Dare To Love A Cowboy (Canton County Cowboys 2) Read online

  Dare to Love a Cowboy

  Canton County Cowboys

  CHARLENE BRIGHT

  Dare to Love a Cowboy

  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)

  Dare to Love a Cowboy

  A Chicago journalist meets the challenge of her life when her story leads her to the secrets, the temptations and the dangers of a lucrative Texas ranch. Paige's pen is as sharp as her mouth and even sharper than the corners on her hipster glasses, but when her fiery temper and her hunger for the truth lands her face to face with unemployment, she will do anything to keep her job... even spend three months on a Texas ranch.

  Everett, the no-nonsense, natural-born leader; the rockstar rancher and expert horseback rider, is less than thrilled to find out he will be hosting a city-slicker for the whole summer, and determined to make her life as hard as possible.

  Paige is certain to be miserable for the entire time and Everett can bet on her quitting in the first week, but both of them are in for a surprise when they find themselves drawn to each other like the opposite ends of two very volatile magnets.

  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

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  My palms were clammy, cold with anxiety and slick with nervous sweat. I aggressively swiped them against my black slacks, but it didn’t help. As I approached my editor’s office, I could hear my heart pounding in my ears, practically see it beating beneath my shirt, and feel my blood boiling in my veins. I took off my eyeglasses and stowed them away in my messenger bag. With a sigh, I raised a trembling hand to Hugh’s door and knocked with fierce determination.

  “Ouch.” Perhaps a little too fierce. I plunged my hand back into the pockets of my leather jacket. I squinted in the severe florescent light, awaiting a response. The sharp footsteps that could only be made by a pair of expensive heels cut through the heavy silence. I looked up to see a woman I only vaguely recognized come around the far corner of the hallway, then stop about ten feet away. She shoved a key into a lock and disappeared behind the door. The slamming door echoed in the hallway.

  “Come in!”

  I jumped at the sound of my editor’s London accent, then wrapped my fingers around the doorknob and cautiously pushed open the door, poking my head in. Hugh, my editor, sat comfortably in his oversized burnished leather desk chair. A tiny MacBook Pro, the Apple logo shining white light, perched in front of him. Under the hefty oak desk, I could see his large feet, clad in gray Armani shoes and crossed at the ankles. Maroon cashmere socks peeked from under the hems of his suit pants.

  “Close the door,” he ordered.

  I nodded, letting the doorknob slip from my hands. The door swung loudly shut. The paper sitting atop a large stack on his desk took flight, then fluttered down to the carpet, landing right next to his shoes. I gulped, then, without hesitation, bent over and picked it up. It was a release form for this past publication. I placed it back on its stack, then took three painfully difficult steps away from him. As I stood there in silence, I could hear the sounds of Chicago pressing against his large window. Just outside, the sun was setting and the sky had taken to an orange, crimson, and purple mixture that cast everything into a deep blue-green light. There were spotted lights coming from the windows of other nearby buildings. From the twenty-second floor of the journalism building at Northwestern University, I could hear the wind battering against the windows as if it meant to take down the entire establishment.

  Hugh sucked in a deep breath, then released it slowly, as if every second he kept me in suspense was another second in which he took pleasure in my discomfort. “Paige, look at me.”

  I snapped my gaze from his gray leather shoes to his face, which sagged with wrinkles. His pale skin was contorted into such an expression of disdain that I seriously wondered if looks could kill.

  As soon as I met his eyes, he snatched the latest issue of the Chicago Post off his desk. “What’s this?” he asked.

  “The newspaper . . . ,” I murmured.

  There was the sound of thin pages being rapidly turned before he held it up again, now opened to page four. And again he asked, “What’s this?” But this time with a more conclusive tone.

  I looked up to find myself staring at an extremely unflattering picture of the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern next to a headline that read, Dean By Day, Private Bank By Night. I gulped as he dropped the paper. Here goes. “It’s um . . . the story I wrote.”

  “And what does this story do?” Hugh asked.

  “It exposes the dean for giving out loans to professors using university money,” I replied. Just uttering that sentence gave me a new confidence via my frustration at the fact that this was happening in the first place.

  “Wrong!” he snapped. “It slanders the dean.”

  My eyes went wide at this. “No, it doesn’t. It’s completely true! I verified the sources and everything,” I cried defensively.

  Hugh rolled his eyes. “Oh wake up, Paige! I told you it was best not to run this story.”

  “I know what you said,” I snapped back.

  “And you ran it anyway.”

  “I couldn’t just bury something like that.” I crossed my arms. “I wouldn’t feel right about it.”

  “This is about more than just your feelings, Paige. A graduate student with your knowledge and experience should know better. What did you think was going to come of this?” he demanded.

  I ducked my head, completely flabbergasted that he was taking this route. I fully expected to be reprimanded for circumventing his authority and running a story he hadn’t given final approval for, but I did not expect this. “I don’t know. What usually comes of stories exposing people as criminals?”

  “And exactly what did you think was going to happen to the dean?” Hugh demanded.

  “An investigation, more verification, a suggestion of resignation.”

  Hugh laughed humorlessly. “Oh, so you thought that this university was going to bend to the whim of a small independent paper loosely affiliated with it?”

  I blinked as I struggled t
o come up with a response that made sense. I could already see where he was going with this. “I thought he was going to be reprimanded.”

  “Wrong!” Hugh yelled, slamming his palm against his desk. “They’re going to fight back. They’d sooner accuse you . . . and me of slander than they would take the time to admit to any kind of mismanagement.”

  I gulped, as my eyes began to water from sheer fear. I clearly had not thought about that option, hadn’t even realized that was a possibility. I cursed myself for acting so irresponsibly and Hugh for cowering in the face of bigger officials instead of standing by his assistant editor when she sought to publish the truth.

  “I honestly don’t understand you, Paige,” he continued. “You’re an intelligent human being . . . a brilliant writer, which is a given, considering you’re in one of the most prestigious graduate journalism programs in the country . . .”

  Yet talent apparently didn’t matter since I was being told not to publish well-sourced, well-written material.

  “And yet you chose to bite the hand that feeds you.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize journalism was about stroking the ego of the people in power.” The words fell out of my angry lips before I could hope to filter myself or stop them completely.

  “He’s my boss, Paige. What am I supposed to do? If I stand by you, I look reckless. If I throw you to the flames, I look like I can’t control my own writers.”

  He leaned over his desk, his sharp eyes piercing a hole straight through my soul. But I had absolutely no answer for him—at least none I was willing to say out loud.

  He sucked in a quick breath and then leaned back in his chair, an action that caused it to slam against the back wall. A framed certificate only a few feet away trembled from the impact. “I know you’ve just graduated and you want to continue on here, but I’m just not sure if that’s possible now. Look, he wants you gone.”

  My entire gut imploded as an unpleasant shock shot up my spine and landed with a throbbing determination in the center of my head. I struggled to remember to breathe as I willed myself to find the right words to say—anything that could keep this canoe from where it was inevitably going, and in record speed: over the falls. “Wait, but you told him that wasn’t going to happen, right?” My voice was hollow.

  Hugh shrugged. “I told him nothing like that story was ever going to happen again.”

  As I felt my whole academic career—if not my whole life, I imagined—flashing before my eyes, I sank into one of the two chairs that sat in front of his desk. Everything I had ever written, every class I had ever taken had led to this internship, and this internship was supposed to lead to the rest of my life. I sat there, faced with the complete annihilation of all my hopes and dreams, but I didn’t feel an ounce of regret for what I had done.

  “Hugh, you can’t let them do that to me. I’m one of the best writers you have and you know it.” I pleaded with wide and watering eyes. Begging him and praying that he was going to find a way to fix all of this. The last sixteen months working with him had to count for something, right?

  He shook his head slowly. “He didn’t want to let you off the hook.”

  I nodded, feeling hope shine like the first rays of the morning sun on this grim situation. “Okay. I'll do anything.”

  Hugh nodded, his lips contorted into a deep frown. “I’m sending you away for a few months.”

  I cocked my head to the side. Could he do that? “What?” I demanded.

  He rested his folded hands on the massive desk in front of him. “I have a friend who is the editor of a Dallas paper. I happened to be talking with him yesterday and he mentioned that he was doing a story on Rock Creek Ranch.”

  I glowered at him. Sensing my save dangling in front of me, my nerves calmed a bit. I had already survived the worst of his wrath. “What’s that?”

  He pursed his lips. “It’s one of the oldest working ranches in the country.”

  I raised an eyebrow, still not seeing what the point was.

  He continued. “Bill wants a feature of the ranch, the way it’s run and what it’s like to live there. I convinced him to let you do it instead of one of his mediocre writers; made it seem like I was doing him the favor.”

  My stomach churned at the realization of what was coming next. “So, I’m going to Dallas?”

  Hugh laughed at this. “You should be so lucky. No. Where you’re going is the small town of Collinswood in Canton County, Texas. It’s about ninety miles west of Dallas.”

  My eyes went wide. “And how long do you expect me to stay there?”

  “Two months, at least,” he replied with a smirk as he drew the huge stack of papers closer to him and rapidly sifted through them.

  I gulped as I struggled to wrap my mind around the fact that, just like that, I was going to be expected to spend an entire summer on a ranch. This was completely ridiculous. I knew absolutely nothing about ranches, and I’d never even been to Texas. Besides, what the heck was there to write about on a ranch anyway? What was I expected to do, follow cowboys around all day? Take photos of the rolling hills and write sentimental things about them? I didn’t set out on this career path to be sentimental. I did it to expose the truth. And now I was going to be stuck spending an entire summer not traveling and researching like I had planned, but hanging around on a ranch. In Hugh’s eyes, I suppose, this was a just consequence.

  As he began to sort his papers into three piles, he looked up again to see that I was still sitting in front of him. “Unless, I suppose, you’d rather pack your things and head back home, which is exactly where I should be sending you thanks to that stunt you just pulled.”

  I set my jaw, sensing that this was more of a challenge than it was a punishment. “No. I’d rather do anything than that.”

  Hugh averted his gaze, picking up yet another piece of paper and raising it to his face to examine it. “Well, then you’re welcome.”

  I nodded, stood up, and left. As I shut his door, relief washed over me like a bucket of cool water. I had survived this with my position and my job still intact. All I had to do was live a summer on a cattle ranch in the middle of nowhere and write something nice about it. With a smirk, I realized that this was shaping up to be the easiest summer of my working life.

  Chapter One

  The sun shone hot and bright on the first day of June, its rays cutting through the thick, humid air and illuminating the rolling hills of North Texas with its morning glow. With spring morphing into summer, nature had a curious hot stench to it. In fertile areas, the grass grew tall and sturdy, comfortable enough to spend a warm night on, while in the less lucrative patches of land, the slushy mud, moistened by the constant rain and cool breezes of the winter and spring months, was already hardening and turning to dust. The land was vast, its far reaches inaccessible by any lone cowboy, its sharp cuts and valleys occupied from dawn to dusk with one species of animal or another. Its trails, well paved and frequently traveled, all led to its center: a massive ranch home and the two barns to either side of it.

  In the two acres of land immediately behind the ranch home was a sea of old trucks, four-wheelers, motorcycles, and weathered sedans. Out of these vehicles flowed what came up to almost a hundred people: men, women, and children, residents of Collinswood, ready to watch or even participate in the branding of the new calves. There was a path just by the house that led people to the twice-a-year event. They rounded the stone building and the wooden barn until they came around the front, where they stood just outside the main, wired fence. The men who had signed up to assist were ushered through the wooden gate by Everett James, a tall man with a muscular build and a healthy head of black hair sticking out of the large black cowboy hat he wore.

  According to his memory, only seven volunteers had signed up to participate. The rest had come to watch. He surveyed the growing crowd of people, who had started to set up their temporary camps. Lawn chairs dotted the neighboring pasture, and people darted in between small congrega
tions with arms full of bottles of beer and canisters of iced tea for the younger ones, cowboy hats shielding many of them from the relentless sun and casting shadows on their faces.

  The last helper, a Hispanic boy from a nearby town with a straw hat, scurried in, and Everett shut the gate. He made his way to the barn directly to the right of the ranch house, which required him to pass through another fence. He unlocked it, then stepped aside, watching as the enthusiastic volunteers passed through the gate. With it locked behind them, he marched through the thick mud of the calf pen. It was like a different world in the realm of the cows that had barely reached grazing age. They stood around idly; some of them surveying the ground beneath them, others loitering in clusters. Everett scrunched up his nose to combat the strong smell of cowhide and the poignant stench of cow dung cooking in the mid-morning air.

  When he pushed the barn open with both hands, a flood of sunlight washed in and his five ranch hands, a bartender, and the housekeeper looked up at him, identical squints in their eyes. The ranch hands—Ian, Matt, Ethan, Jimmy, and Connor—stood idly while the two women, Mia and Ellie, stood by two pens, each brushing down a horse. Everett surveyed the small, shadowed barn for Ian and then stalked up to him.

  “Why’d you let the calves out without me checking the fence?” he demanded in a powerfully husky voice.

  Ian grimaced, his thick lips folding into a confused frown. “Did you tell me to wait for you to check the fence?”

  “I just thought it was common sense.” Everett stepped even closer to him so that the points on their cowboy boots were a mere three inches apart. “If one of those calves escapes or, worse, gets killed because of a nick in that fence, it’s going be your fault.”

  Ian laughed, resting his hands on his alligator-skin belt. “Nah, Everett. It’s going be yours.”

  Everett bit his lip to keep himself from cursing Ian. It was always one thing or another with that boy: not following directions or blatantly ignoring Everett. Ian acted like running a ranch was a game. It wasn’t. “I’m not going stand here and waste my time explaining basic ethics to the likes of you. I’ve got a branding to get started.”