Hometown Cowboy

by Sara Richardson

  Tears snuck into her eyes. The man definitely knew how to write a speech…

  “I know we haven’t been together long,” he went on. “But I’ve never been as sure of anything as I am of us. You brought me to life and now I want a life with you. Always. I hate it when you go home. I want the ranch to be our home now. Together. You and me and a whole bunch of kids.”

  The words warmed her through. Kids. A family…

  “Marry me, beautiful,” he uttered, tears filling his eyes, too. “Please marry me.” He opened the box, revealing the most delicate ring she’d ever seen. It was a solitaire diamond, inset into a wide band, rose gold to match the necklace her father had given her. The last gift he’d given her before he passed away.

  “I can answer now?” she whispered, crying softly.

  He grinned and rolled his eyes up to the ceiling as though thinking about it. “Sure,” he said. “I’m done.”

  “In that case…” She tugged him to his feet. “I can’t wait to marry you. Obviously.”

  He slipped the ring onto her finger and pulled her close. “I’ll make you the happiest woman in the world. I promise you.” A wicked gleam lit his eyes. “And not just in bed, either.”

  “You already make me happy. In bed and in everything else.” She embraced him as tightly as she could, holding happiness in her arms. “Oh my God, I’m getting married!” she sang, letting it soak into the deepest parts of her. She gazed up into Lance’s tender eyes. Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan had nothing on them.

  “I can’t believe you did all of this.” She looked around the room again, at all of the details, the months and months of work he’d kept secret from her. “It’s perfect. The most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  “I’m gonna give you everything.” He leaned down to kiss her, and she savored it, the feeling of belonging to someone again. She’d always miss her father, but for the first time since he’d passed away, her heart felt whole.

  He danced her to the window and together they peered out. “Look at that. It’s all ours. Yours and mine.” His palms cradled her stomach. “And someday it’ll belong to all of our little buckaroos, too.”

  She stared out at the snowcapped mountains that sheltered the houses all lined up in a row farther down the hill. “I love this place.” It would be their place—a haven for their family and friends, a place where they gathered and celebrated and built a life together. All of them.

  Lance drew closer behind her, wrapping her up in his arms. “Let’s go out and share the news,” he murmured against her neck. “Then we’ll kick everyone outta here so I can try to get you pregnant.”

  Eyeing him seductively, she slipped out of his embrace, backed to the main door, and clicked the lock into place. “We don’t have to kick anyone out. No one’ll miss us.”

  “In that case, come here.” Her fiancé made his way to her, those breathtaking bluish eyes focused and intent. He slid his hands down her body, and she loved those big manly hands, loved how they made her feel so petite. “I love you,” she whispered, kissing him again and again.

  “I love you, too,” he said, easing his arms around her. “And I love that you’re going to be my wife.”

  His wife! A burst of happiness could’ve carried her straight to the clouds.

  She’d finally found it, what her heart had so desperately craved. Love. And it was braver and bigger and deeper than she ever knew it could be.

  A woman never forgets her first cowboy…

  Don’t miss the next installment of Sara Richardson’s Rocky Mountain Riders series

  Comeback

  Cowboy

  Available Summer 2017

  Please see the next page for a preview.

  Chapter One

  The best thing about grand vintage houses was not the ornate crown molding or the heavy wooden five-panel doors or even the charming antique accents.

  Nope. Those details were nice and all, but the best thing about old houses were the secrets protected within their walls.

  Naomi Sullivan could relate to secrets. She’d carefully guarded a few whoppers of her own. While her own secrets tended to stalk her, she found other people’s secrets fascinating.

  Admiring the large bow window that welcomed in the early morning sunrays, Naomi breathed in the scent of old wood and dust. Truly, the place was a mess. No one had lived here since old Mrs. Porter had passed away four years ago. The original parquet floors were scuffed and dirty, the thick cherry trim discolored with grime. But somehow the Porter House still charmed her the same way it had when she was a young girl and she’d ride her bike past it every morning on her way to school.

  It had always reminded her of something out of a storybook—whimsical and romantic. The structure itself was a Queen Anne Victorian with a steeply pitched roof, a dominant front-facing gable, and overhanging eaves. The siding had been well kept and was painted a lovely cloud-blue with the trim accented in an elegant cream. Classic columns held up a wraparound porch complete with intricate spindle work.

  She wandered to the window and peered out at the front lawn. The gardens had gone to ruin, but the grass still grew green and thick. She supposed that was something. Turning back to Colton, her real estate agent, lawyer, and oldest childhood friend, she felt that telltale flicker of passion spark in her chest. “It’s perfect. I’ll take it.”

  Colton simply tsked at her and shuffled his four-hundred-dollar loafers over to where she stood. “No so fast. It’s not even officially on the market, yet.” His head tilted with a healthy dose of sass. “And how’s that business loan coming, hmmm? Are the papers signed? Is the money in your account?”

  “It will be,” she fired back, though she wasn’t nearly as gifted in the sass department as him. “It’s all in process.” And everything would go through. She would get that business loan. She would move off of the Cortez Ranch, and she would open her own bed and breakfast by next winter.

  Damn it.

  “‘In process’ won’t cut it,” Colton informed her. “If you want me to make a deal with the Porter family before they list it, I’ll need the cash, honey.”

  “I should have it by the end of the week.” At least she’d better.

  She passed underneath an archway and carefully ran her hand over the solid banister that swirled up the staircase in the foyer. She’d done everything required to submit the loan application and the banker had all but told her she was a shoe in. Working at the Cortez Ranch and living there rent-free for the past ten years had allowed her to save plenty of money, so she only had to borrow enough to purchase the house, do some renovations, and buy the furniture. Besides that, she had outstanding credit and always paid her bills on time.

  There was no way the bank would turn her down.

  She peered over her shoulder and flashed Colton her most persuasive smile. “Tell the Porters not to bother putting the house on the market. I’ll take it. As my lawyer, you can do all the paperwork and cut your rate in half.”

  He laughed. “You know I’m not that generous.”

  “Come on now,” she scolded. “I’ve done you plenty of favors over the years. I always covered for you whenever you got home late.” Seeing as how they’d grown up next door to each other, she’d been around to bail him out when he needed it. “And then there was that time sophomore year when I pretended to be your homecoming date so your parents wouldn’t know you were really going with Thomas.” Which meant she hadn’t had a real date to her own homecoming. She stabbed a pointer finger into his chest. “You owe me big for that.”

  “True enough,” he conceded heaving out a martyr’s sigh. “All right. Fine. I’ll have a talk with the Porters and get the ball—”

  Her cellphone broke out into song and cut him off.

  He eyed her with disdain. “Still haven’t changed that awesome Bieber ringtone, huh?”

  “I don’t know how,” she snapped digging it out of her purse. Her friend Darla had changed it as a joke. “If it annoys you so much, why don�
��t you change it?” she asked, glancing at the screen.

  “Who is it? Tell them you’ll call them back so I can change that appalling ringtone.”

  Her heart sped up. “It’s Lance.” Her boss at the Cortez Family Ranch who’d actually become more like her big brother. The man who’d given her and Gracie a place to live after her ex walked out on them. The man who was marrying her best friend Jessa soon.

  “You haven’t told them you’re quitting yet?” Colton asked when she clicked the phone off and stuffed it back into her purse.

  “Not yet.” She looked around the room again, fear swirling in with her excitement. “It doesn’t seem wise to say anything until I’m sure it’ll work out.” There was no reason to get anyone riled up. All Jessa had talked about recently was the fun they’d have living as neighbors on the ranch.

  “You have quite the connection with the Cortez family,” Colton reminded her. “Once you move here things will change.”

  “Things need to change.” Lance and Jessa deserved to have their own space. He’d just retired from bull riding and would be reorganizing things at the ranch anyway. He wouldn’t need her to keep the books anymore. “Besides, this has always been my dream.”

  “You sure you’re not just running away from Lucas?” Colton enjoyed hitting people between the eyes with the obvious truth. He knew exactly how she’d once felt about the middle Cortez brother. But she refused to flinch.

  “This has nothing to do with Lucas.” As the lie tumbled from her lips, she fell back through the years, forced to relive the memories she’d tried so hard to block out.

  The day Lucas Cortez, the love of her young life, had been arrested for arson. When they’d taken him away in handcuffs, she’d run after him, sobbing, begging the officer to let him go, insisting he wouldn’t have done it. He wouldn’t have started that fire at the rodeo grounds.

  Lucas had turned to her, this seventeen-year-old man she’d known most of her life. The man she’d loved for two years. The man she’d dreamed about building a future with. His face had been cold when he’d told her to go back home. “It’s over, Naomi. I’m going to prison. You need to move on.”

  For years, she didn’t know how. Lucas had taken a chunk of her heart that day, leaving it paralyzed. That was the year she’d learned how to keep secrets. After a shocking pregnancy and a failed marriage, she’d done what she had to do to raise her daughter by herself. Then, eight months ago, Lucas had come home when his father was diagnosed with Parkinson’s, and the things she’d kept hidden no longer felt safe.

  “How long is he planning to stay in Topaz Falls anyway?” Colton asked innocently.

  Yeah right. He knew good and well this topic was off-limits. “I don’t know.” Over the last months, Lucas had split time between his family’s ranch and the McGowen Ranch, but eventually he’d go back to Pueblo for good. And it was just as well. She’d shut the door on the what ifs of her past long ago. “I haven’t talked to Lucas much,” she reminded Colton.

  The truth was, she hadn’t been able to face him. She’d made sure to keep extra busy, volunteering at school and at Jessa’s animal rescue. She’d even taken Gracie to visit her parents for a month over winter break.

  When she’d seen him for the first time in ten years, her heart had buckled, filling her with a pained joy. But so much time had passed. They were both different people. Now everything in her life came down to her daughter.

  The moment Gracie was born, that moment she’d held her in her arms and cuddled her against her breast, every fear went away and Naomi realized she’d never be alone again. She was a mother and she would forever be connected with another soul. That bond had changed everything for her. It had made her brave.

  “So this is what you want,” Colton asked, dipping his chin to give her eyes a good cross-examination. “You’re sure?”

  “Yes.” Be brave. It was time for her to show her daughter she could do anything she wanted.

  It was time to prove she could make all of her own dreams come true.

  * * *

  The decision shouldn’t be this hard.

  Lucas brought his arm back over his head and launched the fishing line, arcing it in a perfectly timed dance, striking the fly against the water to entice the cut-throat trout he knew to be hiding in one of those deep holes on the riverbed. Ripples circled the small fuzzy hook at the end of his line, mimicking a real fly’s movements on the water’s glassy surface.

  He did his best thinking out here—standing waist-deep in his thermal waders, still feeling the chill of the snow runoff barreling down the mountain streams and into the Topaz Falls River. It was high for this time of year—the weather had been unseasonably warm for weeks, melting the mounds of snow that had built up on the peaks.

  The sun had only just started its descent to the west, hovering stubbornly over the rocky horizon, casting enough light and warmth that he didn’t need a coat. In some ways, he loved it here. After being away from Topaz Falls for ten years, coming back had been nostalgic. He couldn’t go anywhere in town without memories flooding him—good memories of him and his brothers riding their bikes to the general store for candy, of building forts in the woods, of riding their horses up the mountain trails.

  But his best memories had taken place right on that riverbank right over there. Long evening picnics with Naomi, his high school sweetheart. The woman he’d left behind so long ago.

  They’d stuff a saddlebag full of food from the pantry and ride out here. He’d spread the blanket on the ground and they’d eat in the surreal glow of a setting sun. When dusk had settled, they’d wrap themselves up in that blanket, kissing and touching each other, and eventually making love in the tall grass.

  Memories of Naomi constantly seemed to churn through him, dredging up the past, giving him glimpses of their two years together. Those images were etched into his soul…her head tipped back while she laughed, that long, wavy red hair spilling down over her shoulders and catching the sun’s light.

  That—she—was what made his impending decision so hard.

  With no strikes at his line, Lucas wound the fly rod’s reel. He had to get back to the ranch anyhow. His youngest brother was throwing yet another shindig in honor of Lance’s wedding. Or should he say Levi was throwing it for himself. No one loved a good party as much as Levi.

  As he worked the reel, the fly slowly skidded across the water’s surface closer and closer, tying up his scattered thoughts along with it.

  A relationship with Naomi wouldn’t be practical. Hell, she didn’t even seem to want him. Ever since he’d been back, she’d avoided him. And why wouldn’t she? Why would any woman want to be with a convicted felon who’d done time? The rest of the town sure didn’t want him to stick around. They’d made that abundantly clear.

  Small towns like Topaz Falls, Colorado, had long memories and no one wanted to welcome back the guy that had supposedly burned down a stable, killed two bulls, and forever ruined the town’s chances ever hosting another rodeo on the circuit.

  Didn’t matter that he hadn’t done it. Didn’t matter that he’d gotten out of prison early on good behavior. Didn’t matter that he’d built a fucking empire for the McGowen Ranch outside of Pueblo in the years since.

  Didn’t matter who he was now.

  That’s why he should head back down south. Bill McGowen had called him up last week and told him he was sorry Lucas’s father had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s but they were gearing up for the competition season and he needed someone to run the show. Which meant he needed Lucas to make a decision. Return to manage his ranch full time, or he’d have to find someone else.

  Lucas trudged to the riverbank, his legs fighting the river’s current. He should’ve told the man then that he’d come back, but his mind had instantly conjured up this image of Naomi in his arms and, before he knew what he was saying, he’d told Bill McGowen—one of the most powerful men in the rodeo world—that he’d need to think about it and he’d let him know after
Lance’s wedding.

  Sighing, he kicked off his rubber boots and stepped on to the soft bank where he peeled off his waders. Then he took apart the fishing pole and stored it in the cylinder carrying case.

  After slipping on his leather boots and shoving the gear into his backpack, he hoisted it onto his shoulders and tramped down the narrow trail that led back to the highway where he’d parked his truck. Even before he reached it, he knew something was wrong.

  All four tires were flat. Slashed, the shredded rubber lying limply on the asphalt. And then there was the glaring orange word spray-painted across the tailgate.

  Felon.

  That label. That damn label. It’d be slapped on him forever. He jogged down to the road to assess the damage. At least they hadn’t shattered the windows. Shaking his head, he dug out his phone, but of course there was no service out here in the river valley.

  And if he needed confirmation that he didn’t belong in Topaz Falls, there it was.

  Looking over the damage again, his hands fisted. But anger wouldn’t do him much good out here. Hiking his backpack higher on his shoulders, he sucked it up and set off on foot, following the curve of the highway, boots pounding the packed gravel on the shoulder.

  He’d have to walk the eight miles back to the ranch.

  This was the whole reason he hadn’t come back after he’d been released from prison. He’d wanted freedom—a life where no one knew about his past. McGowen didn’t care that he’d served time. Hell, he thought it made him more of a badass…

  The hum of an engine broke into his thoughts. He stepped off to the side to give the car room and glanced over his shoulder.

  A yellow Volkswagen Beetle blitzed toward him, picking up speed. Yep, he’d know that car anywhere. Naomi. No one else around here drove a bright yellow bug complete with flower-shaped taillights. Completely impractical for life in the mountains, but that was one thing he loved about Naomi. She didn’t care much for horse sense. If something made her happy, she did it.