The Cowboy’s Off Limits Option (Slow River Valley Ranches #3)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Callie

T here he is-- in those jeans that fit just right, with his boots on and his shirt off. The man's body should be illegal.

He's standing on top of a stack of hay bales piled on the back of Rowan's flatbed pick-up, tossing them off the truck to my brother while I do my best to act like I'm completely oblivious to the defined chest, the stacked abs, the v of muscle descending below the silver belt buckle... because if Rowan knew that his best friend turned my panties into a sopping wet mess, he'd come unglued.

Not that my brother's hottest friend is in any danger.

He hasn't noticed me since I was a kid, making mud-pies with my friend, Ginger. I still remember him telling me that girls that played in the dirt were gross. Which is only one of the many reasons he's never going to see me as anything more than his buddy's kid sister.

Sigh.

Back to working in the garden-- tending flowers and herbs. Still playing in the dirt after all these years, guaranteeing that Archer Dean O'Leary will always think of me as a gross little girl.

I've been swooning over him since I was nine.

At an age when most girls were still convinced all boys had cooties, I was experimenting with make-up and jewelry-- Mom and Dad were not going to let me get high heels-- trying to figure out what it took to get a boy's attention.

All it took was a few years for the boys in my class to hit puberty and me getting my curves faster than most other girls-- turns out, getting a boy's attention is easy. Problem was, I was trying to get a man's attention.

Unsurprisingly, I never stood a chance.

It would have been pretty creepy if Archer'd noticed me back when I was a desperately crushing preteen; he's an entire decade older than me, after all.

But there's no reason he couldn't notice me now that I'm a grown woman.

Except for maybe my over protective brother, I guess.

I know he loves me, but I'm sure Rowan would lock me in a tower if he could. It's probably a good thing Archer isn't into curvy girls that play in the dirt, because if he ever did notice me that way? It wouldn't just end his friendship with my brother, Row would probably kill him.

Sitting back on my heels, I wipe sweat off my brow with the back of my hand, still holding the trowel I've been using to work the soil in the small flower beds.

The September sun is doing its best to hang on to summer as long as it can, dousing Slow River in a heat wave even though I've already had to pull the summer annuals out of the garden.

The bib of my overalls sticks to my back and I unhook on shoulder strap in an effort to get some relief. The strap falls forward, letting the corner of the bibs hang loose. Fresh air hits my sweat-soaked tank top and I wish I'd worn shorts instead.

My eyes track Archer's movements without my permission.

The hay bales are still stacked three high on the flat-bed truck and he stands on top of them, stretching his muscles under the high sun as if this is actually a work-out for him.

Archer Dean is one of the O'Leary brothers. They own the Delta O Ranch out of town where the Slow River branches out into a false delta with half a dozen braided streams crisscrossing the valley before rejoining into on river that runs out of the low lands through the Flying R and on to where ever it finally makes it way to the ocean.

I've seen Archer put in much harder days of work than just tossing a few bales of hay off the back of my brother's truck. Maybe it's just the heat that has him making a fuss today.

Archer Dean

I've got about a dozen things that need my attention back at the ranch, but I couldn't pass up an opportunity to help my buddy unload the bales for his animals. Not when it means getting to see Cal.

Fuck, she's got me acting like a dumb kid-- standing up here on top of the hay stacks on the truck with my shirt off, putting more effort than necessary into flexing my muscles as I lift the hay bales and throw them to the ground. Hoping she's gonna notice.

Sweat runs down my chest and back. I stand upright and twist my torso-- partly for the stretching after all the bending to grab the heavy bales, partly making a damn fool of myself up here, hoping the movement might catch Cal's eye.

I've been obsessed with Calla Lillian Maye since not long after she came of age. Which should have been good timing, considering I'm ten years older'n her. If she was any other girl in the whole world, I'd have asked her out. Done my best to make her fall for me. Courted her and married her and had her chasing my kids around the yard all day while I chased her around the bedroom at night.

Best thing about doing physical labor out here in the valley's blazing, late-summer sun is that it does a good job of keeping my dick from causing a scene when thoughts like that start running through my brain.

It also helps a lot that my best friend is standing on the ground, waiting on me to toss down the next bale-- and if he knew the filthy ideas I had about his baby sister, he'd dig those hay tongs into my hide.

The River's a small place, you know? We all kinda grow up together, and I've known Rowan since we were kids.

By the time high school was over, Row was already managing the big feed supply after he took over from his pop. It's the only place in the valley that can supply a ranch the size of the Delta O, so we saw a lot of each other from doing business together.

Soon enough we were hanging out on our free time and, hell, he's been my best bud aside from my brothers for the last several years now.

I was used to seeing Callie around about most all the time. She was a just a scrawny thing making mud pies with her friends when I first met her.

By the time Row and I started hanging out, she was an awkward teenager, strutting around playing dress up. Trying to figure herself out the way girls do at that age I guess.

I've got three brothers, so what do I know about the phases girls go through?

Cal got her curves early and it seemed like there was always some boy coming around wanting to see her but she never had any interest in any of them.

Rowan got good at running the boys off for her and I was right there with him, playing the part of the protective big brother alongside her real brother.

She went off to the city to do a course in horticulture after she finished high school. She always was playing in the dirt; doing her gardening and growing flowers. She got some certificate in flower arranging while she was still in high school; won some ribbons at the fair for her designs, I remember.

I used to tease her because it seemed she was always caked in mud every time I saw her. I remember telling her boys didn't like girls who played in mud. Like I said-- didn't stop a damn one of 'em.

Guys don't give a fuck about the dirt when a girl's got curves like Callie's.

Back then, I looked at those curves the same way Rowan did-- from the perspective of a brother who wanted to protect her from getting pawed at by idiot teenage boys that didn't have the sense to see her as more than tits and ass.

"You giving up on me already, old man?" Rowan hollers up at me from the ground, probably thinking it's the afternoon heat that's got me stalling too long before getting the rest of his hay unloaded.

"Fuck off," I give him the finger, not bothering to take my eyes off their target, which isn't the patch of late blooming sunflowers or the bench in the shade of the big cottonwood behind the house that I'll tell him it is if he asks. "I don't see your skinny ass up here throwing bales."

"Can't say I see yours throwing bales either. Get to it, would ya? There's a cold beer in the fridge waiting on me."

"Yeah, yeah."

Grabbing up the tongs again, I rip my gaze off the thing I'm really staring at; the woman kneeling between rows of yellow and orange marigolds with dirt smeared across her face in a pair of worn overalls that are hanging off one shoulder and a white tank top pushed to the limits to constrain womanly curves that I don't think of like a brother should at all anymore.

Curves I still want to protect, only for different reasons.

Ever since Callie got back from finishing her course in the city, I haven't been able to see anything but a woman when I look at her. A full-grown woman, running her own business now, with her head full of interesting ideas that I enjoy hearing about whenever we get a chance to talk. A woman who's more than just a beautiful face framed by waves of light brown hair with wide, hazel eyes and soft lips that always look like they need to be kissed.

Calla Lillian Maye might be more than a great set of tits and a plump ass, but I can't stop thinking about what it would feel like to fill my hands with those curves and hear her moaning my name while I've got them wrapped around my hard cock at night.

Cal leans forward, working between the plants with a small trowel, up on her hands and knees in a way that has me groaning out loud at the sight of her.

"Come on, Dean, let's get this done."

Rowan's voice pulls me back to reality and I get busy dropping the rest of the bales down to him.

Cal's off limits. I might be willing to risk my friendship with her brother if it meant calling her mine, but Rowan's important to the ranch and I can't risk him blacklisting the Delta O-- even if it means going to my grave without ever claiming my girl.