Buch lesen: «The Brodys of Lightning Creek»

To Kiss a Cowgirl

Jeannie Watt

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

About the Author

Title Page

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

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

DYLAN CULVER MANEUVERED his beat-up Chevy truck between the stacks of hay and straw behind the family feed store and parked in his old spot next to the grain shed. He’d never in a million years thought he’d be back in Montana, back at the store. Back at the place his dad had worked so hard to keep him away from.

At least it was temporary. Four months until his cousin Finn returned from his National Guard deployment. Four months to focus on something other than the aftermath of his failed marriage or the accident that had put him on desk duty. By the time Finn took over the reins again, Dylan would be fully healed and ready to get the hell out of Dodge.

Okay...he was ready now, but he’d promised Finn he’d take care of Mike, their grandfather, and the store and that was exactly what he was going to do. The unsettled business he’d left in Washington State could wait.

Grabbing his granddad’s dented metal lunch pail from the seat beside him, he opened the door and stepped out into the driving rain. Unlike the grain shed siding, which was now flapping in the wind, the tarps covering the hay seemed to be secure. Good, because he couldn’t afford having hay returned due to mold.

In fact, after looking over the profit-and-loss sheets Finn had left with Mike, he was glad he’d become used to living frugally over the past couple months. Not that Finn hadn’t done a decent job running the place, but with two chain ranch stores opening up within easy driving distance, they’d lost clientele—and employees. Their longtime cashier had left to go to work for Western World, and their bookkeeper had recently retired. Now with Finn deployed and his grandfather recovering from hip surgery and about to move into a smaller house, Dylan and the new bookkeeper had some challenges ahead of them.

Bowing his head against the rain, he started to jog as he rounded the corner to the main entrance, gritting his teeth against the residual pain in his injured leg. The lights were on inside the old building but the door held fast when he pulled on the handle. He reached into his pocket for his keys, but the door swung open before his fingers touched metal. “Thanks,” he said, stepping inside and shaking the rain off before glancing at the woman who stood there.

“Jolie?” He had the odd sensation of his blood freezing. Perhaps one of the warning signs of a heart attack?

“Hi, Dylan.” Her voice was still husky, her hair still long and reddish blond, her eyes the greenest he’d ever seen. “Long time.”

Not long enough.

When Finn had said he’d hired an assistant to help with the store, Dylan had somehow assumed he’d hired someone Dylan could work with. Well, now he knew why his cousin had been shifty about the new hire. What in the hell had Finn been thinking? And, yes, he definitely felt a strong squeezing sensation in the middle of his chest.

“You’re dripping,” Jolie said, interrupting his heart attack.

Dylan glanced down. There was water falling from the brim of his ball cap onto the floor near his boots. He pulled off the hat, gave it a shake. When he looked up, she was regarding him with an ironic half smile.

“You didn’t know I worked for you, did you?”

“No.” Dylan moved forward to set the lunch pail on the counter, trying not to notice that she looked even better than she had back in high school when she’d made his life miserable by not taking anything seriously. That wouldn’t have bothered him if she hadn’t been his chemistry partner for the year and if he hadn’t needed a strong A to sew up some much-needed scholarships.

“I moved back to the Lightning Creek about six weeks ago.” She leaned an elbow on the tall counter next to him, looking relaxed, as she always had during situations that’d sent his blood pressure skyrocketing. After nearly a decade of being a patrol cop, his blood pressure rarely triggered anymore...except, obviously, when he discovered that his nemesis was his employee. “This was the only job I could get close to home,” she continued.

He noticed that while she’d sounded cool and confident, she was watching him carefully.

“Imagine that,” Dylan said.

“It isn’t because I’m unemployable,” she said smoothly. “It’s because it’s the end of winter and no one is hiring.”

“Except Finn.” Bless his black heart.

“I might have reeled in a favor,” Jolie said, and even though she spoke matter-of-factly, Dylan didn’t want to know what kind of favor. “I needed the job and, frankly, I think this place needs someone like me.”

“This place needs you?” She looked about as out of place there—with her form-fitting, blinged-out white shirt tied at the waist and short denim skirt—as a rosebush in a hay field. Easy on the eyes, but somehow didn’t belong.

“Look at it,” Jolie said, making a sweeping gesture. “Dark, depressing.” She ran a finger over the counter next to her. “Dusty.”

“It’s a feed and seed store,” he said as if she were dense, which he knew she wasn’t.

“A depressing feed store. Why would anyone come here—”

“To buy feed?”

“—when they could go to a more modern place and get the same thing and a whole lot more?”

“Because we’re a local institution.”

“That would be the only reason as far as I can see. Your prices are barely competitive.”

“Well, maybe if you took a job elsewhere you wouldn’t have to be stuck in this dark, depressing...” He paused, trying to recall the third D she’d mentioned in her unsolicited critique.

“Dusty,” she supplied. “And at the moment, I don’t want a job elsewhere.”

“Why not? Surely your talents could be better used in a less dusty environment.”

“The employee discount. I buy a lot of feed.”

“And you can’t get a job anywhere else?”

“I could if I wanted to travel. I don’t.” She sauntered a step closer, her full lips curving into a half smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “I can get something else when the market opens up. I have experience.” She said the word in a way that sent his imagination shooting into areas it probably shouldn’t travel, even if that hadn’t been her intention. He yanked it back to where it was supposed to be. When had he ever reacted like that to Jolie Brody?

“However, the market is tight. I now have a job close to home and I’m sticking with it.” Her smile became a touch warmer. “I promised Finn.”

He and Finn were going to have a talk as soon as he could get him on the phone.

The bell rang over the front door and Morley Ames walked in, kind of. The old guy, a close friend of his grandfather’s, was stooped over and skinnier than the last time he’d seen him, but his voice was just as booming as ever as he hailed Dylan.

Jolie smiled at Dylan and went behind the counter where she’d apparently been cleaning, since she quickly moved a bottle of spray cleaner out of sight.

“Morley,” Dylan said, moving forward to shake the man’s hand. “Good to see you.”

“So it’s true—you’ve given up law enforcement and moved home. I didn’t believe it when Gina told me at the café.”

“I’m just on leave,” Dylan said, noting that Jolie gave him a quick, curious glance before settling herself in front of the computer. “I thought I’d come here to escape all the rain,” he said with a smile, indicating the puddle that was forming around Morley’s feet as water dripped off his black hat and raincoat.

The old man looked up at him with an appreciative smile. “We all need a change sometimes,” he said.

“Can I help you with something?” Dylan asked before Morley launched into personal questions he’d have to deflect.

Morley pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and unfolded it, squinting through his fogged glasses as he read, “Hen scratch. Rolled oats—two bags. Salt block—”

“Do you want minerals in that?” Jolie asked as she came to stand next to the old man, cocking her head to see his list. He beamed and handed it to her. She took it gently and squinted a little herself at the light-penciled script on the sheet of pale blue paper. “Lillian wrote this, didn’t she?”

“Woman can’t put pressure on a pencil,” Morley muttered. “Arthritis.”

“I have something for her,” Jolie said. “A special cream that just came in. I’ll see if I can find a sample while Dylan loads your truck.” She handed Dylan the paper.

Way to give orders, Jolie.

Dylan frowned as he took the list, suddenly understanding why they were both squinting. It was as if Morley’s wife had written in faint code. “Do you need this to write the ticket?” he asked Jolie, hoping she would decode it for him.

“Nope. I got it. Hen scratch, twenty-five pounds. Two fifty-pound bags of rolled oats. One salt block—”

“No minerals,” Morley added.

“No minerals,” she repeated with a smile. “Three ivermectin, bag balm and a fly spray.” Jolie reached out to gently take Morley’s hand in hers, examining it. “Are you using bag balm for your hands?”

“Yeah.” Chapped and cracked hands were a mainstay of ranching life, particularly in winter. The ointment used to heal milk cows’ chapped utters was the go-to remedy.

“It works,” Jolie said. “But I have something else you could try...if you wanted.”

“Will it make me smell like a whorehouse?”

“Unscented,” Jolie said. “And it doesn’t stay greasy like bag balm, so the hay and dirt won’t stick to your hands.”

“Throw it in. Maybe Lillian will like it.”

Dylan loaded the truck and then came back inside the store as Morley drove away. “Are you in some kind of hand cream business?”

“What if I am?”

“I guess my question is more along the lines of should you be hawking your wares in my store?”

“I’m not selling the stuff,” Jolie said. “I gave him samples.”

“Am I selling the stuff?”

“You could be.”

“I don’t think so.”

Jolie gave him a long look and he had the impression that he’d reacted exactly as she’d expected him to.

“If you diversify a little, or try some new sales gimmicks, you might bring in more customers.”

“Our customers come here to buy feed, and I’m not into gimmicks.” Thinking that he needed to get out of there, Dylan grabbed his lunch pail and headed for his cousin’s—now his—private office. His father, uncle and grandfather had always subscribed to the theory that you stocked what the majority of your customers needed. Money spent on inventory that took forever to sell was money that could be in the bank, drawing interest. He may not have anticipated a future in business, but he did recall that particular facet of the sales game being discussed often and at length as the brothers debated what merchandise to carry beyond feed and seed.

Mike had even repeated his business theory a few times that morning before Dylan left for work, as if Dylan were going to start ordering useless items as soon as he got close to a computer.

He closed the door and stood for a moment, shoving thoughts of Jolie aside as he took in the familiar cluttered space that was now his center of operations. The desk was clean and the computer was almost new, but the counter and the top of the file cabinet were stacked high with old catalogs and an assortment of junk, as they had always been.

Piles had also accumulated along the wall under the old calendar, which featured a woman in Daisy Duke shorts kneeling on a tractor seat while holding a big wrench and wearing a come-hither smile. It’d been there for as long as Dylan could remember. As a boy, he’d been perplexed by the idea of a scantily clad woman kneeling on the tractor. Every woman he’d ever seen on a tractor had worn jeans and a T-shirt and sat in the seat so that she could drive the thing. And what was with the wrench?

He smiled a little as he put the lunch pail down next to the desk, remembering when he’d come to appreciate those Daisy Dukes and realized that the woman had no interest in plowing fields. He’d barely booted up the computer when the old-fashioned intercom buzzed and Jolie said, “Could you load up this customer?”

He went out into the rain to squeeze three bags of grain into the rear of a Subaru Forester, then decided to shift a pallet of grain for easier access. A few minutes later he came back into the store, shaking water off his hair, his leg giving a little as he turned to close the door.

“Who usually loads?” he asked Jolie, who glanced up from her computer screen.

“Finn.”

“Who loaded customers during the past week?” The transition time between his arrival and Finn’s departure. He knew it wasn’t his grandfather, who’d had a hip replacement a month ago.

“I did.”

“Was the forklift having problems?”

“The engine has been missing, and I had a hard time starting it.” She tilted her head. “Why?”

“It won’t start at all now.”

“I had a feeling this day was coming.” She reached for the phone. “Do you want me to call Bobeck’s? See if they can send someone over to take a look?”

“I’ll do it.” It’d been a while since he’d ripped into an engine, but it’d be cheaper than paying Bobeck’s mechanics rate. He took a few steps toward the counter and Jolie frowned.

“Did you hurt yourself?”

He’d figured the question would come up since his limp was still noticeable when his leg got tired and he’d made the mistake of overdoing his physical therapy that morning. “Banged up my leg in an accident.”

Go ahead, Jolie. Ask what kind of accident. She’d always been brimming with questions about his personal life and comments about his lack of social life. But this time she said only, “Nothing permanent, I hope.”

“No. It’s almost healed.” In a few weeks’ time he’d head back to his doctor in Lanesburg, Washington, to get the release he needed to go back to work once Finn returned home, which was why he’d overdone his PT. He had to get that release to continue his career.

“So you can still load the feed? Because if not I’ll do it.”

“I’m capable.” And, besides, there was no way he was going to stand back and let Jolie do it.

“The offer stands,” Jolie said, running her gaze over him as if assessing his capabilities.

She was enjoying this. He told himself to walk away, to let it be for now, but instead he said, “We need to talk about working together.”

She looked surprised. “In what way? You’re the boss, and I’m the employee.”

Her matter of fact words felt like a trap.

“In the way that this is not going to be a replay of chem class.” She had never understood how important it had been for him to do well in that class, in all his classes. To get those scholarships for his dad, even though it hadn’t really mattered in the long run. His dad had passed away before he’d completed his schooling and he’d ended up being a patrol cop instead of a forensic specialist.

She stared at him for a long moment. “That’s kind of insulting.”

He flattened both palms on the counter in front of him. “I just want us to understand each other.”

“Then understand that I’m insulted.”

“That wasn’t my intention.”

“What was your intention?”

He felt his blood pressure ratchet up again. It was like a Pavlovian response when she was around—one that he hadn’t felt in...oh, ten years. “My intention was to point out that this is not chem class.”

“You’re repeating yourself, so I’ll repeat myself. I’m insulted.” Jolie rose to her feet and walked out from behind the counter to take a stance in front of him, arms folded over her chest.

“When I took this job, the last thing I expected was for you to take over, but I can live with it. Finn hired me because I’m good with people and I can keep books. It isn’t like it was a mercy hiring.” She curled her lips slightly. “And I’m well aware it’s not chemistry class...although if you think about it, it’s not that much different—you being the supreme boss and me expected to do whatever you say.” She pushed her reddish-blond braid over her shoulder with a quick flip of her fingers. “Now, if there’s nothing else, I have work to do.”

“No,” Dylan said, realizing that he’d just been dismissed in his own store. “No. Nothing for now.”

* * *

ONCE THE OFFICE door closed behind Dylan, Jolie planted an elbow next to the keyboard on the crowded desk and lowered her forehead into her palm. Dylan was not the only one who didn’t want to relive chem class, but damned if she was going to tell him that.

When Finn had gotten the call to duty a few weeks ago, he’d said nothing about Dylan coming back. He’d sat on that bit of news until the day before he’d left; springing it on her at the going-away lunch they’d shared with his grandfather. She’d assured him it didn’t matter; told herself it didn’t matter. But it did.

How could it not, when Dylan was still holding on to a ten-year-old grudge? As if it had all been her fault. From day one, he’d made it clear that she couldn’t do anything right, so she’d simply quit trying and, toward the end, she’d moved into sabotage...just a little. Enough to make him scramble and to piss him off. A girl could only take being made to feel stupid for so long.

She’d gotten a C in the class. Dylan had gotten an A-and had acted as though the world had ended. Her friends had loved watching the interplay between them and had deemed him hot, because who wouldn’t be intrigued by an ultraserious, totally gorgeous guy?

His put-upon lab partner, that’s who. Wasn’t intrigued then; wasn’t intrigued now.

Just...insulted.

Jolie stretched the kinks out of her back and went to stand at the window to look out over the empty parking lot. Finn hadn’t been big on change and obviously Dylan was even less so—especially if the suggestions for change came from her. Not that she had any huge ideas, but if someone asked her to come up with suggestions, she’d put her mind to it. Regardless of what the stubborn Culver men believed, they could have more customers, if customers had more reasons to come to the place except for feed and seed. Flowers, trees, hand cream. Anything.

Oh, crap. She whirled to face the closed office door. The box.

She was halfway to the door, ready to knock and ask for it, when it swung open. Jolie knew it was too late. Way too late.

Dylan walked out carrying the box, an expression on his face that would have made her laugh under any other circumstance. He placed the box on the counter and stepped back, nodding at it.

“Yours?”

Jolie peeked inside, even though she knew exactly what was in it—garter belts, skimpy bikini panties, get-the-girls-up-there bras, lacy stockings. “Yes.”

“And this stuff is in my office why?”

“I needed a temporary place to store it between parties. I’m a distributer.” Or rather, she had been. She’d quit a few weeks ago when she’d gone to work part-time at McElroy’s. There were only so many things a person could work into a schedule... Besides, she’d discovered that in a small community, one could only sell so much lingerie. Missoula and Idaho Falls had been much better markets. “I had a couple back-to-back parties.”

“Please don’t tell me the parties are one of your ideas to bring in new clients.”

“It would work.”

“I’ll take that as a no.” He pushed the box a few inches toward her. “Maybe you could store this at your own place.”

She took the box and placed it under the counter. “Will do,” she said on a sigh.

He gave her an unsmiling look and headed back to his office, his shoulders held even more stiffly than when they’d been in school. Maybe it was due to his profession. He’d never gone on to solve crimes in a lab or whatever it was he’d planned to do with all that chemistry knowledge, but he had become a cop. And that was all she needed to make her life complete—Dylan Culver with an even bigger authority complex.

The office door remained firmly closed until the clock ticked past 5:30 p.m. At that point, Dylan was no longer her boss, so Jolie turned off her computer, put on her raincoat, grabbed her box of lingerie samples and left the building without saying goodbye. Unprofessional? She had no idea. She didn’t want to tap on that office door and appear to be asking permission to leave.

Her sister Dani was practically climbing the walls by the time she got home.

“I’m losing training time with all this rain,” she said as she emerged from the kitchen wearing a cherry-print apron. When her fiancé traveled, she ate all her meals with Jolie. “I need my arena. Damned surveyor.”

She and her fiancé and Jolie had each put up one third of the money for the training facility, but the company that was supposed to set up the canvas-covered training arena had yet to have the area surveyed and leveled. Until they did, there was no covered arena and thus no training during inclement weather.

“But we’re growing hay as we speak,” Jolie reminded her. She felt like doing a little happy dance. If this continued, there’d be meadow hay in the barn for the first time in years. One item checked off the very long list she’d made in a loose-leaf notebook. When the last item was checked off, Lightning Creek would once again be a bona fide working ranch. Her working ranch...well, hers and her sister’s, but she’d be the one living there, managing it once Dani got married next summer.

“I’ll give you that,” Dani agreed as she returned to the kitchen while Jolie hung her damp coat on a hook near the front door. “But my arena should have been up by now and it’s ticking me off. And it’s not doing your practice schedule any good.”

Jolie’s barrel racing season started in a matter of weeks at the Glennan Memorial Day Rodeo and she and her mare still had some serious work to do to get up to speed. Unfortunately, the soggy conditions made practicing in the outdoor arena impossible, which in turn made it difficult to reestablish herself as a barrel racing contender—which she needed to do if she hoped to eventually establish a business.

She’d moved back to Lightning Creek Ranch with the idea of conducting barrel racing clinics while her sister continued to develop her successful horse training business. Between the two of them, they’d figured they could keep the ranch afloat and make enough to live comfortably—as long as one of them, aka Jolie, worked a steady job to help pay the land taxes and other incidental expenses.

But once she’d moved home, Jolie had found that she hated seeing the ranch lie fallow. All five cows had been bred the previous spring and all had successfully calved. But the fields were a wreck, the buildings needed re-roofing and the irrigation system needed revamping.

The ranch was in even worse shape than it had been during her teen years when it had slowly been slipping away from them as hay and cattle prices tanked. They’d hung on until the prices rebounded, but only by cutting back to bare bones while their mother worked at a full-time job.

So one late night, over a bottle of wine—or had it been two?—Jolie and Dani had come to an agreement. They would put the Lightning Creek right again. It wouldn’t be a big operation, but they would increase the herd, lease out the fields, mow and bale the meadow hay instead of letting it go to waste. With careful management, they should be able to glean enough profit for Jolie to quit her job in a couple of years and until then they’d build the training business.

That had been the plan, anyway. Then Dani had become engaged to Gabe Matthews, the landscape architect who lived in the mansion next door. Even though Dani still used the ranch as her base of operations, revitalizing the Lightning Creek had become more Jolie’s project.

Jolie had no problem with that. Finally she could put a bit of her animal science degree to work in a meaningful way instead of preg-checking cattle on a mega ranch. She also didn’t mind being the decision-maker. As the youngest of four, she’d been bossed around more than the average kid, and enough was enough.

And speaking of being bossed around...

“Guess who my new supervisor is?” Jolie said, following her sister into the kitchen. At the stove, she sipped a little sauce off a teaspoon and reached for the salt.

“Mike?”

“Still laid up from his hip surgery. No. It’s Dylan.”

Dani turned back from where she was taking plates out of the cupboard. “Dylan?” Her mouth twitched.

“It’s not funny, Dan.”

“Is he as hot as ever?”

“I never found him hot.”

“Liar.”

“I could appreciate his attractiveness but it’s difficult to classify someone who is ordering you around and generally pissing you off as hot.”

Dani shrugged. “Hot is hot.”

Jolie rolled her eyes and went for the wineglasses. Pasta cried out for wine. So did her rather trying day.

Dani waited until they were seated with the bowl of pasta between them before she said, “I assume you’ll be able to work together?”

“I have little choice. I like my job and once Finn gets back it’ll be back to normal. All I have to do is hang on until then.”

“You’ll play nice with Dylan?”

Jolie smiled with mock sweetness. “Of course, Dani. He’s my employer.”