Could saving the ranch…
Mean a future together?
Cowgirl Cassie Diaz has a secret—a bull-riding accident may have stolen her
dream of motherhood. She needs to recover, but how can she rest with her
family’s ranch in peril? Recent Second Chance, Idaho, arrival Bentley Monroe
offers help, and his quiet strength makes her feel safe. Loving him could heal
her wounds, but would she have a future with this family man?
Buy A Cowgirls
Secret by Melinda Curtis
Harlequin.com | Kindle | Barnes & Noble | Book Depository
“I told you so, Cassie.” Cassie’s brother, Rhett, shook his head.
Cassie dropped her saddle back on the stand, having only lifted
it a few inches. She leaned on the horn and cantle, trying to ease the pain
that stretched from the top of her hip to her inner thigh. “Don’t start.”
Don’t tell her she shouldn’t have tried bull riding.
Don’t tell her she should have stuck to horse training.
Don’t tell her horse training wasn’t going to pay the
bills.
There came a point in every young woman’s life where she
had to accept that some dreams were never coming true—hers being making a
decent living training horses. At this point, unless she won the lottery, she
needed to set aside girlish dreams and get “a real job,” whatever that was.
Cassie wasn’t ready. And honestly, she might never be.
Rhett chuckled. “You winning that purse was a long shot, kind of like Grandpa
winning the lottery with that ticket he buys every week.”
Exactly.
“And here we go,” Cassie muttered, glancing at Baby, the
quarter horse she’d been trying to saddle when a spasm from her bull-beaten hip
sidelined her. “Rhett is on a roll.”
“Indeed, I am.” Rhett tipped up his black cowboy hat and
grinned. “I’m surprised you can walk after that bull stomped on your hip.”
The emergency room doctor had been surprised, too. Not
that she’d beaten all odds. The orthopedic specialist had given some grim news.
News Cassie hadn’t shared with her family, because…
“You never should have gotten on that bull, sis.”
Because of that. Cassie gritted her teeth and stared at
the barn rafters at the Bar D. She hadn’t told her family she was considering
giving up the ranching life, partly because it was terrifying, and partly
because no one in her family had ever given up ranching life—not in five
generations.
She continued to stare at the rafters, settling her
cowboy hat more firmly on her head. There were cobwebs up there that needed
tending to, if one was bothered by such things, which she was, unlike Rhett,
who tended to go through life as happy with a tidy environment as a messy one.
He preferred to spend his time on extreme experiences, like zip-lining and
bungee-jumping off bridges.
Cassie’s gaze drifted back down to the photo gallery on
the wall behind her brother.
During a streak of good luck and flush bank accounts, her
father had insulated the Bar D’s barn, which came in handy five or six months
out of the year when Second Chance, Idaho, was snowed in. But because the
insulation had to be held in with something, he’d installed cheap wood
paneling. And because the paneling was so very bare in the breezeway, he’d hung
pictures of Rhett and Cassie competing in rodeos when they were kids—Rhett in calf
and trick roping, Cassie in barrel racing and trick riding.
Back when I thought that’s what I’d do with the rest of
my life: cowgirling.
Like horse training or trick riding offered a health plan
and retirement benefits. How naive she’d been.
Those pictures had been taken before Cassie’s parents
decided to take a job managing someone else’s ranch in Wyoming and handed back
the reins of the Bar D to Grandpa Diaz. Before Cassie began keeping the Bar D’s
books and worrying about making ends meet.
Melinda grew up on an isolated sheep ranch, where mountain lions had been seen and yet she roamed unaccompanied. Being a rather optimistic, clueless of danger, sort she took to playing "what if" games that led her to become an author. She spends days trying to figure out new ways to say "He made her heart pound." That might sound boring, but the challenge keeps her mentally ahead of her 3 kids and college sweetheart husband.
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