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A BAD BOY WITH A GOOD HEART
Widow Skye Larkin will do anything to save her ranch, even if it means accepting help from bad-boy bull rider Tyler Hayward. But he and his penchant for partying are to blame for her late husband’s financial indiscretions, which got her into this mess. She might be attracted to the dark, dangerous cowboy, but putting her trust in another rodeo man is unthinkable.
Ty knows he shouldn’t be surprised that Skye isn’t convinced he’s changed. He wants to prove that beneath the bravado, and no matter what happened on the circuit, he’s one of the good guys. Offering her a business partnership is just the first step. What will she do when he offers her his heart?
“You never answered my question,” Tyler said.
Skye tipped her chin up. “What question is that?” she asked, knowing full well what he was referring to.
“The one about why we never got along.”
She gave a careless shrug. “I don’t know... Spiders. Snakes. The incessant teasing?” His knack for finding little weaknesses and insecurities and exploiting them. “You were merciless toward me.”
“You mean I was acting like a preadolescent boy who liked a girl?”
She stared at him, stunned, as heat flooded her cheeks, which was ridiculous.
Tyler gave a little laugh. “You didn’t know?”
“How could I know?”
“I thought I was telegraphing my feelings pretty well back then.”
Skye rolled her eyes, thankful to have something to distract her from the other questions crowding into her head—such as why had he asked her out in high school?
He hooked his thumb into his belt loop. “This isn’t going to be easy, is it?”
“I see no way that it can be.” Skye spoke truthfully, thankful that he hadn’t clued in to the direction of her thoughts.
A Bull Rider to Depend On
Jeannie Watt
JEANNIE WATT makes her home in Montana’s beautiful Madison valley, where she and her husband raise heritage beef. When she’s not writing, Jeannie enjoys collecting patterns and sewing vintage clothing, riding in the mountains and hiking with her husband. Sometimes she goes fishing, too, but she usually daydreams more than she fishes.
To Gary—the man with whom I’ve somehow managed to spend every major holiday without electricity.
Contents
Skye Larkin hated thinking ill of the dead, but as she pushed through the bank doors for the fourth time in two weeks, she was very, very angry with her late husband. And beyond being angry, she was, for the first time since learning the true state of her finances, afraid.
It’d been a shock, yes, to discover that the money she thought she had socked away to see the ranch through lean times was no longer there—that her husband had drained the accounts during his road trips, despite his assurances that he’d given up gambling—but for the first six months after Mason has passed away, she’d told herself it would be all right. She’d squeak through somehow. Make the payments, start to pull ahead.
At the six-month mark she had to face the reality that she wasn’t pulling ahead. In fact, after a couple of disasters, she was falling further behind, and the money she’d counted on to see her through these rough spells was now in the coffers of some high-rise Vegas casino.
Damn Mason’s gambling.
And not to mention all of his buddies who encouraged him to go out when he shouldn’t have. If Mason had stayed in his hotel room as he wanted—as he’d promised—then he wouldn’t have gambled. But no. His buddies would have none of that. One buddy in particular. And Mason had never been one to say no to a friend—even if that friend was nudging him along on the path to self-destruction.
Skye’s mouth tightened as she jerked open the truck door. She was behind one payment on the ranch and two payments on the truck. The first of the month—payment time—was inching closer, and she was rapidly running out of options. She climbed inside and rested her forehead on the steering.
She couldn’t operate the ranch without the yearly cow loan—the money that saw her through