Page 1 of Last Chance Cowboy
Chapter One
Since moving to Mustang River, Oregon, and beginning her new life at the Painted Ridge Ranch and Resort, Cara had learned that if you wanted to bait a horse, you needed sugar cubes or alfalfa.
If you wanted to try to bait aman, however, she’d learned that strawberry rolls were much more effective.
Baitbeing the operative word, becausetamedefinitely wasn’t it.
Zane Barton was as wild as the landscape around Painted Ridge Ranch, and twice as deadly. There was no taming to be had. Not that she wanted to tame him, she just…
She was fascinated by him. That was the word that she’d arrived at a couple of weeks ago. Crush felt silly, frothy and young. She didn’t feel young, and he wasn’t frothy or silly, so that was out.
It spoke to unrequited feelings that a person didn’t necessarily need to act on, though, and in that sense, she supposed it was close.
But it was still too juvenile for her to bear. So, fascination it was.
She had afascinationwith Zane.
He had nothing of the sort with her, but he did seem to like her baked goods. So, there was that.
The fascination with her baked goods was also why she was being sent to his house – a place she had never been before – to try and sweeten him up.
When Cody had asked her to do this, she had laughed.
Because one did not sweeten up Zane Barton, that would imply that there was some sweetness there to be increased.
She might be fascinated with him, but she was also realistic about him.
She wasn’t entirely sure what Cody was to her. He was her landlord, owned the land that her bakery was on. So, not really her boss, even though he did take a percentage of the bakery’s sales. It was more of a collaboration. He was also in a relationship with her former sister-in-law.
Before all of this, Marlowe had been married to Cara’s brother for five years, and they’d been together much longer than that. Cara barely knew life without Marlowe. Cara was about nine when Marlowe and Aiden had started dating. Marlowe was a sister to Cara in every way that mattered.
Which was why, when her brother had revealed that he was cheating on Marlowe, and wouldn’t be going with her to the Painted Ridge Resort to start their new job as planned, Cara had insisted they still go.
It was why Cara had never questioned where her loyalty lay.
Andthatmade Cody feel a little bit like family, even if there was no neat way to describe that on paper. He would feel like a brother-in-law, because Marlowe felt like a sister.
While her own brother…
Well, he had come out here and tried to win Marlowe back.
He had tried, also, to fix hisrelationship with Cara.
It hadn’t worked.
Because Cara had found that a lot of her old resentment had come rushing to the surface. Resentment that had nothing to do with Marlowe, and everything to do with the last few years.
With the way that Aiden hadn’t been able to handle their mother’s deteriorating health, hadn’t helped Cara with caregiving.
Every time she’d asked for more support, he’d had excuses. He’d sent money instead of himself because he was too busy. He was building a life — a life for a family — he was trying to get to a place in his life where he was stable enough to have children, and he had to be loyal to Marlowe and the future that they wanted to build.
But Cara wasn’t stupid. She knew that none of that had ever been about Marlowe, and after it had come out that Aiden had cheated on Marlowe, Cara’s suspicions had been laid out in front of everyone.
The reluctance to get involved had been about Aiden’s avoidance.
How nice for him. Butbothchildren couldn’t be avoidant. Not when their mother needed to be taken care of.
Somehow, he had been confident that it could all be left up to Cara, and everything would be taken care of.
