Hard Ride: A Cowboy Romance Read online

  Hard Ride

  A Cowboy Romance

  Gigi Thorne

  HARD RIDE

  by Gigi Thorne

  Copyright © Gigi Thorne

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any written, electronic, recording, or photocopying without written permission of the publisher or author. The exception would be in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews and pages where permission is specifically granted by the publisher or author.

  Although every precaution has been taken to verify the accuracy of the information contained herein, the author and publisher assume no responsibility for any errors or omissions. No liability is assumed for damages that may result from the use of information contained within.

  Cover Design: Mayhem Cover Creations

  Editor: Write Way Creative

  First Edition

  Contents

  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

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  Who is Gigi

  Also by Gigi

  1

  Luke

  “It doesn’t look like anybody’s coming.”

  My best friend Cy Carver has a dry sense of humor. You could call him an asshole, and you’d be right, though in this case he’s just stating a fact.

  No one, not a single soul, is making their way up the road to Rider Ranch—Let Rider take the reins!—and that means I’m totally fucked.

  “Thanks for the surveillance report, dick.”

  Cy is kicked back in a rickety metal chair, hands behind his head, his boots up on a second rickety metal chair. “You know what they say.”

  “I wish you’d say less.”

  “A watched pot never boils.”

  “A pot watched by a smartass like yourself probably needs one less set of eyes on it.”

  I can’t take my eyes off the road. Maybe Cy’s right—maybe if I went to work in the barn or just sat on my ass in the farmhouse, somebody’d come along and book a week’s worth of tours. That’s how it went, back when my uncle ran Rider Ranch. He bought it when he was twenty-two, fresh out of the Army, and turned it into Texas’s number one riding destination. Honeymooners. College kids. All that shit. I don’t see the appeal in trying to hold hands when you’re sitting on top of two Quarter Horses on a narrow trail, but as long as the customers are paying, does it really matter how they grease their axles?

  It does not.

  The only problem is, they’re not. Paying, I mean. Since I took over the ranch five years ago, fewer and fewer have taken the dirt road from town, down in the valley there, up to Rider Ranch, tucked in close next to the mountains. The most gorgeous mountains and foothills in all of Texas.

  But nobody cares.

  “The hell happened, Cy?”

  It’s not my style to get deep and introspective with Cy, but he’s the only one sitting here, and my damned chest feels like it’s caving in. We haven’t had a paying customer all month, and the ranch isn’t equipped to transform into an export farm on the drop of a dime.

  Cy cocks his head and squints at the road. “I’d say you lost all your business, Luke.”

  “Christ almighty. Why do I ever ask you anything?”

  “You don’t have other friends,” he says matter-of-factly. “By God, I think this road is going to stay empty all day. Doesn’t anybody but me ever drive over here?”

  “You didn’t drive over here.”

  He waves a dismissive hand in the air. “I drive here sometimes. That’s not the point. Semantics.”

  “It’s not semantics if—”

  Cy stands up so abruptly that the chair he had been sitting on tips backward and clangs into the packed dirt underneath what my uncle calls the Welcome Shelter. He thought that if someone was outside to greet customers, then we’d be more likely to entice people passing through to stop.

  That guy.

  He’s dead wrong. I’ve been sitting out here all day, and the only car to drive by was the coroner's. Not for the first time, I wonder if I’ve died and become a ghost, doomed to haunt this fucking shelter for the rest of eternity, waiting on customers who’ll never come.

  “You gonna say something?”

  Cy’s staring at the town below, the tiny buildings dotting the landscape in miniature beyond the curves of the road. It’s like one of my aunt’s old paintings of a little town in the distance in the fold of a valley, only—

  Well, Christ. Only it’s real.

  “Hey.”

  I slap Cy on the shoulder with the back of my hand. He raises his to deflect it with a whap.

  “Shh,” he says sharply, turning his head to train his ear on the town.

  “What in God’s burning hell are you playing at?”

  I shut my mouth long enough to listen for whatever it is that Cy’s hearing. There’s nothing. The late spring air is warm and languid, and a single judgmental bird caws from where it sits up high in the tree next to the shelter. For a second, I think I do hear something—but it’s only the breeze kicking up and then settling back down.

  “Fine.”

  I bend down and scoop the folding chairs up into my arms, dragging them all the way into the shelter.

  “I’m going.”

  “Don’t make that mistake, my friend.”

  I roll my eyes. “I’m not waiting for the punchline.”

  “There is no punchline.”

  Cy stares blankly into the distance, as if the only sense he’s relying on is his hearing.

  “I’ll believe that when I—”

  “I can feel it,” he declares softly, and a little chill runs unannounced down my spine. His eyes go a little more unfocused, darting up toward the sky, and my heart beats faster. Clearly, I’m entering the early stages of heat stroke. Cy’s bullshit shouldn’t affect me like this.

  But it does.

  I gotta know.

  “Feel what?”

  “A stirring…” He drags out the word and a hot sliver of irritation squeezes around my chest.

  “A stirring of what?”

  Cy drags his eyes from the sky to meet mine and presses his mouth into a thin line.

  Then the corner of his mouth twitches.

  “Oh, fuck you.”

  I push him backward with the flats of my hands and he stumbles a couple steps.

  “My dick,” he calls out, his voice echoing against the rooftop. “It’s getting hard. For cash. I can feel it, buddy boy. You’re going to be swimming in it by the end of the week.”

  “It’s Friday, you unbelievable dumbass.”

  “I meant next week.”

  “Nothing’s going to happen next week that’s any different from this one.”

  I head for the farmhouse, long strides making short work of the distance. The horses will need tending to, but in the meantime, a man has to eat.

  “Not with that attitude,” Cy says.

  I turn back and take in more of that shit-eating grin. He raises his eyebrows.

  “The fuck did you do?”

  “I called in the reinforcements.”

  “Jesus, Cy, I didn’t ask you to—”

  “Isabel can’t wait to get this place back on track.”

  My mouth drops open before I can stop it, and I stalk tow
ard Cy.

  “You asked your sister to come home and save Rider Ranch?”

  “I asked her,” he says solemnly, and then he bursts out laughing. “And she said yes.”

  “I don’t need your little sister to help me.”

  My mouth twists into a scowl, heat rushing down my back and curling around my hips. It’s accompanied by a jolt of desire for. Last time I saw Isabel…

  Jesus. I can’t even go there.

  “You shouldn’t have done that, Cy. Tell her you made a mistake.”

  “Too late for that.”

  He stabs a finger toward town, and there it is—a tiny silver car, winking in the sunshine, making its way merrily onto the road leading toward Rider Ranch. So that’s what that fucker was pretending to listen for. You can’t trust anybody in this world. Not even your best friend.

  “Here she comes.”

  2

  Isabel

  Whoever thought I’d be driving a fancy rental car to go back toward home instead of away from it?

  I didn’t. I always knew I’d make it out of Hawthorne Ridge one day even if I had to wait tables for four years to save enough cash, but in my fantasy the rental car took me toward promise, not back to the farm. My parents had enough money to pay for tuition at college but not for me to live in a dorm, and I needed one of those to shut out all the nasty college guys.

  Ugh. What a disappointment. They all reeked of cheap cologne, and it was clear by their biceps that none of them had ever lifted anything heavier than a gallon of milk.

  That sounds so judgmental, but can I help it if I grew up in a place with people like Luke Rider walking around?

  With…Luke Rider specifically walking around.

  I tip my head back against the headrest of the rental—it’s a little Hyundai that’s honestly not a match for the dirt road, but it’ll do in a pinch—and fan myself with my hand. It’s plenty warm outside, verging on hot, but the thought of being in the same room with Luke again after all these years has me burning up.

  This time he’ll have no choice but to notice me.

  I turn the air conditioning to full blast. “Play it cool, Iz. Play it cool.”

  Rider Ranch sits up along the treeline where the foothills turn to mountains. It’s a sprawling place—hundreds of acres of trails with campsites tucked in the quiet places—and my family’s farm, Lush Acres, hugs one of his property lines. It’s only an imaginary division, that line. There’s not even a fence. Which is probably why Luke and Cy were always such good friends.

  Or—wait. Aren’t good fences supposed to make good neighbors?

  Doesn’t matter.

  A movement in the field catches my eye, and there he is. My brother, riding a horse in the direction of Lush Acres. He throws his arm over his head, waving, and spurs the horse in my direction.

  I pull over, park the car, and tuck the keys into my pockets. It’s a quick trip from the shoulder to the lowest rung of the fence—I think we’re probably near the property line—and Cy climbs off the horse, Shadow. He steps up onto the fence and throws an arm around me, then steps back, reins dangling from his hand.

  “I thought you’d never come back,” he says, a catch in his voice. Then he laughs.

  “You asked me to come back, asshole.”

  “You came for him. I can’t believe you came back for Luke.” Cy wipes at the corner of his eye.

  “Well, I had vacation days. And my big brother asked me for a favor.”

  “Well...” Cy dips his head and looks at the ground.

  “What are you not telling me?”

  Cy purses his lips. “Luke…might not want you there.”

  I didn’t expect this to be a walk in the park—dealing with your older brother’s too-attractive best friend is always a challenge, in a way—but my chest tightens.

  “What the fuck, Cy? You said he was on board with this.”

  “I didn’t tell him.”

  I hop off the fence and struggle not to cross my arms like a petulant teenager. “You can’t use me as some fix-it surprise.”

  “It’s not a surprise any longer. I didn’t tell him…until today.”

  “So he knows I’m coming and he’s pissed about it? What are you trying to do, get me killed?”

  Cy strokes Shadow’s muzzle and laughs. “He’s not a serial killer. That we know of.” Then his mouth settles into a serious line. “Listen. He’s in a bind. I don’t think he gets—” he motions in a circle in my general direction. “— the selling bit.”

  “The part where you market your services to people instead of sitting on your ass waiting for sad saps like you to drive up and go for a pony ride?”

  “Good thing he has a friend like you to back him up.”

  “He’s got two friends now.”

  “I’m not—” My cheeks get hot, and Cy notices. Damn it, he notices.

  “What the hell are you getting all red for? Have you still got a crush on old Luke Rider?”

  Now I do cross my arms over my chest. “Jesus, Cy, that’s not what I said. And if you’ll excuse me, I have a client to meet. Did you tell him that part, too?”

  Cy sticks his hands in his pockets and looks sheepish. “It was extra soap money, okay?” He’s talking about my parents’ organic soap business. They make a special boutique line out of a couple outbuildings on the farm, and the rest is produced in a factory twenty miles out of town. The business has gotten steadily more successful since I went to college. “Wasn’t like I needed it.”

  “God. I’m the hired gun, and he doesn’t even know it.” This is not what I signed up for.

  “So you’re a serial killer now, too?”

  I turn back toward the rental. “Goodbye.”

  “You don’t have to go, Iz. Keep the money and go back to your real work.”

  I turn slowly back to face Cy. My brain can’t process how fucking stupid he’s being. “You’re unbelievable. I got on a plane from New York City and you’re going to send me back home without even inviting me inside?”

  “We’re nowhere near the house.” He chuckles at his own joke. “Why would I invite you inside?”

  “I’m coming in to see Mom and Dad, you jackass.”

  “They’re in Montana.”

  “In that case—” God. He got me all the way out here to help his friend, and what? He’s going to send me back home? Not if I have anything to say about it. I’ve got Cy’s money in the bank and ten days off. There is no way I’m going back to work at the firm and explain that I didn’t need the time off after all. “Have dinner on the table.”

  “Yes, your highness.”

  “No more bullshit.”

  “No, your highness.”

  I press down on the gas and speed away with my middle finger raised high in the air.

  3

  Luke

  I don’t care that she’s coming.

  Why would I care that she’s coming over?

  Fuck. I care that she’s coming over.

  The moment Cy shut his trap, I told him he had to get off my property and I sprinted for the house.

  In the bathroom, I fumble for the shower knob and the water spits against the bottom of the tub, a sharp blast. I have just enough time to wash off the grime of the day from all the hours spent in the barn this morning and the heat of the shelter all afternoon. I don’t have time to deal with the raging erection I have.

  All because of Isabel.

  The last time I saw her, she was wearing a dress that—

  Jesus. I can’t think about it. There. Is. No. Time.

  I slam my palm down on the handle, cutting off the water, and jump out of the shower, droplets raining down onto the floor.

  I reach for the towel on the hook, where I always hang it.

  No towel.

  I reach again.

  No fucking towel.

  I was so worried about the ranch last night that I must not have taken the last load of laundry out of the dryer. Shit. That means all the towels are sittin
g downstairs in the laundry room off the kitchen.

  Why didn’t I just meet her outside, tell her to go away, and call it good? Why did I come in here to shower first? I’m not the one who invited her here, for God’s sake.

  I dash across the upper floor to the window. There is no silver car pulling into the driveway. I’m cutting it close, but I have just enough time to go downstairs, grab a towel, and run back up for clothes before she gets here.

  I take the stairs two at a time, feet hitting hard enough to rattle the whole house, and land in the middle of the living room.

  Three feet from Isabel.

  “Holy Christ!” she shouts. She’s lifted a pair of giant sunglasses up onto the top of her head. Her hair is gathered in a chic bun and her eyes are the size of dinner plates.

  “My God, Isabel, don’t you ever knock?” I scramble for any scrap of fabric—a tea towel, a blanket—and have to settle on a pillow, which I pull over my business and try to pretend this isn’t happening.

  “I did knock.” She waits a heartbeat too long to look away and color lingers in her cheeks. “Well, I thought about knocking. And then—”

  “And then you decided to trespass on my property without any care for—”

  “Whoa, cowboy.” She raises both hands in the air, sunglasses dangling from her fingertips. “I didn’t mean to trespass. I only meant to visit an old friend. And whose fault is it really? You left the front door unlocked.”

  “Is that how it is in the city?” I’d turn away and head for the laundry room, but then she’d have a full view of my ass. “Y’all just barge in on each other in your private homes?”

  Isabel scoffs. “I don’t know anyone with a private home. We’re all sharing apartments with three roommates.”