Mending Fences (Texas Heat: Book 1)

By Amelia Rose

A Contemporary Cowboy Romance Story.
Mending Fences is Book 1 in the Texas Heat series and it features the lively O’Connor family who work hard and love hard.

Marlene is one of the Red O’Connor’s kids and she’s got her dad’s fiery temper. Itching for something bigger, she left the family ranch in Texas and hasn’t been back for a while. Now, for the first time in months, she’s back on vacation where she meets Curtis Copeland who is working as a ranch hand on Circle O. The last thing Marlene wants is any form of relationship, she has a full life already and it’s not on the farm. Curtis has different ideas though; he’s waited ten years to finally have Marlene and fate or destiny delivered her to him. Yet everything seems to be working against them. Marlene’s family is dead set against the relationship and Curtis harbors a ten year old secret that can tear them apart. Whether they will be able to overcome the obstacles to be together is a question neither Marlene nor Curtis can answer.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gold Crown
• Release date: Apr 4, 2014
• ISBN: 9781310635762

Amelia Rose

Amelia Rose holds a PhD in Literature and Language; she specializes in teaching positive, self-reliant principles to children and adults of all ages.  Dr. Rose lives with her husband and three children in the Hudson Valley, New York area, where she enjoys the outdoors and spending time with her family and friends.   Matthew Maley is an artist with nearly twenty-five years in the fields of Illustration and Design. His work has appeared in publications such as Archie Comics, Marvel, Disney, Nickelodeon, and Children’s Television Workshop. He lives in the Hudson Valley with his wife, daughter, and a variety of animals.

Book preview

Mending Fences

Texas Heat - Book One

AMELIA ROSE

~~~

Smashwords Edition

Copyright © 2013 by Amelia Rose

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced in any format, by any means, electronic or otherwise, without prior consent from the copyright owner and publisher of this book.

This is a work of fiction. All characters, names, places and events are the product of the author's imagination or used fictitiously.

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Dedication

To YOU, The reader.

Thank you for your support.

Thank you for your emails.

Thank you for your reviews.

Thank you for reading and joining me on this road.

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

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Prologue

The sun was bright, and it shone down on her as if it meant to light her on fire. This was the third time in two weeks that she’d been dragged kicking and screaming by her hair to the broken fence at the edge of her parent’s property. It seemed as if some force in the world had wanted to see her suffer. Instead of spending the summer running wild with her friends from school, swimming in a lake and riding horses at summer camp, she’d had to stick behind and put the fence back together. To their mother, the chore was a fair one, since her other siblings were off doing other jobs on the ranch that required just as much attention.

She was fifteen—of course she was going to complain. There wasn’t a day that passed that she wouldn’t have the need to open her mouth and scream bloody murder as she kicked her feet back and forth in a tantrum that could melt a steel fence.

Marlene O’Connor wiped her brow free of sweat and helped her older brother to hold his post digger as he stuck it into the ground to carve yet another replacement hole for a fence post that had gone missing. She didn’t want to be out here in the heat digging holes to begin with, yet her mother made certain to remind her that she wouldn’t get dinner for a week if she didn’t pitch in. It had been ground into her since birth that it was her responsibility, along with her siblings, that they were to help the family and that keeping the family floating in both good and hard times were above all the most important things a person could do in their lifetime.

She sighed as her brother, Andrew, moved to the next missing fence post. Her father had been beyond grumpy that morning, and it wasn’t a hard guess as to why. There wasn’t an animal on the planet that could pull a fence post out of the ground and run off with it, or for that matter, run off with the fence wiring that went along with it. The man had been mad enough to spit the nails required to build a house. The money to buy the replacement posts alone were going to put them all out on the street if the culprit wasn’t discovered by the end of the summer. As it was, a few of their animals had gotten loose and wandered over into the neighboring ranch to cause trouble. It was a problem to be certain, and heaven help the poor fool when Red O’Connor got hold of him.

What I can’t figure, is who the hell would want a fence post to begin with. Marlene said to Andrew.

He was melting; the sweat was running down the sides of his face and there was enough of it to soak through the collar of his shirt. He paused for a moment and leaned on his digger. Dad says that he wants to set a trap. He said and wiped his face with his shirt. Can you imagine him out here in the middle of the night waiting on someone to come by and steal a bit of wood?

Marlene smiled. I bet he’s a superhero that can eat only wood. He flies down from the sky and yanks a post before you can say lickety split. She snapped her fingers for emphasis.

Don’t be silly, Andrew chuckled. Hold the digger while I put another post in. We have to get this done before the afternoon, so stop daydreaming about superheroes. If there was one around, I’d already have him digging holes.

********

He was fifteen years old, sure, but he knew beautiful when he saw it. Sure, the missing posts had been his doing, and he was going to keep that a secret until the day he died, but seeing the beautiful girl had been the only thing on his mind when he’d come out in the middle of the night on his boss’ land and lifted five posts out of the neighboring rancher’s fence line. He’d run into a problem with what to do with the long pieces of wood. The horse that he’d used to ride out to the fence with had disagreed with him when he’d thought to load them onto his back, and even though he was a pretty healthy kid, he couldn’t have carried all of them back with him. So, he’d run back to the main farm house, grabbed a shovel and dug a hole large enough to put the posts into the ground for safe keeping. For all he cared, they could remain there until the end of the world.

His world revolved around seeing the beautiful girl that accompanied one of the O’Connor boys out to the fence each time he decided to poke a hole in it. She was beyond beautiful; her hair was a deeply alluring shade of light brown that glinted with red highlights in the sun, and it perfectly complemented her pretty skin which was slightly tan from all the work she’d been doing outside. Slender and lithe, she was like a flower that once seen, demanded to be picked and admired.

Naturally, his efforts to talk to her or get close to her had been thwarted by the rest of the O’Connor clan who thought that a girl ought not to be talking with random ranch hands. He’d gotten more than his share of dirty looks and veiled insults; he knew if he approached her, that the only thing he’d get for his efforts would be to have his feet tied with rope and then strung up in a tree and left for dead. Everyone knew the O’Connor clan prided family and their loved ones above everything else.

Marlene O’Connor! Stop dawdling and let’s get back to the house! Dad will be furious if we’re late for lunch!

Marlene. Even her name was beautiful. He closed his eyes and sunk down against the tree he’d been hiding behind. From where he was, he knew that he wasn’t going to be seen, even if a little part of him wanted to dash from his hiding place and yell at the top of his lungs so that Marlene would be forced to turn around and see him. They’d never met, and would probably never meet. He knew that if she found out what he’d done to her father’s fence and planned to keep doing, that she’d hate him instead of like him. It was a shame; there was never going to be a girl that beautiful in his life again. He was only fifteen, but he was certain of it.

Chapter One

It was one of those days that were neither hot nor cold, that once you were out in and out there with nowhere to go but through the best of it, you felt stuck as if you’d fallen into a vat of glue. The only way she had of getting through the afternoon conscious and in one piece was the thought that if she wrapped her car around a tree, her father would find her in the afterlife and punish her for being so stupid.

Marlene O’Connor yawned as she stood outside in the tepid thick air of the late afternoon and pumped gas into the fuel tank of her trusty but rusty vehicle. She had been driving since early in the morning, and she wanted nothing more than to get into the back seat of her four door and crash until someone brought back the dinosaurs. She wouldn’t be home for another couple of hours at least, and the thought of