Cover

Praise

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

Booklist

Also available from Linda Lael Miller
and HQN

Painted Pony Creek

Country Strong

The Carsons of Mustang Creek

A Snow Country Christmas

Forever a Hero

Always a Cowboy

Once a Rancher

The Brides of Bliss County

Christmas in Mustang Creek The Marriage Season

The Marriage Charm

The Marriage Pact

The Parable Series

Big Sky Secrets

Big Sky Wedding

Big Sky Summer

Big Sky River

Big Sky Mountain

Big Sky Country

McKettricks of Texas

An Outlaw’s Christmas

A Lawman’s Christmas

McKettricks of Texas: Austin

McKettricks of Texas: Garrett

McKettricks of Texas: Tate

The Creed Cowboys

The Creed Legacy

Creed’s Honor

A Creed in Stone Creek

Stone Creek

The Bridegroom

The Rustler

A Wanted Man

The Man from Stone Creek

The McKettricks

A McKettrick Christmas

McKettrick’s Heart

McKettrick’s Pride

McKettrick’s Luck

McKettrick’s Choice

Mojo Sheepshanks

Arizona Heat
(originally published as Deadly Deceptions)

Arizona Wild
(originally published as Deadly Gamble)

The Montana Creeds

A Creed Country Christmas

Montana Creeds: Tyler

Montana Creeds: Dylan

Montana Creeds: Logan

And look for the third book in Linda Lael Miller’s
all-new Painted Pony Creek series, Country Born,
coming soon from HQN!

Dedication

For Laura Wiley and Alan “Chipmunk” Robertson, two of the finest, bravest people I know. Guys, you are Country Strong and Country Proud partly because you’re both Country Born. It’s an honor and a joy to be considered kin to you.

Dear Reader

My very dear readers,

In my considerable experience writing fiction—easily half a century—I’ve met with success in unexpected hours. I’ve also struggled through the “slough of despond,” but why dwell on that? We all have our shadow valleys and dark nights of the soul, and since I’m writing this and you’re reading it, it seems safe to assume that either we’ve come out on the other side or we’re bearing up under our particular problems and pressing on toward a brighter day.

Writing Country Proud was a special joy to me, especially in this time of wild challenges and uncommon adversities. (I will remember this year as, among other things, the year I lived in my pajamas.)

The story people—Brynne and Eli, Cord, J.P., Melba and Dan—kept me focused on what really matters in this life. As I worked with them, I saw in these imaginary friends the qualities I most admire in others and work hard to cultivate in myself: honesty and integrity, courage in the face of adversity, compassion for all living things, respect for other people’s right to speak their mind (whether I agree or not), the ability to take the ultimate risk and love another person.

Times are tough, and they might get tougher.

It’s up to us to get tougher still.

That said, I don’t get paid to preach, but to tell a story—hopefully a good one. If you enjoy reading Country Proud half as much as I enjoyed writing it, I will have succeeded.

Stay strong,

Linda Lael Miller

CHAPTER ONE

SHERIFF ELI GARRETT gazed out his office window at the gently falling snow and sighed.

Christmas was over—although it seemed to him that the holiday would roll around again in approximately fifteen minutes—and another New Year was just around the bend.

Eli cupped his hands behind his head and leaned back in his chair, still watching the snow and hoping this little skiff wouldn’t work itself up into a mega blizzard, burying some or all of Wild Horse County in plain misery.

According to the weather app on his phone, it could happen. The meteorological jury was still out.

If the storm materialized, he and his four deputies would be on round-the-clock duty, prowling the roads and highways for accidents and stranded motorists, checking up on shut-ins and crotchety recluses, hauling drunks out of snowbanks, hopefully before hypothermia set in.

Like bar brawls, incidents of domestic violence rose over the holidays, given the preponderance of alcohol, but a few feet of the white stuff imprisoning people in their unhappy homes for an indefinite period would obviously exacerbate the problem.

Same as most cops, Eli dreaded domestic violence calls above all others.

His county was a relatively peaceful one, but he’d served in law enforcement since he’d graduated from the academy in Phoenix, first as a deputy and finally as sheriff, and he’d seen some crazy-assed shit.

Once, he’d spent upwards of forty-five minutes standing in the weed-choked front yard of a run-down house, trying to talk a methed-up ex-con holding a gun barrel to the underside of his own chin into surrendering the weapon.

Eli had told the poor bastard everything would be okay, which was a lie, since he knew a woman and several children were trapped inside the house behind the man, and there was no telling what kind of shape they were in. The offender was a felon in possession of a firearm, which was five kinds of illegal, and there would be drug charges as well as assault and God knew what else.

Hell, the most liberal judge in the state, never mind the county, would have sent this waste of space straight back to the pen—this time, for good.

Three strikes, you’re out.

Fact was, Eli would have said—or done—damn near anything to get the woman and those kids safely past that pistol-wielding maniac and into the ambulance waiting just out of shooting range.

“You don’t have to do this,” he’d said, for the umpteenth time.

Eli hadn’t drawn his own weapon; a mistake, he supposed, since even a stoner could probably take him down before he pulled his revolver out of the holster, but he hadn’t wanted to ratchet up the tension, which already vibrated like a wire tightened to the breaking point. The two deputies backing him up were almost surely ready to shoot if the need arose.

He’d taken a single step toward the man, hands dangling loosely at his sides, palms out. He was no grandstander, no hero—just a committed cop who wanted everybody involved to survive the episode.

“Think about your wife,” he’d reasoned calmly, though he could feel sweat pooling between his shoulder blades. “Think about your kids. You want them to see you blow your brains out?”

The man bellowed, maybe with rage, maybe with the pain of all he’d done to eff-up his own life.

Sensing a stir behind him, figuring one or both of the deputies were about to make a move, Eli had growled, “Stand down. Do not fire your weapons.”

He hadn’t taken his eyes off the suspect, and he saw a terrible rictus of a grin cross the other man’s face, followed by a gruff laugh.

What happened next was surreal. It seemed to take place in slow motion; the air turned to a thick, pulsating fog and the ground felt spongy beneath Eli’s feet, causing him to sway slightly.

The shot echoed in all directions and the dead man folded to the ground.

Inside the house, the woman and the kids shrieked in horror.

“Oh, shit,” Eli had murmured. “Shit.”

The two deputies rushed past him, toward the house. The ambulance, parked up on the road until the shot was fired, sped down the driveway.

Eli walked toward a nearby maple tree, stepped behind it and lost his lunch.

Some hero.

As it turned out, the woman had a pair of black eyes and a broken arm. The kids were thoroughly traumatized, but physically unharmed, as far as he knew.

After the state police arrived, with their CSI team and the county coroner, Eli had returned to the sheriff’s department—the very office he was sitting in now—to write up the required reports. Then sheriff at the time, Dutch McKutchen, had been out of town that day, taking his wife, Clara, for her first round of chemotherapy, so he’d missed the action.

Upon his return, Dutch made up for lost time by reaming out his “brain-dead idiot of a deputy” for the better part of half an hour. “When you approach an armed suspect,” he’d raged, “you have your weapon drawn and ready. You do not go into a situation like some fricking hotshot TV cowboy—you could have been killed!”

After the lecture, Dutch had bought Eli a drink over at Sully’s Bar and Grill, told him not to come near the department until he’d been (1) debriefed by the appropriate state officials, and (2) cleared by an officially sanctioned shrink.

Eli smiled sadly, remembering Dutch. The old man had died of a heart attack ten years ago, a month into his retirement, while fishing up at Flathead Lake.

Deciding his thoughts had taken an unnecessarily grim turn, Eli lowered his hands, sat forward with a creak of the springs under his chair and stood.

Given some of the problems he’d faced, he reckoned a potential blizzard wasn’t the worst thing that could happen in his county. Not by a long shot.

Most likely, the storm would fizzle out before it did any real damage. Those weather people, in his opinion, were given to drama.

Just the same, Eli felt a little uneasy.

His sister, Sara, would say he was borrowing trouble.

Dutch McKutchen would have told him to pull his head out of his backside and be grateful for all the good things in his life. Like his two best friends, Cord Hollister and J.P. McCall. And his job, which he loved, about 85 percent of the time. He had a fair amount of money put away, savings and an inheritance from his and Sara’s paternal grandparents, and he owned his house and a few acres of land outright.

Had a good truck, too. Paid for, and still under warranty.

And then there was Brynne Bailey, back home to stay.

Brynne, his high school sweetheart. The girl he’d essentially betrayed

Eli was thankful that she’d returned to the Creek, for sure. Never mind that she barely gave him the proverbial time of day, probably still carried a torch for the man she’d left behind in Boston. But she was here now, in Painted Pony Creek, Montana, running her parents’ popular restaurant and bar, Bailey’s.

And speaking of Bailey’s...

He’d agreed—a little reluctantly—to meet his friends there for coffee and a few rounds of good old-fashioned bullshit.

Eli checked his watch. It was one of those jazzy Dick Tracy gizmos, a Christmas gift from Sara and her kids, Eric and Hayley.

A text bounced off some satellite and came in for a landing with a ping, startling him a little. He wasn’t all that big on modern technology; sometimes wished he’d been born in the days of swinging saloon doors, dance-hall girls, dusty streets and buckboards.

He shook his head, amused.

He was a seasoned officer—he’d stood toe to toe with armed criminals, not just that once, but half a dozen times over the course of his career, but this damn watch made him jumpy. God only knew what it was up to, behind that chunky square face...communicating with aliens, maybe. Or tracking his every move and reporting to—whom? Men in black? The Illuminati? Walmart?

Amos Edwards, one of his deputies, was big on conspiracy theories, and he’d taken a dim view of the device, claiming that “they”—whoever “they” might be—were using all forms of technology to spy on law-abiding citizens as they went about their daily lives. Intimate moments included.

Eli chuckled ruefully. Videos of his moments, intimate or otherwise, would be boring as hell.

He swiped the tiny screen to bring up the text.

It was from Cord. J.P. and I are here. Are you on your way, or out somewhere making Wild Horse County safe for Democracy?

He grinned. Managed to access the tiny virtual keyboard and bumble-fingered out, Be there in five minutes. At least, that was what he’d intended to say. The actual message read as if it had been punched in by a chimpanzee.

Cord and J.P. would just have to decode it for themselves.

BRYNNE BAILEY LIKED SNOW. Didn’t mind driving in the stuff, or shoveling the sidewalk in front of the café. In fact, it was romantic, especially around this time of year.

By February, of course, she’d probably be whistling a different tune. Longing for spring and mooning over seed catalogs and websites pitching tropical vacations.

At a signal from Cord Hollister sitting at a corner table, across from J.P. McCall, Brynne grabbed the coffeepot and headed over. Filled their cups.

The place was quiet, since the midafternoon lull was on. Things would pick up around four, when the early diners would rally for the supper special—tonight, it was meatloaf, spiked with Brynne’s own famous onion jam.

Curled beneath the table, J.P.’s retired service dog, Trooper, lifted his head and acknowledged Brynne with a doggy smile.

She smiled back.

“Thanks,” Cord said, and J.P. nodded in agreement.

Cord was married, but J.P. was available, and a real catch by anybody’s standards—like Cord, he was successful, smart and sexy as hell.

Oh, yes. J.P. McCall was a prize—a war hero, no less, with a sense of humor and a legendary investment portfolio. Women fell all over him, much to his delight, but so far, he’d remained single.

Brynne liked J.P., just as she liked Cord, but there was no spark between them. No chemistry whatsoever.

Which was a bummer, since she might have had a shot, otherwise.

Brynne was a pragmatic woman, and she was aware that, with her dark blue eyes, naturally silver-blond hair and decent figure, she turned heads.

Her appearance had been an asset in some ways, but she’d learned early that pretty girls had problems of their own; boys—and, later, men—hesitated to ask them out, lest they be rejected. She’d been popular in high school, a varsity cheerleader, proficient at both softball and soccer, a star player in the drama club, and she’d gotten good grades, too.

Senior year, she’d been prom queen.

Awkward, since she hadn’t actually had a date. By then, Eli had dropped her for Reba Shannon.

Even after all these years, Brynne felt a pang at the memory.

She’d put on a good front that long-ago night, kept her chin up and her shoulders back, but once she was home, in the privacy of her bedroom, still clad in the lovely lacy dress her mother had made with such care, she’d flung herself down on her bed and ugly-cried until her mascara ran and her whole face was puffy.

Watching Eli and Reba dance together had crushed her.

Things were better when she went away to college, at least when it came to the dating scene. At Northwestern, she’d been a very small fish in a very large pond, sheltered and naive; gently raised in Painted Pony Creek, Montana, she’d been homesick and totally overwhelmed during her freshman year.

Guys asked her out, though. They took her to parties and football games, dances and concerts, movies and festivals.

And, with few exceptions, they expected sex in return.

Immediately.

No getting to know each other. No taking the time to become friends, let alone build a relationship.

That kind of slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am approach had come as a shock to Brynne, though of course she’d known it was a thing. Sure, she’d grown up in a Podunk town, and she’d still been a virgin at the time, but plenty of the kids she’d gone to high school with had indulged. Two of her friends had been pregnant on graduation day.

But in college, sex wasn’t an option, it seemed to Brynne. It was a given.

She hadn’t been a prude, but she hadn’t been a pushover, either.

In her mind, there was sex—and there was lovemaking.

Sex had its place, she knew, but it wasn’t currency, to be exchanged for pizza and beer or an invitation to a party.

Soon enough, word had gotten around campus that Brynne Bailey didn’t put out; if she went out with a guy, it was Dutch treat—no exceptions.

And no hanky-panky.

After college, Brynne had moved from Chicago to Boston and made a life for herself, working in various high-end galleries, first in sales and eventually in management. She’d squeezed her personal artwork—mainly abstract acrylics, with diversions into watercolor landscapes, animals and birds—in whenever she’d had that rare combination of time and inspiration.

And then there had been Clayton.

Clay.

She didn’t want to think about him. Especially not in the middle of a workday.

So she shifted her attention back to Cord and J.P.

She’d gone to school with them, from kindergarten right on through high school and they were good friends, the kind of friends a person could depend upon, in the best of times—and the worst.

She refilled their coffee cups.

“You guys have a lot of leisure time,” she teased. Since there were no other customers in the café at the moment, she decided to chat a little.

Cord trained horses, and he was world-renowned for his ability to establish a rapport with even the most troubled animal. J.P. had been injured in Afghanistan, years before, and had parlayed a modest government settlement into a fortune.

J.P. looked around, taking in the empty tables and unoccupied seats at the counter. “So do you,” he said.

Brynne made a face, then laughed.

“Want to sit down?” Cord asked.

“No, thanks,” she replied. She had a personal rule: she didn’t sit with customers, even when the eatery was nearly empty and the invitation came from two of her oldest friends. “I’m on duty.”

J.P. saluted, the smart-ass.

Just then, the number one vehicle from the sheriff’s department whipped into the parking spot next to J.P.’s fancy rig. It was a massive SUV, dark green under sprays of mud, tricked out with top-of-the-line gear and emblazoned with insignia.

Brynne felt a lurch in the pit of her stomach.

Even after all this time, he still got to her, especially when the encounter was unexpected. And she figured she ought to be over it by now, since they weren’t kids anymore.

Nevertheless, there it was.

She watched as Eli got out of the rig, shut the door behind him and headed for the entrance.

He was easy on the eyes, especially in that uniform, but Brynne had other rules, besides the one about not sitting down with customers—she didn’t date cops.

Not anymore.

She was a law-abiding citizen and all that, but cops, like firefighters—she didn’t date them, either—were in almost constant danger, even in places like Painted Pony Creek, Montana. Back in Boston she’d had friends in law enforcement, before and after she’d fallen in love with a policeman.

She’d seen too many marriages break under the stress the job naturally entailed, visited too many hospital rooms, and attended too many funerals.

To Brynne, loving a cop meant being afraid, 24/7.

And if there was one thing Brynne Bailey didn’t need in her life, it was fear.

The little bell over the door jingled merrily as Eli came in from the cold.

Trooper crawled out from under the table and went, tail wagging, to greet the newcomer.

Eli smiled and bent to ruffle the dog’s ears, murmuring a greeting. According to his sisters, Sara, who was Brynne’s friend, he’d recently adopted a dog of his own, and named him “Festus,” after a character on that old Western chestnut, Gunsmoke.

“Coffee?” Brynne asked automatically. She wasn’t abrupt around Eli Garrett, just strangely careful.

“Sure,” Eli said. “Thanks.”

Brynne wondered if he ever thought about their history; if he regretted dumping her as gracelessly as he had.

Probably not, she decided.

To him, high school was a distant memory, water under the bridge.

Brynne didn’t dwell on the old days herself, of course, but sometimes recollections of losing Eli to another girl—Reba Shannon in particular—ambushed her.

When that happened, she had to remind herself that that was then and this is now. She and Eli, once so close, were mere acquaintances now.

Resolved to keep her cool, she went back behind the counter for a clean cup and saucer, grateful to have something to do, even though the task took less than a minute.

Eli was seated and reading the menu when Brynne set the cup down in front of him and poured coffee.

“What can I get you?” Brynne inquired lightly. It was what she said to everyone. Nothing special.

“Is the grill off?” Eli asked, without looking up from the menu.

“I can fire it up,” Brynne replied. “What’ll it be?”

“Burger with everything and an order of curly fries,” came the answer.

Brynne turned quickly and headed for the kitchen.

“Missed lunch,” she heard Eli explaining to his friends. “I could eat the north end of a southbound skunk.”

Brynne rolled her eyes, amused by the colorful, if hackneyed, description.

Men. Especially Montana men.

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