Carrie Alexander - Cowboy Comes Home

“Like the way I chose to take the blame for the fire when the deputy came to question me,” Rio said. “I knew the consequences, Meg, but I did it because I wanted to protect you. I loved you.”

An acrid thickness welled up inside Meg’s chest, pushing tears into her throat, her eyes. She took a deep breath, holding on by the fingernails she dug into her palms. “I appreciate that, Rio. Really, I do. But I wish you’d told them the truth.”

“I didn’t know the truth,” he said quietly. “You were gone.”

Dear Reader,

In Cowboy Comes Home, the hero and heroine both return to Wyoming after many years away. So have I—fictionally speaking. Eight years ago, I wrote my very first Harlequin Superromance, The Maverick, with the small-town setting of Treetop, Wyoming. A good creation never dies—at least in my imagination—so when I decided to write a story featuring a reformed bad girl, a cowboy hero and a ranch named Wild River, I knew I had to return to Treetop.

To refresh my memory, I revisited The Maverick for the first time since it was published. Fun research. (Though slightly scary, since it was way too late to revise!) Then I reread parts of Mary O’Hara’s Wyoming-set “Flicka” series, which are among my favorite books from my horse-crazy years. Even more fun. Sometimes being a writer is the best job in the world.

I hope you enjoy this Wyoming reunion story. Cowboy Comes Home is my ninth Harlequin Superromance book—with more to come. And it all started in Treetop….

Happy reading,

Carrie Alexander

P.S. Visit me on the Web at www.carriealexander.com, where you can also find my backlist and drop me a line.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Carrie Alexander lives and writes among the birches and pine trees in Upper Michigan, where she enjoys gardening (sporadically), swimming (when it’s warm enough), collecting sticks and stones (they breed in her yard), and waiting for football season (Go Pack!).

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

MEG LENNOX HELD OUT one hand, offering a palmful of sweet feed to the balky gelding showing her his hind-quarters. Behind her back she clutched the rope attached to the halter hung off her shoulder. The way the horse had reacted to her previous attempts to catch him, she might as well have been throwing a rattlesnake around his neck.

The chestnut lashed his tail. He wasn’t easily fooled.

“Quiet now.” She chirruped, shaking her palm like a gambler with hot dice. “Don’t you want your dinner?”

Sloop’s ears flicked back and forth. His head turned as if he might be persuaded, but the one visible eye rolled with suspicion, showing a white rim.

She stood still, even though the temptation to sidle closer was strong. The horse was almost within touching distance, the closest she’d come to catching him during their half-hour battle of wills.

“Hey, Sloop. Good fella. There’s nothing to be afraid of. Don’t run away.”

Don’t run away? The words pinched Meg’s conscience. She’d always been good at running away.

She gazed past the fence and the weather-worn barn to the rolling pastures of Wild River Ranch. It was early October in Treetop, Wyoming, and the rich grassy greens of summer had faded to tan and ochre. The upright stands of high-country aspen marched up the foothills in golden epaulets.

She’d loved the ranch, but not her life here. Ten years ago, at barely eighteen, she’d left behind her home and contentious relationship with her gruff, uncaring father. Forever, she’d thought.

But in all the years she’d searched, she hadn’t been able to find the good life she’d expected. When times had gotten really tough, she’d instinctively fled back to Wyoming. To the ranch. Even though it hadn’t been home for a long time, even in her heart.

Especially in her heart.

Meg turned her sigh into another crooning overture to Sloop. Some days, her hopes for the ranch—and herself—seemed as unattainable as the stubborn gelding.

She’d returned too late. Both parents were dead, the land neglected. Her prospects were as bleak as the metallic-gray sky.

But I’m home at last, even if it’s only half a home. That’s something.

She chirruped again. “Sloop. Please let me catch you. It’s gonna rain.”

The horse didn’t mind being out in the rain, but she hadn’t hammered and nailed the box stalls into shape for her own amusement. Renny and Caprice were already inside, pulling at the hay nets, their grain long gone. Only Sloop was being stubborn. His owner had warned her that the horse could be hard to catch. Meg had been certain she’d have no trouble. Once upon a time, she’d had a reputation for being good with horses.

Sloop swung around, his nostrils fluttering. The delayed dinnertime was finally getting to him.

She opened her hand. The feed was moist and fragrant in her palm. “There you go,” she soothed him. “One more step and you’re mine, you ornery old rat-tailed nag.”

Ears twitching, the horse extended his nose to inhale the grain. She raised her other hand to his neck, sliding the halter rope across his flaxen mane.

She was just reaching around to catch it into a loose lasso when a truck burst around the bend, frame rattling, gears grinding. The flock of starlings that had been pecking along the fence line rose suddenly. Sloop flung up his head and wheeled away with a snort.

Meg threw the halter on the ground. “Dammit!”

She strode to the fence, calling a surly “What do you want?” at the driver of the pickup truck.

The door opened. A man stepped out. “Is that any way to greet an old friend?”

Meg stopped with one leg slung over the top railing. Everything inside her had seized into one tight, hard lump. Her shock felt an awful lot like pain.

The voice was deeper, rougher. But she recognized it, even if the face and physique were a stranger’s.

Rio Carefoot.

Her first love. The boy whose life she’d carelessly ruined on the night she ran away.

The man she’d most dreaded facing up to, even ahead of her dad.

Meg dropped back down into the dirt, keeping the fence between them. As if Rio had any chance of getting close to her. She’d wrapped barbed wire around her heart.

“Rio,” she said flatly. “You’re not supposed to be in Treetop.”

“Neither are you.”

“I’ve been back since July.”

“Three days for me.”

Meg grabbed the fence rail to steady herself. She didn’t want Rio to know how badly she was thrown. “What brings you here?”

He glanced away. “My mother’s still around.”

She understood the underlying implication. “Around” meant living in as a housekeeper for William Walker Stone on his multimillion-dollar spread east of town. Any Treetopper asked would have said that Rio returning to the Stone ranch was about as likely as Meg coming back to her father’s place.

Well, look at them now. There must be some fine skating in hell.

“I heard that,” she said. He was glowering. Still holding a grudge? “But I meant here. Wild River.”

“You wrote an ad. Help Wanted.”

The classified ad for a stablehand had been running in the Treetop Weekly for the past month. She’d had two applicants, a kid who could only work after school, and the town drunk who had a history of holding odd jobs only long enough to fund his next bender. She’d taken the kid’s number.