Heartland by Sara Walter Ellwood Read Free Book Online

around, EJ.”
    “Yeah… See you around.” He tipped his hat and turned on his heel to amble toward his extended cab Silverado.
    From inside the screen door, she watched the way he filled out the backside of his Wrangler’s and muttered, “Hell yeah, I hope so.”
     

Chapter 5
     
    What the hell happened?
    EJ hadn’t acted that damned tongue tied around a girl since he asked Raquel to the eighth grade dance. The screen door slapped closed after Emily entered the kitchen. With the vision of her long bare legs replaying in his mind, he turned on his heel and headed for his truck. He’d always thought she had a great pair of legs when he’d seen her splashed across the magazines or on TV, but seeing them up close and personal was enough to remind him how long it had been since he’d been with a woman.
    When Raquel and he were married for a month, he’d been called up for a special mission with his Army Ranger unit. She was three months pregnant. By the time he’d come back from the mission that ended his military career two months later, she refused to sleep with him, claiming she was too uncomfortable from the pregnancy and he was too moody all the time to have sex. After the birth, they barely looked at each other and he suffered from horrible nightmares. He remained sleeping on the futon in the living room of their two-bedroom apartment.
    Closing his eyes, he waited for the pain to hit over losing Raquel, but nothing filled his heart but anger. After his run-in with his brother-in-law, he couldn’t stop thinking about his relationship with his wife. They started dating their freshman year of high school, then continued while they went to college at Texas A & M. She’d studied art, while he double majored in ranch management and criminal justice. He’d joined the ROTC to help pay for school and decided to make a career out of the military. Raquel hated his decision, especially when graduation came around and he sat at the top of his class in both majors. He could have had his choice of civilian jobs, but chose to join Military Intelligence with the rank of second lieutenant. After two years, he joined the Army Rangers with the hope of someday qualifying for Special Forces.
    Raquel and he had broken up for about four years after graduation. He went off to the Middle East at the height of the ISIS Crisis while she dated every available bachelor in McAllister County. After his second deployment four years ago, he’d come home for Christmas, and before he knew what happened, they were engaged. They’d married a month after she announced she was pregnant, then a month later he was called into service to help rescue two American dignitaries who’d been kidnapped by terrorists.
    With a punch at the steering wheel, he stopped the memories. If any of his past caused pain, it was the memory of the mission that had gone south and his bad decisions that had led to the deaths of most of his team and the two civilians he’d been sent to protect.
    He pulled into the driveway of his brother’s home, the same house he grew up in. The Kendalls had deeded the manager’s house and three-hundred acres to Vince not long after Abby and Seth married. They also gave his oldest brother the neighboring three-hundred-acre ranch and house Abby had brought into the marriage. He glanced back at the large white Victorian in the distance. A half mile separated the main ranch house and Vince’s home, but the distance may have been from him to the moon, regardless of whether the Kendalls treated the Cowleys like family or not.
    Sniffing after a woman like Emily Ritter or Kendall or whatever the hell she called herself would prove his idiocy. She was out of his league, and too much like Raquel. Emily would be the same kind of woman who loved excess and easily depressed when she didn’t get her way.
    Why was he attracted to her if he truly believed this? How could he forget his own principles and destroy a speeding ticket for nothing more