The Cowboy's Forbidden Bride (Turners vs Coopers of Chance Creek Book 5) Read online

  The Cowboy’s Forbidden Bride

  By Cora Seton

  Copyright © 2019 Cora Seton

  Kindle Edition

  Published by One Acre Press

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Author’s Note

  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

  Excerpt from Issued to the Bride One Navy SEAL

  About the Author

  Author’s Note

  The Cowboy’s Forbidden Bride is the fifth and final volume in the Turners v. Coopers series. To find out more, look for the rest of the books in the series, including:

  The Cowboy’s Secret Bride (Volume 1)

  The Cowboy’s Outlaw Bride (Volume 2)

  The Cowboy’s Hidden Bride (Volume 3)

  The Cowboy’s Stolen Bride (Volume 4)

  Also, don’t miss Cora Seton’s Chance Creek series, the Cowboys of Chance Creek, the Heroes of Chance Creek, the Brides of Chance Creek, and the SEALs of Chance Creek:

  The Cowboys of Chance Creek Series:

  The Cowboy Inherits a Bride (Volume 0)

  The Cowboy’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 1)

  The Cowboy Wins a Bride (Volume 2)

  The Cowboy Imports a Bride (Volume 3)

  The Cowgirl Ropes a Billionaire (Volume 4)

  The Sheriff Catches a Bride (Volume 5)

  The Cowboy Lassos a Bride (Volume 6)

  The Cowboy Rescues a Bride (Volume 7)

  The Cowboy Earns a Bride (Volume 8)

  The Cowboy’s Christmas Bride (Volume 9)

  The Heroes of Chance Creek Series:

  The Navy SEAL’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 1)

  The Soldier’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 2)

  The Marine’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 3)

  The Navy SEAL’s Christmas Bride (Volume 4)

  The Airman’s E-Mail Order Bride (Volume 5)

  The Brides of Chance Creek Series:

  Issued to the Bride One Navy SEAL

  Issued to the Bride One Airman

  Issued to the Bride One Sniper

  Issued to the Bride One Marine

  Issued to the Bride One Soldier

  Issued to the Bride One Sergeant for Christmas

  The SEALs of Chance Creek Series:

  A SEAL’s Oath

  A SEAL’s Vow

  A SEAL’s Pledge

  A SEAL’s Consent

  A SEAL’s Purpose

  A SEAL’s Resolve

  A SEAL’s Devotion

  A SEAL’s Desire

  A SEAL’s Struggle

  A SEAL’s Triumph

  Visit Cora’s website at www.coraseton.com

  Find Cora on Facebook at facebook.com/CoraSeton

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  Chapter One

  Steel Cooper was sick of hiding. Sick of hanging out with criminals. Sick of playing a part that had no bearing on who he really was or what he wanted from life. Sick of watching everyone else live out loud, unfettered by their pasts or their obligations. He’d spent half his life hiding. More than that, really, if you counted all the years he ran cover for his father’s petty crimes, the way children do when their parents skirt the law.

  As he stood in the shadows of a grove of trees that skirted Thorn Hill, spying on his sister’s wedding reception, he vowed that all the secrecy in his life would end soon. He’d finish the job his father, Dale, had started, would catch the killer that had preyed upon Chance Creek, Montana, for far too many years, and would finally—finally—take his place in the sun.

  He wasn’t sure when he’d hit the wall. Maybe it was witnessing each of his siblings marry this summer, one after the other, finding a kind of happiness that seemed out of his grasp.

  Maybe it was knowing that no one but him even believed the rash of overdose deaths in Silver Falls were anything but accidents. He’d been trying to prove them wrong since he’d come back to town with his family several years ago, and so far he’d made little progress.

  Or maybe it was realizing Stella Turner was falling for someone else.

  Steel looked over the celebration in front of him. Trees had been festooned with fairy lights. A local band played popular dance tunes. Despite the intense heat that had plagued Chance Creek all summer, it was a perfect night—

  For everyone but him.

  His chest tightened as Stella danced in the arms of another man. Her dark hair had been caught up into a loose bun for the occasion, tendrils coming free and curling in the heat. He wasn’t close enough to see her hazel eyes, but he had them memorized, like the sweet shape of her face and her tantalizing figure. If his life hadn’t become so damn complicated thirteen years ago, maybe he’d be the one dancing with her. Holding her close. Taking her home.

  Getting married—

  Steel squashed that thought—hard. He wouldn’t be marrying anyone anytime soon. Certainly not Stella, who worked at the Chance Creek county sheriff’s department fielding calls. She was smart as a whip, cool under pressure, and damned pretty to boot. Much too good for the likes of him—at least the way he was living his life now.

  But a man could dream, and he’d been dreaming about Stella since the day he’d come back to town and caught sight of her walking down main street, the girl next door all grown up.

  Completely out of his reach.

  Since then he’d done his best to stay out of her way, but that was impossible in a small town, especially since her family’s ranch lay across one small creek from his. He saw Stella all the time.

  Craved seeing her. Wanted to do a hell of a lot more.

  So far he’d managed to keep himself in check, but if he had to watch her in Eric Holden’s arms much longer, he was going to lose control.

  It had taken him nearly an hour to creep close enough to the festivities tonight to be able to see them clearly without being seen himself, and he’d only managed it because the hot summer days had convinced Tory and Liam to situate the party among a grove of shade trees on his family’s property. Once the sun set, he’d slipped from tree to tree from the deeper arm of forest that bounded their pastures.

  If he was caught, he’d have the excuse of wanting to congratulate his sister, but it would be for the best for all concerned if he wasn’t. Everyone, including his own family, thought he’d returned to Chance Creek to help his siblings on their ranch. Thirteen years ago, when their father’s checkered past had caught up to him and Dale had landed in jail, their mother, Enid, had moved the rest of his siblings to Idaho. Steel, already eighteen, had lingered in Chance Creek just long enough to clean up Dale’s mess, then had headed even farther west, to Washington. They’d all assumed the ranch had been sold as part of their parents’ divorce settlement and hadn’t expected to ever get the chance to come home, so when Dale died three years ago, and Steel, Lance, Tory and Olivi
a found themselves named as owners of Thorn Hill, their surprise was absolute.

  Lance and Olivia had jumped at the opportunity to go home. Tory had held off for several years but had joined them recently. Steel wouldn’t have come at all if it weren’t for the killer.

  He wasn’t sure if he’d come at all if he’d known how hard it would be to live in the same town as Stella, so close and yet inexorably out of reach of her.

  He’d been able to create a new life for himself in Washington, one in which the people who mattered knew who he was and why he did what he did. He’d had a tight group of friends who’d had his back—something he didn’t entirely appreciate until he gave it all up to come home.

  Still, it would all be worth it if he could just finish this job and put his undercover days behind him—make the kind of life that would give him a chance with a woman like Stella. Until then he needed to keep his distance from his family. He’d made a mistake thinking he could live with them and still penetrate the seamy underside of the area. He found it ironic that all the good people of Chance Creek assumed from the start he was a criminal like his father was, while the criminals who populated Silver Falls viewed him with too much suspicion for him to make any real progress tracking down the killer.

  On a night like this one, that irony got under his skin and made him wish he’d never taken the job in the first place.

  He’d taken too long, and now he was losing Stella to another man.

  Steel chanced another look and bit back a curse when he took in the way Eric had pulled her in tight against him. Steel knew Eric—or knew of him. He was a sheriff’s deputy here in Chance Creek county, a powerful, stocky man, fifteen years older than Stella, his dark hair going gray at the temples. He’d been a mainstay at the department for as long as Steel could remember.

  Steel kept track of all the law enforcement officers from Billings to Bozeman. Not because he was a criminal, like he’d been trying to make everyone think—but because he was a deputy, too—in Silver Falls, a scruffy hill town a short distance down the highway in the next county over. Silver Falls was a little smaller—and a little wilder—than Chance Creek. He’d expected to fit in there just fine.

  He took some small pride in the fact that no one attending this wedding knew what he did for a living. You could say a lot about him—and people did—but he knew how to run an undercover operation. He’d been forced to learn—fast—over a decade ago, but he’d taken to it like a duck to water.

  It was a good thing Mitch Bolton, the sheriff in Silver Falls, knew how to keep a tight lid on the workings of the department. To Steel’s knowledge, no one had slipped and exposed him.

  He wondered how much longer that could last. Wondered how long it would take to finish the job his father had started. Not just because he’d like to be the one out there dancing with Stella, but because he’d like to be a bigger part of everything his family did. His siblings needed his help with the ranch. The wedding he was watching was beautiful, but beneath the festive set dressing he knew Thorn Hill was barely holding together, like many ranches in Chance Creek.

  Steel could see the strain in many of the celebrants’ faces. Everyone was trying to relax tonight, allowing themselves to enjoy the reception, but there was wear and fatigue behind each smile.

  It had been a hard summer for everyone.

  Steel ducked behind a tree as a couple wandered close to his hiding place—his sister Olivia and her husband, Noah Turner.

  They spoke softly and laughed, and Steel smiled to hear them. He respected Noah, even if he had never been able to show it due to the feud that had until recently defined their families’ relationship. Noah was a parole officer who worked for the Chance Creek sheriff’s department, so Steel had been surprised when his sister, who’d had her own brushes with the law, had ended up with him.

  But she seemed happy, and that was the important thing.

  Olivia was working at the library now, putting away money so she could go to school, get her degree and one day take over as head librarian. Noah worked on both their families’ ranches, and his parole officer salary helped make ends meet.

  Steel wondered how Noah felt about having a supposed criminal as his brother-in-law; since Noah worked for Chance Creek rather than Silver Falls, he wasn’t in the loop about Steel’s undercover activities, and as a parole officer, he probably wouldn’t have known even if they had worked in the same county, but as it was, Steel figured it had to bother the law-abiding man to think his brother-in-law was making bad choices.

  But then Noah had managed to overlook Olivia’s past. Sometimes people surprised you.

  Maybe Stella would overlook his past—if he could ever finish the job he was working on.

  Just about everyone Steel knew would get a surprise then. If only it wasn’t taking so damn long.

  The killer was a patient man. Thirteen years ago a spate of overdose deaths among young women on the fringes of Chance Creek society had alerted William Turner, Stella’s father, who had also been a sheriff’s deputy, that something more sinister than a series of accidents was taking place in his town. He couldn’t convince anyone else to take his theory seriously, so he’d enlisted Dale’s help and run a side investigation.

  When William and Dale came too close to exposing him, the killer dropped out of sight, and no other deaths that fit the profile occurred—until recently.

  When Dale knew his health was failing, he’d called Steel to visit him in prison one last time. “The investigation is yours now,” he’d rasped from his position on the other side of the plexiglass. “The killer will be back. I know it.”

  If Steel hadn’t been watching the Chance Creek crime blotter avidly all these years, he doubted anyone would have made the connection when the overdoses started in Silver Falls. At first Steel had burned with the desire to avenge his father, who might not have been caught in his own criminal enterprises if he hadn’t been working to uncover the killer. Dale had filled him in on all of it, given him a series of orders to cover up his and William’s off-the-books investigation, then had pulled strings through William to help Steel get into the sheriff’s department in Washington. Once he’d become a deputy there, he’d continued with undercover work, honing his skills. As the years passed, and there was no sign of trouble in Chance Creek, Steel figured maybe William had been wrong from the start. Maybe there’d never been a killer at all. In truth he’d come to want to shuck off the responsibility Dale had laid on his shoulders before he died. Steel had been busy creating a new life in Washington. He could have stayed there—stepped away from undercover work—

  But then the killings started again.

  Steel swallowed as he watched Eric bend close to Stella and say something in her ear. What kind of sweet nothings was the man telling her? Steel itched to be holding her himself, telling her all about his life, his past—and the future he wanted to build.

  It had taken several deaths in Silver Falls before he’d spotted the pattern, and it was only because Silver Falls’ crime reporting was lumped in with Chance Creek’s in the online version of the local paper that he’d seen it at all. It had been easy enough to join his siblings when they came back to take possession of the ranch. It was harder to convince the Silver Falls sheriff to take him on to work the case.

  For one thing, the killer’s habits had shifted enough to make it difficult to prove it was the same person. Thirteen years ago the victims were young women who were already in trouble: sex workers or petty criminals estranged from their families and known to use drugs.

  This time around the killer had changed his way of doing things, and Steel wondered if he’d upped the ante for himself to make his murders more exciting. Now he seemed to be luring women to him. The kind of women—or rather, teenage girls—who should know better.

  When Steel had first noticed the surge of overdoses in Silver Falls, he’d wondered if it was the same fentanyl scourge that was hitting everywhere. Several things bothered him right from the start, thou
gh. All the overdose victims were young and female, relatively well off, living with their families until they died. Many of them lived in Chance Creek, but their deaths occurred in Silver Falls.

  Mitch Bolton, the Silver Falls sheriff, finally took him on and gave him the leeway to work the cases, but he’d always maintained finding the source of the drugs was Steel’s true mandate. He didn’t believe in a single killer as much as he thought all drugs were far too accessible. Steel was determined to work both sides of the case and hoped to get it done in a year.

  He shook his head now at his own folly. He’d underestimated the job, and now he was paying for it. He hadn’t been able to let Stella know who he really was. Had managed to dance with her a time or two, and that was it. Now Eric was stealing her—

  And it was his own damn fault.

  He’d wasted a lot of time building relationships with petty dealers and criminals but couldn’t seem to get traction with anyone higher in the distribution chain. In desperation he finally repeated his father’s idea: he grew a crop of pot of his own to try to sell—a move he hoped signaled to other dealers he was ready to play ball, a small-time operator who wanted to move into bigger things. He’d planted it on the Ridley property, an abandoned ranch that bordered his family’s and the Turners’ land.

  It had almost worked, too. He’d gotten some interest from an outfit in town to the point where they’d started feeling almost territorial about the crop. They’d started sending their own men out to patrol it, a couple of lackeys who’d first surprised his sister Tory, then her soon-to-be husband, on the Ridley property. Luckily, neither of those occasions had escalated to a serious confrontation. Steel had told them to lay off—and stay away from his crop—and inadvertently unleashed a firestorm.

  Literally.

  Steel assumed the men had complained around town about his high-handedness, and the killer, whoever he was, figured it was his chance to deal once and for all with him, a man asking too many questions about the overdoses. He had to hand it to the man. Sending goons to tie him up and burn down his crop had all the hallmarks of an attack those local dealers might have made in retaliation when he’d balked their supervision, and Sheriff Holden had certainly been convinced that’s exactly what happened.