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  For Love of a Cowboy

  a montana born fair novella

  Yvonne Lindsay

  For Love of a Cowboy

  Copyright © 2014 Yvonne Lindsay

  Kindle Edition

  The Tule Publishing Group, LLC

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

  ISBN: 978-1-940296-66-1

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to two incredibly amazing women. The first, Michel Fenske—to whom I am incredibly grateful for all her help, support and, most of all, her friendship. And, the second, Jane Porter, for whom I have the deepest respect and without whom the opportunity to write this novella wouldn’t have been created. Thank you both. I am so amazingly lucky to know you and to include you among my friends.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Dear Reader

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  The Big Marietta Fair Series

  About the Author

  Dear Reader,

  I was already a fan of Montana Born’s Rodeo series and in love with the town of Marietta from the first moment I read about it. And who doesn’t love a cowboy, right? When Jane Porter offered me the opportunity to write a novella for a new series set in Marietta I jumped at it. My hippie chick and her taciturn cowboy grew to life very swiftly in a place that already felt familiar to me in so many ways.

  It’s always a challenge when you’re asked to write a book set in an area where you’ve never been, but thanks to good friends in the USA and the amazing community that is made up of Tule’s authors, the challenge became more and more manageable. If I’ve made any errors, they are solely my own and for that possibility I will apologize in advance.

  I hope you’ll love reading my first Montana Born story as much as I absolutely loved writing it, and that you’ll find Willow and Booth’s sizzling journey to love captures your heart like they captured mine.I love to hear from my readers and can be reached through my website http://www.yvonnelindsay.com or on Facebook https://www.facebook.com/YvonneLindsayAuthor and Twitter @YvonneLindsay.

  Best wishes and happy reading!

  Yvonne Lindsay

  One

  Willow bit back another sigh. The sun was already low in the sky and would be setting soon. Nearly nine hours of driving today and she still wasn’t in Marietta. It didn’t help that she’d taken a wrong turn somewhere in Utah and headed further northwest than she needed to. She should have known better than to head out on the road on the thirteenth. The only redeeming feature to that was that today was a Sunday, not Friday.

  Still, she reminded herself, this was an adventure. And having an adventure meant doing adventurous things. She was following her bliss, just like her mother had all those years ago—even down to using her mother’s old backpack and trunk. She was seizing the day…or, in this case, seizing the steering wheel of the dilapidated faded yellow VW bus she’d bought privately upon landing in L.A. from New Zealand four days ago, and promptly named for the colorful flowers painted on her sides. Daisy went through oil like most cars went through gas, which had made this whole trip take a lot longer than she’d anticipated. That and the fact that Daisy barely made fifty-five on the freeway and had a tendency to overheat…well, it all added to the experience, Willow told herself grimly.

  Her eyelids dragged heavily, their insides grainy as she fought to stay awake. Not far now, surely. She shifted her attention from the road ahead to check the hand-drawn map she’d created after studying Google Maps at the internet café in Provo. It had only been this morning but it already felt like it was days ago. Yup, she was heading in the right direction. Just another five miles or so and she’d be there. She fixed her eyes on the interminable blacktop ahead.

  A flash of movement from beside the road startled her, forcing her to instinctively swerve to the left and jam on the brakes. The VW shuddered to a halt even as the stag bounded away with its white rump a flash of brilliance in the darkening evening. The beast had been magnificent, its russet brown coat and lighter underbelly at odds with the black markings on its head. She watched until she could see it no longer, then let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Chinese folklore said deer were lucky. The buck was a sign, she was sure of it. She was on the right route and when she got to Marietta she’d find what she’d been searching for all her life. Nothing else mattered but that.

  The thought filled her with hope and she took her foot from the brake and began moving toward her destiny once more. Right up until a swath of blinding lights whipped around the corner ahead and appeared to be coming straight at her. Huh? That wasn’t right. Again she swerved, harder to the left this time, and all but stood on her brakes to avoid a collision. She might have missed the other vehicle but she wasn’t quite so lucky when it came to the ditch that bordered the road, or the trees that lined it. The bus lurched to one side with a bone-jarring jolt, coming to a halt at an angle—half on the road and half off it.

  Before Willow could take an inventory of either herself or Daisy, the passenger door was pulled open. The aperture filled with broad shoulders, a large black Stetson and a hulk of intimidating male.

  “Are you all right?” the guy demanded.

  His voice was deep and gravelly, as if he didn’t talk much, and an equal mix of testosterone and what she thought was anger poured off him.

  “No thanks to you,” she retaliated as she gingerly felt the rapidly growing bump on the side of her head where she’d struck the door pillar and the matching one on her hip where her cell phone usually resided in her pocket. Come to think of it, her whole left side was becoming one almighty ache.

  “Me?” he replied. “I wasn’t the one driving on the wrong side of the road.”

  Willow started to protest but then belatedly realized she was wasting her time. He was right. She had been on the wrong side of the road. She hadn’t corrected after she’d seen that buck. Instead, thanks to a mix of tiredness and inattention she’d carried on driving as if she were still back home in New Zealand. She gave herself a sharp mental slap and groaned out loud. Some sign the buck had turned out to be.

  “I’m sorry, I wasn’t thinking. I—”

  “Too damn right you weren’t thinking. Who declared you and this thing fit for the road anyway?”

  “There’s no need to be mean to Daisy,” she protested as she fought to unclip her seatbelt and clamber out of the bus. No easy task given that Daisy was doing her own impression of the Leaning Tower of Pisa right now.

  “Daisy?” the guy started, then clearly noticed the chain of hand-painted daisies on the side of the van. He rolled his eyes and muttered, “Never mind.”

  A large hand thrust toward her. Willow shrunk back, earning a growl of irritation from her rescuer.

  “Take my hand. It’ll make it easier to climb out.”

  She gingerly reached forward. Strong fingers clasped hers. She gasped at the heat that transferred from his hand to her own. At the t
ingling sensation that began where their hands melded and then traveled the length of her arm. She must have hit her head harder than she’d thought.

  “You okay?” he asked. “Do you think you broke something?”

  Nothing more than what little pride she had left, she thought ruefully. “N-no, I’m fine.”

  She pushed herself up and, aided by his steady strength, climbed out of the van. She pulled her hand free from his the moment she was able—fought the urge to wipe her palm down over her cutoff denim shorts to get rid of the residual tingle that remained there.

  Willow ruefully studied Daisy. “I don’t suppose you have a rope there, cowboy? D’ya think you could pull her out?” she asked, raising her face to meet his gaze for the first time.

  Oh, she thought, taking a big step backward. He was tall and—she did a quick inventory—built. She’d already had the impression of size about him but now, face to face? That was something else. Her eyes flicked over the way his softly worn black T-shirt stretched across his shoulders and muscled chest and tapered to where it was tucked in at the waistband of equally well-worn jeans cinched with a belt complete with a big bold buckle. Yeah, he was built all right. Everywhere.

  Willow swallowed against the sudden dryness in her throat and forced herself not to lift a hand to fiddle with her braids like she always did when she was nervous. Nervous? Hell, she didn’t know whether to be nervous, grateful or just flat-out turned on. Her body decided on the latter.

  “It’s going to take more than rope to get that thing out of there,” he said after assessing Daisy with narrowed eyes. “You’ll need to call for a tow.”

  “Oh, no!” Willow gasped as she discovered the side door of the van had slid open on impact.

  The road was littered with colored skeins of her hand-dyed yarn and some of her clothing. Her mother’s old-fashioned trunk lay crumpled a couple of yards away. She dashed out onto the pavement and began to gather the skeins in her arms. Before she could collect more than half a dozen of them, two strong arms wrapped around her from behind and lifted her off her feet.

  The stranger deposited her on the shoulder of the road.

  “Geez, lady. You got a death wish or something?”

  “I have to pick up my supplies. They’re important.”

  “More important than your life? It’s dusk and you’re virtually invisible on the road in those colors,” he said scathingly as he looked her up and down, eyeing her oversize pale blue peasant blouse and cutoff jeans and obviously finding them wanting. “Anyone could come around that bend and hit you, or worse, drive themselves off the road avoiding you.”

  “It’s not like there’s been another car on the road except you, so far.”

  “And you’re damn lucky it was me and not someone who didn’t have their mind on what they were doing.”

  His implication was clear. He thought she was all kinds of idiot. Willow hitched up the neckline of her blouse from where it had slipped down her shoulder. She winced a little as the movement reminded her she’d taken the brunt of a pretty hard knock not that very long ago.

  “You’re hurt?” he asked, his gray eyes missing nothing.

  “I’ll be fine,” she insisted and took a deep breath.

  As much as she hated to admit it, he was right. She could have endangered someone else and she’d certainly endangered him. She looked around at the bundles of yarn and items of clothing scattered on the blacktop. But she had to get her stuff.

  “I need that yarn,” she said desperately.

  He sighed in obvious frustration and took off his hat to push a hand through his short-cropped dark hair, making it stick out in all directions. It shouldn’t make her smile, but it did. In one small movement he’d reduced himself from towering wall of simmering anger to an aggravated little boy.

  “Don’t move. I’ll get it.”

  He stalked away from her in long strides. Willow couldn’t help it, she stared at his butt. It wasn’t like she meant to, but when presented with such male perfection wrapped in faded blue denim, what else was a girl supposed to do? Her mouth dried as he bent over and a slight wave of dizziness struck. She had definitely hit her head harder than she’d thought. She looked away as he straightened, a bundle of skeins tucked in one muscled arm, a couple of pairs of panties dangling from the fingers of his other hand. He ought to have looked incongruous, a strong grown man carrying balls of yarn and lacy panties, but instead he just looked, well, manly.

  “You got something to put these in?”

  She jumped as he came up beside her. For a big man he moved incredibly quietly.

  “Just the case I had them packed in,” Willow answered, gesturing to the now misshapen and useless trunk that sprawled open in the ditch.

  She’d packed lightly for herself, thankful it was summer. Her mother’s backpack held much of the clothing Willow needed, not that she had all that much, and she’d used her luggage allowance for the flight for the ancient trunk to transport her precious wares and a few extra pieces of clothing. Now she didn’t know what to store them in.

  An exasperated sigh huffed from the stranger’s lips. “I might have something in the truck.”

  He was back in an instant with a couple of very large plastic bags. “These do?” he asked.

  “Yes, thanks.”

  He gave her a curt nod then carried on collecting her stash. He hesitated over a white rectangle that lay closer to the ditch.

  “Is this yours, too?” he asked, straightening and holding the envelope up.

  Willow felt her stomach lurch. The results. She’d forgotten. Well, not forgotten exactly, just put them out of her mind. She wasn’t ready to face the truth just yet. She reached out to snatch the envelope from his fingers and shoved it in the back pocket of her shorts.

  “Yes, thank you.” She ignored the questioning look in his eyes. “You’ve missed some things over there,” she pointed out, earning a narrowed glance.

  Despite the fact he was clearly annoyed with her, he continued picking up her things, and when he was done he handed her the last bag.

  “Where are you headed?”

  “Marietta,” she replied.

  It was the place her mother had mentioned in her journal—where she’d attended the annual county fair all those years ago. The fair where she’d fallen for a cowboy who’d stolen her heart and left his child growing within her. Soon after, a recreational drugs possession charge, not her own, had seen her mom sent back to New Zealand. The charge had made it impossible for her to return and find the man with whom she’d left her heart. In time, she’d birthed and raised Willow and taught her every day that life was a gift not to be wasted.

  Yes, Marietta was where Willow was going to find her father and connect with the man who’d been missing from her life for far too long and the place where, hopefully, she’d find a place to settle for good. Or at least for as long as she had left.

  *

  She was headed to Marietta? Odd. It wasn’t exactly your standard hippie destination and she had hippie written all over her, from the narrow strip of leather tied across her forehead and braids that hung from her head to the idiotic van she drove. “What are you planning to do with all this stuff?”

  “This stuff is my craft,” she said, taking the bags from him and clutching them to her body as if they were more precious than a baby. “I’ll knit some of it up and hopefully sell the rest at the county fair in the next couple of weeks.”

  “Booths are all booked up,” he said bluntly.

  He studied the woman and the vehicle she’d been traveling in. He could pick her type—an airhead drifter who caused trouble without even trying. Another thought occurred to him. If she was thinking of selling that yarn of hers, there was only one place in town she could do that—his sister’s craft store. And if she was headed there she would definitely meet his sister, Ness, whose big heart would fold around this crazy hippie—who would no doubt rip her off and then head off into the sunset, just like the last hard-luck
story to appeal to his sister’s generous nature had. And probably on the wrong side of the road again. He sure as hell didn’t want that to happen. Ness had been through enough already.

  He surveyed the damage to the VW and let a whistle slide through his lips.

  “I dunno that Marietta is the right place. Tanner’s Garage won’t carry the parts you’re going to need to fix this mess. You’d be better off heading back to Livingston, or even Bozeman.”

  Yeah, Bozeman, he thought. The further away the better. He fixed his gaze upon her to gauge her response to his suggestion. He’d happily call for her tow. Hell, he’d even pay for it if it meant she’d stay away from Marietta and Ness. His recently widowed sister was expecting her first baby in a couple of months. She always believed the best of people and was inclined to take in strays. This gal had “stray” written all over her from the top of her head to the battered desert boots at the end of long slender legs exposed by tiny denim shorts that had seen better days. Hell, he had patches on his work jeans that were in better condition. The fact she wasn’t wearing a bra under that floaty top thing she was wearing hadn’t escaped his notice, either.

  He dragged his gaze back to her face. She worried at her lower lip with her teeth, the action sending an unexpected surge of lust straight to his groin. Damn, where had that come from? Sure, it had been a while, but seriously. This woman? Totally not his type. She looked like she was all into flowers and freedom and had never known a hard day’s work in her life.

  “I really want to get to Marietta before it gets full dark,” she said worriedly. “I guess you couldn’t give me a ride could you?”

  “Not heading in that direction,” he said firmly, even though it was less than ten minutes back down the road. “You’ll need to call a tow truck from Livingston.”

  “No, if there’s a garage at Marietta that’ll do fine. Tanner’s did you say?”