Cowboy Cop

by Lori Wilde

  Cowboy Cop

  Cowboy Confidential, Volume 1

  Lori Wilde and Kristin Eckhardt

  Published by Lori Wilde, 2021.

  This is a work of fiction. Similarities to real people, places, or events are entirely coincidental.

  COWBOY COP

  First edition. January 22, 2021.

  Copyright © 2021 Lori Wilde and Kristin Eckhardt.

  ISBN: 978-1393729761

  Written by Lori Wilde and Kristin Eckhardt.

  COWBOY COP

  Lori Wilde &

  Kristin Eckhardt

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Also by Lori Wilde and Kristin Eckhardt

  1

  Mondays were bad for Nick Holden.

  He’d gotten bucked off his first horse on a Monday. Wrecked his souped-up Chevy pickup on a Monday. Kissed his first girl on a Monday. Okay, technically that was a good thing. Only, the girl of his ten-year-old dreams didn’t appreciate his advances and promptly knocked out his front tooth, which was eventually repaired by a sadistic dentist.

  All on a Monday.

  But that was all a long time ago. Surely, today would be different. He was older now. Wiser. Wary of wild horses, fast trucks, and dangerous women.

  Nick tipped up his cowboy hat and studied the guy seated across the booth from him. A small ink stain bled though the pocket of his crisp white shirt, and a spot of ketchup smeared the front of his green clip-on tie.

  His plastic name tag read Capt’in Robby and his freckles and peach fuzz told Nick the kid couldn’t be a day over seventeen.

  A Monday-killer if he ever saw one.

  “Interesting resume, Mr. Holden,” Robby said, flipping the pages in the blue-bound folder. “We’ve never had a cop apply at Farley’s Fish Hut before.”

  “Ex-cop,” Nick clipped.

  Robby nodded. “Right.” Then he folded his freckled hands together and cleared his throat.

  “Yes?”

  “One of my duties here is to hire responsible, dedicated people to serve on our crew. You’ll have to start out as a cabin boy even though you’re”—Robby flipped over the employment application—“thirty-three years old.”

  Aww heck, what did that mean?

  “That means you’re not allowed to run the cash register or operate the French fry machine. But with some self-motivation and hard work, you can advance to deckhand, then first mate, and maybe after that”—his reedy voice grew cocky—“even a Capt’in.”

  Nick closed his eyes, prayed for patience. What options do you have buckaroo?

  He’d been living back at the ranch with Grandma Hattie for the past month, trying to earn his keep by fixing fence and taming wild horses. He’d do anything for her—even rewatch her favorite musicals like Oklahoma, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and The Music Man and that was saying a lot.

  But he needed to move on and find full-time work—something to turn his life around. That’s why he’d been all over town looking for a job until he’d finally ended up here. Bottom of the barrel, but work was work.

  “When can I start?” he asked.

  Robby didn’t answer.

  Nick opened his eyes.

  The teenager still staring at the employment application.

  “Is there a problem?” Nick steeled himself for the inevitable.

  Robby cleared his throat. “This says…um…under felony convictions…”

  “That I spent the last fifteen months in prison at Ferguson.”

  “You’re an ex-con?” Robby shifted in his molded plastic chair.

  Nick nodded, not bothering to explain how he had voluntarily taken the rap for someone else, and in the process ruined his career and his reputation.

  He’d also apparently even ruined his job prospects at Farley’s Fish Hut, one of the few places in town that had granted him a job interview since his release from prison a month ago.

  “Cool,” Robby exclaimed, his eyes lighting up. “I thought you looked kind of tough.”

  A minimum-security prison camp was hardly Alcatraz, but Nick didn’t have time to explain the subtle nuances of the Texas penal system.

  “Listen, Capt’in Robby,” he said, checking his watch, “I’m due to pick up my grandmother at the library in ten minutes…”

  “No problem.” Robby held out his hand. “You start training tomorrow at two o’clock sharp. Welcome aboard, Mr. Holden.”

  Nick looked down at the flattened sheet of colorful cardboard in Robby’s hand. “What’s this?”

  “Your hat. All the crew wear one when they’re on deck. It’s required.”

  “It doesn’t look like a hat.”

  Robby grinned. “You have to put it together. It’s shaped like a cod. That’s our specialty. Oh, that reminds me, you’ll need to memorize the menu list and our slogan: Oceans of Fish, Fries, and Fun for Everyone.”

  But Nick was still staring at the hat.

  So it had come to this. A thirty-three-year-old man trading in his Stetson to wear a cod on his head and work his way up to the French fry machine. For seven dollars and twenty-five cents an hour.

  Another Monday bites the dust.

  This was Lucy Moore’s lucky day.

  She’d lost three pounds and found ninety-seven cents buried in her sofa. And she’d arrived at the Heritage Library employee parking lot just in time to save Coco, Letitia Beaumont’s pedigreed poodle, from a fate worse than death—the amorous attentions of a junkyard mutt cruising the nice side of town, where respectable dogs wore rhinestone collars and microchips under their skin.

  Not that Coco couldn’t use a little of the mutt’s scrappy tenacity in her gene pool. So could her owner, the horrified chairwoman of the Heritage Library Foundation, Lucy thought as she gently shooed the mutt back toward his neighborhood—and hers. But she wisely kept that opinion to herself. Letitia expressed her eternal gratitude by promising to remember Lucy when the position of assistant senior librarian opened up.

  Assistant senior librarian.

  It had a nice ring to it. Of course, not quite as nice as senior librarian, or even director of the Heritage Library. But not bad for a twenty-nine-year-old bookworm who grew up dirt-poor on the wrong side of Pine City, Texas. And certainly better than her current position as staff librarian.

  Lucy ran one hand over the smooth green marble counter, warmed by the late-afternoon October sun slanting through the library windows. She couldn’t wait to write to her brother Melvin and tell him all about it.

  Not that he would ever read it.

  He still returned all her letters unopened. Refused to take her phone calls and generally irritated her with that masculine mix of bravado and martyrdom that always set her teeth on edge.

  He’d been just as stubborn when they were growing up together. Of course, she’d been stubborn, too.

  She’d needed that mental toughness to survive the peer pressure on Bale Street. Avoiding the delinquents so she could earn a high school diploma instead of a juvenile record. Spending all of her Saturday nights studying so she could win a full college scholarship to the University of North Texas.

  Through it all she’d always had her big brother’s support. Which was why she simply couldn’t believe that now he expected her to sit back and do nothing while his life fell apart. He’d told her more than
once to forget about him. To pretend she didn’t even have a brother. To stay out of it, for her own good.

  If she waited around for Melvin’s consent, she’d never get anything accomplished. He simply worried too much. Recalled too many of her past mishaps. Like that annoying incident with his Jeep. Filling the radiator with sweet tea when it ran low turned out to be just fine. He’d never appreciated her resourcefulness.

  So it was time for Lucy to take matters into her own hands.

  Maybe once she proved herself to him, he’d learn to loosen up a little. Melvin needed help. Her help. And she needed a street-smart sidekick to do the grunt work.

  Someone tough and tenacious. Dependable and desperate. Someone like the man Hattie Holden boasted about at the library’s weekly meeting of the Bluebonnet Book Club.

  Now the only question was, how lucky could Lucy get?

  “I can’t wait to meet your grandson,” she said to the silver-haired woman approaching the circulation desk. “I hope he’s the right man for the job. I need someone who’s not afraid to get his hands dirty. A man who’s not afraid, period.”

  “Nick is perfect,” Hattie replied, shifting the bulging library tote bag from one blue-veined hand to the other. “Very well rounded. All my boys are.”

  Lucy had never met Hattie’s boys, the six grandsons she and her late husband had raised on Elk Creek Ranch after they lost their parents in a car accident twenty-five years ago, but she’d spoken of them often.

  Lucy just hoped this one lived up to the hype.

  “I can’t pay much,” she warned for the third time. “That’s why every P.I. in Pine City has turned me down.”

  Hattie smiled, reached into her tote bag and pulled out a business card. “Don’t worry, dear. I’m offering a discount, so the amount you mentioned earlier will be more than enough.”

  Lucy stared at the card Hattie handed her. “Cowboy Confidential?”

  “That’s the name of my new business.” Hattie beamed. “Think of it as a temporary staffing agency for folks who need a bit of help now and then. Like you.”

  “That sounds perfect!”

  Hattie smiled. “I’m sure Nick will be thrilled with anything you have to offer. He just finished doing a little work for the state, so he’s in between jobs at the moment.”

  A little of Lucy’s enthusiasm wavered. There was no doubt Hattie saw her grandsons through rose-colored bifocals.

  What if Nick was a whiner? Just like Lester Bonn, the director of the Heritage Library, who had honed his blame-shifting skills to a degree that made him truly insufferable. A man only a mother could love. Or a doting grandmother.

  “I want to see him before I make up my mind for sure,” Lucy announced. “I always go by first impressions.”

  “Oh, you’ll be impressed.” Hattie smiled. “Now stand up straight, dear. Nick should be here any minute.”

  Lucy tucked a stray wisp of hair behind her ear. “Shouldn’t we have some sort of signal?”

  “Signal?”

  “A code word to let you know if I want to hire him, in case he’s not the right man for the job.”

  Hattie’s blue eyes lit up. “A secret code! That’s a wonderful idea. How about…Mary, Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”

  Lucy wrinkled her nose. “That might be a little hard to work into the conversation. How about ‘nice shoes’?”

  “Nick always wears cowboy boots, just like his grandfather. My Henry stood over six feet tall with his boots on. Worked as both a rancher and a cop after the boys came to live with us, just to keep food on the table.” Her eyes gleamed with pride. “Did I tell you my oldest grandson is named after him?”

  Only about eight hundred times.

  Lucy smiled, warmed by Hattie’s affection for her late husband. “You’ve mentioned it a time or two.”

  “Do you like spaghetti with meatballs?”

  Lucy shrugged. “Once in a while. Why?”

  “No, dear, I mean for our secret code.”

  “That’s perfect. If I want him, I’ll ask for your recipe for spaghetti with meatballs.”

  Hattie clucked her tongue. “No, that won’t work, dear. It’s a secret family recipe and almost as popular as my blackberry cordial.”

  “Well, we’ve got to come up with something—”

  “Here he comes!” Hattie interrupted with an excited whisper.

  Lucy glanced toward the door.

  Nick Holden looked nothing like she’d imagined. He was big and bad, with short jet-black hair, piercing gray eyes, and a square don’t-mess-with-me jaw. He looked like a man who could take apart the library brick-by-brick with his bare hands. And judging by the stubborn set of his chin, he’d do just that if he thought it was necessary.

  Her mouth went dry. A rugged cowboy for hire.

  Cheap.

  Remain calm, Lucy!

  Yeah, that didn’t work.

  A bolt of excitement surged through her blood hot and pounding. She didn’t want to act hastily. Or do anything impulsive. She needed to give this some serious thought. Weigh the pros and the cons. Check into his background, at the very least.

  Nick Holden stared her down like an OK Corral gunslinger, widened his stance, hitched his thumbs through his belt loops.

  Her heart stuttered.

  His lips twitching into a beguiling smile.

  Holy moly!

  She took a deep breath, gazed directly into Nick Holden’s gunmetal gray eyes and said, “Spaghetti with meatballs.”

  2

  Nick didn’t think his Monday could possibly get any worse. Until a bee stung him on his way into the library.

  So now on top of a throbbing headache from his interview with Capt’in Robby, he had a throbbing pain in his right shoulder from the sting. And a wide-eyed librarian talking nonsense to him.

  He turned to his grandmother, taking the heavy tote bag out of her grasp. “Ready to go?”

  Hattie frowned up at him. “Nick, I expect you to mind your manners and speak to Lucy.”

  “Who’s Lucy?”

  The librarian raised her hand.

  He turned toward her, the embedded stinger in his shoulder grating against his shirt. Nick noticed her eyes first— probably because they were big and round and staring openly at him—brown eyes flecked with gold and fringed with lush, dark lashes.

  He dropped his gaze from those eyes and found full pink lips below a small pert nose. Deliciously supple lips. Lips just made for kissing.

  He mentally shook that image from his head, stunned to find himself fantasizing about Marian the Librarian. At least her hair looked the part, drawn back into an efficient knot at the nape of her neck.

  Except for those wisps of honey-blond curls spilling over her smooth cheeks, teasing him with the promise of silky softness, tempting him to reach out and brush them off her face. Nick curled his hand into a fist to prevent him from doing just that.

  He’d obviously been in prison too long.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” she said at last, extending a slender hand for him to shake.

  Nick reached out to grasp it, wincing as the stinger shifted painfully under his shirt at the movement. “Ow.”

  Lucy dropped his hand and frowned. “I’m sorry…I didn’t mean to hurt you. My brother always believed a woman should be able to handle a firm handshake. I must have squeezed too hard.”

  Her words sounded apologetic but her tone implied he was a wimp, and her big brown eyes softened with disappointment.

  Nick clenched his jaw, wondering why he cared about her opinion of him, especially when he’d stopped caring about anyone else’s opinion a long time ago. Fifteen months to be exact.

  “No problem.”

  “What’s the matter with you?” Hattie asked. “You look a little pale.”

  “Maybe he should lie down,” Lucy suggested.

  “It’s nothing serious,” he said. “It’s just this darn”—he skittered a glance toward his grandmother—“stinger i
n my shoulder. A bee got me on the way in.”

  “You got stung?” Hattie asked, her blue eyes clouding with concern. She looked at Lucy. “Oh, dear. Now what?”

  “Why don’t I take him into the office and have a look at it?” Lucy suggested.

  Hattie smiled. “That’s a wonderful idea.”

  “No,” Nick insisted. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Unless you’re allergic,” Lucy said. “Then you could be dead in ten minutes. We’ve got a book called How to Survive Venomous Bites and Stings.” She began pecking at the keys on the computer in front of her. “I’ll just look up a digital copy for the symptoms. We don’t want to take any chances.”

  “That’s not necessary,” he said.

  “Now you look flushed,” Hattie observed, laying her palm on his forehead. “Maybe you should go rest for a while.”

  “I think that’s an excellent idea,” Lucy exclaimed and then turned toward the back office with a frantic wave.

  “Look, this is ridiculous,” Nick interjected as a short, balding man in a tweed jacket and bolo tie joined Lucy behind the circulation desk.

  “Is there a problem, Lucy?”

  “As a matter of fact, Lester, there’s a very serious problem.” She pointed at Nick. “This man just got stung by a bee and seems to be suffering some sort of reaction.”

  “I never…” Nick sputtered, but his grandmother placed a quieting hand on his shoulder, right on top of the stinger, turning his protest into a muted gasp of pain.

  “You can see how much he’s suffering,” Lucy continued with a pitying glance at Nick. “We can only hope he doesn’t sue the city for damages.”

  “A lawsuit?” Lester scowled. “I think you might be overreacting.”