Brenda Harlen - One Night With The Cowboy

Though Caleb’s face was shaded by the brim of his hat, Brie felt the intensity of his gaze on her. After a long minute, he finally said, “I hear you’ve decided on Columbia.”

She nodded. “It’s a really good school,” she said, because it was true, though not even a fraction of the whole truth.

“So’s UC Berkeley,” he pointed out, naming the college she’d originally planned to attend.

She nodded again.

“But California wasn’t far enough from Haven,” he guessed.

“I just think it’s best, for everyone, if we put some distance between us,” she said.

He shook his head. “Do you really believe that?” he challenged. “Because I can guarantee it’s not best for me, and I don’t think it’s what you want, either.”

She’d known this wouldn’t be easy, but she hadn’t imagined it could be this hard. After everything they’d been through over the past few weeks, her heart should be numb. But it wasn’t—it was torn open and bleeding, and she knew that going away from here, away from Caleb, was the only way to make the hurting stop.

She had to swallow before she could speak. “I’ve always wanted to get out of this town,” she told him, her voice breaking just a little. “And you’ve never wanted to be anywhere else.”

“You didn’t always want to get out of this town,” he contradicted. “There was a time when you wanted to be my wife and help me build our home on the Circle G.”

“That was before I knew that the idea of a Blake married to a Gilmore would give my grandfather a heart attack.”

“Your grandfather is a grumpy old man whose heart is kicking along just fine with his new pacemaker. And you’re a Channing, not a Blake.”

“My mother was a Blake,” she reminded him, as she retrieved a manila envelope from her saddlebag. “And her blood runs through my veins.”

He had no choice but to take the envelope she thrust into his hands. “There’s nothing I can say that will change your mind, is there?”

She shook her head. “This is a great opportunity for me.”

“And when you’re finished with school—what will you do then?” he asked. “Will you come home?”

She looked away. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do,” he said, his tone resigned as he hoisted himself into the saddle again. “Good luck in New York, Brie.”

Then he rode away, Indigo’s hooves trampling the already broken pieces of her heart.

Chapter One

Seven years later

“We’re going to Las Vegas!”

The words stole the air from Brie’s lungs, like the first big drop of the Cyclone at Coney Island. But unlike the thrill of plunging eighty-five feet at sixty miles an hour, there was no exhilarating rise that followed—only an uncomfortable queasy feeling.

Judging by Lily’s excited squeals, she had an altogether different reaction to the announcement.

“Okay.” Grace clapped her hands together and grinned. “Stop squealing and start packing—we fly out at eight forty-five tomorrow morning.”

“Tomorrow?” Brie echoed, when she’d managed to find her voice. “But—”

“Don’t you dare say you can’t go,” Grace interjected. “We talked about this months ago, and we all agreed that we would take a long weekend to celebrate my twenty-fifth birthday.”

“Of course I’m going to celebrate with you,” she assured her friend. “I just thought you’d want something a little more...or maybe a little less. And Vegas in August is going to be sticky and gross.”

“Worse than New York?” Lily asked dubiously.

“Trust me,” Brie said.

“I realize you’ve probably been there a thousand times,” Grace said. “But I never have and that’s where I want to go. Plus, the plane tickets and hotel are already paid for by my parents as their birthday present to me.”

Although Brie had grown up less than 450 miles from Las Vegas, she’d only ever made one trip to Sin City. One unforgettable trip more than seven years earlier, and though the heartache had begun to fade, she knew she could never forget the man—or their reasons for making that trip.

“Now I’m off to the obligatory birthday dinner with the family at Per Se,” Grace continued, already heading toward the stairs. “Make sure you pack your party clothes—I want to celebrate my quarter-century milestone in a big way.”

Lily pushed off the sofa. “I knew there was a reason I bought that sexy red dress at Bergdorf’s last weekend.”

“I thought you bought it because you couldn’t resist a sale,” Brie noted dryly.

Her friend grinned. “That, too.”

Lily disappeared into her bedroom to begin packing, and Brie decided to do the same, albeit with less enthusiasm. Because going to Nevada naturally made her think about Haven, where she’d grown up and where most of her family still lived, and thinking about Haven brought back memories of Caleb, the first—and only—boy she’d ever loved. And even after seven years, those memories made her heart yearn.

When she left Haven, she didn’t think she’d ever go back. And for the first four years, she hadn’t. Then her grandmother died, and she’d needed to grieve with her family. Two years after that, she’d returned for a much happier occasion: the wedding of her brother Spencer to Kenzie Atkins, Brie’s best friend throughout high school. The next spring, she’d gone back for the birth of her sister Regan’s twin baby girls—and again for Piper and Poppy’s baptism.

Each successive trip had been a little easier than the one before. Of course it helped that she didn’t need to worry about running into Caleb, because her parents had built a big house closer to town a few years earlier and he rarely ventured far from the Circle G.

She pulled her suitcase out from under her bed now and set it on top of the mattress—and vaguely wondered if she could fake being sick to avoid the trip. She immediately felt guilty for even contemplating such a ruse, but the way her stomach tied itself into knots at the prospect of returning to Las Vegas, she might not have to fake anything.

But she would do this for Grace. She would do anything for either of the two women who’d been her best friends since her first week in New York, when they’d met as freshmen residents of Hartley Hall.

There was a light tap on the partially open door, then Lily poked her head into her room. “Can I come in?”

“Of course,” Brie invited.

Her friend looked at the still empty suitcase, then at her. “You absolutely hate the idea of going to Las Vegas, don’t you?”

Brie opened a drawer and began rifling through the contents. “There are a lot of other places I would have preferred to visit, but I can understand why Grace wants to go. Everyone should experience Sin City at least once.”

“I’m not particularly close to my family—as you know,” Lily admitted. “But even I go home at least three times a year.”

“My parents come to New York periodically.”

“ They come here ,” her friend agreed. “How often do you go there?”

In the past year, more than she’d wanted to, but Brie knew that response would only raise more questions. “I don’t enjoy traveling as much as they do,” she suggested as an explanation instead.

“Says the woman who visited ten countries in Europe on her summer vacation last year,” Lily noted.

“That was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Her friend lowered herself onto the mattress, leaning against the headboard with one leg tucked up beneath the other. “Las Vegas is 432 miles from Haven,” she pointed out.

A detail of which Brie was well aware, but not one that she’d expect an East Coast native to know.

Her surprise must have shown on her face, because Lily shrugged and explained, “I looked it up.”