The Love Ranch (BWWM Romance)

by Violet Jackson

  Dedicated

  To All The Readers Who Are Making My Dream Possible

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

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Copyright © 2015 Violet Jackson. All rights reserved. Including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the author.

  WARNING: This book contains sexually explicit scenes and adult language. It may be considered offensive to some readers. This book is for sale to adults ONLY.

  Please ensure this book is stored somewhere that cannot be accessed by underage readers.

  Other Titles By Violet (Free on Kindle Unlimited)

  Doctor's Love (Complete Series)

  Loving The Doctor

  The Nurse's Secret Love

  Falling For The Doctor

  Heart of Fire

  Country Vibes

  The Billionaire's Bodyguard

  City Vibes – Complete Series

  Jamaica, I Love You

  Books By Friends (Free on Kindle Unlimited)

  Tasha Jones

  Loving The British Billionaire

  The Cowboy's Baby

  For The Love Of The Doctor

  Doctor Of My Dreams

  Cowboy Love

  Meet Me In Alaska

  Saving The Cowboy

  African Attraction

  My Caring Cowboy

  About Me

  Hey,

  I'm Violet and thanks so much for taking the time to read my book! I've always been a strong curvy African American woman who isn't afraid to go against societies social expectations of us. I hope through my writing you can trying to break out of these expectations as well, and truly be who you want to be. When I'm not writing I'm a regular 30 something gal who loves reading about strong males who appreciate women in all their beautiful forms. I also have a loving husband, and two beautiful children that I am grateful for every day.

  Really hope you enjoy the book!

  About This Book

  Tiana Walker was a woman on the run. After dealing with an abusive husband for years, she decided that enough was enough when her husband struck their child.

  After calling the police on her husband and having him taken away to jail, she picked up everything and moved from New York City to a small town in Texas. To say the transition was tough would be an understatement, but the safety of her child meant everything to her.

  In Texas she got a job as a waitress at the local saloon, where she would meet one of the most dashing local cowboys in town, Christian Langfield. But things started out on the wrong foot for them, as Chrisitan would constantly tease her, and Tiana couldn't put her finger on it but her interactions with him were always bittersweet.

  When she saw an ad for the position of a cook at a local ranch, Tiana jumped at the opportunity as cooking was always a passion of hers. But once at the ranch she was surprised to find out how easy it was for her to get the job, and even more surprised to find out Christian was also a ranch had there. Little did she know that he was much more than that.

  Find out if Tiana and Christian get together in this touching romance by bestselling author Violet Jackson.

  This steamy BWWM romance is for adult audiences 18+ only

  CHAPTER ONE

  “Welcome once more to Paradise, Ms. Walker. I hope you enjoy our little town,” the buxom, red-haired realtor yelled cheerfully as she started her Chevy and pulled away from the curb, flipping a careless wave over her shoulder.

  Tiana Walker looked around, her brown eyes noting the simple charm of her new home as she tried to look optimistic for Jamal, her four-year-old son. Jamal was understandably upset because he had had to say goodbye to all his friends and then suffered the added indignity of being taken all the way out of New York straight to some backwater little town in Texas. He was too young to understand why they had to move, so naturally he resented it.

  The town was called Paradise, true, but that was not necessarily the charm for Tiana. For her, the beauty was in the fact that the town was so little it was barely on the map; less chances of him finding them here. Why, there couldn’t be more than three hundred people in the entire town, which, to someone from New York, was like a drop of water in an ocean.

  Besides, she mused, the house was so beautiful and yet, amazingly enough, so affordable that she had managed to pay two months' rent in one shot, which for her was saying a lot. In New York, she had barely been able to scrape by for one week's rent even though she had been working three jobs! Plus, she had always had to keep looking over her shoulder, which was something less likely to happen here.

  “Come on, Jamal, this is our new home,” she said now, ruffling her son’s curly black hair even as her brown eyes anxiously scanned his face.

  “I don’t want to stay here,” Jamal told her, his lower lip trembling with the effort it took him to control his tears. He was a cute little boy with riotously curly hair, beautiful olive skin, even white teeth, and a jaw that tended to jut out stubbornly whenever he was going to be difficult. The little jaw was jutting out now.

  Tiana’s heart splintered in her chest as she gazed down into his unhappy little face. Her baby was deeply unhappy, she recognized, but there wasn’t much she could do about it.

  “Jamal, honey,” she sighed, dropping to her haunches in front of him, “I know you’re going to miss your friends back home but we have to make do, okay? We can’t afford New York anymore,” she said, her eyes staring into his, which were the exact same hot-chocolate shade as hers. “It’s too expensive. If we stayed, we’d be flat broke in a week without two pennies to rub together and then we wouldn’t have any more money to buy food.”

  Tiana bit her lip as she considered the unyielding militant expression on Jamal’s face. She could never tell him that the real reason they had moved was because she was scared out of her mind for both their lives. He would never understand; he was way too young.

  As she rose to her feet and started towards the door of their new home, pulling Jamal along, catastrophe struck. Jamal let out a yelp of protest, dug in his heels and started struggling against her hold, yanking furiously to free his arm. His little body filled with angry energy as he hit out against her, his arms and legs flailing as he screamed loud enough to raise the dead. It was a classic Jamal-tantrum but she had been hoping she would at least have the luxury of stepping over the threshold and into their new home before he would explode. Heck, their baggage was still strewn about on the sidewalk.

  “Jamal!” Tiana cried as she tried desperately to stay out of the way of his flailing limbs whilst maintaining a firm grip on his arms.

  “Hey, hey,” someone shouted, running up to them.

  Tiana barely registered that the newcomer was a tall, dark-haired man wearing an old t-shirt and a pair of well-worn jeans that outlined the powerful muscles in his thighs and rode low on a washboard flat belly.

  “Problems?” he asked now, turning the full force of his pale gray eyes on her.

  Tiana took a hasty step back, unconsciously loosening her grip on
her son some more as her eyes clashed with the stranger’s. He had kind eyes with laugh lines at the corners, she noted automatically even as her mouth went dry. He stood tall, six-foot-three inches of solid, hard male with silver-gray eyes that made her want to stare long and hard into them. His smile reached his eyes, crinkling the corners in a sweet smile that emphasized his dimples, and softened his hard features. He had a long aquiline nose, with even white teeth, shoulders the size of Texas and scuffed brown boots that made him look tough and intensely masculine. A cowboy hat sat carelessly atop his dark head of hair, completing the ensemble and making her swallow as she acknowledged that this had to be the sexiest man she had ever clapped eyes on.

  “Uh, nothing we can’t handle thanks.”

  He exuded a sort of silent sex appeal that reminded her of the strong silent types her favorite romance authors loved to write about.

  “Honey, nothin’ wrong in askin’ for a lil’ help,” he said in an unmistakable Texas twang, and Tiana rolled her eyes inwardly. Of course it figured that the first person she would run into, besides her realtor, would be a cowboy complete with a Texas drawl.

  His gaze flicked over her short, dark head of hair; trailed down her slim, long neck and swept down the rest of her so fast, his surveillance barely registered. She was lovely, he decided; heck she was a knockout with a body straight out of a man’s most private fantasies. She had full sensuous, dewy lips; dimples in both cheeks; short brown hair that barely scraped her shoulders, a killer body with a perfect hourglass figure and olive skin, shapely legs so long they made his mouth go dry just imagining them raised in interesting positions. Her brown eyes were like banks of liquid fire flowing with hot chocolate as she looked up at him and he had to make a concerted effort to keep his mouth shut. It just wouldn't do to start drooling, literally, over the new person in town.

  Before she could stop him, he dropped down onto his haunches in front of Jamal, his pale eyes warming as he grinned at the little boy, “Hey buddy. You don’t wanna do that, you know?”

  “Do what?” Jamal asked, hiccupping now as he warily stemmed his tears in the presence of the big stranger.

  “You don’t wanna be the boy known for carrying on like some sissy right on Main Street!” the man said, looking comically aghast. “I mean you do have to go to school you know? And you don’t want all your new friends to think you’re a cry-baby do you?”

  He was being patient and good-natured with Jamal and she wasn’t certain she liked it; she had come to expect animosity towards her and her kid. He’s not Hank, she reminded herself fiercely. Hank was her ex, and Jamal’s father, and to her way of thinking, he had been in a class by himself; and not in a good way.

  Jamal’s eyes widened in childish horror as he considered this and then his jaw jutted out in familiar stubborn lines as he muttered, “I don’t have any friends here.”

  “Maybe not yet, but as soon as you get to school, you’re gonna have the other kids linin’ up around the block for a chance to be your best bud.”

  “Why? I’m just a new kid,” Jamal said, eyeing him suspiciously.

  “Exactly. They’re gonna want to be able to claim a kinship with the new boy from the big, bad city of New York,” he supplied, ruffling Jamal’s hair.

  Goosebumps erupted onto Tiana’s hands immediately and without stopping to think about it, she snatched Jamal right out of the man’s light grasp and into her arms.

  “Get away from us,” she shouted, her hands shaking as she hastily put some distance between them, her hands protectively thrusting Jamal behind her. How had he known they were from New York, she wondered wildly. Had Hank sent this cowboy?

  “Why?” he asked calmly, rising to his feet.

  “Get the hell away from us. Go on, git!” she ordered wildly, her heart pounding in her chest.

  “We haven’t been introduced,” he said quietly with something that sounded suspiciously like amusement threading his voice even as he stepped back a few paces, his palms raised towards her in the universal sign of surrender.

  “I’m Christian Langfield,” he supplied, watching her carefully as though she was going to go nuts on him the next minute.

  Knowing he had a name should have lessened her alarm somewhat, but she was still clutching her son protectively when she asked, “How do you know where we’re from?”

  She saw the light dawn and watched amusement enter his eyes as he drawled, “It’s a small town; people talk. Ava Martins’ had us goin’ for weeks with tales of her new client from New York. Plus, your accent’s a dead giveaway.”

  “Ava Martins?” she asked ignoring the comment about her accent. She didn’t have an accent, thank you very much.

  “Your realtor?” he said, taking off his hat for the first time and raking one masculine hand through his hair, leaving it standing up in artful disarray around his head.

  “Oh,” she said flummoxed. She tried not to grind her teeth as she saw his eyes light up with definite amusement.

  “Yeah. It was nice meeting you Ms...?”

  “Walker. Tiana Walker,” she offered, reaching out and taking his outstretched arm. Electricity sizzled from the slight contact, shooting an unexpected frisson of awareness straight through her nerve endings. A frisson of awareness prickled the back of her neck and her nipples inexplicably tightened into hard little points under her t-shirt.

  “Now we’ve established I’m not a pedophile or some such thing, I’ll be on my way. See you around and welcome to Paradise.”

  Tiana watched him leave, her heart thumping wildly in her chest as she wistfully watched his lazy, unhurried, loose-hipped strides.

  “Mommy? Who’s that man?” Jamal asked, hero-worship clear in his piping little voice as he also stared after Christian.

  “Just someone Mommy’s gonna be avoiding from here on out,” she murmured. “Come on, Jamal,” she said as she wrapped a hand around her son and led him into their new home.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “Hey, new girl, shake a leg will ya? Them cowboys ain’t going to be sitting on their behinds all day waiting for you to catch up to the pace!” Tiny Tim boomed at Tiana across the crowded room of his restaurant, causing all heads to whip in her direction and making her wince at the unwanted attention.

  “Yeah mucking out stalls is thirsty work!” someone else yelled from among the crowd of diners and the entire room erupted in laughter at what was obviously a private joke that included everyone but her.

  Tiana tried not to roll her eyes as she swung the heavy tray of food and drinks high up into her hands and tried to roll her hips smartly as she had seen the other waitresses do. The heavy tray sagged against her, almost causing her to miss a step. She had been in Paradise, Texas for just one week and in that time, everyone had been friendly and eager to get to know her but all the attention just chafed because her goal had been to go subterranean and not to become the latest celebrity in town. She was beginning to really think small towns were not her cup of tea.

  Tiny Tim’s was just about the only restaurant in a two-mile radius and its owner was a hulking seven-foot tall giant with a neck as thick as a small tree trunk, with the disposition of a bear with a sore paw. Privately, Tiana had thought ‘Tiny Tim’ was just a nickname given his unusually large size, until she had met the man’s mother and realized it was his given name. It was a good job Tiny Tim’s was also as large as the owner or it would never house the influx of regulars it held at all times. The place was always packed and somehow, a chair seemed to materialize for every single person who walked in. She had been trying to figure out how they did that to no avail.

  She hefted her tray onto the table she was serving, keeping her eyes on the dishes as she forced a smile onto her face. She had never worked a waitressing job in her entire life even though she had always adored cooking.

  “Here are your orders,” she said softly as she expertly laid dishes and glasses in front of everyone.

  Startled silence at the table greeted the announcement and
she looked up for the first time and she was so embarrassed; she had just served Bloody Marys and beers to a crowd of pimply faced teenagers.

  “Oh my God, sorry. Sorry,” she mumbled as she hastily piled the dishes and glasses back onto the tray.

  A raised hand at the end of the room signaled the right table and as she gratefully turned in that direction, the front door opened to admit new customers. Her hold on the tray wobbled a little as a person appeared whom she had not seen since that first day; Christian Langfield!

  Sudden heat pulsed from across the room in shocking waves, sending Tiana’s breath out of her chest with a loud whoosh and before she could quite recover from her momentary distraction, the heavy tray crashed to the ground with a resounding thud.

  The ensuing silence was abrupt and complete, sweeping over the entire bar until you could have heard an ant sneeze.

  Tiny Tim broke the silence with a weary sigh and a resigned, “Come replace their orders, Cassie.”

  Cassandra, one of the numerous waitresses at Tiny Tim’s walked smartly to the counter and placed the order for a new tray while Joe deftly offered the customers at the affected table a six-pack, obviously on the house.

  Mortification roiled over Tiana in waves and she bit at her lips as she began to pile the broken glasses and bits of food back onto the tray.

  “That’s quite a mess you made,” a deep resonant voice observed above her and her embarrassment immediately morphed into anger and resentment.

  She glared up at him as she rose to her feet, her chin jutting out. “This is all your fault!” she spat in a low-toned voice that didn’t carry.

  She held onto to her anger, deliberately ignoring the restless and unwelcome stirring inside of her. It was a sensation as hot and ominous as the rumbling approach of a summer storm and she didn’t want to examine it too closely.

  He smirked before saying, “And how do you figure? All I did was walk in the door.”