by Laurel Kerr
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Books. Change. Lives.
Copyright © 2018 by Erin Laurel O’Brien
Cover and internal design © 2018 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover design by Caroline Teagle
Cover images © purestock/Getty Images; Peopleimages/istock
Internal images © Roupplar/Shutterstock
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
All brand names and product names used in this book are trademarks, registered trademarks, or trade names of their respective holders. Sourcebooks, Inc., is not associated with any product or vendor in this book.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Epilogue
A Sneak Peek at Sweet Wild of Mine
About the Author
Back Cover
Chapter 1
The increasingly insistent squeaks broke through Katie Underwood’s intense concentration. Cocking her head to the side, she paused in her drawing. The chirping grew more and more demanding, the sound bouncing off the sandstone rocks surrounding her. At first, Katie thought a flock of birds was scolding her for invading their sanctuary, but she didn’t spot any flying overhead in the waning light.
She started to turn back to her sketchbook, intent on taking advantage of the last rays before the sun dipped below the horizon, but something stopped her. The squeaking had the plaintive quality of an animal calling for help, and Katie had never been able to resist a wounded critter. Shoving her art supplies in her backpack, she followed the direction of the sound. Climbing a few feet above the ledge where she’d been sketching, she realized the cries originated from a cave that she remembered from childhood games with her four brothers.
Dropping to her hands and knees, Katie peered inside the crevice, wishing she had a flashlight. The pearly glow of twilight barely reached the back of the small alcove. She would have crawled inside, but both cougars and wolves haunted this sandstone promontory. As much as Katie loved wild creatures, she did not wish to encounter a wounded predator in a tight space.
Once her eyes finally adjusted to the gloom, Katie’s heart simply melted. Tucked into a corner lay three squirming cougar cubs. One of the disgruntled fluffs chose that exact moment to howl its displeasure. A tiny pink mouth, framed by delicate whiskers, opened wide as the kit mewed in frustration. Katie could just barely make out the black spots peppering its grayish-brown fur.
She started to crawl forward and then stopped. Katie didn’t know what would happen if she got her scent on the little guys. Resting on her haunches, she debated her next step. The mother might return, but Katie couldn’t shake the feeling that the kits were either orphaned or abandoned. A neighboring rancher had recently been complaining about attacks on his livestock by pumas, which is what he called cougars or mountain lions, and he’d been known to shoot them in the past.
Katie reached for her cell phone. No signal. She would need to climb down to the old homestead and use the landline. Before she left, Katie stared back into the crevice where the cubs clumsily toddled in search of milk. “Don’t worry, babies,” she promised. “I’ll be back with help.”
* * *
As Bowie Wilson made the sharp turn onto the old Hallister spread, the suspension of his ancient pickup groaned loudly. He had a hell of a time keeping the vehicle running. The zoo sorely needed a new truck, but funds were tight and getting worse. They’d barely staved off foreclosure this past winter, and attendance hadn’t picked up this spring. They were down to just a handful of volunteers and staff—a far cry from the animal park’s heyday.
Pulling up to the old homestead, Bowie cut the engine and turned to wake his passenger, the former owner of the zoo. The eighty-year-old had fallen asleep on the twenty-minute drive to the ranch. Bowie had debated whether to bring Lou, since the older man generally headed to bed about now. But, unlike Bowie, Lou was a trained vet, and he could immediately start treatment on the cubs if they were seriously dehydrated or malnourished.
As Bowie waited for Lou to descend from the pickup, the front door to the old ranch house banged open. A woman, backlit by the porch light, waved. Although Bowie couldn’t make out her features, he could easily spot the flash of her fiery-red hair. As she stepped out of the brightness and moved closer, the moonlight washed over her and gently illuminated her face. Her brown eyes widened at the sight of him.
Bowie couldn’t quite read her emotion. Shock? Dismay? Recognition? Considering the size of their town, the latter was likely, but despite the fact that she seemed vaguely familiar, he couldn’t place her. And he was pretty certain he’d remember a woman like her: all curly auburn hair, curves in the right places, and expressive chocolate-brown eyes. She exuded an earthy sexiness that appealed to him, awakening sensations that had lain dormant for far too long. Between his responsibilities as a single dad with an eleven-year-old daughter and his duties at the zoo, Bowie hadn’t been with a woman in years.
Unfortunately, he had no time to appreciate this one. At least not now. Not with abandoned cougar cubs to rescue.
The woman focused her attention on Lou. “My parents are inside if you want to wait with them. It’s a pretty difficult climb to the cubs.”
Lou thanked her and headed to the homestead. The woman waited until he had disappeared into the house before she whirled back to Bowie. She thrust a headlamp in his direction, smacking his chest in the process.
“Here, take this. You’ll need it to see,” she bit out before she turned and strode gracefully toward the rock promontory silhouetted against the starry sky. Something about her gait reminded him of an Amazon warrior. An irate one. Although he’d spent most of his youth with adults angry at him—some with cause, some without—Bowie wasn’t accustomed to facing a hot blast of fury anymore. He lived a quiet life now, and he had no idea what he could’ve done to upset this particular woman. It would be his crappy luck that the one female who attracted him also instinctually hated his guts.
When the woman rea
ched the base of the rock formation, she bounded up the lower boulders with the surefootedness of a mountain goat. Even if she had taken an immediate dislike to him, Bowie found his eyes following her lithe shape in the dim light. She moved with a combination of fluidity and unbound energy that made him wonder what she’d be like in bed.
Forcing those unprofessional thoughts from his mind, he concentrated on finding footholds. It wasn’t easy keeping pace. His reluctant guide clambered up the cliff almost as quickly as she walked. Bowie figured she must know the land pretty well, since only moonlight illuminated the landscape, and she hadn’t turned on her headlamp.
“I guess you’ve climbed here before,” he said.
She nodded, but she still didn’t seem too happy. “Yes. My mom’s folks, the Hallisters, lived out here, so I grew up playing on these rocks with my brothers. My parents moved out here after my dad’s retirement.”
That could explain why she looked vaguely familiar, but not her anger toward him. Perhaps he’d seen her around as a kid when she’d visited her relatives. She looked close to Bowie’s age, and in his early teens, he’d worked on a ranch nearby. That was until he’d broken his leg and the rancher, who’d been his foster parent, had thrown him right back into the system. Bowie had never known a real home before Lou and his late wife, Gretchen, had taken him in after yet another guardian had kicked him out on his eighteenth birthday when the reimbursement checks stopped.
Deciding to try one more time to befriend the woman, Bowie asked, “So did you come to Sagebrush Flats a lot as a kid?”
She gave a snort of patent disgust. Even though the climb had just become more difficult, the woman picked up speed. Confused as hell, Bowie had no choice but to follow her up the cliff.
* * *
If the lives of baby cougars hadn’t hung in balance, Katie would have left Bowie Wilson stranded on the rocks until morning. After all, he’d done a lot worse to her back in high school. And despite all his horrible pranks, he’d apparently forgotten that she had ever existed.
That angered Katie more than anything. With all that Bowie had made her endure, she deserved at least a sliver of room in his memory. Even after high school graduation, she would wake up in her dorm, dreaming of her old classmates laughing at her. Because of Bowie.
Oh, she knew Bowie was the mastermind behind all the awful tricks. His high school girlfriend, Sawyer Johnson, might have taunted Katie since elementary school, but it had never amounted to more than snide and not very clever remarks before Sawyer had started dating Bowie. Sure, some of Sawyer’s comments had hurt, but they hadn’t scarred and certainly hadn’t caused the all-consuming humiliation that Bowie’s pranks had.
And what horrible thing had Katie done to Bowie to warrant such malicious attention?
She’d had the temerity to form an innocent, schoolgirl crush on him. That was all.
Katie had never even acted on her feelings. She doubted that Bowie would ever have noticed her if Sawyer hadn’t pointed out Katie’s secret infatuation. Through the years, Katie had never been able to figure out exactly why Bowie had decided to target her so viciously. Sawyer had never liked Katie, and Bowie might have just enjoyed making other people suffer. Either way, she’d become his favorite mark. And it had all started in the worst way possible.
Bowie had duped Katie into believing that he returned her feelings. For two weeks, Katie had lived in euphoric bliss, oblivious to the fact that Bowie was dating Sawyer. In retrospect, Katie should have realized that the cute bad boy would have had no interest in the nerdy girl. However, teen TV shows told a different story, and she’d stupidly believed the fantasy they peddled.
Which was how Bowie had managed to trick Katie into kissing a pig in the janitor’s closet. Even worse, Sawyer had filmed the entire horrifying episode and slipped a clip of Katie puckering up to the hog into the student-run morning announcement program that ran on the televisions anchored at the front of each homeroom. For the rest of her high school career, she’d become known as “Katie the Pig-Kisser.” That is, if they weren’t calling her the oh-so-creative “Katie Underwear,” a name Sawyer had coined in the first grade.
When Katie had left Sagebrush for college twelve years ago, she’d been more than happy to leave high school behind. Unfortunately, her escape hadn’t turned out quite as she’d dreamed. She’d planned to become an artist, maybe in New York, LA, or even Tokyo. Instead, she’d traded a small town with tumbleweed for one with trees. Worse, she’d found herself the oddball out again in the male-dominated mulch plant in Minnesota where she’d worked designing packaging and performing the secretarial tasks that her boss assigned to her instead of her more junior male counterpart.
All told, it hadn’t been hard to quit her job when her father, a retired police officer, was shot by an ex-con, Eddie Driver. Even if Sagebrush didn’t offer many career opportunities, Katie’s family had needed her. Her mother had never handled crises well, despite being the wife of a former chief of police, and Katie’s four brothers couldn’t handle their mother in a crisis.
Unfortunately, Katie hadn’t counted on running into Bowie again. As wild as he’d been as a teenager, she’d figured he would have left their dusty hometown long ago. But it appeared that he hadn’t. She knew one thing for certain, though. After publicly humiliating her and effectively ending any chance of her dating anyone else in high school, Bowie Wilson had simply and utterly forgotten her.
“Uh, ma’am? Where exactly are we headed?”
Ma’am? Really? Although she supposed it was better than Katie Underwear.
“Up.”
“I see that, but where did the mother cougar leave her cubs?” The patience in Bowie’s tone irritated Katie even more. How dare he act like he was the rational one?
She whipped around to glare at him. Even in the harsh light of the LED lantern, Bowie was a handsome man.
“We’re headed to a cave,” she bit out.
Twelve years ago, Bowie could have doubled for a teenage heartthrob with the shock of jet-black hair that had always dangled over his piercing gray eyes. Now, with that hair neatly trimmed and a five-o’clock stubble dusting his jaw, he looked like a model posing for an outdoor magazine. As an immature youth, he’d possessed a bad boy prettiness that appealed to girls—even self-proclaimed geeks like her. The years had toughened his features, hardening his male beauty into something more alluring and dangerous, even to a woman who should have known better.
Much better. Darn the man if he still didn’t have the capacity to make Katie’s hormones dance a happy little jig.
She steamed. If time hadn’t mattered, she might have taken them on a more difficult path. Even then, she doubted that it would have fazed Bowie. Despite never climbing on this particular rock face before, the man moved like a machine. She could just imagine his muscular forearm extending as he reached for the next hold. His bicep would flex as he hoisted his body…
Katie cursed at herself. Sometimes she found her vivid imagination more of a burden than a gift. It had certainly brought her more difficulties than successes.
Thankfully, they quickly arrived at the small cave. Katie started inside, but a warm hand rested on her shoulder. Even through the fabric of her T-shirt, she could feel Bowie’s heat and the strength of his fingers. An unbidden shiver slid through her.
“Let me go first.” Bowie’s breath caressed the sensitive skin on the back of Katie’s neck, and she had to fight to suppress another shudder. “The mother cougar may have returned.”
Bowie dropped to his knees and used the light from his headlamp to scan the cave before crawling inside. With his larger frame, it took him a few seconds to wiggle through the narrow passage. As soon as Bowie moved far enough into the alcove for Katie to enter, she crawled over to the cubs. They moved clumsily about, searching for milk and their mother’s warmth. One yawned. Its tiny whiskers flexed as it emitted a long squeak. The oth
ers followed suit. Katie’s heart squeezed. She resisted the urge to gather the little fluffs against her chest. She still didn’t know the protocol on handling kits this small, and she didn’t want to harm one inadvertently.
“Their eyes aren’t even open yet!” she said.
Bowie nodded. “Nor are their ears at this stage. They must be less than ten days old.” The awe in his voice caused Katie to turn sharply in his direction. He appeared just as infatuated with the cubs as she was. Was this the same man who’d once tied granny panties to the undercarriage of her car along with the sign HONK IF YOU SEE MY UNDERWEAR?
Bowie reached for one of the mewling cubs and cradled it against his muscular chest. The little guy burrowed against him, and Katie’s hormones went crazy again. Just when she thought the scene couldn’t get any sweeter, the kit yawned, showing its miniature pink tongue. Then with one more nuzzle against Bowie’s pecs, it heaved a surprisingly large sigh as it fell asleep. Bowie’s handsome features softened into a gentle smile as he stroked the baby cougar’s spotted fur with one callused finger.
If Katie hadn’t suffered years of Bowie’s cruel teasing, she would have found herself halfway in love with him. He’d appeared to be the ideal boyfriend once before, but it had all been a veneer, the perfect trap for a geeky girl with silly dreams of romance. And Katie, the woman, would not fall prey to his outward charms again.
“Can I pick up one of the cougars too?” The cuteness of the cub would serve as a nice distraction from her unwanted feelings.
Bowie nodded. “They’ll need to be hand-reared, so they’re going to end up imprinting on humans anyway. Unfortunately, we won’t be able to reintroduce them to the wild, but we can save them.”
Katie lifted one of the furry bundles, marveling at the softness of its fur. The little guy emitted a small, contented sound and immediately snuggled against Katie’s warmth. She could feel a cold, teeny nose against her skin as the cub rested its head in the crook of her arm. And right then and there, Katie fell in love. With the tiny kit. Definitely not with the man.