“Excuse me,” he told Ava and Kit, setting his beer bottle on a nearby table. He made his way through the scattered groups of people eating, drinking, and talking in respectfully low tones.
“Well, there’s Scout now,” Mr. Anderson from the neighboring sheep farm said when Scout approached him and Stella.
Scout lightly put his hand on Stella’s back to let her know he was there and ready to help. “I’m wondering if I could borrow your companion here, Mr. Anderson?” he asked, smiling at the other man.
Stella stiffened slightly at his touch, but then she relaxed back into it, exhaustion coming off her in waves Scout could feel.
“Of course,” Mr. Anderson replied. “Stella, it was so good to see you. We all hope we’ll get to see more of you in the future.”
Stella bussed the older man on the cheek, and then Scout leaned down and whispered in her ear, “Come with me for just a sec.”
She followed him out of the room and down the hall to the eat-in kitchen at the back of the house.
Scout pointed to the kitchen table. “Why don’t you have a seat?” he suggested. Stella’s response was to collapse into one of the chairs, leaning her elbows on the table.
“When did you last eat?” he asked, making his way to the pantry.
“I’m not sure. I’ve been traveling for twenty of the last twenty-four hours. My connection in Istanbul was cancelled so I was rerouted through Cyprus. It took eleven extra hours, and I didn’t think I’d make it in time.” She looked up at him with a weak smile. “Thank you for waiting for me.”
“Well,” he said, “I wish I’d waited a little longer. I’m sorry you missed the first few minutes.”
“It’s okay.” She fiddled with the salt shaker. “I made it for the part that mattered.”
He walked to the table, carrying a platter of crackers, cheese, and grapes. Setting it down, he sat in the chair across from her. “Eat. You look like you could use it.”
She slowly took a cracker and a slice of cheddar and began to nibble. Her gaze wandered to the back door. Scout’s followed. Along the edge of the doorframe were tiny marks, beginning about two and a half feet above the floor and progressing upward, each one half an inch, an inch, sometimes more above the previous. He looked back at Stella and saw tears fill her eyes.
Growth marks, he realized. They were the marks of how she’d grown. Stella hadn’t visited often in the six years he’d been working for George, but in that moment, he realized she’d grown up here. She’d visited often enough to mark her height—and love her grandfather. And now she faced the end of everything she’d known with the old man. Of course she was sad. Of course she was.
“Hey,” he told her gently, bringing her gaze back to him. “Would you like me to finish up the reception? Everyone will understand. You’ve had a pretty rough couple of days.”
She sniffed, then took a deep breath, giving her head a small shake. “No, it’s okay. I wasn’t here as much as I should have been, the last few years. Grandpa died without family nearby. This is the last thing I can do for him—send him off the way he would have wanted.”
“Okay, then.” Scout smiled at her. “We’ll go back out there and get it done, then if you need afterwards, we’ll build a fire, grab my best bottle of whiskey, and fall apart together.”
She laughed softly. “It’s a deal,” she said, holding out her hand. He shook it, trying not to notice how perfectly it fit in his, how soft her skin was. She was grieving, and it was his last job for George to help her through that.
Wrangling His Pregnant Cowgirl
Available August 1 2019
LeslieNorthBooks.com
BLURB
Bella Whitmore is the heir to the Whitmore Shipping fortune. Refusing to be pigeon-holed into the socialite box, Bella has worked her entire life to show her father that she can be the son he never had and take over the Whitmore Shipping Empire. So when she wakes up, on a ranch in Montana, missing the memories of the last month of her life, you’d think that would be the worst case scenario. And it is…until she realizes the devil she’d worked so hard to avoid for the last year is now her husband.
Sawyer Cooper knows he’s a devil. Handsome, charismatic, and with an eye for feeding people’s vices, Sawyer’s reinvented himself as a shark in the business world, but very few realize that he’s actually a Cooper of the Country Coop fortune. But rather than resting on the laurels (and red-neck reputation) of Country Coop, Sawyer wants to show the world exactly how important farming can be. To do this, he needs Bella Whitmore’s help. Every bit as beautiful as her name suggests, and smarter than everyone else in the room, Sawyer knows that she could make his dreams come true, both inside and outside of the bedroom. And after a year of pursuing her, she’s finally said yes—to everything.
But after a horseback riding accident, Bella’s brain has reset back to the beginning, and Sawyer was never good at starting a game over. Especially not after he’d already won. Now, Sawyer needs to figure out how to woo her for a second time. Because this time around it’s not just his professional pride on the line: it’s his heart.
Grab your copy of
The Cowboy’s Forgetful Bride here.
* * *
EXCERPT
Chapter One
Bella Whitmore stood on the opposite end of the art gallery and stubbornly pretended not to notice him.
Over the last year she had gotten extremely good at pretending, Sawyer thought to himself. A man less versed in their game might mistake the New England goddess's inattention for actual disregard. Everything about her drew his attention—her lush red lips poised neutrally; her slender body perfectly poured into her scarlet dress; her wineglass held effortlessly aloft, as if the expensive nectar she drank was as light as air. Her copper hair cascaded down her bare back in glossy, glamorous waves, drawing a curtain over her naked shoulder blades without ever quite concealing them.
She had a lot of nerve to show up looking so goddamned gorgeous and not deign to give him the time of day.
Sawyer Cooper liked nerve.
Their game had been going on for the better part of a year now. Function after function, they would circle each other—or more accurately, he would circle, like a wolf closing in on an unsuspecting pronghorn—and when he had all but backed her into a corner, she would finally turn to acknowledge him with a show of polite surprise.
God, their game of cat and mouse turned him on more than he had ever imagined it would. He’d been crossing paths with her since he settled in Boston, and she was one of the reasons he’d stayed so long, even enduring stuffy events like this one. He liked to keep his distance from Montana anyway—and the family business he wanted no part of. The Country Coop chain of farm stores was his family's legacy; it was an empire, all right, but in a family of three brothers, could you ever really be the undisputed king of it? No, Sawyer wanted to make his own waves in the world, and that meant divorcing himself completely from Country Coop and its redneck reputation.
Sawyer wanted a lot of things, but he had never wanted to bed a woman as thoroughly—and hopefully repeatedly—as he wanted to bed Bella. Problem was, the vixen knew it. How could she be oblivious, when Sawyer himself made it so obvious? He had done everything except outright ask her for a romp between the sheets. He still had some shred of pride, despite Bella's persistent ability to test it.
Looking like that, tonight just might be the night she brought him to his knees.
Tonight's art opening was an ever-revolving carousel of Boston's most prominent art aficionados. Of the two hundred or so guests milling about looking at the wild horse exhibit, Sawyer was probably the only one who had been anywhere near a real mustang. He was aware of the stares he was getting and quietly preened at them; he didn't mind being a part of the exhibit. Besides, he knew he looked good, and what he looked best in was the Western shirt and buckle and boots, dressed head to heel like a cowboy who had just come off the circuit. His attire tonight was a calculated choice and one that h
e intended to work in his favor. He could tell from the female attention he was getting that it was already working wonders with the ladies—whether or not it would work with one beautiful lady in particular remained to be seen.
Regrettably, Sawyer had other game he was after tonight. He waited until he saw the curious flash of Bella's eyes on him; she wondered about his delay in approaching her, but as always, refused to break away from what she was doing and pursue him herself.
Sawyer allowed himself one last obvious visual drink of Bella, before he turned to stalk another Whitmore across the room.
This specimen was far less lovely. Tristan Whitmore was Bella's esteemed father, and the captain at the helm of Whitmore Shipping. The CEO was a tall man, though not as tall as Sawyer, and sturdy as the marble pillar he casually leaned against. He straightened when he noticed Sawyer approaching, the bored, inebriated glaze that had come over his eyes appearing to vanish. Tristan Whitmore's face was square, grim, and ugly, but commandingly, fascinatingly so. It was a lot like his personality, Sawyer reflected, as he now stepped directly into the path of said personality.
"Great show tonight," he commented as he slipped in beside Mr. Whitmore. "I feel the hard reality of the west has really been captured by the show's selections."
"Coming from a man like you, I'd say that's the best review one of our fine Boston artists can hope for," Mr. Whitmore returned. Sawyer inclined his head. "How are you, Sawyer? You look good."
"You look the same, sir." He aimed a suggestive glance at what he calculated to be the man's fourth glass of wine.
"Business could be better," Whitmore grunted. Sawyer knew exactly what he alluded to. Whitmore Shipping had recently launched a viral campaign that had gone down in flames when an internet sleuth very embarrassingly called out their covert attempts to appeal to a younger demographic. Now the younger demographic was tearing them a new one across every available social media platform.
"Your press could be better, you mean," Sawyer corrected politely. Whitmore had offered him as good a segue as any, and he took it now. He knew the other man didn't like to beat around the bush. "Sir, I can't help but feel that, given the evening's decorations, now is as fine a time as any to approach you with my own particular solution to your problem." He doubled down now on his Montana twang, knowing that in this instance it might actually improve his chances of being persuasive. "I'm telling you that Farm2U—my new take on the old farm-to-table premise—is exactly the type of project your company needs to wed itself to right now."
"Remind me what you're talking about, boy," Mr. Whitmore said as he sipped his wine. His eyes were trained on a picture of horses surging through a flooding canyon with the waves at their fetlocks.
Sawyer didn't let the other man's drunken distraction deter him. "Think of it: a virtual farmers market that's only a mouse-click away for any city slicker, on either coast. They fill up their shopping cart, check out, and the food is delivered farm-fresh to their door with a two-day shipping time."
"Two days?" Mr. Whitmore echoed.
Sawyer nodded. "That's where Whitmore Shipping comes in. I've got access to the farmers and their food. They're ready to go ahead with it, and even Marketspace is willing to come onboard…"
"Marketspace?" Mr. Whitmore repeated. His focus seemed to sharpen a bit at the namedrop, as well it should. Marketspace had risen up in the past ten years to become one of the biggest e-commerce companies in the world.
Sawyer nodded. "But we need the infrastructure in place to hit that delivery window. You're the best shipping company in the world, sir, but if I may be honest, you're lacking a niche project like this one. Coming onboard with us is the first significant step toward helping the world forget your company's recent marketing gaffe. If you want to reach the younger demographic, you can't market to them against their will. Go the way of culture: food culture. Farm-fresh culture."
Mr. Whitmore laughed lustily in the way that only old money could. "Sawyer, my boy, you've taken on way too much! You're promising more than you alone are capable of delivering. Trust me, I know: delivering is my business. Since we're being honest, I'm going to tell you you're a fool to take on such a risk."
Sawyer bristled. "Actually, I've already spoken to Bella about—"
"Ha! Bella." Mr. Whitmore ejected the name of his daughter as if it was something he needed to clear out of his throat. "Bella is the same way. She spends all her time preparing to do a job I'd never ask a woman to do."
'All her time' is still an understatement, Sawyer thought. She's spent an entire life trying to please you.
He noticed Bella over Mr. Whitmore's right shoulder. She stood closer to their conversation than he remembered, still politely engaged in her own discussion, but Sawyer could swear that her head was angled slightly toward them. She was eavesdropping…and hearing every sexist word that fell out of her father's mouth.
"Little lady actually thinks she'll be named CEO of my company!" Mr. Whitmore grunted and raised his wineglass to his lips. Sawyer thought the other man had already drunk more than enough but said nothing. He unfortunately found himself aboard the runaway train that was Tristan Whitmore's nasty stream of consciousness. "As a cowboy, Sawyer, I'd expect you to understand the place women occupy in our society…and it's not in the boardroom. Yes, women have their place, and Bella needs to learn that."
Sawyer took a long swig of his whiskey. It burned him up on the inside as much as Mr. Whitmore's words did, but in the aftermath of being subjected to old New England philosophy, it was a purifying fire. Over Mr. Whitmore's shoulder, he noticed Bella's face flame as scarlet as her dress before she turned away. If she had been planning to enter their conversation at some point, her plans had clearly changed.
"You know, Mr. Whitmore," Sawyer said, broadcasting his voice loud enough that the conversations around them suddenly stilled. "That's an interesting take for a businessman. Seems to me that if you go through with that plan, you'd be losing the best person to take your business into the future—and I hope you’ll be losing her and her talent for bringing in business to me. Unlike some men, I'm not afraid to let a woman take over."
A murmur of astonishment broke out around them. Mr. Whitmore stared at Sawyer as if he had just lapsed into a foreign language…and said something that was still observably insulting. Sawyer deposited his empty whiskey glass on a passing waiter's tray and moved toward the exit. He brushed by Bella on his way out. Her lips were parted, and her thickly-lashed eyes flung open in shock. Speechless, Sawyer recognized with some amusement. He had never known Bella to wear that particular expression before.
He would have loved to stick around and get to know her look better, but he’d had enough of Boston art galleries for one night. It was enough to make him miss the ranch back home in Montana. Sawyer rarely allowed himself to acknowledge his roots, even privately, in such elite company, but he'd had his fill of New England for a while.
It was time to head home.
Grab your copy of
The Cowboy’s Forgetful Bride here.
Wrangling His Sexy Assistant: Beckett Brothers Book Two Page 11