Heartstrings (Wild Rose Ranch #1)

Chapter 1

Copperhead

WALKER

It’s the flash of copper that first catches my eye. Like a penny glinting in the sunlight.

Except that it appears to be a person, and that person is swimming in the lake on our family land.

My hand finds the revolver at my hip, a Ruger Vaquero that goes everywhere I do on this mountain.

Never know when you’ll encounter a bear.

Or a crazy trespasser.

My two brothers and I are each famous in our own ways, so we attract our fair share of crazy.

“Dad,” I say, lifting my chin towards the lake. “We got a trespasser.”

My father tightens his grip on the reins of his paint gelding, already pivoting toward the lake, when he stops short. “Oh, that’s just Sadie.”

“Who the hell is ‘just Sadie?’”

“Nice girl. Works at the bookstore downtown.”

“Is there a reason she’s swimming in our lake?”

That bright copper amid the turquoise water keeps catching my eye. I can’t look away from it.

“She told me she likes to swim at the community pool, but sometimes it’s closed. I told her she can come up to swim in our lake anytime she likes.”

I frown. “I don’t like strangers on our land. Not with Jonah around.”

I can take care of crazy, but I don’t want it anywhere near my five year old son.

My father gives me a patient look. “Stand down, Walker. She ain’t a stranger. I know her. She’s one of the good ones. Born and raised here in Marble Falls. Give or take a few acres, she’s practically the girl next door.”

“Why don’t I know her?”

He just raises an eyebrow. “Probably because you’ve spent the last decade in Nashville or traveling the world on tour. The goings-on in Marble Falls haven’t exactly been on your radar.”

The reminder that I’ve spent far too long away from the place I grew up in chafes at me. I’ve made a lot of mistakes over the last decade. Chasing my dreams all over the world at the expense of family and home is the biggest.

“Sadie’s a hometown girl,” my father continues. “Sweet kid.”

A voice comes crackling through his radio. It’s Rafe, our foreman and unofficial-but-basically-surrogate fourth Rhodes brother. “Daryl, we got cattle coming through a downed fence on the west pasture.”

“Be there in five,” my father radios back.

I turn my horse to head there with him. “I’ll come with you.”

He waves me off. “I can handle it. Why don’t you go introduce yourself instead of sitting on your horse scowling like a bandit about to rob a train?”

That only makes me scowl harder.

“Be nice!” my father calls, then canters off into the distance, laughing to himself.

I nudge Journey, my stallion, closer to the lake.

The girl hasn’t seen me yet. She’s fully submerged in the water. All I can make out of her features is that flash of copper hair.

But then she flips onto her back and floats atop the glittering water, eyes closed. Arms loose at her sides. Completely unaware of me.

I’m close enough to see her more clearly now.

And… holy fuck.

She's in a white bra and underwear instead of a swimsuit. The fabric is soaked through and completely transparent, clinging to every curve like it's been painted on. The afternoon sun catches the water on her skin, the swell of her breasts, the dip of her waist, the soft flare of her hips.

I know I should look away.

But every coherent thought I've managed to hold onto this past year just... evaporates. There's only the glitter of water on her skin, the way the afternoon light turns her hair to flame. The soft curves of her body.

Suddenly I’m hard as a rock in my Wranglers, and my heart is pounding.

I don’t remember the last time I felt like this. This rush of adrenaline. This raw and unfiltered desire.

A sweet kid? The woman in this lake sure as hell doesn’t look like a kid. She looks like temptation personified.

This is very fucking inconvenient.

Hand tightening on the reins, I turn my horse around. I don’t need any complications in my life right now. My body is responding this way because it’s been way too long since I’ve had sex, and I’m a healthy man.

Well… below the neck, at least.

My head is all kinds of fucked up.

Which is exactly why I’m walking away from this redheaded nymph.

And then, from behind me, a voice comes.

“Hey! Excuse me! Mr. Rhodes said I could swim here. It’s okay!”

Her voice is soft and lovely, even when it’s raised like that so I can hear. Maybe it’s because I’m a singer, but a beautiful speaking voice will always draw me in. Hers makes me want to hear it again.

She must think I’m about to report her. So I turn my horse back around to face her. The afternoon sun is behind me. The brim of my Stetson cuts a shadow across my face.

I dismount, feeling like a sailor being lured to his doom by a beautiful siren.

As she comes wading out of the lake, water streams down her body in long, glimmering rivulets. Her long hair plasters to her neck, her shoulders, her chest. That white fabric leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination.

I should speak. I should move. Instead I'm standing here, hands gripping my horse’s reins, my boots rooted to the bank like I've forgotten how to move. How to breathe.

Her face is stunning. Big, bright blue eyes. Plush lips. Freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. No makeup. Girl-next-door perfection.

And she might as well be wearing nothing at all.

She seems to realize that fact belatedly as she glances down at herself. She quickly crosses her arms over her breasts, which only pushes them together.

I drag my eyes away before I embarrass myself completely.

“You, uh, need a towel?” I ask.

It’s pretty impressive, the fact that my brain, deprived of its normal blood supply on account of it all going to my dick, managed to scrape together a sentence.

I mean, it’s not an impressive sentence.

Nobody’s gonna call me a wordsmith for that one.

But it’s better than blurting out she's the most gorgeous woman I've ever seen and the thing that might actually finish me off is her eyes, so… I've got that going for me.

“Do you have a towel?” she asks. “I forgot mine.”

I dig through the saddlebag until I find the blanket buried at the bottom, past a coil of paracord, a folding knife, and a flask of whiskey.

I hand it over without looking directly at her. “This'll have to do.”

Once she wraps it around herself I figure I'm safe.

Nope. Her wide blue eyes and that smile hits me like a million volts of electricity.

“Big fan of dinosaurs?” she asks, looking down at the T-Rex print fleece blanket.

“My son is,” I answer gruffly.

Her gaze softens. “Well, thank you. I’ll launder it and give it back to Mr. Rhodes when he comes by the bookstore next week.”

She takes a step towards her car, a well-maintained but old Ford Explorer with tires that won’t make it through another Montana winter.

I frown. She needs to get those replaced before the snow starts.

Isn’t anyone looking out for this girl?

“You shouldn't swim alone in that lake,” I say.

She freezes. The smile freezes too. “Pardon?”

“Water that cold can put you into shock. Make you start gasping. You could drown.”

The more I think about it, the more it irritates me.

“And you didn’t even have a towel? How were you gonna get yourself warm, if I wasn’t here?”

Her eyes flash. The smile is all gone now. “I’ve got sweatpants and a sweatshirt in my trunk. I know how to warm up my body all by myself, thank you.”

Filthy thoughts flood my mind immediately. Every single one of them involving me and her body and the job of warming it up myself.

I shut that down hard.

“Next time, come prepared,” I tell her. “Bring a towel. Wearing an actual fucking swim suit.”

Ooh, now I’ve made her mad. Those blue eyes flash again. “It’s none of your business what I wear.”

“It is when you’ve got an apparent death wish.”

“Death wish?” Her eyes widen. “I was swimming, not BASE jumping off a cliff.”

“In freezing water. By yourself.” Each point makes me angrier. “You got any idea how fast hypothermia sets in? How many people we pull out of alpine lakes every summer?”

“We?” She tightens her grip on the dinosaur blanket. She’s spitting mad and trying to hide it, and somehow it only makes her cuter. “You a park ranger now? Or just an entitled rancher who thinks he owns the whole mountain?”

“I do own this mountain.”

“Far as I know, it’s your daddy who does. And he said I could swim here anytime I wanted.”

This is the girl my father called sweet?

She’s more venom than sugar. A damn copperhead snake.

“Doesn't matter who said you could swim,” I say. “Water that cold can cause shock.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time. Anything else you want to lecture me about, or can I go?”

We're standing close enough I can see the individual water droplets clinging to her eyelashes. Can tell how hard she's shivering, though she's trying to hide it. I'd pull her against me and let her have my body heat if I thought for one second she'd allow it.

“I'm serious. You could've drowned. Feel your skin.” I wrap my fingers around her wrist where she's gripping the blanket. “Ice. Fucking. Cold.”

We're inches apart. Her eyes are blazing, dragging blue fire as that gaze dips down to my jaw, my throat, the width of my shoulders.

If she knows who I am, she's giving absolutely nothing away. No phone. No double-take. Just those blue fiery eyes and that lifted chin and the absolute refusal to be the first one to step back.

As her pulse thrums wildly under my fingers, I realize I'm still holding her wrist. The contrast is almost obscene: my fingers, rope-calloused and guitar-string-worn, knuckles scarred from years of physical work, against her silky, unmarked skin.

She looks down at my hand, then back up at me. Her lips are parted, her cheeks flushed deep pink, and her eyes have dropped to my chest like she just now noticed how close we're standing. How much of me there is.

“You planning to keep manhandling me,” she says, a little breathless now, “or can I get my sweatshirt?”

I drop her wrist like it burned me. “Get in your car. Turn the heat on.”

“That was always the plan.” She turns toward the Explorer, and I hear her mutter, “Entitled, bossy-ass cowboys,” as she yanks open the back hatch.

She pulls the blanket off. I get one more look at those curves before she drags her grey sweats on. When she rounds the car to the driver's door she stops.

Then she walks back to me and presses one finger directly into the center of my chest. She has to tip her chin up to hold my eyes. I’ve got close to a foot on her. There's nothing soft about the look on her face.

“I’ll get this blanket back to you because it belongs to your son. Don’t think I’m doing you any type of courtesy.”

“I can’t even expect common sense from you. Why would I expect courtesy?”

Her eyes flare. She opens that perfect mouth, then closes it. Grinds her teeth. Decides I'm not worth the words.

Flouncing back to her car, she doesn't say goodbye. Just slides into the Explorer, slams the door, and guns the engine.

Her taillights disappear down the fire road, dust hanging in the air like smoke.

My heart's still pounding. My hand flexes involuntarily, remembering the feel of her wrist, her soft skin over delicate bone, her wild pulse. The way she looked up at me with those blazing blue eyes.

Angel on the outside, little devil on the inside.

God, when’s the last time someone went at me like that?

Everyone in my life handles me now. My manager with his smooth voice and his talk about “the brand” before I fired him for annoying me with that horseshit.

The label execs who smile and nod and say whatever keeps me making music.

The women who approach me with their phones already out, already composing the caption to the selfie they’ll post before I've said a word.

Even my own family tiptoes. They're salt-of-the-earth people, bewildered by the moody artist in their midst. They love me and they don't know what to do with me, so mostly they just... step carefully.

But Sadie looked me dead in the eye and jabbed her finger into my chest like it was her right. Called me an entitled, bossy-ass cowboy. Stood there, dripping wet, no deference. No backing down. Fiery as her flaming red hair.

I let out a breath. The crickets are starting up as the summer afternoon fades into evening. There’s a breeze moving through the pines.

I put my boot in the stirrup and swing up onto Journey in one motion, the way I've done ten thousand times. Saddle leather creaks beneath me. The fire road is empty. The dust she kicked up is already gone.

The familiar sense of emptiness settles back into me now that she’s gone. Everything just resumes being exactly what it was before she waded out of that water, like she was never here at all. Like the whole thing was some kind of fever dream.

Except my hand still remembers the wild gallop of her pulse.

Except that was the first real human interaction I’ve had with anyone since I can remember.

She wasn't impressed by me or afraid of me. Didn't handle me. She looked right at me and said exactly what she thought, and for about four minutes on the bank of this lake, I felt fucking alive.

And I'm still standing here like an idiot, staring at the empty road like I can summon that redheaded nymph back to me by sheer thought alone.

I’m going down to the bookstore and getting that blanket back all by my fucking self.