A Cowboy Worth Loving (Canton County Cowboys 1) Read online

  A Cowboy Worth Loving

  Canton County Cowboys

  CHARLENE BRIGHT

  A Cowboy Worth Loving

  Copyright © 2015 by Charlene Bright

  All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dad, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Books by Charlene Bright

  Canton County Cowboys Trilogy

  A Cowboy Worth Loving

  Dare to Love a Cowboy

  Captivated by a Cowboy

  Cowboys of Courage Trilogy

  (coming September, 2015)

  Courage to Follow

  Courage to Believe

  Courage to Fall

  I Saw Mommy Kissing a Cowboy

  (Cowboy Christmas Romance coming November, 2015)

  A Cowboy Worth Loving

  Lucy Lancaster became an attorney to fight the injustices she saw happen to her father when she was just a little girl. She has dedicated her life to doing what she can for those in need. When she volunteers to help on a case involving a wealthy, callous neighbor and the state of Texas joining forces to take land away from struggling brother-sister ranchers, Kayla and Gavin Walker, she’s pushes her professional limits. Kayla is sweet and easy to work with. Gavin is suspicious, rude and uncooperative… and the most drop dead gorgeous cowboy Lucy has ever laid eyes on.

  Gavin Walker grew up on Salt Cedar Ranch. He left home at eighteen for college in the city and found out that people aren’t always what they seem. When the justice system turned its back on him, he spent five years paying for a crime that never happened. Now that he’s back home on the ranch, his neighbor and the government are joining forces to take away the only thing he truly trusts: his land. Lucy Lancaster, the sexy, beautiful, smart attorney from the city wants to help, but why? Gavin doesn’t want to trust her, but he’s inexplicably drawn to her.

  The attraction between these two cannot be ignored, no matter how hard they try, but will they realize it before it’s too late?

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter One

  Gavin woke up just as the sun began to poke its head over the hills that surrounded his family’s ranch. He hadn’t closed the blinds last night or maybe it was this morning when he returned from his hay buying trip to Dallas. He brought his arm up and laid it across his face, trying to block the sun. As he rolled over, he realized that his body hurt, and when he tried to remember why, it made his head throb.

  “Damn!” He opened one eye and squinted over at the clock. It was just after six a.m. He should get up and ride out to the back pasture before he stopped at Kayla’s for breakfast. Mike reported to him last night, or maybe the night before, that they were missing another five or six head of cattle. They were already down to less than a hundred. The ranch was on the brink of going under; they couldn’t afford any more losses.

  He swung his long legs over the side of the bed and let his feet hit the floor. He sat there for a few minutes with the palms of his calloused hands pressed up against his eyes. The light in the room was almost unbearable. He finally stood up, and when he stretched his powerful arms up over his head, he winced. His right shoulder hurt like hell. With a grimace he made his way over to the dresser on less than steady legs. Catching sight of his face in the mirror suddenly brought back the events of last night… sort of.

  He remembered going to a bar with Matt, his hay guy. He knew there was a lot of whiskey involved--Jim Beam to be exact. He thought there may have been a girl… yeah, there was a girl. She was the bartender, and she had the face of an angel, the body of a goddess, and King Kong for a boyfriend. The problem had been that she hadn’t mentioned the boyfriend. When she went on her break and Gavin followed her outside, she didn’t kiss him or let him touch her in the alley like she had a boyfriend. His first clue that she had any commitments at all had come at the end of the biggest fist he’d ever personally seen. He’d been lying on the butt of his Wranglers on the pavement for less than a second before the girl, Candy, started telling King Kong that Gavin had come on to her and wouldn’t take no for an answer. Gavin was a big guy, but King Kong was a lot bigger. Had he been sober, he may have been smart enough to keep his mouth shut. Unfortunately, he wasn’t.

  He remembered looking up at the mountain of a man and saying something to the tune of, “She never said no. As a matter of fact, her tongue was too deep in my throat to say much of anything.” Thinking about it now, that had definitely been the wrong thing to say. The big hairy ape, who seemed to have gotten lost somewhere along the evolutionary lines, reached down, picked him up so he was back on his feet, and knocked him on his ass again. By that time, Gavin was more than just a little bit annoyed and way too drunk to realize that if he just stayed down where he was, King Kong might get bored and leave. A fight ensued, if you could even call it that, and when King Kong finally did grow bored with it, he grabbed his girl, and left.

  Gavin stood in front of the mirror now with his dark, curly hair sticking up in eighteen different directions at least, and dark stubble covering his already weathered and sun-bronzed skin, and he wondered when his life would ever stop being a series of drunken one-night stands. Or like last night: a brutal beatdown over a woman he would have slept with once and never seen again. Maybe when they got this mess the ranch was in straightened out… maybe then…Or maybe when he was able to actually trust a woman to take it beyond that point. He loved women. He loved the way they tasted and the way they smelled. He loved looking at them and touching them. He needed them, there was no denying it. He was young and healthy and he had urges he had to satisfy like any other man, but he couldn’t bring himself to trust them enough to take it that one step further. He hadn’t always been this way, but that was in the past and this was his present, and most likely his future.

  He pulled out a t-shirt and yanked it on, hiding his muscular frame, and grabbed his jeans off the floor and slipped into them. As he washed his face, he thought about having to explain the black eye and split lip to his sister. He could see it now; she would purse her lips, shake her head and say, “Gavin, when will you ever grow up?”

  It wasn’t his fault that Kayla was one of those people who was born thirty-five. Everything she did was thought through and well planned. There was nothing spontaneous about her, and that was why Gavin was the one who had spent his life in trouble and Kayla was the one actually running the ranch.

  An obnoxiously loud knock on his front door brought him out of his reverie and once again set his head to pounding. “Hey Gavin! You riding out to the back pasture with me? I don’t want to miss breakfast. You know how your sister gets.”

  Gavin
pulled open the door and looked at Mike with eyes that would barely open. When the ranch hand saw his boss, he laughed. “Whose girl did you hit on last night?”

  “What makes you think it was about a woman?” Gavin asked, turning away from the door to get his boots.

  Mike stepped in behind him and said, “With you, boss, it’s always about a woman. Has your sister seen you yet?”

  Gavin didn’t answer that. He slipped on his boots and grabbed his long sleeved shirt and said, “Let’s get.” He took his dusty brown Stetson off its hook by the door and slapped it on his head on the way out. He was happy to see Mike had already saddled the horses, and Satan, his beloved black stallion, stood ready and waiting for him. He let out a loud grunt as he stepped up into the stirrup and swung his still-shaky leg over the saddle. Mike didn’t bother trying to stifle his snicker.

  “Shut up!” Gavin told him before clicking his tongue at Satan. As he and Mike rode out of the yard, a Queensland named Bo and an Australian Shepherd named Sam followed along behind them. The only thing odd about it was the skinny little goat that followed them. Clarence was an orphaned goat; Bo and Sam had taken it upon themselves to look out for him. That was nice, except now Clarence thought he was a dog, and Gavin didn’t have the heart to tell him the truth.

  It was a beautiful morning for Texas in early September. A cool breeze was actually blowing. It was the first breeze they’d felt since early spring. Maybe the seasons were finally changing. Gavin breathed in the fresh, sweet air. There was nothing he loved more in the world than the smell of the countryside and the feel of the warm sun against his face.

  They hadn’t gotten three hundred yards away from his cabin before Mike exclaimed, “Oh Jesus!”

  Gavin didn’t have to ask what he was talking about; he could suddenly smell the smoke. He looked in the direction Mike was looking, up to the big ridge behind the back pasture and in a direct line with the main house and stables if the wind blew it just right. He watched the fire licking around the edges of the dry, amber colored hill for a few seconds before turning to Mike and saying with urgency, “I’m going to get the truck. Get Clint and take some shovels and ride out there as fast as you can. I’m gonna run by and pick up Kayla. That looks like it’s heading for the main house.”

  “You got it, boss.”

  Gavin nudged Satan in the side with the heel of his boot. That was all it took for the horse to know he was serious. They went at a dead run back to the cabin where Gavin slid off and ran in for his keys. By the time he got back out to his truck, Satan had taken himself back to the barn. He smiled at that and then pulled out his phone as he headed over to pick up his sister.

  ***

  Kayla was in the kitchen making coffee when she heard the pickup coming up the dirt road. She grabbed her boots and her hat. She knew that there was no way Gavin would be driving up that road at sixty miles an hour unless it was a matter of life and death. By the time he hit the brakes in front of the house and slid to a stop, she was out on the porch.

  “Fire!” he hollered out at her.

  Kayla’s stomach lurched. It was one word that caused a seasoned rancher to tremble in fear.

  “You got shovels?”

  “I’ve got them, get in!”

  Kayla jumped into the pickup with her brother. “Where?”

  “Out on the back pasture, along the fence line, I think. I couldn’t tell if it was coming this way or not. I saw it from up near my place. Mike and Clint are already headed down there. Do we need the trailer? Do we have any stock out there?”

  “No, the cattle are all up here in the turn-out pens. I had the boys bring them up last night when you were gone to Dallas. We have to find out where they’re getting out before we can leave ‘em out there to graze. The dozen or so wild horses are in the east pasture and the rest of them are in the stables. If it makes it as far as the hen house or the hog pens… well, you know.” The hen house and the hog pens were just out back of the main ranch house. If the fire made it that far, they were all screwed.

  Gavin pulled the pickup onto a horse trail that led along the fence line. Salt Cedar Ranch stretched out over 5,000 acres, give or take an acre or two. When their mother and father passed away together in a tragic automobile accident, the ranch passed to Kayla and Gavin. Gavin had been a cowpoke at the age of two and a cowboy by the time he was nine. He didn’t want any part of the business side. He didn’t have a problem with hard work, but he lived for the outdoors. Being stuck inside behind a computer screen, on the phone, or--worse yet--in meetings with people in suits would kill him. Kayla ran the business part of the ranch unless it was a matter that affected their future and then she’d get Gavin’s input on it since he did own half of it.

  “When did you get back?” she asked him. She was trying to make herself not mention the black eye and the busted lip, but it was hard.

  “I got in late last night. I was headed out with Mike to check for the break in the fence this morning when we saw the fire. It’s probably been burning at least a half an hour by now.”

  “Did you call Wes?”

  “Yeah, I called him. They were on the north side of Dallas though, just finishing up a job there. It’s gonna take ‘em more than a minute to get here.”

  Wes Granger owned a private company of rural responders. He had a team of six smokejumpers on around-the-clock during the heavy fire season and another plane that carried retardant. Kayla had been adamant when she first took over the ranch that they needed a service like his. Gavin hadn’t been convinced. She bet he was thinking differently about it now. She would wait until the fire was out and everyone and everything was safe to say “I told you so.” Then they could have a conversation about his face as well.

  “How big do you reckon the fire is?” she asked.

  “I’d say when I first spotted it, it was only a couple hundred acres or so, but by now with this breeze, I think we’ll be looking at twice that at least.”

  “Damn!”

  They rode in silence after that. Kayla was trying to figure out in her head how a fire could have started way out there. Unless one of the electric fences went haywire, there shouldn’t have been any spark out that far. A lot of strange things had been going on around the ranch lately. She blamed their new neighbor, Tuck Stevenson. That was Kayla’s theory anyway. Problem was, he covered his tracks well, and Kayla had no proof he was responsible for all the mischief.

  Kayla could see the dark smoke coming into view as they got close to the fire, and she could smell the tang of the burnt grass. Gavin pulled off to the side of the road and jumped out of the truck. She saw him take his bolt cutters and easily snap open the barbed wire between two of the fence posts. Two of the ranch horses were tied up on the other side of the trail; she assumed they were the ones Mike and Clint had ridden out. Gavin jumped back in and headed the pickup off the trail and out across the prairie. Out here, there wasn’t much the fire would hurt, as long as they got it under control quickly. Their problems would begin if the wind shifted and it started burning down the hill in the direction of the house, barn, and stables.

  Mike and Clint came into view as they got closer, and the way the flames rose up behind them they looked like an illustration out of Dante’s Inferno. Kayla could hear the roar of it now. It sounded like the noise a wave makes as it comes out of the ocean and slams against the rocks, only there was a lot of popping and crackling that went along with it as well. Gavin stopped the pickup quite a ways from the fire and opposite of the direction it was burning, and they both scrambled out and grabbed the shovels from the back of the truck. Kayla had also brought a couple of fire extinguishers, but once they were close enough to see how big the monster already was, they knew it was a moot point.

  Kayla let her eyes sweep the blaze. The wall of flames looked like it went on for miles, and the wind was urging it along. She cursed the elements, feeling a sense of complete helplessness. Then with a heavy sigh she mentally kicked herself into gear. She took one of the sho
vels and joined Mike and Clint along the fire line they were furiously digging. Gavin took up a post on the other end and they all began working together, trying to dig a trench wide enough to hold the fire until the smoke jumpers could get there. Kayla had only worked a few short minutes before the smoke began filling her lungs through her uncovered mouth and nose, and her eyes were watering so badly she felt like she was staring through a waterfall.

  “Here, use this,” Mike took a handkerchief out of his pocket and handed it to her. Kayla tied it across her face so only her eyes were showing. It helped some, but her chest still hurt and her eyes were on fire.

  The fire above them held up its head proudly, spreading its destruction and glowering at its surroundings, daring them to challenge its awesome power. A subtle shift in the wind brought noxious smoke and ash raining down into their hair and eyes as it ate everything in its path. That was the warning for what would happen next. The wind acted as a catalyst, catching the fire and pushing it at an enormous speed down the hill toward them.

  Kayla just stood there staring for a few moments, as if she were hypnotized by it. Gavin finally broke the spell by grabbing her arm and telling her, “Dang it, Kayla, run!” She ran. Mike and Clint were already a hundred yards away. Gavin stayed next to her and as they ran, she could hear the sound of the airplanes flying low above them. Reinforcements were here, thank God!

  They ran until they got to Gavin’s pickup. Gavin was watching the planes as they circled the fire, getting lower with each pass. “He’s gonna dump, get in the truck!” The four of them piled inside the truck just as the bottom of the small airplane opened up and a plume of what looked like orange foam came rushing out. It swept across the top of the fire but at first only seemed to anger it. The flames rose up as if trying to reach into the sky and grab ahold of the little plane. The pilot pulled the plane up out of the monster’s grasp and dropped another orange plume. That one seemed to settle the fire down a bit, and a few seconds later, the horizon was dotted with the colors of the billowing parachutes as the smoke jumpers leapt one by one out of the other plane. Gavin reached for his door handle and Kayla grabbed her brother’s arm.