I am Not Your Melody: (steamy cowboy romance) (2 page)

“Nope,” Allie said, in response to Ginger’s question. “Not married.”

“The boys at Melody Ranch are single too, ya know,” Ginger said.

Quite the matchmaker, very subtle.

It was flattering actually, considering Ginger couldn’t really know if Allie was a good match, and yet the woman was already trying to pair her up with a cowboy from the ranch. Allie’s choice out of four, no less. That could be awesome… but she’d already decided that staying away from men was probably the safest way to avoid having her heart torn in two again.

Her ex’s betrayal still stung, even a year later.

“Maybe the boys
could
help me,” Allie said, trying to turn the conversation away from dating and back around to getting directions. “But… Bill Edwards
is
at Melody Ranch, right? I can find him there?”

The woman leaned in close, as if she were about to tell a secret. Allie looked around. There was literally no one else in the shop.

Still, Ginger dropped her voice. “I don’t know what business you’ve got with Bill that ya can’t take care of with the boys, but I wish you luck, that’s all I’m sayin’. You seem like a sweet girl. Keep yer chin up, and don’t let ‘im scare you.”

“
Scare
me?” Allie swallowed hard. Maybe she’d been duped. Catfished. “Ginger, is he… dangerous?”

This time, the woman did not laugh. “No. Not dangerous. Jus’ mean.” She stopped abruptly, and took a breath, her demeanor back to friendly-shop-owner mode. “No one blames Bill, though, bless ‘im. A man shouldn’t have to lose his wife so young.”

Hmm.

Ginger shook her head as if to clear her thoughts. “Well, anyway that’s just my opinion. If you get yourself into any trouble with Big Bad Bill, I betcha one of the boys on the ranch’ll come to the rescue.” She smiled.

“Why do you keep calling him that?” Allie asked.
Please don’t be because he’s a criminal or con artist
.

“Oh, just a silly nickname,” Ginger said, waving her hand as if to brush the connotation of the nickname off. “Ya know, ‘cause Bill Edwards is the biggest, baddest cowboy in town. We know it, he knows it, an’ I guess pretty soon you will too!” This time, her laughter kicked up, softening the words.

Ginger pointed out the big window. “Look, honey — you just need to take Pleasantview all the way ‘round till ya hit the foot of the mountain. Drive past the train tracks and make a right. You’ll start seein’ signs, and smell the cows.”

Allie repeated the directions back to the woman, grateful to finally know where she was going. “Thank you for…all of that information.” She backed out of the shop quickly, before she could get caught up in another long conversation.

Ginger called to her as Allie was already climbing back into her car. “Whatcha need to see Bill about, anyways?”

After everything the woman had told her about “Big Bad Bill,” Allie didn’t doubt that anything she’d told the woman would never stay quiet. She pretended not to hear the question.

“Thanks!” Allie called back over her shoulder. “See ya next time!”

***

A half hour later, Allie pulled up to a large log entrance-way that declared she had finally found her destination. The ranch was huge, and she couldn’t possibly be seeing all of it. Cattle grazed peacefully — despite the cold weather that morning — on either side of her car, on fields that went on forever. Only the farm buildings and the mountains broke up the skyline. An old ranch farmhouse loomed on the left. Pickup trucks were parked in the gravel lot outside of it.

It was beautiful land…the sort of thing she’d only seen before in movies that were set out West. If she didn’t adapt quickly, the culture shock from all the differences between north Idaho and Miami could be all-consuming.

She parked next to a beat up red pickup truck and released her seatbelt. Okay. This was happening…finally. That was a good thing, so why was she so fearful?

Reality hit her like a splash of cold water. A lot hinged on this meeting. Bill had only sold her half of his bar because he needed somebody to handle everything — the whole project of renovating the bar, opening it up, and running the business. What if he took one look at her, and thought she was nothing like her emails? He might think Allie was all talk, but not up to the task.

Stop projecting
. Those were her own concerns, not Bill’s.

Admittedly, she’d never owned a bar before, but she’d been a bartender for years, and a damn good one. For the last two years, she’d even been promoted to shift manager, which gave her an even better view behind-the scenes of the business.

That had to count for something. That, and her motivation to prove to herself that she
could
do it, that she was absolutely capable of owning a business and running it well. Forget her cheating ex, forget her anonymous life in Miami, living paycheck to paycheck. The clean mountain air here, the small town, the beauty of it all…she was home now, in Bear Creek Saddle, and ready to start over. She could feel it in her soul.

A quick glance in the rearview mirror confirmed that her blonde hair looked like she’d combed it with the wind. She found her purple mini-brush at the bottom of her purse and swiped it through her hair.

What if the things she wanted to do to restore the bar ended up costing too much for Bill? As part of their deal, he’d promised he would fund all improvements of the bar, including stocking it and paying for liquor licenses. She wanted to put a dance floor in… but he hadn’t sounded too excited about that in his emails. Would he simply close the purse strings? There was no way she could pay the tens of thousands of dollars it was going to take to make this bar a success without him.

Allie stepped out of the car, smoothed her blouse once more, and looked around for someone to point her in the right direction. The wind was picking up, blasting cold air right through the thin cotton.

The car door handle was freezing when she opened the car again to grab her jacket, a thick, beige wool pea-coat she’d always thought made her look a bit like Eponine from Les Misérables (one of her favorite musicals ever, definitely).

“Hello?” Allie called, buttoning up. No one responded.

In fact, no one seemed to be around at all. Only the cattle. Down the dirt road a bit there were some stables. Maybe Bill was tending to his horse. He’d already told her he was in the process of taming a wild stallion that had needed medical help for a wound.

It was weird to be there, knowing details about the ranch from Bill’s emails without ever having been there before.

Allie pulled out her phone to text him. May as well give him a heads up that she was there…even if he’d be pissed. Her fingers clasped around nothing but air in her pocket.

You have got to be kidding me
. Now she’d have to ransack the car, then retrace her tracks all the way back to Ginger. Thank goodness she had her missing phone password-protected, in case Ginger wanted to go through it (searching for a way to help Allie get her phone back, of course. Nothing to do with gossip.)

But now that Allie had finally gotten to the ranch, after almost a week on the road…the last thing she wanted to do was jump back in the car and leave. Later, yes. Now: find Bill.

Allie walked on the dirt path down to the barn. Somebody would probably be there, at least.

“Hello?” she called again.

A horse in the stables whinnied in response, and Allie grinned.

“Yay!” She whispered her cheer, just for herself. It had been awhile since she’d last gotten an opportunity to say hi to horses.

They were such amazing animals. When she was a kid, she had taken home a blue ribbon in Dressage. But her equestrian hobby was too expensive to keep up after her mom divorced, and so she’d had to say goodbye to her horse Salsa and her riding lessons, right at the same time her dad moved out.

Uh oh… did that sound like stomping hooves?

This horse did not look happy. The closer she got to the stable, the more huge the horse appeared, practically filling the stall with his muscular body. He flattened his ears when he saw her approach and shook his head.

“Are you the wild one?” she whispered.

She didn’t see the wound Bill had told her about from her vantage point, but this didn’t look like a domesticated working horse — not at all. It had to be the one Bill was trying to tame.

The fact that Bill had emailed to tell her about it the moment he got a chance after rescuing the injured animal made her giddy in a silly, girly way —because that meant Bill saw her as a friend, the way she’d begun to see him.

It was the ride a’ my life, Allie
, he’d written to her,
I wish you were here already to see how strong an’…beautiful…this stallion is. Takes my breath away
.

He’d been right — the stallion was beautiful. But its strength made it dangerous.

“Whoa… it’s okay. Look,” she said, keeping her hands at her sides. “I’m taking a step back, no worries.”

The stallion still looked like he wanted to kill her. She turned and walked several feet more away. Maybe that would calm it down, make it stop moving in that angry, restless way.

Something was wrong with that horse. Maybe the horse was acting that way because he’d injured himself banging around in the stall like that. Or maybe his wound was really hurting him, or infected or something.

“Is anybody here?” she called, walking across in front of the stable to see if someone was working on the other side of the structure.

The stallion neighed in fright, and rushed forward, shaking the wooden stall door.

Allie looked up at the horse, willing the wave of fear that flowed through her not to show in her body language. She’d never dealt with a wild horse before. Her attempts at calming it would’ve worked on a show horse, maybe, but not this guy.

Maybe what she’d thought was giving him enough space wasn’t enough at all.

The stallion stomped his foot, quivers of tension rippling across his back.

I’m too close for him
. “Whoa!”

With a lunge, the horse popped the latch on the gate, pushing the wood down to the ground with a mighty crash.

Allie shrieked, and leapt to the side to get out of the way. She fell backward over her heels, landing in the dirt with her legs sprawled, and the horse dangerously close.

Suddenly the sound of hooves rushed up behind her, and for a terrifying split-second, she thought she was about to be trampled to death.

Please God, NO!

Her body lurched into the air, her arms in a painful, unknown vise.

“Help!” she screamed.

She wasn’t sure if she was yelling for help from the wild stallion, or for help from the huge, mean-looking cowboy who had just lifted her up and thrown her across his saddle in front of him.

Chapter Two

The man on the horse held her still, keeping her immobilized. One heavy, muscular arm lay across her lower back, as if he were prepared to spank her.

“What the hell did you do to that horse?” the man yelled. His icy gray eyes flashed with anger, and it was all directed at her.

“That horse almost killed me!”

The stallion had taken off, galloping around through the nearest pasture, which was thankfully empty of cattle. At least the fences should keep him away from her.

Her elbows and her bottom hurt from her fall, but her pride hurt much worse at being manhandled and thrown over the back of a horse by this man.

A
handsome
man, at least beneath the scruff and anger on his face. He must be one of the ranchhand “boys” Ginger had basically suggested Allie marry.

The cowboy grabbed her under the armpits and roughly pulled her to sitting, without bothering to tell her he was going to do so first. She winced as her butt hit the saddle.

“Get your grubby hands off of me.”

The cowboy raised his hand and she flinched. No, he wasn’t going to hit her.

He looked at his hand, checking out the lines of dirt under his fingernails. “Did I ruin yer
wardrobe
?” he asked, dripping sarcasm. “Gettin’ trampled by that wild stallion would’ve mussed you up even worse.”

“I knew it!” she said. “I knew he was wild. You guys shouldn’t keep him locked up like that. He hates it.”

“That ain’t your business,” he snapped.

Without warning, he wrapped his thick, muscular arm around her waist to keep her from falling off, and squeezed his thighs against his horse’s flanks to make it move. The familiar feel of a horse trotting beneath her, merged with the altogether unfamiliar feel of a large muscular man holding her pressed against him.

“I’m takin’ you back to wherever you came from,” he said, “and then I gotta undo what you just did — messin’ up Pirate’s trainin’.”

Allie shook her head in amazement. This guy had nerve, moving her body about like a ragdoll just because he could, and talking to her like she was a naughty little girl. Unbelievable.

“I wonder how the owner of this ranch would feel if he knew how you’re treating his new business partner,” she said, barely able to contain her anger.

He slowed the horse to a halt. “What did you say?”

His voice was steely, even, and the hint of threat behind the words made Allie slink back — only to be reminded by the feel of his arm around her that she was quite literally not going anywhere.

“I didn’t mean…” She swallowed hard, and forced herself to meet his hard gaze. “I have a meeting with Bill Edwards. I just was looking for him, that’s all.”

“
I
am Bill Edwards,” he said. “And you can bet your ass I was not expectin’ you.”

Any dream she’d had of impressing her new business partner with her professionalism flew out the window. Her hopes of seeing Bill in person and instantly picking up where their emails had let off were dashed as well. She looked heavenward and sighed audibly.

“Can we start over?” she asked, still looking at the impossibly panoramic sky.

“Allie Crawford,” he said, not answering her question. “Live and in the flesh.”

Allie dropped her gaze and looked at him, trying to behave the same way she did with the stallion.
Don’t show any sign of fear, and act in a non-threatening way.
Whatever she’d thought she knew about Bill Edwards had to go on the backburner now that she had the
real
Big Bad Bill in front of her. This cowboy was as wild as his horse — his reputation had preceded him, and she should’ve known it was him.