Hard Loving Cowboy--Includes a bonus novella
Page 1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2019 by A.J. Pine
Preview of My One and Only Cowboy copyright © 2019 by A.J. Pine
Rocky Mountain Cowboy copyright © 2018 by Sara Richardson
Cover design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes
Cover copyright © 2019 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
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First edition: March 2019
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ISBNs: 978-1-5387-2711-9 (mass market), 978-1-5387-2713-3 (ebook)
E3-20190207-DA-NF
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
A preview of “My One and Only Cowboy”
About the Author
Also by A.J. Pine
Praise for A.J. Pine
ROCKY MOUNTAIN COWBOY
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Acknowledgments
A Preview of “True-Blue Cowboy”
About the Author
Looking for more cowboys?
Prologue
New Year’s Eve
Walker swiped his forearm across his face, and his sleeve came away bloody. He guessed his nose was broken, but he was numb to the pain.
“What the hell?” he said. He coughed as blood ran down the back of his throat. That was when he realized he was lying down. He made a move to get up.
“Don’t!” someone shouted. It was a woman’s voice. “Unless you want a palm full of glass. You’re paying for that window, by the way.”
Window?
He was about to start asking questions again when he heard the wail of a siren. Seconds later, his vision blurred with swirls of red and blue.
A car door slammed, and boots crunched in the gravel. Or maybe that was the glass he was sprawled on.
“Gimme your hand, Everett,” a gruff, male voice said. And because Walker wanted to get the hell out of whatever situation he was in, he gripped the outstretched palm and let whoever was standing above him pull him to his feet.
Walker’s vision didn’t clear, even when the lights were out of his eyes. But he could make out the uniform. He could tell the vehicle was a black SUV and not a white ambulance, which only meant one thing.
“Evening, Sheriff.” Walker stumbled, but someone caught him by the elbow.
“Hell, Cash. This guy’s a walking miracle. No embedded glass. Looks like he fell just right ’cause there’s not a scratch on him…other than what looks like a broken nose.” The voice belonged to a woman, but she was still standing behind him.
Whoever she was, while she’d been nice enough to keep him from hitting pavement again, she was now pushing him toward a bench. With his arm pinned behind his back.
“Walker Everett, you’re under arrest for disorderly conduct, public intoxication, and likely vandalism if Nora decides she’s had enough of your antics. You want to take it from here, Sheriff?” the female officer asked.
Walker sat and felt cool steel clamp around one wrist and then the other.
“Christ,” Sheriff Hawkins hissed as he squatted, the two men now eye to eye. “What the hell happened in there?”
Walker leaned forward and whispered, “I’d love to tell you that, Cash, but first you’re gonna have to tell me where the hell I am.”
The sheriff winced. “Well, you smell like you’re drowning at the bottom of a bottle of Jack, so that ought to give you a hint. Sorry to have to do this, Walker, but I can’t help you out of this one.” He straightened to his full height. “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to talk to a lawyer and have him present with you while you are being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you before any questioning if you wish. You can decide at any time to exercise these rights and not answer any questions or make any statements. Do you understand each of these rights I have explained to you? Having these rights in mind, do you wish to talk to us now?”
Walker Everett had plenty to say—and ask for that matter. His brain was swimming with questions and answers and a few choice words for his friend Cash, who had the balls to arrest him. But none of his words made it to the surface. Instead the black spots dancing at the edge of his vision were a full-on blanket of dark now. The last thing he heard before losing consciousness completely was “Call his brother, Jack Everett. He’ll represent him when he’s ready for questioning.”
To say he had a headache was the understatement of the year. Walker had been on benders before, but he’d learned early on to keep a bottle of ibuprofen in the top drawer of his nightstand. Sure, sometimes he forgot to take them, but after a while it had become habit, and no one actually forgot a habit.
But he wasn’t in his bed right now. He was in a bed, but this wasn’t his room.
“Morning, sunshine,” he heard before he dared to open his eyes. “I’ll call your brother and let him know you’re awake. Said he wasn’t posting bail until this morning as long as you had a place to sleep. Cozy, isn’t it?”
Walker blinked, the tiniest movement, and hissed in a breath through clenched teeth. He guessed by the sheriff’s chuckle that Cash had heard him. He pinched the bridge of his nose and saw stars. Then he caught sight of his bloodstained sleeve and imagined what the rest of him must look like.
“You’re gonna need to get it set, but there wasn’t much we could do without you being conscio
us. As long as you get to the doctor within the week, you should be good to go. Wait any longer, and they’ll need to rebreak it.”
Walker gingerly swung his legs off the side of the cot, his boots falling heavy onto the cement floor of the cell.
“My brother let me sleep here last night?” His mouth was drier than cotton, and he wasn’t going to try to figure out what it tasted like.
Cash’s feet were propped up on his desk as he sipped his coffee and stared at Walker. “I don’t think I’d call what you were doing sleeping, but that’s not what I want to discuss.”
Walker braced his hands on his knees, head hanging between his shoulders, and blew out a long breath. “December thirty-first is her birthday. Was her birthday.” It had been more than fifteen years, and he still had trouble thinking of his mother in the past tense.
“And it’d break her heart to know how you spent it.”
Walker looked up to meet the disappointed gaze of his oldest brother, Jack. “Do you ever get tired of lecturing?”
Jack scrubbed a hand across his jaw. Dark circles rimmed his eyes. “Yeah. I do.”
Walker stood, not exactly steady on his feet but enough that he wouldn’t topple over. “Noted, big brother. So, this is the part where we make this all go away, right? There are advantages to that fancy law degree you got.”
But Jack stood in front of the small cell with his arms crossed while the sheriff never lifted his feet off his desk.
“This isn’t like all the other times. Nora’s pressing charges,” Jack said. “You fell through the tavern’s damned window. That mess that was once your face? The wooden frame. You’re lucky you still have your teeth.”
“So you’re leaving me here?” Walker asked, not exactly feeling lucky.
“That’s up to you,” Jack said. He slid a hand through the bars and held out a pamphlet. “There’s a place about an hour from here. Supposed to be real nice. Program lasts two months. But you have to voluntarily admit yourself.”
When Walker didn’t take what was being offered, Jack’s head fell against the bars.
“Please,” Jack said. “I can’t keep doing this. You can’t keep doing this to yourself. I’m getting married the end of the summer, and—”
“And you don’t want your drunk of a brother messing things up,” Walker interrupted.
Jack lifted his head, and the pained look in his brother’s eyes made Walker take a step back.
“I’m done making excuses for you. I’m done telling myself that you’re the youngest, that you’ll grow out of this. I’m done wondering when I’ll get the call from Cash telling me that this time your luck ran out. I’m done, Walker. I’m—done.” He dropped the pamphlet on the floor of the cell. “Just because Jack Senior drowned in the bottle doesn’t mean you have to do the same.” Then he started to walk away.
If Jack was finally turning his back on him, Walker’s luck had run out.
“Wait!” he said, the panic and desperation rising.
His brother stopped, and for several long seconds he did nothing else.
Turn around, Jack, Walker thought. Turn the hell around.
After what felt like days, Jack turned to face him.
“Okay,” Walker said. “You win. When do we leave?”
Jack’s fists clenched at his sides. Then they released. “We get your face fixed up—as best we can—and then we get on the road.”
“Just like that?” Walker asked.
“Just like that.”
He’d do this for his brother, but it would only be a temporary fix. Walker knew it, and he was sure Jack did, too. Walker couldn’t change who he was any more than a tiger could change its stripes. For better or worse—in this case he’d admit it was worse—Walker Everett was his father’s son. You couldn’t fight genetics, could you? Yet somehow the inheritance skipped Jack and his other brother Luke.
“It won’t work,” Walker admitted.
“Might not,” Jack said. “But for the first time in my life, I’m asking—no, I’m begging—you to try.”
And that was when Walker realized it, the one part of the equation that had always seemed to be missing.
No one had ever asked him to stop.
“Jenna and Luke know?” he asked his brother when they were outside in Jack’s truck. No way his aunt and his other brother would be left in the dark, but confirmation was always good.
“They know if I come home without you that you made the right decision. Here.” He handed Walker a soft ice pack. “Grabbed this on my way out. Cash said you’d need it. And the bottle of water in the cup holder is all yours.”
Walker tore the lid off the bottle and drank its entire contents without coming up for air. After a substantial belch, he laid his head against the seat and placed the pack over his eyes and nose, letting out something between a groan and a sigh.
“You sure my luck didn’t run out?” he asked Jack. “Because other than a fresh bottle of whiskey, this is about as close to heaven as I think I’m gonna get.” When his brother didn’t so much as laugh, let alone answer him, Walker cleared his throat. “This isn’t who I wanted to be, you know.”
The only problem was, if he wasn’t this—the brother who couldn’t get his shit together, who nobody even expected to grow out of this kind of behavior—then who the hell was he? Because this was the only version of himself he recognized anymore.
“I know,” Jack finally said as they pulled out onto the main road. “I know.”
Chapter One
Two months later
The job is yours if you want it. We leave as soon as we’re done putting that addition on the bed-and-breakfast. We can use all the cheap labor we can get.”
Walker held the phone to his ear for several seconds, letting the offer sink in.
“I need to stick around for Jack and Ava’s wedding,” he finally said. “That’s not until the end of July.”
Sam Callahan, of Callahan Brothers Contracting, laughed. “Yeah, I know about the wedding. Got a save-the-date e-mail and everything. We’ll be heading out soon after, breaking ground on the ranch in early August.”
Walker nodded, though he knew the man on the other end of the line couldn’t see him.
“I gotta think on it,” he said. “But I’ll let you know.”
“Sure thing,” Sam said. “Welcome home, Everett.”
Walker ended the call. He didn’t have much of a response to the sentiment, not when the place he’d spent most of his life felt as foreign right now as if he’d moved to the other side of the world. It was still the place where his mother had died and where his father had gone off the rails. But it was far from home.
He slid his phone in his pocket and got back to the task at hand.
It was high noon, the heat topping out at an unseasonably hot eighty-eight degrees for early March. Walker had been using the circular saw outside the winery’s back entrance for the better part of two hours. His T-shirt was soaked through with sweat, his jeans full of sawdust, and his beard was itching his neck something fierce. But when he looked at the perfectly cut pieces of crown molding ready to be stained, he considered it all worth it.
Okay, he was hotter than Satan’s pitchfork in a furnace and was sure he’d sweated out fifteen years’ worth of alcohol even if he hadn’t had a drink in two months. Nothing was worth this kind of torture, but now that the floors were done and the entire inside of the winery painted, Jack and Luke wouldn’t let the sawhorse inside even if Walker used a drop cloth.
“There’s air-conditioning inside,” he’d argued.
“Fresh air will do you good,” Luke had countered.
“Plus Ava and Lily will have our asses if you mess up their space,” Jack had added.
Leave it to his brothers to throw their respective partners under the bus when they weren’t around to defend themselves or hear Walker’s side of the argument.
“Do you know how much fresh air I had while I was gone? I’ve been on hikes, bikes, and”—he’d lea
ned close to whisper this one to Luke—“and there was outdoor yoga, man. You don’t know the fucking horrors.”
You’d think a guy would get some sort of recognition for two months of sobriety, yet here he was, tossed outside like his nephew Owen’s Lab, Scully.
Who was he kidding? That spoiled pooch was probably in the ranch lying next to the air-conditioning vent getting a belly rub. Damn that sounded nice.
He pulled his shirt over his head, found the one dry spot left, and gave his torso a good once-over. That was when he heard the crackle of tires in the gravel out front and the distinct sound of a car door slamming not once but twice.
Excellent, he thought. Visitors.
As he made his way to the front of the soon-to-be Crossroads Winery, the sound of a heated argument filled the air. At least, he thought it was an argument based on the rapidly increasing volume of their voices, but the words that floated his direction were anything but English.
“Reviens, Violet! Tu sais que tu m’aimes!”
The male, who Walker could now see was a tall, lanky guy with curly dark hair, was waving his hands in the air as he followed the woman—a curvy brunette with thick waves tumbling over her shoulders, light brown skin, and legs for days—toward the winery’s front door.
“Va te faire foutre, Ramon! J’arrête!” She added a one-fingered gesture, and even though Walker didn’t speak what he guessed was French, he did understand the universal language of Fuck you.
“We’re closed, gorgeous,” Walker called to her, and without a second glance, she changed her trajectory from the building’s entrance to where Walker stood a couple yards to the right.
“Est-ce que tu vois?” she called over her shoulder to the other man as she approached. “Il est la!” She was close enough to touch him now—and she did, wrapping her arms around Walker’s waist.
“Are you married?” she whispered. “Engaged or attached in any way?”
He shook his head slowly. “So you do speak English, huh?”
“Please,” she said under her breath. “Go with this, and I promise to make it up to you.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he said.
She slid her palms up his bare torso and linked her fingers behind his neck. Walker didn’t think, just acted. He dropped his balled-up T-shirt to the ground, pressed his hands firmly against her hips, and dipped his head so she could brush her soft lips over his. If he thought he was parched from baking in the morning sun, it was nothing compared to the insatiable thirst he felt when her tongue slipped into his mouth. He growled as she let out a soft moan. And then he took all that she gave, and damn this stranger was a giver.