Shelter: The Getaway Series

By Jay Crownover

His life is chaos and confusion. It’s a storm of uncertainty and raging emotion.

Sutton Warner is a mess. Everything in his life feels like it’s unraveling.

He’s let a lot of people down lately, including his daughter. Sutton always promised his little girl he would never disappoint her and that he would always be there when she needed him. Until he wasn’t.

The truth is, he’s used to disappointing the women in his life. First was his mother who couldn’t find a reason to stick around when he was growing up. Then there’s his ex. The woman who takes unbridled delight in making his life incredibly complicated. Luckily, his daughter is still young enough to believe her old man is some kind of hero. But, he knows the day is coming when she realizes the truth, which is, he’s just a man with some serious flaws and a list of ever-growing weaknesses.

Finally, there’s the woman he’s desperately trying to forget with every shot tossed back and each pill popped.

He more than disappointed Emrys…he almost got her killed.

 Her love is steady and sure. It’s a shelter shaped by conviction and silent assurance.

 Emrys Santos is lost. Everything in her life feels pointless and futile.

 She’s been busy running away from her feelings and all the people who love her the most—including her best friend, the one person who knows exactly what she’s been through. They promised to always stick together and to lean on one another. It was a promise Em had to break so she could lick her wounds and figure out her next move. For once, there is no easy way out of the tangled web of emotions she’s caught up in, and right now, she recognizes that all roads lead back to Wyoming…and back to Sutton.

The man she nearly got killed.

Shelter is a standalone novel, the second book in the Getaway series, which features the hardheaded and brokenhearted Warner brothers and the women who dare to love them. These boys are very good at putting the wild in wilderness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Jay Crownover
• Release date: Dec 26, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386455059

Jay Crownover

Jay Crownover is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of the Marked Men and Welcome to the Point series. Like her characters, she is a big fan of tattoos. She loves music and wishes she could be a rock star, but since she has no aptitude for singing or instrument playing, she’ll settle for writing stories with interesting characters that make the reader feel something. She lives in Colorado with her three dogs.

Book preview

GETAWAY SERIES

Escape (coming in Jan 2018)

Shelter

Retreat

THE SAINTS OF DENVER SERIES

Salvaged

Riveted

Charged

Built

Leveled (novella)

THE BREAKING POINT SERIES

Dignity

Avenged (crossover novella)

Honor

THE WELCOME TO THE POINT SERIES

Better When He’s Brave

Better When He’s Bold

Better When He’s Bad

THE MARKED MEN SERIES

Asa

Rowdy

Nash

Rome

Jet

Rule

Shelter

Retreat Copyright © 2017 by Jennifer M. Voorhees

All rights reserved.

Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data has been applied for.

ISBN-13: 978-1979653633

ISBN-10: 1979653631

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address Jay Crownover LLC 1670 E. Cheyenne Mountain Blvd. Box# 152, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80906.

Cover design by:

Hang Le

www.byhangle.com

Photographed by and Copyright owned by:

Wander Aguiar Photography

www.wanderbookclub.com

Model: Drew Leighty

Editing by:

Elaine York, Allusion Graphics, LLC/Publishing & Book Formatting

www.allusiongraphics.com

Proofreading & Copyediting by:

Beth Salminen

www.bethanyedits.net

Interior Design & Formatting by:

Christine Borgford, Type A Formatting

www.typeAformatting.com

Contents

SHELTER

Also by Jay Crownover

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Epilogue

Sneak Peek of RETREAT

ESCAPE ~ Getaway series

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

About the Author

Dedicated to all my kindred spirits who

also stole their first romance novel from their mom.

Six months earlier . . .

Emrys

It was all my fault the guys with guns had caught up with us.

I knew they wanted to hurt us.

I knew they were faster than us on their dirt bikes and ATVs.

I knew they wouldn’t hesitate to kill us.

They were dumping bodies in the river like they were garbage, and I knew if they caught up they were going to do the same to us.

I understood they were willing to go to extreme lengths to protect acres and acres of an illegal marijuana farm hidden deep within the national forests of Wyoming. They couldn’t afford to let us leave the mountain alive. There were some secrets worth killing for . . . and this was one of them.

I knew all of that, but I still forced Sutton Warner to stop.

I wasn’t as comfortable on horseback as he was, especially at the blistering pace he’d set for us to get safely back to his family’s ranch. The rest of the group I’d been vacationing with had branched off in different directions trying to outrun the drug growers and armed men protecting the fields hidden deep within the Wyoming wilderness. Sutton and I were the smallest unit: just the two of us tearing through the forest at breakneck speed. The hope was that we would be able to get to the ranch and call for help before anyone else got hurt. We were supposed to be moving faster than any of the other groups, but there was no way to gauge if that was true. Sutton’s older brother and another guest, who had been searching for a harmless vacation like I was, had already been seriously injured when the dealers pinned down our campsite in a hail of bullets. In the blink of an eye, our circumstance deviated from the peaceful, serene week in the mountains I’d planned with my best friend. Now, it was a life or death race against some seriously bad guys packing some seriously big guns.

Sutton wanted to keep going; I was starting to breathe heavily and was having a hard time staying upright. It had been non-stop movement since we’d split up. There was no time to stop and rest, no time to eat, and no time to think about just how dangerous our situation was. The horse I was barely staying on was also starting to show signs of fatigue. The poor, overworked animal kept stumbling and was fighting every jerk of the reins and every tap of my heels against its heaving sides. I hurt from the top of my head to my toes, and I could hardly see the big, blond man sitting on his horse in front of me. He hadn’t said much when we’d started on this journey. Hell, he hadn’t said much before we started. He didn’t hide the fact that he considered my tagging along on his furious trek back to the safety of his ranch a burden and hindrance. He’d mentioned more than once that he would be twice as far along if he didn’t have me to worry about.

He wasn’t very friendly or very nice. He hadn’t given me a single encouraging word since we started out. But he did stop anytime I told him I needed a break, and I fully believed he would do his absolute best to make sure no harm came to me. He was alert and aware of everything happening around us, hyper-focused on the task at hand. He was equally as worried about his two brothers, the men who had acted as guides on the trip and led the rest of our motley crew through the woods. A lot had happened over the course of the last week, and this scramble away from killers was just the tip of the iceberg. My best friend was somewhere out in the wilderness with Sutton’s older brother, and they were also running for their lives. Lucky for her, that particular Warner seemed to like her just fine and didn’t treat her like she was a nuisance—unlike my current companion.

I could see Sutton was annoyed with me when I told him we had to stop again. I knew he wanted to argue with me, that he didn’t think it was a good idea, but I literally couldn’t stay in the saddle anymore. My ass had gone numb an hour ago. The horse stumbled and listed to one side. I was too tired and too stiff to react properly and slid sideways in response to the jerky motion. I hit the ground with a yelp and heard the blond man swear softly under his breath. He pulled the speckled Appaloosa he was riding around and swung out of the saddle in one fluid motion. If I hadn’t been so close to passing out, I would have swooned at the gesture. Before coming on this trip, I’d been reading a lot of romance novels featuring sexy cowboys and rugged ranchers. A hot boy in tight jeans and cowboy boots had always been a secret fantasy of mine. I liked that they were a throwback to what I imagined a real man was like. One who could kill his own dinner and change a tire. The kind of man who knew how to take care of women in and out of the bedroom. There weren’t any of those kinds of men hanging out in my social circle in San Francisco. I knew a lot of artists and poets. I attracted actors and musicians. I ended up with creative types who never seemed to have a steady income and wanted me to give them a place to stay more than they wanted me. I had been giddy when we stepped onto the Warner Ranch and were greeted with three different varieties of real-life cowboys right out of the gate.

Cyrus Warner, the oldest of the three brothers, was what my best friend Leo called ‘not- quite-a-cowboy.’ He looked more like a biker crossed with a CEO. He was big and gruff . . . unquestionably badass. There was something a little bit dangerous about him. He had style and flair that was unexpected so far away from the civilized world, and it was just as easy to picture him in a boardroom as a barn. He was the executive kind of cowboy. He was the one who had turned the dying ranch into a profitable vacation destination.

Lane, the youngest brother, was as stereotypical of a cowboy as one could get. He had bright blue eyes, wavy, dark hair, and deeply tanned skin. His long legs had been encased in too-tight Wranglers and his too-handsome face was marked by a charming grin that indicated he knew exactly how to work all the goodness he had going on. He was the one you could easily find on a cowboy of the month calendar, shirtless, holding a gangly foal. The quintessential cowboy fantasy come to life. Most definitely the one who made girls from the city swoon and trip over themselves with a flash of his smile.

Sutton was an odd mix of both his brothers. He was the most traditionally handsome of the three of them with his shaggy, blond hair, and dark green eyes. He was shorter than Cy but taller than Lane, not that any of them were hurting in the height department—something I always noticed since I was on the tall side myself. He had on the standard boots and jeans, which he was obviously comfortable in, but he didn’t seem like he enjoyed being on the ranch, at least not as much as his brothers did. He wasn’t stern and silent like his older brother, and when he spoke it was with a sarcastic slant and biting rudeness that was sharper and more pointed than his affable younger brother’s humor. He moved sure and steady across the property, but there was anger in every step. Ever the reluctant cowboy. The one who didn’t know how to be anything else, but clearly found the role confining. Of course, he would be the one who caught my eye and sparked an interest that had been missing for quite some time.

It was always the broken boys who called to me. All I wanted to do was fix them. I was habitually sacrificing my own happiness to help whatever wounded bird ended up in my nest.

Sutton reached out a hand and pulled me to my feet. I ended up with my hands on his hard chest and my head tilted back so I could meet his gaze. His mouth was pulled in a tight line, but there was heat in those dark green eyes that he couldn’t hide as my body pressed into his.

Are you okay, Em? His voice was gruff and I wasn’t naïve enough to think it was all from his thinly veiled impatience.

He’d noticed me noticing him. And maybe he’d noticed me back, not that he seemed happy about the fact.

I dipped my chin down and exhaled a long breath. I will be. I just need a couple of minutes. I’m not used to this kind of exertion and adrenaline. I feel like my heart is going to beat right through my chest. And my thighs were burning from holding onto the horse for dear life.

I put a hand over the pounding in my chest and watched as his gaze followed the movement. He blinked a few times and then set me away from him like my skin had suddenly sprouted thorns.

I’m gonna take the horses down by the river and see about getting them some water. Find a place with some cover to hide until I get back. Try and stretch out your muscles. The ranch is only another day’s hard ride. Once we get back, you can rest for as long as you need. Push through the pain, Em. Leo is counting on you.

He would have to bring up my best friend who was also sprinting through the woods to safety. The only reason either of us were in this predicament in the first place was because of me. I’d been the one who decided this wilderness retreat would be the perfect way for her to heal her broken heart. Little did I know it was going to be the oldest Warner brother who was going to accomplish that goal, not the week-long escape of our girls-only retreat.

I was getting ready to tell Sutton I would crawl behind a massive pine tree and hunker down until he returned when the first shot rang out. It hit the flank of Sutton’s horse, sending the massive animal bolting. The noise the injured horse made broke my heart. Sutton moved without a sound, throwing his big body over mine and taking us both to the ground. The growl of motors instantly surrounded us, making my horse dance away nervously.

We hadn’t been fast enough or gotten far enough away.

It was too dangerous to stop but I made him do it anyway.

The dirt bikes circled us, and even though I had my face buried in Sutton’s neck where he was acting as a human shield, I could see no less than four assault rifles pointed at us. After climbing off his dirt bike, one of the men walked to us and kicked Sutton in the ribs hard enough that I swore I heard bones break. Sutton gave me a squeeze telling me to stay calm and he only let out a faint grunt at the attack. I didn’t even realize I was screaming at the top of my lungs as they pulled him off me and shoved the muzzle of a gun under his defiantly tilted chin. The guy who kicked him reached down and grabbed me by my tangled ponytail. He jerked me painfully to my feet and pulled me way too close to his face. His eyes bored into mine and I could see every evil, ugly thing he had planned reflected back at me.

The rest of them will come for you when they realize you’re missing. They’ll find the injured horse we’re cutting loose. They’ll know we found you. Until they show up, we can have some fun with you. We’ve been stuck in these mountains for a long, long time. The men have been dying for some easy entertainment. Turning to his fellow thugs, he held up my arm and said, Boys, meet your entertainment. He grinned at me and it made my stomach twist into a thousand knots.

Don’t touch her! It didn’t matter they had us outnumbered and outgunned. Sutton lunged for the man who was holding me hostage, only to have the man behind him crack the butt of a rifle on the back of his head. Instantly, he went to his knees. Crimson flowed freely, turning his light hair red. He shook his head and fell forward, catching himself on his hands. The guy who hit him took another swing, making me scream and forcing my feet to move involuntarily toward him.

The guy holding my hair hostage grabbed my face in a punishing grip and growled, If you fight me, if you make getting you back to our camp difficult, I will put a bullet between his eyes. After all, they only need to come for one of you.

Helpless, I looked at the unconscious man on the ground, tears silently sliding down my cheeks. He told me we shouldn’t stop, that we only had one more day to reach safety. This was all my fault . . . again. Everything up until this moment had been mine to own, and if something happened to Sutton, it’d be all on me. I nodded stiffly and reached up to wipe my hands across my wet face.

A couple of the men threw Sutton’s limp, bleeding body over the back of the horse they hadn’t let get away. My hands were zip-tied together in front of me and I was put on the front of a four-wheeler, a gun pointed at my side, as we drove back through the woods. I cried the entire way. I wanted to throw my body sideways, wanted desperately to try and escape, but I couldn’t chance them shooting Sutton. He shouldn’t have to suffer or die because of my weakness or inability to stay on my horse.

When we reached their ramshackle campsite, the guy holding me wasted no time in dragging me into one of the white tents. Another man dumped Sutton was unceremoniously on the ground, and I was shoved down on a filthy, smelly air mattress. Between one blink and the next, both my shirt and bra were cut away, leaving my torso bare.

I couldn’t help but struggle. I kicked him in the chest. I beat at him with my tied hands. I twisted away, even as the knife he used to cut my clothes dug into my flesh—drawing blood as my skin split open. I was screaming so loud he shoved my torn shirt in my mouth to keep me quiet. He bit my exposed nipple so hard I gagged. He held me down with a hand on my face, making it hard to breathe as he pulled off the rest of my clothes. I wanted to disappear. He wasn’t the only armed man in the tent. There were two other men present, practically salivating as more of my body was uncovered. They seemed to enjoy it more the harder I fought.

I managed to bring my bound hands down in a blow to the head of the man pawing at me. A wild kick brought my foot close to his balls, but I went deathly still when that dirty knife, already shiny with my blood, dug into my cheek. I felt it dig into my soft skin as the man smiled at me again. You think you’re better than me, better than this? All bitches are the same. We’ll see how special you think you are when your face is in pieces. You’ll beg men like me to take you, to take care of you. No one will want you when I’m done carving my initials into your skin. The knife dragged across my skin again and I felt like I was drowning in my own blood. I could feel it trickling down the side of my neck and into my ear. I could feel it touch the corner of my mouth and the iron tang made me want to vomit.

The knife skipped over my ravaged chest and sliced across my stomach. When I felt the blade between my legs I closed my eyes and prayed that I would never open them again. I wanted to die. Teeth dug into my skin, stinging and sharp. No one had ever touched me against my will before. I’d never been someone who felt totally helpless. I had no idea how I was going to survive this . . . if I was going to survive this. I felt the sting of the blade dig into the fleshy inside of my thigh and rough fingers probing at the apex of my thighs. I sobbed behind the gag and tried to pull away again, but I wasn’t allowed to move. I was on the precipice of being forever changed and there was nothing I could do about it.

Suddenly, there was a commotion coming from where the other two men in the tent had been waiting impatiently for their turn to violate me.

Sutton was no longer unconscious.

He was wide awake and he was raising hell. He had somehow gotten hold of one of the men’s guns, since they had been too distracted watching what was happening to me. He fired off a round taking one of the men down before the other jumped him. They grappled on the ground for the weapon while the man on top of me climbed to his feet. He was hitching up his pants and reaching for his own weapon when another shot rang out. Suddenly, the man fighting with Sutton dropped to the ground. Sutton staggered to his feet, the ugly, black gun steady in his hands even though he was still bleeding heavily from his head wound.

Let her go. The two men faced off, neither looking like they were willing to bend.

Why would I do that? I was just starting to have fun. I was covered in blood and bite marks. My skin was shredded and raw from the knife.

I wouldn’t physically survive any more of his fun.

I’m not going to let you touch her again. His voice was raspy and the look in his eyes was deadly serious. I scrambled to put my pants back on and to get as much of my shredded shirt back over me as I could. It wasn’t easy with my hands bound and covered in slick, wet blood. I managed to cover my chest, but the fabric immediately turned scarlet from my bleeding wounds. I was climbing to my feet and moving toward Sutton when another man entered the tent.

This one had an aura about him that made chills race up and down my spine. He took one look at the men lying on the ground—bullet holes in both—and pulled out a pistol. He shot Sutton twice in the chest, not saying a word as he did so. No warning or remorse showed on his face as he watched the blond man pitch forward. I screamed again and ran to where he had fallen to the ground, again catching himself on his hands. I put a hand on his back, but I could hear his gasping breath and see the way his skin went white. His eyes rolled back in his head and he flopped on the ground, his face in my lap.

How did you let this happen? The man with the pistol motioned to the two dead men on the ground.

The man who had very nearly raped me shrugged. I was distracted and the cowboy was more determined than I thought.

The newcomer turned the pistol on the other man and pulled the trigger just as coldly and calmly as he had when he shot Sutton. We don’t have time for distractions.

The man collapsed in a heap as his executioner turned to me. I was talking softly to Sutton, trying to get him to respond. I could feel his pulse go thready and weak. He wasn’t going to make it. Almost as if he could read my mind, the newcomer told me, He’s a dead man. None of you are getting off this mountain alive.

He was wrong on both counts.

Sutton almost died . . . but he didn’t.

I watched the life fade out of him, watched his eyes go dark and his chest stop moving. But those drug dealers didn’t have any idea how stubborn the Warner brothers were or how protective they were of one another.

Not even a minute later, Cy showed up out of nowhere with the cavalry and managed to rescue both of us. Sutton barely made it. No one was sure how he survived the flight to Billings, Montana and the intense, lengthy emergency surgery that followed . . . but he had.

I owed him my life and so much more than that.

I wanted to stay by his side.

I wanted to hold him and thank him repeatedly.

I wanted to take care of him the same way he had taken care of me.

I wanted to fix him.

I wanted to get the chance to let myself fall in love with him because I was sure I could. No one had ever taken care of me before, let alone taken a bullet and nearly died for me.

But as soon as he opened his eyes, he told me to go. He couldn’t speak since he had a breathing tube down his throat but he was so upset, so distressed at the sight of me, he made his brothers give him pen and paper so he could tell them that he wanted me gone.

He didn’t want anything to do with me. After a while, I realized I couldn’t blame him for sending me away. After all, I was the reason he was in this shape. I had nearly gotten him killed. He’d sacrificed himself to save me and obviously regretted it. The man had a family and a daughter to raise. I’d nearly taken him away from them.

He wanted me out of his life . . . so I left.

I left my job, my friends, my family.

I left everyone trying to help and heal me.

The thing was, no matter where I went or who I was for the day, I couldn’t shake the feeling that there were things left unsaid between Sutton Warner and me. He was in every thought; he was trapped inside every feeling.

He followed me everywhere I went.

I’d left a piece of myself, a chunk of my heart, back with the cowboy who had saved my life, and if I ever wanted to move forward, if I ever wanted to be complete again, I needed to go and get it back.

Somewhere South of Rock Bottom

Sutton

You been sleeping with my wife, Warner. It was more a statement than a question, and the guy asking looked like he already knew the answer.

I squinted up at the man from under the brim of my battered and well-worn baseball cap. It was dark in the bar but the reason I needed to narrow my eyes wasn’t because of the crappy bar lighting. I was more than halfway through a bottle of cheap bourbon, and there were two images of the tall cowboy, blurry and wavering, in front of me. I had to concentrate really hard to pick out which of the fuzzy figures was the actual threat and not a figment of the booze flooding my system. There was no question the man was pissed and looking for a fight.

I lifted a shaky hand and rubbed it over the pale scruff that covered the lower half of my face. It had been a few days, or maybe it was weeks . . . probably a few months . . . since I had shaved. I didn’t give enough of a shit to worry about how my appearance had deteriorated along with the rest of my life. If this cowboy bothered to look past his anger, he would notice I wasn’t exactly the catch I had once been. It was no secret that I used to get around. Both me and my younger brother, Lane, had worked our way steadily through the single women and the not-so-single women who called Sheridan, Wyoming home. Over the years, as the tourist traffic increased, so did the opportunity to have guilt-free fun, and neither one of us apologized for it. I’d been stuck in a relationship for nearly a decade that was the opposite of fun, so I’d been making up for lost time. At least I had been, until I was stopped in my tracks by a couple of bullets and a beautiful brunette.

If I had slept with this guy’s wife, it would have been before everything changed.

It would have been before I nearly died and before I spent every waking hour of the day wishing I had so I didn’t have to see the look on her face as that asshole pawed at her and sliced her open between each blink.

It would have been long before I started drinking the minute I opened my eyes and didn’t stop until I blacked out.

It would have been before everything hurt. And I mean everything. My chest ached where those bullets went through me and tore my insides apart. My heart hurt from the way my daughter looked at me, like she didn’t even recognize me anymore. My soul felt like it was burning every single time my older brother looked at me, disappointment and reproach clear in his eyes. And the rest of my body . . . well, things hadn’t been quite right since getting out of the hospital. I was weak. I was skinny and almost frail, uncoordinated and sloppy. But worse than all of that, I couldn’t have fucked this guy’s wife even if she was naked and begging, because shit below my belt hadn’t been right since everything went wrong, either. It was like everything that made me a man had been stolen away the minute I let those men hurt her.

I blamed it on the bourbon whenever I was stupid enough to find myself with my pants around my ankles and a disappointed woman looking at me like I’d done something wrong.

I was drinking enough that it was easy to play it off. However, when I was sober, I couldn’t escape the nightmare of hearing her scream and the image of that guy crawling all over her, his knife slicing into her over and over again. I knew my newly acquired malfunction had nothing to do with the booze and everything to do with her and the way I’d let her down. What kind of man allowed a woman to go through that? I bet she wished I had died on that operating table almost as much as I did.

I blindly reached for the rest of my drink, swallowing back a mouthful that burned the entire way down. By the time the last of the liquor hit my gut, there were three wavering cowboys in front of me instead of two, and all of them were losing patience and getting angrier by the minute.

I used a finger to push the brim of my hat up and narrowed my eyes farther. I didn’t recognize him, but that didn’t mean anything. Sheridan was slowly expanding as people from the rest of the country were going out of their way to find the quiet, rustic, and peaceful kind of life my brothers and I had fought to keep since the minute we were born. Most of the ranches that surrounded our property had grown exponentially in the last five years, which was good for business and longevity, but bad for keeping that small-town feel of everyone knowing everyone else.

You sure you got the right Warner, bud? My words were slow and deliberate so I didn’t slur them together. It took way more effort to get those words out than I wanted to admit. I was having trouble breathing and a cold sweat had popped out across my forehead. I didn’t feel quite right, but that was nothing new.

The cowboy rocked back on his boots and the blurred images on either side of him did the same. The motion made my stomach roll and trying to keep my eyes focused was giving me a headache. I tapped the rim of my empty glass with my finger and the bartender looked at me with regret before shaking his head in the negative. Burke Bolton had graduated the same year as my older brother. He’d moved away a few years ago, and much like Cy, had been reluctant to return. His