But what starts as a trade of necessity to achieve their goals turns into a tangled jumble of emotions when they realize they might have found more than bugs and babies: they may have found the person who completes their lives.
The Rancher’s Baby Bargain
Available February 21, 2019
LeslieNorthBooks.com
EXCERPT
Chapter 1
The crops were a disaster.
Aiden didn’t like to be dramatic. Slipping into hyperbole never helped anyone. It was best to assess things accurately, with a clear head.
And his head was clear enough to see that he had a real problem.
“It’s not good.” Jonas Mills, the man who flew his Rockwell Thrush Commander over Harpers’ Ranch every two weeks, walked beside Aiden between the neat rows. The hops themselves rustled in the breeze, green and tall, but the height was only a distraction. A closer look revealed a slow-motion devastation. Aiden let the statement hang in the air, half-hoping that Jonas would tell him it wasn’t as bad as he thought.
“It’s real bad,” Jonas said, lifting one of the leaves up to examine it.
Wonderful.
Harper’s Ranch should have been idyllic for a man like Aiden. It was everything his soul wanted—wide open under a great big sky, with a view of the mountains and enough room to roam. When he took over ownership after his dad died, he’d expected that its natural beauty would be paid for with hard work. He hadn’t expected it to become an ongoing battle with the land. Clearly, they were at odds. He wanted the hops he’d planted to grow, and the earth wanted to teach him a lesson about perseverance. So far, they were both winning. The earth kept knocking him down. Aiden kept persevering. Though this was not great news.
“Three years in, and these are looking worse.” Jonas let go of the leaf and shook his head. “Those hop spider mites are doing a number on you.”
Aiden inspected the plant to his left, swallowing his frustration as best he could. It was still early in the season, and if things were this bad already, they weren’t going to get any better. And with two years of this already behind him, he didn’t have much wiggle room left. He’d leveraged everything, including his small herd of cattle, to get the hops going. And they were not going well.
“We can think of a solution,” he said, willing them both to believe it. Harder. “Got any new ideas?”
“Glad you asked.” Jonas turned to Aiden and rubbed his hands together, and it was all Aiden could do not to roll his eyes. The man was an ace pilot. He flew lower and more accurately than anyone else Aiden had ever met in his years on the ranch, but he couldn’t resist a good sell. Aiden sensed it coming in the air before Jonas opened his mouth again. And—here it came. “I’m bringing in an expert. There’s a new treatment that just might save your bacon.”
“New treatment?” That was hopeful.
“Something meant for hop mites in particular.”
“Great.” Aiden looked down the row of hops. This was supposed to have been a good investment. He’d taken a risk, planting this many acres of hops, and these days it felt like he was fighting a losing battle. But Aiden hated to lose battles. He’d rather cling to that last shred of hope than give in entirely.
Jonas looked in the same direction, crossing his arms over his chest. “It is great,” he said. “Some expert consulting could turn things around for you.”
“I’ll think on what they have to offer.”
It would mean a lot more than thinking on Aiden’s part. Any expert Jonas wanted to hire would cost more than he had. “Expert,” after all, was only code for “expensive.” How was he supposed to swing that? The hard truth was that he couldn’t—not today, anyway. There was no way he could pay for a hop spider mite professional to visit his ranch and give him a private consultation. Maybe by next season…
No. There was no way he could pass it up. Not if he wanted the ranch to succeed and be here the next season.
“By the way,” Jonas said, his tone shifting toward hope. “I want to get on your list early this year.”
“My list?”
Jonas nudged him with his knuckles. “You know which list I’m talking about. The list everyone wants to be on.”
In fact, Aiden did not know. “You’re going to have to help me out.”
Jonas scoffed. “It’s annoying how humble you are. I’m talking about your beer. I want to be first in line for a case the minute you’re done brewing it.”
Aiden felt a wash of pride. So his beer was good. He’d thought it was top notch two years ago when he’d started brewing small batches in the little brewery he’d set up in the auxiliary barn, and he’d gotten even better at it. But he wasn’t about to brag.
“Don’t worry about it, Jonas. There’ll be plenty.”
“Not this time. People are waiting.”
“Like you?”
“Like me…” Jonas shrugged. “And a few of my friends. They also want to reserve a case. I guess four cases. On reserve.” He looked at Aiden like he expected a receipt or a ticket.
Aiden patted his pockets. “Sorry, bud. I left the list at home.”
Jonas shook his head. “Well, when you get there, add us up top.”
“Will do.”
He kept his laugh to himself. There was no list, for god’s sake, and Aiden hardly had the time to worry about whether he’d get to brew his own beer this year. Jonas changed the subject, switching to his flyover plans for the upcoming month and reassuring Aiden that he would consult with the expert to make sure they were getting the best results. Aiden heard about every other word of what Jonas said. He nodded in what he thought were the right places, but his mind felt like a hurricane.
He was going to get it done, but it was going to be a bit of a fight. The mortgage payment to the bank was enormous as it was. He’d have no way to pay it if he couldn’t sell the hops. Which meant that if Jonas’s expert didn’t come through, then he was going to be mightily screwed. The best possible outcome was also the least likely. If the expert wasn’t some con man with a heart-attack-inducing sticker price, and if he could bring Aiden’s crops back from the brink, it still didn’t guarantee Jonas—or anyone else—a case of beer from Aiden’s brewery. He’d have to sell most of his crop to make a dent in the mortgage. Most…or all of it. He gritted his teeth. He’d think of something. Even if Jonas’s expert didn’t work out.
Things were never really as dire as they seemed. Aiden had saved back some of last year’s crop, and he had a row of them planted in his garden, but these—this hundred acres of premium product—these were the ones that had to succeed. They had to. Otherwise, the bank would do what banks always did: repossess the equity he’d put up for the loan. That equity was the ranch itself.
Aiden shoved down the shame he felt over that mortgage. The fact of the papers he’d signed weighed on him every second of the day and most nights, too. It had all seemed so hopeful three years ago. A guaranteed success. He’d talked himself into believing it. And it should have been all right. Maybe it still could be. Once they worked out all the kinks, things would be back to normal.
If he didn’t lose the ranch in the process of working out those kinks.
“—meet with them today,” Jonas was saying.
“Sorry. Meet with who today?” They were far from the edge of the field. Aiden had kept walking farther than was absolutely necessary, hoping against hope that he’d reach the edge of the hop spider mite infestation and find rows of perfect plants waiting for him.
But that had been a fantasy. A lovely dream. The entire field was at risk, and that was simply reality. No way around it.
“The expert,” Jonas said, looking at him like this should have been obvious. Who knew? Maybe Jonas had repeated the information six times while Aiden was wallowing over his precarious position. “Should be ready to meet us in…” He checked his watch. “Half an hour.”
“Half an hour? That’s not enough time.” Aiden’s heart picked up the pace. It was a warm morn
ing, and he was wearing his work clothes. His worry had made his shirt damp against his skin. This was no time to be meeting with any kind of expert. Yes, Aiden was a rancher—more cowboy than anything else—but a person should always enter any negotiation on equal terms. He was pretty sure the expert wouldn’t show up wearing dusty clothes and carrying sweat from the morning’s work. He spun on his heel and started off toward the farmhouse.
The Rancher’s Baby Bargain
Available February 21, 2019
LeslieNorthBooks.com
BLURB
Texas rancher Nathaniel Meier always puts his responsibilities first. With his father dead, his brothers away, and his mother off “finding herself,” it’s Nat who runs their sprawling ranch. But with cattle to sell and the bank breathing down his neck, he needs all the help he can get, even when that help comes from the last person he ever expected to see again—his childhood sweetheart January Rose.
Free-spirited January always dreamed of traveling the world. The moment she turned eighteen, she left Close Call, Texas behind and barely looked back. So now that she’s home, she intends to stay only long enough to earn some cash and get back on the road. But when she comes face to face with Nat Meier, she quickly realizes the boy she left behind is now all man.
Even for a nomad like January, wanderlust sometimes gets lonely, and Nat is the one person who’s called to her, even after a decade apart. But for a man ruled by responsibility and a woman whose suitcase is her home, the future is uncertain. And the closer they get, the more Nat worries he’s going to get burned…again.
Grab your copy of Tempting The Rancher here.
EXCERPT
Chapter 1
October in Texas was damned near perfection. Gone was the scorching heat that anchors a pair of jeans to the thighs like a wet straightjacket, hell-bent on dropping anyone not in air conditioning straight to the devil’s back kitchen. Sporadic, deep reds on the sweet gum trees teased the landscape with impending change. Even the cow pies took on the scent of money.
Selling season in the cattle business had a fragrance all its own, and Nathaniel Meier wasn’t above pulling in a potent lungful of the end.
The end. God in heaven, he fucking hoped not.
Nat’s least favorite part of the ranch was the south acreage. Eighteen wheelers barreled down the adjacent two-lane county road to avoid construction fifty miles and another world away, scattering everything from mockingbirds to piss-filled sports drink bottles. The south acreage’s only saving grace was the perfect alignment of the squeeze chutes and ramps so as not to cast morning shadows or blinding sun—two factors that could make loading hundreds of cows onto trailers feel like a fire-ant enema.
His general apathy toward anything beyond Close Call, Texas, was a side effect of being hyper-attuned to the ranch, cradle to loan, as his grandfather had always said. Four generations saw fit to ensure the Meier legacy continued. For now, the burden fell solely on his sunbaked shoulders.
Nat set to work applying fresh rubber stops to the metal gates so the banging wouldn’t spook the animals. Earbuds in place, he ignored the world beyond the periphery fence. The sidewinding melody of a steel guitar calmed his pre-auction nerves—and was why he failed to notice the SUV tires eating up his good grazing grass until they had damned near galloped up his ass.
Rubber stops tumbled out of his hand. His pulse played catch-up, the way it did when he accidentally stepped into a steer’s flight zone. Spine straightened, he slow-crawled a gaze from the pristine tires to the glossy black rims of a late-model Cadillac, as out of place on a ranch as a drag queen singing show tunes would be.
Well, shit.
Austin Pickford exited his trust-fund vehicle. The banker stood in place as if he could spare no more than a minute, as if the pasture were a mine field. Nat supposed to the guy’s imported alligator loafers, the pasture was Cambodia.
Nat swiped the adhesive bumpers out of the grass and resumed circling the curved race. “You visit all your borrowers this often, or can I tell my mother we’re officially courting?”
“Nice to know the impending sale hasn’t affected your juvenile sense of humor.”
“Juvenile? Keep flattering me like that, and we’ll be married by nightfall.” Nat shot him a wink for good measure.
Austin rolled his eyes and jingled coins in his suit pocket.
Nat and Austin had a history straight out of rural Shakespeare—same graduating class, same primal ambition, the occasional quarrel between well-established families, a general distaste disguised as friendship. Austin went away to a private university to study finance. Nat attended state school to try for an ag degree. But Nat couldn’t escape the truth that the Meier family couldn’t do what they did best without the generations-old backing of Pickfords. Close Call Community Trust was the only lender left in town. Banks close to the city didn’t understand the financial cycle of ranching past how much a porterhouse at some country club in Houston set them back. Nat and Austin had history. Around here, history counted for something.
“To what do I owe this honor?” Nat called over his shoulder. As in, spit it out and be on your way.
“Came out to check on you. See if you needed anything.”
Liar. The guy was probably measuring for drapes at the main house before he drove out here. Every time Nat thought about the collateral he’d put up last winter to expand his operation, his stomach threatened to empty, full or not.
“Unless you have a new weigh scale in that fancy trunk of yours, I’m good.”
“’Fraid I can’t help you there.” Austin took a few minefield steps away from the safety of his luxury car. His silk tie lifted and twisted on the stiff breeze. “What I can do is tell you what I’m hearing.”
Nat slowed his gait. Good-old-boy gossip came in two forms: bet-the-farm accurate and grizzled, half-baked accurate—usually while buzzed on Shiner at the roadhouse’s Thursday polka night. Either way, previous generations had hundreds of years of droughts and windfalls between them. The year Nat lost his grandfather’s prized truck was the year Nat learned to pay attention to such things.
“Word is, the market is softer than anticipated. Exports are down. More consumers going to plant-based proteins.”
“All things beyond my control.” Nat shook steel rails as he circled the race. A loose belly pipe snagged his progress. He bent down to inspect the fastening bolts. “We’re selling at the right time. First major auction before all the spring-born calves land on the market. Everything before that is speculation. Nothing more.”
“That isn’t all, Meier. Vet’s been out here daily. That happens, people start to think you’ve got a problem.”
Nat’s breathing stalled. He tucked his chin to his collar, mostly so his hat brim blocked Austin, the Cadillac, rigs barreling past, the problems back at ground zero where pink eye had spread to four heifers before they caught it and isolated them. Bet-the-farm accurate, that gossip. With pliers from his tool belt, he tightened the offending bolt. And his voice.
“Only problem I have is getting these ramps ready for transport.” As in, be on your way already.
“Hope you’re right. For your sake.”
Nat’s knuckles whitened around the pliers. He thought of a thousand things he wanted to say but only one his upbringing allowed him to say. His dry tongue felt thick and leaden. “Thanks for stopping by—”
“What the hell?”
Austin’s tone was equal parts delight and alarm—enough of a contrast that Nat glanced up. Idling on the highway’s shoulder was a gigantic plastic shrimp on wheels, its antennae snapping on a robust gale. Two cartoon shrimps shaped into a heart with the words “Bae Shrimp” adorned the food truck’s pink paint job.
Before Nat could echo Austin’s sentiment, a passenger exited the cab and waved to the bearded driver. At a distance, the bare-legged and sandaled figure—undoubtedly feminine—looked like a traveling Sherpa: massive backpack, woven poncho of some sort with brightly colored fringe, staine
d and wrinkled brown hat that looked as if it had been fished out of a shrimp boat rudder in Galveston. But there was something familiar—the energetic way her tan legs slipped through the tall grass like a native species, the confident, fluid strides despite the heavy load, the slight freedom in her hip rotation. It wasn’t until the stranger removed her hat that Nat realized she wasn’t a stranger at all.
Well, shit.
Austin spoke first. “Isn’t that—?”
“January?” Uttering her name felt like a decade-old trip wire set off in Nat’s chest. One false move? Boom. “Yeah.”
Two airhorn blasts penetrated the slow acceleration of the truck’s diesel engine. The crustacean drifted down the road.
January Rose was damned near perfection. Named for the month of her conception—the only stretch when the Texas heat subsided long enough for two people to want to generate heat of their own. Or so the story went. She was magnificent trouble, the kind of charmer that could lead a devout man straight into the devil’s back pocket and leave him wanting more. Ten years ago, Nat had entered her flight zone and she had left his heart stampeded. The only thing worse than that kind of pain was ten years plus one day for her to do it all over again.
Grab your copy of Tempting The Rancher here.
Home with the Cowboy Page 19
