The Broken Protector

The Broken Protector A Small Town Enemies to Lovers Romance Nicole Snow Ice Lips Press Content copyright © Nicole Snow. All rights reserved. Published in the United States of America. First published in June, 2023. Disclaimer: The following book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance characters in this story may have to real people is only coincidental. Please respect this author’s hard work! No section of this book may be reproduced or copied without permission. Exception for brief quotations used in reviews or promotions. This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. Thanks! Cover Design – CoverLuv. Photo by Wander Aguiar Photography. Proofread by Sisters Get Lit.erary. Contents About the Book 1. Lady In Red (Delilah) 2. Red Eye (Lucas) 3. Red Light (Delilah) 4. Red With Envy (Lucas) 5. Ruby Red (Delilah) 6. Red Herrings (Lucas) 7. Red Handed (Delilah) 8. Red Sky At Morning (Lucas) 9. Red Sky At Night (Delilah) 10. Red Flags (Lucas) 11. Red Hot (Delilah) 12. Seeing Red (Lucas) 13. Red Meat, Dead Meat (Delilah) 14. Redder Herring (Lucas) 15. Red Blooded (Delilah) 16. Red With Rage (Lucas) 17. Red As A Beet (Delilah) 18. Red Haze (Lucas) 19. Cherry Red (Delilah) 20. Red String Of Fate (Lucas) 21. Roses Are Red (Delilah) 22. Blood Is Too (Lucas) 23. Red As Sin (Delilah) 24. Red With Guilt (Lucas) 25. In The Red (Delilah) 26. Tie A Red Ribbon On It (Lucas) 27. Red Letter Day (Delilah) The Romeo Arrangement Preview About Nicole Snow More Books by Nicole About the Book My fresh start turned into a dumpster fire. Awesome new job. Small town heaven. Friendly faces galore. Then I strolled into my new home and found the unspeakable. Just when I'm sure it can't get worse, I'm “rescued” by a man who makes me see red for miles. Enter Lucas Graves. A bossy grump with a badge who's sworn to keep me safe. He rocks the scary-hot vibe, he reads too much, and he never misses a chance to give me crap for being a nerdy little cactus who mouths back. Not the type of man I'd go for in my right mind. Definitely not the type I should keep trading bruising kisses with. Redhaven, North Carolina has driven me insane. Why else does my heart race when Lucas gets jealous and overprotective? How could I think he'll ever share more than another reckless night? He guards his own battered heart as fiercely as he watches over me. It can't get more complicated. Oh, but then it does. There's a razor-thin line between heartbreak and hope with a broken protector. He's so wrong for me I could scream. But I'm not losing sleep over the very real danger I'm in. I'm terrified that Lucas Graves might be the best thing that's ever happened—if he'd let us happen at all. 1 Lady In Red (Delilah) No one ever totally captures the stillness of a desolate highway leading far, far away from the only city you know. Oh, they might try. They’ll tell you about the streaming cars slowing to a trickle, and then to crawling ants scattered few and far between. They’ll tell you about the wide-open sky, the way the yellow dotted line on the road runs together into a single liquid stream. They’ll tell you about the forests, the grass, the countless fences drifting by. And they’ll always mention the silence. Nothing but your tires grinding on tarry asphalt and the occasional bump when you veer too close to the shoulder. What they won’t tell you, though? What it feels like to be alone for the first time in your life. What the stillness is when you can’t hear anyone else. No slamming doors. No whistles from the street below. No phones blaring down the narrow halls of an apartment building full of disjointed lives crammed together, each one insulated in its own little bubble of humming refrigerators and televisions and notifications. There’s just nothing. Nothing but quiet stretching on for so long, so deep, that you start to hear your own pulse. It’s unlike anything I’ve ever known. Somehow, it feels like a shower, rinsing off the dirt of big-city life and making me ready to step into a whole new chapter of me. I’m not sure if that’s what’s waiting in North Carolina. I couldn’t even tell you what really made me take a job in a tiny town I’ve never heard of, close enough to Raleigh to get decent internet but too far to make a day drive to the beach worth the commute. When I responded to the postage-stamp-sized ad in my neighborhood circular for a K-4 teacher, I wasn’t actually expecting to get the job. I have the degrees, but not much experience beyond a few supervised part-time and substitute teaching gigs in inner-city schools. Something like this—a full-time position with room and board covered—would be a pipe dream back in New York. Sure, I worked my ass off. Perfect grades. Awards. Extracurriculars. Internships. So maybe I was the most qualified candidate willing to move to a town that’s barely a dot on the map and probably doesn’t have a single Uber. But maybe, just maybe, no one else could stand the thought of living in this much stillness. Me? I could ride like this forever. Just me and my ratty old Kia Sportage with everything I own piled in the back, cruising into an endless red sunset. It’s barely late afternoon, the light brassy and thick, by the time Google Maps chirps and tells me to take the next exit. There’s not a single building around. No gas stations, no rest stops, just low, sloping hills and walls of pines and poplars turning the off-ramp highways into corridors. Not a single car in front of me or behind me for miles. I might as well be the last woman on Earth. My GPS leads me on through a spiderweb of old backwoods highways and spangled