Verwandte Artikel zu A Texas Rescue Christmas (Texas Rescue, 2, Band 2376)

A Texas Rescue Christmas (Texas Rescue, 2, Band 2376) - Softcover

Buch 2 von 6: Texas Rescue

Carson, Caro

 
9780373658589: A Texas Rescue Christmas (Texas Rescue, 2, Band 2376)
Softcover
ISBN 10: 0373658583 ISBN 13: 9780373658589
Verlag: Harlequin Special Edition, 2014

Inhaltsangabe

Home for Christmas 

Trey Waterston has been on the outside looking in for so long he nearly forgot where home is. But when he has to go back to the ranch that is his Texas birthright, he expects it to be as difficult to navigate as everything else in his life. He does not expect to find a halfhearted search afoot for a missing heiress. Beautiful and innocent Rebecca Cargill has disappeared, and nightfall—and a snowstorm—is coming. If they don't find her, she could die. 

Not on my watch. Instinctively, and directed only by a photograph, Trey knows he is the only one who can help her. Maybe he can finally claim his legacy. But why is he suddenly so sure Rebecca is a part of it?

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate, Army officer, and Fortune 100 sales executive, Caro Carson has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. As a Rita-winning Harlequin author, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and children in Florida, a location which has saved the coaster-loving theme park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

James Waterson III left his family's ranch at the glorious age of eighteen, ready to exceed the already high expectations of his friends and family, teachers and coaches. James the third, better known as Trey among the ranch hands and football fans, the recruiters and reporters, was going to conquer college football as the star of Oklahoma Tech University. He'd so easily conquered high school football, the NFL was already aware of his name.

At the age of twenty, Trey was washed up.

What's wrong with that boy? He blew his big chance.

What's wrong with him? He was so bright when I had him in class.

What's wrong with the Waterson kid? He must've gotten into drugs.

What a waste, what a shame, why, why, why?

His parents, of course, had left the family ranch in Texas to visit him in Oklahoma numerous times. They'd consulted with his coaches and met with his professors, and no one could understand why Trey Waterson, the promising freshman recruit, could no longer remember the play calls and passing routes now that he was a sophomore.

Well, Mr. Waterson, I'm not saying your son can't handle stress, but we've seen kids freeze up when they get in a big stadium. We're talking about a crowd of one hundred thousand.

No one could deny that Trey's test grades were no longer easy As, but struggling Ds and failing Fs.

To be honest, Mrs. Waterson, he was supposed to come to my office for tutoring directly after class, but he never showed. As I told the athletic director, I can't help a kid who refuses to be helped.

Trey's parents had believed him. He wasn't trying to skip class. He was not experimenting with drugs. They remembered the hit he'd taken in the last quarter of a home game, and worried that he was somehow suffering, months later.

We take good care of our players. Your son had a CT scan and passed a neurological exam that very week. Everything looks completely normal. No damage from that game, and no brain tumors or anything else that would explain the changes in his behavior.

That had been the most disheartening news of all. Trey was healthy, according to the doctors. An MRI was ordered, anyway; Trey was told it was "unremarkable." He could balance on each foot. He could touch his nose with his index finger and stick out his tongue straight and name the current President of the United States.

When he finally found his professor's office and correctly described how to calculate the area within the shape created by rotating a parabola around the z-axis, Trey believed the doctors, too. There was nothing wrong with him. He was just having a hard time, somehow. Not sleeping well, for some reason.

After their conversation, the professor gave him the exam, letting him make up the missed test just because Trey was the future of the Oklahoma Tech football program.

Trey failed the math test.

He understood the mathematical theory, but he couldn't calculate three times six. Five plus twelve. He sat in the professor's office and sweated clean through his shirt. He thought he was going to vomit from the fear, the sheer terror, of not being certain if he was counting on his fingers correctly. Seventeen times four? Not enough fingers, he knew that much.

We 're sorry, Mr. and Mrs. Waterson. I know your son passed the drug screen, but these boys get pretty clever about hiding substances in urine samples. Now, now, hold up. We 're not accusing him of taking drugs, but he has been cut from the football team. He has until May to bring his grade point average up to the school standard.

Trey came home for spring break, in time to help with the annual calf branding. As coordinated as ever, he threw lassoes and branded calves, day after day. He felt so damned normal, he wondered why he'd fallen apart. After spring break, he'd go back. He'd make up all the work he'd missed. He'd survive his nineteenth year. Then he picked up the branding iron, held it over the calf's hide and forgot which way was up. He was on the James Hill Ranch. The brand was a straightforward three initials: JHR. The iron didn't look right.

Trey had spun the brand the other way, but it looked just as wrong as it had at first glance.

Hurry up, the iron's cooling.

He must be holding the iron correctly, then, if they were telling him to hurry. James Waterson III permanently branded a calf on his own family's ranch with the symbol upside down.

He returned to Oklahoma Tech, failed all his courses, turned twenty years old and never returned home again.

It was much easier to lie to his parents on the phone. He had a good apartment, a good job, a good life. No, he wasn't going to go back to school next year, but that was okay, because he'd rather work with his hands. That became his big excuse: he'd rather work with his hands. His parents didn't need to know that he was spreading mulch for a landscaping firm.

His mother was worried sick, but he could fool her once a year when his parents came to visit. Before their arrival, he would practice driving from his one-bedroom apartment to their hotel and back, daily, until he could do it without getting lost. He'd preplan the restaurants they'd go to, and rehearse those routes, too. He'd smile and drop names as if he had lots of friends, and then his parents would leave after four or five days, and Trey would go back to his life of isolation and safe routine.

But now, he had to go back to the James Hill Ranch.

Trey looked at the wedding invitation in his hand, at its classic ivory vellum and deep black engraving. It contained little squares of tissue paper and extra envelopes, a confusing piece of correspondence until he'd laid all the parts out on his kitchen counter.

Miss Patricia Ann Cargill and

Mr. Luke Edward Waterson request the honor of your presence at their marriage.

The groom was his younger brother. His one and only brother. The wedding would be held on the ranch, one third of which Trey owned as his birthright. There was no acceptable excuse to miss his brother's wedding.

Ready or not, after ten years away from home, Trey Waterson had to return to the James Hill Ranch.

It was enough to make a grown man break out in a cold sweat.

Becky Cargill perched in her first-class seat, ice water in her hand, and sweated unladylike buckets. She'd never been so nervous in her life. Then again, she'd never tried to run away from home before.

The flight attendants were extra solicitous, even by the standards of the first-class cabin, but Becky didn't know if that meant she looked as ill as she felt, or if they'd simply seen her name on the passenger manifest. Becky meant nothing, but her last name, Cargill…well, that meant money. Of course, not everyone named Cargill was a relative of the Texas Cargill oil barons, just as not every Rockefeller or DuPont was one of those Rockefellers or DuPonts, but Becky's mother had indeed been married to one of those Cargills, and she made sure no one ever forgot.

Becky's birth father was not a Cargill, but when the man known to one and all as Daddy Cargill had been her stepfather, when he'd been in the first weeks of passionate fascination with Becky's mother, he'd let his new stepdaughter use his last name. Her mother wouldn't let her drop it now. Not ever.

Becky was her mother's little trophy, always dressed like a doll, the picture of sweetness and innocence. Her mother would turn on the charm for the Right Kind of People. I'm CharleneMaynard—or Lexington, whichever of her...

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Verlag
Harlequin Special Edition
Erscheinungsdatum
2014
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
0373658583
ISBN 13 
9780373658589
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
224
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Product Safety Manager
enquiries@harpercollins.ie

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