The Lawman's Romance Lesson (Forever, Tx. Series Book 20) Read online

  He used to believe in love.

  Until life took an unexpected turn...

  And Daniel Tallchief’s fiancée left him. But staying in Forever, Texas, to raise his little sister was the right choice. Until her teacher Shania Stewart tells Daniel he’s too strict with his party-obsessed sibling! The handsome lawman doesn’t know whether to ignore her or kiss her. But Shania knows. It’s going to take a carefully crafted lesson plan to tutor this cowboy in love.

  She was a grown woman, for heaven’s sake, not some prepubescent girl nursing her first crush.

  The word crush caught her up short.

  Why had she just thought that? she silently asked. Where had it even come from? Had it really been that long since she’d had even the mildest form of a relationship in her life?

  Feeling unaccountably nervous, Shania cleared her throat. “Belle probably thinks that I must have run away from home.”

  Daniel surprised himself when he told her, “Can’t have that.”

  “No, we can’t,” she murmured. One hand on the door latch, she still hesitated. What was she waiting for? she asked herself.

  Forcing herself to open the door, she heard Daniel call her name.

  Turning around to look at the deputy, Shania asked, “What?”

  And then she had the answer to the question she’d asked even though Daniel didn’t say anything in response. Instead he slipped one hand behind her, cupping the back of her head just enough to bring her a shade closer to him.

  And then he kissed her.

  FOREVER, TEXAS:

  Cowboys, ranchers and lawmen—oh my!

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to part two of Wynona and Shania’s story. At the end of the last book, Wynona agreed to marry Clint Washburn. When we pick up the story here, Shania is now living alone in the house that she and her cousin rented when they returned to Forever. Shania doesn’t do well alone and fills her time by keeping busy teaching math and physics. One of her students is a particular challenge at the outset. Elena is sixteen and has just discovered partying. Elena is also Deputy Daniel Tallchief’s younger sister. Daniel is both mother and strict father to the teen, having taken on the roles after their parents were killed in an auto accident several years ago. As it turns out, Daniel didn’t just lose his parents, he lost his fiancée, Lana, as well when the latter gave him an ultimatum: it was her or his sister. But now his sister is giving him trouble and he has no idea how to get her to come around.

  Fortunately for him, Shania takes on this problem and, by making the girl realize how much potential she has, gets Elena to come around as well as settle down.

  Daniel finds himself indebted to the woman. When the irrepressible Miss Joan steps in, one thing leads to another and Daniel’s faith in love is renewed. Come and watch the evolution as a good man discovers that there is such a thing as a second chance.

  Thank you for taking the time to read my book, and from the bottom of my heart, I wish you someone to love who loves you back.

  All the best,

  Marie Ferrarella

  The Lawman’s Romance Lesson

  Marie Ferrarella

  USA TODAY bestselling and RITA® Award–winning author Marie Ferrarella has written more than two hundred and fifty books for Harlequin, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide. Visit her website, marieferrarella.com.

  Books by Marie Ferrarella

  Harlequin Special Edition

  Forever, Texas

  The Cowboy’s Lesson in Love

  The Lawman’s Romance Lesson

  Matchmaking Mamas

  Diamond in the Ruff

  Her Red-Carpet Romance

  Coming Home for Christmas

  Dr. Forget-Me-Not

  Twice a Hero, Always Her Man

  Meant to Be Mine

  A Second Chance for the Single Dad

  Christmastime Courtship

  Engagement for Two

  Adding Up to Family

  The Fortunes of Texas: The Secret Fortunes

  Fortune’s Second-Chance Cowboy

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

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  To

  Patience Bloom

  And

  Gail Chasan

  With Gratitude

  For Allowing Me

  To Live In Forever

  A Little

  Longer

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from To Keep Her Baby by Melissa Senate

  Excerpt from The Austen Playbook by Lucy Parker

  Prologue

  The evenings were the hardest for Shania. Somehow, the darkness outside seemed to intensify the silence and the feeling of being alone within the small house she used to occupy with her cousin.

  Before she and Wynona had returned to Forever, Texas, the little town located just outside of the Navajo reservation where they had both been born, noise had been a constant part of their lives.

  Joyful noise.

  Noise that signified activity.

  The kind of noise that could be associated with living in a college dorm. And before that, when they had lived in their great-aunt Naomi’s house, there had still been noise, the kind of noise that came from being totally involved with life. Their great-aunt was a skilled surgeon and physician who was completely devoted to her work.

  Because Naomi volunteered at a free clinic at least a couple of days a week as well as being associated with one of the local hospitals, patients would turn up on their doorstep at all sorts of hours. When she and Wynona grew older, Aunt Naomi thought nothing of having both of them pitch in and help out with her patients. She wanted them to learn how to provide proper care.

  Between the volunteer work and their schooling, there was never any sort of downtime, never any time to sit back, much less be bored.

  She and Wynona had welcomed being useful and mentally stimulated because that was such a contrast to the lives they had initially been born into. Born on the Navajo reservation to mothers who were sisters, Shania and Wynona spent their childhoods together. They were closer than actual sisters, especially after Wynona lost her mother. She’d never known her father. Shania’s parents took her in to live with them without any hesitation.

  Shania herself had been thrilled to share her parents with her cousin, but unfortunately, that situation didn’t last very long. Nine months after Wynona had come to live with them, Shania’s father was killed in an auto accident. And then less than six months later, her mother died of pneumonia.

  At the ages of ten and eleven, Wynona and Shania
found themselves both orphaned.

  The girls were facing foster care, which ultimately meant being swallowed up by the social services system. Just before they were to be shipped off, their great-aunt Naomi, who had been notified by an anonymous party, suddenly swooped into town. In the blink of an eye, the strong-willed woman managed to cut through all manner of red tape and whisked them back to her home in Houston.

  And after that, everything changed.

  Shania and her cousin were no longer dealing with an uncertain future. Aunt Naomi gave them a home and she gave them responsibilities as well, never wanting them to take anything for granted. They quickly discovered that their great-aunt was a great believer in helping those in need. Naomi made sure to instill a desire to “pay it forward” within them.

  They had found that their great-aunt was a stern woman, but there had never been a question that the woman loved them and would be there for them if they should ever need her.

  Shania sighed and pushed aside her plate, leaving the food all but untouched. Having taken leftovers out of the refrigerator, she hadn’t bothered to warm them up before she’d brought them over to the table. She could almost hear Aunt Naomi’s voice telling her, If you’re going to eat leftovers, do it properly. Warm them up first.

  Shania frowned at the plate. She really wasn’t hungry.

  What she was hungry for wasn’t food but the discussions they used to have around the dinner table when Aunt Naomi, Wynona and she would all talk about their day. Aunt Naomi never made it seem as if hers was more important even though they all knew that she made such a huge difference in the lives she touched. Each person, each life, Aunt Naomi had maintained, was important in its own way.

  When she and Wynona had moved back to Forever, armed with their teaching degrees and determined to give back to the community, for the most part those discussions continued. She and her cousin had been excited about the difference they were going to make, especially since both the local elementary school and high school, for practicality purposes, were now comprised of students who came not only from the town but also from the reservation. The aim was to improve the quality of education rendered to all the students.

  But there were times, like tonight, when the effects of that excitement slipped into the shadows and allowed the loneliness to rear its head and take over. Part of the reason for that was because she now lived alone here. Wynona had gotten married recently and while Shania was thrilled beyond words for her cousin, she had no one to talk to, no one to carry on any sort of a dialogue with.

  At least, not anyone human.

  There was, of course, still Belle.

  Just as she got up to go into her den to work on tomorrow’s lesson plan, Belle seemed to materialize and stepped into her path. The German shepherd looked up at her with her big, soulful brown eyes.

  “You miss her too, don’t you, Belle?” Shania murmured to the dog that she and Wynona had found foraging through a garbage pail behind the Murphy brothers’ saloon the first week they moved back. After determining that the dog had no owner, they immediately rescued the rail-thin shepherd and took her in.

  Belle thrived under their care. When Wynona got married, Shania had told her cousin to take the dog with her. But Wynona had declined, saying that she felt better about leaving if Belle stayed with her.

  Belle rubbed her head against Shania’s thigh now, then stopped for a moment and looked up.

  “Message received,” Shania told the German shepherd with a smile. “You’re right. I’m not alone. You’re here. But there are times that I really wish you could talk.”

  As if on cue, Belle barked, something, as a rule, she rarely did. It was as if Belle didn’t like to call attention to herself unless absolutely necessary.

  “You’re right. I shouldn’t be feeling sorry for myself, I should be feeling happy for Wyn.” Dropping down beside the German shepherd, Shania ran her hands along the dog’s head and back, petting the animal. “You really are brighter than most people, girl,” she laughed.

  As if in agreement, Belle began licking her face.

  And just like that, the loneliness Shania had been wrestling with slipped away.

  Chapter One

  Deputy Daniel Tallchief could feel his anger increasing in waves. He told himself he wasn’t going to say anything to the girl sitting in the seat next to him until he calmed down. He didn’t want to say anything to his sister that he might wind up regretting later, after he’d had a chance to cool off.

  Right now, it felt as if that was never going to happen.

  And keeping his temper under control wasn’t easy. Not when he wanted to shout into Elena’s face and demand to know how she could do something not only so stupid, but so incredibly disrespectful to the memory of their parents as well as to him.

  So far, Daniel had been silent. Silent the entire drive home, even though he could feel angry words clawing at his throat, all but choking him in their eagerness to be released.

  Elena wasn’t much help to him in that respect. His sixteen-year-old only sister was sitting in the passenger seat, obviously fuming. Her very body language, not to mention what she was actually saying to him, were goading him to lose his temper.

  “I don’t know what you’re so mad about,” Elena retorted, folding her arms in front of her chest just like their mother used to do when she was displaying anger. “You told me I couldn’t have parties in our house while you were gone and I didn’t have one,” she informed him haughtily. “In case you didn’t notice, that was Matthew’s house you storm trooped into, not ours. His house is a lot nicer,” she deliberately pointed out. “Matthew has a right to throw a party if he wants to and I have a perfect right to be there if I want to.” She punctuated her statement by tossing her head defiantly, sending her long, shining black hair flying over her shoulder.

  The best laid plans of mice and men, Daniel had read somewhere, often went awry—or words to that effect. Right now, that described his plans for waiting until he had cooled off to a T.

  So rather than driving straight home in silence—at least his silence—Daniel pulled his car over to the side of the road and glared at his angry sister, the person who was responsible, at least in part, for his taking a job as a sheriff’s deputy rather than finishing college and getting a degree. Not finishing college put an end to his being able to go on to medical school and to eventually achieve his lifelong dream of becoming a doctor.

  It had also wound up putting an end to Lana and him.

  The hell with cooling off. “Number one,” Daniel enumerated, “Matthew doesn’t have the right to have a party loud enough to disturb all his neighbors just because his parents were naive enough to leave him home alone for a week. Number two, you don’t have the right to attend a party where alcohol was being unlawfully served. From what I could see, everyone there was a minor so if I was as hard-nosed as you seem to think I am, I would have arrested them all on the spot instead of giving them a warning that I’d come down hard on them if this happened again.”

  Daniel took a breath. It was a real struggle to keep his voice down.

  Apparently, his self-restraint was wasted on his sister.

  She glared at him. “Not much that they can do in the way of partying now that you took away all their liquor.”

  “I confiscated it,” Daniel corrected. “And when Matthew’s parents get back and ask about what happened to their incredibly large supply of alcohol, I’ll hand the bottles over to them.”

  Elena’s frown intensified. “Along with a lecture, no doubt, about how they should make an effort to be better parents.” She fumed, looking at him darkly. “You know, not everyone wants to be like you, Daniel.”

  “Right now,” the deputy told Elena, starting up his car again and heading back to town, “I don’t even want to be me.”

  Refusing to appear intimidated, Elena raised her chin defiantly.
“Well, it’s no picnic being your sister, either.”

  Daniel bit his tongue to keep back the hot words that were hovering there, aching to be released. Saying them to Elena might very well produce momentary gratification, but he knew that he’d wind up paying for that gratification in the long run. Paying for it with the amount of damage that those words could cause to the relationship he had with Elena.

  A relationship that already felt as if it was tottering on its last legs.

  He and Elena had been close once. Extremely close. He’d helped raise her because both his parents were so busy trying to provide a decent life for his sister and for him. Despite experiencing the typical wants and desires of a teenager, which included hanging out with his friends and all that entailed, Daniel still doted on Elena and found time to be there for her.

  But then the world had been turned upside down. His parents had been in a terrible car accident. His mother had died instantly and his father had lingered for a few hours before he died as well. So instead of graduating college and going off to medical school—he had an early acceptance letter he still carried around folded up in his wallet—he had to drop out and find a job in a hurry in order to be able to provide for Elena and take care of both of them.

  And, as hard as giving up his education had been, losing Lana had been even harder on him.

  The death of their parents had its effects on Elena as well. Always bright and studious, she’d gradually turned her back on all that. Instead, she just focused on living in the moment.

  Partying in the moment.

  And frustrating Daniel to the point that he was all but incoherent, like now.

  “I don’t even know you anymore,” he told Elena after another ten minutes of silence had passed.

  Exasperated, Daniel pulled his car up in front of the small, three-bedroom, single-story house that had once known such happiness but now stood as a lonely reminder of what no longer was.

  “That makes two of us,” Elena shot back. “I don’t know you anymore, and I can’t trust you, either.”