Taming the Wild Cowboy (Bad Boys of the Rodeo #2)

Chapter One

You’ve got this.

Sunlight broke through the cloud cover as she crossed the cattleguard, her truck lurching on bad shocks that she had intended to replace in a month or two.

Yeah … she’d have to wait on that. The sunlight faded as the clouds closed in again and Mac let out a silent sigh.

She did not have this. She was on a fool’s mission.

Such a bad idea.

Unfortunately, it was her only idea, which she’d acted on before she talking herself out of it. As her former coworker Shay Crawford had said, the worst that could happen was a no. Well, that and getting her past shoved into her face, although Shay had no way of knowing that.

Shay had been more of an acquaintance than a friend during their time together at the Sweet Grass Guest Ranch, where Maclyn worked as a wrangler tending to the horses and Shay managed the house, tending to well-to-do guests.

Their paths didn’t cross often, so Mac had been surprised when Shay called to check on her after the blow-up and to suggest a job possibility at Lane Feed and Supply.

“My brother quit there last week, and they might still be looking.”

So it was that Mac had visited the feed store, a mile or two north of Marietta, Montana, only to find that the job had been filled days before.

She was about to exit the store, wondering yet again how she was going to fill the void until her final paycheck came in, when the counter lady called, “If you don’t mind ranch work, there’s a job opening at the Tree Fork Ranch. ”

She pointed to the bulletin board next to the door. “Seems they’ve had a touch of trouble with their current hands.”

“Yeah?” Maclyn found the notice posted on the corkboard, surrounded by ads for puppies, horses, farriers, and hay. Help Wanted. General ranch work. Experience calving required. Tree Fork Ranch. A phone number followed. Mac took a photo of the sign, then turned to thank the woman.

“You know where the Tree Fork is, right?”

Mac shook her head.

“The Matthews place? About five miles north. Take Reed Farms Road off the highway. There’s a sign for the ranch.”

Maclyn barely heard the directions. “Matthews?”

“Wade Matthews.”

And that would be the sound of the universe giving her yet another one-two punch.

She managed to work up a smile. “I knew a Hayes Matthews from rodeo. Is it the same family?”

The woman beamed. Hayes had that effect on people. “Wade’s nephew. He’s not in the area right now, but if you drop his name, I bet Wade’ll hire you.”

“How about the other brothers?” Mac asked, doing her best to act as if her nerves weren’t suddenly thrumming. “Where are they?”

The counter lady frowned. “Jordan’s working in the Boise area. He and my son still get together when they’re both in the area, but I don’t know much about what he does.”

“And Trev?” Her voice almost squeaked in her effort to appear casual. She cleared her throat as she waited for an answer. Mac was not a squeaker.

“He stopped by the store around Thanksgiving, but I haven’t seen him since. I think he works in Missoula doing computer stuff.” She made a face that Maclyn had no trouble interpreting. Trev Matthews and computers were an odd combination. “I don’t think he spends much time at the ranch.”

Maybe the universe was giving her a break after all. Heaven knew she was due. The past several days had been hell. The shame and anger at being fired was now muted by the very real question of what next? and a growing sense of desperation.

Her final paycheck had failed to land in her post office box, and she knew that driving the thirty miles south to the Sweet Grass Guest Ranch to demand payment would do no good because the payroll was outsourced to a Bozeman-based accounting firm.

The Benningtons were in no hurry to settle their debt with her, but at least she had enough cash for a few weeks of food, hay, gas.

Gas.

Maclyn glanced at the gauge, thinking she needed to do that more often. A tick over a quarter tank. She’d be able to get back to Marietta with her tail between her legs if this mission failed.

If?

More like when.

The odds were against her, even if she and Trev Matthews didn’t share a history.

She’d been employed by the Sweet Grass Ranch for five years, so technically she had ranching experience.

She knew horses, could drive a tractor, fix a fence, but her cow skills were negligible.

And calving … well, she’d loved seeing the new calves cavorting in the pastures every spring, but the nearest she’d come to working cows was participating in guest-centric roundups, managed by the foreman.

Her job had been to keep the guests from killing themselves or getting into situations where horses might get injured.

She was desperate, but she was also honest. She’d have to be upfront with Wade Matthews about her lack of cow experience, which meant she’d probably be driving back to Marietta.

What happens then?

She brushed the question aside as she navigated a series of ruts and potholes.

Maybe Wade had other work that needed to be done.

Even a couple days of paid work would put her ahead of where she was now and give her a chance to figure out where to keep her horses, which were currently being housed in small outdoor corrals at the Marietta Fairgrounds facility for $15 a night.

Mac focused on the road as she passed through an aspen grove. Due to a week of unseasonably warm March weather, the trees had started to leaf out. Too bad. The April blizzards would freeze the leaves, and the trees would have to start all over.

Kind of like you.

Just like her, but she wasn’t going to indulge in woe-is-me thinking.

Action was key. Action coupled with the fleeting hope that she could talk Wade Matthews into a few days’ work and prove herself worthy of a paycheck before Trev, wherever he might be, found out and threw a monkey wrench into the works … just as he’d done five years ago.

*

“I honestly didn’t see this coming.” Trev Matthews leaned his shoulder against the still-warm side of his truck, his gaze traveling over the herd of close to a hundred cows ready to calve over the next few weeks.

The mothers-to-be were strung out in a long line, placidly eating the hay that Trev finished dropping just before his brother called.

Two of the younger cows were showing signs of imminent birth, but experience had taught Trev that signs of imminence could stretch into days. Cows could be contrary creatures.

“There’s a reason the Staton brothers were available for hire when no one else was,” Hayes pointed out.

“I didn’t expect them to end up in jail.”

So soon, anyway.

Bill and Phil Staton were good workers with an unfortunate penchant for becoming drunk and disorderly on payday.

Because neither brother drove while under the influence, they were usually let off with a warning and a ride back to their house in the sheriff’s SUV, but their last encounter with the law hadn’t gone so well.

As a result of a bet, Phil had climbed onto the bar at Grey’s Saloon and performed a few steps of a line dance.

He’d been ordered back to the floor by Jason Grey himself, ignored said warning, then blackened the second bartender’s eye with an ill-timed kick-ball-change.

The brothers might have been able to talk Jason Grey out of pressing charges, but instead they’d fled the scene when the bartender went down, and Jason made a grab for his bat.

Then they’d eluded the deputy who’d happened to be parked outside, eventually being caught in the dead-end alley behind the library.

It had been a busy night for the Staton boys, and Trev would have found the incident funny, if it hadn’t put such a crimp in operations at the Tree Fork.

“Pretty sure they’ll be excited to get back to work once they make bail,” Hayes said. “You were.”

“One time,” Trev muttered. That Hayes knew of, anyway.

He and his roping partner Dylan Kent had ended up in jail for being drunk and disorderly after winning the big purse at the Kalispell rodeo, just weeks before Brooke Danvers came into Trev’s life as a settling influence. Hayes had bailed them out.

“One time you got caught,” his brother agreed. “What now?”

It wasn’t worth taking a risk on the Statons again.

They needed someone steady until the calving season was done.

Longer if they found someone good. Wade refused to admit it, but he was not fully recovered from the broken leg that had put him out of commission the previous autumn, which meant Trev and his brother Jordan were taking turns overseeing operations until Hayes finished his first semester of classes.

They’d sold a hundred head of cattle in December to reduce the workload, but there was still a lot of births to see to.

The one blessing was that the Statons had calved out the heifers, scheduled to give birth first, before commencing their adventure in Grey’s Saloon.

As a result, seventy-five first-time moms were chomping hay in the northwest pasture with babies by their sides.

“I put the ad back up in the feed stores and Big Z’s hardware, and Jim Reed said one of his hands was willing to help on the weekends until I find someone.”

“I could always—”

“No. You aren’t bailing on your classes with only two and a half months to go.”