Rangers: Silver-Star Seductions: A Two-Book Box Set Read Online Free

know that if I hear about you or any of your family paying an unwelcome call on Ms. Hale, you and I are going to have a problem. You hear what I’m saying Mr. Ellis?”
    “Fuck you, Childress. Your old man was a second rate asshole and you’re no better. Me and my boys will do what we want when we want and there’s not shit you can do about it.”
    “Oh, yes, there is, Mr. Ellis.” Zeb patted his badge then let his hand drift to his sidearm. “Let’s just hop e̶ for your sake that I don’t have to.”
    “You threatening me, Ranger?”
    Zeb smiled and saw from the reaction on Clancy’s face that he hadn’t lost his touch in delivering a smile that carried a whole lot of threat with it. “I don’t threaten, Mr. Ellis. I’m telling you straight out. You bother Ms. Hale, or any harm comes to her and I’ll put you down. You and your boys.
    “Do we understand each other?”
    “Yeah.”
    Zeb put his finger to the brim of his hat. “Then you have a nice day, Mr. Ellis.”
    He turned his back on Clancy and walked back to his cruiser, but stopped before he got in and gestured to the run-down trailers. “You might want to do something about that. Calder County has ordinances and it’d be a shame for someone to send an inspector down here and him make you move all … that.”
    “Fuck you.”
    Zeb ignored the insult and got into his cruiser. As he pulled away from the house he saw old man Ellis standing in the yard, staring after him and couldn’t help but wonder if he had done Willa a favor by paying a call on the Ellis clan, or had just stirred up a hornet’s nest that would have them more bent on punishing her.
    He ignored the misgivings. It didn’t matter to him which way they went. If they stayed out of her life, he’d let them be. If not, then he’d live up to his promise.
    He’d take them down. Every one of them.
    The one thing he never thought to question as he headed back to the station is why he was so wrapped up in Willa Hale’s life.
     
    *****
    Willa had been up since before dawn. Sleep had eluded her. Mostly because she couldn’t stop thinking about the kiss. Not the one she’d planted on Zeb at the front door when he showed up, but the one he’d given her before he left.
    She’d never been kissed like that in her life and she almost wished she had not now because god help her, she’d never be able to stop thinking about it. Or about him.
    That was going to get her nothing but heartbreak and bags under her eyes from lack of sleep. She’d fed and watered the stock, mucked out the stalls and taken care of her menagerie of pets. It was half past seven and she was antsy enough that she had to keep moving so she swept and mopped the floors in the house and even the front and back porch.
    When the truck pulling the horse trailer turned onto the drive and headed for the house, she ran out to meet it, eager to get started with the new horses she was training for law enforcement work.
    “Hey Billy,” she greeted the driver as he got of the truck.
    “Hey, Willa. Got some good looking horses for you today.”
    “Well, let’s get ‘em unloaded.”
    Together they walked to the rear of the trailer. Billy wasn’t lying. The three horses in the trailer were prime. Two geldings and a mare. One of the geldings was an Appaloosa who stood about 15 hands and the other was black as night and stood a good seventeen hands. The mare was a Paint with good lines and intelligent eyes.
    Willa and Billy got the horses into the paddock then stood leaning on the fence rail watching. “That big one has a temper,” Billy said.
    “Most animals do if pushed,” Willa remarked.
    “He’s got more than most. Damn, let me get the paperwork from the truck. Boss’ll have my ass if I forget.”
    Willa waited, watching the animals as Billy fetched the paperwork. He handed it to her and she scanned through it. It wasn’t hard to figure out why the black horse, an American Saddlebred named Jet had issues. He’d been