Cowboy Seeks Bride
Copyright © 2013 by Carolyn Brown
Cover and internal design © 2013 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Blake Morrow
Cover photo by Jon Zychowski Photography
Models: Jillian Warmbir and Donovan Klein
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To one of my biggest fans,
Karen Brown Koch.
It’s pretty close to a historical, darlin’!
If it was an April Fools’ joke, it damn sure wasn’t funny.
If it wasn’t a joke, it was a disaster.
Those five big horses complete with cowboys didn’t look like a joke. Cattle bawling and milling around looked pretty damned real, too. And that little covered wagon, with a bald-headed man the size of a refrigerator sitting on the buckboard holding the reins for two horses in his hands, didn’t have a single funny thing about it, either.
Haley’s mouth went dry when she realized that the big dapple-gray horse was for her and that absolutely nothing in front of her was a practical joke. It was all as real as the smell of the horses and what they’d dropped on the ground.
She slung open the door of her little red sports car. The cowboys were all slack jawed, as if they’d never seen a woman before. Well, they’d best tie a rope around their chins and draw them back up because she was going to be their sidekick for the next thirty days. They could like it or hate it. It didn’t really matter to her. All she wanted to do was get the month over with and go home to civilization.
“You lose your way?” The cowboy on a big black horse looked down at her. His tone was icy and his deep green eyes even colder.
“Not if this is the O’Donnell horse ranch and you’re about to take off on the Chisholm Trail reenactment.” She looked up into the dark-haired cowboy’s green sexy eyes. “Who are you?” She planted her high heels on the ground and got out of the car.
“Dewar O’Donnell, and you are?”
Dammit! With a name like Dewar, she’d pictured a sixty-year-old man with a rim of graying hair circling an otherwise bald head, and a face wrinkled up like the earth after a hard summer, complete with a day’s growth of gray whiskers. He sure wasn’t supposed to look like Timothy Olyphant with Ben Bass’s eyes. It was going to be one hell of a month because she wasn’t about to get involved with a cowboy. Not even if she had the sudden urge to crawl right up on that horse and see if those eyes were as dreamy up close as they were from ten feet away.
“I’m H. B. Mckay,” she answered.
“Well, shit!” Dewar drawled.
“I know. Life’s a bitch, isn’t it? But I’ll be riding along this whole trip taking notes for the reality show to be filmed this summer,” she said. “Unless you want to tell me that this is a big silly joke and I can go home to Dallas now.”
“Can’t do that, ma’am. I was expecting you to be a man, but we’re ready to move this herd north so I guess you’d better saddle up. I was just about to call Carl Levy and ask where you were,” Dewar drawled.
“That’s the idea most people have. I guess that empty horse is for me and I don’t get to drive from point to point and stay in a hotel?”
“That’s the plan Carl made,” he answered.
She crossed her arms over her chest. “So we are ready to go right now?”
“Unless you want to change clothes,” he said.
“Hell, no! I’m wearing what I’ve got on, and if I get a single snag in this suit Daddy will be paying for a brand new one,” she said.
Dewar frowned. “Daddy?”
“Carl Levy is my father as well as my boss.”
***
Dewar had always had a liking for redheads, but not the kind that wore high-heeled shoes and business suits. And it seemed like here lately he’d dated every redhead in the whole northern part of Texas. Because both of his brothers and his two sisters had beat him to the altar, now everyone in the family thought they had a PhD in matchmaking and had made it their life mission to get him married off.
He’d rebelled at first, but then he admitted that he really wanted to have a wife and family so he’d started looking around on his own. He hadn’t joined one of those online dating services, but he had been dating a lot. Either he was too damn picky or else all the good ones were taken because very few women interested him enough for a second date.
H. B.’s eyes were a soft aqua, somewhere between blue and green like the still, deep waters of the ocean. And her lips full, the kind that begged for kisses. He felt a stirring down deep in his heart that he hadn’t felt before, but he didn’t know if it was anger or desire.
It really didn’t matter because the whole damn thing had to be a joke. It was too ridiculous to be real. Raylen had cooked it up and paid some woman to help him pull it off. He pulled his cell phone from his shirt pocket and quickly punched in the numbers to the office of the Dallas magazine tycoon.
“Carl Levy, please.”
Ten long seconds later, “Tell him this is Dewar O’Donnell and this is definitely an emergency.”
H. B. shook her head and took her saddlebags from her car. “You are wasting your time, cowboy.”
Dewar hooked a leg over the saddle horn and ignored her. “Carl, I’ve got a red-haired woman who says she’s H. B. McKay. You want to verify that?”
He frowned.
“You led me to believe that H. B. was a man, sir. A woman hasn’t got any business on a cattle drive.”
H. B. yelled over the noise of bawling cattle, snorting horses, and laughing men. “Tell him Momma is going to throw a Cajun fit, and if he’s smart he’ll walk in the house with roses in one hand and an apology on his lips.”
“Yes, sir, that was her,” Dewar said.
She held out her hand. “Give me that phone.”
Dewar leaned down and put it in her hand.
“You are going to pay for this, Daddy. I’m pissed off worse than I’ve ever been before in my life. I’m so pissed off that I’m not even going to talk to you about it and you can tell Joel that I know he’s behind this shit and I’ll get even with him when I get home.”
Everything went silent. Even the cows stopped bawling.
“Stop laughing. I’ll show you what I can do, but you are going to be sorry. Believe me, you are going to regret it.”
She handed the phone back to Dewar. “He says to tell you good luck. You ready?”
He put the phone back in his pocket and nodded toward the dapple-gray horse. “Soon as you tie down those bags and mount up. Apache is spirited, but he’s tough. You ever ridden?”
“Once or twice,” she answered.
***
She still couldn’t believe that she was going on a Chisholm Trail cattle run. There was no doubt that she’d aggravated her father big-time when she’d broken her engagement six months before, but she thought he’d gotten over it.
“Evidently I was dead wrong,” she mumbled.
Joel was a hardworking businessman in her father’s corporation, but when it came down to brass tacks, she hadn’t loved the man nearly as much as her father had liked him for a potential new son-in-law. When she called off the engagement, Carl Levy sure hadn’t been happy with her. Well, she damn sure wasn’t happy with him today, so maybe that made them even.
Even though she wasn’t marrying Joel, Carl had kept him as his right-hand man and she was sure that Joel was behind the whole idea of sending her off into the wilds on horseback, for God’s sake. Well, she’d prove to both her dad and her former fiancé that she could handle the job better than either of them.
Cowboys were wonderful subjects to film. Women loved their tight-fitting jeans, boots, belt buckles, and slow drawls. But they sure weren’t her cup of tea. No sir! Give her a man in a custom-fit three-piece suit any day of the week over a man who liked horses and cows better than five-star restaurants and Broadway plays. So that tall, dark cowboy with a black hat pulled down over his eyes had better lay low for at least a week. She might begin to cool off by then.
It was going to be a long month with no cell phone or even a laptop. She had to take notes by hand and give them to the cook who would send them by snail mail whenever he went for supplies.
Thank goodness she knew how to tie down a saddlebag, even if she did have to tiptoe to get the job done. Not a single one of those cowboys hopped down off their horses and offered to do it for her, proving that she was right in her choice of men. Cowboys were only gentlemen in movies and romance books. The real thing didn’t even exist. When they dropped their britches and kicked off their boots, they were just like all other men. And she didn’t have time for any of them.
She stuck her high-heeled shoe in the stirrup, grabbed the saddle horn, and gave a little bounce. The slick red bottom of her spike-heeled shoe slipped in the stirrup. The foot on the ground was standing in a fresh pile of horse manure. The momentum jerked her hand off the saddle horn and she was staring with wide open eyes at big fluffy white clouds somewhere past the horses, cowboys, and even the big pecan trees. Her chest felt like it was going to explode when she finally remembered to force air into her lungs, and the smell of fresh warm horse shit hit her nose.
She quickly pulled herself up into a sitting position. Her shoes were ruined. Her best power suit was a mess. And she hadn’t even gotten on that horse yet. Her father had better get busy fulfilling all the things on his bucket list.
She looked up to see a hand extended toward her and she took it. A different cowboy heaved her up to her feet. He looked somewhat like Dewar, but he wasn’t as tall, but then Dewar was sitting on the biggest horse she’d ever seen, so maybe he just looked like he was ten feet tall and bulletproof.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Guess you didn’t get a good hold on that stirrup with those shoes,” he said. “I’m Raylen. Who are you?”
“Had nothing to do with my ability to mount the horse. I stepped in horse shit! I’m H. B. McKay,” she said through clenched teeth.
Raylen chuckled and then roared. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “I can’t wait to tell Liz. Dewar, you are never living this one down.”
“Who is Liz?” Haley asked.
If Liz was Dewar’s wife or girlfriend, that just complicated matters even more. No woman would want her husband or boyfriend out in the wilds for a whole month with a strange woman.
Raylen didn’t answer but pointed at her. “
You
are the sissified fellow my brother has been bitchin’ about for two months? Now that is rich.”
“Sissified!” Haley cut her eyes up at Dewar and set her mouth in a hard line.
Dewar shrugged. “How can Carl Levy be your father and your name be McKay?”
“My name is Haley McKay Levy. I dropped the last name for professional reasons. No one needs to know that Carl is my father,” she said.
“What’s the
B
stand for?” he asked.
“Bitch! And don’t you forget it,” she told him.
“You sure you don’t want five minutes to change into some boots? You did bring something other than those shoes, I hope, or maybe you’re planning to ride all day in your bare feet?” Dewar drawled. “I’ll give you ten minutes to change. If you aren’t ready to ride by then, we’re leaving you behind and you can scoot right back to Daddy and tell him to send us a man who can do the job.”
“I’ve got boots and jeans,” she said from behind clenched teeth.
Did all men share DNA with jackasses, or was it just because it was April Fools’ Day?
Dewar pointed toward a barn.
She untied her saddlebags and stomped off in that direction. She hadn’t been on a horse since she was in college. She’d taken a riding class as an elective, but that had been eight years before. She hadn’t liked anything about horses then, not the way they smelled, brushing them, or the crap they left behind. According to her professor, it was therapeutic. According to Haley, it was a big waste of her time.
But in the next thirty days she’d prove to the whole damn bunch of them that she wasn’t a sissified anything. And when she got back home to Dallas, Joel had best pack his bags and catch the next flight back to Holly-damn-wood.
She’d carefully packed the saddlebags with the pair of Roper boots that she’d bought for the riding class, three pairs of jeans, four T-shirts, and clean underwear and socks plus a thick spiral notebook and several ballpoint pens. She’d gotten ready, but she still could hardly believe it was happening. She’d even prepared a speech giving her father credit for the biggest and best prank ever. Her mother had assured her every day the past week that it wasn’t real, and Haley had believed her right up until she saw all those cowboys, horses, and the wagon. Wait until her mother found out that her father sent her and not Joel.
“I really, really wouldn’t want to be Daddy tonight,” she mumbled.
She found an empty horse stall in the barn and kicked off her smelly shoes, removed her slacks, jacket, and blouse. She jerked on jeans and a T-shirt and pulled socks from inside her boots. She cussed under her breath the whole time she put them on and shoved her feet down into the Ropers. That blasted riding class turned out to be her biggest mistake in her college years. She’d gotten a B in it—the only one on her transcript. But she was glad she’d saved the boots.
“Hey, where are you?” a woman’s voice yelled.
“I’m back here in a stall,” Haley said.
The voice came closer. “
You
are the reality television person?”
Haley hung her clothes on the stall door. They were ruined for sure and those shoes had only been worn once. The smell of horse crap would never come out of the leather.
“Yes, I am.”
“Decent yet?”
Haley opened the stall door. “I hope I am.”
She faced a short dark-haired woman wearing faded jeans and a pearl-snap chambray work shirt and a denim jacket.
“And you are?” Haley asked.
“I’m Liz O’Donnell, Dewar’s sister-in-law, and you’d be the
fellow
who is going along to take notes for that reality show?” Liz laughed.
“Guess I surprised them all.” Haley smiled.
“Dewar still thinks it’s a joke that Raylen has pulled on him. I’d love to be a fly on the tree bark when he figures out this whole thing is real and my husband did not play an April Fools’ joke on him,” Liz said.
“I’d love to be a fly on the dining room table tonight when my momma figures out that Daddy sent me on this trip. There might not even be a Dallas after tonight,” Haley said.
Liz pulled off her denim jacket and handed it to Haley. “Put this on. I bet you didn’t even bring a jacket and it’s still cold in the mornings. You’ll need it.”
She slipped it on over the T-shirt. “You sure? I didn’t even think of a jacket.”
