Chapter 4

Ace

The day had finally slipped away as I sat and watched as Jaelyn tried to rest. Debra had returned, and true to her word had gotten Jaelyn’s signature on both the answer to the missing person’s report and the complaint filing charges against Edward. She’d then gave her a copy of the Restraining Order and reminded her it wasn’t a guarantee that Edward would stay away. Later, the nurse brought in dinner for Jaelyn and mom stopped by with the clothes she’d purchased and offered to stay so I could go get cleaned up. I refused and once again told my mother I’d only leave when Jaelyn could come with me.

Finally, we were alone. I wanted to learn more about her, but the pain meds and food made her sleepy again. Once she’d finally slipped into a fitful sleep, I’d quietly gotten up and shut the door to her room, trying to block out the hospital noises and giving her some much needed peace and quiet.

I slipped back into the chair beside her bed and just watched her sleep. I knew I was in trouble here. There was just something about her that drew me to her. I’d meant every word I’d said to everyone who’d asked since she showed up on the ranch. Yes, she was my new mission. Yes, I would do whatever it took to see her safe. But it was more than that. I don’t know how I knew it, but I knew this woman was mine. She belonged with me. She was the piece of my soul that had always been missing. Maybe Boomer had known it too.

Maybe that’s why he’d told her to come to me if she needed anything. Because he knew we were supposed to be together. As I watched her rest, I could honestly look at her without worrying about upsetting her. I knew because of what she’d gone through that I needed to move slowly and cautiously.

While Frank had made me leave the room during her interview, I hadn’t gone far. I stood right outside on the other side of the doorway and listened as she’d explained to Debra about how that asswipe had manipulated her. How he’d isolated her from anyone who might help her.

I burned inside at how he’d used and abused her. It was taking everything in me not to jump in my rig and drive over to Skyview and take him some place secret. Some off the grid unknown place where I could hurt him slowly before making him disappear forever. We had a section of the ranch that would be perfect for that. High up in the thousand acres of undeveloped woods where our elk herd grazed, just across the state line in Wyoming.

That Edward thought his dad’s reputation and position would keep him from prosecution angered me. Even more upsetting was that he’d been right. It seemed like the deputies in the Skyview office had given him special treatment because of who he was or who his father was.

He should have been arrested and investigated the first time she’d gone to them or the hospital. Jaelyn should never have been reviled and returned to him so he could continue hurting her. I had a feeling that he wasn’t going to just give up and go away. He’d come for her. My gut told me he’d come, and my gut had never been wrong.

Well, let him come. Because this time he wouldn’t get away. This time I’d be waiting for him. When he came for her, he’d find me, not the rancher everyone here knew me to be. Oh no! That isn’t who Edward Robinson would find, no he’d find Commander Ace Wilder, team leader of Delta Forces elite Alpha unit. Edward would meet the stone-cold killer my country had made me. And that Ace, well let’s just say that Ace would make sure he paid for his transgressions.

For now, I sat here watching Jaelyn sleep. Yes, she was battered. Her face, at least, was no longer swollen and I could see that she was a beautiful woman underneath the multicolored bruises that covered most of her body. But it wasn’t something physical that drew me to her. I wasn’t sure what it was, but it called me to her. As I sat in the quiet room listening to the soft sounds of my girl sleeping, my need for rest caught up with me and I slowly slid into a restful sleep. My last thought before the night took me was, I hoped that Linda would let me take Jaelyn home to the ranch tomorrow. I couldn’t help it, but I felt like we were too exposed, surrounded by danger every second we were away from my family’s ranch.

I felt an overwhelming need to get Jaelyn out of here and back on the Rocking W ranch. And more specifically to my house on the Rocking W. The place where I could see and know what was coming for us before it came.

Home, where I knew every solitary inch of the terrain and could sense a change before I could see it. That’s where I needed to get my girl. From there, I could keep her safe. I needed to keep her safe, and more than that. I had an almost overwhelming desire to eliminate the danger to her. Deep in my gut, I knew this would not end peacefully like Frank and Debra tried to assure Jaelyn it would. They thought like civilian law enforcement. They couldn’t understand the danger men like Edward and Congressman Paul Robinson were to people like my Jaelyn. But that’s okay because I, and the men I’d called to help me, we had a different understanding. Not only did we understand that kind of danger, we also were well equipped to handle it. And with or without help, I would handle it.

I slipped into sleep where I dreamed of the ranch. Only unlike other dreams, this one wasn’t filled with the danger of being captured and tortured by men from my past. No, this dream was of a beautiful, light brown-haired woman with golden highlights and eyes as blue as the summer sky. A woman who smiled at me as she swung a little girl with the same hair and eyes on the plastic swing that was attached to the old oak tree my dad and mom had set up their kissing bench beneath.

I woke at the sound of the hospital room door opening as the nursing staff arrived at seven to change shifts. For the first time since I’d returned home a year ago, I felt well rested and not filled with anxiety, but a sense of hope and purpose. For the first time since I’d left the service I’d slept through the night.

*****

Jaelyn

I woke the next morning much more rested and at peace. A large part of that was because the first thing I saw was the greenish-gray eyes of my hunky cowboy protector.

Yes, my hunky cowboy. He’d claimed me repeatedly the day before, so I was claiming him as my own. Ace Wilder was mine.

I know I should have feared him because he was bigger than Edward. I was sure he was at least six feet tall, maybe taller, and close to two hundred and fifty pounds. Of what I now knew was pure muscle. He’d removed his button-up shirt the night before to sleep. Leaving him in only a tight muscle style T-shirt that left very little of his massive arms, shoulders, chest, and abs to the imagination. If he hadn’t revved my female engine before that, it had gone from zero to sixty in three point five seconds. All my girly desires had taken notice, and they did again this morning as he stood and put his shirt back on.

I wasn’t the only one to notice the muscle show, either. The morning nurse, night nurse, and both nursing assistants were watching as he dressed too. They all looked at me and smiled while the morning nurse fanned her face and winked. “Well, I think we need to keep you around, Jane Wilder, if we are going to get a morning show like that every day.”

Ace ignored them and looked at me. “While they help you get whatever they need, I’m going to run down for breakfast and coffee again. Do you want another latte, sweetheart?”

I nodded. “If you don’t mind, Ace. Thank you.”

It shocked me when he leaned over my bed and placed a light kiss on the side of my mouth. Sending the tingling sensation rocketing through me. “Anything my girl wants, she gets.”

All four women’s mouths dropped at his declaration. Then he turned and nodded to each of them before walking out of the room.

“Oh, my stars and garters! Girl, you’ve caught the elusive Ace Wilder. Put a saddle on that cowboy and ride him into the sunset.” My day nurse exclaimed, and the other three giggled like schoolgirls.

“He’s just watching out for me. He promised my brother who was in the army with him. That’s all it is.”

“Honey, that ain’t all it is. Ace Wilder has been home from the Army for a year now. And in all that time, no one has seen him even dance with a girl. Heck, he hardly ever leaves that ranch.

“When I came in this morning, they told me he hadn’t left your side in a week, unless Doctor Linda and then Sheriff Frank forced him too.

“He eats this nasty hospital food and sleeps in that chair. He watches over you like you’re his most precious possession. Nope, that man is all yours and if you don’t want him, toss him my way. Hell, give him to any single woman around. Any of us would play spider monkey and climb him like a banana tree.”

I was starting to not like these ladies so much and wished they’d just all leave me alone. “Well, I’m not a monkey and he isn’t a tree.”

“No, but I can see the green-eyed monster in your face, Miss Wilder. And don’t think we don’t all know you ain’t family. We know his sisters and cousins. If he’s giving you his name and putting you in his house, he is yours. Own it with pride, girl.”

I bit my lip. “You think?”

“Girl we know. Listen, his brothers are just as hot. I mean, Vincent is the rodeo star, Taylor is the hottest preacher I’ve ever seen.

“But that Ace, oh my lanta! That man is H.O.T. and you can see the intensity in his every glance. There ain’t a woman in this county, single or married, that doesn’t think one night with him would put the wildest eight second ride to shame. So get well and then ride that cowboy into the sunset, honey.”

The night shift left to head home, and the day nurse finished her health check and morning protocol. The nursing assistant wrote both their names on the whiteboard and asked me if I could move over into the chair that Ace had been occupying when he was in the room. When I had, she quickly changed my sheets. She left me a clean towel and filled a pan with hot water telling me I couldn’t shower until the doctor gave the okay because of my arm cast but that I could take a sponge bath and she’d stand outside to let Ace know what I was doing so he didn’t walk in on me without my clothes on.

I nodded and hurried, knowing he would be back soon, and I didn’t want him to have to stand out there waiting. I had barely gotten clean and into a second set of pajamas his mother had left with the clothes for me to wear home before there was a knock on the door.

The assistant stuck her head in and when she saw me dressed, smiled. “Thank goodness. Your man wasn’t going to wait much longer. He threatened to pick me up and move me out of his way. Thankfully, his brother came.”

I frowned. I’d not met any of his brothers yet. Just his sweet mother. “Which brother?”

Lucy fanned herself as she blushed. “Taylor, he’s our new assistant pastor. Pastor Brandt is getting old and the deacons were worried he was doing too much. So they hired Taylor Wilder right out of seminary to help.

“Only problem is Pastor Taylor is single. Every mother and grandmother is trying to set him up with their daughters or granddaughters. But everyone knows that Deputy Debra is who he’ll end up with. Her dad’s the head deacon. But that Taylor is so hot that most of us ladies think it’s a sin he’s single.

“I know Alice told you that everyone has the hots for Ace, but that isn’t true. Pastor Taylor is the one all my girlfriends and I think is the one we’d want to lead us into temptation or at least let us lead him into it.

“I’m pretty sure most of us need to ask for forgiveness for lusting after him every Sunday.”

Just then, there is a knock on the door, and she sighs. “You’ll see what I mean in just a second.”

She opened the door as I climbed back into bed and Ace came tearing into the room. Behind him was the biggest man I’d ever seen.

I mean, Ace was big. Tall and muscular, but the guy behind him had to actually duck to enter the room. He had to be seven feet tall and was built like a giant. However, he was as my nurse’s assistant, Lucy said, very handsome. He wasn’t dressed like a pastor. No, Pastor Taylor, like Ace, was in typical cowboy wear. A button up a plaid shirt that was so tight I thought he’d blow the buttons off of it. His Wranglers were well broken in but just a slight bit looser fitting than Ace’s. He had on black cowboy boots and the same Rocking W buckle on his belt that Ace had. In one hand, he had a large brown cowboy hat, and the other held a Bible.

Ace came right up and helped me settle into the bed, tucking the clean sheets around me before setting a cup of pumpkin spice latte in front of me. “Here’s your wake-up juice sweetheart.”

I smiled and sipped the hot drink, watching as Lucy flirted with the giant preacher. “Pastor Taylor, are you here to visit my patient or your brother?”

The big man looked down at Lucy and smiled. “Good morning Lucy. I actually was on my way to the church when my dad asked me to get Ace to go home for a bit. Seems there is some tension at the ranch that has Skylar and Amber upset.”

Ace looked away from me at that and focused on his brother. “What’s got the girls’ panties in a wad now?”

The big man shrugged. “He didn’t say, just said to tell you I’d sit with the patient while you came home and handled your mess.”

Ace pulled his phone out of his pocket and hit a contact. “Dad, what is this issue you need me for?”

I could hear the older man’s voice booming out as plain as if the phone was on speaker.

“Let’s see, Son. You invite a motorcycle gang, and some fella’s in a big black helicopter to the ranch. They arrived at the same time just as Amber and Skylar were turning the two-year-olds into the training paddock. All that noise got them horses in a state which has your sisters in a state.