Wyoming Cowboy Ranger. Nicole Helm
Jen Delaney loved Bent, Wyoming, the town she’d been born in, grown up in. She was a respected member of the community, in part because she ran the only store that sold groceries and other essentials within a twenty-mile radius of town.
From her position crouched on the linoleum while she stocked shelves, she looked around the small town store she’d taken over at the ripe age of eighteen. For the past ten years it had been her baby with its narrow aisles and hodgepodge of necessities.
She’d always known she’d spend the entirety of her life happily ensconced in Bent and her store, no matter what happened around her.
The reappearance of Ty Carson didn’t change that knowledge so much as make it...annoying. No, annoying would have been just his being in town again. The fact their families had somehow intermingled in the last year was...a catastrophe.
Her sister, Laurel, marrying Ty’s cousin Grady had been a shock, very close to a betrayal, though it was hard to hold it against Laurel when Grady was so head over heels for her it was comical. They both glowed with love and happiness and impending parenthood.
Jen tried not to hate them for it.
She could forgive Cam, her oldest brother, for his serious relationship with Hilly. Hilly was biologically a Carson, but she’d only just found that out. Besides, Hilly wasn’t like other Carsons. She was so sweet and earnest.
But Dylan and Vanessa... Her business-minded, sophisticated older brother impregnating and marrying snarky bad girl Vanessa Carson... That was a nightmare.
And none of it was fair. Jen was now, out of nowhere, surrounded by Carsons and Delaneys intermingling—which went against everything Bent had ever stood for. Carsons and Delaneys hated each other. They didn’t fall in love and get married and have babies.
And still, she could have handled all that in a certain amount of stride if it weren’t for Ty Carson. Everywhere she turned he seemed to be right there, his stoic gaze always locked on her, reminding her of a past she’d spent a lot of time trying to bury and forget.
When she’d been seventeen and the stupidest girl alive, she would have done anything for Ty Carson. Risked the Delaney-Carson curse that, even with all these Carson-Delaney marriages, Bent still had their heart set on. She would have risked her father’s wrath over daring to connect herself with a Carson. She would have given up anything and everything for Ty.
Instead he’d made promises to love her forever, then disappeared to join the army—which she’d found out only a good month after the fact. He hadn’t just broken her heart—he’d crushed it to bits.
But Ty was a blip of her past she’d been able to forget about, mostly, for the past ten years. She’d accepted his choices and moved on with her life. For a decade she had grown into the adult who didn’t care at all about Ty Carson.
Then Ty had come home for good, and all she’d convinced herself of faded away.
She was half convinced he’d returned simply to make her miserable.
“You look angry. Must be thinking about me.”
Her head whipped up, the jolt of surprise having nothing on the white-hot flash of fury. “I never think about you, Tyler.” She definitely wasn’t about to admit she had been.
His cocksure grin faded somewhat. He hated his full first name with a passion she’d certainly never understood, but it was one of the few tools in her arsenal she had to get under his unflappable demeanor.
He wasn’t the only person who made her want to lash out, but considering what he’d done to her, she didn’t make an effort to curb that impulse like she did with everyone else.
She slowly rose from where she’d been crouched, dusting her hands off by slapping them together. “Don’t you have anything better to do than stalk me?” she asked haughtily, sailing past him in the narrow aisle with as much grace as she could muster.
“Don’t flatter yourself, babe.”
Babe. Oh, she’d like to knock his teeth out. Instead she scooted behind the checkout counter and smiled sweetly at him. “Then might I kindly suggest you make your purchases.”
“You really think I’d be talking to you if I didn’t have to be? I’ve got ample time to corner you if I wanted to at a family gathering with all the recent Carson-Delaney insanity going around.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. He’d always been tall, rangy, dangerous. Age only enhanced all of those things. It was hardly fair he looked even better now than he had then. Certainly unfair he was talking to her as if she’d been the one to disappear in the middle of the night a decade ago.
“So what is it you want?” she demanded, but the fact he had a point had fear sneaking past her Ty-defenses. “There’s not more trouble, is there?” Bent had been a beacon for it lately.
Laurel and Dylan and even Vanessa dang Carson might be going around town yapping they didn’t believe in curses or love solved curses or whatever, but trouble after trouble didn’t lie. Jen was convinced there had to be something to the old curse that said a Carson and Delaney falling in love only spelled trouble.
“No trouble,” Ty said casually. “Just a concern. We’ll call it a gut feeling.”
Develop those off army rangering, did you? She bit her tongue so the words wouldn’t escape and reveal how many scraps of information she’d collected about him over the years.
“How can I help?” Mr. Army Ranger should take care of his gut feelings himself, shouldn’t he?
“I just need you to give me a heads-up if you get any new people in the store. You can even send the info through Hilly or Addie, if you’d rather.”
Jen raised her chin. It’d be a cold day in hell before she gave this heartless, careless jerk any clue she still had feelings for him. “I don’t need to go through anyone, but surely you don’t need to know every single stranger I get in here.”
“And just how many strangers do you typically get in here?” Ty asked drily.
“Enough.”
He didn’t respond right away, though she could tell by the tiniest firming of his mouth that he was irritated with her. It nearly made her smile. Ty was not an easy man to irritate—at least not visibly.
“This isn’t about us,” he said in low, heavy tones.
Any twitch of a smile died. Us. They did not acknowledge