What She Did Read online

  Does someone want her frightened...or dead?

  Someone is terrorizing Chelsea McGregor and her daughter. But who? Her husband disappeared years ago. The only other suspect is a former boss who couldn’t respect boundaries—a far cry from attempted murder. Texas rancher Nate Kent vows to help the single mom. But can she trust an outsider to keep her family safe?

  Nate turned and backed Chelsea up a step. “I think I understand what’s going on.”

  “You do? Mind clueing me in?” she asked.

  “You’re scared.”

  She blinked at him. “Of what?”

  “Not of what...of who?” He caught her gaze and held it.

  “I’m not scared of you, Nate, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she stammered. “You’ve been nothing but helpful.”

  His smile was devastating. Good-looking was almost an insult to say about a man as hot as Nate. He had that animal magnetism she’d heard about but rarely seen. His piercing steel eyes and carved-from-granite jawline coupled with thick, curly dark hair made for one seriously hot package. The man worked out. His body was defined in places she didn’t even realize there could be muscles.

  “If not of me, then maybe of this.” He brought his hand up to her chin and tilted her mouth toward his.

  WHAT SHE DID

  USA TODAY Bestselling Author

  Barb Han

  USA TODAY bestselling author Barb Han lives in north Texas with her very own hero-worthy husband, three beautiful children, a spunky golden retriever/standard poodle mix and too many books in her to-read pile. In her downtime, she plays video games and spends much of her time on or around a basketball court. She loves interacting with readers and is grateful for their support. You can reach her at barbhan.com.

  Books by Barb Han

  Harlequin Intrigue

  Rushing Creek Crime Spree

  Cornered at Christmas

  Ransom at Christmas

  Ambushed at Christmas

  What She Did

  Crisis: Cattle Barge

  Sudden Setup

  Endangered Heiress

  Texas Grit

  Kidnapped at Christmas

  Murder and Mistletoe

  Bulletproof Christmas

  Cattlemen Crime Club

  Stockyard Snatching

  Delivering Justice

  One Tough Texan

  Texas-Sized Trouble

  Texas Witness

  Texas Showdown

  Harlequin Intrigue Noir

  Atomic Beauty

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com.

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Chelsea McGregor—An inheritance changes her luck. Will it make her a target?

  Nate Kent—This Kent brother interferes with a criminal’s plan and puts himself in the line of fire.

  Skylar—Is this little girl ready for a new life?

  Travis Zucker—Chelsea’s ex has disappeared without a trace. Or has he been watching all along?

  Renaldo Vinchesa—This former boss is fixated on Chelsea. How far will he go to get her back?

  All my love to Brandon, Jacob and Tori, my favorite people in the world.

  To Babe, my hero, for being my great love and my place to call home.

  To my mom, Juanita, for being my biggest cheerleader. And to my sister, Tonia, for always having my back. Love you both!

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Excerpt from Covert Complication by Nicole Helm

  Chapter One

  “Skylar, it’s time to go,” Chelsea McGregor shouted up the stairs to her four-year-old daughter. She listened for the sounds of those still-small bare feet running on the creaky wood flooring of the new house in Jacobstown. Skylar’s energy never ceased to amaze Chelsea. The kid had two speeds: full-out and passed out. And she was being way too quiet for this hour of the morning.

  Chelsea called to her daughter again.

  At least they’d made it through the first night in a new house. The move to a new town in Texas, a fresh start, had been the only light of hope in Chelsea’s life since the first time she’d looked into her newborn baby’s eyes. In that moment of pure bliss, Chelsea had had no idea what was going on at home. Anything of value was being cleaned out of her house while both her personal and business accounts were also being drained by the man who’d promised to love and protect her for the rest of her life.

  Travis Zucker had robbed her blind, cost her her livelihood and, to be honest, her dignity. She’d been young and naïve in falling for a charmer. He’d charmed her right out of her life’s work.

  People talked about defining moments. That had been hers.

  When Travis hadn’t answered any of her texts while she was in labor, she’d gone from fearing her husband had gotten into a terrible car accident—because she’d thought there was no way he’d miss the birth of their daughter otherwise—to laboring for seventeen hours with her mother at her side, to shock followed by horror that she had a brand-new life to care for and no financial means to do it with. She and Skylar had moved in with Chelsea’s mother, whose health had been declining for years. Linda McGregor had high blood pressure and cholesterol, diabetes, and arthritis to name a few. Staying on top of her medications and having the money to pay for them had been a challenge.

  “Hey, Mom,” Chelsea shouted up the stairs to her mother, who was helping Skylar get dressed for preschool. “How’s it going up there?”

  Her mother appeared at the top of the wooden banister.

  “I sent her down.” Linda checked her watch. “Must’ve been at least five minutes ago.”

  “That’s odd. I didn’t hear her.” Chelsea spun around and scanned the long hallway past the boxes that had been stacked and pushed haphazardly against the wall.

  She immediately checked the hall bathroom but it was empty. Skylar might be playing a game. She loved hide-and-seek. Or she might be trying to avoid her first day at a new school.

  Skylar had to be upstairs. There was only one staircase in the house. It creaked and groaned even under the weight of a child. Chelsea had already flagged a couple of random nails sticking out that would need to be addressed soon. Her to-do list was growing considering the place hadn’t been updated or repaired in probably a good twenty years. None of the imperfections mattered. This house was a gift beyond measure.

  “Where are you, little bit?” Chelsea tried to regulate her breathing as her stress levels climbed. She reminded herself that the man who’d taken everything from her wouldn’t come back for their daughter. The fear was unrealistic. And yet it could be crippling when it struck. This was one of those moments.

  Chelsea reminded herself to breathe slowly as she checked behind boxes, shivering in the drafty hall. There was a door to a small storage space underneath the stairs. It was possible that Skylar could’ve tiptoed downstairs and slipped inside. Chelsea had been in the kitchen making Skylar’s lunch for her first day in a new school. A new month. A new house. A new lease on life.

/>   Her mother had agreed to come live with Chelsea in Jacobstown. Chelsea had said she needed help with Skylar to convince her mother to leave Houston but the reality was that she was worried about her mother. Her health was a concern and Chelsea needed to be able to keep an eye on her. A group of doctors in Fort Worth had a great reputation and Chelsea figured a change couldn’t hurt considering her mother’s Houston doctors seemed to be running out of ideas and inspiration. They’d played around with her mother’s medications, which had led to all kinds of side effects. Getting the balance right proved tricky.

  A cold front had blown in during the night. Seventy-five-degree temperatures had dropped into the low forties.

  Chelsea rubbed her arms to stave off the cold and called her daughter’s name again.

  Skylar didn’t so much as make a peep.

  Chelsea quickened her pace, knocking empty boxes out of her way as she locked her gaze onto the door underneath the stairs that had been made into a small coat closet.

  “Hey, sweet girl. Are you in here?” Chelsea opened the door with her heart in her throat. Her calm words belied her panic.

  There was no sign of Skylar.

  Now, Chelsea was jogging through the rooms, double-checking the small powder room near the kitchen.

  She returned to the bottom of the stairs and called up to her mother. “She’s not down here. Are you sure she isn’t upstairs with you?”

  “I’ll double-check her room.” There was worry in her mother’s voice, too.

  Chelsea ran to the kitchen.

  If Skylar was playing a joke, this wasn’t funny anymore.

  “Come on out of your hiding place.” Chelsea drummed up her I’m-not-kidding tone. Her Serious Mom voice was nothing to mess with and maybe because she only used it as a last resort did it always work.

  She listened for sounds of movement. When none came, her heart lurched. She stormed toward the stairs, panic slamming into her with the force of a tornado, threatening to rip her apart and smack her into the ground when it was done with her.

  Chelsea broke into a run and by the time she hit the stairs her body was already trembling. She took the wooden steps two at a clip and then sprinted toward her daughter’s bedroom.

  What was it about her life that caused the walls to come tumbling down around her just when everything seemed to be clicking?

  “Skylar,” she said so loudly it startled her mother.

  “I can’t find her.” Linda squinted her eyes as her right hand went over her heart; habitual signs that she was out of options. It was also the expression she’d worn the few times Chelsea had asked about her own father.

  At a young age, Chelsea had realized the topic brought painful memories to her mother. She’d since learned not to ask.

  Once, her mother had asked twelve-year-old Chelsea to run and get muscle strain cream from her nightstand. When Chelsea had picked it up, accidentally knocking a book to the floor, a photograph had fallen out. The picture had been a younger version of her mother. Although, to be honest, Chelsea had barely recognized the woman with the carefree smile. She’d traced the beaming face with her index finger. Gone were the deep worry grooves from her forehead—a now-hardened face from years spent barely getting by on odd jobs. Her mother had had to sacrifice going to college to support Chelsea’s father, whom she later found out had been an aspiring photographer. She’d made the connection years afterward that he had taken the picture of her mother.

  Money had always been tight and Chelsea often wondered what had happened to her father. There’d been times when Chelsea and her mother had had to pick up in the middle of the night and leave all their belongings behind to avoid being forced out because her mother couldn’t pay the rent.

  The two of them had bounced around among well-meaning relatives for most of Chelsea’s life. Chelsea had picked up on late-night conversations. Her father had gone out for milk and never returned.

  She’d learned that in those first couple of years after her own father left that her mother believed he’d been injured somewhere and was unable to come home. And then, as time went on, she’d hear about a relative who’d seen her husband and then another sighting from a friend of a friend. Over time, her mother seemed to realize that he’d made the choice to leave. No explanation. No looking back.

  Travis had been nothing more than history repeating itself. When he’d walked out, Chelsea had no such fantasies that he’d return. She’d accepted her fate and moved on.

  She thought about Travis and the similarities. Unlike her mother, Chelsea had never searched for her husband.

  The worst part for Chelsea during her childhood had been seeing the hope in her mother’s eyes while on road trips—trips she later realized were voyages to locate Chelsea’s father. Her mother would come alive for a few days. She’d stay up late and talk until Chelsea’s eyelids grew so heavy they closed automatically. She’d splurge on eating at a restaurant, which Chelsea now realized was nothing more than a truck stop but had felt like five-star dining to a kid.

  Before the day ended, her mother would produce a chocolate bar. The two would curl up in a motel room bed and break off piece after piece until it had disappeared. Looking back, Chelsea had also realized that every road trip she’d taken with her mother had ended at a photography exhibit.

  At least one of her aunts had believed that her father had changed his name and was living in New York. A trip there at fifteen years old had amounted to a hot, sticky bus ride and a whole heap of disappointment. Her mother had quietly cried after she’d believed Chelsea had gone to sleep, just like all the other times.

  Chelsea had started a successful food truck at nineteen and within two years owned three. She’d been so proud of her business, of her ability to financially support a mother who had given up everything to care for her only daughter. She’d met Travis two years later and married after a whirlwind romance because she’d found out she was pregnant despite taking birth control pills.

  To have everything she’d worked for taken away was a hot poker in Chelsea’s chest.

  The thought of anything happening to her daughter was worse.

  “Where could she have gone?” Linda threw her hands in the air, exacerbated.

  “Maybe she slipped outside and is waiting in the car.” Chelsea couldn’t let herself think the worst.

  She hurried to the front window so she could see her used pickup truck. She’d bought it with some of the small—but enormous in so many ways—inheritance money. Since losing her business four years ago, she’d gone to work in Renaldo Vinchesa’s kitchen as a sous chef. It was pretty much the only job she could get after losing everything. He was notorious for being a womanizer despite being married with kids, something she didn’t learn until she’d been on the job a few weeks. She’d rejected his advances, which seemed to make him even more determined to pursue her. He’d promised to leave his wife if Chelsea agreed to go out with him—an offer that had turned her stomach.

  And then, when his wife left him, he seemed to turn up the heat, pressuring Chelsea to date him or risk him smearing her reputation in the food service industry.

  Vinchesa was powerful in the Houston culinary scene and his threats to ensure she’d never work in another restaurant weren’t idle. He’d deliver on them in a heartbeat and, based on the texts she’d received from the couple of friends she’d made while working at Chez Houston, wheels were already turning in that direction.

  Vinchesa had tried to corner her into staying put when she’d turned in her notice. Her aunt’s inheritance had freed her. So she didn’t mind a creaky old house, because it was hers. She didn’t mind the elbow grease it would need to become ship-shape, because it would provide a home base for Skylar to grow up secure in. And she didn’t mind that the heater had conked out in the middle of the night, because... Well, admittedly, that part had been awful.

  What she did
mind was her daughter pulling a Houdini.

  Glancing down at the late-model pickup she’d bought, Skylar was nowhere to be seen.

  “Where’s my cell?” Chelsea’s pockets were empty. Had she left it on the kitchen counter?

  “I’ll keep looking up here. You go down and check there,” Linda said.

  Chelsea turned to head toward the kitchen as her mother continued her closet inspection, picking up empty boxes and shaking them as though Skylar might tumble out of one.

  A moment of I-can’t-do-this struck. Chelsea hammered it down. She could do anything she wanted. She would pull on her big-girl pants and keep it together.

  As she wheeled down the stairs and past the front door, the silhouette of a male figure appeared on the porch.

  Funny, she hadn’t seen anyone drive up, but then the house sat close to the road and she couldn’t hear much over the howling winds picking up speed by the minute.

  Heartbeat pounding at the base of her throat, she froze.

  Three rapid knocks sounded at the door, followed by a masculine voice that sent warm vibrations rippling through her despite the frigid temperature.

  A couple of thoughts raced through Chelsea’s mind at that moment. She quickly crossed off the first. That voice did not belong to Renaldo. His was like fingernails on a chalkboard.

  The other had to do with Skylar missing.

  Chelsea bolted to the door and whisked it open.

  Six foot three of male muscle under a gray cowboy hat stood on her porch. He looked to be in his early thirties with steel eyes and what she imagined would be a six-pack of pure power beneath his lightweight shirt.

  The wind almost forced the door out of her hands but she held tight.

  “My name’s Nathan Kent and someone in this residence called in a fire.” He examined her and then looked right past her. His voice would make reading a medicine bottle sound scandalous.

  “A what?” Chelsea tried to ignore the inappropriate reaction her body had to the tall, gorgeous cowboy. She was confused because her cell was nowhere to be found and her mother hadn’t made that call—