Not Your Average Cowboy. Christine Wenger

Meredith’s cooking show was on, Karen would microwave some popcorn and the two of them would watch it together.

      He should be used to Cait’s silence toward him by now, but he wasn’t. He kept hoping that someday she’d say something—anything. He wanted to hear his little girl’s voice again, to hear her call him Daddy.

      Meredith Something Turner tossed him the keys and mumbled a question about whether or not Lizard Rock or Hanging Tree Junction, Arizona had a dry cleaner.

      He was willing to bet she wouldn’t last a week here before he’d be driving her back to the airport and his home would be safe from change.

      Then he hoped like hell that people would like his furniture and buy it. If they did, he could get out of the red a lot faster and his home would still be safe.

      But by then it might not be his.

      Chapter Two

      Buck skillfully guided the rental car down the narrow mountain road, but Meredith still found herself holding her breath on every twist and turn. The craggy rocks were so close to the car, she could reach out and touch them. Every fallen tree branch looked like a snake or a lizard, and every other stone or twig was either a tarantula or a scorpion.

      Swallowing hard, she adjusted the air-conditioning vents until the cold air blew right on her face. As she took a couple of gulps of the air, she decided that she was being ridiculous by scaring herself like a teenager at a summer camp bonfire.

      But still, there was no sign of civilization as far as she could see. No hotels. No stores. No banks. No fast food places. Arizona was as foreign to her as Jupiter.

      She stole a glance at Buck. He was so tall that he had to take his hat off to sit in the car. His hair was jet-black and tied back in a ponytail with a piece of leather. It made him look more masculine than some of the men back home with their neat Boston haircuts.

      Merry remembered the day that Karen had called her, sobbing about Caitlin, and how devastated her brother was when his wife had walked out. Apparently, Buck’s wife, Debbie, had left for Nashville to pursue a singing career more than two years ago, and Cait had stopped talking from that moment on. Buck was having a hard time dealing with his daughter’s silence.

      Buck had found a psychiatrist for the child to see, but based on Karen’s last call, the little girl was still withdrawn and still not talking to anyone.

      Merry stole another glance at Buck. How awful for him to have gone through so much pain. In a way, he’d lost his wife and his little girl on that same day two years ago. Karen had said that he’d barely left the barn for a year or so, and was there all hours of the day and night, barely sleeping.

      His siblings, Karen, Louise and Ty, had told Buck he needed to snap out of his funk, for his daughter’s sake. He finally had, and tried to make things up to Cait, but she still wouldn’t talk.

      Sighing, Merry concentrated on remembering the road, the road that would take her back to the airport when she was done with her business here. But there were no landmarks, no side streets and still no signs. They just kept climbing, twisting, then descending.

      Buck must have heard her sigh. “It’s not much longer,” he said. “About twenty more minutes.”

      “Thank you.” She racked her brain for more conversation, but for a woman who made a good chunk of her income as a TV personality, she couldn’t think of a thing to say to this man with broad shoulders and dark stubble that made him look more than a little dangerous.

      The weather was always a safe subject, so she dove in. “Have you had much rain lately?”

      “It’s the desert.”

      “Oh…I guess not, then.” So much for conversation with the cowboy. She twisted her fingers together and checked her manicure, remembering how Karen had gotten her to stop biting her nails. Seeing her good friend again would be wonderful.

      She looked out the window. Every so often, she was surprised by the flash of color from a patch of fragile-looking wildflowers, or daunted by a lethal-looking cactus, both co-existing in a strange type of harmony.

      All right, so this wasn’t Boston. It was…tolerable. And she told herself that there weren’t acres of poisonous reptiles out to get her, just wild burros.

      She resolved to concentrate on helping Karen just like she’d promised. The sooner she did that, the sooner she’d be back home in familiar territory.

      With that decided, she relaxed her grip on what was left of her purse.

      “Over there.” Buck pointed off in the distance, to his left. “Rattlesnake Ranch.”

      She craned her neck and squinted. “Where?”

      “Over there.”

      “Over there” got closer, then disappeared again, as they turned another bend and descended until the mountain road turned into packed dirt barely wide enough for a car. They were on flat land now, up close and personal with the desert.

      Buck turned right and before them was a bleached sign proclaiming Rattlesnake Ranch. She shuddered involuntarily and immediately her eyes scanned the road for anything slithering.

      “Um…Buck?”

      “Yeah?”

      “About snakes…”

      “What about them?”

      “Do you have a lot of them out here?”

      His blue eyes glanced at her briefly, and then returned to the road. “It’s the desert.”

      “Of course there are snakes” was what he didn’t say.

      Quit obsessing, she told herself.

      They rolled to a stop in front of a sprawling ranch house.

      “Here we are,” he said.

      Merry heard the obvious pride in his voice. She took out a notebook and leafed through it for a clean page, free from burro slime, and found a pen at the bottom of her purse. Brainstorming time had arrived.

      At first sight, the ranch house was welcoming. Designed in traditional Santa Fe architecture, it had a big porch that ran the length of the house. Bright flowers spilled out of terra-cotta pots of every size and shape along the brick walkway. More colorful flowers cascaded from hanging baskets.

      Beautiful.

      She knew that the flowers were Karen’s doing. She’d always had a green thumb and went into the business program and floral arranging curriculum at Johnson & Wales with the hope of opening her own florist shop.

      The car door opened, startling her. Buck held out a hand to help her out, and she placed her hand in his. She wasn’t a small woman, but when his rough, callused hand covered hers, she felt very feminine and protected.

      She tried to analyze why she was having a cowboy fantasy, when a small hurricane descended down the thick wood stairs.

      “Merry! It’s been so long.”

      Buck dropped her hand, and Merry found herself in Karen’s bear hug.

      “I see my lug of a brother found you, or did you find him?”

      Merry laughed. “He found me. I was lost.”

      “I knew it,” Karen said, turning toward her brother. “Buck, thank goodness you’re okay. When Bandit came home without you, I got worried and sent Juan and Frank out looking for you. What happened?”

      “It’s a long story,” Buck said, carrying Merry’s suitcases up the stairs, as easily as if they contained feathers instead of a closet’s worth of clothes.

      Merry scribbled in her notebook. That would make a perfect picture for Karen’s brochure—a rough-and-rugged cowboy bringing luggage up the stairs of the dude ranch.

      Perfect.

      Buck