The Cowboy Takes a Bride
Read The Cowboy Takes a Bride Online
Authors: Lori Wilde
The Cowboy Takes a Bride
Lori Wilde
To Carolyn Greene. A gifted storyteller.
Thank you so much for your friendship.
You’ll never know how much you mean to me.
Contents
An Excerpt from
The Cowboy and the Princess
Good sense comes from experience, and a lotta that comes from actin’ like a damn fool.
—Dutch Callahan
T
he naked cowboy in the gold-plated horse trough presented a conundrum.
In the purple-orange light of breaking dawn, Mariah Callahan snared her bottom lip between her teeth, curled her fingernails into her palms, and tried not to panic. It had been a long drive down from Chicago, and jacked up on espresso, she hadn’t slept in thirty-six hours. There was a very good chance she was hallucinating.
She reached to ratchet her glasses up higher on her nose for a better look, but then remembered she was wearing contact lenses. She wasn’t seeing things. He was for real. No figment of her fertile imagination.
Who was he?
Better question, what was she going to do about him?
His bare forearms, tanned and lean, angled from the edges of the trough; an empty bottle of Jose Cuervo Gold dangled from the fingertips of his right hand. Even in a relaxed pose, his muscular biceps were tightly coiled, making Mariah think of hard, driving piston engines.
Like his arms, his legs lay slung over each side of the trough. He wore expensive eelskin cowboy boots. She canted her head, studying his feet.
Size thirteen at least.
Hmm, was it true what they said about the size of a man’s feet?
She raised her palms to her heated cheeks, surprised to find she made herself blush.
Question number three. How had he come to be naked and still have his boots on?
Curiosity bested embarrassment as she tracked her gaze up the length of his honed, sinewy legs that were humorously pale in contrast to his tanned arms. No doubt, like most cowboys, he dressed in blue jeans ninety percent of the time.
She perched on tiptoes to peek over the edge of the horse trough. The murky green water hit him midthigh and camouflaged his other naked bits. Robbed of the view, she didn’t know if she was grateful or disappointed.
But nothing could hide that chest.
Washboard abs indeed. Rippled and flat. Not an ounce of fat. Pecs of Atlas.
A rough, jagged scar, gone silvery with age, ambled a staggered path from his left nipple down to his armpit, marring nature’s work of art. The scar lent him a wicked air.
Mariah gulped, as captivated as a cat in front of an aquarium.
A black Stetson lay cocked down over his face, hiding all his features, save for his strong, masculine jaw studded with at least a day’s worth of ebony beard. His eyes had to be as black as the Stetson and that stubble.
Mesmerized, she felt her body heat up in places she had no business heating up. She didn’t know who this man was, or how he’d gotten here, although she supposed that drunken ranch hands came with the territory. If she was going to be a rancher, she’d have to learn to deal with it.
A rancher? Her? Ha! Big cosmic joke and she was the punch line.
Less than twenty-four hours ago she had been standing in line at the downtown Chicago unemployment office—having just come from a job interview where once again, she had
not
gotten the job—her hands chafed from the cold October wind blowing off the lake, when she’d gotten word that Dutch had died and left her a horse ranch in Jubilee, Texas.
She didn’t call him Dad, because he hadn’t been much of a father. The last time she’d seen Dutch, he’d been hovering outside her ninth grade algebra class, battered Stetson in his hands, his sandy blond hair threaded through with gray, his blue eyes full of nervousness, remorse, and hope. Horse poop clung to his boots and he wore spurs—
yes, spurs
—against the polished maple hardwood floors of her Hyde Park high school. His Wrangler jeans had been stained and tattered, his legs bowed, his belt buckle big. He’d smelled of hay, leather, and horses.
The other students had stared, snickered, pointed.
“Where’s the rodeo?”
“Who’s the hick?”
“How’d the cowboy pass security?”
“He smells like horseshit.”
“Hillbilly freak.”
Dutch had stretched out a hand nicked with numerous scars, beseeching Mariah to come closer. “Flaxey? It’s me. Your pa.”
How many times had she fantasized that he would come back to her? Be a real dad? Love her the way she’d always loved him? But now that he was here, she didn’t want him. Not in her high school. Not among her friends. Not dressed like that.
Shame flushed through her. She’d walked right past Dutch as if she hadn’t seen him, and when he called her name, she started running in the opposite direction as fast as she could, schoolbooks clutched tight to her chest, heart pounding.
Not only was she ashamed of him, but also she was still mad because he had disappeared a week before her seventh birthday. He told Mariah’s mother, Cassie, he was going to see a man about a horse, and he just never came back.
They’d been living in Ruidoso, New Mexico, at the time, and Cassie waited three months for him to return while she cleaned rooms at the Holiday Inn and cried herself to sleep every night. When one of the wealthy Thoroughbred owners in town for a race offered Cassie a job as his family’s live-in housekeeper, her mother snatched the opportunity with desperate hands. They packed up their meager belongings, moved to Illinois, and didn’t look back.
Dutch never missed a child support payment and he phoned a few times over the years, usually when he was drunk and feeling maudlin; the conversation generally ended with Cassie hanging up on him. Once in a while he sent Mariah gifts at Christmas or for her birthday, but they were always inappropriate. One year, a lasso. The next year, a lucky horseshoe engraved with the words “Make Your Own Luck.” Another year, a pair of purple Justin boots, two sizes too small, as if he thought she stayed forever seven.
As she waited in line, Mariah’s cell phone rang playing Wagner’s Bridal Chorus. She fished it from her purse at the unemployment line and checked the caller ID.
Randolph Callahan.
A strange mix of anxiety, hostility, and gratitude lumped up in her throat. Why was Dutch calling her after all these years? If he was broke and looking for money, he’d certainly picked the wrong time to call. On the other hand, it would be good to hear his voice again.
The weary woman in line behind her, holding a runny-nosed kid cocked on her hip, nudged Mariah, and then pointed at the poster on the wall. It was a symbol of a cell phone with a heavy red line drawn through it.
“Hang on a minute,” Mariah said into the phone, and then smiled beseechingly to the woman, “This’ll just take a sec.”
The woman shook her head, pointed toward the door.
“Fine.” She sighed, never one to ruffle feathers, and got out of line.
A blast of cold air hit her in the face and sucked her lungs dry as she stepped outside. It was the first of October, but already cold as a Popsicle. She liked Chicago in the spring and summer, but the other six months of the year she could do without.
“Hello?” Head down, hand held over her other ear, she scuttled around the side of the building to escape the relentless wind.
No answer.
“Dutch?”
He must have hung up. Great. She’d gotten out of line for nothing. Huddling deeper into the warmth of her coat, she hit the call back button.
“Hello?” a man answered in a curt Texas accent. It didn’t sound like her father.
“Dutch?”
“Who’s this?” he asked contentiously.
“Who is this?” she echoed on the defensive.
“You called me.”
“I was calling my father.”
A hostile silence filled the airwaves between them.
“Mariah?” the man asked, an edge of uncertainty creeping in.
“You have the upper hand. You know my name, but I don’t know yours. Why are you answering Dutch’s cell phone?”
He hauled in a breath so heavy it sounded as if he was standing right beside her. “My name’s Joe Daniels.”
“Hello, Joe,” she said, completely devoid of warmth. “May I speak to Dutch please?”
“I wish—” His voice cracked. “I wish I could let you do that.”