The Millionaire and the Cowgirl

From a van parked in front of a small cottage on the opposite side of the street, a stranger, a man who didn’t belong anywhere near this elementary school, peered anxiously through the window. He stared past the caravans of trucks, cars and minivans that idled in the asphalt lot as parents waited to pick up their precious cargos.

“Come on, come on,” he muttered.

Surely he would catch a glimpse of the girl in question, the one on whose slim, nine-year-old shoulders his partner’s hopes rested.

What if she no longer went to school here? What if she and her mother had moved? His fingers curled over the steering wheel in a death grip. Damn, it was hot, even though he was parked in the shade of a solitary oak tree, whose branches stretched over the fence guarding the small house.

He cracked open the window just a bit and a breath of hot, dusty wind whispered through the van. A dog somewhere up the street barked, grating on his nerves, but still he waited. He’d promised that he would see this child for himself so that he could report back to his partner that she was alive and well.

Suddenly a blond girl with wild hair and big smile dashed from the building. Long legged, her teeth a little too big for her face, she was one of those children who would blossom with age, a cute girl who promised rare beauty in adulthood. Caitlyn Bethany Rawlings, only child of never-married Samantha Rawlings.

He felt a moment’s relief as he watched Caitlyn and the rest of the students in Mrs. Evelyn Johnson’s fourth-grade class join the other kids already climbing onto the buses or threading through the line of parked cars.

Caitlyn, chattering to a dark-haired, shorter girl, was dressed in jeans and a T-shirt. Tangled curls, so like her mother’s, framed a small, tanned face. Freckles dusted her nose, and her eyes, round and blue, squinted until she spied her mother’s sorry-looking pickup. With a frantic wave to a couple of friends, she dashed between two parked station wagons and climbed into the passenger side of the vehicle.

Caitlyn was jabbering excitedly to her mother. It was, after all, the last day of school. There was much to say, plans to be made for the summer, he supposed, though little did either female know that their carefully laid plans were about to change in light of his partner’s agenda.

He stared through the grimy back window of the Rawlingses’ truck.

Samantha, listening to her daughter as she flipped on her turn signal, drove out of the parking lot and followed the parade of cars and trucks that headed through the small Wyoming town for the last time this school year.

They passed the stranger’s van and he turned away, hoping not to be seen or recognized. Coming to the school in broad daylight was taking a big risk. There was always the chance that someone would catch a glimpse of a person who didn’t belong in this small, tightly knit community located at the base of the Teton Mountains. But some chances had to be taken. They were risky, but necessary, if this first part of the plan was going to work.

And come hell or high water, the plan was going to work. Lives depended upon it. Important lives. The lives of the Fortune family.

One

She hasn’t changed a bit.

The thought struck Kyle Fortune deep in his gut, bringing back memories best left forgotten as he eased his foot onto the brake of the old Chevy pickup. Bugs spattered the grimy windshield, and the interior was breathless—baked by the unforgiving Wyoming sun.

Samantha Rawlings. The girl he’d left behind. A woman now. Hell, who would’ve thought she would be the first person he’d run into here in Nowhere, Wyoming? So his luck hadn’t changed any. “Damn you, Kate,” he growled under his breath, as if his feisty grandmother—the woman who had arranged this little trek back to the family ranch at the base of the Tetons—could hear him even though she was dead. That thought almost brought him to his knees.

Bald tires rolled to a stop. “God help me.” In the flash of an instant, a memory long distant seared through his mind, and he saw Samantha as he had a long time ago, lying in a field of bent grass and wildflowers, her red-gold hair fanned around her face. Her body was tanned except for the most private parts, sweet breasts rising skyward, with pink nipples that pointed proudly up at him as he kissed her everywhere—loving her with the wild abandon of youth, never giving a thought to the future, only wanting to plunge himself into her warmth and make love to her forever.

He hadn’t seen her in over ten years, and yet his insides tightened and air already hot enough to blister the paint from the hood of his old truck and bleach the color from the grass seemed to sizzle a bit more as he crossed the gravel lot. A cloud of dust settled around his new, too-tight boots.

She didn’t even flick a glance in his direction. Too intent on the stubborn-looking colt on the other end of the short tether she held firmly in her hands, she didn’t seem to know he’d driven up. They stood eyeball-to-eyeball, a spirited mite of a flame-haired woman and a determined Appaloosa, all rippling muscles and gleaming, sweat-soaked coat.

Sam wasn’t giving an inch. Mule-headed as ever, Kyle decided. Her chin was a little more pointed than it had been at seventeen, her lips, now set in a determined line, fuller and her breasts, hidden beneath the faded gingham of her Western-cut shirt, seemed larger than he remembered. But that hair—blond with fiery red streaks—was still the same, still scraped back into a ponytail, with a few wayward locks framing her sweaty face. “You listen to me, you miserable, overpriced piece of horseflesh,” she growled, barely moving her lips. “You’re going to—” She stopped short as her concentration was broken by Kyle’s shadow, stretching past the rail fence and over the hard, dry ground to crawl across the toes of her boots. Her eyes sliced a glance in his direction and she audibly gasped, her fingers losing their tenacious grip. “Kyle?”

Sensing his advantage, the horse twisted his great black-and-white head and stripped the reins from her hands. With a triumphant whistle, he reared and pivoted, a magnificent stallion who had won again. “Hey, wait, you blasted, miserable…” But the stallion was already gone, kicking up dust as he raced to the far end of the corral and the shade of a solitary pine tree.

“Great! Just great! Now look what you’ve made me do!” Stalking to the fence, she stripped the rubber band from her hair and stuffed it into the pocket of her tight, faded jeans. “Thanks for messing me up!”

“It’s not my fault you lost control of the horse.” So her tongue was just as sharp as ever. It figured.

“Sure it is.” Squinting against the sun, she eyed him up and down. “So the prodigal grandson has returned. What happened? Lose your Ferrari in a poker game? Take a wrong turn on your way to Monte Carlo?”

“Something like that.”

Leaning over the top rail of the fence, she blew her bangs out of her eyes. “You know, Kyle, you’re the last person I ever expected to see again. Ever.” Hot color caressed high, sculpted cheekbones and sweat dripped from the tip of her nose.

“I guess you haven’t heard.”

“Heard what?”

He felt a grain of satisfaction to be the one to break the news. “Believe it or not, I’m the new owner of this place.”

“You?” She stared straight into his eyes, as if checking for lies, as if she expected him to disregard the truth or stretch it to his own advantage. “You own the Fortune Ranch? Just you? No one else?” Was there a note of disapproval in her steady tone?

“The whole spread.”

“But—”

“You didn’t know?”

She actually paled, the dusting of freckles on the bridge of her nose becoming more visible. “I—I knew that one of Kate’s children or grandchildren would probably end up with the…” Her eyes moved from his face to the vast acres of rolling pastureland, dry and brown in midsummer. Clumps of sagebrush were scattered along the fence line and a tumbleweed rolled lazily past the weathered barn. Sam swallowed hard as her gaze settled on him again. “I mean, someone was bound to inherit it, but I never once thought… Oh, for the love of Mike, why you?”

“Beats me.”

“You’re a city boy now, aren’t you?” Her chin rose a little bit, as if she were suddenly defiant. “You haven’t set foot here in years.”

“About ten,” he agreed, and saw her gaze shift away, as if she, too, didn’t want to think about that last summer they’d shared. It seemed a lifetime ago, though his blood still raced a little at the sight of her. That would have to change.

“So you’re here…why? To live?” she asked, wrinkling her brow as if she couldn’t believe it.

“For the time being. There’s a catch to my inheritance.”

“A catch?”

“Kate left the ranch and everything on it—well, almost everything—with the condition that I can’t sell the place or even one item of equipment until I’ve lived here for six months.”

Six months! Kyle was going to be her neighbor for the next half year? Sam’s knees hitched a little. “But you don’t intend to really stay here,” she said, panic chasing through her innards.

“Haven’t got much of a choice.”

There had been a time when she’d hoped to see him again, had planned the day, been ready to tell him off, nail him and call him the bastard he was. But she didn’t want it to happen like this, not so unexpectedly, blindsiding her when she wasn’t ready. “You’ll be here through Christmas?” she asked, feeling as if the wind had been knocked out of her.

“That’s the plan.”

He looked so cocky, so damned citified in his starched jeans, new hat, polo shirt and polished boots. He had no place being here. Oh, God, now what? Trying to regain her equilibrium and think clearly, she blurted, “But, but what about Grant?” He was the only one of Kate Fortune’s grandchildren faintly interested in ranching. Sam reminded herself that Grant McClure wasn’t a blood relative, but a stepbrother to Kyle and stepgrandson to Kate. Not that it had mattered during Kate’s lifetime. She’d treated Grant as if he were blood kin, though he’d spent little time with the Fortune family.

“Grant inherited a horse.” Kyle’s gaze traveled to the muscular stallion who was eyeing the intruder with interest. The beast had the audacity to snort at him. “Fortune’s Flame.”

“Joker.”

“What?”