Curvy Girl and the Off-Limits Cowboy (Blackwater Falls: Cowboys #3)

Chapter 1 - Nicole

The bathroom door rattles again, and I jump so hard I nearly drop my phone.

"Come on, Nikky. Don't be like that." Jason's voice is slurred, irritated. "We were having fun."

We weren't having fun. I was politely listening to him talk about his truck for twenty minutes while trying to figure out how to leave without causing a scene. Then his hand landed on my thigh. Then higher. Then I said no. Then he didn't stop.

I press my back against the cold tile wall and stare at my phone screen, at the three dots that mean Boone is typing. My heart hammers so hard I can feel it in my throat.

The dots disappear. Reappear. Disappear again.

"Fuck," I whisper, squeezing my eyes shut. "Come on, Boone. Please."

I shouldn't have called him. I should have called literally anyone else. The police. An Uber. My boss. Hell, I should have called Colt, even though it's Friday night and he's probably drunk off his ass at the Saloon like every other Friday night since the dawn of time.

But I didn't call any of them. I called *him*.

Because somewhere in the back of my terrified, panicking brain, the part that's been pathetically hung up on Boone Sullivan since I was a teenager knew that if I called him, he'd come. No questions. No hesitation.

The phone buzzes in my hand.

**Boone: Have you locked the door like I told you? I'm 10 minutes away.**

I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the bathroom floor, knees pulled to my chest, phone clutched against my heart.

Ten minutes. I can survive ten minutes.

"Nikky!" Jason bangs on the door again, harder this time. "This is fucking ridiculous. Open the goddamn door!"

"Leave me alone, Jason!" My voice comes out steadier than I feel. Good. "I told you no. I'm leaving."

"The fuck you are." Something slams against the door. His fist, maybe his shoulder. "You came here with me. You're not going anywhere until we finish what we started."

We didn't start anything. I came to this party with Melissa and Tara, who disappeared the second we walked through the door. Jason started talking to me. He seemed nice at first. Funny. Normal.

Then he got me a drink. Then another. Then his hands started wandering and his nice-guy mask slipped, and suddenly I was just another girl who made the mistake of being friendly to the wrong man at the wrong party.

Story of my fucking life.

I text Boone again: **He's getting aggressive.**

The response is immediate: **I'm driving fast.**

I imagine him behind the wheel of his truck, jaw set, those broad muscular shoulders tense, brown eyes fixed on the road with that intense focus he brings to everything.

Boone doesn't do anything halfway. When he commits to something—training a horse, fixing a fence, helping someone—he gives it everything.

God, I've been in love with him for so long it's embarrassing.

Not that it matters. Boone Sullivan is so far out of my league we're not even playing the same sport.

He's thirty-eight, gorgeous in that rugged, mountain-man way that makes women stupid, and he's got his shit together.

He co-owns a two-thousand-acre ranch with his brother and their four best friends.

He's kind, loyal, hardworking, and according to Colt, he actually believes in true love like some kind of goddamn unicorn.

And me? I'm twenty-two, stuck bartending at the Blackwater Falls Saloon because my dreams died with my parents, and I apparently have terrible taste in men judging by my current situation.

Yeah. Real catch.

The doorknob jiggles violently.

"Open this fucking door, Nikky!"

"No!" I scramble to my feet, heart racing again. "Jason, I'm serious. Leave me alone or I'm calling the police."

"Bullshit. You're not calling anyone." He laughs, but there's an edge to it that makes my skin crawl. "You think they're gonna give a shit? You came here willingly. You were drinking. You were all over me."

I wasn't all over him. I was being polite. But he's right about one thing. Small-town cops aren't exactly known for taking drunk girls at parties seriously.

My phone buzzes.

**Boone: 5 minutes.**

Five minutes feels like forever when there's a locked door between you and a man who won't take no for an answer.

I try to steady my breathing. In through my nose, out through my mouth. The way my mom taught me when I was little and having anxiety attacks about stupid kid things. God, I miss her. She'd know what to do. She always knew what to do.

Then again, if she were still alive, I probably wouldn't be in this situation at all. I'd be traveling like I always planned. Seeing the world. Finding myself or whatever the fuck people say when they're trying to escape their small-town lives.

Instead, I stayed. Took care of her after Dad died. Watched her fade away from grief and cancer. Then when she finally followed him, I just... stayed. Because leaving felt wrong. Because I'd lost my momentum. Because somewhere along the way, I'd given up on my dreams and settled for survival.

And survival in Blackwater Falls means bartending at the saloon, serving drinks to the same people every night, going to shitty parties because my friends insist I need to "get out more," and apparently locking myself in bathrooms while drunk assholes try to force their way in.

Living the dream.

Jason hits the door again, and I hear wood crack.

"Five minutes," I whisper to myself. "Just five more minutes."

I think about Boone to calm myself down. It's pathetic, but it works. I've been doing it for years: using thoughts of him as a security blanket, a comfort, a fantasy that makes reality a little more bearable.

I still remember the exact moment I stopped seeing him as just Colt's brother and started seeing him as.

.. *Boone*. I was nineteen. Home from my disastrous single semester at community college because Mom had just been diagnosed and Dad's life insurance had run out.

Colt had dragged me to the ranch to distract me from everything falling apart.

It was summer. Hot as hell. Boone was in the corral working with a new horse. This gorgeous chestnut mare who'd been abused and wouldn't let anyone near her. He was shirtless, sweat glistening on all those ridiculous muscles, talking to her in that low, gentle voice he uses with animals.

And I just... stopped. Stared. Felt something trembling in my chest that had nothing to do with grief or fear or loss and everything to do with pure lust.

He turned and caught me looking. Held my gaze for exactly three seconds. I counted, before giving me this tiny smile and going back to the horse.

I went home that night and touched myself thinking about him for the first time. It definitely wasn't the last.

Colt knows about my pathetic crush. Has known for years.

He thinks it's hilarious and loves to torture me about it, but he's also sworn on his life he'll never tell Boone.

Because Colt might be a pain in my ass, but he's also my best friend and he knows how mortifying it would be if Boone found out.

Not that Boone would care. I've caught him looking at me maybe half a dozen times over the years.

Quick glances that never lasted more than a second, always followed by him looking away like he'd done something wrong.

He probably barely registered my existence beyond "that girl who used to hang out in our basement with Colt. "

Which is fine. Totally fine. I don't need Boone Sullivan to see me as anything other than his little brother's friend.

I definitely don't need him to know I've spent countless nights fantasizing about what those big hands would feel like on my curves, or what that gentle voice would sound like whispering dirty things in my ear, or whether he'd be as patient and thorough in bed as he is with everything else.

Nope. Don't need any of that.

"NIKKY!"

The door shudders in its frame. Jason's really losing his shit now.

My phone buzzes.

**Boone: Pulling up now. Stay put.**

Thank God. Thank every god. Thank the universe and fate and whatever cosmic force made me call the right person.

"You're dead when I get in there, you cock-teasing bitch!" Jason shouts.

Yeah, okay. That's enough of that.

"Someone's coming to get me," I call through the door, trying to sound braver than I feel. "He'll be here any second. You should probably leave."

Jason laughs. "Right. Sure. Who'd you call? Your mommy? Oh wait—"

He doesn't get to finish that sentence because somewhere in the house, there's a crash. Shouting. Then heavy footsteps, getting closer.

The bathroom door stops rattling.

"The fuck—" Jason starts to say.

Then there's a sound like someone getting hit by a freight train, a grunt of pain, and Jason's voice saying "Jesus Christ" in a way that sounds a lot like fear.

"Where is she?"

Boone's voice. Deep, rough and absolutely lethal.

"Who the fuck are you?" Jason, trying to sound tough and failing.

"Where. Is. She."

"The bathroom, man, Jesus, she locked herself in there and—"

There's another crash. The sound of someone hitting the wall. Hard.

"Try again," Boone says, voice dropping even lower. "And this time, don't lie to me about what you were doing."

Silence. Then Jason's voice, smaller now: "Look, man, it's not… We were just talking and she—"

"She called me from a locked bathroom." Each word is precise, spitted with rage. "Told me you wouldn't let her leave. Told me you were trying to force your way in. That sound like 'just talking' to you?"

"I didn't—she's overreacting—"

"Open the door, Nicole." Boone's voice is calmer. "It's safe now."

My hands shake as I unlock the door. It swings open to reveal Boone standing in the hallway, one large hand fisted in Jason's shirt, holding him against the wall like he weighs nothing. Jason's nose is bleeding. He looks terrified.

He should be.