Free In the Arms of a Stranger (Entangled Ignite) by Virginia Kelly

mustn’t forget why she’d risked so much by keeping JP’s presence a secret from Brooks, from everyone.
    Answers .
    With a deep breath, she dropped her arms to her sides and walked quickly to catch up with JP and Cole, who were looking toward the pasture. June bugs buzzed lazily in the summer heat.
    “How do you call Buck?” JP was asking her son.
    “Mommy whissus,” he replied.
    “Can you whistle?”
    “Not like Mommy.” Cole turned toward her. “Whissu, ’kay?”
    JP put Cole down.
    Abby smiled, put her fingers to her lips, and blew.
    The shrill sound carried across the hot, still morning. Cole clapped.
    JP’s eyes widened and he smiled. “That’s some whistle your mom has,” he said, his gaze on Abby.
    “Petunia comes, too,” Cole said, his face alive with pleasure.
    “Petunia?”
    “He’s a boy cow. He’s big.” Cole looked up at JP with a serious expression. “He likes for Mommy to talk to him.”
    “I heard your mom talk to Petunia.”
    Cole smiled. “Doc Sam aks Mommy to talk to Petunia so he can sew him up.”
    JP’s reaction to that statement was priceless. His face showed disbelief, then something else. Admiration? Humor?
    “I bet anything would hold still for your mom,” he said casually, as if in jest, but the timbre of his voice changed the simple meaning to something beyond. Something heated.
    Ashamed of herself, of the places the sound of JP’s voice was taking her, she turned abruptly and pointed, “Look. There comes Buck!”
    The light tan gelding was galloping toward the barn. With a whinny and a toss of his beautifully shaped head, Buck came to a bouncing halt at the fence in front of them. In the opposite pasture, still a good distance away, Petunia ambled toward them.
    Cole ran to the wire fence topped with barbed wire and stretched his hand through, holding a carrot in his palm for the horse.
    “What do we do when Petunia gets here?” JP asked.
    “Throw some carrots on the ground for him and leave fast,” she replied with a laugh.
    JP stepped back, indicating with a jerk of his head that she should follow him.
    Standing not far from Cole, he asked quietly, “Wade didn’t have anywhere else he might have kept things for work?”
    She didn’t like the question. It sounded like the ones Brooks had asked.
    “Things like what?”
    “You said he didn’t keep papers at home.”
    “No.”
    “He didn’t keep an apartment somewhere, in DC maybe?”
    An apartment? Maybe a whole other life? Was that what he was asking? She hadn’t even thought of that possibility.
    “I have no idea what Wade had away from here.” The statement hurt. A lot. She’d trusted Wade implicitly. He’d said his work wouldn’t touch their life together, and she’d believed him. Until the day it did touch their lives. Until the day she could do nothing to save him. That day had thrown all her preconceptions about Wade, about their marriage— about herself —into disarray.
    “He sold—” She stopped to correct herself. “He said he sold his family’s place in Texas.”
    “Where was it?”
    He didn’t know about the Texas ranch. Strange. He’d known about Buck, about the Rangers, but he didn’t know this? He should know. Even Brooks knew. Or…was he testing her?
    She faced him directly. “Why are you here, JP?”
    He stiffened, the question apparently catching him off guard.
    She held up a finger. “And don’t tell me you came to visit Wade. You’re running. Hiding. How do you think Wade could have helped you if he’d been here?”
    He didn’t answer. Deciding what to say? How to lie? Oh, he’d definitely know how to lie. Wade certainly had.
    “Finding out that Wade’s dead, that he’s been dead for over a year, doesn’t fit with the neat little scenario you had figured out,” she accused. “You have to look elsewhere for help now, but wherever that is, it has something to do with Wade.” She was rambling, thinking aloud.
    “Abby—”
    “Don’t lie to me. Do not do