Page 1 of Road to a Cowboy

Chapter One

The landscape on the other side of Austin MacIsaac’s camera was jaw-dropping. Gently rolling green hills dotted with cattle and, in the distance, the jagged snowy peaks of the Rocky Mountains. A few wispy clouds hovered midway up the mountainside, and at this elevation in northwestern Wyoming, Austin could walk right through them if he wanted to.

He was sure there was a joke in there about having his head in the clouds, but as he adjusted the ISO setting on his camera, he couldn’t be bothered to find it. Sunset was imminent. If he wanted to capture the panorama of colors that were about to erupt above the mountains, he needed to concentrate.

Adjusting the settings on his beloved Nikon was second nature after a decade as a professional night sky photographer and after almost all of his thirty-three years spent with a camera in his hands. Somewhere in his parents’ house was an album full of the photos he’d taken with the instant camera his grandfather had gifted him as a kid. Most were of roughly cut grass and cracks in the sidewalk and the bits of trash that got blown onto front lawns on garbage day—what his mom lovingly referred to as “his natural talent to see the beauty in imperfections.”

Sure, Mom. Whatever you say.

He just liked taking pictures of things from unique points of view, and if those pictures inspired awe, all the better.

And what was more awe-inspiring than the Milky Way chasing stars across a darkened sky? Or the Orion Nebula swirling with pinks and purples? Or a full moon haloing puffy clouds?

There were stories to tell in the night sky that painted themselves across his camera lens.

This evening’s assignment was all about the sunset, and although it wasn’t as exciting as the vast canvas of a night sky, it would still be pretty. Besides, he liked hanging out on Windsor Ranch. Always had.

The owners were longtime family friends. Whitney Windsor-March, the matriarch, was close friends with Austin’s mom, and Austin used to accompany his mom to the ranch when he was a kid whenever she had lunch with Whitney. Austin had often brought Cal along, because it was much more fun to make a nuisance of himself among the ranch hands with his best friend. The ranch hands had been endlessly patient though, showing them how to saddle a horse or muck a stall or milk a cow and making sure they stayed out of trouble.

Years ago, Whitney and her husband had hired Austin to take pictures of the ranch for their website, for social media, and for brochures. Sometimes Austin got down into the nitty gritty and snapped photos of a cow’s hoof or the dirt clinging to a cowboy’s boot heel or a calf suckling its mother.

Windsor Ranch was both a working ranch and a guest ranch. Three thousand acres was bisected almost right down the middle by the highway. On the east side: the cattle ranch, barns, and the Windsor-March homestead. On the west side: the number one guest ranch in Wyoming, according to Travelers’ Digest Yearly, for the past five years.

Even though Austin currently stood on the ranching side, the photos he was preparing to take tonight were for Windsor Ranch’s guest services business. Photos to post on social media to entice families, young couples, and solo travelers to take a trip here instead of heading to Florida or wherever people vacationed during the summer these days.

Early in his career, Austin had photographed the night sky in central Florida in July and vowed never to go back. Why anyone chose to live in a place that made a person sweat their pants off just by sticking a toe outside was beyond him.

On the flip side, he’d often been asked by fellow photographers how he could possibly live in a place that often saw snow in June, so...

To each their own.

There was no snow on the ground currently in this second week of June, although it was chilly enough to warrant his shearling jean jacket, especially as the sun dipped, throwing the first touches of pale pinks across the sky. An off-white cowboy hat with a black-and-white checkered band and a pair of fingerless gloves kept his head and fingers warm as he raised his tripod slightly, aiming for less hilly foreground and more mountain and sky background. Pale pink quickly morphed into the color of watermelons, then into bright fire-like orange and deep blues. Austin adjusted his camera settings on autopilot to account for the diminishing light source, his pulse thrumming like it always did when he knew he’d captured something good. Something that would move people. That would encourage them to set aside visions of beaches and palm trees for mountains and bonfires.

As the sound of hoofbeats thumped against the grass behind him, Austin’s pulse thrummed for an entirely different reason. He was friendly with all the ranch hands, but there was only one cowboy who would take time at the end of his day to seek him out.

Austin’s pulse had only ever thrummed for two people.

The first was quickly making his way up to him, the hoofbeats getting louder.

The second had died five years ago, but if his wife’s death had taught him anything, it was to grab life by the balls and take a chance where others might retreat.

Which was why, someday soon, Austin was going to sit the approaching cowboy down and tell him how he felt about him. How he’d always felt about him.

Cal Anderson was Austin’s childhood crush.

He was Austin’s teenage obsession.

He’d been Austin’s rock during the hardest time of his life.

And he was the man Austin wanted to build a life with.

The hoofbeats came to a stop. There was the sound of fabric against fabric, a soft thump as boots hit the ground, then footsteps approaching, muffled by the grass.

Austin’s heart did a sideways flip when Cal stopped next to him, his broad shoulders as intimidating as the Rockies to anyone who didn’t know him.

“Welcome back,” Cal said in a slow drawl that dragged along Austin’s senses. “How was Montana?”

“Beats me,” Austin said with a grin, keeping his eyes on the image on his camera’s display. “But Kootenai National Forest was gorgeous. You should see some of the shots I got. The night sky there is spectacular.”

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