Smooth-Talking Cowboy. Maisey Yates

had had quite enough of life being a pain in the rear. If there was a reward for being well behaved, she hadn’t yet found it.

      She got out of her car to look at the flattened tire in the back on the passenger side, bracing herself against the frigid wind that whipped up right as she did so. The typical chilly Oregon January weather did nothing to improve her mood.

      And there it was. Silver and flat, sticking into her tire. A nail.

      Of course. She was running late to work down at Grassroots Winery and she had a flat tire as well as a broken heart. So, all things considered, she wasn’t sure it could get much worse.

      She scowled, then looked down at her phone, trying to figure out who she should text. Normally, it would have been her boyfriend, Bennett, but he was now her ex-boyfriend because she had broken up with him last month at Christmas.

      She had her reasons. Very good ones.

      She couldn’t text him now, obviously. And she probably shouldn’t text his older brother Wyatt, or his other older brother Grant, because their loyalty to Bennett made them off-limits. Even for pitiful Olivia and her flat tire.

      She was pondering her quandary, sitting on the outer edges of Gold Valley with her car halfway in the ditch when a beat-up red truck came barreling down from the same direction she had just come. Her stomach did a somersault and she closed her eyes, beseeching the heavens for an answer as to why she was being punished this way.

      There was no answer. There was only a flat tire. And that red truck that she knew well.

      Oh well. She needed rescuing. Even if it was by Luke Hollister. She moved closer to the road, crossing her arms and standing there, looking pathetic. At least, she had a feeling she looked somewhat pathetic. She felt pathetic.

      Luke would stop, because despite being a scoundrel, a womanizer, he had that innate sense of chivalry that cowboys tended to possess. All yes ma’am and opening doors and saving damsels from the railroad tracks.

      Or the side of the road, in this case.

      The truck came closer, and she registered the exact moment Luke saw her. Felt it, somehow. She took a step back, making room for him to pull off and up next to her car.

      His truck kept going.

      She stared after him. “He didn’t stop!”

      She had been incredibly peeved that Luke Hollister had been the salvation she hadn’t wanted, but she was even more peeved that he had declined his opportunity to be said salvation.

      Then she saw brake lights, followed by reverse lights.

      Slowly, the truck backed up, easing its way up beside her.

      Luke leaned across the seat, working the crank window so that it was partway down. He had a black cowboy hat on, covering most of his dark blond hair, his green eyes glittering with humor beneath the wide brim. And then he smiled. That slow, lazy smile of his that always made her feel like he had spoken an obscenity.

      “Olivia Logan, as I live and breathe. You seem to have gotten yourself in a bit of trouble.”

      “I didn’t get myself into any trouble,” she said crisply. “There was a nail in the road, and I now seem to have a flat tire.” He just looked at her, maddeningly calm. “You weren’t going to stop,” she added, knowing she sounded accusing.

      “I thought better of it. I’d hate it if you were eaten by wolves.”

      “There are no wolves here,” she said, feeling impatient.

      “They recently tracked one that came down from Washington. Just one though, so probably the worst that would happen is you’d get gnawed on, rather than eaten in your entirety.”

      “Well. I’m glad you decided to help me avoid a vicious gnawing,” she said grumpily.

      “I could change the tire for you,” he said.

      “Do you want to pull off the road before we have this discussion?” she asked.

      He looked in his rearview mirror, then glanced back at her. “There’s no one coming. It’s not exactly rush hour.”

      “There is no rush hour in Gold Valley.”

      But that didn’t mean someone wouldn’t be pulling up behind him on the narrow two-lane road soon enough.

      He still didn’t move his truck, though.

      “Luke,” she said, “I need to go to work.”

      “Well, why didn’t you say so? Do you have a spare tire?”

      “Yes,” she said impatiently.

      “I’ll tell you what. I’ll drive you down to work, and then when I head back this way I’ll fix your tire.”

      She frowned, suspicious at the friendliness. “Why would you do that?”

      “Because I’m going that way anyway,” he said. “You still work at the winery?”

      She nodded. Grassroots Winery sat in between the towns of Copper Ridge and Gold Valley, and Olivia worked predominantly in the dining room at the winery itself. It wasn’t, she supposed, the most ambitious job, which usually didn’t bother her. She liked the ambience of the place, and she enjoyed the work itself. But she had always assumed that she would marry a rancher and help him work his land. Make a home for them. The way her parents had done. That seemed silly now that she was single, and there was no rancher in her future.

      She had been sure that by now Bennett would have come back to her. Was sure that breaking up with him would make him realize that he had to commit or he could lose her.

      Except he seemed all right with losing her. And that was terrible, because she was not all right with losing him.

      With losing that vision of her future that she had held on to for so long.

      “How will I get home?” she asked.

      “I could help you out with that, too, but I’ll have your car in working order by then.”

      She narrowed her eyes. “Why are you being nice to me?”

      That wicked grin of his broadened. “I’m always nice.”

      She let out an exasperated sound and clicked the lock button on her key fob before climbing into the passenger side of his truck. She struggled to get in because of her skirt and nylons, but finally shut the massive, heavy door behind her.

      “Thank you,” she said, knowing she sounded ridiculously prim and not really able to do anything about it. She was prim.

      She grabbed hold of the seat belt, then pulled it forward, having to wiggle it slightly to get it to click. His truck was a hazard. She straightened, held tightly to her handbag and stared straight ahead.

      “You’re welcome,” he said, stretching his arm over the back of the bench seat. His other forearm rested casually over the steering wheel. His cowboy hat was pushed back on his head, shirtsleeves pushed up past his elbows, forearms streaked with dirt as if he had already been working today. Which meant that he had likely been out at Get Out of Dodge before driving down toward town. She wondered if he had seen Bennett.

      “Were you out at the Dodge place today?” She tried to ask casually.

      “You want to know if I saw your boyfriend,” Luke said. Not a question. A statement. Like he knew her.

      And this, in a nutshell, was why she didn’t really like Luke. He had a nasty habit of saying the one thing that she wished he wouldn’t. With a kind of unerring consistency that made her suspect he did it on purpose.

      “He’s not my boyfriend. Not anymore.”

      “Still. You’re wondering about him.”

      “Of course I wonder about him. I dated Bennett for a year. I’m not going to just...not wonder about him suddenly.”