Brave Hearts: Dallas Hearts, #2

By Maddy Barone

Isabel Ybarra. A soldier who lost her leg in Iraq.

 

Dusty Wolfe. The medic who saved her life.

 

When they meet again in Dallas twelve years later, they're not who they were. Dusty is an EMS with Dallas Fire & Rescue, with dreams of someday having a wife and family. He just needs to find the right woman. Isabel, now the owner of a yarn store, has left her dreams of love and a family firmly in the past. She's happy with the peaceful life she's built.

 

Dusty has finally found the right woman, and he refuses to be ignored. Her quiet courage and brave heart are irresistible to him. He will do whatever it takes to win her love. If that means signing up for her knitting class to get her attention, he will. Can he figure out the difference between knitting and purling? More importantly, can he convince her that he is her future?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maddy Barone
• Release date: Apr 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393781684

Book preview

Brave Hearts

Dallas Hearts

Book 2

By

Maddy Barone

Table of Contents

Brave Hearts

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

About the Author

Other Books By Maddy Barone

Copyright © 2020 by Maddy Barone.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Maddy Barone

PO Box 9995

Fargo, ND 58108-9995

www.MaddyBarone.com

Edited by Dayna Hart

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

I dedicate this book to the many readers who have emailed me and/or left comments on my blog and Facebook page to encourage me in my writing. Thank you!

Special thanks also to Linda Faneuff and Mary Ellen Faneuff, for allowing me to use their names in this story.

A huge Thank You to Paige Tyler for granting permission for the use of her characters Captain Stewart, Lexie Fletcher, Dane Chandler, Jax Malloy, and Skye Chandler, and Dallas Fire & Rescue from her Dallas Fire & Rescue Series world.

Chapter One

DUSTY SET HIS PHONE on the table with a small frown. Brutus flicked a card his way. Automatically, Dusty picked up the card and added it to his hand. Nothing. Not even a pair. They’d been playing poker for the last two hours of their shift at the station house of Dallas Fire & Rescue, and the bowl of pretzels was overflowing. He wondered if he could bluff his way into winning the pot of pretzels.

No, Brutus knew him too well for a bluff to work.

Brutus jerked his chin toward the phone. Wasn’t that the delicious Shawnda?

Dusty rearranged his cards, trying to keep his face impassive. Yeah.

After a minute of expectant silence, Brutus slapped his cards face down on the table. C’mon, Wolfe, he said. Spit it out. What did last year’s third runner up to Miss Texas want?

Nothing. That’s the trouble, he added in a mutter. Dusty risked a quick glance around the station dayroom to see if any other EMS personnel or firefighters were listening. There were about a half-dozen other people in the big room, but no one seemed to be paying attention to their corner.

Brutus leaned a beefy forearm on the table, which squeaked under the strain. The man was a wall of muscle. Dusty was an inch over six feet with a broad-shouldered body he kept toned by running and pumping iron at the station weight room, but Brutus was three inches taller and outweighed Dusty by sixty pounds, all of it solid muscle. Someone who judged him only by his craggy face and powerful build would think Brutus was a brute, but Dusty knew him to be a fiercely loyal friend with a tender heart. Not that Brutus would ever admit to the tender heart.

What do you mean? Talk to me, man.

Dusty scowled at his cards. Ace high. Nothing. She called to cancel our date tonight. He looked away from his cards to stare at his friend. In fact, she won’t be seeing me again.

Brutus winced. Bummer, man. I can see why you’re down.

Dusty looked down and rearranged his cards again. I am bothered, he admitted, not looking up. But not because she cancelled. He tried to sort his thoughts the way he was sorting his cards. I’m bothered because it doesn’t bother me.

What? Brutus squawked. It doesn’t bother you that the fourth hottest chick in the great state of Texas just dumped your ass?

Grinding his teeth, Dusty shot another glance around. The two firefighters at the nearby pool table quickly looked away, as if trying to pretend that they hadn’t heard Brutus. No, it doesn’t. Actually, I’m relieved.

Man, are you sick?

No, I’m old.

What? This time Brutus kept his voice quiet. You’re thirty-one. I don’t think we need to get you a walker just yet.

He tried to explain. Shawnda is twenty-two. She’s sweet, and beautiful, and doesn’t have a clue of what life is really like.

A bimbo?

No. She’s intelligent enough, but she’s never seen anyone die while she was trying to save their life. She has no idea what it is like to get up at oh dark thirty and ride in a convoy that could be blown to kingdom come at any second. She’s never had everyone else depending on her to save them when their deuce rolls over an IED. When I was her age, I was on my second tour in Iraq.

Brutus sat back with a breath blown between his teeth. His face held unsmiling acknowledgement. Yeah, Dusty had known his buddy would understand. Brutus served three tours in Iraq as a corpsman with the Marine Fifth Regiment. Dusty had served as a medic in the Army. Their shared experiences cemented their friendship. They also strengthened their partnership as Emergency Medical Responders with Dallas Fire and Rescue.

Okay, Brutus said, serious now. So, she hasn’t played in the Sandbox, but is that what you want in a woman? To be able to share war stories on a date?

I don’t know. He pushed his cards away and put his elbows on the table to lean his forehead on his fists. I would like to have an intelligent conversation with a woman, instead of listening to her go on and on about her shoe shopping experience and how hard it is to choose the right color of nail polish for her outfit.

Oh, hell, yes. Brutus was back to laughing at him. War stories are definitely more interesting.

Well, at least I can contribute to that conversation, Dusty shot back. What do you say when she asks if you like Cherry Bomb Ombre or Painted Desert Shimmer better?

Brutus screwed up his face. Does either of them involve alcohol?

Dusty chuckled. You suck, he said gratefully.

I do my best. Brutus glanced at the clock. Shift’s over.

They put away the cards and headed out of the dayroom. When they got outside to their vehicles, Dusty spoke again. Hey, you want a couple of tickets to the ballet tonight?

Brutus looked at him like he was out of his mind. Are you nuts? Baseball, yeah. Basketball, sure. Football, absolutely. Ballet? No way in hell. Go find a new date. A pretty boy like you should be able to find a woman to take to the ballet.

Maybe Denise would like to go.

Ha! Brutus’ grin was wide. Dee would rather watch a Rangers game. In fact, we have seats for tomorrow’s match up with the Red Socks. So you just go find yourself a date and watch the pretty ladies twirl around on their toes.

Yeah, yeah.

They bumped fists and got into their respective vehicles. Dusty left the parking lot and wasn’t sure what to do with his next forty-eight hours. Brutus had a fiancée to go home to. Denise and Brutus were in love, and Dusty was happy for his friend, but until now he’d never been envious of him. All Dusty had waiting at home for him was a mostly empty fridge and a herd of dust bunnies. Going home to a lonely apartment didn’t appeal to him right now.

An hour later he was still driving aimlessly around Dallas. This was an area he wasn’t familiar with. Residential neighborhoods with small houses and minuscule well-kept yards were punctuated by blocks of small businesses. It reminded him of small towns back home in South Dakota. A stab of homesickness spiked through his chest. He should go home and see his mom and dad, meet the new crop of nieces and nephews his sisters and brothers had produced. Maybe that’s what he needed to get rid of this sense of dissatisfaction. Family connections. Yeah, he’d talk to the captain about taking some time off this summer and head north to see his folks.

But for now, he should go home to his apartment. Lonely or not, it was home. He should delete those ballet tickets from his phone, grab some food, and crash on the couch for a couple of hours of TV reruns before going to bed. When he spotted a takeout place between a bookstore and a coffee shop, he decided to stop.

The nearest parking spot was a block away. He walked along the street, looking into the windows as he passed. The coffee shop was fronted by nothing but windows with tables lined up so the patrons could watch the traffic outside. At the first table in the window a young Hispanic couple ignored the view and their coffee to hold hands and smile at one another. Even their feet were touching. That was young love. Sweet, sappy, and — he reluctantly admitted – rather wonderful.

The next table was empty, but the third table had a woman working on a laptop seated at it. Dusty slowed as he examined her. Was she familiar? She might have some Native American blood. Her hair was straight and shoulder length, the rich glossy brown of coffee, half hiding a face of strong lines. Her profile had a proud, hawkish nose. Probably not a pretty face, but a strong one. No, he decided, he didn’t know her. She certainly wasn’t a woman he had dated. She had to be in her mid-thirties at least, and the oldest woman he had dated had been Mandy. At twenty-eight, the TV news anchor had been his own age at the time. He came to a stop, staring at the woman in the window. There was something about her that he seemed to recognize.

She glanced up through the window and he saw her face full on. No, not pretty, but distinctive with a certain harsh beauty. She held a piece of paper up, probably trying to catch the light, and studied it for a long minute before putting it down and picking up another. She stroked her fingers over it as if she were petting a cat. Her gaze passed from it to him, and back to it, without lingering on him. She added the paper to a stack on the table and tapped at the keyboard of her laptop. That niggling sense of recognition tugged at him. He knew her. He was sure of that. But where... His gaze fell on a wooden cane leaning against the table, and he looked quickly at the woman’s legs, revealed by the skirt she wore.

Oh, God. Breath froze like ice in his lungs. He knew who she was. He stared blindly, seeing not a woman wearing a sleeveless red blouse in a homey coffee shop in Dallas, but a soldier wearing the red of her own blood in a crowded and dusty vehicle in Iraq.

Without another thought, he went into the coffee shop.

Chapter Two

ISABEL YBARRA SELECTED another of the sample cards the yarn company had sent and scrutinized the yarn swatches glued there. So beautiful and soft. She could imagine what a gorgeous shawl the silk and cashmere blend yarn would make, but would the shop’s customer base buy it, or would the price keep the beautiful skeins sitting on the shelf?

With a regretful sigh, she put the sample card aside and picked up another for sock yarn. Dos Hermanas Yarn Shop was small, and shelf space needed to go to yarns that were most likely to sell. She and her sister Inez were dedicated to making their small business work, and now, in their fourth year of business, they were making a tiny profit. With her military disability checks, Isabel was making ends meet. She didn’t have much left over at the end of the month, but at least she didn’t have to go to her brother begging for help. Eduardo would be happy to give her money, but his wife, Carmen, would begrudge every penny, even though Eddie made a very good living.

Glancing at her watch, she knew it was time to get back to the shop so Inez could have supper before the knitting class began. Isabel picked up her plate and