by Stacy Finz
“You won’t change your mind, will you?” he said against her lips.
“Never.”
“Promise? Because you’ve been known to—”
“I promise.” She wouldn’t let him say it.
“We’ll have to talk to your dad.” He stopped kissing her to look into her eyes. “He’s counting on you going back with him to Connecticut.”
“I wouldn’t worry too much about him.” She planted her lips back on his and felt him smiling against her mouth.
“You sure?” he whispered. “Because you kind of have a reputation, you know?”
“It depends,” she teased. “Is your love for me for real or for show?”
“I’ll let you decide.” And when he kissed her into sheer oblivion there was no doubt left in her mind.
Epilogue
“You think she’ll actually show up this time?” Owen whispered to Darla, who told him to keep his yap shut.
Nate overheard the entire exchange, even over the din of the string quartet and stragglers still looking for seats. Not for one minute did he think Sam would stand him up, but for insurance he’d put Maddy on the case. She wasn’t to leave the bride’s side, not even for a bathroom run.
And just to hedge his bets, Nate had asked for a short engagement—he didn’t want to give the bride too much time to change her mind. A person couldn’t be too careful. Fortunately for him, Sam didn’t want to plan another extravagant wedding. She’d just finished Harlee and Colin’s and did enough of them for her clients. So here they stood at the Lumber Baron, ready to tie the knot on one of those perfect Northern California September days when the sun shone and the temperature registered a balmy seventy-eight degrees. Afterward, the wedding party and one hundred of their closest friends and family would move to Lucky’s barn for barbecue and dancing. The next day, they had flights to Nantucket for a week-long honeymoon at Sam’s summerhouse.
Initially, George had balked at the informality of his only daughter’s wedding, but Sam had persuaded him to go with the flow.
“Daddy, you’re in Nugget now. Get over yourself.”
Since becoming a part-time resident of the town, George had gotten much more laid-back, trading in his large collection of red pants and loafers for jeans and boots. Coincidentally enough, he’d bought a house in Sierra Heights the very day Nate and Sam had gotten engaged. George had said it was a good investment.
Nate, however, suspected that he’d been hoodwinked by the scheming old man, that Sam had never intended to move back to Connecticut, and that George had been playing matchmaker.
Thank goodness. Sam was the best thing that had ever happened to him.
And of course Lilly, who Sophie shoved into his arms. “We want a picture of you two on your wedding day,” she said, snapping various shots with her smartphone.
“Get into the picture,” Donna told Sophie and Mariah. “I’ll get all four of you.”
“I want one of Sam, Lilly, and me after the ceremony,” Nate told them.
“We’ll take it in front of the Lumber Baron,” Mariah said. “It’ll be beautiful.”
Although Sam had enthusiastically agreed to take the top event-planning job, she’d persuaded Nate to let her make the Lumber Baron her main base of operation. Like him, she’d travel back and forth. But with Gold Mountain in the works, and plenty of barn weddings on the horizon at Lucky’s cowboy camp, they needed their focus to be in Nugget for now. So they’d agreed to live in Nate’s house and maybe buy a second place in San Francisco later.
The processional music started up, signaling that the ceremony was about to begin. Nate took his place under the arbor Colin had built. The minister stood stiffly at the lectern. Brady came out the back door, near the kitchen, and grabbed a chair at the end of the front row.
As the quartet launched into the “Wedding March,” it seemed that the entire audience held its collective breath. Harlee had discreetly positioned herself to get the photo op if the bride decided to make a run for it. And Owen kept turning around to see where she was. Lucky, on the other hand, seemed to have more faith than the rest. He sat with his mom, scanning the crowd in front of him. Nate could only presume he was looking for Raylene Rosser, who if rumor had it right was seeing the champion bull rider.
As the music continued to play, the guests waited a beat before getting to their feet, still uncertain. Then Sam appeared in a white strapless gown and a long veil. Coming down the aisle on her father’s arm, Sam took Nate’s breath away. Like an angel, she smiled at him, her big blue eyes so beguiling and full of love that for a moment Nate was suspended in time and eternally grateful that of all the country inns in all the small towns in the world, Samantha Dunsbury, soon to be Breyer, had walked into his and decided to start over.
Please turn the page for an exciting sneak peek of
Stacy Finz’s newest Nugget romance
GETTING LUCKY
coming in November 2015!
Chapter 1
“Come back here!” Lucky propped up on both elbows and watched Raylene shimmy into her denim skirt. “What’s the rush?”
“I promised my parents I’d be back in time for dinner.”
Lucky reached over and grabbed his watch off the nightstand. “It’s still early.”
“I have to shower and change,” she said, pulling a miniscule tank top over her head.
“Shower here.” With me.
Raylene scanned the singlewide trailer and Lucky could’ve sworn she grimaced. Granted, it wasn’t fancy—a tin can, really, with a few pieces of shabby furniture Lucky had rummaged from some of the outbuildings on his property. But he got the bed new and the place was clean. And temporary. Pretty soon his construction crew would finish converting one of the bunkhouses into his office and private quarters.
“It’s best if I get home before anyone sees me in this.” Raylene looked down at the mini skirt that barely covered the dental floss she called underwear and pulled on her cowboy boots.
The slutty getup might’ve gotten him off with the buckle bunnies he typically consorted with but not Raylene. On her it didn’t sit right with him. It made Raylene seem cheap.
“Don’t you think it’s time to take us public?” Lucky swung his legs over the side of the bed, found his Levi’s on the floor and shoved them on, buttoning the fly.
“We’ve been over this, Lucky.”
“Yeah, well I’m tired of all this sneaking around.” He’d loved the woman since middle school, and was getting weary of the clandestine booty calls. Sometime soon he’d like to take her on an actual date.
“I don’t want Butch to find out while we’re still hashing out the settlement. Besides, there’s my father and your mother to consider.”
Neither would be happy that Lucky and Raylene were seeing each other. A lot of bad blood between the two families.
Raylene pushed Lucky back onto the bed and straddled his lap with her long tanned legs. “Try to be patient, baby. For me.” She pouted prettily and then kissed him until he was snaking his hands under her top, reaching for the good stuff. “I’ve gotta go, Lucky.”
“Ten more minutes,” he moaned, hard as a rock.
“Uh-uh. Daddy’ll be home soon.”
“For Christ’s sake, Raylene, you’re twenty-eight years old. A grown woman.”
“You know how he is.”
Yeah, Lucky knew Raylene’s old man. A prick and a bigot. “Then go now. Because in another minute I’ll have you on your back.”
She giggled, reminding Lucky of their teens when she used to flirt with him mercilessly. Of course then she’d been dating Zachary Baze, captain of the football team.
“When’s the divorce final?” he asked as she wiggled off of him.
“I’m not sure. Butch is being difficult.”
“What the hell does he have to be difficult about? He was screwing your best friend.”
She put her finger over his mouth. “Shush. I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Well I
don’t like it, Raylene.” He waggled his hands between the two of them. “Going around everyone’s back. . . . It feels slimy.”
“What do you want me to do, Lucky? Divorces take time. Colorado isn’t California.”
Lucky didn’t know anything about the legalities of divorce in either state, but for the life of him he didn’t know what the holdup was. Raylene and Butch had been separated for months now. “I want this to be good between us. . . . I want it to be right.”
She bent down and kissed him again. “It is good between us, Lucky. And nothing has ever felt more right.”
“Yeah?” He stood up and wrapped her in his arms. “God, I love you, Raylene.”
“I love you, too. But if I don’t get home . . .”
“Go then,” he said, patting her bottom. “When can I see you again?”
“Mama and I are taking a shopping trip to San Francisco this weekend. As soon as I get back.”
“Get some clothes that cover you, while you’re there,” he said, staring at her ass—the same bubble butt that had filled those itty-bitty uniforms she’d worn while cheering for Nugget High.
She bent over, letting her denim skirt ride up, giving him more than just a view of her behind.
He dove for her, but Raylene darted away, laughing. “They’ve got a name for girls like you.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” Raylene rucked up her tank top, making a big show of fondling the double “Ds” Butch had bought her. Apparently, the man hadn’t thought his wife’s natural breasts were big enough. Lucky had liked them just fine.
“I’m going now,” Raylene said, giving him one last peep show of her nether regions before darting out the door of the singlewide.
A couple of ranch hands were sitting on the fence, taking a break. Lucky shot them a dirty look when they gaped at Raylene like she was a hooker.
“Call me when you get back, you hear?” he shouted to Raylene, who hopped up into her truck and peeled off.
The girl had gone a little wild, but Lucky chalked it up to Butch keeping her on a string. She just needed a good man to give her the proper love and respect she deserved.
Lucky’s phone vibrated inside his back pocket. Fishing it out, he checked the display and answered when he saw it was his agent.
“Hey, Pete.”
“How’s the cowboy camp shaping up?”
“It’s coming along. I’d hoped to have it up and running by now. But we’ve run into a few glitches. Nothing insurmountable, though.” After ten years on the road living out of hotels, he’d purchased the property with plans to settle in his home town.
“That’s good,” Pete said. “Hey, I just wanted to give you a heads up. A reporter for Sports Illustrated is interested in doing a profile on you before the World Finals. I know you said you want to lay low for a while to recoup from that fall you took in Billings and to focus on your new business. But this sounds like a great opportunity, Lucky.”
Lucky scratched his head. “Maybe I could give him an hour over the phone.” Not too many pro bull riders made it into the pages of Sports Illustrated.
“That’s the thing. He heard about your cowboy camp and how you’re raising rodeo stock up there in the California Sierras, and wants to come up and spend some time with you. He seems to think this new enterprise of yours is a good hook for his story.”
“First of all, it’s the Sierra. Singular. It means mountain range in Spanish,” Lucky said. People were always getting it wrong. “How long would he need? Because, Pete, it’s September. I was supposed to open in summer. If I want to get this camp off the ground, I don’t have a lot of time for schmoozing with a reporter.”
“I know. But, hey, being featured in Sports Illustrated . . . you can’t get better publicity than that.”
True that. “Yeah. All right. When does he want to come?”
“I’ll check with him and get back to you. Is there a place for him to stay or should I tell him to book a room in Reno?”
“We’ve got a five-star inn in downtown Nugget. The Lumber Baron. Besides, Reno is a good forty-five minute drive.”
“Hang on, let me get a pen. I want to write that down. What’s the hotel called again?”
“The Lumber Baron. Hold a sec and I’ll get you a contact.” He searched his phone and ticked off the bed-and-breakfast’s phone number to Pete.
“Great. I’ll let him know and talk to you soon.” Pete ended the call.
Lucky needed the distraction of a reporter like he needed a hole in the head. Ordinarily, Lucky never shied away from the press, loving the attention. But he was way behind schedule. Once the snow came—which could be any day now—it would slow construction. The bunkhouses still needed to be winterized and as it turned out, the lodge, which he’d originally thought to be in good shape, needed all kinds of electrical work. Then there was the fact that most city folk didn’t want to ride, rope or wrestle steers in the freezing cold. Lucky hoped to attract Silicon Valley executives interested in using the ranch for corporate team building.
At least in future winters he and the owners of the Lumber Baron planned to team up on various ventures. The inn’s event planner, Samantha Dunsbury—now Breyer—wanted to rent out Lucky’s cowboy camp for weddings and other functions where the guests could indulge in their warped vision of ranch life—hay rides and barn dances. It wasn’t exactly the rough-and-tumble cowboy camp he’d envisioned, but it would help pay some of the overhead of the ranch. Right now it was paid for with Lucky’s winnings from professional bull riding. But at twenty-nine, this would be his last year.
He wasn’t getting those eighty-five and ninety-point rides like he used to. Not with the bulls getting tougher every year. Not when he had a couple of inches of height and thirty to forty pounds on the average bull rider. He’d never been built right for the sport, but he’d had youth and vigor on his side. Now there were younger and stronger contenders.
Lucky planned on the cowboy camp being his next chapter. That and raising prime rodeo stock. So far, though, bull riding, despite the broken bones and bruises, was still paying the bills. He gazed across the ranch, a defunct camp used by church organizations, clubs, and schools for retreats. The place was still in a shambles and nowhere close to welcoming guests.
But when he finally got the cowboy camp off the ground, a Sports Illustrated story would be good for business. Lucky couldn’t buy better advertising than that.
On his way to the lodge, a massive stack-stone and timber-log building that would serve as the camp’s combination mess hall and cantina, an early-model Jeep Cherokee crawled down his road. He didn’t recognize it as belonging to one of his workers. Then again there were so many of them swarming the place who could keep their vehicles straight?
Lucky stood to the side of the singlewide, out of sight, shielding his eyes from the sun, as a woman climbed out of the driver’s seat. She headed to the trailer door and knocked. He continued to watch her, debating whether to see what she wanted or to continue to the lodge. Occasionally, over-zealous fans—usually women—showed up on his doorstep uninvited. Crazy as it was, just being on ESPN was enough to bring all kinds out of the woodwork.
Today, he wasn’t in the mood to send one of them packing. But the lady didn’t strike him as a groupie. Her clothes were too conservative for one thing. A skirt that hit mid-calf and a nice blouse. It was her boots, though, that caught his attention. Even from yards away he could tell they were quality. Not gaudy, but definitely expensive. And a good chance, custom. Not what you would expect from someone driving a beater car.
His curiosity got the better of him and he made his presence known. “Can I help you?”
She jerked up, like he’d caught her off guard, then just stood there staring up at him.
Finally, he stuck out his hand. “Lucky Rodriguez. Were you looking for me?”
The woman shuffled her feet in the dirt and cleared her throat. “You don’t remember me, do you?”
“No, ma’am. Should I?”
> She didn’t say anything, just let her eyes drop to those elegant boots of hers. “Donna Thurston said you lived here now.”
He nodded. It wasn’t a secret that he’d purchased the old Roland Camp and had moved back to Nugget, even if Donna was the biggest mouth in town.
“Could we go inside?” she asked.
Lucky hesitated, but the woman didn’t look particularly threatening. Hell, soaking wet she couldn’t weigh more than 120 pounds. There was something desperate about her though, like maybe she was looking for work. “Yeah, come on in.”
The door to his bedroom was open and the bed showed signs of his and Raylene’s recent love making. He motioned to a ratty plaid couch and the woman took a seat while he chose the chair across from her.
“How can I help you, Miss . . . ?
“Tawny.”
Something about her rang a vague bell with him. But after a few seconds of searching his brain, Lucky couldn’t place the name.
She stared down at her hands, which were locked together like a fist.
“Would you like a drink?” Lucky asked.
“Water would be nice.”
He got up, hunted through his cupboards for a decent glass, filled it from the tap and brought it to her.
“Thanks.” When she looked up he noticed that her eyes were green. They too sparked an elusive memory, but like the rest of her he couldn’t quite pinpoint it.
She was pretty enough that if they’d crossed paths he would’ve remembered. The boots too. On closer inspection, Lucky thought they were some of the finest leather work he’d ever seen. Lots of hand tooled flowers and a monogram. As a world-champion bull rider, Lucky knew good boots when he saw them. And those must’ve cost a boat load. Strange, because she gave off the vibe that she was down on her luck. Sad. And tired.
“So what can I do for you, Miss Tawny?”
“Just Tawny,” she said. “Tawny’s my first name.”
Didn’t tawny mean orange or brown? The thought popped into his head that her name should’ve been Jade and again he got the distinct impression that he knew her from somewhere. He watched, waiting for her to state her business, then grew impatient when she just sat there.