Candace Schuler - The Cowboy Way

“Packing what?” Clay asked.

“Condoms.” Jo Beth slid her hand from his waist to the back pocket of his trousers and squeezed. “I’ll bet you’ve got a couple in your wallet, right?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t blush. “So?” he said, with all the wariness of a man who had reached out to pet a house cat and found himself stroking a tiger instead.

“So I’m going to dance two more dances after this one, and then I’m going to the corral by the barn. There’s a tack room in the northeast corner.” She leaned into him, lightly touching her breasts to his chest. “It has a door. And a lock.”

The bolt of lust that shot through Clay burned away all thoughts of propriety and what was or was not appropriate behavior at a wedding.

“I’ll wait ten minutes,” she said. “If you don’t show up by then, I’ll lock the door and play by myself.”

Dear Reader,

I received more fan mail after the publication of Good Time Girl than for any other book I’ve written. Readers told me how much they liked the hot sex scenes and then asked when I was going to write Clay’s story.

As an author, I had created Clay Madison strictly as a plot device to move the story along. He was a secondary character whose role was to make the hero of Good Time Girl jealous. Once he’d done that, I never expected to write about him again. Little did I know! Readers loved him. “What happens to Clay?” they asked. “Give us Clay’s story!” they demanded.

It took me a while to figure out where life and love would eventually lead the sexy young bull rider. It took me a little while longer to find the woman who was strong and sexy enough to appeal to the rodeo champion he was destined to become. Much to my surprise (again!) another secondary character from Good Time Girl turned out to be exactly the right woman.

Happy reading,

Candace Schuler

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To all the romance readers who demanded Clay’s story.

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

Epilogue

“AH, TO HELL with it!” Jo Beth Jensen pushed back from her desk with enough force to send her chair crashing into the metal file cabinet behind her and shot to her feet. Yanking the straw cowboy hat off the peg by the door as she passed, she jammed it on her head and, spurs jangling discordantly with every step, stomped out of her office. “I’m going riding,” she said to the round-faced Mexican woman who came out of the kitchen to see what all the commotion was about.

Esperanza Diego nodded complacently and disappeared back into the kitchen without saying a word. None of the cowhands Jo Beth passed on her way to the barn said a word to her, either. Anybody with one good eye and half a brain could tell at a glance that the jefe of the Diamond J was in the mood to kick some butt.

It was a mood she’d been in for some time now, off and on. Not that anyone blamed her. What with the three best hands on the place lost to the summer rodeo circuit, and turning the main house into fancy la-di-da accommodations for city slickers, and the wedding and all…it was enough to make anyone a mite cranky. Added to which, they all knew she’d spent the morning holed up inside the stuffy little office across from the kitchen, wrestling with columns of numbers that most likely added up to just barely enough. So they all certainly understood, even sympathized with, her obvious desire to stomp the shit out of someone—just so long as that unlucky someone was someone else. As a result of this very natural desire to spare their individual derrieres, the barn was empty of human habitation when she reached it.

“José!” she hollered, pausing just inside the door to give her eyes a moment to adjust to the shadowed interior. “T-Bone! Damn it, where the hell is everybody?”

A lone horse nickered in answer.

“Cowboys.” Jo Beth shook her head. “Bunch of no ’count, lily-livered good-for-nothings. Always running off at the slightest sign of trouble. Irresponsible sons o’…” Her voice trailed off as she neared the occupied stall. “Hey there, Bella,” she crooned, reaching into her breast pocket to fish out one of the peppermint candies she always carried for her pampered favorite. “How’re you doing, sweetheart?”

The horse nickered again and thrust its head over the stall door, neck stretched out in greeting. Jo Beth offered her hand, palm up. The mare lipped the small red-and-white pinwheel delicately, accepting it as her due, then dropped her head and butted it against Jo Beth’s chest. Jo Beth touched her forehead to the mare’s, and felt her bad mood start to dissolve.

Bella was her best and dearest friend, a sweet-tempered strawberry roan with a freckled white stripe on her nose and three white stockings. She’d been a champion barrel racer in her prime, and was still a damned fine cutting horse as long as you didn’t work her too hard or too long. She was patient, polite, and undemanding, without an ounce of foolishness or folly in her. A woman couldn’t ask for a steadier or more dependable companion.

“What say you and me go for a ride?” Jo Beth whispered into the mare’s velvety ear. “Get ourselves a little fresh air and exercise. Stretch our legs. Work some of the kinks out. Hmm?” She lifted a lead shank from the hook between the stalls as she spoke, clipped it onto the mare’s halter, and led her out of the barn and into the scorching Texas sunshine.

Fifteen minutes later she gathered up the reins and swung into the saddle. Bella took a little dancing sideways step, the powerful muscles of her shoulders and flanks twitching as she sensed her rider’s restlessness and impatience.

“Tell Esperanza not to wait dinner on me,” Jo Beth said to the lone cowhand who’d decided it was safe to show his face now that she was mounted up.

She held Bella to a walk as they exited the stable yard, eased her to a slow, rolling canter when they’d cleared the little hillock and the stand of scrub pine and oak trees behind the barn, and then let her have her head when the land flattened out. They raced hell-bent-for-leather for a few exhilarating moments, the hot wind whistling past their ears, Bella’s red mane and tail streaming, her hooves pounding against the hard-packed earth.

Jo Beth bent low over the mare’s neck, her thick braid whipping out behind her, and the coil of catch rope looped over the saddle horn bouncing against her thigh. She wished they could run forever. But Bella was blowing hot and breathing hard, her thick barrel bellowing in and out between Jo Beth’s legs. Jo Beth reined in, bringing the pulse-pounding, ground-pounding gallop back down to canter, and then to a trot, and, finally, to a walk. Bella shook her head, jingling her bridle as if in protest at the slowdown, but she settled into it, more than content with the leisurely pace.

Jo Beth sighed and tried to be content, too, but she was still restless. Still edgy. Still agitated and dissatisfied and riled up. And it wasn’t all because of the three hands who’d quit on her to follow the summer rodeo circuit, leaving her shorthanded when she needed them most, or the half dozen city slickers who were due to invade the Diamond J in less than a week, or her best friend’s wedding at which she had agreed to be—God help her—the maid of honor. It wasn’t even the bookkeeping.

It was that damned Clay Madison!

If she’d been getting laid regular, it wouldn’t be so bad. But it had been over six months since that weekend in Dallas with Jim, the cattle broker, and she’d gone without for four months before that. It’d been so long, she’d almost forgotten what it was she was missing. And then Clay Madison had swaggered onto the scene with that lazy, loose-hipped, loose-kneed cowboy saunter of his and had reminded her of exactly what she was doing without. She’d have avoided him if she could have, but he was best man to her maid of honor, so ignoring him wasn’t an option.