C is for Cowboy (ABCs of Love Sweet Romance Book 3) Read online

  Madison Grace Keller was going to Jane Eyre the heck out of this “vacation.” Luckily, she’d packed her copy of the book just in case she needed any inspiration.

  She stepped off the escalator, being careful to look down as she did but still nearly tripping. The steps disappearing into the ground threw off her balance every time. It was like she couldn’t not trip off an escalator.

  Or in front of a hot guy. That was also a long-running problem of hers, but she covered up her stumble and stuck out her hand.

  “I’m Madi. Are you looking for me?”

  Cash nodded, staring her straight in the eye so intently she glanced over her shoulder, wondering if there was something behind her he was trying to see. When she looked back at him, his eyes had moved above her head, scanning the room and everything in it except her.

  Not that she wanted him to “scan” her, it was just a little weird. But maybe he had some kind of weird eye thing going on.

  It wasn’t until after they had all her bags—and she’d nearly smashed him like an avocado on toast—that she worked up the nerve to talk to him again.

  “Do you mind if I pop into the ladies’ room?” Her cheeks needed a splash of water to put out the fire she could still feel burning in them.

  He nodded to her hat. He seemed to be very interested in the pink cowboy hat her friend Abby had given her. Madi knew it was obnoxious, but Abby had challenged her to wear it, making her pinky swear to post pics. Abby’s theory was that if Madi was stepping out of her comfort zone, she might as well make it super uncomfortable by wearing something she’d never wear in LA and something everyone would judge her for wearing in Montana.

  “You charm everyone,” Abby had said. “You’ll have every cowboy in sight falling all over you within five minutes of getting there, and then you won’t have the proof you’re looking for that you can make it on your own.”

  It made sense, in a way, but she sure felt stupid in that hat.

  But the hat was the least of her worries as she walked into the bathroom and saw her reflection in the full-length mirror. She gasped and clutched at her flannel. If her cheeks had been red before, they were a deep burgundy the moment she saw how far her shirt had come unbuttoned. She had no problem showing off a little belly, but she generally didn’t flash her entire bra and everything that it covered. “Cover” was probably a little too generous a description of what her leopard-spotted bra did. Or didn’t do.

  She dropped her Louis Vuitton bag on the floor and quickly did up the four buttons that had somehow come undone. A woman walked in and gave Madi a quick once over followed by a frown so judgmental that Madi undid the knotted hem of her shirt and did up those buttons too.

  It was bad enough she’d fallen on top of Cash, but the fact she’d done it while practically undressed made the whole incident one of the most embarrassing of her life. Top three at least. And she had a lot to choose from.

  Ten minutes passed before Madison had pulled herself together enough to walk out of the bathroom with a face only slightly pink and a shirt buttoned to the neck and hanging, untucked, over the shorts she usually only wore to the beach. It had been a day already. Contrary to Abby’s prediction, Madi had been the one falling all over the cowboys. Or at least one of them. And she wasn’t quite sure how she was going to face him again.

  Once Madi found him, Cash didn’t seem too excited about facing her either. He still kept his focus on her hat, but she was okay with that. She wouldn’t mind if he forgot her entirely.

  “Madison!” a woman yelled behind her as she and Cash were about to exit the terminal. She turned around to see the woman, Samantha, she’d met on her layover in Salt Lake City. The one whose baby had not only thrown up all over her but had also added some poop to the mix when his diaper had leaked all over her pants.

  Madison watched as the woman ran to her holding out a pair of neatly folded jeans. “I’ve been looking all over for you!” she cried. “I’m so glad I caught you before you left!”

  Madi held up her hand. “I said you didn’t have to give them back.”

  “I know, but I got some sweats out of my suitcase, and I would feel so bad keeping these.” She shoved them toward Madi. “You were so nice to loan them to me; I can’t thank you enough.”

  Madi took the pants and looked over the woman’s shoulder at the man holding the peacefully sleeping baby who’d done all the damage. “It really wasn’t a problem. I don’t know how these shorts even got in my tote, so I must have been meant to loan my jeans to you. I hope Max is feeling better.”

  Samantha thanked Madi a few more times, asked for a selfie with her, then gave her a hug and said good-bye. When Madi turned around to continue out the door, Cash was looking at her.

  “You loaned a stranger your pants?” he asked. His lip twitched into an almost smile.

  “There was a lot of baby poop. Nobody wanted to smell that for two hours.” Madi rolled her bag through the automatic doors. She was embarrassed enough already; she didn’t want to go into detail about how the woman was sobbing almost as loudly as her baby when Madi had run into her in the bathroom. What else could she do but help? Especially when Samantha was her same size and on the same flight.

  “And you just happened to have an extra pair of pants?” Cash followed her out the door then took the lead toward the parking lot.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call these pants in any sense of the word, but yeah, they happened to be in my bag.”

  “Sounds like a little bit of a miracle to me,” Cash said carefully.

  “I don’t know if I’d call it that. I’m always losing stuff in the VBP—Very Big Purse.” Why did she keep introducing her bag to everyone? Because she was very far out of her comfort zone. “It’s my Mary Poppins bag. I never know what I’m going to find in it. Samantha’s not the first person I’ve been able to help by digging through my purse.”

  She paused, but when Cash didn’t have anything to add, she kept talking. She knew she should stop, but her off switch wasn’t working. Silence was like a jelly donut; it always needed filling. Especially when you were sharing it with someone you’d just met.

  The only thing Cash had to say was, “There it is,” as he pointed to a black truck with giant tires.

  “Nice. Is it your baby?” She knew cowboys loved their trucks. Maybe she could get him to talk about that.

  “It belongs to the ranch. I drive it sometimes.” He opened the tailgate and took her suitcases from her, letting out a groan when he lifted the largest one into the back of the truck.

  “Sorry. That’s a heavy one.”

  “I noticed.”

  Cash finished loading her luggage without saying another word, but he was polite enough to open the passenger door for her. Madi had given him plenty of opportunities to chime in… probably. She couldn’t remember, but she was determined to get him to talk as they pulled out of the airport onto the freeway.

  “So,” she started. “Have you always lived in Montana?”

  “Yep.”

  “You’ve never wanted to live anywhere else?”

  “Nope.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep.”

  “I love LA, but I’ve always wondered what it would be like to live in New York. I love how it’s so easy to get places on the subway and how everything is kind of jammed together in Manhattan. Los Angeles is so spread out, it can take hours to get from one side to the other, and there’s not really a downtown. . .” Madi realized she was dominating the conversation again. “Have you ever been to New York?”

  “Nope.”

  “Ever been to LA?”

  “Once.”

  That was a different answer. Madi pounced

  “Really? What did you think? What did you do?”

  “There’s a lot of people. I spent most of my time trying to avoid them.”

  She couldn’t tell if Cash was joking or not, but she laughed anyway. “Yeah, you get used to them. I mean, I’ve lived there my whole life, so the crow
ds weren’t ever something I had to get used to. They just… are. I kind of miss all the people already. Don’t you ever get lonely with all this open space?”

  Cash side-eyed her like she’d said the craziest thing he’d ever heard. “Noooope.”

  Madi stayed quiet after that as the town of Bozeman faded away behind them. What she really wanted to do was check her messages. Her fingers itched to take out her phone.

  Instead she scanned the horizon, the nearly empty highway ahead of them, and the open land on either side of the freeway. Her chest tightened. She’d had a panic attack once in her life. Her mom had taken her on a cruise to Hawaii. They were at sea for three days, and every time Madi looked at that endless blue ocean, her heart had started to pound so hard she couldn’t breathe. Being in the middle of the Pacific was totally different than enjoying it from the shore on her beach towel. She’d spent half the cruise in their cabin watching any movie that didn’t have the ocean in it to take her mind off the fact they were in the middle of nowhere.

  “You okay?” Cash asked, and Madi opened her eyes. She didn’t remember when she’d closed them.

  “Yeah, I’m fine. Do you mind if I roll down the window a little?”

  “Sure.” Cash cracked it for her. “Is that enough, or do you want more?”

  Madi pressed her nose close to the open space and breathed in. “More, please.” She shut her eyes and took another deep breath.

  Cash rolled down the window all the way and Madi stuck her head out, forgetting all about her hat. The wind picked it up, and before she could grab it, the pink hat was flying toward the back of the truck. For half a second it looked like it might land in the truck bed, but the bed was covered. Instead the hat bounced off the cover, hit the road, bounced again, and again, and again, then rolled into the weeds.

  “Oh no!” she cried. “You’ve got to stop the truck!”

  Cash had seen the hat go and watched it in his rearview mirror. He was already pulling over before she asked. “You sure you want to go after it? It’s probably in pretty rough shape.”

  “I have to! I promised Abby I would wear it.”

  Madi was out of the truck before Cash had come to a complete stop on the side of the road. He put on his hazards, then headed after Madison who was walking at a pretty good clip despite her ridiculous pointed boots and the rocky terrain.

  “Watch out for rattlers!” He called after her, and she stopped in her tracks.

  “The snake kind?” She stood stock still, scanning all the rocks around her.

  “Is there any other kind?”

  Madi didn’t move. What if a rattlesnake was under the rock right in front of her just waiting to strike? What if her hat had landed on a snake and now it was waiting for someone to lift it off him—it had to be a him—so he could sink his fangs into her?

  “You can keep walking,” Cash said, and she’d never been so relieved to have a man by her side in her entire life. “Just keep an eye out. They ain’t gonna hurt you unless you try to hurt them.”

  “How do they know I don’t want to hurt them?” Madi resisted the hand Cash put on her back to encourage her to keep going. She could see a spot of pink a hundred feet away, but her feet were frozen to the ground. The safe, safe ground without any snakes in sight.

  “They usually don’t stick around to find out.” Cash adjusted his hat and sniffed. He was annoyed with her. She didn’t blame him, but she still didn’t want to risk coming face-to-fang with a rattler. Not that a rattler could spring high enough to bite her face…

  Could it?

  “It’s just that I’m really afraid of snakes. Like petrified.”

  Cash took a deep breath. “Head on back to the truck, and I’ll go get it.”

  “I can wait here.”

  Madi didn’t need to read Cash’s face to know how high maintenance she was being. He was probably used to hanging out with girls who wrestled rattlesnakes bare-handed and blindfolded. She didn’t care. She’d done plenty of things that took a lot of guts: bungee jumping, whitewater rafting, cage diving in shark infested waters, telling her grandpa she was getting a tattoo.

  But she drew the line at snakes. Cash could think whatever he wanted about her, but she wasn’t leaving without her hat, and she wasn’t walking back to the truck until he was by her side to fight off any reptiles.

  Chapter Three

  Cash hated snakes. It wasn’t Madison he’d been trying to reassure when he’d said snakes were more interested in avoiding people than in biting them. He had to tell himself that every time he rode out in the rockier parts of the ranch, even though he’d seen more mountain lions over the years than rattlers. It would have helped if Madison had gone with him to get her hat. The more footsteps snakes felt, the more likely they were to stay hidden.

  But no. Madison was as immovable as a horse who’d smelled a grizzly.

  Cash trudged through the rocks and tumbleweeds, making his steps as heavy as possible on his way to the pink spot in the distance. This girl was a piece of work. To keep his mind off any potential snake attacks, he listed every way Madison Keller had made his life harder in the few minutes he’d known her.

  Actually, the trouble with Madison had started before he’d even met her, the moment she’d missed her flight to Montana. He wished he could keep his mind focused on all the problems she’d caused rather than her suitcase full of books and her “miracle” booty shorts. She’d be easier to ignore if he could convince himself she was the self-absorbed woman he was expecting to find at the airport.

  He picked up her stupid pink hat—which luckily no snakes had crawled under—and turned back toward her. She was on her phone; he could see that even if he couldn’t quite make out her face. Her smile and the dimples it brought out. Her eyes, the color of...

  “Keep your eyes on the ground,” he muttered and forced himself forward.

  “You okay?” Madison yelled.

  “Yep,” he yelled back, his eyes glued to the dirt and sagebrush in front of him. He walked fast, slapping her hat against his thighs to work the dust out of it. There was no way it would ever be the same, but at least it wouldn’t be so bright pink.

  Now if there were a way to make Madison herself less... attention-grabbing? He was sure having a hard time keeping his attention off her.

  He kicked at a rock. She was only about ten feet away, and he was determined to keep from looking at her unless he had to. But then she screamed, and he had to look. She had her finger pointed at a spot behind him, but before he could ask her what was wrong, she yelled the word he least wanted to hear.

  “Snake!”

  Cash didn’t look. He’d take her word for it.

  He bolted for the truck, throwing open the door and scrambling inside before he could think to make sure Madison was okay. He locked the doors. Snakes couldn’t open a door, but, at the same time, not wanting to take any chances. Once he’d caught his breath, he glanced in the rearview mirror.

  Madison wasn’t standing on the boulder anymore, so he turned all the way around and saw her walking toward the truck. She swiped a finger under her eye, and he couldn’t tell if her shoulders shook because she was laughing or crying. She had a big, fat stick in her other hand, not quite straight enough to be a walking stick, so she must have picked it up for protection.

  Smart…

  Madison reached the truck and tried the door. As Cash unlocked it, he decided the tears in her eyes combined with the smile on her face were a sure sign she’d been laughing. And there was only one thing she could be laughing at.

  Him.

  Madison swung open the door but didn’t get in. Instead, she held up her stick. Her twisted, brown-colored, snake-sized stick.

  “It wasn’t a snake. I really thought it was, I swear.” Her smile couldn’t be any wider if she’d just won the Miss Montana Pageant. “I just really gave myself away as city girl.” She tossed the stick into the brush as she climbed into the cab and shut the door. “Thanks for getting my hat.” She tug
ged at its brim until Cash released his grip on it.

  He’d forgotten he was still holding it. “Sure.” He cleared his throat and started the truck, checking over his shoulder for traffic he knew wasn’t there.

  She waited until they were back on the road before she said anything. “Soooo...” She wasn’t laughing anymore, but he doubted he’d ever be able to look her in the eye again. “I guess you’re not the guy to call in a reptile emergency?”

  Something in her voice made him see the humor in the whole thing. Like she thought it was adorable that he’d left her to fend for herself. In general, he didn’t like being “adorable,” but, in this case, adorable beat wimpy.

  “It’s every man for himself when it comes to snakes,” he forced himself to say, and she laughed. She might be an LA girl, but he had to give her points for thinking him running was funny. He could even laugh about it himself. Plus? She’d laughed at his joke.

  “Or sticks?” she asked and quirked an eyebrow at him.

  “Hey, you’re the one who was scared of the stick.”

  “Yeah, but I didn’t run.”

  “Fright or flight.” He hazarded a glance at her. “Flight is my defense mechanism.”

  “It’s fight, isn’t it? Fight or flight? Or are you saying I could scare something away? Is that a comment on my looks?” Madison smoothed her braids over her shoulders. “I did just spend the night in the airport. I’m not always this frightening.”

  “No! That’s not what I meant!” Cash thought Madison might be teasing him, but he didn’t know her well enough to be sure. “I don’t think you’re ‘frightening’ at all. You look great for sleeping in a terminal all night.”

  Now he’d said too much. Heat crept up the back of his neck into his cheeks, and he changed lanes just for something to do.

  “Well, thank you. It really wasn’t all night, it just felt like it. You know how it is when you get stuck at an airport, and you don’t know when you’ll be able to catch another flight, so you just have to stay there.” She pulled down the visor, and Cash watched out of the corner of his eye as she fixed her make-up. “I would have explored Salt Lake City if I’d known I was going to be there as long as I was, you know?”