Not a Chance, Cowboy (Whispering Creek Cowboys #2)

Chapter 1

CASSIE

My bag is open on the bed, and I need to finish packing it.

I've been standing in the middle of this cabin for twenty minutes holding the same flannel shirt, staring out the window at the meadow by the arena, and I can't make myself put it in.

That's not like me.

I handle things, move on, and don't stand around waiting for myself to get it together. I've been doing this since I was old enough to pull my own weight.

I've never once been the person who has trouble leaving a place.

I drop it on the bed instead and turn back toward the window.

Cricket's in the small corral just outside, working through her morning hay with her head low and her ears at half mast, the way she eats when she's fully settled. I've had that mare since I was fifteen.

I know every version of her.

The version that pins her ears at strange horses and the version that goes soft-nosed around kids. The version that watches the gate when she's somewhere new, weight forward and attention tight on whatever's outside the fence line.

This version is not watching the gate.

Cricket looks like a horse that's decided she's home, and I don't know what to do with that.

The cabin is warm. It smells like pine and cinnamon. Darla must already be in the dining hall kitchen, cooking up something.

The morning light is coming through the curtains in long pale strips across the wood floor. The quilt on the bed has been folded back the same way every morning of the clinic. The towels were restocked before I noticed I needed them. That's Londyn, the personal touch in every corner of it.

I came here at thirteen because I begged my dad to send me to a horsemanship clinic, and he knew exactly where to send me. He and Sawyer had history from back when they were on the circuit. He'd heard enough about what she'd built here to know it was exactly what I needed.

I spent that whole week being thirteen and trying not to let anyone see how badly I wanted to stay.

I stood at the arena fence on the last afternoon and watched Sawyer work a horse through a problem, her hands quiet, her weight easy in the saddle, like she already knew how it was going to end and the horse just hadn't heard yet.

I understood, even at thirteen, even without the words for it.

I was looking at exactly the kind of rider I wanted to be and exactly the kind of place that made that possible.

I went home and thought about it for six years.

I'm nineteen now. Coming back on my own terms felt different from arriving on my father's schedule.

Better, actually. The clinic week had been everything I thought it would be and then a little more, the kind of better that's harder to leave because you came knowing what you were looking for and found it.

I've known since Wednesday that I didn't want to go home.

I just haven't figured out what to do about that.

I'm still standing there, the shirt still on the bed and the bag still half empty, when I hear boots on the porch steps.

***

Sawyer leans a shoulder against the door frame, coffee in hand, and doesn't look at the open bag or the shirt on the bed or the half-packed state of anything. "How'd the week go?" she asks. "Was the cabin comfortable? Did you like the food? Darla's a good cook."

She asks it the way she asks everything, warm and direct, the kind of questions that make you forget she's also reading every word you say and half the ones you don't.

I've never been able to do anything else with Sawyer but answer honestly.

"Good," I say. "It was all really good, actually." I look around the room, at the wood floor, the quilt, and the way the morning light is still coming through the curtains. I'm aware of the half-packed bag on the bed behind me and the fact that I haven't touched it in twenty minutes.

"Cricket was happy here. I could feel it every ride. And the cabin… " I shake my head a little. "I didn't expect it to feel this much like somewhere I wanted to stay."

Sawyer smiles into her coffee. Like that was exactly the answer she was waiting for.

"Well, Brynn left for Colorado a couple of weeks ago," she says, her voice easy. "She's getting married. She was here four years, and I'm really happy for her." She pauses, tilts her head slightly. "But, it does leave me without a clinic assistant."

I look at her.

She reaches into her jacket pocket and sets a key on the dresser between us. A small brass key on a plain ring. "Cabin 3 on the staff side. I'd like you to have the job, if you want it."

I don't sit down. I don't think too hard about it. The thinking-too-hard version of this question has an answer I already know, and so does the not-thinking version, and they're the same answer.

I pick up the key.

"Yes!" I almost shout.

Sawyer smiles. It's warm and real, and my pulse gives an unexpected little kick.

"Good, get your things moved over and get settled in.

Next rotation doesn't start until the day after tomorrow, so you've got time.

" She pushes off the frame. "Staff horses stay in the barn and go out to the pasture.

Take Cricket over and find Kade. He'll show you where she goes and get you sorted. "

She steps off the porch, and I think she's gone, but she stops at the bottom of the steps and looks back at me with that small, real smile.

"Welcome to the family, Cassie." Then she's walking, footsteps fading off toward the dining hall, and I'm standing in the middle of the cabin with the key in my hand and the half-packed bag still open on the bed.

I should call my dad.

I pull my phone out, look at it, and put it back in my pocket. I'm not running this by anyone. I said yes, and I mean it, and I'll call Dad from the staff side of the property after I have a stall for Cricket.

I turn back to the bed and finish packing, closing the door on my way out.

***

I said yes before I thought too hard about it.

The key to Cabin 3 is in my pocket, the bag is on my shoulder, and I'm crossing the property like I've been doing it for years.

The ranch has gone quiet, caught in the lull between clinics.

The parking area is empty now, the guest cabins waiting to be turned, the arena sitting quietly in the mid-morning sun.

Londyn is already moving through the cabin row with her cart, working her way methodically down.

I can hear Logan's voice carrying from the round pen, low and even, talking a horse through something.

Birds are going back and forth in the pines above the cabin rows.

Darla and Mandy are talking in the dining hall kitchen.

The air carries pine and something sharper underneath, damp soil and woodsmoke. Not a sound from anywhere that isn't the ranch.

I'm halfway across the open ground when someone falls in alongside me.

I don't have to look. I've been tracking Levi Walker all week without meaning to.

The way he moves through the barn, the way he gravitates to the arena rail between his tasks like someone who can't quite stay away from where the real work is happening, the way he makes every room a little easier to be in and does it so naturally that most people probably don't notice he's doing anything at all.

I've noticed.

He's taller than I keep accounting for. Broad through the shoulders in the way that comes from years of work, blonde hair pushed back like he did it once this morning and hasn't thought about it since.

He moves like someone who has never once been in a hurry and has never once been late, and right now he's falling into step beside me with his hands in his pockets like he was exactly where he was supposed to be.

"Heading out?" he says.

I don't answer.

"So that's a no on the goodbye wave." He glances over at me, green eyes easy and unbothered. "I'll try not to take it personally."

He's like this with everyone. That's the thing I've watched all week, the way he finds the angle, the exact thing that gets a laugh, and lands it every time. It works because he's good at it and because most people are more than happy to give him what he's looking for.

I keep walking.

He walks beside me like my silence is just temporary weather, nothing to worry about, give it a minute. And then, without asking, he reaches over and lifts the duffel off my shoulder.

I didn't ask him to. I had it. But I let him take it without a word, because saying something about it means I noticed it, and I've made a careful choice this week about what I let him see me noticing.

"This thing weighs about forty pounds," he says, adjusting the strap on his shoulder.

"Just so you know. In case anyone asks how I threw my back out.

" He glances over at me. Nothing. He keeps going like he expected that.

"I've also been thinking about this all week, you know.

The not laughing thing. I'm funny. I know I'm funny.

Kade laughed at me twice yesterday, and Kade hasn't laughed at anything in a year, so.

" He shifts the bag to his other shoulder.

"I'm just saying. Statistically, the odds are not in your favor. "

The way he says it, not trying too hard, just talking like the words are coming out because they want to, is almost enough to do it. Almost.

When I turn toward the staff cabin row instead of the parking lot, he slows. Looks at the cabins, then at me.

"That's not the parking lot," he says.

I pull the key out of my pocket and keep walking. He follows, and I can feel him putting it together behind me. I step up onto the porch of Cabin 3, unlock the door, and push it open.

He stands there a second with my bag still in his hand, recalculating, and then that easy grin moves across his face, and he steps onto the porch, setting the duffel just inside the door.

"Thanks," I say.

He pauses at the door and looks back at me, that easy grin still in place. "You know, most people at least say thanks when someone carries forty pounds across a ranch for them." He shakes his head. "Toughest crowd I've ever played to." And he's gone.