The Walker Brothers ~ Book 1

Nick Walker - FBI agent - second chance romance

 Read chapter one below….

An emotional second chance love story.

He broke her heart. Now this FBI agent is down on his knees to win her back.Nick Walker found his one and only when he was just nineteen.

Found her. Loved her. Lost her.

It's been ten years since Nick watched Mia walk out of his life. Ten years of pain and regret. Now he'll do anything to win her back. But it won’t be easy…

Mia’s heart was shattered by Nick. They'll have to face their painful past if they want a future, including Mia's own secret about that day it all fell apart...

Worth the Wait

Chapter 1

Present day…

Nick Walker leaned his shoulder against the weathered wall inside the barn. Sturdy and solid, a good place for his sister. A safe place. Through the open back end of the barn, he could see a patch of dry grass blowing in the wind. Farther in the distance, a dark line of green pines met a hazy blue sky.

Hannah’s hair hung in a long braid down her back, the exact color of the blowing grass, and he watched her carefully as she stabbed the pitchfork into the hay bedding then dumped horse manure into the wheelbarrow parked next to his feet. As she went back for more, he continued to lay out all the pitfalls of dating, all the reasons to be careful, every precaution an overprotective FBI agent could think of. For all the good it did.

He should be glad his sister was spreading her wings, but thinking about her with McKinney only amplified that sick feeling in his gut. Part of him said that fear was irrational. A bigger part knew it wasn't. He hadn’t protected her before. He wouldn’t make that mistake again.

He sighed, noting she was going about her work without comment. “Are you even listening to me?”

“Are you even saying anything worth listening to?” she countered sweetly.

“Stubborn.”

His baby sister, who admittedly wasn’t a baby, shook off the extra straw then swung around for another dump in the wheelbarrow beside him. He’d hung around after bringing Hannah lunch, his excuse for checking in on her more than she’d like. But she was his little sister; that was his job. The fact she was dating had his threat level dialed up to the highest setting. DEFCON one on the big brother scale.

It didn’t help that he still saw her as a two-year-old with corn-silk, barely-there pigtails and eyes too big for her face. “The guy is trouble.”

“The guy has a name. He even has a family and everything.”

“Yeah.” Stephen McKinney. As an FBI agent, Nick had run the guy through the system and found things in his past that might or might not be legitimate cause for worry. The fact that he was a millionaire playboy was enough. That his photo was recently on the cover of a magazine as Norfolk’s most eligible bachelor would have made Nick roll his eyes in any case. But McKinney was sniffing around his sister. Definite cause for a lot more than eye rolling. Hannah was not a player, and she sure as hell was not going to be played with.

Tall and lean, she had an inner strength, but she was also fragile. Breakable. Even with the heat thick enough to swim in, she wore jeans, which made sense for riding. But not the long sleeves she wore, as she always did, to cover the scars of her past. The marks left by a man Nick hadn’t protected her from. Faded after twelve years, but he still saw them, still heard her crying in his nightmares.

That was the bitch of regret. It kept the past in the present, right on top of you, so you couldn’t forget, so it could keep eating at you until there was nothing left. Until the woman that was holding all your pieces together walked right out the door.

“Nick, you know I love you,” Hannah was saying, “even if you are a pain, but I’m twenty-six years old. I can make some decisions for myself.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t.”

“You didn’t have to.” She sent him a meaningful look before turning back to her task. “You know, if you have time to watch me work, you have time to help me work.”

“And get yelled at? I don’t think so. You’ve told me more than once to stay out of your way.”

“Hmm.” She leaned the pitchfork against the wall. “Well, you’re in my way now, so move you and your fancy self back.”

Dressed in his standard khakis and button-down, he stepped back into the barn aisle not to save his scuffed brown boots but because he didn’t put it past his sister to dump horse shit on them.

Hannah lifted the handles of the wheelbarrow and marched it out to her dumping pile. A breath of summer air blew through the breezeway, sweeping tiny bits of hay to the sides of the aisle, offering a little relief from the Virginia heat.

Freedom Farm was a physical therapy riding facility for children with various special needs, from amputations and paralysis to severe burns and visual impairments. Even five years ago, he couldn’t have imagined it, and seeing her happy was like a balm to his soul. And McKinney was ruining that, he thought with a scowl.

“Where’s Luke?” he asked as Hannah walked back, pulling off her work gloves. “I saw his truck.”

“I don’t know. He went for a walk, I think. We talked, then he left.”

He wondered what they’d talked about. His younger brother wasn’t much of a talker. A Special Forces officer, Luke still hadn’t said why he was home. That worried him. He worried, about all of them, had since the day they’d stood like soldiers in the front row of the church, struggling to keep their gut-wrenching shit together.

Luke, a sullen seventeen, the twins, Zach and Dallas, just fourteen and forced to take the sudden death of their parents like men. And then two-year-old Hannah in his arms, quiet, observant, confused. Not yet twenty, he hadn’t been ready for the responsibility of his siblings. It hadn’t mattered.

The service ended; a pause between music pieces followed as the organist flipped pages in her book. The air was sticky with the scent of too many lilies. The only sound came from the squeaking wheels as two identical caskets were rolled to the back of the church. You could have heard a pin drop until Hannah’s scream split the reverent silence in two.

It pierced every ear, so high and sorrowful it rattled the organ pipes. She lunged toward the aisle with a desperate cry for Mommy that tore through all of them. Again and again until her voice gave out. She understood more than he’d thought. Solemn music played over her while women around him wept. Luke and Dallas watched the scene in horror. Zach slumped to the pew and buried his face in his hands.

Since that moment, she’d been his.

He’d like to think he’d done a decent job. He knew he hadn’t. The screams that had come years later were far worse than those in that church twenty-four years ago.

“Don’t you have any real detective work to do?” Hannah bent to scatter the pile of fresh hay she’d set inside the doorway. “Someone else to bother?”

“It’s more fun to bother you,” he said lightly, even if he didn’t feel it. He did have two hot cases going, both related to drugs and possibly to each other. He checked his watch. He’d only meant to come for lunch. “I do need to go, I just—”

“Wanted to hover? Typical.” She blew out an exasperated sigh. “I wasn’t kidding when I said you should think about settling down. If you can’t find that special someone who’ll take you, God bless her, at least get a dog.” She added that last bit with a smile as she turned.

Then her expression grew serious, her probing eyes studying him until he wanted to squirm. But he was a federal agent. It was his job to make other people squirm.

“In all seriousness, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about—”

“Right.” He kissed her cheek, tapped a finger lightly on her furrowed brow. “I’ll catch up with you later.” He knew better than to get into this with his sister. If she was getting it into her head that he needed to settle down, she’d be like a dog with a bone.

A dark cloud of rain was blowing in fast. He almost turned around to see if Hannah needed help but resisted the urge. All the horses were in, and her assistant, Lexi, was in the office. If she needed help, she had it.

As he drove his standard black Suburban up the rise and away from the barn, the first giant drops hit his windshield. He paused at the end of the gravel drive then took a left for the Norfolk field office. On the long stretch of empty country road, Hannah’s words about settling reverberated painfully through his chest.

He couldn’t settle, not like his sister had in mind, probably not ever. Because he’d found that special one. The only woman who’d ever owned him.

Found her. Lost her.

Chapter 2

Twenty-four years ago…

Nick pressed two fingers into the headache pounding in his temple and tried to concentrate on professor Jenkins’s explanation of ideal gas law. He circled a line of notes, ignoring the knock on the auditorium door until he heard the familiar cry: Hannah, who he’d left in the university daycare two hours before.

The high-pitched wail wasn’t his two-year-old sister’s hurt cry. It was her scared cry, with a touch of pissed off. In the six weeks since their parents’ death, he’d learned to tell the difference.