Buck Cowboys

by Elle Thorpe

  Buck Cowboys

  Buck Cowboys #1

  Elle Thorpe

  www.ellethorpe.com

  Copyright © 2020 by Elle Thorpe

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  #1

  For my mum.

  * * *

  You’re the strongest woman I know, and I’m so proud to be your daughter.

  * * *

  So many of my female characters are inspired by you, qualities you possess, or things you’ve taught me.

  * * *

  Thank you for always having my back, even if you still can’t bring yourself to read my books. I swear, the sex scenes aren’t that bad! (Okay, they are.) Hahaha.

  * * *

  I love you.

  * * *

  Elle x

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek at Talk Dirty, Cowboy. Available now!

  Also by Elle Thorpe

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  1

  Hallie

  “Oh, hell no. Not today, Satan.” Digging the heels of my boots into the scuffed hardwood floor, I hauled ass to the doorway I’d just walked through. It didn’t matter that the band was playing my song and I was itching to shake off the dust on the dance floor. It didn’t matter that after working at the ranch all week, my throat was parched and craving an ice-cold beer.

  All that mattered was bright blue eyes I’d recognize anywhere, even through the dimly lit crowd having Friday night drinks at the Black Bull Bar.

  Summer caught me by the shoulders, halting my escape. “Whoa.” She pointed at her chest. “It’s Summer, not Satan. Though you’ve called me worse, I suppose.”

  I none-too-softly jabbed an elbow into her midsection. “Not you, dope. Him. It. Gah. Just no.” I swiveled for the door again, but I was cut off by the group of cowboys Summer and her dad were training, so I had no choice but to get swept along in the mass of large male bodies.

  Normally, I wouldn’t have minded. It wasn’t much of a hardship, being pressed between fit young guys, who had the rhythm and coordination, not to mention the balls to get on the back of a bull and try to ride him for eight seconds. No, normally, I’d be laughing and chatting up a storm. That was who I was. Hallie Ryan. Life of the party. One of the guys. Always up for a joke and a good time.

  But that was before I’d seen Nathaniel Mathews’ baby blues from beneath a battered baseball cap.

  And he’d noticed me, too.

  Summer squinted into the smoky bar, and I knew the moment she realized who I was talking about. Her fingers pressed into the skin of my arm, and she dragged me to a table in the corner of the room.

  It wasn’t far enough away.

  I could still see him, even though I tried my best not to look in his direction. His gaze still burned across my skin, following my every move. I sank down into the wooden chair, catching my balance as it wobbled on uneven legs.

  Summer peered at me, her big brown eyes filled with sympathy. “You didn’t know he was back in town?”

  That got my attention. “You did?”

  Summer shrugged. “Dad said he was visiting his sister before the next leg of his tour. Supposed to only be a few days. Was kind of hoping you wouldn’t hear about it.”

  I glared at her. “You’re fired as my best friend. I was not emotionally or mentally prepared for this. Like, fuck. He never comes home. Why now?”

  She lifted one shoulder, but then Austin pulled up the seat beside her, and she was too busy kissing her boyfriend hello to pay attention my woes. They launched into a discussion about their days, but unfortunately, listening to the drone of their ‘been together too long’ conversation was not at all a diversion from the man across the bar. I couldn’t help but sneak another glance at him.

  Aaaaand he was still staring at me. Shit. I was completely busted. Our gazes clashed, and that longtime spark I’d fought so hard to bury lit right the fuck up, just like it had four years ago.

  Nope. No way. Not doing that again.

  I got up and stalked to the bar, ordering a drink. But with the dire situation I’d found myself in, my resolve to have just one beer tonight disintegrated. At the last minute, I ordered an extra. I was going to need it to drown out the spark kindling into a goddamn wildfire with every passing minute. I dropped my head, staring down at the sticky countertop, and wished for the strength to get through this evening without saying, or worse, doing something I’d regret.

  I had a lot of regrets over Nate Mathews. I didn’t need to add to them.

  When solid, thick forearms rested on the bar top beside me, I didn’t even need to glance up to know who they belonged to. His scent hadn’t changed. He still smelled of pine trees and fresh air, with the added tang of motor oil. I knew if I looked over, I’d find a smudge of it somewhere. Maybe on his forehead or his shirt. If he wasn’t on the back of a bull, he was under a car or working on his motorcycle.

  At least, he had been. Before he left.

  I couldn’t face him. My cheeks were already hot, and I didn’t want to give Nate the satisfaction of making me blush.

  “Hey, Hallie.”

  I groaned internally. His voice had changed since the last time I’d seen him. If it were even possible, it had somehow become deeper. More gravelly. Sexier. Damn him.

  I tapped my fingers on the countertop, wishing Anthony would hurry the hell up with my beer. How long did it take to uncap a bottle and grab a few dollars from my hand?

  Long enough for Nate to corner me, apparently.

  He leaned in closer, and it was as if time crawled to a halt, his movements switching to slow motion. I saw what was coming before it happened. He was going to nudge me with his arm. Make contact with my skin. Touch me.

  In my head, I yelped and moved away quick enough that no contact could be made.

  In reality, my horny, traitorous body stood completely still and welcomed the touch of his arm against mine, even if it was covered by a T-shirt sleeve.

  I closed my eyes for the tiniest second as that wildfire consumed me.

  “Not gonna talk to me?” he asked casually, like it had only been yesterday that we’d been friends, not years ago. He had to be kidding if he thought I was going to talk to him after everything that had happened that night.

  Anthony put the two beers on the countertop, but before I could even pick them up and hightail it back to the relative safety of my table, Nate snatched one.

  “Hey!” I jerked in surprise and made the mistake of looking Nate in the face.

  I immediately wished I hadn’t. I took in every detail in the space of a second, my heart pounding. Dark blond stubble coated his strong jaw. The slight upturn of his lips, like he was pleased to see me. The hair that stuck out from beneath his tattered ball cap was longer than he’d worn it in high school, but the perfect length for grabbing if we were kissing…or doing other things.

  I swallowed hard
; shutting down that part of me that still wanted him. It was just my hormones. Nothing more. A physical reaction to a pretty face and a body made for sin.

  He took a swig of my beer, eyeing me over the top of it. “Dance with me?”

  Thank God I hadn’t taken a sip because I would have spit it all over him. On second thought, that might not have been the worst thing in the world. Watching sticky beer saliva spray all over his too-handsome face would have been momentarily satisfying. He would have deserved it. Beer stealer.

  Heartbreaker.

  “I’d rather dance with Two Toe Tom than you.”

  Two Toe Tom was the local drunk and about a hundred years old, regularly found slumped at the end of the bar with his graying beard soaking in a glass of half-drunk bourbon. He’d lost most of his toes to frostbite one winter, when he’d gotten drunk and passed out during a once-in-a-hundred-year snowstorm that had ripped through the usually mild-weathered town. Or so the story went anyway.

  Nate glanced in Tom’s direction and shrugged. “Don’t think he’s up for it.”

  “And neither am I.” I pushed away from the bar, with my solitary beer clutched firmly in my fingers.

  “You can’t go. I owe you a drink.”

  “You don’t owe me anything, Nate. Not a damn thing.” I spun on my heel and stalked back to Summer and Austin.

  They both stared at me with big eyes.

  “Brutal,” Austin whispered.

  Summer, awesome best friend that she was, jumped to my defense. “She has a right to be pissed.”

  “Thank you,” I said, putting a fist out for her to bump.

  She grinned at me as our knuckles touched. “But maybe you should talk to him? Clear the air? It’s been four years…”

  I pressed my fingers so hard into the bottle I was surprised it didn’t shatter. “It could be fifty years. It still wouldn’t be enough.”

  Summer nodded more firmly this time. “Right. Okay, if that’s how you want to play it, I’m completely on board and president of the We Hate Nate Club. I’ll get T-shirts made and clear a spot on my bumper for a sticker.”

  I couldn’t help but grin at that and relief tinged her eyes when she realized I wasn’t really mad. We’d been best friends for four years now. Ever since Nate had left, she’d been my right-hand woman. I could never stay angry at her for more than a minute or two. Normally we didn’t argue much at all, and this was definitely something I needed her to have my back on.

  Nate could waltz back into town if he wanted to. He could sit across the bar and look handsome as hell. But there was no way I was forgiving him. Not in a million years.

  2

  Nate

  Hallie fucking Ryan.

  I’d promised myself that when I came back home, I wouldn’t try to talk to her. Yet I’d dragged my sister, her husband, and their devil spawn daughter to the Black Bull, knowing Hallie would be there. Everybody was at the Black Bull on Friday nights. There was nowhere else to go in this tiny dead-end town. If you wanted a beer and a feed, you had no other options.

  I’d known she’d be here, and I’d come because I couldn’t stay away from her. It had been different when I was on tour. With millions of miles between us, it had been easier to lock the memories of Hallie up in a little box and tuck it into the back of mind. Even then, I never really forgot about her. Hallie was not the sort of woman any man could forget in a hurry. The other guys on tour gave me shit for not being interested in the women who threw themselves at us, but I just shook my head and said I had my reasons.

  All my reasons started with H and ended in ALLIE. But what could I do, working all the way on the other side of America? Or worse, Australia or Brazil. My job as a bull rider on the WBRA tour was a dream come true in every way. Except one. And I was staring right at her.

  Shep, my sister’s husband, chuckled as I slumped back into my seat and crossed my arms over my chest.

  “Shut up,” I griped at him.

  He held his hands up in mock surrender, but his shit-eating grin of amusement was impossible to miss. “Just never thought I’d see the day where you’d actually try your luck with Hallie Ryan again.”

  I paused with the beer bottle halfway to my lips. “What does that mean?”

  My sister, Jasmine, rolled her eyes, her little daughter bouncing up and down on her knees, cute as a button when it was her mama holding her. “After what you did to her on prom night? You’ve got nerves of steel.”

  I shot her a dirty look. “Does everybody in this backward-ass town know about that?”

  “Not everyone.”

  The laughter in Shep’s eyes was telling. “Just most.”

  I groaned and focused back on Jasmine. “You’re a woman. Scale of one to ten. How badly did I fuck up?”

  She cocked her head to one side, considering my question. “One being not at all, ten being colossal mistake that should have made world news?”

  I nodded. “Sure. Whatever.”

  “About a seventy.”

  “Seventy!”

  She shrugged. “You have no idea what it’s like to be a seventeen-year-old girl on prom night if you think you’re getting out of this one easily. And then to compound it, you left.”

  I scraped my hand through my hair. This was worse than I thought. I sipped at my beer again but then put it back on the table. Damn it. I knew coming back here and trying to fix things with Hallie wasn’t going to be simple, but I only had a week. I’d expected to have to grovel for a night, but then I thought we could have spent the rest of the week doing all the things we’d never gotten to do as teenagers.

  Apparently, I was wrong. Shit. Stealing her beer probably hadn’t helped any either. What the hell had I been thinking?

  “I asked her to dance. She said no. Should I ask again?”

  Jasmine gaped at me like I’d grown an extra head. “Have the bull shit—” She grimaced and shot an apologetic glance at her husband. “Sorry, I know we’re not swearing around Molly.”

  He gave her a tolerant smile.

  I rolled my eyes at that. They’d turned into such…parents since I’d been gone.

  Jasmine swiveled back to continue berating me. “What I was saying was, have the bull poo fumes gone to your brain? You don’t ask her to dance if she already said no. You’re jumping the gun entirely. You need to get her attention first. But from a distance. Give the woman some space.”

  I didn’t like the sound of space. Not when all I wanted to do was get closer to her. The last night I’d seen her she’d been in a fancy dress that swept the floor. She’d looked like some fairy-tale princess. But I liked the way she looked tonight better. With her long blonde hair swept up into a high ponytail, loose tendrils falling around her face. Her jeans molded to her ass and hips. And those lips…she was completely free of makeup, but those lips drew my eye from across the room. Full and pink, and all I could think about was how they’d feel beneath my own.

  Jasmine obviously knew women better than I did. And my lame attempt at winning Hallie over just now had resulted in her ignoring me, then dismissing me outright, so I obviously needed some help.

  Molly, my niece, rubbed at her eyes with her fists, and let out a whine of complaint.

  Jasmine held her out to me.

  I pushed my chair backward. “Whoa, what are you doing? You know that kid hates me.”

  “She doesn’t hate you. She just doesn’t know you. Take your niece.”

  “But why?” I liked babies. At least I thought I did. But I’d had absolutely nothing to do with them. I’d held Molly a few times in the last couple of days since I’d come back to stay with my sister, but it hadn’t gone down well. She’d taken one look at me and held her chubby arms out for one of her parents to rescue her. A few times that had been accompanied by wailing. Right now, she appeared ready to launch into a full-scale tantrum at the prospect of me taking her.

  “Do you want to win Hallie over or not? You know what women love?” She thrust Molly into my arms, forcing me
to cradle her small body to my chest or drop her.

  “They love a man with a baby. If Hallie won’t dance with you, go dance with your niece. It’ll work. Guarantee it.”

  I shot a glance at the mostly empty dance floor, then shook my head at my sister. “I’m not doing that!”

  She shrugged and held a hand out to her husband. “Fine. But Molly is exhausted, and the quickest way to get her to sleep is to get up and sway. We’re going to dance, so you’re on your own, little brother.”

  I looked to Shep in dismay, but he just winked at me and wrapped an arm around his wife. The two of them threaded their way through the tables and found themselves a spot in the middle of the dance floor. I wrinkled my nose at the two of them. Shep gazed down at Jasmine like she was the sun and the moon.

  It was sickening how in love they were. But I didn’t miss the pang of jealousy that echoed around my chest either. It only reminded me how far away I was from having something like that, and how different my life might have been if I’d stayed here after prom, instead of running away to ride bulls.

  Molly squawked, and I patted her on the back awkwardly. “Shh, baby girl. Go to sleep.”

  Molly wasn’t having any of it. She fidgeted and flailed in my arms, throwing herself around, her tired cries growing louder.

  I couldn’t blame Jasmine for wanting a moment with her husband. I was her only family, and Shep’s parents lived in Australia. I knew the two of them hadn’t had a minute alone since Molly’s arrival eight months ago. That was on me because I never came home.