Cowboy Lessons. Pamela Britton

hanging over a tarnished belt buckle he’d won back in his rodeo days.

      “Kidding, Dad. But it’d serve you right if he did.”

      Her father squinted his eyes at the departing car, his hands hooking into his leather belt. “He’s younger than I thought he’d be.”

      “He wants cowboy lessons.”

      “Cowboy lessons?”

      She eyed the man she loved more than any person on Earth. Her only family, and yet a man who’d managed to disappoint her more times in life than she cared to admit. She added today’s fiasco to the list. “Yeah. Ranching lessons. Horse lessons. The whole bit.”

      “Are you going to teach him?”

      “I told him to find someone else.”

      He blinked gray lashes, still staring at the car. “Humph. I wondered why he wanted to buy that horse.”

      “That horse could have killed him.”

      “Nah. He was safer than a tick on a deer.”

      She shook her head in disgust. She almost left it at that; experience told her that trying to make her dad accept responsibility for anything was a task best left alone. But she couldn’t keep quiet.

      “You should have told me what was going on, Dad.”

      “I never wanted this life for you, Amanda,” he said, still not meeting her gaze. “You know that. It’s why I sent you to that fancy college.”

      Fancy, in her dad’s opinion, was anything away from the small town they lived in. Los Molina was fifty minutes from the Bay Area, but you’d never know it. Nestled in a small valley, the town enjoyed mild winters and cool summers. Perfect ranching country with rolling green hills and shady oaks.

      “Dad, I happen to like this life.”

      “I think you could do better. Heck, I didn’t let you go off to Cal Poly and get a degree in business agriculture so you could come home and use it.”

      “But I want to use that knowledge.” Even though that hadn’t always been the case. When she’d first realized she’d need to come home because of her father’s failing health, she’d been bitterly disappointed. She’d wanted to use her degree to find her dream job: working for a thoroughbred breeding farm. Instead she’d been forced to come back home. But that was ancient history. She’d learned to love this place in the past few years.

      “It’s a hundred thousand dollars.”

      “What?”

      “You asked me earlier how much I owed. One hundred thousand dollars.”

      She just about fell over. Lord, how the heck was she going to get the place back?

      I want to learn to be a cowboy. The words bounced off the inside of her head as if she were in a drum. But she couldn’t do it. She just couldn’t.

      Could she?

      Chapter Two

      She could. And a week later—a week during which she regretted agreeing to the ridiculous scheme the day after he’d proposed it—Amanda woke up to the buwap-wap-wap-wap of helicopter blades, which rattled her bedroom window and shook dust off her ceiling.

      She knew immediately who it was.

      “Give me a break,” she muttered, tossing back the antique-ivory lace cover her grandmother had made almost seventy years ago. Leave it to Scott “Mr. Billionaire” Beringer to arrive in a helicopter.

      She’d been dreading this day for a week, and so she took her time crawling out of bed. The hardwood floor felt cold beneath her bare feet as she crossed to the window and looked up. Sure enough, a white-and-black helicopter glided into view, the Global Dynamics logo visible against the gray-and-red sky of an early morning dawn. Pique made her jerk the lace curtains back as she moved to turn away, but just as quickly, she moved back to the window.

      It looked like—

      “No.” She shook her head in disbelief. “No. Don’t land in the bull pasture,” she murmured. “Not the bulls.”

      But the spring grass in the pasture had already compressed from the pressure of the helicopter blades.

      She turned around—the chilly morning air smacking her hard—then quickly pulled on rubber boots. Her blue-and-white-checkered flannel nightgown barely hung past her knees, but she paid it no attention as she squeaked along the hallway’s hardwood floors…no, ran along the hallway.

      “Not the bulls,” she murmured again.

      The outside morning air was cold enough to make her eyes water, the door swinging wide just in time for her to see the helicopter drop a passenger, then begin to lift off again.

      “Not the bulls,” she said, watching as Scott Beringer, wonder boy of the techno industry, did something incredibly stupid. He’d hopped out of the chopper into the middle of a field of bulls. Granted, they were cowering bulls right now. But not for long. Once that helicopter lifted off—

      “Scott,” she screamed. But she might as well have been yelling at her shadow. The chopper drowned out any sound: Scott calmly walked toward the wide gate as if he had all the time in the world, toting a black piece of luggage in one hand and a cowboy hat in the other. In the corner of the pen, one of her brown-and-white Herefords lowered its head. And as the helicopter began to lift, it became apparent that that particular bull would take it upon himself to be the sole representative of his species in stomping down the lone human intruder.

      “Scott,” she called again, panicked now.

      The bull waited half a heartbeat before wringing its tail, a sure sign he was about to charge. He didn’t have horns, but it wouldn’t matter. When fifteen-hundred pounds of beef hit you broadside, you’d be lucky to walk away alive.

      Oh, damn. She would succeed in killing him where her father had failed.

      She waved her arms. Scott finally looked her way.

      She pointed. Scott turned.

      She yelled, “Run!”

      And Scott Beringer, one of the wealthiest men in the United States, ran. Fast.

      The suitcase got left behind, but not the hat. That he waved behind him as if shooing away a fly. Dumb, dumb, dumb. It only gained a bull’s attention. But then the big Hereford spied the suitcase. It changed its path like Wile E. Coyote. Amanda never, not in a million years, would have thought a bull could turn that fast, but it did, heading toward the suitcase with its head down, tail flicking. The suitcase never stood a chance. It sailed through the air like a carnival ride. Scott, still running, looked back. The bull—its Samsonite enemy now vanquished—turned to Scott and put his head down again.

      “Run,” Amanda repeated. Not that he wasn’t running already. Her blood thrust through her veins so fast it hurt her head. She began to wave her arms again, hoping to distract the bull. Didn’t help. Scott’s eyes looked panicked behind his thick glasses. “Stay.” She thought she heard him yell. “Stay.”

      The bull charged. Scott wouldn’t make it.

      She arrived at the fence; Scott was about three feet away on the other side, three feet that he seemed to jump, launching himself like a Harlem Globetrotter.

      The bull hurled himself at Scott, and maybe it reached him in time to help propel him, or maybe it was pure adrenaline that allowed Scott to cover so much ground, but he landed across the top rail and a second later, the bull hit the rail right below where he dangled. Scott was thrust off the top rail like a bird from a perch. He landed on his back and, as coincidence would have it, right at her feet. The hollow thud he made caused Amanda to wince, but she was so winded, and so relieved that he’d survived, all she could do was lean over and clasp her knees. “You lucky bastard.”

      The