Kelli Ireland - Conquering The Cowboy

Trusting him is dangerous...

When a mission goes disastrously wrong, search-and-rescue team lead Taylor Williams is left with indescribable terror at the prospect of climbing. But she knows she has to face her fear to overcome it. Now she’s at a ranch in New Mexico, where her climbing recertification is in the hands of cowboy climber Quinn Monroe. Only this devilishly handsome rancher is about as friendly as a spur in the backside...

As they prepare for the climb, Taylor can’t ignore Quinn’s rugged physicality. The scorching heat between them helps distract Taylor from her fear, but her growing feelings make spending time with him dangerous. In the end, conquering her past may be a small feat compared to conquering this cowboy...

“How long have you been running the ranch?”

“For a little over a year and a half,” Quinn said. Instinct shouted at him to proceed with caution. “Why?”

“Did you give up climbing for this?” Taylor asked.

“Excuse me?”

“I want to know what your priorities are. If you’re a rancher, you’re a rancher. That’s fine. But I didn’t hire a rancher to see me through my recertification. I hired you under the express belief you were a dedicated mountaineer.”

Muscles along his jaw worked and knotted. “I’m perfectly capable of doing, and being, both.”

“I disagree.” She crossed her arms and looked at some point well beyond him. “When was the last time you summited, Quinn? Eight months? Twelve? More?” She waved him off when he started to answer. “What you’ve been doing with yourself over the past several months may not matter so much to you, but it matters very much to me.”

Dear Reader,

There are times when a book speaks to an author, and this book was one of those times. It was also one of those times when the author spoke back to the book, and not all of the words were amiable. This book challenged me in ways I wasn’t prepared to confront, both good and bad. Both the manuscript and the characters pushed me to write with such emotional authenticity that there were days I was literally incapable of making dinner—or even ordering off a menu—because I was so mentally fried! The end result was a book that resonated with me on a unique emotional level and proved worth every ounce of sweat and every minute of sleep lost. May you find yourself as caught up in the tale as I was and, in the end, as enamored with the characters as I am.

Happy reading,

Kelli Ireland

Conquering the Cowboy

Kelli Ireland

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KELLI IRELAND spent a decade as a name on a door in corporate America. Unexpectedly liberated by fate’s sense of humor, she chose to carpe the diem and pursue her passion for writing. A fan of happily-ever-afters, she found she loved being the puppet master for the most unlikely couples. Seeing them through the best and worst of each other while helping them survive the joys and disasters of falling in love? Best. Thing. Ever. Visit Kelli’s website at kelliireland.com.

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To Vivian Arend, a beautiful soul who recognizes the value of a country boy. Muah!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Extract

Copyright

1

WHETHER IT WAS beating the house in Vegas or coming back from a search-and-rescue call that had much higher stakes, Taylor Williams thrived on beating the odds. No, that wasn’t quite right. She didn’t just thrive on it. She lived for it, for those moments when she turned the bell curve into a ninety-degree climb and made the competition sweat—not to keep up, but merely keep her within sight, when she forced “average” to recognize her as irrefutably superior.

And if being a member of the Pacific Northwest’s Mountain Search and Rescue team, known as the Prime Times, had taught her anything about superiority, it was that staring down long odds—without blinking—was the easy part. Surviving the consequences? That was the ultimate measure of true strength.

Never before had she doubted her ability to survive. Not until the early morning hours of May 17 when the rescuers had become the rescued...and recovered.

She’d lived while her team, and the climber they’d been sent to retrieve, had died.

Sole survivor.

If only she’d been a soul survivor.

But she wasn’t. Nothing but broken remnants of who she’d been lay scattered around what was left of her life.

Details were scarce. Her memory’s recall abilities were less effective than using six feet of rope for a twelve-foot descent—she’d get halfway there and hang. The entire event had narrowed down to a few mental snapshots and a handful of sensory memories—a sound, a word, a smell. Nothing more. Her only recourse had been to read the After Action Review, and she had. Exhaustively. She’d tried to fill in the blanks, tried to piece together what had gone so wrong, until she now possessed every detail known to the crash-site investigators. Those facts were efficient. Factual. Cold. Few.

Page one: Team Leader Taylor Williams requested helo OH-58 Bell Jet Ranger in response to a distress call received at 17:52 from a lone climber who identified himself as Gary Wilcox, age 29.

He’d had blue, blue eyes.

Had.

Past tense.

Her fist balled against her thigh.

She pounded the steering wheel of her Toyota Tundra. A sharp beep sounded, and she jerked the wheel. Deep substrate along the side of the road sucked the passenger tires down. Gravel flew as the truck fishtailed. Her control slipped.

“No!” A short scream was ripped from her throat as her gaze shot to the instrument panel. No. The dash. Not the instrument panel.

Truck. Not a helo. I’m on the ground.

Her fuel light flickered once...twice...before glowing bright orange against the dark dashboard.

Regaining control of the truck, she slowed and, finally, stopped. All around her, the Sangre de Cristo Mountains rose, rock faces reflecting the afternoon sun even as, well above the tree line, a spattering of snow dotted the highest peaks. Wrapping her arms around her middle, she leaned forward and rested her forehead against the steering wheel.

Not Rainier. Nothing like Rainier.

Memories that always hovered just out of conscious reach left her wondering, for what seemed like the millionth time, if she might have changed the ultimate outcome, might have saved lives versus costing them, had she made different choices, been five minutes earlier or ten seconds later to the scene. Perhaps if she had, she wouldn’t have been required to spend the last several months in intensive therapies, physical and psychological, trying to come to grips with her injuries and worse—much, much worse—the loss of her team.