had short blond hair and chiseled features. The faintest shadow of a beard covered his strong jaw. A white cotton T-shirt—the words Cowboy Tuff blazing in red letters across the front—framed his massive shoulders and hugged his thick biceps. Worn, faded denim cupped his crotch and molded to trim hips and long, muscular legs. His scuffed brown boots had obviously seen better days, but then that was the way every cowboy worth his salt liked them.
She could still remember the boys back in her small-town high school, a map dot in East Texas that wasn’t so different from this one. The boys back home would rather duct-tape their favorite boots than give them up for a shiny new pair.
There was no duct tape in sight, but this guy still looked every bit as wild as any wrangler she’d left behind when she’d rolled out of Sugar Creek and headed for UCLA.
Sabrina’s fingers tightened around the plastic cup in her hand and a shiver of excitement worked its way up her spine.
Because he was a cowboy and another name to add to her currently growing database.
She certainly wasn’t feeling all tingly because of the way he looked at her. As if he wanted to take several slow bites and savor each one.
No biting.
No savoring.
No.
She pulled a business card from her purse that listed her email address and her cell phone number.
Numbers. It was all about the numbers.
That’s what Mitch, team leader for the investment firm, had told her when she’d approached them about fronting the start-up cash for a new online-dating service that specialized in Western singles. The service was the brainchild of Sabrina and her two college roommates, Livi Hudson and Katherine Ramsey. Since Sabrina knew how to write, she’d penned the business model, while Livi focused on the marketing and Kat handled the actual web design. The idea had grown out of yet another bad breakup for Livi, followed by a night of apple martinis and Bonanza reruns.
Forget the bank executives and the grungy tattoo artists and the egocentric personal trainers. Livi wanted a real man. A man’s man.
A cowboy.
And if she wanted one, then there had to be a ton of other women out there who did, too, right?
Sabrina hadn’t been as convinced, but money talks and polls on Facebook and Twitter had convinced her that Livi’s idea might be just the ticket to becoming her own boss.
The three had set up a website, done some soft-launch testing at various singles events and now it was time to put up or shut up. If they could prove to potential investors that they could stock their database with an adequate number of profiles, both men and women, then Southern Money International would front the initial capital needed to officially launch FindMeACowboy.com. They’d given the trio three months to build their singles database.
That had been two months and two weeks ago and while Sabrina and her besties had managed to sign up a decent number of females, they were falling a little short when it came to eligible males.
Men were crucial.
Tall, strong, Stetson-wearing men.
With time running out, Sabrina had had no choice. Kat had stayed back in L.A. to fine-tune the website and finish entering profiles while Sabrina and Livi had headed to Texas. It was Lost Gun or failure.
“Listen, I know this isn’t your favorite place, but how bad can it be?”
Sabrina cast a sideways glance at the petite redhead standing next to her at the bar.
Livi shrugged. “Okay, so we’re talking bad with a capital B. You hate small towns and we’re in a small town. Still—” she cast a glance around “—it’s kind of fun. I always wanted to learn to two-step.”
“And I want to be the next Woodward and Burns.”
Or at least, she had back when she’d been a freshman taking her first journalism class and the real world had been four years away. But entry-level journalist positions were hard to come by, and if she did manage to land one, she wouldn’t make enough to cover her rent, much less pay back the mountain of student loans.
Which is the reason that she’d taken a slight vacation from hard-core journalism to write fluff pieces for a few local tabloids and work on FindMeACowboy.com. The fluff coupled with the dating service would pay the bills and then some. Meanwhile, she would keep writing for the few blogs that actually liked her work and build her résumé. She was already brainstorming a new piece—an in-depth look at the bank robbery that had put Lost Gun on the map. Who knew? Maybe she could find a new twist regarding the missing money. She was here, after all. She might as well ask around.
In the meantime, she was going to sign up as many cowboys as possible and get the hell back to the city just as soon as she filled up her database.
“I feel like dancing.” Livi’s voice pulled her from her thoughts. “I’m going to head over to that table and ask one of those hunks to dance.” She indicated a handful of good-looking men in starched Western shirts. “And then I’m going to sign him up and find him the love of his life.”
Sabrina smiled as Livi made a beeline for the group. The expression died a heartbeat later when she heard the deep, seductive voice.
“What’s the fun in that?”
“Excuse me?” She cast a sideways glance at the hunky cowboy she’d spotted earlier.
Up close he was even more mouthwatering.
“Love.” His eyes glittered a hot, potent violet. His lips curved in a sexy smile. “Life isn’t about love. It’s about lust.”
“Is that so?”
He shrugged. “Lust makes the world go ’round.”
“So sayeth a commitment-fearing man.”
“I don’t fear commitment, sugar.” He shrugged. “I just don’t see the point in it.”
“And you are?”
“William Bonney Chisholm—” he touched a tanned finger to the brim of his Stetson and tipped it toward her “—but folks around here just call me Billy.”
“As in the Billy Chisholm?” Her mind scrambled, recalling bits and pieces from the posters plastered around town and the commentaries airing on the local radio stations. “The bull rider?”
A grin spread from ear to ear. “You’ve heard about me.”
“Actually, I’ve heard about your brother. He’s the current pro bull-riding champion, right?”
“For now. But he’s getting slow and preoccupied and I can guaran-damn-tee that another win isn’t in the cards for him.”
“How can you be so sure?”
“Because he sold out in the name of love and now his concentration’s for shit. The only plus is that he smartened up and ran for the hills before he embarrassed himself.”
