Page 5 of Wild and Wanted

Dude ranch or not.

‘And she’s better at ass kissing.’

Completely unperturbed by his insult, Mags grinned around her crammed mouthful. She could cuss like a sailor and hold her own with any cowboy on the ranch but she could also be sweet as pie if required.

His father shook his head. ‘She’s got the trail ride. Unless you want to switch and do that?’

His sister grinned bigger. A trail ride meant plodding along with multiple weekend cowboys for a couple of hours and that made his brain itch.

‘Can’t Dev or Walt or Kirby do the trail ride and Mags take the one-on-one?’ Hell, any one of the hands on the ranch could – and did – lead a damn trail ride.

‘They’ve already started moving the stock to the south pasture.’

‘I know. I’m supposed to be helping them.’

‘And you can.’ His father smiled at him. ‘After the one-on-one.’

What Clay hated most of all about coming back to the ranch, apart from his feelings of failure, was how out of touch he’d become. This place that he’d called home for seventeen years had gone on without him.

Which of course it had. He hadn’t expected he’d walk back in a decade after leaving and everything would be the same, but he hated that he didn’t know his place in it any more.

That he felt like an outsider.

‘We agreed I didn’t have to have anything to do with the tourist side of the business.’

Implacably, his father nodded. ‘We did.’

Which meant, as his father was a man of his word, they really needed him to do this. Was the ranch in trouble again? He glanced at his mom.

As if she could read his mind, she smiled at him reassuringly. ‘She’s a special client paying top dollar. And here at the RVR’ – she winked at him – ‘we aim to please.’

‘She’s super cute, too,’ Mags chimed in.

And that was when Clay knew who their top-dollar guest was. He just knew. Because of course it would be the woman he’d been trying not to think about since yesterday morning.

‘And famous.’

Clay frowned. ‘Famous?’

‘It’s Stephanie Everhart. You know, “Forever Without You”. Won a Grammy earlier in the year.’

Stephanie Everhart?

That’s why she’d seemed a little familiar yesterday. The song had been all over the country stations this past year. It was rare to turn on the radio and not hear the tremulous notes of Stephanie Everhart’s breaking heart. She’d written it about her sister, he remembered. Who’d died in a car crash.

‘And she’s here for a month,’ his mother added.

‘A month?’ What. The. Fuck? It was going to be real hard to avoid her for a month!

‘Uh huh,’ she confirmed. ‘So you better get your Howdy Ma’ams all polished up because you’re going to be seeing her around a lot.’

Yeah, that’s what he was afraid of.

‘Why a month?’ Nobody stayed that long. Three days pulled most people up. ‘Are they thinking of… buying the place?’

Wait… was the ranch going under again? A knot of anxiety tightened in his gut. He thought the hospitality side had really pulled them out of a hole. There’d certainly been a lot of money invested back into the actual ranch side whilst he’d been away. But maybe his parents had overcapitalised?

Theresa Calhoun laughed. ‘No, silly. She’s a country music singer from Boston. Her record label wants her to have a crash course in ranch living so they sent her and her mom here.’