“Deal!” He stood from the sofa, lifting her at the same time.
“So you think this can work?” she asked.
His gaze was serious, but his heart was full of light and joy, like a glass filled with sparkling wine. “It’s going to work because I love you, Stella Steadman. And I love our baby. The rest is just details. I know that now, and I’ll never forget it as long as I live.”
“I love you, too. Are you going take me to bed already?”
He strode to the stairs, and she wrapped her arms around his neck.
“One more thing,” he told her as he carried her up the long flight.
She kissed the side of his neck and murmured, “Hmm?”
“I’m going to ask you to marry me one of these days when we’re settled.”
She took his earlobe between her teeth. It felt so good, he nearly dropped her.
“And I’m going to say yes,” she whispered. “Yes. Yes. Yes.”
Epilogue
Stella balanced little George Steadman Beckett on one hip as she leaned down and showed the two girls from Gopher Springs High School how far apart to space the seeds they were planting. Her acreage devoted to Crops for Kids was about to become a successful lima bean field, and the proceeds from the sales would go to the nonprofit to fund more projects in the future.
Her phone buzzed with an email as she headed toward the truck where she had a snack for George, and she pulled it out of her back pocket to look. It was from her first subconsultant, a bright and enthusiastic young woman with a degree in sustainable agriculture from Texas A & M who was now in Peru, working to help a village learn how to prevent coffee leaf rust in their crops. Stella quickly moved the email to her work inbox, then tossed the phone on the seat of her new SUV before setting George in his car seat and getting out the goldfish crackers.
It had taken her a while, but she’d come to understand why her grandfather had put that stipulation in his will. In the time they’d been together, she’s seen how headstrong and determined Scout could be when he’d set his mind to something. So much so, it was often hard for him to see alternatives but he’d learned to compromise. They both had. While Stella had thought she’d been following her heart with her career, she’d come to realize that she’d been running from it. No, everything she needed to make her complete was right here in Gopher Springs.
She looked up to see Scout striding across the field, hat in hand, his long legs eating up the dark furrowed earth. The eyes of both schoolgirls and the two Crops for Kids staffers followed him as he made his way across the field, and Stella couldn’t blame them a bit. She was one lucky cowgirl.
“Hi, there,” he said with a grin as he kissed her on the cheek before leaning in through the open car door and kissing George as well. The baby giggled and waved his arms at his daddy.
“I’ll get you out of there in just a minute, big guy. I need to talk to your momma real quick, though.”
“What brings you out here?” Stella asked with a smile as big as the Texas sky.
“I wanted to see my girl, and I needed to ask you something.”
“Okay. Ask away.”
Suddenly, Scout dropped to one knee on the freshly turned earth. Stella’s hand flew to her mouth as he pulled a ring box out of his shirt pocket.
“Stella Steadman,” he said with a smile. “I think it’s more than high time I follow through on my promise from all those months ago. You are without a doubt the smartest, most beautiful woman I’ve ever known. You’re an incredible mother, a savvy businesswoman, and a generous spirit. I love you something crazy, and I can’t think of anything I’d rather do in this life than walk through it with you by my side.” He opened the box to reveal a beautiful cushion cut diamond solitaire. “Will you please marry me?”
Stella leaned over and kissed him long and hard. When she pulled away, she said one word, “Yes.”
He looked her in the eyes, love as clear as day in every nuance of his face. “When they first read that will of your granddad’s, I thought he’d betrayed me after all those years.”
“But now?” she asked as if she already knew the answer.
“Now I know he was just looking out for me after he was gone.”
“Amen,” Stella said. Then she kissed him again under the big Texas sky.
End of Wrangling His Pregnant Cowgirl
Beckett Brothers Book Three
Wrangling His Best Friend’s Sister, July 18 2019
Wrangling His Sexy Assistant, July 25 2019
Wrangling His Pregnant Cowgirl, August 1 2019
Want to saddle up with another cowboy? Please keep reading for a preview from Tempting the Rancher.
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BLURB
Texas rancher Nathaniel Meier always puts his responsibilities first. With his father dead, his brothers away, and his mother off “finding herself,” it’s Nat who runs their sprawling ranch. But with cattle to sell and the bank breathing down his neck, he needs all the help he can get, even when that help comes from the last person he ever expected to see again—his childhood sweetheart January Rose.
Free-spirited January always dreamed of traveling the world. The moment she turned eighteen, she left Close Call, Texas behind and barely looked back. So now that she’s home, she intends to stay only long enough to earn some cash and get back on the road. But when she comes face to face with Nat Meier, she quickly realizes the boy she left behind is now all man.
Even for a nomad like January, wanderlust sometimes gets lonely, and Nat is the one person who’s called to her, even after a decade apart. But for a man ruled by responsibility and a woman whose suitcase is her home, the future is uncertain. And the closer they get, the more Nat worries he’s going to get burned…again.
Grab your copy of
Tempting The Rancher here.
* * *
EXCERPT
Chapter One
October in Texas was damned near perfection. Gone was the scorching heat that anchors a pair of jeans to the thighs like a wet straightjacket, hell-bent on dropping anyone not in air conditioning straight to the devil’s back kitchen. Sporadic, deep reds on the sweet gum trees teased the landscape with impending change. Even the cow pies took on the scent of money.
Selling season in the cattle business had a fragrance all its own, and Nathaniel Meier wasn’t above pulling in a potent lungful of the end.
The end. God in heaven, he fucking hoped not.
Nat’s least favorite part of the ranch was the south acreage. Eighteen wheelers barreled down the adjacent two-lane county road to avoid construction fifty miles and another world away, scattering everything from mockingbirds to piss-filled sports drink bottles. The south acreage’s only saving grace was the perfect alignment of the squeeze chutes and ramps so as not to cast morning shadows or blinding sun—two factors that could make loading hundreds of cows onto trailers feel like a fire-ant enema.
His general apathy toward anything beyond Close Call, Texas, was a side effect of being hyper-attuned to the ranch, cradle to loan, as his grandfather had always said. Four generations saw fit to ensure the Meier legacy continued. For now, the bu
rden fell solely on his sunbaked shoulders.
Nat set to work applying fresh rubber stops to the metal gates so the banging wouldn’t spook the animals. Earbuds in place, he ignored the world beyond the periphery fence. The sidewinding melody of a steel guitar calmed his pre-auction nerves—and was why he failed to notice the SUV tires eating up his good grazing grass until they had damned near galloped up his ass.
Rubber stops tumbled out of his hand. His pulse played catch-up, the way it did when he accidentally stepped into a steer’s flight zone. Spine straightened, he slow-crawled a gaze from the pristine tires to the glossy black rims of a late-model Cadillac, as out of place on a ranch as a drag queen singing show tunes would be.
Well, shit.
Austin Pickford exited his trust-fund vehicle. The banker stood in place as if he could spare no more than a minute, as if the pasture were a mine field. Nat supposed to the guy’s imported alligator loafers, the pasture was Cambodia.
Nat swiped the adhesive bumpers out of the grass and resumed circling the curved race. “You visit all your borrowers this often, or can I tell my mother we’re officially courting?”
“Nice to know the impending sale hasn’t affected your juvenile sense of humor.”
“Juvenile? Keep flattering me like that, and we’ll be married by nightfall.” Nat shot him a wink for good measure.
Austin rolled his eyes and jingled coins in his suit pocket.
Nat and Austin had a history straight out of rural Shakespeare—same graduating class, same primal ambition, the occasional quarrel between well-established families, a general distaste disguised as friendship. Austin went away to a private university to study finance. Nat attended state school to try for an ag degree. But Nat couldn’t escape the truth that the Meier family couldn’t do what they did best without the generations-old backing of Pickfords. Close Call Community Trust was the only lender left in town. Banks close to the city didn’t understand the financial cycle of ranching past how much a porterhouse at some country club in Houston set them back. Nat and Austin had history. Around here, history counted for something.
“To what do I owe this honor?” Nat called over his shoulder. As in, spit it out and be on your way.
“Came out to check on you. See if you needed anything.”
Liar. The guy was probably measuring for drapes at the main house before he drove out here. Every time Nat thought about the collateral he’d put up last winter to expand his operation, his stomach threatened to empty, full or not.
“Unless you have a new weigh scale in that fancy trunk of yours, I’m good.”
“’Fraid I can’t help you there.” Austin took a few minefield steps away from the safety of his luxury car. His silk tie lifted and twisted on the stiff breeze. “What I can do is tell you what I’m hearing.”
Nat slowed his gait. Good-old-boy gossip came in two forms: bet-the-farm accurate and grizzled, half-baked accurate—usually while buzzed on Shiner at the roadhouse’s Thursday polka night. Either way, previous generations had hundreds of years of droughts and windfalls between them. The year Nat lost his grandfather’s prized truck was the year Nat learned to pay attention to such things.
“Word is, the market is softer than anticipated. Exports are down. More consumers going to plant-based proteins.”
“All things beyond my control.” Nat shook steel rails as he circled the race. A loose belly pipe snagged his progress. He bent down to inspect the fastening bolts. “We’re selling at the right time. First major auction before all the spring-born calves land on the market. Everything before that is speculation. Nothing more.”
“That isn’t all, Meier. Vet’s been out here daily. That happens, people start to think you’ve got a problem.”
Nat’s breathing stalled. He tucked his chin to his collar, mostly so his hat brim blocked Austin, the Cadillac, rigs barreling past, the problems back at ground zero where pink eye had spread to four heifers before they caught it and isolated them. Bet-the-farm accurate, that gossip. With pliers from his tool belt, he tightened the offending bolt. And his voice.
“Only problem I have is getting these ramps ready for transport.” As in, be on your way already.
“Hope you’re right. For your sake.”
Nat’s knuckles whitened around the pliers. He thought of a thousand things he wanted to say but only one his upbringing allowed him to say. His dry tongue felt thick and leaden. “Thanks for stopping by—”
“What the hell?”
Austin’s tone was equal parts delight and alarm—enough of a contrast that Nat glanced up. Idling on the highway’s shoulder was a gigantic plastic shrimp on wheels, its antennae snapping on a robust gale. Two cartoon shrimps shaped into a heart with the words “Bae Shrimp” adorned the food truck’s pink paint job.
Before Nat could echo Austin’s sentiment, a passenger exited the cab and waved to the bearded driver. At a distance, the bare-legged and sandaled figure—undoubtedly feminine—looked like a traveling Sherpa: massive backpack, woven poncho of some sort with brightly colored fringe, stained and wrinkled brown hat that looked as if it had been fished out of a shrimp boat rudder in Galveston. But there was something familiar—the energetic way her tan legs slipped through the tall grass like a native species, the confident, fluid strides despite the heavy load, the slight freedom in her hip rotation. It wasn’t until the stranger removed her hat that Nat realized she wasn’t a stranger at all.
Well, shit.
Austin spoke first. “Isn’t that—?”
“January?” Uttering her name felt like a decade-old trip wire set off in Nat’s chest. One false move? Boom. “Yeah.”
Two airhorn blasts penetrated the slow acceleration of the truck’s diesel engine. The crustacean drifted down the road.
January Rose was damned near perfection. Named for the month of her conception—the only stretch when the Texas heat subsided long enough for two people to want to generate heat of their own. Or so the story went. She was magnificent trouble, the kind of charmer that could lead a devout man straight into the devil’s back pocket and leave him wanting more. Ten years ago, Nat had entered her flight zone and she had left his heart stampeded. The only thing worse than that kind of pain was ten years plus one day for her to do it all over again.
Grab your copy of
Tempting The Rancher here.
Wrangling His Pregnant Cowgirl: Beckett Brothers Book Three Page 11