Saving Cole Turner Read Online Free PDF Page A

anticipation of the explosion sure to come.
    “You’re not to have anything more to do with him.” He ground out the order as his powerful hands fisted.
    “I’ve known him since we were kids. I consider him a friend. More than a friend.”
    “What the hell does that mean?”
    “It means I plan to marry Cole Turner. If he’ll have me.”
    Redness suffused her father’s craggy face like fire burning through coal. “You’ll do no such thing while there is a breath left in my body, young lady.”
    “I love him.” She said those three words with conviction, the feeling inside her so strong she’d never take them back.
    “What the hell does a girl like you know about love?”
    Kate willed herself to stay calm. If her father sensed weakness, he’d clip her wings faster than a coyote on a hen. “You married mama when she was nineteen.”
    Her father looked away for a moment before turning back, anger still etched in every line on his face.
    “I was a good man. I had a future. I loved your mama. Cole Turner is not a good man. He has no future. And I doubt he knows a thing about love.” With every point he made, her father released a finger from his clenched fists. “Has he said he loves you? Has he been filling your ears with sweet-talking lies?”
    Her father’s voice was booming so loud, Kate figured every cowhand on the ranch now knew what they were fighting about.
    “No.” Painful as it was to admit, she wouldn’t lie. “But he is a good man,” she said, jumping up from the chair and announcing that fact just as loudly as her father had been shouting. If her father was going to tell the whole world what they were arguing about, she’d be sure they got the full story. “And he’s got money now. He’s no longer some poor beggar’s son you can run out of town because you don’t like the way he looks at your daughter.” She bunched a hand on each hip to brace against the storm of her father’s rage.
    But Will didn’t speak for a moment. A vein pulsed at his temple.
    Perhaps the reality of the situation was just hitting him. If she could get Cole to want her enough to marry her, there wouldn’t be much her father could do about it. Her father, powerful as he was, was no match for a hired gunslinger, and he knew it. Cole could defend his right to her, if necessary. Bullying her wouldn’t solve the problem, and her father was in no position to bully someone of Cole’s skill.
    As if the same thoughts had run through his mind, her father slumped into the other chair and stared at her. “He’s a hired gun, Kate. He makes his living killing people.”
    “He’s killed some.” And that fact had torn her up inside. “But he brings more in alive if they give up. He’s not the cold-blooded killer you think he is. And they are bad men,” she said, hoping they could now talk about this instead of rant about it.
    Hope faded as her father glared at her. “You think your loving him is enough to change him back into the young man you remember before…before everything happened.”
    She did think just that. Maybe not turn him back, but help to bring out the goodness she knew was inside of him. The goodness she’d seen, felt, touched. The boy who had futilely bound a bird’s broken leg, guarded a litter of fox pups from harm, and lent his shoulder for a ten-year-old girl to cry on when she lost her mother was worth redeeming.
    Her father sat back and steepled his weathered hands. “Let me tell you something that only life can teach you so you can learn it without having to go through the misery.”
    Kate took a deep breath. She’d at least hear him out, she thought, as she settled back in her chair.
    “When I was a boy, my brother Charlie, the one who died in the war, he and I found this dog.” The planes of his tanned face softened at the mention of his older brother. “The dog was beat-up, dirty, and wouldn’t let any of us get near him. We figured he’d been abused somewhere along the way.