“The future.” Cryptic. Deep. Conversation-ending, hopefully.
“That the same future you were staring at a few minutes ago?”
Once again, he snatched her words. How absurd for him to insinuate that he was her future.
She blinked away the flurry of interference in her thoughts. It was like standing inside a jar, swarmed by fireflies—not wholly unwelcome but dizzying, nevertheless. “I’ve just never seen anyone wearing chaps before.”
“Chinks.”
“Excuse me?”
“Chaps go all the way down. Course, you’d probably know that if you were from around here. Short dress, combat boots, ankle-length duster, educated but dismissive tone. I’m guessing you’re a Yankee.”
She might have taken offense had her history professor father not traced their lineage back to Thaddeus Blake, pride of the New Hampshire militia during the American Revolution.
“I’m from Amsterdam…”
His brows lifted, concealed by his hat brim.
“…by way of New York.”
He nodded as if to say I knew it.
“And from your gregarious inability to mind your own business, I’m guessing you’re a native.”
“Born and raised.”
“Proud of that, aren’t you?”
“Hell, yeah. Besides, we’re not without sophistication around here. We’ve got a Baptist preacher who once met the King.”
“Spain? Belgium?”
“Memphis. And Close Call has a cemetery where the most notorious Texas outlaw in history is buried. Met his tragic end on the wrong side of a Ranger’s gun at a bar that’s now the five and dime. Also, we’re in the Guinness Book of World Records for the biggest pluot.”
“Is that a flash mob of farmers? Because I can totally see that.”
“It’s a plum-apricot hybrid.”
“Sounds…”
“Sweet?”
“Unnecessary.” Just like this conversation. “I don’t mean to be rude…”
“But you’re going to be anyway.”
They exchanged abrupt smiles.
“I have less than two minutes to decide my next creative year,” Livie said. “Pluots don’t really factor into that decision.”
“Shame. They probably should. Likely the best thing to ever cross your lips. Unless you’ve been exceptionally kissed.” He pinched the brim of his hat so briefly it must have been an afterthought. “I’ll leave you be.”
The cowboy walked away, headed in the direction of the old courthouse, the easternmost component of the park-like town square. The building surprised with Romanesque Revival architecture, a worthy counterpoint to a formidable sculpture, not unlike the juxtaposition of the rigid limestone steps to the cowboy’s easy gait. After their stimulating but slightly dizzying banter, the void felt like fireflies escaped from an opened jar—not wholly unwelcome but empty, nevertheless.
Her gaze trickled back to the live oak. At the base was a historical marker, decayed with time, mostly unreadable but for intermittent words that hinted at a much longer tale: Augusta and Mildred and white patron and colored.
Livie called after him. “What happened here?”
From across the road, the cowboy turned back her direction.
She pointed to the worn sign.
“It’s a family marker from the days of segregation. Two beautiful girls’ lives cut short simply because they wanted a drink of water on a hot afternoon. Darkest day in Close Call’s history. Be nice to see this spot replaced with something positive. Something that resembles the future.”
Livie’s heart swelled not only from him wielding her words but also because she had always found inspiration in that intersection of history and humanity. That he had known why she was there, who she was all along, made her realize she had underestimated him.
“I don’t pretend to know what factors into your decision,” he said. “I know we’re not Amsterdam or New York. We’re nothing like what you’re probably used to—some ten-dollar word you used and unable to mind our own business because we don’t ever want to see another dark day in our town like the one in 1966. But I don’t really see caring about each other as a bad thing. In fact, the world could use a little more of that.”
He gave her a weak smile, as if he hadn’t meant to fly his flag of vulnerability, then took the courthouse steps two at a time and disappeared inside. Across Main, a few shop owners turned their signs, emerged from their storefronts, and locked up. Livie glanced at the courthouse’s impressive central pediment surrounded by four conical copper towers. The clock hands stood at a split, twelve and five.
Livie took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Away from distraction, in that moment of centeredness, she sought the sensation that always accompanied her artist decisions—that peaceful inevitability, as if she had already completed a work of art and looked back on it with favor and gratitude. What he said—the rawness, the honesty, the creative oddities already present in the environment, the subtextual hunger for something to unite observer and artist on a transcendental level—made her want to stay, to take the commission, to believe that this statue had the possibility of becoming the defining piece of her legacy, despite feeling like a New York minute stuck inside a country decade.
But when she opened her eyes, she didn’t think of her brother, who never had the chance to settle in this town he loved because an IED robbed him of his future, or the sizeable sum she would receive from a town that clearly couldn’t afford to pay respects to Augusta and Mildred’s memory with proper signage. She didn’t consider her off manners to the handsome stranger, which would have made her socialite mother go apoplectic, or pouring her heart into a piece that only a handful of people would ever see or how the blissful quiet might affect her creativity. When Livie opened her eyes, she wondered only what it meant to be exceptionally kissed.
She pulled out a pen and signed.
Grab your copy of Redeeming the Rancher
Available Book May 3rd 2018
www.LeslieNorthBooks.com
BLURB
Ranch owner, Trevor Wild, loves nothing more than spending his day in the saddle riding in the Texas sun. He’s passionate about being the latest generation of Wild man to breed quarter horses on Wildhorse Ranch. But in the aftermath of inheriting a bad business deal the Ranch is in serious financial trouble, and this serious cowboy needs to look outside the box to save his family’s pride and joy.
Glamping guru, Sabrina Hearthstone, is the best of the best at what she does, and she could very well be Trevor’s saving grace. The blonde beauty arrives at Wildhorse Ranch ready to get the job done. She’s all business when it comes to bringing a little luxury to the leather and dirt clad Ranch. But soon she’ll realize that to renovate the Ranch for Glamping she may have to renovate its cowboy too.
Sabrina is tempting on a whole lot of levels for Trevor—when he gives into both her touch, and the 1,000 thread count bed sheets, he finds that she soothes his soul. However, Sabrina’s world is a difficult thing for the hardened cowboy to accept. Trevor will have to learn to accept Sabrina and her changes to his world, not only to save Wildhorse Ranch, but to save a love he never expected to find.
Grab your copy of Breaking the Cowboy’s Rules from www.LeslieNorthBooks.com
* * *
EXCERPT
"That her?" Trevor Wild asked his brother. The question rose from his lips like vapor, his warm breath chilled by contact with the early morning air.
He already knew the answer to his question, but he wanted to make sure he wasn't hallucinating the pretty blonde woman standing in front of the old bunkhouse with her arms crossed. She appeared to be in deep contemplation of the woodpile he had been gathering there all season, and the intensity of her concentration made her blind to everything else—including the two men watching her from behind the fence across the property.
"That's her," his brother confirmed. Trent hitched the front of his Wranglers up and blew casually on a steaming mug of coffe
e he had lifted out of the ranch kitchen. Trevor, sleep-deprived from his long drive home from the conference, felt a surge of jealousy at his twin's morning alertness. "Sabrina Hearthstone, Wildhorse Ranch's very own Glamping Adventure Coordinator. I'd say it has a certain ring to it, but I'm not sure half of those words were meant to exist in the English language."
Trevor cringed in private agreement, the shadow of his hat brim concealing his reaction to the distasteful word. “Glamping,” a portmanteau of glamorous camping, was not a concept he had ever imagined, let alone expected to put into place at Wildhorse. At thirty-two, he was sure life had more unpleasant revelations in store for him, but whether Sabrina Hearthstone might be the next unfortunate event in a glamping-related string of surprises remained to be seen.
"Looks like you're going to have your hands full with this one," Trent remarked as the distant female figure pulled her hair back into a ponytail and dropped to a squat. He said it in the tone of a horseman surveying a particularly unruly filly. Trevor wondered what his brother had gone through already with this woman; still, there was no mistaking the slight tone of admiration in Trent's voice.
"Looks like she's got her hands plenty full already," Trevor mentioned. He squinted across the lawn at Sabrina, who appeared to be dismantling and hauling much of the woodpile up onto the porch. "What the hell is she doing?"
That scrap was probably lousy with splinters—not to mention pill bugs and termites—yet she didn't shrink from grappling with it barehanded. She might as well have been holding the front door wide open and inviting the pests to brunch in the goddamn bunkhouse living room.
"No idea," Trent replied, before amending. "I thought she said something about wanting the scraps for planters or a coffee table or something. You know, like a project."
Trevor sighed and cuffed his brother on the shoulder. "Thanks for keeping an eye on the place while I was away." He tipped his hat in advance of another momentary farewell. "You want to stick around for a bit? Give me the rundown of what's been going on?"
"Sure. Not like I have a job or anything."
The grim line of Trevor's mouth flexed a little. "I'll catch up with you in a few, Sheriff."
"You know I'll be here. And get some coffee!" Trent hollered the suggestion after him. "Something tells me you're going to need it!"
Something tells me you're right. What he wouldn't do for a cup as black as Sabrina Hearthstone was fair. Despite feeling dead on his feet, Trevor loped the length of the yard to reach the new adventure coordinator. She glanced up when she heard his bootsteps; she opened her mouth to start talking almost before he was within earshot.
"Oh! I'm so glad you're here, Trent. Do you mind helping me with this monster?" Sabrina wiped her forehead and indicated the log giving her trouble. Trevor knew it all too well. Not only had he struggled for more hours than he would readily admit to unearth it and drag it this far, but his unwillingness to move it again was the entire reason the wood scrap on his property had started accumulating here in the first place.
Trevor doubted a pair of freckled, toothpick-thin arms would provide the help he needed to haul it, but he had never turned down a woman in distress before. "Sure." He pulled on his work gloves and stooped to wrestle the other end of the log into his arms. "But I'm not Trent."
"Huh?" Sabrina glanced up to take him in again, and dropped the side of the log she was holding. Trevor grimaced and set his end down, also. The way his mouth tended to frown naturally—and only deepen when he was annoyed or working—distinguished him from his more approachable twin brother.
"No…I mean, wow. You really aren't, are you?" Now that Sabrina had halted operations, Trevor straightened to regard her in turn. The way she looked him over, with eyes as wide and summer-blue as the Texas sky, made him acutely aware of just how closely they stood.
"No. I really am not," he agreed. He wondered how much Trent let her get away with while he was gone. Sabrina Hearthstone had a face as pretty as an angel's—pair that with her ridiculously tight, stone-washed designer jeans, and he doubted his brother had been willing to deny her much. She was the living, breathing lyric of a country song standing before him—the worshipped, vaunted city girl—and for the first time, Trevor contemplated how much trouble he might be in having her on his property.
At least they had managed to agree on one important detail so far: he wasn't his brother Trent. While the Sheriff of Lockhart Bend might be willing to let certain behaviors slide, Trevor expected a rigid adherence to his rules. If she already found him more serious, more commanding, than his twin brother, then it might make his job a hell of a lot easier.
Grab your copy of Breaking the Cowboy’s Rules from www.LeslieNorthBooks.com
Tempting the Rancher: Meier Ranch Brothers Book One Page 13