Stryker's Wife
3/5
()
About this ebook
MAN OF THE MONTH
TALL, DARK AND HANDSOME
MR. NOVEMBER
Reluctant Bachelor: Kurt Stryker didn't want to marry, but he sure needed a wife!
Unsuspecting Bride: Sweet, sexy Debranne Kiley.
The proposal: Gulp!
Rugged Kurt Stryker wasn't a man of many words, but he did have one heck of a hot desire for Debranne Kiley. So when he needed a wife to keep custody of the boy in his care, he started practicing his "I do." Problem was, whenever he had Debranne in his arms, he couldn't get the proposal past his lips! Now this sweet, loving woman had him longing to say three little words he'd never planned on uttering again .
MAN OF THE MONTH: He has to pop the question one of these days
Read more from Dixie Browning
A Bride For Jackson Powers Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5More To Love Rating: 2 out of 5 stars2/5Her Fifth Husband? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Bride-In-Law Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Passionate G-Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHer Passionate Plan B Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSocial Graces Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Quiet Seduction Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHer Man Upstairs Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Related to Stryker's Wife
Titles in the series (36)
Megan's Marriage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Beauty, The Beast And The Baby Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Texas Blue Norther Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSaddle Up Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSecret Agent Man Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Accidental Bodyguard Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Stryker's Wife Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Coffeepot Inn Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Baby In His In-Box Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tight-Fittin' Jeans Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsA Knight In Rusty Armor Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A Memorable Man Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWho's The Boss? Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Brennan Baby Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNobody's Princess Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Whispers In The Dark Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThat Boss Of Mine Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Heart Of Texas Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Look What The Stork Brought Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSlow Talkin' Texan Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTough To Tame Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLean, Mean & Lonesome Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsTall, Dark & Western Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHer Perfect Man Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way To A Rancher's Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHard To Forget Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Cowboy Fantasy Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Taming Of Jackson Cade Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBillionaire Bachelors: Stone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsRocky And The Senator's Daughter Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5
Related ebooks
Beckett's Cinderella Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Rocky And The Senator's Daughter Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Tall, Dark & Western Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Beauty, The Beast And The Baby Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBillionaire Bachelors: Stone Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHard To Forget Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5The Accidental Bodyguard Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Husband--Or Enemy? Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5With Open Arms Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Soldier's Untamed Heart Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsMegan's Marriage Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Instant Dad Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Groom Of Fortune Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Bride Hunter Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Single Dad's New-Year Bride Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Temptation Of Rory Monahan Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The British Billionaire Affair Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Colorado Countess Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFor Services Rendered Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe M.D. Next Door Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Under The Boss's Mistletoe Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHigh-Altitude Doctor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFalling For The Rebel Falcon Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Contemporary Romance For You
Heart Bones: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ugly Love: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Icebreaker: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Ends with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Before We Were Strangers: A Love Story Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5November 9: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beautiful Disaster: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Animal Farm Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5You Made a Fool of Death with Your Beauty: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Finding Cinderella: A Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Hopeless Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The True Love Experiment Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5It Starts with Us: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wallbanger Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ruin Me Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Confess: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5All Your Perfects: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe Someday Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Wildfire: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Losing Hope: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Without Merit: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Intense - Erotic Short Story Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Slammed: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe Not: A Novella Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Spanish Love Deception: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Something Borrowed: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Swear on This Life: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Maybe Now: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Point of Retreat: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5This Girl: A Novel Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Reviews for Stryker's Wife
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Stryker's Wife - Dixie Browning
One
Inhaling the familiar aroma of salt, diesel fuel and fish, Kurt Stryker tilted the fighting chair, propped his feet on the transom of his charter boat, the R&R, and sipped his first beer of the day. Life, on the whole, was good, he decided. Idly, he watched through a forest of masts and outriggers as the sun slipped slowly beneath the surface of the Atlantic.
How many o’ them things have you had?
his young mate demanded from the pier, having just arrived with their evening meal. There’s coffee in the pot if you want sump’n to drink.
One. This is it.
Kurt held up the brown bottle.
A skeptical look on his freckled face, Frog boarded the boat carrying a paper sack of burgers and fries and a king-size cola. Kurt silently cursed the drunken bastard who had spawned the kid and dragged him all over the country, leaving him with more than his share of scars. Kurt knew about scars. He had already dealt with his own, but then, his were mostly the visible kind. Frog’s were the kind that had to be found before they could be healed.
Did you pick up the mail?
he asked.
Yeah.
Well?
The boy shrugged his bony shoulders. Usual stuff.
Which meant bills. At fourteen, Frog Smith could barely read. Kurt had enrolled him in the local school, much to the boy’s disgust. In their spare time, between charters and maintenance work, he tutored him in reading, math, navigation and survival skills.
Frog had already mastered a few survival skills that Kurt, after years of flying search-and-rescue missions for the U.S. Coast Guard, had never even considered. Their relationship had progressed over the past two years from combativeness through wariness to a mutual respect. And perhaps something more, at least on Kurt’s part.
Frog handed over a few rumpled envelopes, and Kurt quickly scanned the return addresses. Jones’s Hardware. That’ll be the paint.
The R&R was one of the few remaining wooden charter boats along this section of the North Carolina coast. He’d bought her for a song and spent a fortune bringing her up to standard. In a year or so, he might spend another fortune on a first-class fiberglass job.
Then again, he might not. Wood was good. Classic, you might say.
He examined another envelope but didn’t bother to open it. Pierce’s Electronic Repair. This one’s going to bust the bank,
he muttered. It took more than a compass, a flare and a few life jackets to operate legally these days.
We broke?
There was anxiety in the boy’s voice.
Nah, we’re not broke, but we’re going to have to hustle if we plan to buy that house out on Oyster Point.
Hey, who needs a house? We got us a place to live.
"We need a house, that’s who. Anywhere else, we wouldn’t get away with living aboard the R&R. There’s rules—"
Ah—rules is for fools,
Frog said dismissively.
Shaking his head, Kurt quickly scanned the rest of the mail. No cancellations. Thank the Lord for small favors. The season was winding down. Barring storms, he still had five more charters on the book, but he was determined to make it through an entire season in the black before dipping into his retirement fund for a house that was in even worse shape than the boat had been when he’d bought it.
Actually, his first season as captain of his own boat had been pretty successful so far. He liked to think it was because he was damned good at what he did, but it probably had more to do with the fact that his rates were the cheapest along this section of the coast. The R&R was hardly a luxury yacht. Bottom-of-the-line carpet to cover the hatches. Ditto the plumbing fixtures. But she had a pair of dependable Detroit diesels and a hull that had been designed specifically for the waters around the Outer Banks.
"Three burgers? Who’s the third one for?" Kurt asked as Frog ripped into the sack.
Hey, I’m a growing kid, awright?
I told you you need milk with your meals, not all those colas.
"I ain’t growing all that much." The towheaded teenager bit off a third of his first cheeseburger.
Done your homework yet?
Kurt asked after awhile.
Aww, man—you’re worse’n Pa ever was.
Kurt doubted that. From what he’d been able to put together from the locals and a few of Frog’s remarks, the boy’s parents had migrated from somewhere out west doing odd jobs and knocking over the occasional convenience store. The mother had dropped out of sight several years ago. Nobody knew where she was. Frog and his old man had wound up at Swan Inlet, where that gentleman had found temporary work driving a fish truck. When he’d been sober enough. He’d been headed north with a load of gray trout when he’d tried to beat a fast freight train to a crossing. It was discovered during the cleanup of the ensuing wreckage that fish wasn’t all he’d been transporting.
Frog had already gone to earth by the time the first social worker had come sniffing around. It had been generally assumed that he’d moved on, and that was the end of that. Three weeks later, when he was caught shoplifting food at a neighborhood supermarket, one of the locals had offered him a room and a job. The boy had declined. Claimed he was seventeen, used to being on his own.
He was fourteen. His voice was still in the process of changing. He’d been bunking aboard a dry-docked commercial fishing boat and doing odd jobs around the marina when Kurt had bought the boat right out from under him, so to speak, and had more or less inherited the kid. They were a team now. A pretty good one, although Frog didn’t always agree with that assessment.
Homework,
Kurt reminded him now.
Hell, man, you told me yourself you never got no degree. What’s the big deal?
"Didn’t get a degree, not never got no. Don’t swear, and we’re talking high school diploma now. A diploma is a big deal. We’ll talk about your degree later."
If I’m still around,
Frog muttered.
You’ll be around.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah. Who else is going to keep me on course? One beer, no smokes and no fast women?
Kurt grinned. Slipping off his eye patch, he scratched his head where the tapes tied in back. A man’s gotta have someone he can count on when the chips are down.
Frog nodded sagely. A guy to watch his back and see don’t nobody break no bottle over his head.
Kurt didn’t bother to correct his grammar. Rome wasn’t built in a day. Right now he was more concerned with teaching the boy trust, responsibility and the advantages of a basic education. You got it, kid.
He held up a palm. Frog high-fived him just as a woman emerged from the fifty-five-footer on the other side of the finger pier and sent him a speculative look.
Captain Stryker, isn’t it? You took out that fishing party from Kinston? I heard you guys when you went out this morning. I was still in bed.
Sorry if we disturbed your sleep, ma’am.
Ma’am. That’s cute. And Captain—you can disturb my sleep any old time.
She smiled. She had a pretty smile. At least most people would call it pretty. For some reason, it made Kurt nervous.
Shark off the port beam,
Frog mumbled under his breath. He was grinning from ear to ear. One of his chief sources of amusement since they had teamed up had been watching women’s reactions to Kurt and Kurt’s reaction to women.
Ever do any moonlight cruises?
the woman inquired, her voice laced with all sorts of possibilities.
Frog covered a snort of laughter with a grimy hand. Ignoring him, Kurt concentrated on not staring at the woman’s sagging halter. What was inside it wasn’t sagging. Not at all.
Er, ah…
He cleared his throat.
I’ve heard it can be awfully nice offshore on a calm night.
Long’s you wear plenny o’ clothes. Them vampire skeeters’ll be all over you the minute the wind drops off,
Frog put in with a knowing snicker.
Stow it,
Kurt growled quietly. He had no intention of taking the woman up on whatever it was she was hinting at. Nevertheless, it was the captain’s decision to make, not his mate’s.
And the captain was single, dammit. He was male. He might be an aging, one-eyed gimp with a lousy track record where women were concerned, but that didn’t mean he was out of the race. Not by a long shot. If he wanted a woman, he would damn well have one. And regardless of what he’d said earlier, he didn’t need any smart-mouth kid to run interference for him.
She kept looking at him. Kurt was used to having women look at him. His nickname in college had been Handsome. Which had embarrassed the hell out of him, even more than the stuttering that had made his life miserable all through grade school.
Which was one of the reasons he was still somewhat socially retarded. His two best friends back in high school, Gus and Alex, had teased him about being shy. Their girlfriends had thought he was cute.
Cute! Judas priest. That was even worse than being shy!
He’d been a damn good football player in his high school and college days, though, which had probably accounted for his popularity with women. There was sure as hell nothing out of the ordinary about dark blond hair, gray eyes and his father’s square jaw and blunt nose.
After he’d dropped out of college and joined the Coast Guard, the uniform had only seemed to add to the attraction. Unfortunately, it had been too late to do him much good. The woman he’d been in love with at the time had preferred Alex’s money to Kurt’s good looks or Gus’s rough charm.
Dina. All three of them had been in love with her. She’d chosen Alex, and eventually, Kurt and Gus had gotten over her.
At least, Kurt had. Since then he’d gotten over a number of lesser attractions before getting involved seriously again. Then, ironically, it had been his lack of looks that had done him in. He’d still been pretty much of a physical wreck when Evelyn had left him leaning on his crutch at the altar.
Idly, he wondered what Dina and Evelyn would have made of a dinky little no-stoplight fishing village like Swan Inlet.
What would they have made of Frog? A homely kid who was all long, skinny limbs, big feet and tough talk.
He couldn’t picture either one of them being content to live aboard a reconstituted commercial fishing boat with no Jacuzzi, no maid service—not even a CD player. The whole idea struck him as amusing and just a bit sad.
So, okay. Maybe he would go ahead and start the process of buying that house. He had a family now—or as much of a family as he was ever apt to have. After nearly twenty years of pulling up stakes every three years, moving from base to base—from Carolina to California, from Hawaii to Alaska to the U.S. Virgin Islands—he was more than ready to settle down.
Captain Stryker? I’m pretty much at loose ends almost every evening,
the woman in the loose halter said, her voice a husky invitation.
Kurt shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Yes, ma’am. The thing is, I’m…uh, booked up pretty solid.
Frog smirked.
The woman sniffed.
Kurt pretended an intense interest in the rumpled statement from Pierce’s Electronic Service.
Overhead, a gull flapped past with a finger mullet in his bill. Something hit the water not two feet abaft the port beam. It wasn’t the finger mullet.
Splotch alert,
Frog quipped.
Kurt decided the boy’s vocabulary had improved, even if his grammar hadn’t. Thanks, mate. We’re covered, but maybe you’d better pass the word.
Kurt glanced up at the overhang from the flying bridge that covered a portion of the cockpit. They grinned at each other. Frog nodded toward the woman in the white shorts and halter, who was stroking her legs with after-sun lotion, her gaze straying frequently toward Kurt.
Bet that stuff she’s rubbin’ on ‘er ain’t gullproof.
When Kurt didn’t reply, Frog noisily finished his drink and dumped the ice overboard. Know why she keeps looking at you?
No, but I expect you’re going to tell me.
It’s that eye patch. Makes you look like a pirate. Women like pirates.
Oh, yeah? How would you know what women like?
They’d talked about women before. Mostly warnings on Kurt’s part and bragging on Frog’s.
The boy shrugged. I notice stuff like that. What about tomorrow, you gonna let me go out?
That’s a negative.
They had talked about this subject, too. No weekday charters during school months. It was still a sore spot between them, because in season, Frog’s tips could run anywhere from twenty-five to a hundred dollars a trip, depending on the length of the charter, the number of fish caught and the size and generosity of the party. Kurt had insisted on starting a savings account for him, much to the boy’s disgust.
How you gonna run the boat and wait on fishermen? You need me, man.
What I need is a partner who can read a chart, lay out a course and follow it. What I need—
Awright, awright! So maybe I’ll just shove off and try my luck somewheres else where I don’t have to learn all that crap.
It wasn’t the first time he’d threatened to leave. Kurt could only hope he didn’t mean it. He had no hold on the boy. No legal hold. Anyhow,
Kurt said, this Kiley fellow’s not a fisherman, he’s a photographer. No hooks to be baited.
So who’s gonna put film in his camera and hand over his fancy bottled water when he wants a swig?
Nice try, kid.
Kurt chuckled. Another crisis avoided. "Now go below and get started on your