Pamela Britton - A Cowboy's Pride

Broken Cowboy…

Trent Anderson’s rodeo days are over. Thanks to the car accident that killed his best friend, he will never get on a horse again. But physical therapist Alana McClintock isn’t listening to his protestations. She just won’t let up—getting under his skin, waking parts of him he thought would sleep forever. He can sense she feels something for him, too.

Alana knows Trent’s injuries aren’t as extensive as he thinks, and with some hard work she’s convinced he will ride again. But the problem is convincing Trent. As Alana works with the wounded cowboy, she is drawn to him in a way that is anything but professional. She’s determined to help him, though—even if it means he’ll walk away from her.

“What could you possibly want from me?” Trent asked.

The unspoken words: someone who’s crippled and useless.

“I want you to give Rana lessons.”

He frowned, clearly perplexed. “Lessons?”

“She’s a breakaway roper. One of the best in the county. I’d like you to help her improve.”

He immediately shook his head. “Impossible. I would need to ride alongside her.” He leaned forward, as if he feared she might miss his next words. “Run alongside her. I could barely hang on at a trot.”

“Bull. You can coach her from the sidelines.”

“That’s a half-ass way of doing it.” Sunlight hit his face head-on, illuminating his square chin and dazzling gray eyes. He sat his horse just like any other cowboy, and Alana was reminded of the cover photo she’d seen of him once upon a time in some rodeo magazine, when he’d been photographed just as he was now. Square in the saddle, one hand resting on the horn, the other holding the reins.

Handsome.

Dear Reader,

I am frequently asked where I get my ideas for books. Honestly, they come from all over the place. It’s not unusual for me to be in the middle of a conversation, only to interrupt and say, “Wait! That’s a great idea for a book!”

A Cowboy’s Pride is an example of that happening. I was sitting at the coffee shop where I write when a friend of mine mentioned a ranch where her mother worked, a ranch that specialized in people with disabilities, a ranch in the far reaches of Northern California….

And an idea was born.

My fictional ranch is nothing like the real ranch in question, but I’d like to think the characters could be real. They certainly feel that way to me. I love a wounded hero, especially one who thinks he’s unworthy of love. And I adore a heroine who’s not afraid to stand up to a man, and whose heart is as big as her capacity to love.

I hope you enjoy A Cowboy’s Pride, and that you pick up the sequel in November, if you get a chance.

Pamela

P.S. You might find it interesting to note that every horse in A Cowboy’s Pride is an actual animal owned by either me or a friend. To see photos of the real horses, visit my Facebook page, www.facebook.com/pamelabritton.

A Cowboy’s Pride

Pamela Britton

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

With over a million books in print, Pamela Britton likes to call herself the best-known author nobody’s ever heard of. Of course, that changed thanks to a certain licensing agreement with that little racing organization known as NASCAR.

But before the glitz and glamour of NASCAR, Pamela wrote books that were frequently voted the best of the best by the Detroit Free Press, Barnes & Noble (two years in a row) and RT Book Reviews. She’s won numerous awards, including a National Readers’ Choice Award and a nomination for the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Heart.

When not writing books, Pamela is a reporter for a local newspaper. She’s also a columnist for the American Quarter Horse Journal.

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Larri Jo Starkey, this one’s for you. I love that you read everything I write, including my adult horse stories. I love that you get my style of writing. Most of all, I feel blessed to have you as my editor at the American Quarter Horse Journal. Over the years you have gone from mentor to true friend. I am blessed.

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 Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Excerpt

Chapter One

“He’s here.”

Alana McClintock kept her gaze firmly on the frying pan in front of her, though she glanced up quickly at the teenager who burst into the spacious state-of-the-art kitchen like a colt from a pasture. The black cowboy hat the girl wore just about fell from her head.

“It’s got to be him, Alana,” the fourteen-year-old all but shouted, brown ponytail flying. “They said they’d be here around five and it’s a little after that right now.”

The butter-and-brown-sugar mixture began to lose its viscosity, a sure sign the homemade syrup was about to boil. “Be there in a sec.”

“But you’re going to miss it,” the girl wailed.

There. Tiny bubbles began to form on the bottom. Alana grabbed her whisk. Timing was everything here. If she let it get too hot, it would crystallize. If she didn’t get things hot enough, it would turn into a gooey mess, and Cabe and Rana wouldn’t have anything to pour over their flapjacks. She’d never hear the end of it, either.

“Here comes the bus right now.”

She stirred the mixture with more and more speed, then quickly counted down. Five. Four. Three. Two...

“Done.” She grabbed a pot holder and clutched the cast-iron skillet, taking it off the stove. “Who needs a double boiler?”

“Hurry!”

“All right, all right.”

With the pan safely off to the side and the gas off, Alana turned toward Rana. The teenager had the appearance of a kid on Christmas morning. No surprise since her hero, a man Rana had looked up to since she was old enough to watch TV and, more important, the National Finals Rodeo, was about to arrive at New Horizons Ranch.

Albeit in a wheelchair.

“Hurry,” Rana cried, spinning on her heel and running from the kitchen, her cowboy boots leaving clumps of dirt on the floor.

“Rana,” Alana scolded. “You know how much that drives me nuts. No boots in the house.”

The teenager had disappeared.

Alana followed at a more leisurely pace. Never before had Rana shown so much enthusiasm for a guest, and there’d been a lot of guests come and go over the years. They were primarily a dude ranch, one of the best in the nation, according to a review they’d recently received, yet they did more than escort people on trail rides. They specialized in guests with disabilities. Guests who couldn’t walk, guests missing limbs, guests with severe deformities. Alana provided therapy if they needed it. Sometimes it was the parents who were disabled, sometimes the children. New Horizons made sure everyone enjoyed the same types of activities: horseback riding, swimming and, most of all, the Feather River.