Chapter One
Thirty-year-old cowboy Axel Redford was letting off some steam with his friends-of-convenience in a honky-tonk in Bozeman, Montana.
He had been crashing with a sweet little friends-with-benefits rodeo princess for a week or two, but had to pull up stakes when her sweet turned sour.
He could bunk with one of his bar buddies, but he decided to unroll his sleeping bag and get some shut-eye in the back of his truck.
It wouldn’t be the first time or the last.
“I’m gonna head out.” Axel finished his bottle of beer. “My day starts in the dark.”
“Man. Don’t go,” said a wiry guy by the nickname of Priest. “I was just about to win back my fifty.”
Axel smiled at him. “Naw, partner. I know when it’s quittin’ time.” He stopped by the bar, fished out his wallet from the back pocket of his faded jeans, peeled off a one-hundred-dollar bill and waited for the bartender to head back his way.
He had eyes in his head, and he surely loved to admire beautiful women.
This night, the object of his gaze was a woman with porcelain skin and freckles dusted across her nose and cheeks; those freckles were on her shoulders as well, easy to spot because she was wearing a tight strapless dress that hugged her figure in all the right ways.
But what had caught his eye first was the thick, fiery red hair she wore loose and long to the small of her back.
Man. Redheads. They were his downfall. Unfortunately, it was all look and don’t touch; this little filly was spoken for, according to the Bride-to-Be sash she wore.
Axel held out the folded bill to the bartender; the bartender nodded his appreciation, and just as Axel turned away from the bar, someone bumped into him. He turned around to find the lovely red-haired bride-to-be.
“No!” she called out in frustration to the bartender who had already moved down to the other end of the bar. “Come back!”
“Can I help you?” Axel asked without any idea why he had just inserted himself into the tipsy woman’s life.
She dropped her head and hands down. “I need a whiskey sour.”
Axel whistled loudly, waved his hand, and the bartender headed back their way. “An emergency whiskey sour,” Axel said.
“Coming right up.” The bartender nodded.
The bride-to-be leaned against the bar and smiled up at him. “You’re like my knight in shining…” She stopped, looked him up and down, and then said, “I don’t see anything shining.”
Yes, she was tipsy, but she wasn’t sloppy. On her, it was cute. She had lightened his mood without any effort on her part. And darned if she wasn’t prettier up close. He’d be tempted to extend his night if she wasn’t wearing that sash.
Axel paid for the drink.
“No!” the woman said. “I can’t let you pay for my drink.”
“Sure, you can,” he said easily. “It’s my gift to you and your lucky groom.”
“Well. Thank you.” She took a sip of the drink.
He was fixing to walk away when she added, “He’s not lucky.”
His ears perked right up, and he hated that he was still playing in her sandbox. “Come again?”
“He’s not lucky!” she shouted over the noise.
Now his curiosity got the better of him. With an amused smile, he asked, “Why not?”
She held out her sash for him to read. “Bride not to be.”
In between the words bride and to, the word not was written in black ink, smeared on the white satin.
“Who the heck let you get away?” he asked.
“Oh,” she said with a shake of her head. “It’s a whole thing. I’d rather dance.”
“I can dance,” he volunteered.
A man in his mid-twenties appeared from the crowd. “Rowan,” he said. “You okay?”
She nodded, still sipping on her drink. “This guy right here bought me a drink. We’re going to dance.”
Not wanting to do the three-is-a-crowd deal, Axel asked, “Are you the ex?”
“No. Just a friend.” The man held out his hand. “Nash Landry.”
Axel shook it. “Axel.”
Rowan held up her hand. “Rowan.”
“Just a friendly bit of advice.” Nash looked at his friend and then back to Axel. “I wouldn’t go spinning her if I were you.”
Axel’s plan for an early night turned into closing down the bar with Rowan and Nash.
After the drink he bought for her, Rowan switched to water and kept him busy dancing to every upbeat song the band played.
Darn it if he didn’t have to switch to water just to keep hydrated with all of the sweating trying to keep up with Rowan.
Somewhere along the line, he’d started to nickname her Spitfire in his mind.
A slow song came on, and Rowan made a dissatisfied, frustrated noise. She headed back to the booth where Nash was hunkered down against the wall, cowboy hat over his face.
“You know,” Axel told Rowan, “I’ve got some pretty slick slow dance moves.”
Rowan pulled a sour expression, shook her head and then headed for the ladies’.
“Is she always the energizer bunny?” Axel asked Nash.
Nash slid his hat back. “Always.”
“She’s wearing me out.”
That made Nash laugh. “She can do that.”
After a short pause, Axel said carefully, “Sounds like she got a pretty raw deal.”
Nash’s smile faded, and his jaw tightened. “Man, I’m telling ya. It was brutal. Nearly the whole damn town was there. Videos and pictures uploaded instantly. People on socials love to build a body up, but they like even better when they can tear them down and drag them through the mud.”
Axel said, “Her ex must be a real piece of work.”
That was all he had to say for Nash to crack right open. And Nash was still talking when Rowan returned with bottles of water.
“Band only has one more set,” she told them. “Are you up for closing the place down?”
Nash chuckled. “If I say no, will that change anything?”
Rowan smiled at her friend, and for the first time, Axel could see the light in her eyes. “Probably not.”
“Then we’re closing down the place.” Nash slid his hat back down to cover his eyes. “Wake me up when it’s over.”
The band had taken a short break and was now back on the stage. Rowan looked at Axel. “Are you staying or going?”
I should say that I’m going. Early morning, long day of ranching ahead. “Staying.”
That earned him the smallest of smiles, and it only made him hungry for more.
As he followed Spitfire to the dance floor, Axel began to feel something inside that he hadn’t felt in too many years to count.
That initial attraction had unexpectedly grown into interest and curiosity.
But she was coming off a big breakup. No one was ready for a relationship after that kind of loss.
He’d rebounded with his share of women, and he’d been on the receiving end of that same scenario himself. It was like a punch to the gut and an uppercut to the chin. He wasn’t in a hurry to feel that way again.
On the way back to the dance floor, he crossed paths with one of the acquaintances he’d left at the pool table.
“Did’ya get hooked?” the man teased him.
“Cowpoke, it sure looks that’away.”
When the band bid everyone goodnight, Axel walked with Nash and Rowan to the sidewalk just outside the bar.
In the streetlight, which was certainly brighter than the bar, Axel could see that Rowan’s mascara had bled around her eyes from the sweat.
She looked rather like a raccoon. She had tamed her thick red hair into a topknot when they danced, but part of it had fallen, and the rest was plastered to the top of her head with sweat.
In all of his days, he’d never seen anyone more attractive than Rowan. It was flat-out odd.
Rowan held out her hand to him. “Thank you for the dancing.”
“My pleasure.”
“Nice to meet you.” Nash held out his hand, as well.
“Same on this side.”
They said good-night, and then Axel watched Rowan and Nash walk away together. After she had disappeared from his sight, Axel walked to his truck. Lying flat on his back in the bed of his truck, he replayed the evening.
He didn’t know Spitfire’s last name. He couldn’t remember Nash’s. He didn’t know if they lived in Bozeman or if they were just visiting. He didn’t have any way to contact them. He’d wanted to ask for her number, but he’d been around long enough to know better.
So, he might never see Rowan again. If only he had thought of some way to keep in touch without seeming like a greasy come-on. In his defense, he had been distracted by her eyes.
“Amateur,” Axel scolded himself, looking up at the sliver of moon above. “You let that one get away.”
* * *
“We had two cabins checking out today. Cleaning services will be here this afternoon,” Charlotte “Charlie” Brand said to her sisters, Rayna and Danica.
They were known in the Big Sky area as the Brand triplets; Rayna and Danica were identical twins while Charlie rounded out the three as the fraternal twin. “And only one arrival.”
Charlie Brand was a strong, independent, brave Montana cowgirl.
She was born to live the ranch life, and for many years she had held Hideaway Ranch together with only her determination and sheer gumption to hold on to the pristine land settled by her ancestors five generations ago.
But the ranch was being held together by a frayed string, and when the pandemic hit, that string broke.
Luckily, and possibly through divine intervention, the sisters were able to come back together and work as a team to save Hideaway Ranch.
“Isn’t that one of our long-lost relatives?
” asked Rayna “Ray” Brand. Ray had been a stay-at-home mom, raising her two sons in Connecticut, playing the role of perfect wife for her high-profile attorney husband, when her husband, seemingly out of the blue, asked for a divorce.
The life she had built for nearly twenty years was over, and the only place she could think to lick her wounds and regroup was her childhood home: Hideaway Ranch.
The idea of romance was the last thing on her mind until she ran into her first love, single father Dean Legend, and when those sparks started to fly again, Ray’s fears of a lonely life were washed away by Dean’s love and devotion.