Read Online Renegade Father by RaeAnne Thayne - Free Book Online

her fragile barriers and crashed over her in wave after wave of paralyzing panic.
    Someone had been watching her. While she had worked at her paperwork completely unaware, someone had been just a thin sheet of glass away. Watching her.
    How long had he stood outside the window?
    And why?
    As soon as she felt the fear begin to take over, felt the return of that helplessness she hated so much, she stiffened.
    Not again. Dammit, not again.
    â€œCome on, Annie. Tell me what’s going on. You’re white as a ghost.”
    She wrenched her gaze from the inky, ominous blackness to the man who stood beside her looking ruggedly masculine even with a dishrag in his hand.
    She couldn’t tell Joe about the photograph. She couldn’t. He would only worry and fret and use this asan excuse not to take the job opportunity in Wyoming. She refused to do that to him.
    Besides, it was only somebody’s idea of a stupid, silly prank. It had to be. With a deep, calming breath, she forced the fear down so that the cool voice of reason could reassert itself. Just a joke, that’s all. What else could it possibly be? Nobody had any reason to frighten her anymore.
    That was Charlie’s specialty and he was gone—living in New Mexico somewhere, according to his sleazebag of a lawyer. He wouldn’t dare show himself around Madison Valley again, not unless he wanted to find himself behind bars.
    His good-old-boy network wouldn’t be able to protect him anymore. Now that Bill Porter had been voted out of the sheriff’s office, Charlie had no more influence with local law enforcement.
    John Douglas, the new sheriff, had been the deputy who investigated Charlie’s last drunken attack on her—the beating that nearly killed her and finally convinced her that she had to break free, for the children’s sake if nothing else.
    Douglas had been caring and committed, and she knew he was more than willing to pursue charges if her ex-husband ever showed his face around town again.
    She wouldn’t be Charlie’s victim anymore.
    Or anyone else’s, for that matter.
    â€œAnnie?”
    Joe gripped her shoulder to turn her toward him. The heat of his touch forced its way past her nerves—past the fear—and zinged right to her stomach. He stood only a few inches away from her, a tall, lean man, hardened and toughened by life.
    With any other man she might have been uneasy athis closeness, at the leashed power in those thick muscles. But this was Joe.
    Joe’s arms would give only comfort, a safe haven, and she suddenly wanted them around her with a fierce intensity that alarmed her far more than any noises she heard outside.
    Her body instinctively swayed toward him, drawn to his warmth and strength like metal shavings toward a magnet. Instead of pulling her close, though, instead of folding her into the solace of his arms, he dropped his hand from her shoulder as if he’d touched the electric fence around the south pasture.
    Cheeks flaming, she backed away from him and returned to the sink to gaze out the window. She could sense him watching her, feel the heat of that black-eyed gaze.
    She had always thought Joe would have made a good cop—he could stare the truth out of anybody. But she wouldn’t bend this time.
    He must have reached the same conclusion. He sighed, a soft, frustrated sound in the quiet kitchen. “You’re not going to tell me what’s bothering you, are you?”
    â€œThere’s nothing to tell,” she lied. “I’m just edgy from the storm, that’s all.”
    â€œYou could teach stubborn to a blasted mule.”
    Before she could answer, C.J. came bursting into the kitchen. “Hey Mom! There’s gonna be a show on next about panda bears in China. Want to come watch?” His voice trailed off when he saw Joe standing by the mudroom door. Her son’s finely drawn features twisted into a frown.
    â€œWhy is he still