The Undercover Cowboy

by Lori Wilde

  Dedication

  To Rachael, the loveliest of angels.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Announcement page to The Christmas Dare teaser Chapter One

  About the Author

  By Lori Wilde

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Chapter One

  In retrospect, Allie Grainger probably shouldn’t have been texting and walking across Main Street during the eleven a.m. cattle drive.

  Her bad.

  In her defense, her bestie, Tasha, had just been dumped by the love of her life, and Allie was nothing if not a good friend. Unfortunately, Tasha texted while Allie was on her way to a job interview during her lunch break from her receptionist’s position at the Twilight, Texas, Visitors Center.

  Allie was strolling past a living diorama of Twilight’s colorful past—shirtless Wild West reenactors portraying rugged cowboys by shoeing horses, repairing wagons, and pitching hay. A throng of camera-clicking gawkers surrounded them.

  Normally, she would have slowed down for the eye candy. She appreciated a hunky cowboy as much as the next girl, but today, her mind was half on Tasha, and the other half on her impending interview at the popup art gallery inside the old courthouse.

  The job was temporary, but if she landed it, she’d finally be using her art degree and it would be a feather in her résumé cap. Plus, the added income would keep her from having to move back in with her parents. At least until she could find another roommate.

  The day was miserably hot. Soaring over one hundred degrees already with no relief in sight. Perspiration collected on her brow and in her cleavage. So much for shower fresh.

  Over the last few days, the electric coop that supplied the town and rural areas had been suffering rolling blackouts from the strain of overworked air-conditioning systems. Two nights in a row, she’d awoken in complete darkness, sweaty to the core. Mom used the blackouts as an excuse to try to lure her back to Dallas, but Allie could handle a little heat.

  Her thumbs flew over her smartphone Head down, she stepped off the curb, as she texted: How R U holding up?

  Tasha’s text bubble exploded with poop emojis.

  Allie’s heart twisted for her friend, who just last week, believed her boyfriend, Tag, was on the verge of proposing. Shitty. Got it. Anything I can do?

  An gif of an angry woman chasing a wide-eyed, wild-haired, screaming man with a rolling pin popped onto her screen.

  Allie wrote: He’s not worth the jail time.

  A second text box flashed onto the screen, this one from her mother. Good luck with the interview. Fingers X’d.

  Thnx, Allie texted.

  ???, Tasha texted back.

  Allie: Oops. That was 4 my mom.

  Tasha sent a yellow, smiley-faced, eye-rolling emoji.

  Mom: Allie? U there?

  Allie: Mom, stop the helicopter.

  Mom: Just wanted U to know I’m in your corner. And if U don’t get the job, U can move back home. Dad and I will pay for your PhD.

  Allie blew out her breath. No way in hell-o. She punched in: TY. I’ll call U after the interview.

  Tasha: Huh?

  Fiddlesticks, she’d texted the wrong person again. Gotta go, Allie wrote to both Tasha and Mom, her thumb posed over the arrow that would send her reply.

  But she never got a chance to push it.

  A loud booming noise shattered the lazy summer morning. Sharp and sudden.

  Crack!

  She jerked her head in the direction of the noise. Was someone shooting off Fourth of July fireworks ten days early? Or was it a gunshot?

  Rumbling shook the earth. People gasped as the sound of galloping hooves thundered across the ground. The dozen head of cattle, trotted out daily for tourists in Twilight’s recent bid to compete with the Fort Worth Stockyards, had been on their way down Main Street toward their grazing pasture in a ranch off Highway 51. The boom had jolted them, and they’d outpaced their drovers.

  And they were stampeding straight toward her.

  Allie’s mouth dropped open, and the steamy morning air, mingled with dust kicked up from the cattle, rushed across her tongue.

  Run!

  But she couldn’t move. The faint dings of fresh text messages sounded from the cell phone still curled in her palm. Heat rose off the asphalt, mixing with the pungent aroma of cowhide. The bulging, frightened eyes of the charging longhorns stared right through her.

  Uh-oh.

  Run! Run!

  Rubbernecking sightseers were lined three feet deep on the sidewalks framing the newly widened thoroughfare. The sea of bystanders leaned forward on a collective inhale like spectators at a rodeo, curious to see if the champion bull rider had eight seconds in him. Or if the bucking bull would bash his head.

  “Run! Run! Run!” the crowd screamed.

  Too late.

  The cattle were already there. No time to get out of the way.

  If Allie hadn’t been lucky by fate, and optimistic by nature, she might have lost her cool. But her childhood stint in the cancer ward had taught her an important lesson, and she did what she’d always done when things got tough.

  Calmly, she closed her eyes, said a prayer of gratitude, and waited for a miracle.

  The woman stood in the middle of the road with such stunning calm. Her face turned to the sky, eyes closed, seemingly oblivious to the stampeding cattle bearing down on her. She was either a full-fledged crackpot, dumb as a fence post, or suicidal.

  But when it came down to it, what did it matter? She was in the path of disaster.

  Undercover detective Kade Richmond wasn’t supposed to call attention to himself, but if someone didn’t do something fast to save the loony lass, she was going to get flattened by the small herd of terrified longhorns.

  Kade didn’t hesitate. He threw down the hammer he’d been using to pound out a horseshoe against an anvil, shoved through the gawking horde, and sprinted to the middle of the street.

  Without a second to spare, bellowing cattle bearing down on them, Kade scooped her into the crook of his arm—thank God she was petite—hoisted her against his hip, and ran as fast as her weight—and his cowboy boots—would allow.

  Which wasn’t quite fast enough.

  Just as he reached the curb, a longhorn caught him, clipped his shoulder, spun him full circle, and sent a jolt of searing pain down his arm.

  Jelly beans and jawbreakers, that hurt.

  Kade stumbled, staggered against a huge old pecan tree root growing up out of the sidewalk. The sweet-smelling bundle in his arms made a soft sound of distress. His gut clenched like an angry fist and his pulse pounded in the back of his throat.

  Had he hurt her?

  His intentions had been honorable and succinct. Distressed damsel. Rescue her.

  But now?

  Her breasts were pressed flat against his side and the hard beads of her nipples were making him feel things he had no business feeling.

  Unnerved, he set her down beside the tree and put a hand to her shoulder to steady them both.

  “Oh,” she whispered. “My.”

  He stepped back and studied her. His mind was addled, rattled. All he could think about was how good she looked in that skimpy white skirt and filmy navy blouse with a heart-shaped cutout at the center of her cleavage.

  Was she even wearing a bra?

/>   C’mon, Richmond. He had no business letting his thoughts graze freely. He was nothing to her, just the chump who’d risked blowing his cover to save her pretty little fanny. Time to let her go and get back to work.

  Cameras flashed. Cell phones clicked. The chattering crowd surrounded them.

  “What a hero!”

  “This is so going up on Facebook.”

  “Mamas, do let your babies grow up to be cowboys.”

  Well, dammit, so much for anonymity.

  He kept a restraining hand on her elbow and looked down into eyes so blue they were almost purple. Her lips were the color of fresh strawberries, plump and red and shiny. Her skin beneath his hand was warm, delicate, yielding.

  “You okay?” he asked, his tone coming out unexpectedly brusque as he straightened. The shade from the pecan tree overhead provided scant respite against the late-June heat.

  She blinked, and those purple-blue eyes framed by black lashes so thick they could double as paintbrushes knocked his heart sideways. Her gaze caught his, brushfire hot.

  Kade’s head spun, fast and dizzy. That bugged him. He hated feeling out of control. Dehydrated. That was it. He’d been standing in the relentless sun all morning, pretending he was a blacksmith in 1885. He was dehydrated. Had to be it. This little slip of a thing couldn’t shove him that off-kilter.

  “Thank you,” she murmured.

  “You should watch where you’re going,” he said, still sounding like Billy Goat Gruff. “You almost got creamed.”

  She bobbed her head as if she agreed, but she was already sneaking a peek at her cell phone screen.

  Kade grunted. Some people never learned.

  She made a sudden clucking sound with her tongue, and he thought of the way mother hens called to their young. “You’re hurt!”

  “What?”

  She reached out cotton-candy-pink fingernails to touch his shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”

  The sharp tip of the longhorn had jabbed his skin where his right arm attached to his shoulder. One long, shallow slash. No biggie. No stitches needed. He’d had much worse in his rodeo days.

  Kade tugged a red bandana from the back pocket of his jeans and awkwardly tried to tie it around the cut with his left hand.

  “Here,” she said in that throaty voice of hers. “Let me.”

  Before he could tell her “no,” she’d already plucked the bandana from his hand and was dressing his wound.

  The crowd oohed and aahed and took more pictures, and that was when he realized they thought her rescue from the stampeding herd was part of the living diorama.

  He resisted an eye roll. Tourists.

  The drovers had gotten the longhorns under control and were guiding them toward the ranch. End of excitement. The tourists started dispersing.

  The woman bent her head as she tied a knot in the bandana, and he could smell her scent, an oddly compelling combination of watermelon, lemons, and honeysuckle. Her fingers were quick and competent.

  His stomach pitched and dipped.

  “There you go,” she chirped and patted his biceps.

  “Thanks.” His voice came out rough as a cheese grater.

  “Thank you,” she said. “For being in the right place at the right time.”

  “What’s your name?” he asked. Why did he want to know? The sooner he got back to his undercover assignment the better.

  “Allie.” Her smile was as bright as a halo. “Allie Grainger.”

  “Ka—” He stopped himself before he gave his real name and supplied his undercover alias. “Rick Braedon.”

  “Nice to meet you, Rick. Thank you for saving me.” She sent him a coy glance as if she might be interested, and by damn, he was certainly interested. But then without another word, she turned and disappeared into the crowd.

  Leaving Kade to wonder if he’d imagined the whole damn thing. His arm tingling strangely where she’d touched him.

  “May I take a picture with you?” asked an elderly woman who was holding up a camera. “I traveled all the way from Pittsburgh to have my picture taken with a real live cowboy.”

  Because he couldn’t think of a way to get out of it gracefully, Kade agreed. Besides, from this angle, he had a pretty good view of the side entrance of the courthouse. The place he had under surveillance. The place the FBI suspected was about to be hit by an art thief during the upcoming Fourth of July art festival.

  The very same place that sweet, clueless Allie Grainger had just stepped inside.

  Chapter Two

  With the sound of Rick Braedon’s rich, deep voice tickling her ears, Allie grinned her way into the courthouse that no longer served court. The historic building was alive with the sound of saws and hammers, sheetrock dust, and booted men in hard hats and tool belts.

  See there. If she just had faith that everything would work out for the best, it always did. Not only had she not been trampled by cattle, she’d met a cute guy too. And speaking of things working out for the best, she decided she was going to ace this job interview.

  That was until she followed the directional arrow signs posted along the scaffolding route through the construction zone and walked into the makeshift office built from cubicle dividers.

  A dozen people, most of them around her same age, crammed into the small space and tried not to look desperate as they filled out applications, fidgeted, and checked their electronic devices.

  There was no place to sit, barely any room to stand. The aged air-conditioning system wasn’t up to the task and the improvised room was uncomfortably warm. Several people had sweat stains ringing their armpits.

  Allie slipped around the hipsters, millennials, and a couple of senior citizens applying for the low-wage job, excused her way up to a cheap folding table pretending to be Ikea, and slanted her cheeriest smile at the bored, Cheeto-thin young woman bouncing on a yoga ball in lieu of a chair.

  “Hi,” she said, hoping she sounded like the right kind of cheerful. “I’m Allie Grainger.”

  The ennui-infused woman, whose mouth was slick with vampire-red lipstick, didn’t bother glancing up from the kittens-swatting-yarn YouTube video playing on her tablet. “Fill out an application and take a seat,” she intoned.

  Allie turned on her cell phone to check the time. Yipes! Fifteen minutes until she had to be back at the Visitors Center. The encounter with the cowboy had taken a big chunk out of her thirty-minute lunch break.

  “Mmm.” Allie leaned in. “I know you’re like . . . um . . . super busy, but I was wondering how long the wait is? I’ve got to get back to work.”

  Ennui woman gave Allie’s starched white skirt a fishy stare and then flicked her gaze to her four-inch stilettoes—that Allie had worn intentionally so she’d looked taller. According to statistics, tall people were more likely to get the job.

  Allie lengthened her spine, held Ennui’s gaze.

  A calculated look crossed the woman’s face as if she was trying to decide something important about Allie. “Do you know Lila?”

  Um. No. No, she did not. “Who’s Lila?”

  Ennui tapped her chin with a fingernail that was the same shade of red as her lipstick, studied Allie for a long moment, opened her mouth, closed it, and then finally said, “You look like you should know Lila.”

  Was this some kind of code? Was she being led to lie about knowing Lila? Allie frowned, not sure how to proceed.

  “I bet you do know Lila,” Ennui said.

  Huh? What was going on? Did she know someone named Lila? Allie searched her memory. Nope. Nothing. “I’m pretty sure I don’t know a Lila.”

  “Maybe you know her by her middle name? Emily. You do know Emily, don’t you?” Ennui winked as if they were in on a conspiracy.

  The wink made her feel included, part of a secret club. Allie liked the feeling, but this was one of the weirdest conversations she’d ever had. She cocked her head. “I do know a couple of Emilys.”

  “There you go.” The woman pushed up from her yoga ball. It bounc
ed against the cubicle wall with a soft thwap. “Follow me.”

  Allie glanced around at the other people waiting for an interview. Several of them glared at her. This wasn’t fair, cutting in line, and pretending to know Lila Emily. “I can’t . . . I shouldn’t . . .”

  “Do you want a shot at this job?” Ennui hiss-whispered.

  “Yes, but I don’t want to cheat anyone else out of a chance.”

  Ennui straightened, her uber-red lips shining in the light dripping in through the window behind the cubicle wall. “Never mind. This was a mistake. Fill out the application and get in line.”

  Allie thought of having to call her mom to tell her she needed to move back in. Imagined how happy her mom would be, hovering, cooking her meals, washing her clothes, snooping through her cell phone. Compared that loser feeling to the triumphant coup she’d feel when she took her parents out to dinner at Del Frisco’s to tell them she’d finally landed a job in her chosen field.

  She didn’t understand what was going on with this weird interview, but she desperately needed the job, for her mental health if nothing else. “Please don’t write me off. I want a shot.”

  “Well, then, come along.” Ennui tossed her head and guided Allie past the other applicants who were shooting eye daggers at her.

  Why was she getting special treatment? Had her folks pulled strings? But how could they? She hadn’t told them the details of her job interview, precisely because she didn’t want them pulling strings.

  Gulping, Allie ignored the urge to slump guiltily past the other interviewees. She tossed her head like she belonged, and kept her eyes straight ahead, aloof as a runway model. Jumping ahead of the line went against every egalitarian bone in her body, but when life handed you an advantage, it was dumb not to take it.

  Right?

  It wasn’t as if she hadn’t had her share of disadvantages. Still, guilt had an uneven weight, a thorny texture, and the pasty taste of cold oatmeal.

  “This way.” Ennui turned to crook a finger, stopping briefly in front of a columned entryway leading into the dark recesses that once upon a time had been a courtroom. She switched on her cell phone, using it as a flashlight, and crossed over the threshold.