The Cowboy’s Rescue (McCall Ranch Brothers Book 2)

by Leslie North

  “Yes, Your Honor,” he replied, swallowing hard and with no idea what he had just agreed to.

  At twenty-seven, Carson, who had never been in trouble with the law before, had been found guilty of assault and was now standing before a judge for sentencing. Worse yet, the judge was looking at him as if he were a common criminal.

  Carson was an independent guy. The idea that this man who didn’t know him from Adam now held Carson’s fate in his hands didn’t sit well at all. He covered his feelings by glancing around the courtroom. On television, these places always looked glossy somehow, intimidating in their subtle elegance. In reality, the well-worn carpet was a dispiriting shade of beige and showed the marks of far too many boot-clad feet. The wood paneling of the walls looked like vinyl. The defendant’s chair he was sitting in, waiting to learn his fate, was an unappealing shade of blue and, unless he was happily mistaken, had dealt with its fair share of bodily fluids over the years.

  “Your Honor,” his lawyer said, shooting Carson a cautionary glance, “seeing as this is my client’s first offense, I would like to ask for leniency.”

  “First offense or not, it was serious,” the judge said, his voice severe.

  “That’s true,” Blackstone conceded. “But prior to this incident, Mr. Carson has always been an upstanding citizen.”

  Carson took a deep breath, trying to remain calm. He was tired, far more tired than he had any real right to be. Two weeks ago, he'd been released from his jail cell on bail, courtesy of his older brother Trevor, and since then, he'd gotten almost no sleep at all. Part of the problem was the injuries he’d sustained during his last rodeo ride in the PBR US Finals—the last stage he had needed to make it through to the World Championship.

  His souvenirs from that ride included stress fractures in his foot and leg, which had him walking with a cane and wearing a therapeutic boot. It was a sure thing that he wouldn't be doing any more riding for some time. He had also fractured several ribs, and the doctor had said he was lucky not to have punctured his lungs. The worst, though, were some pretty gnarly intestinal wounds from where the bull had gored him. Those were the scariest, and they had almost robbed him of his life. Even now, remembering the looks on his brothers’ faces when they had first come to see him in the hospital made him feel ill. They would have been over the moon if he had given up on rodeo right then and there.

  It should have been the almost-dying part that had him the most messed up in the head, but in truth, the feeling of loss was what was really getting to him, the feeling of almost having had that championship under his belt, only to have it snatched away.

  Being sidelined due to sickness or injury was nothing new. He could still taste the bitterness of the memory of spending weeks sick and cooped up in his bedroom as a little boy while the world continued to move on without him. Having to sit back, helpless, while his older brothers kept on racking up accomplishments. He had sworn he would never wind up in that place again, edged out of life by injury. To be there now, and to have somebody throw it in his face, had been more than he could take.

  “Leniency,” Judge Warren said again, steepling his hands on the bench, “is something Mr. McCall chose not to show his victim. Had the bouncer not pulled him off the man, he might be looking at a very different situation.”

  Carson found himself clenching his jaw. He took a deep breath, and another, and swallowed hard, forcing himself to relax. His lawyer and his older brothers Trevor and Randy had expressly warned him to present a calm, respectful, rational, agreeable appearance before the judge.

  “With all due respect, Your Honor,” the lawyer broke in, shooting Carson another sideways glance that was clearly an instruction to keep his mouth shut. “A man as respectable as Mr. McCall, with no prior record, must surely deserve something along the lines of probation and community service.”

  Carson lowered his eyes as his thoughts went helplessly back to that night in the bar. He wasn’t proud of what he'd done. He’d never been the kind to resort to violence, but that guy in the bar simply wouldn't let things go. A good ol' boy who’d lived in Winding Creek all his life—and spent a good portion of his adult years hitting the sauce, Clay had been familiar with the whole McCall family in general and Carson in particular, and he'd been relentless in the way he'd lit into Carson.

  At the memory, Carson felt a blush mounting up the back of his neck. Good old Clay had just kept pushing and pushing, sneering about how Carson was never going to be "Mr. Big Shot" now, until Carson had lost it—lost his cool, lost his drink, lost everything, including his self-control. The next thing he knew, he was on the floor, his stitches torn and a bar full of people looking at him like some kind of lunatic.

  “Fine,” the judge said, breaking into Carson’s thoughts. “In a case like your client’s, Mr. Blackstone, the merits of community service instead of jail time are clear.” He nodded thoughtfully. “Thirty days’ community service. I have just the ticket, a task to suit Mr. Carson’s knowledge, experience, and abilities. Ms. Peterson? Will you approach the bench, please?”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” a woman spoke up from the gallery. At the sound of that sweetly melodious voice, Carson shut his eyes tightly, like a little boy who believes that the monsters will go away if only he can’t see them. Not that Karen Peterson was a monster. She was simply somebody he really, really didn’t feel like seeing right now. Or, preferably, ever.

  “Thank you for joining us, Ms. Peterson,” the judge said. “Would you please inform the court of the opportunity you have for Mr. McCall to pay back his debt to society?”

  “Of course,” she said matter-of-factly, using her “getting down to business” voice that Carson remembered so well. “I would be more than happy to.” She wasn’t simply going through the formalities—she actually sounded happy.

  Carson couldn't help himself; he opened his eyes despite his best intentions not to look at her. She sounded so much like she had when they were younger, so in love that the rest of the world didn't seem to matter. Listening to that voice was like hearing a dream, and although his head told him to keep his eyes forward, his heart had other plans.

  The judge held up a staying hand. “Just one moment,” he said and began to shuffle through some papers.

  Now that Judge Warren wasn’t staring sternly in his direction, Carson risked turning his head. In a quick glance, he saw that Karen was as beautiful as she had ever been—more beautiful, if that were possible. He would have thought he was standing next to a bona-fide movie star if he hadn’t already known who she was. All the unconscious natural beauty she’d had as a girl, before she had entirely known what to do with it, had matured into a sort of calm elegance.

  Where she had been gangly, her mess of red hair always in her face, invariably sporting scabs on her knees, now she was poised and almost heartbreaking in her confidence. The red hair was still there, but today it was pulled back and pinned up in some kind of fancy hairstyle he didn't know the name of. He could still make out the smattering of freckles across the bridge of her nose, even subdued with the use of artfully applied makeup. Her eyes were what really got to him, though, the same way they had when she and Carson were eighteen and parked in his truck far later than they should have been. Hers were the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.

  “Hey, McCall,” she said out of the corner of her mouth, offering him one of her patented wry smiles. “Long time, no see.”

  “Come on, Karen, what are you doing here?” he mumbled, trying to look as if he wasn’t talking at all. His aching ribs didn’t need any more sharp-elbowed lawyer jabs.

  “You already know what I’m doing here,” she said. Carson risked another glance at her and saw that she wasn’t looking at him at all now but was staring attentively at the judge, who was perusing a particular paper he’d fished out of the stack.

  Not wanting to attract the judge’s attention, he barely managed to stop himself from shaking his head at his own thickness. She was right. He knew exactly why she’d co
me, although he hadn’t expected her to show up at his sentencing. Word in a town like Winding Creek traveled fast, especially when it had to do with the town’s sometimes rodeo star. She had called him up two nights ago, completely out of the blue, and told him she had a proposition for him. After the way he had left her, almost ten years ago now, he hadn’t ever expected to hear from her again. He was even more surprised at her plan, and his answer had been a resounding no. He’d thought that was the end of it, but he should have known better. When Karen sank her teeth into an idea, she could be a pit bull: relentless until she got her way.

  Grab your copy of The Cowboy’s Pregnant Sweetheart (McCall Ranch Brothers Book Three)

  January 16, 2020

  www.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 (Brothers of Cooper Ranch Book 1)

  from www.LeslieNorthBooks.com

  EXCERPT

  Chapter 1 Sawyer

  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 he 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 slic
ker, 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."