Marin Thomas - Arizona Cowboy

Last Cowboy—Or Cowgirl!—Standing…

Rachel Lewis is a bona fide city slicker. Still, when her estranged father asks for her help, she ends up in dusty Stagecoach, Arizona, to manage his rodeo company for the summer. Being clueless about rough stock is nothing, though, compared to the confused feelings Rachel has for sexy ranch foreman Clint McGraw…because he’s also her main competitor for her father’s affections.

Clint can hardly believe it when his boss hands over the reins to his long-gone daughter. What the heck does a spoiled city girl like Rachel know about rodeo? Why, she’s crazy enough to offer a competition event to women bull riders! And for sure she’s going to nudge her way back into her father’s heart—leaving Clint high and dry. Even so, he can’t help falling hard for Rachel.

But only one of them can be the head honcho of this round-up!

“Is that why you agreed to help your father this summer—so you two could mend your fences?”

“Yes.” A soft sigh escaped her. “But that was when I believed I was his only child.”

“You are his only child.”

“You might not be his son by birth, but it’s obvious he cares more about you than me.”

The truth was painful.

Rachel stepped past Clint, but he grasped her hand. His warm, callused fingers entwined with hers, sending shivers racing along her arm.

“This isn’t a competition between us,” he said.

Who was Clint kidding? They’d have to wait until the end of the summer to see which one of them came out on top in her father’s eyes.

Dear Reader,

While writing my cowboy books for Harlequin American Romance, I occasionally stumble across information about women’s rough-stock events, but usually never pay much attention to the details. After all, the average American woman has little in common with a female bull rider—right? Wrong. On a whim I began to research these courageous, spirited cowgirls and realized they’re more like you and me than I’d first believed. Whether women work in education, health care, business, are stay-at-home moms raising children or even romance writers, women face obstacles in the workplace and at home that most men don’t. Each and every day, women fight for recognition, respect, equal pay and equal benefits. When women fail, they pick themselves up, dust off their Wranglers and return for another go-round the next day.

I can’t think of a better example of bravery, dedication and resilience than a cowgirl who competes in rough-stock events. I hope you find inspiration from these courageous women and enjoy the wild world of rodeo!

For more information on my books and my Rodeo Rebels series for Harlequin American Romance, visit my website, www.marinthomas.com.

Happy reading!

Marin

Arizona Cowboy

Marin Thomas

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To all the cowgirls who dare to dream big!

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 One

Stagecoach 10 Miles

Rachel Lewis strangled the steering wheel Sunday afternoon as she sped along the deserted Arizona highway southeast of Yuma. Although she’d been born in this desolate wasteland, the bone-dry landscape remained unfamiliar to her. The car’s thermometer displayed 100—it was only June seventh. After living two decades in Rhode Island, temps over eighty degrees constituted sweltering.

How did people survive this heat? Better yet…how would she handle three months of hundred-degree-plus temperatures on her father’s ranch?

You’re almost there. Eight hours in her car and the wavy heat lines hovering above the baking asphalt threatened to mesmerize Rachel. She gulped several swallows from her water bottle. Her concentration restored, she searched for a large rock, a mountain peak, a saguaro with too many arms—anything that might help her recall the first few years of her life in Hell’s backyard. Nothing. She felt like a tourist in a foreign land.

When Rachel was five years old, her mother had died in a horse accident and her father had shipped Rachel east to live with her aunt. Twenty-two years later she was returning to her birthplace—not because she wanted to but because her father had asked her to.

The speedometer nudged eighty and she eased her foot off the accelerator. Thoughts of P. T. Lewis sent her blood pressure soaring. A week before the public schools in Rhode Island had dismissed for the summer Rachel had learned her father had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and would be undergoing three months of treatment at a medical center in Phoenix. Before she’d uttered a single word of sympathy, he’d asked her to return to Stagecoach to run his rodeo-production company.

The phone call had been the first time her father had reached out to her since her mother’s death and the hurt, abandoned little girl in Rachel had yearned to shout, “No!”

But Rachel wasn’t a child. She was a grown woman with a successful career as a high school psychologist and athletic trainer. On a daily basis she dealt with teenagers who struggled with anger-management issues, eating disorders, physical disabilities and social adjustment problems. Too bad her background in psychology did nothing to ease the anger and hurt that had festered inside her the past twenty-two years. Her immature reaction to her father’s request had triggered a bout of serious soul-searching.

Deep down she yearned to be needed by her father because he loved her—not because he wanted her to manage his business. Dare she hope P.T.’s call for help signaled a desire to mend their relationship? After several sleepless nights Rachel had acknowledged she wasn’t certain she was able or even willing to forgive her father for choosing not to be involved in her life. In the end, his health had convinced her to attempt reconciliation.

P.T. was all the family Rachel had left, but she hesitated about becoming too close to him when a chance existed that he wouldn’t beat his cancer. All these years she’d struggled to accept her father’s disregard. If she opened her heart to him and then he didn’t survive… How would she endure losing her father twice in one lifetime?

I wish you were here to help me, Aunt Edith.

Rachel loved her aunt for all the sacrifices the woman had made in raising Rachel. Aunt Edith was the sole reason Rachel had survived her father’s absence through the years. Her aunt had never openly criticized her brother for neglecting his only child but Rachel had eavesdropped on phone conversations through the years and overheard Aunt Edith reprimand her brother for not visiting Rachel or speaking with her on the phone.

Relax. It’s not as if you’re going to a job interview. She might as well be. For all intents and purposes, P.T. was a stranger to her.

Turn around and go home. Say you changed your mind. Not after driving over twenty-five hundred miles and crossing thirteen states in three and a half days.