Texas Roots: The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs Read online

  TEXAS ROOTS

  Texas Heroes:

  The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs

  Volume One

  By Jean Brashear

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2013 by Jean Brashear

  E-book and cover art formatted by Jessica Lewis

  http://www.AuthorsLifeSaver.com

  License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to your online retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  The first book of a new series featuring USAToday bestselling Texas romance author Jean Brashear's much-loved Gallagher family—TEXAS HEROES: The Gallaghers of Sweetgrass Springs.

  When scandal and an ambitious prosecutor wreck talented chef Scarlett Ross's life and she learns of a grandmother she never knew she had, she flees the notoriety to pay an anonymous visit to Sweetgrass Springs, Texas, a town kept alive only by her grandmother's determination and carried on the strong shoulders of sexy Texas cowboy Ian McLaren. There she is surprised to discover a yearning to sink roots deep in the Texas Hill Country—but she is terrified that the secrets she's hiding will endanger everyone she's come to love.

  "Jean Brashear writes with warmth and emotional truth. The depth of her understanding of human nature marks her as a writer to watch." ~Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author

  "Gifting readers with another emotionally charged romance, Ms. Brashear has a fine knack for commingling full-bodied characters, a fast-moving storyline and just the right measure of passion." ~Romantic Times Bookclub magazine

  "Jean Brashear has that "it" factor. She is an incredibly talented writer who can hit every note with enough clarity to bring the reader tears, laughter, or just, 'Oh, my, this is an amazing story.' " ~New York Times bestselling author Stella Cameron

  Books in the Texas Heroes series:

  TEXAS SECRETS

  TEXAS LONELY

  TEXAS BAD BOY

  TEXAS REFUGE

  TEXAS STAR

  TEXAS DANGER (coming soon)

  TEXAS ROOTS

  TEXAS WILD

  TEXAS REBEL (coming soon)

  DEDICATION

  As always, to Ercel, for his unwavering faith and love, for sharing with me the happily-ever-after I can only hope all my characters have the privilege of experiencing once their time on these pages ends.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  With heartfelt thanks to Gene Diller for helping me better understand Ian's situation as a rancher and his vision for the future. Any errors made or liberties taken are completely my own.

  My deep gratitude also to the very gracious and kind Kerrie Steiert, for performing an insightful beta read on a tight deadline!

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  The Legend of Sweetgrass Springs

  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

  Epilogue

  Also Available

  About the Author

  THE LEGEND OF SWEETGRASS SPRINGS

  Lost and alone and dying, thirsty and days without food, the wounded soldier fell from his half-dead horse only yards from life-giving water. His horse nickered at the scent, and the soldier gathered one last effort to belly his way to the edge of the spring.

  But there he faltered. Bleeding from shoulder and thigh, he felt the darkness close in on him and sorrowed for his men, for the battle he would lose, for the fight he would not finish. In his last seconds of life, he wished for the love he would never find.

  Rest, a lovely, musical voice said.

  He managed to drag his eyes open once more.

  And gazed upon the face of the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.

  And perhaps the saddest. Her eyes were midnight blue and filled with a terrible grief as she lifted a hand toward him.

  I am dying, he thought. I will never know her.

  But the woman smiled and tenderly caressed his face as she cradled his head and brought life-giving water to his lips.

  You will live, she said. Be at peace. Let the spring heal you.

  Around him the air went soft, the water slid down his throat like a blessing. His battered body relaxed, and the pain receded.

  Sleep, she said. I will watch over you.

  He complied, his eyes heavy. His injuries were too severe; he knew he could not live. But though he would not wake up, he was one of the fortunate, to have an angel escort him into the afterlife. Thank you, he managed with his last breath.

  * * *

  Wake. All is well.

  The soldier opened his eyes, surprised to feel soft grass beneath him, trees whispering overhead. From nearby, he heard the bubbling music of the spring.

  Then he saw her, his angel. Where am I? Is this heaven?

  Her lips curved, but her eyes were again midnight dark with sorrow. You are still of this world.

  Who are you? he asked. Why are you sad?

  She searched his eyes. Will you stay with me?

  I would like nothing more, but I cannot. I must return to my men.

  She turned her face away, and he felt her grief as his own.

  I'll come back. When the battle is over and I am done, I will come back to you.

  You won't. A terrible acceptance filled her gaze. I will never have love. Once I was mortal like you, and I was loved, but I turned away from it. From him, my one true love. He was beloved of The Fates, and they cursed me to wait. I cannot leave this place.

  Wait for what?

  It doesn't matter, she said sadly. You must go. They always go.

  I'll come back. I'll set you free. Tell me how, and I'll do it.

  She stared into him for a long time, then shook her head. There's only one way.

  What is it? he asked eagerly, rising strong and well again, already searching for his horse to ride away.

  She watched him in silence. Made herself invisible because she knew.

  Where did you go? he called out, searching the clearing, striding to the spring to peer into its depths. When he didn't see her, with a heavy heart he mounted, but for a moment he lingered. I'll come back, I promise. You can tell me then. I'm sorry, but my men need me, and I have to go. I will return for you.

  He wouldn't, she knew. They never did. She'd brought her eternal loneliness on herself, and she was losing hope.

  So she watched him ride away after one last look.

  Only love can set me free, she whispered softly.

  Love strong enough to stay.

  PROLOGUE

  Each night her café was open—which was every day but Sunday—Ruby Gallagher declared a twenty-minute recess she called halftime. Coming not long before sunset, halftime wasn't actually the midpoint of a day that began at four every morning, but it was her recess and she'd by golly call it what she wanted.

  Climbing the stairs to the cupola on top of the courthouse—all three stories of it—was a w
hole lot harder at seventy-one than it had been when she'd first declared halftime the year her daughter ran away. Ruby figured she was still on her feet all day and into the night because, well, she stayed on her feet. Didn't sit on her fanny watching soaps all day or whatever foolishness passed for retirement. She had no desire to be idle.

  Her work wasn't done.

  She stared out the arch that was her picture window to the glory of the Texas Hill Country, the rolling peaks, the gnarled mushroom shapes of the live oak trees, the ribbon of water fed by Sweetgrass Spring that curved through the center of the town that was the spring's namesake.

  She was weary to her bones, not that she'd ever say so to anyone but herself. Discouraged, too, though that was something else she wouldn't breathe to a soul. There was a note coming due on this decrepit old courthouse she'd purchased several years back after the county commissioners had decided to move the county seat to a bigger town. Lacking its center, Sweetgrass had been dying ever since, and she couldn't stand to watch its demise.

  She'd been determined to start reviving her hometown by not letting this grand old limestone building fall to wrack and ruin. She'd had high hopes for putting Sweetgrass back on the map the way it once had been, back when everyone in the county came to town to do their business.

  These days, Ruby's Café was about all the business that still existed.

  And she was fast running out of options.

  But as she gazed out at these hills that had been a grant to her Gallagher forebears and the three other founding families, all veterans of the Texas Revolution, the sacred charge she'd felt since she was knee-high to a grasshopper stirred inside her.

  Fifteen hundred sixty-seven folks still called Sweetgrass their home, even if few of their children stayed on. How could she let it die on her watch?

  She just couldn't, that was all. Nor could she abandon The Lady, the spirit of the spring, waiting so long for her lost love. Others thought her only a legend, but Ruby felt her presence. Felt in her bones the sorrow and the loneliness.

  Sometimes even heard her voice. Stay.

  Love strong enough to stay.

  It wasn't only in hopes that her daughter would return that Ruby had never left Sweetgrass. She'd been hearing The Lady since she was young, had a few times seen her sad, pretty face.

  I've stayed, Ruby thought. But so many others have gone, and you're still caught here, aren't you? We're a pair, aren't we?

  A pitiful pair, she sometimes thought. Two fools who couldn't pack up and go and just…forget.

  She glanced up at the evening star as it appeared.

  Star light, star bright

  First star I've seen tonight

  I wish I may, I wish I might

  Have this wish I wish tonight.

  Her eyes scanned the darkened buildings below, save only the bright lights of Ruby's, the faint glow from her aunt Margie's house just behind it—her house now.

  She'd lost a child but she still had a town to mother.

  Please, she wished with everything in her, don't let me fail in this, too.

  CHAPTER ONE

  What had possessed her mother to keep Sweetgrass Springs a secret for thirty-two years? To tell her that they had no family?

  Scarlett Ross pressed the accelerator and tried to think about that mystery instead of the fear that tangled beneath her breastbone: would she be safe there?

  No one knew about the town—she herself had not until two weeks ago. She hoped she'd been careful enough in her hasty exit from New York—she'd certainly never expected to find herself in a situation like this. She had bought a throwaway cell phone—not that she had anyone to call after the scandal—and the car was not registered in her name. She hadn't had any use for a car in Manhattan, so she'd never owned one.

  The District Attorney would be furious, of course. He wanted her on hand in case her testimony would make the difference. How that could be, when she'd known nothing about her boyfriend Andre's illegal activities until she'd wound up in handcuffs, she hadn't a clue.

  But that didn't seem to matter to a DA running for reelection, determined to take down a very bad man named Viktor Kostov. Kostov, she'd learned, was suspected in a variety of crimes both here and in his native Bulgaria, and the DA would use anything that might possibly help him. He didn't want to believe in her innocence. Blind ambition, yes—that she was guilty of. Being too trusting—check. Ridiculous optimism? That, too.

  What seems too good to be true usually is, she'd always been told—but she'd wanted her chance so badly. She was a talented chef, but there were plenty like her in New York, so when she'd been offered a shot at headlining in a high-end restaurant, she'd jumped on it with both feet.

  Damn you, Andre.

  She crested the last hill, the tiny town a small diamond of light cushioned in flocked green velvet as the smudged violet of night stole over the Texas Hill Country. January here was far kinder than in New York. While the grass was a flaxen hue and some trees were only bare trunks and branches, many were still green.

  The road curved left, right, left again, while Sweetgrass Springs winked in and out of view. Dead tired from the long drive fleeing the wreckage of her life in Manhattan, Scarlett longed for a meal and a bed. Best she'd been able to tell from the limited information available online, however, only the meal would be available in this town of fifteen hundred sixty-seven. The nearest motel was an hour back the way she'd come, but after running full-speed halfway across the country, Scarlett couldn't bear to wait another night to find out if she, in fact, was not alone in this world, after all.

  She had nowhere else to go. Her career was in ruins and the media hounded her every step, screaming for juicy details of her affair with a drug lord. For two years she'd been a meteor on the rise in the only city that mattered…and now she was a star in a tragedy. A farce, except that a cop had died in the raid.

  She wasn't a criminal…but she was criminally stupid, no question. How could she not have seen? How could she have blithely accepted Andre's assurances that it was his love for her that made him want to showcase her talents in the gem of a restaurant into which she'd put her heart and soul?

  Instead, Mirelle had been simply a front for illegal activities that had gone on under her nose. And she'd never once, in the whole two years, suspected. Never wanted to look. She'd simply been grateful for the focus, the distraction from her grief. His offer had come right after she'd lost her only family, and she'd boxed up her mother's effects without a look. Instead of immediately leaving for parts unknown as her mother had always done when things got crazy, she'd tried something radical: she'd planned to stay in one place. She'd been too devastated to think straight, had been ripe pickings for Andre's machinations.

  She'd been grateful, so grateful for the rescue. She'd lost her only compass in a life spent on the move, and she'd welcomed the chaos and endless work that allowed her not to think. The solace of someone who cared.

  Except Andre hadn't really cared, had he? She'd been a dupe, and she'd walked into his trap with gratitude, playing her part to perfection.

  The velvet-lined trap had sprung just when her future seemed brightest, when she was at last emerging from grief and loneliness.

  Only to wind up in handcuffs, with her picture on the front page of the newspaper and featured on the evening newscast. Andre had escaped scot-free, no doubt on some tropical island drinking mai tais with a new idiot, while she stood holding the bag because he'd put her name on the more damaging documents.

  And she'd thought him so sweet to both bankroll the venture and give her Mirelle.

  She'd been trapped in New York for twelve days while the District Attorney had bled her brain dry, then she'd been freed under the stipulation that she'd testify against Andre and his cohorts—should they ever be found. On one of many sleepless nights, wandering the apartment filled with hated memories of Andre, in desperation she'd dragged out a box of her mother's things. There, in her mother's girlhood diary, a stunned Sca
rlett had discovered family. In Texas, of all places, one of the few states she and her mother had not lived.

  A grandmother, still alive, from what little Scarlett could determine...a treasure she'd longed for all her life. Why Georgia Ross had never spoken one word of Sweetgrass Springs or family was reason for caution, certainly, but Scarlett had decided that once she had her life back together, she would seek the answers she craved to the riddle of her mother's past.

  Then came a late night visit from two very scary men. She woke up with a knife to her throat and cold, flat shark's eyes staring into hers. If her drunken neighbors hadn't chosen that moment to erupt into another screaming battle and the lady across the hall hadn't yelled out that she was calling the cops…

  Scarlett shivered at the memory of the harsh whisper warning her that they would be back, that testifying would mean her life. She'd tried to tell him that she knew nothing useful, but he'd only pressed the knife a little harder and said in that odd accent that she was a loose end Kostov wouldn't tolerate.

  Then they'd vanished as quickly as they'd come.

  In a panic, she'd thrown clothes into a suitcase, grabbed the box of mementos and was gone within a few hours.

  Texas had been the only place she could think of to go. To pay a visit to the grandmother she'd never known existed and to buy herself a few days to think what to do next.

  She had nowhere else to go. No options.

  Okay, she still had her skills, and there might be some corner of the world where no one read the headlines. Truth to tell, New York only thought of itself as the center of the universe—there were other foodie towns like Santa Fe or San Francisco, other places where her skills could take her. Where the confidence she'd once had in spades could land her a new position.