by Anne Marsh
One Hot COWBOY
ANNE MARSH
eKENSINGTON
Kensington Publishing Corp.
www.kensingtonbooks.com
All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Copyright Page
Chapter One
Blackhawk Ranch was running dry. Cabe Dawson had lost one well already, and now a second had slowed to a trickle. There hadn’t been enough rain this winter to fill the creek the ranch got its surface water from, and the surviving wells fought to bring the water up nine hundred feet and into the baking, skin-drying heat of California summer. Now, as he steered his battered pickup over the dark dirt road, time seemed to slow to a heated, sensual shimmer with one driving urge pounding through everyone and everything: find water. Cattle needed it. Men wanted it. Cabe Dawson would be damned if he allowed a dry well to take what he’d built here.
Making a living from the land meant fighting every step of the way. Fortunately, Cabe had never minded a good fight.
He’d planned for this day—already had the solution. There was water underneath the Jordan place, and he held the mortgage on the neighboring ranch. All he had to do was foreclose, and the land was his. He’d drill. The cattle would drink. They could all live happily fucking after.
Instead, he was waiting for Rose Jordan to bring her sweet little ass home to Lonesome so he could set things right. For “Auntie” Dee Jordan’s sake—everyone in Lonesome had always called her Auntie—he wanted to hand her adopted daughter, Rose, a check and preserve the fiction that he was buying her out, not spring the news about a reverse mortgage he was calling due after the older woman’s death. He sure as hell didn’t want to drag this through the courts. He didn’t have six months or longer to wait. He needed that water now, and he’d get it, but he didn’t have to be a bully about it.
Unless Rose left him with no other option. Truth was, with her blend of mischief and youthful rebellion, his fiery young neighbor had always been good at leading him on a merry chase.
His family owned this particular part of California, and the ranch was feudal at heart. As the head of the family, his word was law. He had the money—and the land—to back it up. Rose had time to dally only because he’d decided to give it to her. Soon, however, he’d cut off her shenanigans.
His cell buzzed, and he flipped on the hands-free. “You track her down yet?” As always, Seth cut right to the chase. His youngest brother had never been patient. Hell, he was more of a heat-guided missile, constantly seeking out his next adrenaline rush. That made him a star on the rodeo circuit but piss-poor at waiting for his childhood friend to make up her mind to come back home.
The turnoff for the swimming hole appeared out of the nighttime shadows. Cabe guided the pickup carefully, the crunch of gravel beneath his tires threatening to drown out his brother’s voice and his own response.
“You know Rose. She’s not picking up.” Or answering her e-mail or the three registered letters Cabe had had the lawyer send her way. Cabe didn’t know why Auntie Dee hadn’t told Rose about the reverse mortgage. Maybe they didn’t talk much. Maybe Auntie Dee was too proud to admit she’d needed the money, or maybe she hadn’t wanted to worry Rose. Whatever the reason had been, the damage was done. It was clear Rose didn’t know. The way he saw it, he’d had a hand in the whole mess, even if he’d had the best of intentions originally, and so now he had an obligation. He needed to fix this.
There was laughter in Seth’s voice now, his earlier impatience forgotten. “Yeah. She’ll get here when she gets here, Cabe. Our Rose never was an early bird. Plus, if she knows how badly you want her to come, she’ll just take twice as long.”
That was certainly true. Rose had spent most of her high school years tormenting him. Teasing him. Worst part was, she’d had no clue what she did to him. What he’d wanted to do to her.
She’d seen him as an older brother.
A bossy, boring, play-by-the-rules, too-strict older brother.
“This can’t wait any longer,” he growled. The pickup emerged from a tunnel of trees, and he killed the headlights, just soaking up the peace of the night. The pure quiet and the heat escaping slowly from the ground. “We can’t wait anymore. The ranch needs that well, Seth.”
“We’ve still got a couple left,” Seth pointed out, laughter gone.
“We had four.” The prospect of even one inch of the ranch becoming a dust bowl had Cabe gritting his teeth. This place, this land, was his family legacy. He’d damn well hold on to it, keep it together. His cowboys and their families depended on him for a living, and he’d poured himself into building the ranch one acre at a time.
His father had taken and taken, sucking the cash from the ranch and giving nothing back. After his wife had died in a car accident, leaving Cabe and his two brothers and their father to try and make sense of it all, Dawson Senior had thrown in the towel. He’d knocked back beers with his cowboys, pointed his horse around the ranch, and hadn’t given a fuck what happened next. Maybe the heart attack was one of those blessings in disguise. Afterwards, Cabe had been in charge.
He’d been the one to hold things together.
He’d also been the one who stayed, the one with the vision for the ranch. Seth and Rory played backup when he asked, but his brothers had their own lives off the ranch. That was okay. He understood that not everyone could find everything he needed on fifty thousand acres and horseback. He did. That was enough.
Rose Jordan was not undoing all that work now.
Rose procrastinated, Cabe knew. She left the important things undone, rushing in at the last minute when someone rode her ass. She was pure trouble. Growing up next door to Blackhawk Ranch, she and his brothers had raised hell from one end of Lonesome to the other.
“She’ll turn up, Cabe,” Seth said again. “She always did. Eventually.”
“She’d better.” He was bone tired from a day that had begun before sunrise and had only just ended. He was hot, and he smelled like sweat and horse and probably a dozen other things as well. Right now, a swim sounded perfect, exactly what he needed to cool down and think things through.
“I’m going for a swim.” Signing off, he tossed the cell onto the seat beside him. The quiet surrounded him the second he got out of the truck. After a long day wrangling the ranch, he needed that. He needed to be alone.
Except . . . he wasn’t alone. Tucked into the edge of the road was a beat-up Honda he couldn’t believe had made it down the dirt track.
Christ, he was sick and tired of the trespassers who thought ignoring the Blackhawk’s signs and fences was a game. High school kids had always enjoyed sneaking onto the ranch for a swim. Never mind that all they had to do was ask and follow a few basic rules to keep themselves safe. He’d have said yes.
Scrubbing a hand over his head, he grabbed the Stetson from the passenger seat and jammed it on. Somehow, maybe dating back to Rose Jordan’s days here, he’d gotten himself a reputation for being a mean-ass, coldhearted bastard. Of course, he also didn’t give a damn about what folks said, which probably meant his fan club wasn’t all that wrong.
Getting out of the truck, he carefully closed the door behind him. No point in advertising his presence until he had to. Tonight’s trespassers were probably just kids, but, damn it, it wasn’t safe to swim out here unsupervised. He’d warned them not to come at night and never to come alone. He needed to know when there was someone on his land. Too many things could happen out here if a person was
n’t careful.
It took just minutes to get through the fringe of cottonwood trees ringing the swimming hole. Older than anyone now living on the ranch, those trees had seen plenty. His brothers had had a rope-and-tire swing here. They’d spent hours whooping it up, clambering into the tire, soaring out over the water, and letting go of the rope as soon as the swing was over the center of the pond where it was the deepest. That water was cold as hell, too, because it came from deep underground.
As soon as he reached the edge of the trees, his feet stopped moving; tonight’s swimmer was unexpected. He’d expected to find a few high school kids. Maybe a cooler of beer or a couple a little too busy discovering each other.
Instead, there was a woman in the water.
A damned fine, completely bare-ass naked woman.
She cut through the dark water with slow, lazy strokes. Not too tall and real damned curvy. He could see her sun-kissed skin even in the silvery moonlight. Water-slicked blond hair covered her bare shoulders and back. He should have been a gentleman, should have looked away. But damned if her swimming bare-ass naked in his swimming hole wasn’t the sexiest thing he’d ever seen.
She dove beneath the surface, giving him a spectacular view of her ass. He swallowed hard. From where he stood, those curves looked as soft as peaches and just as luscious. He wanted to cup both cheeks in his hands. Run his hands down that skin and explore every inch of her. Even the shadowed crease between her cheeks. Yeah, there, too, if she’d let him. He’d show her every dark, sweet pleasure.
A slow grin tugged the corners of his mouth. Hell, she’d have been safer if his hell-raising younger brothers had been the ones to find her.
He’d never pretended to be nice. He didn’t have to. His family owned this ranch. This world, this place, was his, and here she was, blatantly trespassing without so much as a by-your-leave.
His sexy swimmer reached a rocky outcropping and grabbed for a plastic bottle of shampoo. The scent of green apples filled the air as, with a little hum, she treaded water and lathered up before slipping beneath the surface of the water.
That body of hers was now slick with foam and appley-ness.
Christ, he’d always loved apples.
And, even though he hadn’t seen her face yet, she looked good enough to eat.
The cold water of the Blackhawk Ranch’s swimming hole nearly numbed Rose, almost making her forget everything that had gone so wrong. The loss of Auntie Dee was still there, a deep, sore spot in her heart, but maybe now that wound would finally be able to start healing. Coming back here to Lonesome was a good start, she thought, even if it was at Cabe Dawson’s imperious behest. Here she could revisit some of her happiest memories of Auntie Dee.
“Here’s to you, Auntie Dee.” Getting ready to emerge, she lifted the shampoo bottle in a mock toast. Auntie Dee had loved crazy escapades. Even after Rose had left Lonesome, and they had to share their latest adventures by phone, Auntie Dee had sometimes one-upped her. She always wanted to hear all about Rose’s life, but always, always, the older woman had had stories of her own to tell.
Of course, the plain truth was that Rose wasn’t here at the old Blackhawk swimming hole just to swim and remember Auntie Dee. No, she was here to get clean, too, because she’d lost the key to the house she’d inherited from Auntie Dee. Until she was ready to face Cabe Dawson and retrieve a copy, she’d be camping out. Frankly, camping out was easier than facing down his disappointed stare when she confessed her carelessness.
God, she needed that house.
She needed to come home.
The water was a familiar kind of cold. She’d swum her heart out here summer after summer, whooping and jumping every chance she got because she’d loved the adrenaline rush as the swing’s rope curved up through the air, taking her higher and higher until her fingers slipped free and she was falling, flying through the air with the water waiting beneath her. Falling. Flying. She’d gotten those two mixed up back then. Then, when she’d left Lonesome, she’d done more than her share of both.
She knew the difference too well now.
When she heard the soft crunch of gravel, she didn’t think too much of it. This far out on the ranch, there was wildlife. It was part and parcel of the place, but there wasn’t anything out here that could really hurt her. Still, the sound had her head turning instinctively, her eyes searching the darker shadows of the trees.
Adrenaline pumped through her in a sickening, dizzying rush of sensation. Oh, God. That wasn’t wildlife. There was someone standing there in the shadows. A large, too-male someone who was watching her. She wasn’t stupid. She was out here alone, and she was giving some stranger one hell of a peep show. And that was the best-case scenario.
No way she would be able to get out of the water, grab her keys, and run past him to her car. She would put herself within arm’s reach in the process, and she could imagine exactly how that scenario might end.
Badly.
Maybe she could wait him out. But when she swam out to the center of the swimming hole, the water suddenly seemed too cold, too dark. God, she had to learn to think first. She shouldn’t have come here, and she definitely shouldn’t have come alone.
Booted feet moved forward, not making any effort to keep quiet. He didn’t care if she knew he was watching; he was warning her of his presence. She froze, her fingers clamping down around the stupid bottle of shampoo. Eight ounces of Suave wouldn’t save her now.
A rough growl of a voice came out of the darkness. “What do you think I should do with a naked trespasser, darlin’?”
The man behind the voice stepped out of the shadows, crouching down by the water’s edge. She knew the legs in those faded jeans and those hand-tooled cowboy boots. Even with his hat pulled down low, she recognized him. Cabe Dawson. He’d been her nemesis from the moment she’d set foot in Lonesome. Eight years in the town had burned that hard-edged, darkly handsome face and big, strong body into her memory. He was authority in these parts, and she’d spent every minute breaking his rules.
So it just figured Cabe Dawson would catch her red-handed in his swimming hole with a shampoo bottle, bare-ass naked.
“Well, cowboy, I’m thinking you should march on back to that pickup of yours and drive straight to hell.” The woman’s voice was feminine, husky. And familiar. Way too damned familiar.
Hell.
Recognition jolted through him, tossing a big dose of wake-up onto his fantasies.
He recognized that voice.
Christ. This wasn’t just another teenager looking for a quick thrill.
Even wet and slick from water, her features were so very familiar as she turned toward him. He knew that honey-colored hair that hit just below her shoulders, knew the darker slash of her eyebrows. He’d spent too many hours wondering if she colored her hair, because that was just one of the many contradictions that made up Rose Jordan. He knew exactly how her creamy skin freckled in the summertime and the message those gray eyes were telegraphing. Defiance. Disdain. One big fuck-you to the very idea of rules. She swam like a fish—and like she damned well belonged there.
And she’d been avoiding him for far too long.
“Not a chance, Rose.”
“Really?” She smiled up at him slowly, treading water while she plotted her next move. Even now, in the dark, the water wasn’t quite enough to hide her body from him. The curve of her breasts was all too obvious when her arms met and then pushed the water away. His dick liked that just fine, too, which reminded him how wrong all this was. She was supposed to get her fine ass back to Lonesome, but she wasn’t supposed to be here.
He’d always had a prickly relationship with Rose. When they hadn’t been locked in a silent power struggle, they’d fought outright. She didn’t acknowledge any authority, even when she should. She’d run with his younger brothers, got in trouble with them, and, even when she’d done that running on Blackhawk Ranch, she hadn’t wanted to listen to his rules.
Hell, she hadn’t wanted a
nything from him at all.
This time, though, he’d have to figure out a way to make her take what he had to offer. He didn’t want to break her heart, didn’t want to tell her that Auntie Dee hadn’t left her much of an inheritance, not money-wise. It would be simpler and easier to just write Rose a big check for the old place and let her haul her sweet ass back out of town. She wasn’t a stay-put kind of woman anyhow, so she probably already had her exit planned.
He shouldn’t feel guilty about what he’d done.
Auntie Dee hadn’t had any biological family left. Hell, that was why Cabe had made her the offer he had—he’d reverse-mortgage her place, give her the money she needed to live, and he’d get her land when she passed on unless her estate paid back the money. She wouldn’t take his money any other way, and Cabe figured he could always use more land. Especially land with an aquifer beneath it. Sure, he’d kept their arrangement quiet, but that was because it was nobody’s business but his and Auntie Dee’s. Auntie Dee had had her pride.
“You finally came home, darlin’. It’s about time. Past time, actually.” He drawled the words, wondering if he should share the truth with her right now. That Auntie Dee’s place was going to be his, not Rose’s, unless Rose had a whole lot of cash saved up somewhere. That wasn’t fair, letting her come down here all unawares, but she hadn’t returned his calls and he wasn’t explaining this in an e-mail. Now, it seemed even less fair to tell Rose, while she was naked and vulnerable.
Unfortunately, the naked part still had him thinking things he shouldn’t.
Naked. This was Rose Jordan he was thinking about. Rose Jordan he wanted to scoop up out of that water and lay out in the back of his pickup. He’d make her holler as he ate her right up. He’d bet that, when Rose Jordan came, she came as wholeheartedly as she did everything else.
This was his land.
His territory.
And, whether Rose Jordan realized it or not, she was now his, too.