How to Catch a Cowboy

by Tia Souders

  How To Catch a Cowboy

  Cedar Falls

  Tia Souders

  Published by Cherry Valley Press, 2020.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  HOW TO CATCH A COWBOY

  First edition. April 22, 2020.

  Copyright © 2020 Tia Souders.

  Written by Tia Souders.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  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

  EPILOGUE

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  CHAPTER 1

  Danielle Roberts prided herself on being a good wife. At thirty, she’d been married for only three years. But in that time, she made every effort to create the perfect life for her and her husband, Neil. When they first got married, she left her job at the salon to focus on creating a home for them. She studied interior design until she managed a near professional look to their brownstone. She regularly hosted dinner parties for her husband’s colleagues and their friends, single handedly curating menus, while creating gorgeous tablescapes that would impress even the likes of Martha Stewart.

  When it was time for her to return to the workforce, she took an open secretarial position at Neil’s law firm. She’d been at Lee & Lewis Law Firm for nearly two years and loved the extra time she got with him, even if it was mostly their morning and evening commute, along with the occasional lunch. They even worked well as a team, and when Neil was stressed at work with a big case, she made every effort to accommodate him with his favorite meal or a massage or a fancy cocktail to help him relax.

  And she liked to think because of her efforts, things were good. For the most part.

  They had a solid foundation, a marriage most of her friends envied, and a beautiful life together. Sure, she wanted kids, sooner rather than later, but it was only a matter of time before Neil was ready too.

  She juggled her briefcase, umbrella, and the bag of takeout from Neil’s favorite deli down the road to unlock the door. Managing not to drop anything, she pushed inside and headed straight to the kitchen, then plunked everything down on the large island.

  The scent of chicken noodle soup wafted up to her nose as she removed it from the bag. Fat noodles swam in a rich stock with chunks of chicken, carrots, and celery. It looked delicious, and it was just the thing to soothe Neil’s sore throat and ease his cough. After all, it was rare for him to leave work early, even rarer for him to fall ill in the first place. She used to joke he had the immune system of an elephant. While she got sick as a dog, he always managed to remain unscathed.

  She shook off her jacket and laid it over one of the stools, then yanked her long, dark hair into a ponytail before she turned and took a bowl out of one of the cabinets. Unsure of whether Neil would be up for joining her in the dining room or if he’d want dinner in bed, she set the bowl, along with a spoon on a tray, then set them aside.

  “Neil?” she called as she headed for the bedroom.

  She paused outside their door, noticing for the first time, his slacks, dress shirt, and tie scattered in the hallway.

  Frowning, she picked them up. Neil was typically neat and tidy. It was unlike him to just leave them lying around, which meant he must be seriously sick if he’d just thrown them there.

  Inside, she heard the muffled sound of his voice. She hoped she hadn’t woken him.

  Maybe after dinner, they’d wrap up in a soft blanket, cuddle on the couch, and watch a movie. It felt like forever since they’d done that, and just the thought brought a smile to her face.

  She swung the door open, his clothes tucked in her arms, as the deep rumbled of his voice continued.

  “What was that?” She glanced up. “I didn’t hear . . .” The words died on her lips as she froze.

  Time stopped as her brain scrambled to catch up. But she couldn’t compute what she was seeing.

  Neil stood in front of her wearing nothing but boxer briefs, while her best friend, Clara, clutched a dress to her nearly nude form.

  Danny’s mouth opened, but the only sound from her lips was the wheezing of air from deep within her lungs.

  She was entirely numb. Her mouth full of sand, and her tongue weighed down by the weight of what she was seeing.

  She blinked, her eyes still glued to Clara who’d gone pale, her skin almost as light as her platinum locks.

  “Danny,” Neil stepped forward and reached out, “you weren’t supposed to be home until six.”

  Her head jerked back to Neil, whose brow creased in frustration, his expression bordering on annoyance. “W-what?” she stammered.

  “I said, you weren’t supposed to be home yet.” He paused, then added, “I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to find out like this.”

  She nodded, averting her gaze, unable to look at him any longer. “I came home early to check on you and to bring you soup.” Her voice was robotic, even to her own ears, but it was the only thing she could think of to say.

  “Clara was just leaving,” Neil said, placing a hand on her bare shoulder and nudging her toward the door.

  Danny should be raging at them, screaming out in pain and anger and indignation as Clara slipped past her and out the door. But all she could do was focus on the image of her husband’s hand on Clara’s skin. The one she knew as well as her own. The same hand that caressed her and held her as they made love. The same hand that slid a ring on her finger as they said vows was the one to skim over another woman’s body, touching her in intimate places.

  Danny backed out the door, stammering before she glanced down and realized she still held his clothes, the ones Clara no doubt had helped to remove. Dropping them to the floor like a bed of coiled snakes, she fled from the room.

  It was almost too surreal to comprehend. Neil cheating. With her best friend, nonetheless.

  She rushed out into the kitchen, busying herself with the soup, needing something to do with her hands for fear they might clutch at her chest, poking and prodding and clawing until she ripped her own heart out.

  She hastily spooned it into bowls when Neil appeared across from her at the island. “Danny, say something.”

  She sloshed a spoonful of noodles into the bowl, spilling it as she went, but she didn’t care. She couldn’t care. Because Neil was cheating on her, and that’s all that mattered.

  Cheating on her.

  Cheating on her.

  The thought replayed in her head on repeat until she managed to rasp, “How long?”

  Because she needed to know. Maybe if this was the first time, a freak thing, a lapse in judgment, one bad decision, she could find a way to forgive him and move on. Just maybe . . .

  “A while now. Over a year?” he said like a question, which only made her want to scream at him. Was it a year or not? How can you not know?

  Instead, she nodded, biting her lower lip until she thought it might bleed. It was all she could do to hold herself together, because a bleeding lip was better than the pain of a breaking heart, and the agony in hers was threatening to overcome her.

  Finally, she lifted her head and met his eyes, and what she saw nearly broke her because she didn’t know this man. The man that could stand before her so calm and cool after she discovered his infidelity. The man that
wasn’t breaking down or pleading for forgiveness, but instead seemed to be waiting for her to react so he could mitigate whatever damage he had done. Ever the lawyer.

  Well, she wouldn’t keep him waiting. And she wouldn’t yell or scream or cry. At least not right now. Not in front of him. If he could treat this encounter like an emotionless transaction, so could she.

  She needed him out. Now.

  “I want you to leave,” she said.

  “This is my place, too.” He pushed his shoulders back like he could afford to be indignant.

  On second thought . . .

  Danny swallowed the bile rising in the back of her throat. “Fine. I’ll leave then.”

  She moved around him and snatched her coat off the stool and pocketed her keys, then headed for the door before she thought better of it and doubled back around, grabbing the remnants of the soup takeout and placing it back in the bag.

  He didn’t deserve her soup.

  “Now, why don’t we just calm down and talk about this,” he said, stepping in her way.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, jutting her chin out, standing her ground. She wasn’t a particularly confrontational person. Even now, the inclination was to avoid a scene, but she would be no one’s doormat.

  “I want a divorce.” The words slipped past her lips more smoothly than she would’ve ever thought possible.

  “Let’s not be rash. You know there was always a connection between Clara and I. In fact, for a while, I thought for certain you knew and were just turning a blind eye.”

  The words hit her like a slap. Turning a blind eye?

  She felt the sting of tears pricking the back of her eyes. Any second, she’d lose it, and she wanted to be far from his sight when she did.

  She pushed around him and reached for the door, but not before Neil placed one hand against it, blocking her escape.

  “You can’t just leave,” he said. “Everything you have, we have together. This place, your job, our friends. If you leave, you’ll have nothing. Come on,” he said, hands out as if talking to a toddler. “Let’s face it, you’ll never make it on your own after me.”

  Boiling rage, hot like lava, burst through her bones, chasing the tears away as she turned on him and jabbed a finger into his chest.

  Jab. “Oh, yeah?”

  Jab. “You just watch me,” she said between clenched teeth with one final jab to his ribs, and then she wrenched the door open and left.

  IT WAS OFFICIAL. AS of today, a little more than ninety days after she walked in on her husband and her best friend, Danielle Roberts was a divorcee.

  She wished it didn’t still hurt.

  Danny sat outside the quaint coffee shop, staring out at the bustling city streets of Pittsburgh. Commuters zipped past, people rushed by on the sidewalk, going to and from work, while others buzzed in and out of shops, enjoying coffee or a little lunch on this gorgeous spring day. She was surrounded by people, yet she felt utterly alone.

  In the days and weeks that passed, her sadness and pain ebbed and flowed, transforming to a dull ache, leaving behind a toxic kind of desperation, when all she wished for was anger.

  Anger she could handle. Anger would be easier to bear than this empty pit inside.

  But as it turned out, Neil had been right. She had nothing without him. No husband, no job, no friends. She lasted all of a week at the law firm before she quit in a shameful haze of tears, unable to stand seeing Neil’s face every day, hearing his voice, and wondering how many other women there had been before Clara.

  Speaking of Clara, though she tried to reach out to make amends, Danny ignored her calls. She had nothing to say to her. And though her other friends meant well, they were all wives of Neil’s friends or coworkers and “didn’t want to take sides,” which basically meant they were taking his. In the end, their silence spoke volumes, and they kept their distance. With very little family to speak of, that left Danny empty-handed and on her own.

  Lord, help me, she thought. Danny lifted the paper cup to her lips and took a sip of her tea. It was hot and sweet, just how she liked it, yet she barely tasted it as she swallowed it down.

  In an effort to ground herself back to the present, she scanned her surroundings once more. Beside her, two women sat together, presumably mother and daughter. The resemblance was uncanny, save for the twenty-plus years between them. Danny tried not to be obvious as she watched the mother push a folder across the table toward her teenage daughter.

  “So these were the places I was thinking for vacation this year. Look through them and let me know what you think,” the mom said.

  With a sigh, the girl opened the folder and rifled through the brochures with a bored expression. “No. No. No . . .” she said, in a monotone voice, flipping through them. Then she scrunched her face and asked, “What about the beach? Aren’t there any beaches in here?”

  Her mother’s smile fell. “Well, I thought it might be nice to do something different this year.”

  “Whatever.” The girl grimaced, then closed the folder, causing one of the pamphlets to flutter to the ground at her feet.

  Danny glanced away, clenching her cup harder than necessary as a surge of anger pricked at her composure. She wanted to go to the girl and shake her. To tell her to appreciate her mother and be grateful to have her in her life. Danny hadn’t been much older when she lost her own mother, and she missed her desperately. She’d give anything to have her back, to have her support right now, her shoulder to cry on. Though Danny’s father was still alive, he wasn’t a particularly warm person, and they’d never been close. He certainly wasn’t a confidant or someone she could lean on.

  A few minutes later, the pair left their seats, with the mother muttering, “Okay, then. That’s fine. We can go to the beach.”

  Danny waited until they were gone and then glanced at the spot on the ground where the pamphlet lay. Her fingers itched to grab it, to see what vacation had been so awful to earn such disdain from a teenager.

  She pursed her lips, dismissing it. But the nagging feeling persisted, so much so, it felt like someone tugging on her sleeve, so she got up before anyone else could take the seat and snatched the paper from underneath the table, then sat back down.

  Montana Wilds was written in large, bold script, followed by the slogan, Come experience the great outdoors in the Big Sky Country, and we promise it’ll be The Last Best Place you travel.

  “Montana Wilds,” she murmured to herself, turning it over.

  From the looks of it, it was a dude ranch in Montana, just thirty miles outside Flathead Lake. Below was a picture of a setting sun over a mountain peak. The sky was awash in an array of colors, glistening off the water, along with the description:

  Need to get away? Want a reprieve from your busy life? Or maybe you need to do some soul searching? Experience all the beauty Montana has to offer at this gorgeous ranch resort. Connect with nature in the peace and serenity of the rolling mountains and forget your woes in the small town of Cedar Falls, all while enjoying the luxury of Montana Wilds.

  A quick flip through the pamphlet revealed a plethora of activities, including horseback riding, fishing, kayaking, hiking, exploring, and sleeping under the stars.

  “Forget your woes, huh? I wish,” Danny muttered, setting it down.

  If only it were that easy.

  With a wistful sigh, she picked her cup back up and brought it to her lips, then paused as an idea unfolded.

  The brochure mentioned long-term and temporary stays. What if . . .

  “No.” She scoffed at herself for being silly. For even considering . . .

  She took a sip of her tea, then tapped the bottom of her paper cup on the table before she snatched the brochure back up and eyed it warily.

  What did she have to lose?

  She has nothing here. No one to stay for. No job. No life.

  Everything she had was gone. Everywhere she turned, she was reminded of Neil, haunted by the sting of his betrayal.
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  But what if she could start over? Or at the very least escape and . . . how did the pamphlet say it? Forget her woes.

  A bubble of excitement burst in her chest. Maybe she was meant to find this. Maybe she was in the right place at the right time. Her mother always believed in signs, that there were no coincidences in life. Danny wasn’t so sure. But she couldn’t help but feel like finding this brochure was kismet. Like that subtle tug on her sleeve was more than just nosiness or curiosity.

  She bit her lip and glanced at the shining images of the mountains once more.

  For the first time in a long time, she felt the wings of hope spreading inside her like a morning dove.

  After she left Neil, she promised herself she would rebuild her life and thrive, if not for her own sake, then just to spite him. She needed to move on. To heal. But moping around in the city would do nothing for her.

  So she’d claim her fresh start, grab it by the horns, and take it by force. Even if she had to drain her savings to do it.

  She grinned as she tucked the pamphlet into her purse.

  She was going to Montana Wilds.

  CHAPTER 2

  Rhett guided the geldings back into their stalls where they’d stay for a couple hours before he let them back out to pasture for the night.

  He removed their halters, followed by their saddles, then hung them up in the tack room with the others. Once he finished, he made his rounds through the stables, scooping grain and throwing hay to the horses before he dusted his hands off on his jeans and tipped the wide brim of his black hat toward a group of ranch guests that arrived that morning. They were likely checking out the animals, seeing if they wanted a ride. It’s one of the reasons he rotated them in and out of the stables. This way, guests had the opportunity to see them up close and personal, to get comfortable with them, as opposed to watching them graze from afar. After all, a lot of his guests came from the city, and oftentimes, the thought of riding one of these gentle giants seemed daunting.