Marrying the Rancher

by Roz Denny Fox

  * * *

  TO TANDY THE days after Scotty’s birthday zipped by. Wyatt’s former boss sent two guys for his vehicle. She expected he’d get depressed, but he didn’t. He whistled as he did chores and helped with the cattle.

  Her whole life had changed for the better. So why did she get up feeling nervous the morning of their wedding?

  Loki, Abby and their kids had arrived the previous afternoon. While the kids played and the men toured the ranch, Abby talked her out of being married in jeans. Instead they teamed her green Western shirt with a broomstick skirt. It did look nice and feminine. The hem barely brushed the tops of her new handmade cowgirl boots.

  Even the weather appeared to cooperate. Cool, but sunny.

  Abby wouldn’t let Tandy fix breakfast, and newly acquired friends swarmed in to string festive St. Patrick’s decorations while Roy Wilkerson readied his brisket smoker.

  “Are you nervous?” she asked Wyatt during a lull.

  “No. Should I be? I’m the happiest man alive. I look at you and see all I’ve been missing.”

  “I know you and Loki went out this morning to see the wolves. Won’t you miss working for Game and Fish?” The words had barely cleared her lips when Wes Rowe drove in, hopped out of his SUV and bounded up to Wyatt, a folder in his hand.

  “You were right about Joe dumping responsibility for the Mission pack on my desk,” he said, grinning at Wyatt and Tandy. “Yesterday I received authority to offer you the new state program we discussed. I could’ve phoned, but thought what better wedding gift can an old bachelor like me give you two?” He handed Wyatt the folder.

  Wyatt shook Wes’s hand. “Without even reading the offer, I’m glad to oblige.”

  Tandy hugged Wes and kissed Wyatt. “Now everything is perfect. And here comes Manny in his Sunday-go-to-meetin’ Western suit. It’s time we go dress and head up to the mine.”

  Wyatt caught her chin. “So you know, it was perfect for me before Wes’s gift.”

  Tandy’s heart leaped and beat faster even as carloads of neighbors began arriving. She and Wyatt hurriedly separated to dress for their wedding.

  * * *

  A SHORT TIME later as the ceremony commenced, Wyatt and Tandy exchanged vows along with rings brought to them by a pleased-as-punch Scotty.

  Their kiss at the end delighted the crowd and more than sealed their love in Tandy’s heart.

  Following hugs and congratulations, everyone returned to Spiritridge for the reception. And the ranch rang with sounds of love and laughter like Tandy had envisioned when she’d left the military to become a rancher. What she’d never dreamed was that she’d find true love. A love that deepened as she and Wyatt held hands and mingled with their newfound friends.

  * * * * *

  If you loved this book, look for previous titles

  by Roz Denny Fox

  in her SNOWY OWL RANCHERS series:

  HIS RANCH OR HERS

  A MAVERICK’S HEART

  A MONTANA CHRISTMAS REUNION

  And more, available now at Harlequin.com!

  Keep reading for an excerpt from A BABY FOR THE SHERIFF by Mary Leo.

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  A Baby for the Sheriff

  by Mary Leo

  Chapter One

  The wine was poured. The fire burned bright in the hearth. Doctor Coco Grant, the town’s vet, had painted her toenails, donned extra makeup, chosen her most seductive underwear—the blush lace panties and bra she’d bought anticipating this moment—slipped into her sexiest black dress and even shaved her legs.

  All of it done in preparation for her date with Russ Knightly, the potential new mayor of Briggs, Idaho, and one of the most sought-after eligible bachelors for a hundred miles. At thirty-three, he would be the youngest mayor of Briggs, and the one man in the entire county whom Coco had lusted over for the past five years while he dated several other women. One of them he’d even proposed to. Fortunately for Coco, that engagement didn’t last more than a few weeks.

  Now it was Coco’s turn...the woman he was meant to be with, the woman he would love like no other, the woman for whom he was about to fulfill all her sexual fantasies in one hot night, and the woman she hoped would one day be referred to as Doctor Coco Knightly, the mayor’s wife. Her family, especially her brother, Carson, admired Russ. Carson had been sponsored by the Knightly Endowment for the Preservation of Western Culture when he had first started competing as a bronc rider in local rodeos.

  Coco had been smitten ever since Russ, and a few other cowboys, rescued a small herd of wild horses trapped up in the Teton Mountains. Russ had risked his life to go up there and lead those animals out, under severe avalanche warnings for the area.

  Ever since that moment, she thought Russ Knightly was a kindred spirit who loved and respected animals as much as she did. He was simply the bravest man alive, or at least the bravest man in Briggs, next to her brother and her dad, of course.

  “I’ve been thinking about you all day,” Russ said as he walked backward to her bedroom, pulling her along with one hand, the other caressing his glass of expensive scotch, a scotch that Coco had ordered online just for this occasion, a fifteen-year-old scotch she knew he would love.

  “Me, too,” she told him as she eagerly followed him, aroused by the mere idea of what was about to happen in her once lonely bedroom.

  She and Russ had been dating for almost two months, thanks to an official introduction by her brother, but because of her schedule and his mayoral campaign, they hadn’t found the time to take their relationship to the next level.

  Tonight, they would break through all those levels with pure lust, pure sex and pure seduction. At twenty-nine, Coco hadn’t really experienced a lot of sex, especially not the kind that Russ Knightly was noted for. She’d been too busy with her studies, volunteering and dreaming about Russ to care much about dating other guys.

  But all that was in her past now. Tonight the floodgates were open, and each time he touched her a fire ignited that she didn’t want to put out anytime soon.

  Heck, Coco had even locked her little dog, Punky, a Yorkshire terrier, in the bathroom. For some reason she couldn’t understand, Punky didn’t seem to like Russ, and growled whenever he came close to Coco.

  Well, there would be none of that tonight.

  Tonight Coco and Russ wo
uld be so close they might need the Jaws of Life to pull them apart.

  “I have plans for you, baby, plans for your body,” he muttered in a deep voice.

  She loved it when he called her baby.

  “What kind of plans?” she teased, loving how he made her feel all tingly.

  “Dirty plans that will make you blush whenever you think about our first night.”

  “I’m already blushing,” she demurely said. “And I have my own plans.”

  That was a complete fabrication. The only plans she’d had that day were how to foal a breached horse and what kind of drugs she would administer to Helen Granger’s horse, Tater, for the infection in his right front femur.

  Russ stopped, pulled her in tight and kissed her. Although Coco’s mind sometimes drifted whenever they kissed, she felt certain once they were in bed together her focus would laser in on the task at hand—not that making love to Russ was a task. What she meant was, once they were in bed together, nothing else would matter and she’d be able to surrender to the moment.

  Of course it would be that way, she told herself. He was the man she wanted to be with forever. The man she’d dreamed about, longed for and pictured as the father of her children.

  Russ Knightly was her man, her guy, her Mr. Right.

  As he pulled her in tighter and she felt the bulge of his manhood press against her body, her heart raced, and suddenly all she could think of was how this was finally going to happen. She was going to make love with her dream man. Life couldn’t get any better if it had been scripted.

  Until the doorbell rang for her animal clinic downstairs. She’d only recently, in the last eight months, finished construction on the two-thousand-foot expansion. She’d had proper ventilation installed, added to the reception area and incorporated two large pens for the livestock she inevitably took in. She’d been thinking of hiring another doctor to help out, but so far, she hadn’t made the time to begin the search...a fact she now found herself regretting.

  Russ kept his lips pressed to hers as if he hadn’t heard it.

  “I...I, um, I should get that,” she mumbled while his lips stuck to hers.

  “Not tonight. Whoever it is will go away.”

  The bell rang again.

  “Or not,” she said, trying to disengage from him. It felt as though his lips were glued to hers and she couldn’t unstick them.

  “I...really...need...to...get...that.”

  He finally stepped back and Coco swore their lips popped apart. “You’re not seriously going to leave me here like this while you answer the door.”

  He nodded down toward the bulge in his pants, which for some odd reason was no longer doing it for her. Not when she knew someone’s animal could be in crisis.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, slipping out from his embrace, “but as much as I would like to, I can’t ignore the bell. It wouldn’t be right. If someone’s trudged through all that snow and cold, I have no choice but to at least answer the door.”

  He glanced at his watch. “It’s ten o’clock at night. Nobody just brings over their sick animal at this time of night without calling first.”

  “All the more reason why I need to get that. It’s probably an emergency.”

  Coco ran a hand through her hair, placed her wineglass on the table and turned to dash down the stairs to answer the door.

  The bell rang again.

  “Persistent, aren’t they?” he said, sounding resentful.

  She turned back to him. “I’ll only be a minute. I’m sure it’s something minor and I’ll be able to fix it in no time.”

  But Coco wasn’t so sure. Usually whenever her doorbell rang this late, someone was leaving behind an unwanted or sick pet they could no longer care for. She flipped on the light switch in the stairwell and through the glass on the top half of the door caught the shadow of a woman wearing a puffy coat and hood as she walked away.

  “Oh, shoot,” she said aloud, knowing full well it was a drop-off. She already had a piglet named Jimmy, two baby goats, one puppy, two persnickety calico kittens, an adult tortoise named Tortie and two temperamental baby llamas taking shelter in her clinic. She’d find homes for all of them eventually, but at the moment, the farm animals were illegal within city limits, and if Sheriff Jet Wilson—who did everything by the book—learned about them, he’d issue her another fine on top of the last two she couldn’t afford to pay. She’d spent all her savings on the expansion.

  When she arrived at the bottom of the stairs, she grabbed the gray sweater that hung on a hook next to the door and slipped it on. Whatever was waiting for her on the other side of that door was more than likely going to require her standing out in the cold for a minute or two before she could wrangle it inside.

  Good thing she still wore her shoes, albeit three-inch heels, but shoes nonetheless.

  “Okay, what do we have this time?” she asked as she swung open the door expecting another goat or llama or...

  * * *

  SHERIFF JET WILSON fought his way back to the jail. The official white SUV, with the Briggs Sheriff’s Department logo emblazoned on the two front doors, was fishtailing at almost every turn. The snow was piling up fast now, and driving was nearing impossible. Benny Snoots, the town’s one and only official snowplow driver, worked as fast as he could, but the snow was just too much for him.

  Russ Knightly, a man Jet Wilson didn’t much like, promised two more snowplows if he was elected mayor, and on a night like this, Jet considered giving him his vote...or not.

  If, on the other hand, Mayor Sally Hickman won again, Jet would make sure at least one more snowplow was on her agenda, and if it wasn’t, he promised himself he’d take up the cause himself and add plowing capability to the front of the SUV.

  When he finally pulled up in front of the small jailhouse, he parked curbside and got out. His very first step encased his cowboy boots in so much snow that it slipped inside his boots and made a mess of his nice warm woolen socks. He grabbed the bags of food that he’d picked up at Sammy’s Smokehouse off the back seat, slammed the doors shut and headed for the front of the jail. None of the townsfolk knew he was living at the jail these days and no one needed to know.

  A water pipe had burst in his apartment earlier that week, and until his landlord could get it fixed and repair the damage to the floor and the wall, Jet didn’t have anywhere else to go...at least nowhere he could afford. All the rooms in this town were too pricey for him and, well, he didn’t want to impose on what few friends he had.

  Being relatively new to Briggs, having lived there for less than two years, making friends had been tough. Especially since he’d ticked off Russ Knightly, who seemed to be a big deal in town, next to Carson Grant, the town’s one and only rodeo hero. Jet admired Carson, and had met him a few times, but Russ was another story entirely. He hadn’t meant to make him mad, but the guy had been doing seventy-five in a fifty-five-mile zone, had a taillight out and was missing his front license plate when Jet had pulled him over. Idaho required two license plates, no matter what kind of vehicle you drove, and besides, the guy had way too much attitude for Jet’s liking.

  Little had Jet known that Russ seemed to pull all the important strings in town, and in the state, for that matter, and when you were merely a small-town sheriff, those strings could get pretty tight.

  In the end, his violations had somehow been dismissed, and Jet had ended up the bad guy.

  Of course, at the moment, Jet didn’t give a hoot. The jail suited him just fine, thank you very much. The bed in the cell was comfortable enough, and rarely used, so he thought he’d break it in for a few days.

  He swung open the heavy front door, hit the light switch, slipped out of his bulky parka and cowboy hat, tugged off his boots and his wet socks, sat down at his desk inside his small office and tore open the bags of delicious-smelli
ng barbecue. His mouth instantly watered in anticipation. He hadn’t eaten all day, and his stomach had started aching about three hours ago from lack of food. The pungent smells filled the room as Jet cracked open a can of beer and took a long pull.

  He was in for the night, and it felt good to finally be free of all responsibilities. He took a big bite of one of the beef ribs, ripping the meat off the bone with his teeth, groaned his delight and walked over to put his wet socks on the old radiator under the bank of windows so they could dry. All the blinds were closed, so no one could see him, not that there was anyone out there looking on a night like this. Still it gave him comfort to be hidden from view for a while. He walked back to the desk, took another big bite and was just about to sit down and settle in when the phone rang...his phone, in his pocket. The phone that he kept private, and only a handful of people had the number.

  That phone rang.

  The jailhouse phone had an all-night service for any emergency calls, but that wasn’t ringing.

  He felt the sigh that seemed to come up from his bare feet before he heard it expel from his throat as he pulled his phone out of his pocket and checked the screen.

  Doctor Coco Grant’s name lit up the black screen along with the picture he’d taken of her in front of her illegal goat pen inside her clinic.

  Part of him didn’t want to answer, but he knew if she was calling this late at night, it must be important.

  Frankly, he didn’t want to hear about “important” right now, not in the middle of what had to be the best barbecue ribs Sammy had ever created.

  He chewed and swallowed.

  “Hello,” he reluctantly said into his phone.

  “Hi, Sheriff. Sorry to bother you this late, but I’ve got a situation over here that requires your attention.”

  He glanced up at the large clock above the front door knowing perfectly well that whatever it was that required his attention would take him at least another hour or more and it was already going on ten thirty.