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Copyright © 2015 by Carolyn Brown
Cover and internal design © 2015 by Sourcebooks, Inc.
Cover art by Blake Morrow
Sourcebooks and the colophon are registered trademarks of Sourcebooks, Inc.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from its publisher, Sourcebooks, Inc.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks, Inc.
P.O. Box 4410, Naperville, Illinois 60567-4410
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Also by Carolyn Brown
Lucky in Love
One Lucky Cowboy
Getting Lucky
I Love This Bar
Hell, Yeah
My Give a Damn’s Busted
Honky Tonk Christmas
Love Drunk Cowboy
Red’s Hot Cowboy
Darn Good Cowboy Christmas
One Hot Cowboy Wedding
Mistletoe Cowboy
Just a Cowboy and His Baby
Billion Dollar Cowboy
Cowboy Seeks Bride
The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby
The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride
How to Marry a Cowboy
Cowboy Boots for Christmas
Women’s Fiction
The Blue-Ribbon Jalapeño Society Jubilee
The Red-Hot Chili Cook-Off
Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
About the Author
Back Cover
This book is dedicated to Blake Shelton and Miranda Lambert.
For the many hours of wonderful country music that inspires me to keep writing about cowboys and their sassy ladies.
Chapter 1
The scariest sight in the world is a woman’s finger on the trigger of a sawed-off shotgun. Sawyer O’Donnell was not an idiot. When he saw the big hole in the barrel of that gun aimed right at his heart, he dropped the broom and threw up his palms.
“Lady, you might want to put that shotgun down. I’m not havin’ no part of this feud business. Let’s talk about it,” he whispered.
The gun stayed right where it was, and his hands didn’t drop an inch.
Gladys hadn’t said a damn thing about a crazy woman in Burnt Boot when he was hired on as foreman of Fiddle Creek Ranch. Maybe the redhead with the bloodshot green eyes was a member of one of the feuding families. Hopefully, she wasn’t out to shoot first and ask questions later.
“Who in the hell are you, and why are you in my bunkhouse?” she asked bluntly.
“Your bunkhouse?” Sawyer raised his voice. “Lady, you made a wrong turn back there at crazy and demented. This is my bunkhouse, and you are damn sure not welcome here. So put that blunderbuss away and take your ass back to wherever you came from.”
“Yes, it is my bunkhouse. I told Aunt Gladys I’d do my own cleaning when I got here. She said the door would be open and she’d meet me here,” she said.
His hands came down. “Aunt Gladys? Who are you? She didn’t tell me that anyone else would be living here.”
Deep-throated laughter preceded Gladys into the bunkhouse. “She’d be my great-niece, Jill Cleary, and I didn’t know until last night that she was coming to Burnt Boot. I didn’t tell you because I wanted y’all to meet before either one of you went to jumpin’ ship.” She clamped a hand on the gun and lowered it until the barrel pointed at the ground. “Darlin’, you got to load a gun, or it ain’t worth a damn. You made good time. I wasn’t expectin’ you for another hour. Saw you comin’ in, but I had one more bale of hay to kick off the back of the truck before I could get here. Now give me a hug and meet my brand-new foreman, Sawyer O’Donnell. He’ll be sharin’ this bunkhouse with you.”
Jill propped the gun against the back of a worn sofa and rolled up on her toes to hug her aunt. “I’m not sharing my living quarters with a stranger. I’d rather pitch a tent by the river.”
Gladys pushed her back but held on to her shoulders. “In January?”
“Then I’ll stay in the house with you,” Jill said. “You said you’d hired a foreman that was living on Salt Draw. Why didn’t you tell me he was living in the bunkhouse?”
“Same reason I didn’t rush down here and tell him that you’d be living in it too. You’d have bitched. He would have quit. You’ve lived in bunkhouses before now, and so has he. Looks like only two in this big old place would be a blessing after living with twenty or thirty people. And, darlin’, I love you, and someday you’ll inherit all I’ve got and all Polly has got, too, but you are not livin’ with me. Not with your temper. And, besides, you said when you called last night that you wanted to live in the bunkhouse, so that’s what you are going to do.”
Sawyer looked from one woman to the other. Gladys was a tall, lanky woman with a touch of white in her black hair. High cheekbones and dark eyes said she had some Native American blood. She’d said she was past eighty, and that’s why she needed help on her small ranch. But she damn sure didn’t look it or act it, either. Jill had a mop of wavy shoulder-length red hair, green eyes, a cute little nose, and full lips made for kissing. There was no way in hell they could be related.
Gladys read his mind. “Yes, Sawyer, we really are kinfolk. Jill is mine and Polly’s only living relative and she has come to Burnt Boot to work for us. And this bunkhouse is big enough for the two of you.”
Sawyer wasn’t too sure about that last statement. The bunkhouse had looked huge when he moved in, but a woman living in it would damn sure make it smaller in a hurry.
Travis Tritt’s old song “T-R-O-U-B-L-E” played through his mind. The verse that kept running around on a continuous loop said that the men were going to love her and the women were going to hate her, because she reminded them of everything they were never going to be. It said that it could be the beginning of another war, because the world wasn’t ready for nothing like her.
With those tight-fittin’ jeans attempting to cover up that cute little rounded butt and cinching in a small waist, Jill was sure enough trouble with a capital T in Burnt Boot, Texas. The Gallagher and the Brennan men would both love her because she was so damn pretty, but the minute they found out she was in line to inherit Fiddle Creek—well, look out, Burnt Boot.
According to what Verdie had told him already, the feud was already hotter’n a Texas wildfire. Naomi Gallagher, the head she-coon of that clan, was out for Brennan blood. Throwing Jill in that mix would be like throwing a five-gallon bucket of gasoline on the fire. Both families wanted the land separating their properties for the water rights that ran through Gladys’s ranch, and even if they didn’t, one look at Jill and they’d forget the ranch and want her.