Who Wouldn't Love a Cowboy?

Contents

Cover

Title Page

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

Copyright

Endpages

Chapter One

The back roads of Montana were dustier than Callie Anderson remembered. Maybe lowering the roof on her red Mustang hadn’t been such a smart idea. Or perhaps she should have stuck to the main road instead of following the shorter—but not necessarily faster—route recommended by the GPS.

She’d left the secondary highway twenty minutes ago and now she was in the heart of cattle country. Not a building in sight, only grazing pastures, distant mountains and translucent blue sky. A far cry from her urban town house in Billings, where she’d started her day.

Dust spewed out behind her; she could see the trail in her rearview mirror. Ahead, there was only more gravel road, leading ultimately—hopefully!—to the Big Horn Guest Ranch. Not that she’d noticed any signs.

Shouldn’t there be signs?

She hadn’t even passed another vehicle since she’d left the highway.

But there was something ahead. She could make out a dark shape on the road. Wait a minute. There were dark shapes everywhere. Not only on the road, but on both sides of it, too. She eased off the accelerator, clipping her speed to a more cautious forty miles an hour.

And suddenly the dark shapes were recognizable. Oh, my God. She hadn’t seen this many cows in a long, long time. Over five hundred head, she figured.

They were crossing the road in a steady stream, probably being moved up to higher pasture for the summer.

The sight, the sounds and most of all the smell of them made her feel fourteen years old again. Callie closed her eyes as an overwhelming wave of nostalgia tried to suck her under.

She’d been afraid this would happen. Why, oh, why, hadn’t she just said no to the assignment from her editor?

I want you to write an article about the eternal appeal of the cowboy, her editor had said. Why do women love them so much?

I don’t, Callie had thought but not said, as she valued her career. And now she was here, in cowboy country, the last place on earth she wanted to be.

Suddenly, as if conjured by the power of her thoughts, a cowboy on an Appaloosa broke out from the herd. He sat tall in the saddle, a tan-colored hat obscuring the features of his face except for a firm jaw and nicely molded chin. The horse was beautiful with a dark mane and tail that contrasted with his light, speckled coat.

She realized it was the perfect photo op for the ridiculous article that her entire career was resting on. She stopped the car and pulled her Nikon out of its case.

Planting her cowboy boots on the driver’s seat—she’d dressed Western for the occasion, at her editor’s orders—she leaned her legs against the headrest of the driver’s seat and aimed her camera at the cowboy. She quickly snapped several shots of him before reaching for the wide-angle lens to get some photos of the cattle drive, en masse. Her head was bent over her equipment when she heard a voice.

“Were you just taking pictures of me?”

The cowboy. She glanced up. He and his horse were about ten yards away. He hadn’t turned his head in her direction when she’d been snapping photos of him, so she’d assumed he hadn’t even noticed her. Which was ridiculous, she now realized. Her red Mustang didn’t exactly blend in with the surroundings.

Nor did she. Slowly he perused her showy Western boots, dress and belt—every single item brand-new. No doubt he was pegging her as city girl playing at country.

“Yes, I did, for an article I’m writing. Would you like me to send you copies?” Up close, she could tell the cowboy was in his early thirties. Bronzed skin, features sculpted from a beautifully balanced, square-jawed face, and eyes so blue she could see the color from here.

Just the sort of cowboy her editor wanted her to write about. A few close-ups would be perfect….

“No.”

He wasn’t even trying to be polite. She masked her discomfort with a smile. One of her brightest. “That would be a shame. They’re going to turn out beautifully. That’s a gorgeous horse you have there.”

A pretty gorgeous guy, too. If he would only smile. But the scowl on his face didn’t seem inclined to budge.

“You must be that journalist from Billings.” He made the word journalist sound like slimy bug.

Belatedly it occurred to her to check the brand on the cattle that were still moving briskly across the road. Sure enough, she spotted a BH on the black hide of one of the closest animals—Big Horn, the ranch she was staying at. At just that moment, the very same cow lifted her tail and a fat patty of excrement splattered to the road, right in front of her car.

“You work for the Big Horn Guest Ranch,” she said, stating the obvious.

“Correction. I own the Big Horn Guest Ranch.”

“I should have guessed. You obviously love working with people as well as animals.”

His eyes narrowed at the sarcasm. Then his jaw muscles tightened. “I hire staff to deal with the dude ranch. I told Naomi it was a bad idea to have a journalist on the property. But she convinced me I wouldn’t even notice you were here.”

Talk about making a paying guest feel welcome. Now she was the one getting annoyed. “Well, I wouldn’t have bothered you if your cows weren’t blocking the road.”

“Wouldn’t have been a problem if you’d taken the main approach from the north, the way our brochure tells you to do.”

Crap. He had her there. “Fine. My mistake. I’m sorry. Please feel free to go back to work while I sit here and wait for the road to be clear.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he replied. “Until you erase those pictures of me.”

Chapter Two

Jason Dowcett just wanted to be left alone. Was that too much to ask? He owned a thousand acres of land—most of it wilderness. So how was it possible that, purely by chance, he would happen to be snagged by a journalist on assignment to write some damn article about why women loved cowboys?

When Naomi, the dude ranch manager, had told him about the writer from Montage magazine that was booked at the ranch—and why—he’d done his best to nix it.

“She’ll be too disruptive. Asking questions and getting in the way.”

“But think of the PR,” Naomi had coaxed.

He didn’t care, particularly about that part of the business. For the past year and a half the only company he could tolerate was that of his horse, Gold, and his cattle. The dude ranch was just a reminder of Lana and what used to be. He planned to shut it down as soon as he could figure out how to take care of his staff. But he hadn’t told anyone about that yet. And so, reluctantly, he’d let Naomi have her way.

“Just keep her out of my hair,” he’d said.

“I will,” Naomi had promised.

And now look what had happened. Callie Anderson hadn’t even handed over her credit card yet and she was already in his face. Dressed in the sort of duds that city folk liked to call “country chic“—a formfitting black dress with a silver-and-turquoise belt slung around her waist and black-and-brown boots that were obviously fresh out of the box.

Standing on the driver’s seat of her car, she appeared to be a tall woman, but she was still significantly shorter than he was astride Gold. He urged the Appaloosa closer, then held out his hand.

“The camera?” If she wasn’t going to erase the pictures, he would.

“Just look at them first. If you’re concerned about your privacy, you needn’t worry. Most of your face is hidden by your cowboy hat.”

When he said nothing, she reluctantly handed over the Nikon. He squinted at the screen, then scrolled through the photos. They looked innocuous enough. Maybe he should let her keep them. Now that she was here, he didn’t want to make the journalist mad.

He passed the camera back to her.

“Thank you.” She smiled at him again, and he had to look away. Damn, but she had a pretty smile. And nice legs, too. He felt guilty as hell for even noticing.

“Keep well back from the cattle,” he warned. “In another five minutes the road should be clear again. Don’t imagine I’ll see you again, but do me a favor and stick to the designated dude ranch areas from here on in.” He tipped his hat and turned away.

Chapter Three

It actually took fifteen minutes, about a hundred head of cattle and two more cowboys before the road was clear. The cowboys bringing up the rear were a lot friendlier than the ranch owner had been. They both waved and came over to apologize for holding her up.

Too bad neither of them was as photogenic as their boss.

Anyway, Callie had already tucked away her camera, thankful that the Big Horn’s owner hadn’t insisted she erase the photos.

With the road finally empty, the Mustang made short work of the final few miles to the dude ranch, which was picturesque and welcoming. Someone other than the owner must have done the designing.

The main house—a Montana-style log home—sat on a rise to the right amid a grove of freshly budding aspen. The outbuildings were next, all white with green roofs. These included several barns, storage sheds and a series of loading chutes and fenced pastures. To the far left along the bank of a meandering creek were eight log cabins for the guests. Each one had a hand-painted mailbox out front with a number.

Callie had been booked into Cabin 7 and her directions were to head straight in, she’d find the key in the mailbox.

She eased her Mustang into the parking spot beside the cabin, cleverly disguised by a thick border of shrubbery, then popped open the trunk. She’d no sooner done this than, like magic, a man in his forties dressed in Western boots, jeans and a plaid shirt arrived to help her with her bags.

“Ms. Callie Anderson?”

“That’s me.”

“Welcome to Big Horn Ranch. I’m George, the assistant manager of the guest ranch. You’ll be seeing a lot of me while you’re here.” He grabbed her bags then nodded for her to precede him along the path to the cabin. “We’ve got a basket of fresh scones waiting, as well as the fixings for either French-pressed coffee or your choice of tea.”

“What a welcome!” She stopped at the mailbox for the key, then went ahead and unlocked the door. Inside she found a charming room with a vase of flowers on a small table, a cozy quilt-covered bed and a love seat with a blanket folded over one arm. Hooked rugs were strategically placed on the pine plank flooring and several beautiful quilt squares hung on the walls.

“We aim to give you an authentic Montana ranch experience while you’re here—but we want you to be comfortable, too,” George said with a wink. He set her bags on a bench at the foot of the bed.

“Can I get you anything else? Dinner will be served in an hour, then we can go over your orientation after that. We were expecting you earlier, I hope you had no trouble getting here.”

“I’m sorry. I was held up by a couple hundred head of cattle crossing the road.” She smiled as she said this, thinking she was making a joke, but George looked very serious.

“That’s unfortunate. You must have come in the back way.”

“Yes. The recommended way, according to my GPS, but it was made very clear to me that I mustn’t do that again.”

“So you met Jason?”

“If Jason is the owner of this place, then I guess I did. He didn’t bother with introductions.”

“I’m not surprised. His name is Jason Dowcett. His family has owned this land for four generations.”

“He’s not the friendliest guy, is he? I’m surprised he runs a dude ranch operation.”

George sighed. “He used to be different.”

“Really?” Sounded like a story. Callie’s journalist instincts went on high alert. “What happened?”

But George acted like he hadn’t heard the question and went to the table to check a linen covered basket. “Naomi just brought these scones out of the oven ten minutes ago. You should eat them while they’re warm.”

He smiled, waved and practically ran out the door.

Chapter Four

After a big barbecue dinner shared with the other guests at the ranch—a family of four visiting from California and a couple of middle-aged women from Seattle—Callie went for a stroll by the creek. The sign on the wooden stake next to a couple of inviting wooden chairs said Lost Horse Creek.

She made a mental note of the name. Maybe she’d use it in her story. Ignoring the chairs, she strolled along the dirt path bordering the creek.

When her editor, Valerie Pender, had called Callie into her office a few days ago to assign her the cowboy story, Callie had wanted to refuse. But Valerie had been enthusiastic. “Why are women so crazy about cowboys, Callie? That’s the question you’re going to answer in this story.”

Why me? Why not someone else? Anyone else? Callie was tempted to ask. She wasn’t into cowboys. She’d been born on a ranch but after her father’s death, her mother had sold the place and they’d moved to the city. Ever since, Callie had had no interest in horses, ranches or the rodeo. She liked to go to the theater in her spare time. She enjoyed shopping and spa dates with her mother. She even avoided country music and Western movies because they brought back too many painful memories.

But this was the first feature article Valerie had offered her. It would have been career suicide to say no.

So she’d fibbed and said, “I’d love to write a story about cowboys!”

And now, a few short days later and given no time to research, here she was.

Callie stopped. She’d ended up at a corral outside one of the big barns. George was saddling horses for the other guests, who had all signed up for a sunset ride along the ridge of the foothills that surrounded the homestead.

“Change your mind?” George asked, spotting her on the other side of the fence. When she hesitated, he added, “Don’t worry. I’ll find you a nice, gentle mount.”

“Thanks, but I’ll sit this one out.” She turned to head back to her cabin, only to find the cowboy she’d met earlier on the road standing in her way, close enough that she could see the dark growth of his beard outlining the square line of his jaw.

Jason Dowcett, she remembered George saying his name was. He’d cleaned up after his long day of work and looked pretty darn good. Except for that peeved expression on his face.

“What’s the problem?” he asked. “Afraid of horses?”

She didn’t bother to answer his question, instead telling him, “I’m not here to have a vacation. I’m here to interview cowboys.”

“You should call Thunder Ranch, then,” Jason advised. “The Hart family loves to rodeo. Especially Colt. Make sure you book an interview with him.”

Callie was about to thank him, surprised that the grouchy cowboy was actually being helpful. But George piped in, saying, “The Harts aren’t the only famous rodeo cowboys around these parts.”

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