Always a Cowboy Read online

  He’s the middle of the three Carson brothers and is as stubborn as they come—and he won’t thank a beautiful stranger for getting in his way!

  Drake Carson is the quintessential cowboy. In charge of the family ranch, he knows the realities of this life, its pleasures and heartbreaks. Lately, managing the wild stallions on his property is wearing him down. When an interfering so-called expert arrives and starts offering her opinion, Drake is wary, but he can’t deny the longing—and the challenge—she stirs in him.

  Luce Hale is researching how wild horses interact with ranch animals—and with ranchers. The Carson matriarch invites her to stay with the family, which guarantees frequent encounters with Drake, her ruggedly handsome and decidedly unwelcoming son. Luce and Drake are at odds from the very beginning, especially when it comes to the rogue stallion who’s stealing the ranch mares. But when Drake believes Luce is in danger, that changes everything—for both of them.

  Praise for #1 New York Times bestselling author Linda Lael Miller

  “Miller delights readers... The coming together of the two families was very well written and the characters are fraught with humor and sexual tension, which leads to a lovely HEA [happily ever after].”

  —RT Book Reviews on The Marriage Season

  “The Marriage Season is a wonderfully candid example of a contemporary western with the requisite ranch, horses, kids and dogs—wouldn’t be a Linda Lael Miller story without pets... The Brides of Bliss County novels do not have to be read in order but it would be a shame to miss some of the most endearing love stories that feature rugged, handsome cowboys.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Fans of Linda Lael Miller will fall in love with The Marriage Pact and without a doubt be waiting for the next installments... Her ranch-based westerns have always entertained and stayed with me long after reading them.”

  —Idaho Statesman

  “Miller has found a perfect niche with charming western romances and cowboys who will set readers’ hearts aflutter. Funny and heartwarming, The Marriage Pact will intrigue readers by the first few pages. Unforgettable characters with endless spunk and desire make this a must-read.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “All three titles should appeal to readers who like their contemporary romances Western, slightly dangerous and graced with enlightened (more or less) bad-boy heroes.”

  —Library Journal on the Montana Creeds series

  “An engrossing, contemporary western romance... Miller’s masterful ability to create living, breathing characters never flags, even in the case of Echo’s dog, Avalon; combined with a taut story line and vivid prose, Miller’s romance won’t disappoint.”

  —Publishers Weekly on McKettrick’s Pride (starred review)

  Also available from

  Linda Lael Miller

  and HQN Books

  The Carsons of Mustang Creek

  Once a Rancher

  The Brides of Bliss County

  Christmas in Mustang Creek

  The Marriage Season

  The Marriage Charm

  The Marriage Pact

  The Parable Series

  Big Sky Secrets

  Big Sky Wedding

  Big Sky Summer

  Big Sky River

  Big Sky Mountain

  Big Sky Country

  McKettricks of Texas

  An Outlaw’s Christmas

  A Lawman’s Christmas

  McKettricks of Texas: Austin

  McKettricks of Texas: Garrett

  McKettricks of Texas: Tate

  The Creed Cowboys

  The Creed Legacy

  Creed’s Honor

  A Creed in Stone Creek

  Stone Creek

  The Bridegroom

  The Rustler

  A Wanted Man

  The Man from Stone Creek

  The McKettricks

  A McKettrick Christmas

  McKettrick’s Heart

  McKettrick’s Pride

  McKettrick’s Luck

  McKettrick’s Choice

  The Montana Creeds

  A Creed Country Christmas

  Montana Creeds: Tyler

  Montana Creeds: Dylan

  Montana Creeds: Logan

  Mojo Sheepshanks

  Arizona Wild (previously published as Deadly Gamble)

  Arizona Heat (previously published as Deadly Deception)

  And don’t miss Forever a Hero

  Dear Reader,

  Welcome back to Mustang Creek, Wyoming, home of hot cowboys and the smart, beautiful women who love them.

  Always a Cowboy is the story of Drake Carson, the second of the three Carson brothers, and Lucinda “Luce” Hale. Drake is a true cowboy with a ranch to run, plus stallion trouble and a mountain lion trying to wipe out his whole herd of cattle. He certainly has no time, or so he thinks, for the likes of Luce, a stranger and a trespasser to boot.

  Luce is doing a postgraduate study, and her subject is wild mustangs and their interactions with livestock. She is one determined city woman, willing to climb over fences and hike for miles, rain or shine. Luce wants to know all about ranching, and ranchers—one in particular.

  If you read the first book in this new trilogy, Once a Rancher, you’ll recognize a lot of the characters, and I hope you’ll feel right at home in their midst.

  The third book in the series, Forever a Hero, features the youngest Carson brother, Mace, a combination cowboy/winemaker, and the woman whose life he once saved.

  Ranch life runs deep with me; I live on my own modest little spread, called the Triple L, and we’ve got critters aplenty: five horses, two dogs and two cats. And those are just the official ones—we share the land with wild turkeys, deer and the occasional moose, and I wouldn’t live any other way.

  My love of animals shows in my stories, and I never miss a chance to speak for the silent, furry ones who have no voices and no choices. So please support your local animal shelters, have your pets spayed and neutered and, if you’re feeling a mite lonely, why not rescue a four-legged somebody waiting to love you with the purest of devotion.

  Thank you for bending an ear my way, and enjoy the story.

  With all best,

  For Doug and Teresa, with love

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  EXCERPT FROM ONCE A RANCHER BY LINDA LAEL MILLER

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE WEATHER JUST plain sucked, but that was okay with Drake Carson. In his opinion, rain was better than snow any day of the week, and as for sleet...well, that was wicked, especially in the wide-open spaces, coming at a person in stinging blasts like a barrage of buckshot. Yep, give him a slow, gentle rainfall every time, the kind that generally meant spring was in the works. Anyhow, he could stand to get a lit
tle wet.

  Here in Wyoming, this close to the mountains, the month of May might bring sunshine and pastures blanketed with wildflowers—or a freak blizzard, wild enough to bury cattle and people alike.

  Raising his coat collar around his ears, he nudged his horse into motion with his heels. Starburst obeyed, although he seemed hesitant about it, unusually jumpy, in fact, and when that happened, Drake paid attention. Horses were prey animals and, as such, their instincts and senses were fine-tuned to their surroundings in ways a human being couldn’t equal.

  Something was going on, that was for sure.

  For nearly a year now, they’d been coming up short, Drake and his crew, when they tallied the livestock. Some losses were inevitable, of course, but too many calves, along with the occasional steer or heifer, had gone missing over the past twelve months.

  Sometimes, they found a carcass. Other times, not.

  Like all ranchers, Drake took every decrease in the herd seriously, and he wanted reasons.

  The Carson spread was big, and while Drake couldn’t keep an eye on the whole place at once, he sure as hell tried.

  “Stay with me,” he told his dogs, Harold and Violet, a pair of German shepherds from the same litter and two of the best friends he’d ever had.

  Then, tightening the reins slightly, in case Starburst took a notion to bolt instead of skittering and sidestepping like he was doing now, Drake looked around, squinting against the downpour. Whatever he’d expected to see—a grizzly or a wildcat or even a band of modern-day rustlers—he hadn’t expected to lay eyes on a lone female. She was just up ahead, crouched behind a small tree and clearly drenched, despite the dark rain slicker covering her slender form.

  She was peering through a pair of binoculars, having taken no apparent notice of Drake, his dogs or his horse. Even with the rain pounding down, they should have been hard to miss, being only fifty yards away.

  Whoever the lady turned out to be, he wasn’t giving her points for alertness.

  He studied her as he approached, but there was nothing familiar about her. Drake would have recognized a local woman. Mustang Creek was a small community, and strangers stood out.

  Anyway, the whole ranch was posted against trespassers, mainly to keep tourists on the far side of the fences. A lot of visiting sightseers had seen a few too many G-rated animal movies and thought they could cozy up to a bear, a bison or a wolf and snap a selfie to post on social media.

  Some greenhorns were simply naive or heedless, but others were entitled know-it-alls, disregarding the warnings of park rangers, professional wilderness guides and concerned locals. It galled Drake, the risks people took, camping and hiking in areas that were off-limits, walking right up to the wildlife, as if the place were a petting zoo. The lucky ones got away alive, but they were often missing the family pet or a few body parts when it was over.

  Drake had been on more than one search-and-rescue mission, organized by the Bliss County Sheriff’s Department, and he’d seen things that kept him awake nights, if he thought about them too much.

  He shook off the gruesome images and concentrated on the problem at hand—the woman in the rain slicker. Wondered which category—naive, thoughtless or arrogant—she fell into.

  She didn’t appear to be in any danger at the moment but, then again, she seemed oblivious to everything around her, with the exception of whatever it was she was looking at through those binoculars of hers.

  Presently, it dawned on Drake that whatever else she might be, she wasn’t the reason his big Appaloosa gelding was so worked up.

  The woman seemed fixated on the wide meadow, actually a shallow valley, just beyond the copse of cottonwood. Starburst pranced and tossed his head, and Drake tightened the reins slightly, gave a gruff command.

  The horse calmed down a little.

  Once Drake cleared the stand of cottonwoods, he stood in the stirrups, adjusted his hat and followed the woman’s gaze. Briefly, he couldn’t believe what he was seeing, after days, weeks and months of searching, with only a rare and always distant sighting.

  But there they were, big as life; the stallion, his band of wild mustangs—and half a dozen mares lured from his own pastures.

  Forgetting the rain-slicked trespasser for a few moments, his breath trapped in his throat, Drake stared, taking a quick count in his head, temporarily immobilized by the sheer grandeur of the sight.

  The stallion was magnificence on the hoof, lean but with every muscle as clearly defined as if he’d been sculpted by a master. His coat was a ghostly gray, darkened by the rain, and his mane and tail were blacker than black.

  The animal, well aware that he had an audience and plainly unconcerned, lifted his head slowly from the creek where he’d been drinking and made no move to run. With no more than a hundred yards between them, he regarded Drake for what seemed like a long while, as though sizing him up.

  The rest of the band, mares included, went still, heads high, ears pricked forward, hindquarters tensed as they awaited some signal from the stallion.

  Drake couldn’t help admiring that four-footed devil, even as he silently cursed the critter, consigning him to seven kinds of hell. The instant he pressed his boot heels to Starburst’s quivering sides, a motion so subtle that Drake himself was barely aware of it, the stallion went into action.

  Nostrils flared, eyes rolling, the cocky son of a bitch snorted, then threw back his head and whinnied, the sound piercing the moisture-thickened air.

  The band whirled toward the hillside and scattered.

  The stallion stood watching as Drake, rope in hand and ready to throw, drove Starburst from a dead stop to a full run.

  Before Starburst reached the creek, though, the big gray spun on his hind legs and damn near took wing as he raced across the clearing and up the slope.

  Drake and his gelding splashed through the narrow stream, and up the opposite bank, the dogs loping alongside.

  But hard as he rode, the whole experience felt like a slow-motion sequence from one of his brother Slater’s documentaries. He and Starburst might as well have been standing still for all the progress they made closing the gap.

  The stallion paused at the top of the ridge, he and his band sketched against the stormy sky. Time seemed to stop, just for an instant, before the spell was broken and the whole bunch of them vanished as swiftly as if they’d melted into the clouds.

  Drake knew he’d lost this round.

  He reined Starburst to a halt, grabbed his hat by the brim and slapped it hard against his left thigh before jamming it back on his head. Then, still breathing hard, his jaw clamped down so hard that his ears ached from the strain, he recoiled his rope and fastened it to his saddle.

  Harold and Violet were at the foot of the ridge by then, panting visibly and looking back at Drake in confusion.

  He summoned them back with a shrill whistle, and they trotted toward him, tongues lolling, sides heaving.

  Only when he’d ridden across the creek again did Drake remember the woman. Coupled with the fact that he’d just been outwitted by that damn stallion—again—her presence stuck in his hide like a burr.

  She stood watching him as he rode toward her, her face a pale oval within the hood of her slicker.

  With bitter amusement, he noticed that her feet were set a little apart, as in a fighter’s stance, and her elbows jutted out at her sides. Her hands, no doubt bunched into fists, were pressing hard into her hips.

  As he drew nearer, he noted the spark of fury in her eyes and the tight line of her mouth.

  Under other circumstances, he might have thrown back his head and laughed out loud at her sheer audacity, but at the moment his pride was giving him too much grief for that.

  He hadn’t managed to get this close to the stallion—or his prize mares—for longer than he cared to remember. While he hate
d letting them get away so easily, he knew the dogs would be run ragged if he gave chase, and might even end up getting their heads kicked in. They’d been bred for herding cattle, not wild horses.

  They were disappointed just the same and whimpered in baleful protest at being called off, which only made Drake feel like more of a loser than he already did.

  Harold and Violet, named for two of his favorite elementary school teachers, ambled over to him, tails wagging. They were drenched to the skin and getting wetter by the minute, but they were quick to forgive, unlike their human counterparts, himself included.

  Just then, Drake’s chestnut quarter horse, a two-year-old mare with impeccable bloodlines, caught his eye, appearing on the crest of the ridge. Hope stirred briefly, and he drew in his breath to whistle for her, but before he could make a sound, the stallion came back, crowding the mare, nipping at her flanks and butting her with his head.

  And then she was gone again.

  Damn it all to hell.

  “Thanks for nothing, mister!”

  It was the intruder, the trespasser. The woman stormed toward Drake through the rain-bent grass, waving the binoculars like a maestro raising a baton at the symphony. He’d forgotten about her until that moment, and the reminder did nothing for his mood.

  He was overreacting, he knew that, but he couldn’t seem to change course.

  She was a sight, he’d say that, plowing through the grass the way she was, all fuss and fury and wet through and through.

  Drake waited a few moments before he spoke, just watching her advance on him like a one-woman army.

  Miraculously, he felt his equanimity returning. In fact, he was mildly curious about her, now that the rush of adrenaline from his lame-ass confrontation with the stallion was starting to subside.

  Drake waited with what was, for him, uncommon patience. He hoped the approaching tornado, pint-size but definitely category five, wouldn’t step in a gopher hole and break a leg, or get bitten by a snake before she completed the charge.

  Born and raised on this land, where there were perils aplenty, Drake understood the importance of practical caution. Out here, experience wasn’t just the best teacher, it was often a harsh one, too.