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Who Wouldn’t Love a Cowboy?
C.J. Carmichael
MILLS & BOON
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Contents
The back roads of Montana were dustier than Callie Anderson remembered. Maybe lowering the roof on her red Mustang hadn’t been such a smart idea. Or perhaps she should have stuck to the main road instead of following the shorter—but not necessarily faster—route recommended by the GPS.
She’d left the secondary highway twenty minutes ago and now she was in the heart of cattle country. Not a building in sight, only grazing pastures, distant mountains and translucent blue sky. A far cry from her urban town house in Billings, where she’d started her day.
Dust spewed out behind her; she could see the trail in her rearview mirror. Ahead, there was only more gravel road, leading ultimately—hopefully!—to the Big Horn Guest Ranch. Not that she’d noticed any signs.
Shouldn’t there be signs?
She hadn’t even passed another vehicle since she’d left the highway.
But there was something ahead. She could make out a dark shape on the road. Wait a minute. There were dark shapes everywhere. Not only on the road, but on both sides of it, too. She eased off the accelerator, clipping her speed to a more cautious forty miles an hour.
And suddenly the dark shapes were recognizable. Oh, my God. She hadn’t seen this many cows in a long, long time. Over five hundred head, she figured.
They were crossing the road in a steady stream, probably being moved up to higher pasture for the summer.
The sight, the sounds and most of all the smell of them made her feel fourteen years old again. Callie closed her eyes as an overwhelming wave of nostalgia tried to suck her under.
She’d been afraid this would happen. Why, oh, why, hadn’t she just said no to the assignment from her editor?
I want you to write an article about the eternal appeal of the cowboy, her editor had said. Why do women love them so much?
I don’t, Callie had thought but not said, as she valued her career. And now she was here, in cowboy country, the last place on earth she wanted to be.
Suddenly, as if conjured by the power of her thoughts, a cowboy on an Appaloosa broke out from the herd. He sat tall in the saddle, a tan-colored hat obscuring the features of his face except for a firm jaw and nicely molded chin. The horse was beautiful with a dark mane and tail that
