Page 37 of The Way to a Cowboy's Heart

“So lovely to meet you, Mr. Lassen. What a fabulous place you have here!”

“It’s my little sanctuary. Welcome. And Liam?” He shook his hand. “Good to see you, too. I’d say you two had better hurry if you plan to catch some of those trout down at the river though. It’s been pretty good fishing down there lately. Spring is here early, though we might still get another snow this year.”

Liam grabbed the dufflel bag he’d brought from the helicopter. “Thanks, Deke. We’ll strike now while the trout are hungry. Emily here is going to learn how to fly fish this morning.”

“I am?”

“You wanted the full Montana experience, didn’t you?”

“But… fishing? Me?”

“Not fishing.Flyfishing. It’s a whole other world. You’re gonna love it. You need any help off-loading this stuff before we go, Jake?”

“No, we’ve got it. You two have fun. See you in a couple of hours.”

Emily supposed she was game for anything this morning, even—a shiver ran through her—loading squiggly earthworms onto fishhooks. Her father was not an outdoorsman, aside from shooting trap with political cronies now and again. But she imagined that Liam had grown up on these rivers, fishing with his father or his siblings on lazy summer days.

In spring, this high up, the air was still chilly as they hiked down to the river to a place that was out of sight of Deke’s house and the Yellowstone still had lacey traces of ice along its banks, but the water was running swiftly, save a few deep pools that sat beneath the branches of the willows along the shore.

“They’ll be hungry now that the river’s thawed,” Liam said, pulling his disassembled fishing rods from the pack.

“Please don’t tell me we have to dig earth worms before we can fish.”

“You’ll be happy to know there are no worms involved at all. Fly fishing uses flies. Hand-tied to look like insects. Like the ones that land on the water or hover above.”

“Ah.”

He handed her an assembled pole and started on the other one. “Fly fishing is really more about teasing the fish than waiting for one to take the bait. You’ve really never fished before?”

She shook her head, eyeing the nearby dark water with suspicion.

“Don’t worry. I’m going to show you how. You’ll see. It’s fun.”

Or a way to embarrass herself by being completely out of her depth. Ah, well. Failing around Liam was becoming her modus operandi. So, what did she have to lose? She was here for an adventure of her choosing. And here she was having one!

The water was too cold to go standing in the river, though he told her that was his method of choice. But they stood together on the shoreline, and he showed her how to cast the fly across the water with a rhythmic one-two-three motion, releasing the line a little more with each forward bow of her rod. It was definitely easier said than done.

“That’s it,” he told her, showing her by example with his own line. “Easy, easy motion. One, two, three release.” And off his fly would go, stretching out across the water where it would float as he tugged it back in jerky little motions that imitated actual flies.

It took him all of two minutes to snag a fish, a pretty, strong rainbow trout that fought him all the way in. But after admiring the shimmery color of him, Liam set him free and released him gently back into the dark pool.

“Too small,” he said, though he looked good sized to her.

But being the softie she was, she was glad he released the fish. For the next half hour, they cast lines out over the river. He caught a few and kept them in his creel, floating in the river. She snagged nothing but a tree behind her, a log near the shore, and her own jacket once.

“I am not a quitter,” she told him finally, “but this is impossible.”

Setting his pole down, he came to her side. “Here, let me help you.”

He stood behind her, pressing her back up against his hard chest and covered her right hand on the rod with his, showing her the motion and feeding the line out as he went. Emily momentarily forgot all about the fishing and could only think about how close he was and how much she wanted to turn in his arms and kiss him.

He smelled like… like soap and fresh air, and if he was wearing any scent at all, it was his own, a scent that had stirred her dreams at night after that one kiss on the stoop of her apartment in New York.

Focus, Emily.

She wanted to figure this out. To impress him. Wanted to make him proud of her—from some foolish, deep-seated feeling of insecurity, she was sure. Some need to prove herself to the men around her. But it wasn’t Liam putting that pressure on her. She was doing it to herself.

She let herself flow with the feeling of his arm on hers. Back and forward, back and forward. And the fly at the end of her line sailed on the air currents effortlessly until it landed with a plop yards and yards away in the middle of the stream.

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