmother Adsila. Sara helped out at the health clinic on the reservation, as well.”

Steve smiled and continued. “Some background intel you need to know about Sara and her family. Leo Romano had a lot of women on the side. Shortly after Tsula found out about Leo’s illegal operations, she sent her daughter to live on the reservation on summer break, and her divorce was finalized. In a matter of a month after that, Leo married another woman, Victoria Lucinda, and she had a son by him, Manny Romano. This monster boy grew up under daddy’s wing, learning the illegal trade.

“In the meantime? Sara was twenty-five and started being stalked by Romano’s soldiers. She moved back to Dallas and lived with her mother. She didn’t want to be involved in her mother’s soap company, but instead, worked in the city, offering her services to Latino families who grew up on herbal medicine. In her spare time, Sara worked with various fire departments and their paramedics. In the Latin quarter, she held clinics with their permission. That went well until there were attacks on Sara’s life.

“Tsula called me and wanted her daughter to ‘disappear’ and get out of Texas, and go somewhere in backwater, USA, to protect her from Leo’s henchmen. She felt Manny Romano, Sara’s half brother, was ordering the attacks on Sara. In the original prenup that Tsula had with Leo, their firstborn child would get the money and estate after they both died. So you can see why Tsula figured out that Manny, who is a sociopath like his father, and who is running the criminal elements now in his father’s software business, wants Sara dead and out of the picture. And if that happens? I’m pretty sure Manny will go after Tsula next. He’ll kill both of them sooner or later.”

Scowling, Wes muttered, “Her mother is the one who asked for a bodyguard for Sara?” Frankly, in his private opinion, Sara Romano looked like the last person to be the daughter of a Sicilian Mafia father. She had golden-colored skin, and he thought it was due partly to her Native American blood. It was the kindness in her face, the tenderness emanating from her green eyes, large and framed with thick black lashes, that spoke of her being a healer. Her mouth was softly shaped, the corners naturally lifting upward. He tore himself from drowning further into her photo.

“Sara didn’t want a bodyguard, to be honest with you,” Steve said. “But her mother insisted.” He gave Wes a wry look. “The first one, the ex–Delta Force operator Zane Werner, was, in Sara’s words, ‘like a Mack truck plowing through my office.’”

“Not something I’d want on my résumé,” Wes said, his frown deepening.

“I agree. We work hard to pair up a client with a bodyguard around here”—he sighed—“but sometimes? The nature of the job just isn’t a fit for either the contractor, in this case, or the client.”

“What was Werner’s problem?” Wes wanted to know.

“Well, she lives in a turn-of-the-century Victorian three-story house here in Silver Creek. It’s on the National Heritage register of Historic Places and is beautiful. Right behind it is a single-story horse barn and carriage house. Sara hired a woman master carpenter and her team to renovate it into the twenty-first century. It was just completed and my employee, whose more patriarchal than I like, didn’t think he should be used to carry boxes of quart jars filled with herbs and set them where Sara needed them in her clinic or the retail area of the building. He was thoroughly briefed by me that even though he was hired as a bodyguard, he was to go undercover as her assistant.”

“Oh?” Wes wondered what that entailed.

“Are you at all up on herbs and herbalism?”

“Not at all.”

Steve made an unhappy noise. “Well, that was the only way Sara would agree to have a full-time bodyguard around: He or she would have to help her. She’d teach the person as time went on. And,” he said, shaking his head, “when Werner found out what she was asking of him, he thought it was beneath him to be, what he termed, nothing more than ‘a grocer dude.’”

“I’ll bet that didn’t land well,” Wes said, liking Sara’s pluck and the fact she was the owner of her own business; Werner was not. “He was supposed to fit in, not stand out like a sore thumb and cause friction with the client.”

“Yeah, well, you’re right. Sara told him to leave, picked up the phone and called me and told me what had happened. She said the guy’s bullying energy was wearing on her, and she just didn’t have time to deal with him. She’s busy setting up her retail, lab, and clinic, as well as dealing with moving in.”

“She’s under a lot of stress,” Wes said.

“Yes. The fact that she knows that Manny Romano is probably trying to find her whereabouts right now—that’s a big stress. Plus, she moved away from her family, now is setting up a new business and all, both of which are enough to make anyone feel under thumbscrews. She never struck me as someone who had a short fuse, but she was angry about Werner’s antics and how he treated her.”

“I don’t blame her at all, then,” Wes said.

“So, you’re not giving me that horrified look like you’re going to find an arrow through your heart if you take this job?”

A croak of laughter filled Wes’s throat. “I think Sara was right to ask for someone new. Now, I don’t know if I’m the one for this job in regards to her herbal background. Maybe a woman contractor filling those shoes would be better.”

“The woman I know who would be perfect is on assignment right now in Belarus and not available,” Steve muttered unhappily. “I know you to be a good listener, Wes. You’re a thoughtful person, thinking before you speak. You don’t blurt the first thing that comes to mind. And I know your patience and know it well serving under my command as a SEAL. You were the guy who contacted American charities for donations to small villages where kids didn. . .