Chaps and Chance Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  All Rights Reserved

  About the Book

  Also by Jessie Evans

  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

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  A letter from the Author

  More From Jessie Evans

  Sneak Peek of Ropes and Revenge

  Chaps and Chance

  A Lonesome Point Novel

  By Jessie Evans

  All Rights Reserved

  Copyright Chaps and Chance © 2015 Jessie D. Evans www.jessieevansauthor.com

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of the copyright owner. This contemporary western romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This e-book is licensed for your personal use only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy hot, sexy, emotional novels featuring alpha cowboys. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work. Cover image by Rob Lang c. Rob Lang/Roblangimages.com 2014. Cover design © by Sarah Hansen for Okay Creations. Edited by Robin Leone Editorial.

  About the Book

  How far will they go for a second chance...

  Years ago, Layla Parker's romantic dreams came true. She married her high school sweetheart and settled into a house on his family's ranch to live happily ever after. But sometimes dreams turn into nightmares and when Layla's husband became abusive, she felt there was no way out. Her big brother was serving overseas, her friends were away at college, and her single father insisted she'd made her bed and now she had to lie in it. It isn't until her father's death over a decade later that Layla gains the courage to leave her marriage. She hopes to find peace living alone, but her dreams of happily ever after died a long time ago.

  Cole Lawson has spent years secretly pining for his former best friend. Layla Parker captured his heart sophomore year of high school, but she was already taken. When she married her boyfriend two years later, she and Cole grew apart and have rarely seen each other since. Cole's been a lady killer since the day he realized that his dimpled smile made all the cowgirls swoon, but when he discovers Layla is newly single he's ready to put an end to his womanizing ways and make a serious play for the one who got away.

  When tragedy strikes the Lawson family, Cole and Layla's rekindled friendship grows into something more, but soon a dark secret from Layla's past threatens to destroy their shot at forever. Now Cole will have to decide--listen to his heart or to the people warning him that Layla might not be as innocent as she seems.

  Also by Jessie Evans

  Sign up for Jessie’s newsletter and never miss a new release: http://bit.ly/1swaXYv

  Lonesome Point, Texas

  LEATHER AND LACE

  SADDLES AND SIN

  DIAMONDS AND DUST

  12 Dates of Christmas: A Lonesome Point Holiday Novella

  GLITTER AND GRIT

  Sunny With a Chance of True Love: The Ballad of Ugly Ross

  CHAPS AND CHANCE

  ROPES AND REVENGE

  Always a Bridesmaid

  BETTING ON YOU

  KEEPING YOU

  WILD FOR YOU

  TAKING YOU (series-ending novella)

  Fire and Icing

  MELT WITH YOU

  HOT FOR YOU

  SWEET TO YOU

  SAVING YOU (series-ending novella)

  Escape to You Novellas

  AUDITIONING YOU

  DARING YOU

  Edgy, New Adult Reads written as J. Evans

  ONE WILD NIGHT-Wild Rush One

  THIS WICKED RUSH-Wild Rush Two

  ONE PERFECT LOVE- Wild Rush Three

  THIS SWEET ESCAPE-Wild Rush Four (Danny and Sam’s story)

  ONE BEAUTIFUL REVENGE-Wild Rush Five (Danny and Sam’s conclusion)

  THE PROTECTOR

  A Kindle Worlds novella set in the world of

  H.M. Ward’s The Arrangement

  CHAPTER ONE

  Layla

  The heart surrenders.

  The mind makes excuses, the soul suffers in the dark forgetting the color of sunlight, but the broken heart eventually lays down its sword and gives up the fight.

  Layla Parker couldn’t remember the day she’d stopped believing that she and Wayne Wheeler were going to find their way back to the love they’d lost. She couldn’t remember the first time he used words to hurt her, the first time he left her alone for weeks on end while he and his brothers got wasted at their hunting camp, or the first time he gripped her wrist so tightly there were bruises on her skin the next morning.

  She couldn’t remember the moment that grief had transformed into resentment or resentment to terror, but she remembered the exact minute of her heart’s surrender.

  It was six minutes after ten on a Sunday morning, not long after her ninth wedding anniversary. She was staring at the clock above the stove and Wayne’s hand was fisted in her hair, pinning her face to their oak dining table. She remembered the crumbs from the English muffin she’d had for breakfast rough under her cheek, the sour smell of Wayne’s beer-scented sweat filling her nose, and his breath hot in her ear as he promised to kill her if she tried to leave him again.

  “You’re my wife,” he growled, pushing her face into the table until waves of pain shot through her cheekbone. “You made a promise and you’ll keep it. Or I’ll put you in the ground. Do you understand me, Layla? Am I penetrating that thick skull of yours? I will end you before I let you go.”

  “Yes,” she whispered, gaze fixed on the clock as the six flickered to a seven and she surrendered all hope for the marriage she’d fought for and the man she’d once loved.

  Twenty minutes later, Wayne was finished screaming and hurting and had entered the tearful phase that often followed in the wake of his rage. He knelt at her feet, his cheek pressed against her stomach, crying as he begged for forgiveness and promised everything was going to be better from here on out.

  She cradled his head and ran soothing fingers through his thick brown hair, but his apologies hadn’t melted her heart the way they once would have. Her heart was lying motionless on the battlefield, waiting for the killing blow. Her heart had surrendered and now there was only her soul shivering in the cold, trapped in the nightmare her life had become, and her mind carefully, deliberately sorting through the available options.

  Layla had always been clever. In high schoo
l, she’d made straight A’s without even trying and had earned her bachelor’s degree in business management online in three years instead of the usual four. She could tally five digit numbers in her head, balance the budget of a multi-million dollar company in a few days, and had a better than average grasp of statistical probability.

  Now that her heart had fallen silent, no longer protesting that things would get better the way they usually did after a rough patch, her mind was free to analyze the data and come to logical conclusions.

  As she comforted her husband, her mind catalogued every bruise, every hard word, and everything he’d done to isolate her on his family’s massive ranch, keeping her far from anyone who would notice the haunted look in her eyes or the marks he left on her skin. She remembered the night three months ago when he’d found her secret money stash taped beneath the bureau and beaten her until she could barely walk the next day. She recalled the look in his eyes when he’d arrived home early this morning from a long weekend with his brothers and found her in the kitchen with her suitcase by her feet.

  She’d been afraid of Wayne for at least a year, but it wasn’t until she was bent over the kitchen table with his fist in her hair, that she realized how much more afraid she should have been.

  His tearful apologies now filled the kitchen, but none of his repentant words sounded as true as his threats. He could swear until he was blue in the face that he would never end her life, but Layla’s mind knew better, and her gut insisted there was only one way she was getting free of Wayne Wheeler.

  That night, she slept in the circle of his arms.

  The next morning she got up early and took the first baby step toward escape.

  If she’d known when she started that it would take a year of baby steps to gain her freedom—or that her family’s ranch would soon pass to her older brother, Grayson, who would offer her the sanctuary her father had refused her—she might have made a different choice.

  Or not.

  The morning Layla finally left the home she’d shared with Wayne for the last time, all she knew for certain was that there was no going back. The past was etched in stone and there was no rewriting it. The best she could hope for was to find peace with her brother, who had promised to keep her safe.

  A part of her knew it wasn’t wise to stay in Lonesome Point—even with Grayson to watch over her—but she didn’t know where else to go. She had no money, no job, very few friends and even fewer prospects. After years of managing her in-law’s lucrative meat-packaging plant in Houston, Wayne’s parents refused to give her a reference, the same way they’d refused to acknowledge that their youngest son had become a monster.

  In Pat and Deborah’s mind, Wayne was still their golden child, the hero of the football team, the star of the debate team, and the president of every club at Lonesome Point High. He was still the boy who could make everyone laugh and end an argument with a wink and a smile, the boy who had made Layla believe in happy endings after a childhood shadowed by the loss of her mother and the neglect of her emotionally distant father.

  But Wayne hadn’t been that person for a long time and Layla no longer cared about being happy. Happiness was a luxury reserved for people who had made better choices than she had made. She just wanted to feel safe, to be able to drop her guard and stop living in fear.

  As the days after her escape stretched on without a word from her husband—not so much as a phone call, let alone the ugly confrontation she’d feared—she began to hope the peace she craved would be hers.

  By the time her brother and his new wife left to go look at property in Montana in March, ten weeks after Layla had left Wayne, she was feeling confident enough to stay at their childhood home alone. There were locks on the gate leading to the property, heavy locks on the doors, and she slept with a shotgun she knew how to handle by her bedside.

  But she didn’t really think she would need to use it.

  Enough time had passed that she was forgetting how to be properly afraid. She was learning to smile again, to laugh with her sister-in-law, to treasure long talks by the fireplace with her brother and to wonder what good things the future might hold. She was working as a waitress while she applied for management jobs, writing in her long-neglected journal, and making new friends.

  She was learning to live again, and had even heard regret murmuring in her subconscious, once or twice, late at night before she went to sleep.

  Maybe you were wrong, it whispered. Maybe there was another way out and you did this dangerous, crazy thing for nothing.

  At one point, she even picked up the phone, only to end the call before she pressed the last number and hang up with shaking hands.

  She couldn’t tell the truth. Never, no matter how loud the guilty voices in her head learned to shout. She had already served her time. It didn’t matter if her crime had come at the end of her sentence or the beginning; she had paid for it and then some.

  Besides, Wayne would be all right. The situation would resolve itself when the next property inspection was conducted in May and he would be back to his old self in no time.

  She knew that—had even thought it as she was getting dressed the night Wayne proved she’d been a fool to drop her guard—but she still wasn’t prepared. She should have realized that it was only her heart that had surrendered.

  Wayne’s heart would never give her up.

  Not until the moment one of their hearts stopped beating.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Cole

  In the two months since he’d been held captive by a crazy man—staring Death in the face until Death blinked first—Cole Lawson had realized that an uncomfortable number of things in life are left up to chance.

  If he’d gone to visit his friend Reece two days earlier, he wouldn’t have been tied up and beaten by Neil Parker, the man who had taught him everything he knew about horses. If his mother hadn’t taught pottery classes at an artist’s retreat down the road from the Parker ranch when Cole was a kid, he would have taken riding lessons closer to home. And if he had taken riding lessons closer to home, he wouldn’t have ended up working part time for Neil after school or falling head over heels in love with his daughter.

  Cole had known Layla Parker since they were in kindergarten, but until ninth grade, he’d only known her smarty-pants, know-it-all side. The side that enjoyed tilting her test paper his way so he could see that she’d beaten his A with an A plus.

  But as they worked together in the barn after school, he got to know her thoughtful side, her gentle side, and the side that laughed until she got the hiccups at his silly jokes. He’d learned that they shared a mutual obsession with good books and comfortable silences, had memorized the meanings of all her different smiles, and had developed a profound appreciation for the intoxicating way she smelled after they went for a ride.

  Once, he’d even held her while she cried, not knowing what it was that had made her so sad, only that his heart had felt like it was going to burst when she whispered “thank you” and kissed his cheek before heading back into the house.

  He’d wanted to ask her out right then, but he’d forced himself to wait. He wasn’t one hundred percent sure she returned his feelings, and he hadn’t wanted to upset her any more than she was already. He’d figured he would give it a week, and if she was still sneaking looks his way while they mucked out a stall, he’d go for it.

  That Saturday, Layla had gone on her first date with Wayne Wheeler. Monday afternoon, she had come back to work giddy over her first crush and never glanced Cole’s way with that curious light in her eyes again.

  Cole had missed his window, had botched his chance, and that was that.

  Layla and Wayne had become the school’s golden couple, had been voted prom queen and king, and had gotten married a few days after graduation. Cole had gone on to date half the female population of Lonesome Point, believing the best way to get over the one who’d gotten away was to have a damned good time with the ones who let themselves be caught.
r />   But secretly, he wondered what would have happened if he’d asked Layla out before Wayne and had been given a chance with the first girl who had captured his heart.

  Would it have been as good as his sixteen-year-old self imagined it would be?

  Or would they have eventually found things to dislike about each other and gone their separate ways?

  There was no way to know for sure, and Cole had eventually come to peace with his unrequited love for Layla Parker Wheeler. The fact that she rarely came to town—clearly preferring to spend her days on her husband’s family’s ranch outside of town—helped. He didn’t have to see her and Wayne out to dinner, catch sight of Layla pushing a baby carriage through downtown, or otherwise be confronted with evidence that the girl he’d crushed on for years was having a perfectly fulfilling life without him.

  In fact, he hadn’t seen Layla in so long, that when he caught his first glimpse of her at her brother Grayson’s wedding, he wasn’t sure it was her.

  She looked so different—pale and thin, with thick silver streaks through her nearly black hair and a careful way of holding herself that was so different than the confident Layla he’d known. Still, he’d started across the crowded bar toward her, intending to offer his congratulations on her brother’s marriage or his apologies if she wasn’t who he thought she was.

  But by the time he’d reached the far wall, Layla had vanished.

  He hadn’t seen her around town again, but he’d started paying closer attention to his mother’s gossip around the table during his lunch break, close enough to learn that Layla had moved in with her brother and rumor had it that she’d filed for divorce.

  Cole had been raised well and knew it was shitty to be happy that someone’s marriage had failed. It was even shittier to decide he was asking Layla out the next time they crossed paths.