Page 1 of Wyoming Heart

CHAPTER ONE

CORTGRIERWASdisillusioned with life. He owned a huge Santa Gertrudis breeding stud ranch in West Texas. He was thirty-three now, in his prime, and he wanted to have a family. His father had remarried and moved to Vermont. His brothers, except for the second youngest, were all married with families. He wanted one of his own. But every woman he thought might be the one turned out to be after his money. The last one, a singer, had laughed when he mentioned children. She was in her own prime, she told him, and she had a career as a rising star. No way was she giving that up to live on some smelly ranch in Texas and start having babies. She wasn’t certain that she was ever going to want a child.

And so it went. Women had been a permissible pleasure for many years, and while no playboy, he’d had his share of beautiful, cultured lovers. The problem was that after a time, they all looked alike, felt alike, sounded alike. Perhaps, he told himself, he was jaded. Certainly, age hadn’t done much for his basically cynical nature. He found more pleasure these days in running the cattle ranch than he did in squiring debutantes around El Paso.

The ranch was a bone of contention with prospective brides. Every one of them enthused about his vast herds of Santa Gertrudis cattle, until they actually saw the ranch and realized that cattle were dusty and smelly. In fact, so were the cowboys who worked with them. One date had actually passed out when she watched one of the hands help pull a calf.

Not one of his dates had liked the idea of living so far from the city, especially around cattle and hay and the noise of ranch equipment. Park Avenue in New York would have suited them very well. Perhaps a few diamonds from Tiffany’s and an ensemble from one of the designers who showed their wares during Fashion Week. But cattle?No, they said.Never.

Cort had never liked the girl-next-door sort of woman. In fact, there were no girls next door when he was younger. Most of the ranchers around where he lived had sons. Lots of sons. Not one female in the bunch.

The point was, he reminded himself, that the kind of woman who’d like ranch living would most likely be a woman who’d grown up on a ranch. Someone who liked the outdoors and animals and didn’t mind the drawbacks. He probably shouldn’t have been looking for a bride in the high-rent districts of big cities, he decided. He should have been looking closer to home. If there had been anyone closer to home to look at.

He’d had a brief encounter with a pretty young woman in Georgia, during a visit with Connor Sinclair, a multimillionaire who had a lake house there. The woman’s name was Emma, and her zany sense of humor had interested him at once. It was one of the few times he’d been paying attention to what a woman said instead of how she looked. Emma was Connor’s personal assistant, but there was more than business there, or he missed his guess. Connor had separated Cort from Emma with surgical precision and made sure there were no more opportunities for him to get to know her. Not too many months later, he heard from his brother Cash Grier, who was a police chief in South Texas, that Connor had married Emma and they had a son. He’d actually thought about going back to North Georgia and courting her, despite her testy boss. That was no longer possible. He balanced Emma against the girls with diamonds in their eyes and greedy hands who’d filed through his life. He’d felt suddenly empty. Alone. The ranch had always been the core of his existence, but it was no longer enough. He was in a rut. He needed to get out.

So Cort had decided that he needed a holiday. He’d called a fourth cousin in Catelow, Wyoming—Bart Riddle—and invited himself to help work around the ranch incognito. He explained the situation to his amused cousin, who told him to come on up. If he wanted to ruin his health digging postholes and chasing cattle, welcome.

He also had another cousin in Carne County, Wyoming—Cody Banks, who was the local sheriff—but Banks lived in town and didn’t own a ranch. Cort wanted to get his hands busy. But he had plans to visit with Cody while he was in town.

Bart met him at the airport, an amused smile in his dark eyes as they shook hands. “You own one of the biggest ranches in Texas and you want to come up here and be a cowboy?” Bart asked.

“It’s like this,” Cort explained on the way out of the airport. “I’m tired of being a walking, talking dollar sign to women.”

“Oh, if only I had that problem,” Bart sighed. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his jeans. “I’m older than you, no pinup boy, I budget like a madman and I’m not housebroken.” He chuckled. “I guess I’ll live alone with a houseful of dogs and cats until I die.”

Cort glanced at him, his suitcase and suit bag in one hand and a carry-on bag in another. “What happened to that local veterinarian you were going around with?”

He made a face. “She moved to Arizona. With her new husband,” he added.

“Sorry.”

Bart shrugged. “Fortunes of war,” he said. “I’m giving up on women. Well, not all of them,” he added. “I have one who’s just a friend. Kind of like a baby sister.” He smiled. “She’s a writer.”

“We have a lot of writers back home,” Cort mused. “Hopefuls. Not a published one in the bunch,”

“This one is very published. Her latest book actually landed on theUSA Todaybestseller list.”

“Not bad. How about theNew York Timeslist?”

He shook his head. “But it’s early days yet. She has the talent.”

“What does she write?”

“Romance novels.”

Cort made a face. “Drippy, oozy, sugary stuff.”

“Not exactly.” They reached Bart’s big black pickup truck. “Climb aboard. I think it’ll get us home. Halfway, anyway.”

Cort made a face. “What do you do with this thing, herd cattle?” he asked, noting the dents and scratches.

“It goes all sorts of places. I have another one that looks a little better, but it’s in the shop. Had a slight malfunction.”

Cort stowed his gear in the boot and climbed in beside his cousin and closed the door. He reached for the seat belt. “What sort of malfunction?”

“It accidentally got slammed in the passenger door with a tire tool.”

Cort blinked and stared at his cousin, who flushed. “It what?”