Page 6 of A Cowboy in the Streets

Ms. Pink Boots flashed one last grin and then practically skipped over to the bar cart, where I was still standing for no apparent reason other than I’d decided to take up stalking as a hobby.

She waved the card at me. “I made a friend!” she said, like that was a totally normal conversation to have with a complete stranger. But friend. Not a potential date. I took note of that for no good reason at all. “That’s a good omen, don’t you think?”

I grunted. Dad would be so disappointed. Use your words, son.

She clamped the card in her teeth while she added a hefty amount of cream to her coffee.

“You new around here?” My voice came out rough. I wasn’t used to making small talk with women. Mostly I scowled at them, would be my guess.

“Oh!”

She must have been surprised that I could speak actual words after grunting at her like a caveman. Fair enough. Her mouth popped open, and the card fell out, fluttering to the floor in a pinwheel. Without even thinking about it, I crouched and swiped the card off the floor. Because Mom raised a gentleman.

She did the same, except I got there first.

We looked at each other, surprised, both squatting low, balanced on our toes, and our knees knocked together.

And then we both fell forward and smashed into each other.

Nose to nose.

Lips to lips.

Arms flailing, reaching for support, finding it in each other’s bodies and catching our balance. We froze like that, holding each other’s shoulders in a death grip, as though tumbling three inches to the ground was the same thing as plunging into the Grand Canyon.

Fucking hell.

She made a strangled noise. Against my fucking mouth.

She pushed away from me, jerking her head back. Her cheeks were beet red. My face felt…entirely normal. Which probably meant I was frowning again. Shit.

She stood. I remained squatting at her feet, stunned into my best deer in headlights impression.

“Well,” she said. “Bye!”

She shot out of there like the building was on fire, leaving me still holding the card with Chloe’s phone number. My gaze cut to the barista, who bugged her eyes out at me, her jaw flapping open.

“Dude,” she said. “What the heck just happened?”

My sentiments exactly.

Chapter 3

James

Coming from California, I should have been less impressed with the Rocky Mountains of Colorado than I was. In my defense, Blue Skies Farm was located in central California, where the ocean and the Sierra foothills were both an hour away in different directions, so mostly the view consisted of flat fields. I had visited Yosemite and all that with my parents, but somehow the Rockies were just a little bit more. A little wilder, a little more intense.

Every five minutes I shrieked “Holy shit!” to my empty car and pulled over to snap a picture with my phone. It made the drive from the coffee shop to Lodestar Ranch a lot longer, but—

A stranger’s lips pressed to mine, the scent of horses and pine, teetering on my toes—

Gah! No! The memory popped into my brain like a jump scare. Instinctively, I squeezed my eyes shut, remembered that I was driving, and forced them open again. Fortunately, the dirt road leading to the ranch was straight and flat, lined by fields the fluorescent green of late spring.

“It’s fine,” I said out loud. “I never have to see him again. It’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine.” I chanted the words like a mantra.

That didn’t stop the hot flush from spreading across my cheeks. But, who cared? No one was here to witness my embarrassment. Anyway, these things happened. Not to me, usually. I wasn’t the sort of person things happened to, the kind of person who always had a story where hilarity ensued, like in a romantic comedy. Hilarity literally never ensued.

Until today.

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