Front Range Cowboys (5 Book Box Set)

by Evie Nichole

  “We’re so glad to have you on board here at Aquilar & Associates,” Vittoria told him in a tone of voice that almost gushed. “I cannot wait to have a mutually lucrative association here in Denver. Your family name is a mainstay in Denver society, and we’re honored to add you to our ranks as a junior partner.”

  “Thank you,” Cisco murmured.

  So much for doing this on his own. So much for distinguishing himself without the use of his family name or connections or the bullshit that went along with it. Apparently, you could take the cowboy off the ranch, but you could not remove the stain of association from his boots.

  Chapter Three

  Melody put the two lattes on the bar and forced herself to smile at the soccer moms who picked them up. Both women were dressed in patterned yoga pants and pastel camisole tops. Their matching blond ponytails were artfully messy, and they had huge sunglasses perched on top of their heads. They appeared to be twins, but Melody would not hesitate to speculate that they were not even distantly related. Originality in society was truly dead.

  “Oh my God, thank you!” Soccer mom number one moaned as she sipped her latte. “I totally need this caffeine after that yoga class. It totally kicked my butt this morning. Such a good class.” She turned to her friend. “Right?”

  “Oh my God. Yes!” soccer mom number two gushed right back.

  Of course, neither one of them had managed to put a single penny into the tip jar on the counter despite the fact that they had apparently been near death before they had received their life-restoring lattes from the counter of the coffee shop. Melody struggled not to roll her eyes. She told them that it was her pleasure and then plastered a fake smile on her face before grabbing the next cup and preparing to make the next drink waiting on the line.

  It was not that Melody didn’t like her job. She really did. Most of the time. Okay, so maybe she only liked it about fifty percent of the time these days. But part of the problem was that she was just working so many hours! It was really hard to keep a smile on her face when she felt as though she were slogging through glue each and every time she picked up an empty cup to start mixing a new drink for a customer.

  She had been at this since four o’clock in the morning. The trendy corner coffee shop was located in a fairly upscale area of the city. It was visited by plenty of lawyers, judges, and stockbroker types on their way to work. That made it a lucrative place to work. For the most part. And this was why Melody walked two miles to work in the mornings from her tiny one-room apartment on the outskirts of what could be considered a good area of Denver.

  “Hey, Melody!” Her coworker Allie was waving. “Can you add an extra shot to that one?”

  “Sure. Coming right up.” Allie smashed the top of the pump three times into the cup and then turned on the machine to begin fluffing up the milk to make a nice foamy top for the mocha. “You got a name for this one?”

  “Cisco.”

  “Right.” Melody only used half a brain cell to finish making the coffee. Then she set it up on the counter. “Cisco! Large mocha with an extra shot on the bar!”

  “I wondered if I would ever see you again.”

  The words pulled Melody right out of the work groove where she typically hid during her shift at the coffee shop. She blinked as she tried to determine where the words had come from. Who wondered if they would see whom again?

  That was about the time Melody noticed a very tall, very good-looking man in a dark suit standing in front of her bar. Except it was not a regular good-looking man. It was more than that. It was the man she’d started to think of as the “not-geographically-lost guy.” Why in the hell was he in her coffee shop?

  The shop was busy. Melody already had four more drinks waiting to be made. She did not have time to stand here and shoot the breeze with anyone, much less the attractive stranger from the elevator. Besides, it was kind of awkward seeing him again after she had practically bailed into the elevator and then had pushed herself against the wall like she was begging it for mercy or something. Talk about undignified ways to make a first acquaintance!

  Holy crap! The elevator guy!

  The fact that his image was pretty much burned into her brain probably wasn’t helping this whole situation any. She felt her cheeks begin to burn as she realized that she was now standing in front of the man who had been starring in some of her most graphic and exciting fantasies of late.

  “So, your name is Melody?” He was still trying to talk to her.

  Melody tapped the cup on the counter. “Sir, your drink is ready. Have a nice day.”

  There. That was pointed. There was pretty much no way that he could misinterpret that particular phrase. Right? Have a nice day pretty much meant “buh bye.” Except this guy apparently didn’t subscribe to the normal sort of social cues that would automatically make him understand that when someone told him to have a nice day, it also included an implied idea that he would leave.

  Instead of leaving, he picked up his coffee and took a sip. “This is really good. Thank you.”

  Melody just bobbed her head and continued mixing the next four coffees in line. An espresso, a few more mochas, and an Americano went up on the bar. Busy people snatched up the coffees. Some were regular customers. Some were not. All of them had to jostle this Cisco clown out of the way so they could move on with their busy days. Maybe he just didn’t have anywhere to be. Maybe that was the problem.

  “Don’t you work for a living?” Melody finally asked him.

  She didn’t bother to try and sugar coat her words. At the moment, he was absolutely standing in the way of a large order she was about to set on the bar that included half a dozen pastries for a horde of soccer moms who had just walked through the door.

  “Actually, I do.” He was still sipping his coffee. Since he was standing there at her bar, he had apparently decided to doctor the thing up with a sprinkle of cinnamon and nutmeg. “I’m a lawyer. I work in that building across the street.”

  “You work there?” Melody felt like she was parroting what he said. It was silly. But she hadn’t ever expected to see this guy again. She’d never wanted to see him again. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  Her internal radar was going haywire. He was a lawyer? She needed legal advice pretty badly. She had been getting harassing phone calls for the last twelve hours from a real estate agent who claimed to be working for Paul Weatherby. It was about the land deal. Melody still didn’t know what she was required to do or not required to do by law about this land. The legal file that Mr. Watson had given her was completely indecipherable—on purpose, she suspected—and she suspected she was coming up on a tax deadline.

  “That must be interesting work,” Melody muttered. “I didn’t realize that’s why you were in the elevator that day.”

  “I didn’t realize you worked in my favorite coffee shop.” He seemed amused by this. Had she served him before? She could not remember.

  That was part of the problem with working in a popular coffee shop. There were more customers coming in and out of this place than there were at some of the local bus stations. She knew a ton of regulars. But in order to be considered “regular,” a customer had to come in at pretty much the same time, every single day, and they ordered the same thing too. Otherwise, it was possible to see a hundred people in an hour. She saw thousands a day. It was highly probable that she had seen this Cisco person more than once and had just never noticed him.

  Come on. Never noticed him? That seems highly unlikely.

  The man was just noticeable. There was something about him that made her feel as though she’d had the breath knocked out of her. He didn’t smile a lot. Not really. Sometimes the corners of his mouth would turn up slightly, but it wasn’t really a smile. She could not help but wonder what he would look like should he actually decide to let that smile go for real. She suspected that the mere sight of it would make her knees knock and her brain fog over.

  “Mel!” Allie was waving to her. “What’s going on down
there? We’ve got a backup!”

  “Sorry!” Melody called. Apparently, she had stopped working while she contemplated the question of whether or not she’d seen Cisco before. But the bottom line was that he was a lawyer. It was tempting to ask him a question or something just to further the acquaintance and hopefully score some legal help. She figured that simply asking him for his phone number was probably a really bad idea at this point. Was there anything creepier than a barista just randomly asking for a customer’s phone number? Usually that was the other way around.

  “You’re creating a drink backup, Mel!” Allie insisted. She glared at Melody with big round blue eyes the size of hubcaps.

  “I’m bothering you.” Cisco the lawyer actually seemed surprised by this. “I’m sorry. I’ll let you get back to work.” He raised his coffee cup. “Thanks for the coffee. It’s good.”

  She opened her mouth to stop him. She needed help. He could provide it. But then she bit her tongue. Did she really want to bark up that tree? It would likely cause a disaster of epic proportions.

  So, instead of telling him to wait or making a point of telling him that she’d see him next time, Melody grunted and let him walk out of the coffee shop. She buried herself in making drinks until the rush finally ended. Then she did what she always did at the end of a fierce morning rush at the shop. She leaned back against the counter and sagged like a marionette doll with the strings cut.

  Allie moseyed over and handed her a tiny thimble-like cup of espresso. “Rough morning, huh?”

  “Totally.” Melody threw back the dark liquid and enjoyed the quick burn and the rush of intense caffeine. “It was like everyone in the city wanted coffee from right here today.”

  “So, who was the guy?” Allie wanted to know. “I see him in here a lot. I didn’t know you guys were friends.”

  “What guy?” Melody had briefly forgotten Cisco’s appearance. “Are you talking about lawyer guy?”

  “Lawyer guy?” Allie asked dubiously. “If we’re talking about the super-hot man with the custom black suit, the imported Italian shoes, and the incredibly gorgeous blue eyes, then yes.”

  “I saw him in an elevator the other day.” Melody realized this was not nearly enough explanation for Allie. “I made a total fool of myself in front of him. Apparently, he’s a regular here. Who knew?”

  “You said he’s a lawyer?” Allie seemed to be considering this very seriously.

  Melody sighed and turned her cup up to get the dregs of bitter liquid out of the bottom. If she could have licked it clean, she would have. “Isn’t that how it always works?” she muttered. “You think the only person to witness your stupidity or weirdness is a total stranger and then boom! You’re making their coffee two days later.”

  The front door of the shop opened. Melody forced herself to smile, but she wanted to groan. She was tired, and it was affecting her people skills.

  “Don’t you need a lawyer?” Allie asked hurriedly as she started toward the cash register. “I mean, don’t you think this guy could be a lead or something? Maybe he knows a good estate attorney.”

  “Maybe.” Melody kept her tone noncommittal. It wasn’t like she hadn’t come up with the same idea. Right? “I’ll see if he comes back. You know how it is in this business.”

  “Melody!” A man stepped through the front door, waving frantically. “Melody, it’s good to see you!”

  Melody smiled and waved back. Being nice was sort of a necessity of her job situation. That was true. But what she sometimes had difficulty with was being nice to creepy people who put off the sort of pervy vibe that they made forensic investigation television shows about.

  “Allie,” James gushed. “It’s just so good to see you. How have you been? You had that stomach flu last week. Are you all better, I hope?”

  Allie was always a little better at hiding her discomfiture from people. It was something about the really big and somewhat empty smile she could pull out at any second. She bobbed her head and obediently said something to James about feeling much better. Then she passed his cup on down to Melody, which meant that James came tumbling after it.

  “You’re looking beautiful today, Melody.” James put his elbow on the countertop and leaned in. “You know that polo shirt really brings out the green in your eyes.”

  Melody was hyperaware of the way the young women waiting for their frappuccinos were staring at James. He did look a little bit like a leering pedophile in a tracksuit. The guy was probably in his mid to late forties. He had thinning blondish-grayish hair and thick glasses. He was extremely odd. The only thing Melody really knew about him was that he lived nearby. He seemed to have an endless supply of funds to come to their coffee shop. Sometimes he stopped in two or three times a day for expensive specialty drinks.

  “James,” Melody said firmly. “Can you please stop leaning on the bar? It’s not sanitary. You know?” She gestured to the young women waiting to retrieve the frozen drinks she was about to set on the bar. “I can’t have you standing there when these ladies get their drinks.”

  “Right.” James actually snapped his finger and clicked at her as though they were in on some big secret together. “I’ll just take my salted caramel latte and scoot out of your way. See you soon though!” James winked and exited the store.

  The young women watched him leave. They were all laughing behind their hands as they grabbed their frozen drinks and headed out the door after him. For some reason, Melody felt like she should tell them to stay well away from James. He had never shown signs of being a sexual predator. At least she had never personally felt as though he were a real danger.

  Then Melody spotted him going back by the front door as though he had now decided that he was now going in the same direction as the young women. Melody began to wonder if she might have underestimated the threat he posed.

  Chapter Four

  “I must admit that I was surprised to be asked by your father to this social gala, but he was very adamant that this was more of an attempt to help advance the firm.”

  It would have been highly inappropriate and probably quite rude on multiple levels for Cisco to do an actual face-palm at this moment. No doubt Vittoria Velasquez would not have understood what he was doing or why. Still, the desire was there. What was his father thinking? Why did he have to insert himself into everything? Wasn’t it possible for one of his sons to have a career that did not involve the blatant interference of Joe Hernandez?

  “Francisco?” Vittoria’s brow furrowed, and she tilted her head to one side. Her elegant dark hair slid over her shoulder and sat there as though she had planned for it to frame the side of her face in the most attractive manner possible. “Is there something wrong? I told your father that I would be pleased to attend the charity gala to represent our firm.”

  “It’s fine,” Cisco said quickly. He forced himself to smile. “I would be pleased to attend the gala as your escort, of course, and yes. I think that any opportunity we have to further the business interests of the firm is a worthwhile endeavor.”

  There. He had done his level best to pretend that he thought this was a good idea. It was only his fifth day on the job. Friday. This meant, of course, that the gala event was tonight. Cisco had already declined this invitation from his father. Apparently, this was Joe Hernandez’s way of making an offer that Cisco could not refuse.

  Vittoria glanced down at her diamond wristwatch. Then she smiled. The expression struck him as odd though he could not put his finger on exactly why that was. Then she made a gesture to him. “If I’m going to be presentable for a charity function by eight o’clock at night, I suppose I had better be on my way out the door.”

  “Right.” Damn. That meant Cisco had to make plans quickly. “Shall I pick you up at seven thirty?”

  “That sounds wonderful.” She offered him a practiced smile. “I’ll text you my address. Just tell the doorman you’re there to pick me up, and he’ll buzz you in.”

  Cisco nodded because he could not
find anything else to do that would have been appropriate. He certainly could not roll his eyes even though he had been planning to work late tonight in order to finish up his initial notes on a case that one of the partners was passing along to him. Apparently, he would be going to a party instead.

  “See you at seven thirty,” Vittoria said with a wiggle of her fingers.

  Then she was gone, and Cisco was left standing alone in his office. It was odd. He had always made the assumption that he would be working in a firm where people were in their offices until all hours of the night. He had imagined all-night conferences and serious conversations involving civil rights and other important legal topics. This firm handled estate law and domestic cases involving prenuptial agreements and divorces. They were one of the most sought-after firms in the city.

  Cisco wandered toward his desk and picked up his suit jacket. He draped it over one arm while he located his car keys and his mobile phone. There was really no point in hanging around the office for another hour. It was four thirty. He was the only one here. Even the paralegals and secretaries had gone home for the weekend. Some of it was because there were no huge upcoming cases. Cisco had a feeling the rest of it was because the partners and associates in this firm were so well entrenched in the local court scene that they could choose their hearing days and trial dates. Judges didn’t particularly want to work on Friday either.

  With a deep sigh, Cisco headed for the elevator. He was feeling straight-up disillusioned. This was not what he’d wanted when he imagined himself practicing law. It wasn’t what he’d thought he would be doing. But perhaps this was the first week and he should give it a break.

  It was the elevator that reminded him of Melody. Cisco pushed the button for the ground floor and thought about the young woman with the messy brown hair and brilliant green eyes. He wanted to talk to her. He had the strangest urge to get to know her. He had a feeling that she would be fascinating in a very basic kind of way.