My Heart's Protector Read online

  Table of Contents

  My Heart's Protector (Evans Sisters Series, #1)

  Chapter 1 - Eloise

  Chapter 2 - Troy

  Chapter 3 - Chloe

  Chapter - 4 Troy

  Chapter 5 - Eloise

  Chapter 6 - Troy

  Chapter 7 - Eloise

  Chapter 8 - Troy

  Chapter 9 - Eloise

  Chapter 10 - Troy

  Chapter 11 - Eloise

  Chapter 12 - Troy

  Chapter 13 - Eloise

  Chapter 14 - Troy

  Epilogue - One Year Later - Eloise

  Copyright © 2020 by Tell Me More Publishing LLC

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Tell Me More Publishing LLC

  P.O. Box 764

  Bellefonte PA, 16823

  Note from the Author

  DEAR READER,

  Thank you for joining me for this sweet and steamy romantic Evans Sisters adventure in My Heart’s Protector! This series is a delightful spin off from my previous Billionaire Brocker Brothers Series. We met the Evans Sisters in the book Accidentally Yours, the story of how the oldest Brocker Brother, Owen, accidentally fell head over heels in love with Samantha, the oldest Evans Sister. Owen and Samantha’s love story introduced us to Eloise, Rose, and Abby. And now, here we are with an Evans Sisters Series!

  These sisters are smart, witty, funny, determined, and so supportive of one another. I couldn’t let these young women go without seeing how things turned out for them in the love department. Plus, Frost Forest took a hold of my imagination and heart with its emerald green fields, tall trees, and rugged beauty.

  Frost Forest is a stunning stretch of wilderness between the well-to-do town of Clear Creek where the Brocker Brothers are from and the college town of Bloombury. Although Frost Forest is a fictional place, when I think about it, I envision the mountain town where my parents owned a small cabin in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Each time I write about Preacher Road, I picture the pine lined forest road that connected our family’s cabin to the state forest where my mother would take us swimming on hot days.

  I hope that you enjoy spending the summer in Frost Forest with me and fall in love with each sister’s love story. Don’t miss my upcoming Evans Sisters Series novel, My Heart’s Guardian, where Rose is swept off her feet by Clear Creek’s favorite soldier, Colton Stone after she gets her heart broken by her not-so-great longtime boyfriend, Boyd Vasny. Cole, is home for the fourth of July after being honorably discharged from the ARMY . . . and lesser known, home to lick his wounds from a failed engagement.

  Cole gets roped into helping his little sister’s best friend, Rose Evans. He thinks it will be the perfect cover to keep the single ladies of Clear Creek at bay while he’s home only to find that he enjoys fake holding hands, fake dating, fake . . . kissing Rose so much that maybe the only person who is fooled by their fake relationship is him and Rose! Don’t miss Rose and Cole’s sweet and steamy love story in my next book My Heart’s Guardian by following me on Facebook or emailing me to join my newsletter! If you’re curious about the Brocker Brothers check out their book blurbs at the end of the book!

  Happy reading and enjoy Eloise and her handsome, protective state trooper, Troy Witmer in My Heart’s Protector.

  Love always,

  Jenn Sable – Author

  [email protected]

  https://www.facebook.com/jennsableauthor

  Chapter 1 - Eloise

  The text message notification at the top of my cell read:

  State Trooper: Permission to do what exactly?

  Did Troy Witmer mistakenly text me?

  Puzzled and curious, I pulled my phone off its charger, sat up in bed, tucked a few dark chestnut curls behind an ear, and clicked on the message.

  Troy Witmer was perfect, almost too perfect. He was a longtime family friend, a well-known and highly-respected state trooper, a total do-gooder who always helped people, and put his sense of duty before everything else. Everything, including having fun. Troy was by the book and devoted to protecting the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

  He was also tall, clean-shaven, square-jawed, with a thick head of dark-blond hair that he wore shaved on the sides and longer on the top. He was “a real looker,” as Ms. Biddle, our local piano teacher, put it. Eyes glanced in Troy's direction when he walked by in his trooper uniform and heads turned when he strolled by in a pair of jeans and a tight T-shirt on the rare chance you saw him on a day off.

  The clouds must’ve parted, and the angels must’ve sung the day Troy Witmer was born. He looked as good from the back as he did from the front with his thickly muscled thighs and tight ass. He had a broad chest tapered that into the perfect V to his narrow hips. He looked positively rideable and could make a woman need to fan herself when she was on the receiving end of his slow half-smile.

  Troy was also my secret crush, which was why my stomach dropped when I saw that I'd sent him, not one, but two texts last night. AT&T delivered both messages at the completely reasonable time of 3:03 AM.

  The first text was a picture of my silky lavender panty-covered crotch.

  Jesus Christ.

  The second text read:

  Me: You have my permission.

  What? No! Why, God, why?

  Followed by his response at 3:15 AM:

  State Trooper: Permission to do what exactly?

  This was a nightmare!

  I’d sent that text message to my big sister, Sammie, or at least, I’d thought I’d sent that text message to my big sister! How could I have confused Samantha with State Trooper in my contacts? He'll never believe this was a mistake.

  Sammie had been hounding me to go to a dermatologist for months to get a birthmark on my upper, inner, right thigh checked because she was a natural worrier. Naturally, I had forgotten.

  The last several months had blurred into one day of work, and I’d barely had time for sleep, let alone to make a doctor’s appointment for something I wasn’t actually concerned about. My business partner and I had been working around the clock on our new tea company to get a new blend into production and out to market. In a moment of sheer overconfidence, I also decided to take on converting our family inn's first floor into a teahouse.

  My big sister, exasperated with me and my lack of appointment making skills, in no uncertain terms, told me to take a photo of my birthmark and send it to her. A doctor friend of hers—a dermatologist from Clear Creek, the next town over—had agreed to look at a photo of it, as long as she had proof of my permission. She'd do a cursory glance to see if I might need to move forward with an in-person appointment. Sammie didn’t trust me enough to forward it to the dermatologist on my own.

  And, like the good little sister I am, I proved her right. Again. I completely forgot to send her a picture. Until last night at 3:03 AM, apparently!

  Typically, I would’ve laughed off a situation like this, but not with Troy Witmer. I’ve had a crush on him since I was fifteen. Considering I’d just turned twenty-three, that meant Troy was the longest-lasting secret crush of my life, and it had to stay that way. Forever.

  We were total opposites. Troy was several years older than me—nine years older, to be exact—and a serious-minded state trooper, whereas I was a young, free-spirited entrepreneur. He was tradi
tional, and I was progressive. His reputation in the community sparkled with approval from the masses, and people looked at me like a weird, wildflower with middle-child syndrome in a family of prim, proper, and poised roses. In all honesty, my sisters were just better actresses in public than I was, but they were equally weird. Probably weirder.

  Then there’s the real reason Troy could never find out. I was pretty sure he'd been in love with my big sister, Samantha, for as long as I had been in love with him. Nothing had ever happened between Troy and Sammie, but still. There was no way I’d ever go after a man who preferred my big sister. Ever. I didn’t even like sharing clothes with my sisters, so, obviously, sharing a man was out of the question. I chalked it up to middle-child syndrome and was content and committed to secretly pining after Troy for the rest of my life.

  This texting snafu looked bad. The interpretation could be that I was hot for the trooper and skipped ahead of heavy eye contact and nervous stammering and jumped straight into sexting. I guess I was known for being bold. But this text thread threatened my plan of never letting Troy know how I felt about him, and anything that hinted at my attraction to him needed squelching. Immediately.

  My fingers danced frantically over the cell screen. I needed to clear things up immediately, or as best as I could. That text was not meant for you. Okay? Send!

  Me: That text was meant only for you. Okay?

  I blinked hard and reread the text that I’d just sent.

  What the actual fuck? This isn’t happening. This isn’t real, right? What kind of autocorrect turns “not” into “only?”

  As quickly as possible, I very carefully typed out my next message and hit send.

  Me: NOT meant for you. NOT.

  An error sign popped up on my phone. Message not sent. Tap to try to resend.

  Tap. Tap. Tap!

  Message not sent. Recipient not available.

  Recipient not available? Did he just block me?

  A high-pitched ringing started in my ears, and my vision blurred, blessedly, so that I could no longer read the screen. My secret, with a capital S, crush thinks I am aggressively sexting him.

  Thinking I was going to vomit, I stood up and tried to rush toward my bathroom, but my lightheadedness had other plans. I crashed onto the floor like a sack of potatoes dropped from a second-story window.

  Ouch.

  The bedroom flew open, and my little sister, Rose, rushed inside. “El, what the hell was―El! Are you all right?” she cried.

  I tried to moan a response, but it was too late. Rose ran to the window facing the garden, wrenched it open, and screamed at the top of her lungs to her twin, “Abby, help! El’s dead!”

  Oh, for the love of God, this is the problem with little sisters. Sisters are dramatic, loud, and won’t even allow you to die from embarrassment caused by accidental sexting in peace.

  “Call the police!” yelled Rose.

  I leaped from the floor, pushed a very shocked Rose out of the way, heaved my head out the window, and cried, “Don’t you dare call the police!” I sucked fresh air into my lungs to restore all of my senses. Abby stood in the garden below and shook her head judgmentally.

  Rose stood behind me with her arms crossed and nostrils flared. “What the hell is wrong with you, El? That wasn’t funny. I’m telling Sammie the second I see her at brunch.”

  I pressed the back of my hand to my forehead. “Rose! What the hell is wrong with me? What the hell was that ‘El’s dead’ crap all about? You didn’t even check for my pulse or think of asking for an ambulance! You just ran to the window and dove head long into solving a murder mystery.”

  Rose’s brows shot up, and her green-gold hazel eyes bugged out. “You screamed for help, and I panicked. You know how we Evans sisters panic and then do or say something not quite as helpful as we’d hoped it would be.”

  “I am aware of this family curse you speak of,” I said, and gave her a deadpan look.

  “I was trying to help,” Rose said, huffily.

  I rolled my eyes. “I didn’t scream for help. Wait, did I?” I asked, now confused. The moments between the texts and the floor had been blurry, and I didn’t recall what had come out of my mouth, if anything.

  “Yes. Well, not exactly,” she said.

  “Huh?”

  “You didn’t get the word all the way out, or you forgot how to say it. It sounded like you were in the midst of a neurological event or a possible bludgeoning. You cried ‘Hap! Hap! Hap’ or maybe it was ‘Tap.’ but why would you yell that?”

  My stomach clenched.

  Rose continued, “Anyway, then you crashed to the floor with the force of an elephant, really it shook the whole house, andー”

  “Unnecessary detail!” I cried.

  “I wisely interpreted your scream as you needing h-e-l-p. You’re welcome by the way,” said Rose, indignantly flipping her long, auburn locks behind one slender shoulder.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and prayed for patience. “Thank you, Rose. You’ve been most unhelpful; you may leave now.”

  She widened her stance. “Tell me what happened.”

  “Yeah, what’s going on? What happened?” asked Abby. The almost identical version of Rose walked into the room, peeling off her garden gloves and trailing garden dirt on the floor. Abby was a smaller than Rose, shorter in stature, shorter hair, just all around one size down.

  And then there were two. Splendid.

  “I had a nightmare. I woke up and rushed from the bed, my blood pressure must’ve crashed and I hit the floor. End of story. So, thank you for . . . err . . . rescuing me,” I said, trying to summon whatever words would make these two hellhounds leave me alone to die of my embarrassment.

  The twins looked at one another and connected in their weird twin way, where they communicated through barely perceptible facial gestures. Their strange face conversation concluded with a grand finale of Abby raising a brow and Rose flattening her pouty lips into a firm line. And that somehow determined that Abby would be the spokesperson.

  Abby turned to me. “We don’t believe you, but we promised Sammie that we’d have brunch with her and Owen at the lodge to go over travel plans before we head out of town this afternoon. Which reminds me, do you promise to look after my berry patch? The strawberries and the raspberries? I need you to water them and keep them behind fencing, so those rascal groundhogs don’t eat them. Also, if they start growing, pick and freeze the strawberries and raspberries at their peak> That way I can use them for recipes when we get back from Elys Island.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, sure, it’s no problem. It’s just for one or two weeks, right? I doubt any berries before will be ripe before you get back.”

  Abby grimaced slightly, “I forgot to tell you that we extended our stay since Sammie and Owen are now closing on a property near Mason and Trish’s beach house. So . . .”

  I leaned forward. “So . . .” I made a circular motion in the air with my hand.

  Abby bit the corner of her lip. “Now, we're kind of making a thing out of it.”

  It still shocked me that our big sister, Samantha—matriarch to our small family of orphaned girls—was wealthy beyond comparison. Especially since she got that way by writing a scathing article in our local paper, maligning Clear Creek’s favorite son billionaire CEO, Owen Brocker, and then ended up married to the man. Love truly does make the impossible, possible.

  Now, whenever Owen wasn’t busy being the CEO of Brocker Industries, and my sister Sammie, wasn’t overseeing Brocker Lodge which sat next door to our family’s inn, they liked to travel and often took relatives with them—like my spoiled, little, twin sisters. Don’t get me wrong. I was actually looking forward to a little alone time at the inn before the rush of summer guests arrived; I just hadn’t counted on it being this much alone time.

  “How long are you planning to stay on Elys Island?” I asked and slid a hand to my hip.

  Abby’s gaze didn’t reach mine, and Rose studied her nails. “We’re s
taying until the summer celebration is over,” murmured Abby.

  “The summer celebration! What? No! That’s not until the twentieth of June, and it’s only the beginning of May! You two promised to help me run the teahouse this summer!”

  “Exactly,” said Rose. “We’ll be back once summer officially begins. It's going to be an epic summer trip! Sammie even said that Boyd could come to visit for part of it!” Rose fisted her hands and shook them in a celebration that her longtime, loser boyfriend had also received an invitation.

  I inhaled deeply and slowly while I reminded myself that I was the one who’d insisted on running the inn by myself and starting another business simultaneously, all the while denying any help from anyone. Well, except from my unhelpful little sisters. “I’ll water some berries, but I’m not taking care of your horses, Rose,” I said, worried that my family had taken total leave of their senses and forgotten that I would be by myself for the next seven weeks during a critical phase of my new business.

  My partner, Winifred Langley, planned to do her fair share of the heavy lifting. She was a phenomenal force in the commercial bagged and loose-leafed tea world. Winnie was as much my mentor as she was my partner, but she was also sixty-seven years old and lived in Paris. Most of the time-consuming, but endless little tasks involved in producing a tea blend for market were up to me. Then there was my grand idea to turn the first floor of the inn into a teahouse and keep only four rooms on the second floor available for guests.

  Although Sammie would’ve gladly turned over our family inn’s management to a friend of Owen’s, I talked her and Owen into allowing me to try to run our little inn. At first, they worried that at twenty-three, I was taking on too much responsibility. In the end, they’d agreed I could run the inn, as long as I could make enough profit to cover the monthly costs and house maintenance. I was determined to prove that I was reliable and capable enough to run the inn. But I had my limits. I couldn’t run the inn, market a tea blend, defend Abby's berry patch from hungry groundhogs, and care for Rose's two horses!

  Rose’s horrified look mirrored my own, and I laughed.