Wendy Warren - Cowboy Comes Back / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride - Cowboy Comes Back / The Cowboy's Convenient Bride

“Yeah,” Kade said, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say. “So, do you think your wife could stop by and take a look at the ranch and give me some advice on how to make it most salable?”

“I’ll have her call you. There’s a pen in the console. Write your number on something.”

Kade wrote his cell number on the back of a receipt. “Thanks,” he said as he handed the paper to Jason.

“No problem.”

And it sounded as if he might actually mean it.

KADE HAD JUST entered the trailer when his cell phone rang. Maddie’s name appeared on the screen and he picked up immediately. School was barely out—Maddie never called this early, before her homework was done.

“Dad, Mom says that if I visit you, I can’t go to horse camp!” She sounded both angry and distressed.

Thanks, Jillian. “Honey—”

“Shandy gets to go, Dad, and we wanted to share a bunk bed and everything.”

“Maddie, we’ll work something out.” Riding horses with Dad wasn’t going to compete with riding horses and sharing a bunk bed with her best friend. “Could I talk to your mom?”

Maddie instantly yelled for Jillian, holding the phone close enough so that Kade winced at the volume.

“Well, I’m the bad guy,” he said as soon as his ex said hello, “which isn’t fair, Jill, because all I want is what I’m supposed to get according to our agreement. Thanks a lot.”

“I thought that you of all people would want Maddie to have this experience,” Jillian said primly.

“I want my time with my daughter.”

“Then why did you move to Otto?”

“You know why.”

Jillian’s voice dropped as she said, “Yes. And if you remember I warned you about Dylan Smith. I told you I thought something about him was off. But no. You said he was a friend and doing a great job handling your money.”

“Damn it, this isn’t about my accountant or my stupidity or anything else. I paid for that mistake.” And several others. “I’m fixing it the quickest way I can. And meanwhile, I want to see my kid.”

“Fine. I’ll tell her.”

Thus making him the bad guy. She’d set him up well on this one. Maddie would come for the summer. And she might even have some fun. But she’d be thinking about what she was missing, and Shandy would have stories to tell. Oh, yeah. Kade couldn’t win here.

“Don’t. But we will work something out. If not, I honestly am seeing a lawyer.”

“Don’t threaten me, Kade.”

“Then follow the agreement. What you did this time. We agreed not to play Maddie as a pawn against each other.”

“I’m not doing that! I’m just trying to keep her life stable.”

“By shutting me out?” Kade asked quietly. There was a long silence.

“I’m her dad, Jill. Her real dad. She has a right to know me and I have a right to know her. And I’m serious about the lawyer.”

“I believe you.”

“Let me talk to Maddie.”

Kade told Maddie she’d be going to horse camp and that she could spend a couple of weeks with him in June and August—which was about all the time she had after school ended and before it started again. Not the best solution, but one that would work. For Maddie, anyway.

By the time Kade hung up, his daughter was happy again, and he was wavering between feeling good that he’d made everything all right with her, and depressed because he’d really wanted them to spend more time together during the summer.

LIBBY GOT HOME from work mentally spent. It was exhausting to hold both her tongue and her temper for ten hours. That woman had to go.

After finishing with Libby, Ellen had browbeaten both Stephen and Fred. Fred didn’t care, but Stephen had come back to the office looking like a whipped pup. The only positive note was that they were about to have a four-day break from the Ellen regime while she attended a state conference.

“I tell you,” Fred had grumbled, rubbing a hand over the gray bristles on top of his head, “one of us needs to go along and keep a rein on her. Who knows what kind of lies she’ll tell or what she’ll promise to do?”

But Ellen wasn’t allowing anyone to go—probably for the same reasons that Fred had suggested.

The more Libby thought about it, the more certain it seemed that Ellen was up to something—and it probably involved accumulating political support. Ellen didn’t so much want to do a competent job as a showy job, one that would get her the promotion she wanted as she climbed government ranks. It ticked Libby off that in order to better her own position, Ellen would probably do things that were actually detrimental to the area but looked great on paper. And there wasn’t much Libby could do about it. But what she could do, she would.

Libby drove up to her house and instantly knew something was wrong when the Aussies came shooting out of the pasture, instead of appearing from the porch. She parked and jumped out of the truck, running toward the pasture. There at the far end she could see that one of her horses was down. Colic? If so, she had to act fast. She felt in her pocket for her phone, then realized it was back in the truck. She didn’t slow down.

It wasn’t colic.

Her best gelding, Cooper, was on his back with his feet in the air, entangled in strands of smooth wire fencing, his sides heaving as he struggled to breathe. It looked as if he’d rolled into the fence while taking a dust bath, got his feet caught in the wire and then panicked. His eyes showed white as Libby approached. She quickly assessed the situation and then raced back to the house, the dogs at her heels. She needed wire cutters and she needed help.

The vet was on speed dial, but when she hit Stan’s number the answering service came on, telling her he was away for the week and to contact his colleague, Sam Hyatt, in Wesley. Libby didn’t have time to wait for Sam to drive down from Wesley.

She hit Jason’s number. He answered immediately and she blurted out her story.

“Lib, I’m in Elko,” he said when she paused to take a breath.

Libby cursed, squeezing her eyes shut against tears of frustration. “I’ll call Menace.” She couldn’t think of anything else to do.

There was no sound on the other end of the line for a few tense seconds, then Jason said, “Call Kade. He’s close and he knows horses.”

Libby’s eyes snapped open. “Are you kidding?”

“He can get there fast and he’ll be way more help than anyone else near your place. Especially Menace.”

“I don’t have Kade’s number.”

“He just gave it to me. Hold on a sec.” When Jason gave her the number, she hung up, repeating the digits over and over until she’d punched them into the keypad. Kade answered on the second ring.

“It’s Libby,” she said without hesitation. “I have a horse down. I need help.”

“Should I bring anything?”

“Wire cutters. Big ones. I’ll be at the far end of the field.”

The phone went dead and Libby grabbed her vet kit and headed out to where Cooper was struggling. She started working on the tautly stretched wire, trying to cut it with the only cutters she had at hand, but they were too small for the job. She needed her fencing pliers, wherever they might be.

Cooper’s breathing was ragged, but Libby couldn’t get the wire loose, much less get him back onto his side so that he could breathe better. She was frantically hacking away when she heard Kade speak behind her.

“Let me.”

Libby backed off, letting him crouch down to use his cutters. He did live nearby, but he must have driven ninety miles an hour to get there that fast.

“Watch it,” he said as he squeezed the handles. After the first wire popped, zinging wildly, he cut the second. The horse heaved, making the ends of a third wire, which was still wrapped around his hind leg, bounce.