Curtis (Coyote Ridge) (Volume 1) Read online

  CURTIS

  Also by Nicole Edwards

  The Alluring Indulgence Series

  Kaleb

  Zane

  Travis

  Holidays with the Walker Brothers

  Ethan

  Braydon

  Sawyer

  Brendon

  The Club Destiny Series

  Conviction

  Temptation

  Addicted

  Seduction

  Infatuation

  Captivated

  Devotion

  Perception

  Entrusted

  Adored

  The Coyote Ridge Series

  Curtis

  The Dead Heat Ranch Series

  Boots Optional

  Betting on Grace

  Overnight Love

  The Devil’s Bend Series

  Chasing Dreams

  Vanishing Dreams

  The Devil’s Playground Series

  Without Regret

  The Pier 70 Series

  Reckless

  The Sniper 1 Security Series

  Wait for Morning

  Never Say Never

  The Southern Boy Mafia Series

  Beautifully Brutal

  Beautifully Loyal

  Standalone Novels

  A Million Tiny Pieces

  Inked on Paper

  Writing as Timberlyn Scott

  Unhinged

  Unraveling

  Chaos

  Naughty Nice Holiday Books

  2015

  CURTIS

  A Coyote Ridge Novel

  NICOLE EDWARDS

  Nicole Edwards Limited

  PO Box 806

  Hutto, Texas 78634

  www.NicoleEdwardsLimited.com

  www.slipublishing.com

  Copyright © Nicole Edwards, 2016

  All rights reserved.

  This is a self-published title.

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  Curtis – A Coyote Ridge Novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Cover Image: © kjolak | 123rf.com (front cover image - 12022832);

  Ebook Format Image: © kjolak | 123rf.com (14284060); © 100ker | 123rf.com (12494733); © Viktor Kunz (19053287)

  Cover Design: © Nicole Edwards Limited

  Editing: Blue Otter Editing www.BlueOtterEditing.com

  ISBN (ebook): 978-1-939786-59-3

  ISBN (print): 978-1-939786-60-9

  Contemporary Romance

  Mature Audience

  Dedication

  To Jack DeNormandie

  Without you, this book wouldn’t have been written. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for sharing so much of yourself with me. (And thank you for Chancy, too)

  Table of Contents

  Dedication PROLOGUE

  PART ONE chapter ONE

  chapter TWO

  chapter THREE

  chapter FOUR

  chapter FIVE

  chapter SIX

  chapter SEVEN

  chapter EIGHT

  chapter NINE

  PART TWO chapter TEN

  chapter ELEVEN

  chapter TWELVE

  chapter THIRTEEN

  chapter FOURTEEN

  chapter FIFTEEN

  chapter SIXTEEN

  chapter SEVENTEEN

  chapter EIGHTEEN

  chapter NINETEEN

  PART THREE chapter TWENTY

  chapter TWENTY-ONE

  chapter TWENTY-TWO

  chapter TWENTY-THREE

  chapter TWENTY-FOUR

  chapter TWENTY-FIVE

  chapter TWENTY-SIX

  chapter TWENTY-SEVEN

  chapter TWENTY-EIGHT

  chapter TWENTY-NINE

  chapter THIRTY

  chapter THIRTY-ONE

  chapter THIRTY-TWO

  chapter THIRTY-THREE

  chapter THIRTY-FOUR

  chapter THIRTY-FIVE

  chapter THIRTY-SIX

  chapter THIRTY-SEVEN

  chapter THIRTY-EIGHT

  chapter THIRTY-NINE

  chapter FORTY

  chapter FORTY-ONE

  chapter FORTY-TWO

  chapter FORTY-THREE

  chapter FORTY-FOUR

  chapter FORTY-FIVE

  chapter FORTY-SIX

  chapter FORTY-SEVEN

  PART FOUR chapter FORTY-EIGHT

  chapter FORTY-NINE

  chapter FIFTY

  chapter FIFTY-ONE

  chapter FIFTY-TWO

  chapter FIFTY-THREE

  chapter FIFTY-FOUR

  chapter FIFTY-FIVE

  chapter FIFTY-SIX

  chapter FIFTY-SEVEN

  chapter FIFTY-EIGHT

  chapter FIFTY-NINE

  EPILOGUE

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE

  “Pop!”

  Curtis Walker glanced around, looking for the face of the person calling him. He recognized the voice, but for the life of him, he couldn’t place it. The last few hours had left him jittery and frustrated, making it damn near impossible to think about anything except his wife.

  Lorrie.

  God, baby, please be okay.

  His chest hurt so much that it was difficult to breathe. His lungs felt ten times too small. As though a band was cinched tightly around his ribs, squeezing, suffocating.

  Damn it.

  He needed air. Needed … something.

  A firm hand touched his shoulder, and he focused long enough to realize his oldest son was standing at his side.

  Shit. Where am I?

  “Dad? You okay?”

  No. No, he wasn’t. Not even a little bit.

  Then it all came back to him in a rush of noise and light mingling with the stench of disinfectant and disease. He was in the emergency room waiting area because they had taken Lorrie back for some tests. He remembered the nurse had kindly asked him to wait out here because he was a nervous wreck and he was making the doctor uneasy. At first, he’d considered arguing—for a brief moment, even throwing a punch at the surly doctor—but when he’d looked down at his wife, so pale, so weak, lying in that bed, her lips thin, eyes dim from the pain she was enduring, he had relented.

  And yeah, damn it, he was a fucking nervous wreck. How could he not be? His wife was sick. Sicker than he’d ever seen her in her life, and he’d been by her side through plenty of illnesses over the past fifty plus years they’d been together.

  “Where’s Mom?” Travis asked, his tone gruff, his face a stony mask of concern.

  Curtis met his oldest son’s gaze, those hard, blue-gray eyes identical to his own. “Tests,” he forced out, noticing that Travis’s wife, Kylie, his husband, Gage, and their daughter, Kate, were with him.

  “Dad, you need to sit down,” Curtis’s daughter-in-law stated firmly, her hand curling around his arm as she led him toward one of the empty chairs.

  He hadn’t even realized he was standing. Shit.

  He needed to pull himself together.

  Although he towered over Kylie by a solid foot, outweighed her by God only knew how much, it seemed she had more strength in her hand than he had in his entire body.

  Lorrie.<
br />
  “Breathe,” Kylie stated delicately. “Just breathe.”

  Not so easy when there were ten tons of emotions sitting on his chest. Not knowing what was going on with Lorrie made it damn near impossible to function, but he forced himself to draw air into his lungs, exhaling slowly.

  “Where’re your brothers?” Curtis asked Travis, doing his best to clear the fog from his head.

  “They’re on the way. I called them as soon as I hung up with you. Did the doctor say anything before they sent you out here?”

  Curtis shook his head. Hell, he couldn’t remember half of what the doctor had said. “Something about infection…”

  Travis’s hand was once again on Curtis’s shoulder, giving him comfort. “From the kidney stone?”

  “They said that shouldn’t have caused it.” In layman’s terms, the stone was gone, so technically it was no longer an issue.

  Oh, God. Curtis put his hands on his face, tried to gather his composure, but it was futile. The riot of emotion was tearing him apart. He just needed to be by Lorrie’s side. It was the one place on earth that he belonged, and they had sent him away. Banished him to the godforsaken waiting room.

  He knew Lorrie would be fine on her own, but he wasn’t so sure he’d be fine without her.

  “Hey, Trav. Pop.”

  Curtis looked up to see more of his boys coming toward him. Ethan and his husband, Beau, along with Kaleb and his wife, Zoey. Not far behind were Sawyer and his wife, Kennedy. He knew the rest would be along shortly, especially if Travis had told them that their mother was sick.

  “What sort of tests are they doing?” Kylie asked, her hand gently resting on his forearm.

  “Blood tests and a CT scan.” At least that was what he thought they’d said. He really wasn’t sure.

  “What happened?” Kennedy questioned.

  Curtis sat up straight, gripped the arms of the chair, and took another deep breath. He tried to ignore the incessant pounding of his heart as he looked at his daughter-in-law, then around at the others. “She woke up this mornin’, said she felt horrible. She couldn’t eat, and if she tried, she couldn’t hold anything down. Her temperature was one-oh-three…” God, she’d looked so pitiful. It had broken his heart to realize he couldn’t do a damn thing to help her, either.

  Ethan squatted down in front of Curtis, placing his hand on Curtis’s knee. “When did this start?”

  “When she went to bed last night, she said she didn’t feel well. Thought maybe she was coming down with the flu.”

  “The flu?” Ethan frowned. “But she’s been better since Friday?”

  Curtis nodded. “For a bit, yes. Then this morning, her skin was kinda ashy. Finally, she told me to get her to the hospital.” That was when he’d known it was bad. Lorrie hated hospitals, so for her to suggest it meant there was a serious problem.

  “Be right back.” Travis patted Curtis’s shoulder, then headed over to the nurse’s desk as more people moved toward him.

  Braydon and Jessie, Brendon and Cheyenne, Zane and Vanessa. Now all his boys and their significant others were there, along with his nephew, Jared, and Jared’s son, Derrick. Not far behind them, Curtis saw his sister, Maryanne, and her husband, Thomas.

  Looked as though word had gotten out.

  “I need to see her,” Curtis mumbled to himself, not thinking about all the people who where there watching him lose his shit.

  “You will,” Kylie assured him. “Travis’ll make sure of it.”

  “She’ll be okay, Pop,” Ethan said, his voice low. Curtis heard the concern in his boy’s tone, though. He knew everyone was as worried as he was. Lorrie was the backbone of their family. Without her…

  No, he wasn’t going to think about that. She was going to be fine.

  She had to be.

  Lorrie Walker felt like crap warmed over. Her entire body hurt and she had no idea why. It was as though every fiber of her being was being pricked with tiny needles, then squeezed with pliers. She couldn’t stop vomiting, either, but they’d given her something to help with that, or so they’d said. The only thing she wanted to do was sleep until she could wake up and be well again.

  They’d been poking and prodding her for the past couple of hours in an attempt to figure out what was going on with her body, but no one seemed to know. And the worst of it was, they had sent Curtis out into the waiting room because he’d been looming over them, making the medical staff nervous. She hadn’t wanted him to leave, but she knew it would be best for the doctors and for Curtis if he didn’t have to sit and watch.

  Now that the CT scan had been done and she’d given more blood than she’d thought she had in her veins, Lorrie was settled into the bed, and they had promised they would go get him, but twenty minutes had passed, and she could hardly keep her eyes open. Still no Curtis.

  When the bubbly blond nurse walked in, Lorrie shifted her legs, trying to get comfortable. “Is my husband coming?”

  “Oh, right. I’m so sorry, Mrs. Walker. I’ll go get him in just a minute. You should probably get some rest in the meantime.”

  For most of her sixty-seven years, Lorrie had been described as kindhearted. Non-confrontational. Loving even. And yes, she was usually all of those things, including the easygoing woman everyone suspected her to be, but there were a few things in the world guaranteed to set her off. One surefire way was if someone messed with her boys. Another was when it was clear they were trying to keep her away from Curtis—or vice versa. At that point, the gloves came off and a different side of her came out. A side most people didn’t want to see.

  This nice young woman should’ve been warned. Too late now.

  “You need to go get him,” Lorrie said, keeping her tone as polite as she could while she breathed through the pain that was currently tearing apart her insides.

  “We will, Mrs. Walker. Just close your eyes and rest.”

  Lorrie smiled, and based on the way the nurse was looking at her, she knew it wasn’t a pleasant one. “I’m only gonna say this one time. And it’s more of a warning for you than anything else. If my husband finds out that you’re purposely keeping him away from me, the outcome is going to be unlike anything you’ve ever seen before.”

  And heaven help them all if her boys were out there, too.

  The men in her life did not take kindly to someone attempting to keep her away from them. Especially Curtis.

  The woman’s smile faltered, her forehead creasing. “We understand, but—”

  “No, I really don’t think that you do.” If she did, she wouldn’t be standing there gawking at her.

  “We thought it might be best if you got a little rest without him here.”

  Lorrie plastered a fake smile on her face. “I highly suggest you don’t tell him that.”

  Lord have mercy. Was it that difficult to understand?

  Thankfully, the nurse nodded and rushed out of the room. Within a couple of minutes, Curtis was walking in, his face hard, his beautiful blue-gray eyes reflecting the fear she’d expected to see in them. She hated that he worried so much, but the truth was, she was worried, too. Never had she felt like this before, and she couldn’t even pinpoint exactly what the problem was. She hurt everywhere.

  “What did they say?” Curtis asked, his voice deep but soft as he leaned over and kissed her forehead.

  “Something about high white blood cell counts from the preliminary tests,” she told him, trying to remember exactly what they’d said. She was having a hard time focusing as it was. Nodding toward the IV in her arm, she continued, “They’ve put me on antibiotics while they wait for more tests to come back.”

  Curtis eased into the chair beside her bed and rested his hand over hers.

  “I’m so tired,” she told him.

  “I know, darlin’. Close your eyes and rest. I’m right here.”

  “You won’t leave me?”

  “Not in this lifetime.”

  Knowing he meant every word, Lorrie succumbed to sleep, instantly
drifting off, knowing Curtis would keep her safe. Just as he always had, since that very first day...

  PART ONE

  “Love isn’t something you find. Love is something that finds you.”

  ~ Loretta Young

  chapter ONE

  SUNDAY, OCTOBER 7, 1962

  I can’t believe Daddy made me go over to the Walkers’ place today. On my way over there, I hoped that no one would be home and I could come back and tell him so. I didn’t get that lucky.

  Of all people, Curtis Walker answered the door. The nerve of that boy. If I didn’t think he was cute, I would be really mad at him right now. Not that I like him. I’m still on the fence about that. He’s… I don’t know what he is. Stubborn, maybe?

  When I got to his house, he was the last person I expected to see when the front door opened. I figured if anyone would answer when I knocked, it would be Carol, the lady who works for them.

  I should probably mention that the Walkers aren’t like the rest of us. Granite Creek is such a small town. We’ve got one school, one pharmacy, one gas station, a diner, and a tiny little grocery store. It’s more of a farming community than a town, and it’s no secret that people aren’t rich here.

  And then you’ve got the Walkers. Not only do they live in one of the nicest houses, they’ve got people who work for them, and I’m not talking about on their ranch. They have a housekeeper and a cook, while we have to do all the work ourselves. With so many people doing things for them, I’m surprised Curtis even knows how to answer the door.

  That wasn’t the worst, though. When he joined me on his porch, he nearly pushed me out of the way, not even saying he was sorry. Then again, he’s a Walker, and everyone in Granite Creek knows that the Walkers are big shots. They’re arrogant and rowdy, even mean sometimes. Especially Mr. Walker. But he’s dead now, so at least I didn’t have to talk to him. That would’ve been bad.

  I heard that Mr. Walker’s funeral was a big to-do with most of the people in town showing up to say good-bye even though no one really liked him. We didn’t go, of course. Daddy didn’t like Mr. Walker, and he makes sure everyone knows it. Which makes me wonder why Daddy wanted me to go over there in the first place. I heard him and Momma talking about Mr. Walker’s death wishes. Something about land and money, I think. I tuned it out because Daddy is always talking about how hard it is that we don’t have money and everyone else in town has more than we do.