Praise for #1 New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author Linda Lael Miller

  “This second-chance romance is set in the perfect setting of Painted Pony Creek. Curl up in your favorite reading chair and get lost in the pages of this book.”

  —Debbie Macomber, #1 New York Times bestselling author, on Country Strong

  “Miller’s return to Parable is a charming story of love in its many forms.... [A] sweetly entertaining and alluring tale.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Big Sky River

  “Miller’s down-home, easy-to-read style keeps the plot moving, and she includes...likable characters, picturesque descriptions and some very sweet pets.”

  —Publishers Weekly on Big Sky Country

  “A delightful addition to Miller’s Big Sky series. This author has a way with a phrase that is nigh-on poetic.... This story [is] especially entertaining.”

  —RT Book Reviews on Big Sky Mountain

  “Miller’s name is synonymous with the finest in Western romance.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “A passionate love too long denied drives the action in this multifaceted, emotionally rich reunion story that overflows with breathtaking sexual chemistry.”

  —Library Journal on McKettricks of Texas: Tate

  “Miller’s prose is smart, and her tough Eastwoodian cowboy cuts a sharp, unexpectedly funny figure in a classroom full of rambunctious frontier kids.”

  —Publishers Weekly on The Man from Stone Creek

  Country Born

  Linda Lael Miller

  For Steve and Deb Wiley.

  I think the world of you.

  Dear Reader,

  As I write this, we’re enjoying a crisp and sunny autumn day. My dogs, Tule (pronounced Toolie) and Mowgli (think The Jungle Book), are snoring contentedly away near my desk.

  Fall is hands down my favorite season. There is, it seems to me, a sort of festive buzz in the air—pumpkins are on sale everywhere and soon they will be replaced by fragrant Christmas trees and stunningly beautiful poinsettias. I think this feeling I always have is in part a throwback to my childhood in Northport, Washington.

  Autumn meant we were back in school, and I loved school. It meant Halloween was coming—my mother sewed wonderful costumes for us at her old Singer—and beyond trick-or-treating was Thanksgiving. Then, oh happy day, Christmas.

  We didn’t have much money, but somehow, my folks managed to make every holiday magical. Stir in a little love, and you’re good to go, right?

  If you’re reading this, either you’ve run across this brand-new, never-before-seen story, Country Born, the final book in the Country trilogy, in your favorite store, or you’ve already purchased it. Thanks for that, by the way.

  In this story, I’ll introduce you to J.P. McCall, one of the sexiest heroes I’ve ever invented, and the smart, beautiful and accomplished Sara Worth. Sara is a published writer and the mother of teenagers.

  I sympathize, and maybe you will, too.

  Alas, my teenager is all grown up now. And I’m so proud of her.

  All that said, I hope you’re being careful and staying well.

  These are challenging times, for sure, but we’re all in this together, and we need to remember that. We’ll pull through this, as a nation and as a planet, as long as we calm down and cooperate.

  Don’t forget—whether you were raised in a town like Painted Pony Creek, Montana, or in a big city, you are country tough.

  With love,

  Linda Lael Miller

  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

  EXCERPT FROM CHRISTMAS IN PAINTED PONY CREEK BY LINDA LAEL MILLER

  CHAPTER ONE

  SARA’S CALL HAD come through at 6:00 a.m. sharp, jolting J.P. McCall a little, even though he was a lifelong rancher and thus an early riser.

  Sara was, after all, the sister of one of his two closest friends, Eli Garrett, the current sheriff of Wild Horse County, Montana, a man with a dangerous job, and it didn’t help that she opened with a breathless, “This is an emergency, J.P.”

  “What is it?” he’d asked, hoarse with alarm. “What’s going on?”

  In moments like that, his PTSD, a relic of his tour of duty in Afghanistan, always spiked.

  Fortunately, such moments were relatively rare. He still had the occasional nightmare, and sometimes, a loud unexpected noise triggered a dizzying rush of adrenaline, pure fight-or-flight.

  When that happened, he went off by himself and breathed his way back to the real world.

  “I’ve completely forgotten how it feels to ride a horse!” she blurted anxiously.

  If J.P. hadn’t thought as highly of Sara Worth as he did, he probably would have cut her off at the knees—and attractive knees they were—for scaring him half to death.

  Sara, who wrote under the pen name Luke Cantrell, was the successful author of two Western thrillers, featuring a Clint Eastwood–type hero named Elliott Starr, with another book currently in the works, according to Eli.

  Clearly, she did thorough research.

  “Seriously, Sara? That’s your emergency?” He’d sounded irritated, but in actuality he was swamped with relief. The county under Eli’s jurisdiction was a peaceable place, for the most part, with a relatively low crime rate, considering its size, but it definitely had its share of losers and troublemakers.

  Just last winter, Eli was taken by surprise in his own backyard, savagely attacked and very nearly killed.

  Eli was a friend J.P. couldn’t lose, like Cord Hollister, the third member of the rowdy triad. The three of them had been tight since kindergarten, and the bond between them ran deep, like the roots of an ancient tree tangled with bedrock.

  They were more than friends; they were blood brothers.

  There was a silence. A very awkward one.

  J.P. had looked down at his retired service dog, Trooper, standing beside him in the tall dew-dampened grass between the barn and the house, instantly alert, ready for trouble.

  “It’s all right, boy,” he’d told the dog. “At ease.”

  For several seconds after that, no one spoke.

  Then, sounding chagrined, Sara had murmured, “Oops. I guess my enthusiasm for accuracy got away from me. I’m sorry if I worried you, J.P.”

  She knew about his combat injuries, of course, and the subsequent case of PTSD that, though mostly under control, still sneaked up on him at times.

  As a child, Sara had been a tomboy, and she’d sometimes hung around with Eli and, by extension, J.P. and Cord. She’d garnered a lot of information along the way, having sat around campfires with her brother’s friends, fished in Painted Pony creek with them, raced barefoot down rocky country roads with them, often winning.

  For a while, after his honorable discharge from the military, he’d even had a crush on her. Might even have pursued a relationship with her, if she hadn’t fallen for an outsider named Zachary Worth and eventually married him.

  “I’m revising my manuscript,” Sara had explained in a burst when J.P. didn’t immediately respond to her apology. “Technically, it was due last week, and I just realized that the scenes where the characters are on horseback don’t ring true at all. I know it sounds crazy, since I’ve already written two books in the same series, but there it is. It just doesn’t feel right.”

  “Okay,” he’d muttered, stretching out the word. He could let this go.

  He just had to breathe.

  And then breathe some more.

  He had wondered why she’d come to him with the problem, instead of Cord, for instance. Cord was literally world-renowned for his methods of training both horses and riders. And then there was Emma Grant, Cord’s wife Shallie’s best friend, who ran a therapeutic riding academy and could therefore provide whatever instruction Sara needed.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Sara had rattled on. “I could have gotten a few quick lessons from Cord, or from Emma. Trouble is, the Hollisters are away, visiting Shallie’s mom in Florida, and Emma has back-to-back classes booked, which leaves her with zero free time.”

  “All right,” J.P. had finally capitulated. “Come on out to the ranch and we’ll saddle up and ride.”

  Now, an hour later, here she was, standing in front of J.P.’s barn, clad in jeans, an old sweatshirt and boots that looked a little too new. Her dark hair, plaited into a single braid that reached almost to her slender waist, gleamed in the sunlight, and her silver-gray eyes were bright with eager determination.

  With considerable help from J.P., she’d saddled Misty, a bay mare so tame that J.P.’s citified nieces, Becky and Robyn, rode her bareback whenever they visited the ranch.

  His favorite gelding, Shiloh, was tacked up as well and ready to ride. Nickering and sidestepping with impatience.

  “
I insist on paying for your time, J.P.,” Sara said, setting her jaw. “Don’t even bother to argue the point—this is research and, as such, it’s tax-deductible.”

  J.P. managed not to roll his eyes. “I’m not exactly short on money, Sara,” he pointed out, with the slightest twitch of a grin tugging at one corner of his mouth.

  He’d received a modest settlement from the government after being badly injured in Afghanistan, back in the day, and during the long months he’d spent recovering, he’d studied the stock market in depth and found that he had an uncanny knack for picking winners. Between that and his one-third stake in the family ranch, which he managed well, he was a wealthy man.

  She was about to mount Misty, one booted foot already in the stirrup, both hands gripping the saddle horn, when she turned her head to look back at him over one shoulder. She smiled and something shifted inside J.P., sweet and poignant, soft as the brush of a moth’s wing.

  “Don’t try to talk me out of it,” she warned cheerfully. “I know you’re bullheaded, J.P. McCall, but I’m a Garrett, remember. We’re notoriously single-minded, as I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

  J.P. gave a rumbling chuckle, but he was still shaken. He wasn’t a fanciful man, and this new element, whatever it was, left him off-balance—inwardly, anyway.

  “We can argue all day,” he pointed out, surprised that he sounded like his ordinary Montana-rancher self, “or we can ride.”

  “Let’s get on with the research,” Sara urged, grinning. Then she hoisted herself off the ground, left foot in the stirrup, right leg ready to swing over Misty’s broad back.

  J.P. did a little research of his own, watching her shapely blue-jeaned backside as she swung, somewhat laboriously, up into the saddle.

  She settled herself, sunlight rimming her like a golden aura, and, looking up at her, J.P. was nearly blinded.

  The phenomenon wasn’t entirely physical, and that confounded him further.

  It was ridiculous, reacting like this, he decided, annoyed with himself.

  Sara was Eli’s sister, his big sister.

  She had two kids, courtesy of her no-good, long-gone husband.

  And, though she must have had opportunities, she’d shown no interest—as far as J.P. knew, anyway—in finding another husband or even a boyfriend.

  She seemed content to raise her son and daughter, write her books and take part in community projects with her friends.

  But wasn’t she ever lonely, in a crowd or by herself, at odd hours of the night?

  J.P. certainly was, though he was more than reluctant to admit as much. Those bleak bouts, like the infrequent but fiery, bloody flashbacks he sometimes endured, were among the many things he liked to forget.

  With no other blood kin—her and Eli’s folks had died when Sara was in middle school, and a few years later their guardian and aunt, Abigail Garrett, had passed away as well—Sara had focused on her children.

  She’d had some kind of falling-out with her former father-in-law, a very wealthy man who owned vast stretches of land around Painted Pony Creek but rarely spent time in his secluded castle of a mansion, and apparently severed any and all ties with her ex-husband’s family.

  Naturally, Eli had helped out as best he could, but he’d been busy in those days, finishing up at the police academy down in Phoenix and then starting his career as a deputy sheriff.

  Sara had remained in Painted Pony Creek, missing out on college, but educating herself in a variety of creative ways. Until recently, she’d worked in a day-care facility, having stuck with the job in the early days when Eric and Hayley were little so she could be near them.

  Always a voracious reader, Sara had eventually begun to write books of her own, pounding away at a keyboard before and after work, keeping her own counsel.

  J.P., as close as he was to Eli, hadn’t known about that part of her life until a few months ago, when her second novel had made a big splash in the marketplace. Even now, very few people knew that Luke Cantrell, purveyor of gritty historical thrillers, was really Sara Garrett Worth.

  She’d landed an impressive multi-book contract after these successes—J.P. had no idea how much money she made, and it wouldn’t have occurred to him to ask—but she still kept a low profile professionally, preferring to live quietly in Painted Pony Creek. Through Eli, J.P. knew she’d managed her money wisely, setting up trust funds for her kids, paying off her mortgage and making a few improvements to her brick ranch house in town.

  Apparently, unlike many of the newly prosperous, Sara didn’t seem interested in the usual trappings of wealth—world travel, costly jewelry, designer clothes, fancy houses and cars. Not that there was anything wrong with those things; people had the right to spend what they’d earned however they chose.

  She was different, that’s all.

  Sara lived in the same house she’d bought after Zachary left her, using part of the inheritance she and Eli had shared following the death of their parents to make a substantial down payment. J.P. knew this about Sara, not because Eli had confided in him but because, in small communities like the Creek, people picked up on things like that, as if by osmosis.

  It occurred to J.P., in those moments of daylight reflection, that he and Sara had a few things in common, at least when it came to how they spent—and didn’t spend—their money.

  Now, looking up at Sara, he realized that he’d known her better than he thought he had, though he’d never bothered to look too far beyond the obvious: sister of one of his two best friends, divorcée, mother of two and now bestselling author.

  Why hadn’t he taken more notice of her?

  Well, he’d sure as hell taken notice of her now.

  The question was, where did he go from here?

  Should he follow his gut instinct and try to get to know Sara as a person rather than just a background character in his life story? Or should he leave her alone, spare her the drawbacks of getting involved with a man like him? A man with scars, inside and out.

  “J.P.?” Sara asked, gazing down at him from within the halo gleaming around her. “Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine,” he lied somewhat gruffly.

  With that, he turned to his gelding, swung up into the saddle and gathered the reins.

  He gave Sara a sidelong look. “Let’s go, Luke,” he teased.

  Now that he was mounted on Shiloh, he felt like himself again, firmly planted inside his body instead of slightly out of alignment with it.

  Sara laughed. “Don’t forget,” she said, “I’m actually a greenhorn. A total fraud when it comes to boots-in-the-stirrups type stuff.”

  With a motion of his hand, J.P. saluted her. “I wouldn’t go that far,” he replied easily. Sara might not have a lot of confidence in herself as a rider, but she wasn’t a raw beginner, either. He knew she’d ridden with Shallie on occasion and, like him, she’d helped out over at Emma Grant’s stables, working with kids.

  He let Sara lead the way, and she soon eased Misty into a gentle trot across the expanse of the rolling pastureland.

  J.P. kept up, as did Trooper, who, though not as agile as he’d once been, seemed to be enjoying the fresh air, the rich green smell of good Montana grass and the earthy scent of fertile land. The famous big sky was a cloudless dome overhead, edged, in the distance, by timbered mountains.

  This was home, this wide-open space.

  This was the place he longed for whenever he was away, the place that had healed him, body and soul, after endless, painful months in a military hospital back East. He drew it in deep, like a soul-breath.

  As the minutes passed, Sara seemed to relax in the saddle, loosening her grip on the reins, taking in her surroundings instead of focusing on the space between Misty’s twitching ears.

  They didn’t speak; it didn’t seem necessary out here, where the sky and the breeze and the whispering grass spoke in a language all their own.

  When they reached Painted Pony creek, the broad stream for which the town was named, they let the horses drink.

  Meanwhile, Trooper dashed up and down the muddy bank, chasing a handful of butterflies, as happy as any dog could wish to be.

  Watching him, J.P. smiled. He loved that mutt, and he didn’t care who knew it.