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

  Hours later—although it was probably only thirty seconds—a horse and rider rode next to her and Brownie, and a hand reached out and grabbed the reins hanging down from Brownie’s neck. The rider tugged the reins and clicked his tongue, slowing the horse to a slow walk in time for Madi to right herself in the saddle. One more trot and she would have been on the ground.

  It took some time for Madi’s eyeballs to quit bouncing around in her head, but once they did, she focused in on who her rescuer was.

  Cash. Of course.

  “You okay?” he asked her as he steered the horses in a circle, talking to Brownie in a soothing voice.

  “I think so.” Madi took a long breath. “That was scary.”

  “Brownie wouldn’t hurt anyone. She just got a little startled.” He leaned way over and patted Brownie’s neck who whinnied in return. Then he handed the reins to Madi. “Hold them loosely, like this.” He showed her the correct position for her fingers and thumbs on his own reins. “If she starts to run again, pull them gently, and she’ll stop.”

  Cash showed her a few more signals with the reins and gave her directions about what to do with her feet too. By the time they got back to the rest of the group, Madi was feeling much more comfortable. Her butt still hurt but knowing what to do lifted her confidence to the point she could see how riding horses might be relaxing. Especially in a place like Rocking M, nestled in a valley surrounded by mountains on one side and prairie on the other with a river winding through it for good measure.

  “Thanks for your help,” she said to Cash. “I’d be halfway to North Dakota by now if not for you.”

  He laughed and circled his horse to face the opposite direction. “She would’ve run out of steam long before then. Hold on to them reins, and you’ll be fine.” He tipped his hat to her.

  “You’re not going with us?” she asked as Owen put his horse in motion and the others began to follow.

  “No. I’ve got a lot of other chores to get done.” His horse pawed the ground, but Cash kept him in place.

  “Oh.” The horse in front of Madi’s got into formation and Brownie shifted her weight ready to move forward, but Madi wasn’t ready to go. “Thanks again for your help.”

  “No problem.” He clicked his tongue and his horse moved in a slow, lumbering motion. For having a lot of chores to do, Cash didn’t seem to be in a big hurry to leave.

  Madi watched him go until Brownie moved, and she was reminded what she was supposed to do. She held the reins the way Cash had shown her and clicked her tongue to get Brownie to catch up with the riders in front of her. When the horse actually listened, a surge of confidence ran through Madi like the river they were riding toward. She could definitely get used to that feeling.

  Lyla rode up next to Madi and interrupted her thoughts. “You dropped this.” Lyla’s tone was nicer than the one she’d used earlier, but it didn’t soften the blow of seeing her phone’s screen cracked in a million places as Lyla handed it to her. “I think a horse stepped on it.”

  Madi took it from her and tapped on her Insta app. Or, at least, she tapped on the spot where the app should have been. She couldn’t really tell, because in addition to being cracked, the screen had lines running through it.

  Madi groaned. “I already know the answer, but… is there a cell phone store nearby?”

  “There’s one in town, but that’s an hour away, and you don’t have a way to get there.” Lyla didn’t offer to take Madi herself. So maybe she wasn’t quite over being mad at Madi.

  “Do you think Cash would have some time to take me into town?” Madi wouldn’t have asked if she weren’t desperate. “I have to have a phone for work.”

  “You’re on vacation.” Lyla looked mystified, like she’d never heard of the concept of people doing business on vacation. “And I doubt Cash would take you. He’s way too embarrassed to be alone with you again after everything he told you.”

  Lyla’s tone had gone back to being professional rather than friendly, but Madi wasn’t having any of it. She didn’t need some girl she barely knew being rude to her on top of a totally broken phone.

  “What do you mean ‘after everything he told you’? He didn’t tell me anything. I mean, other than that he wanted to ‘get me to bed.’ He’s barely talked to me since he said that.”

  “He told me he explained. He was being literal. Like you were so tired, he really just wanted you to sleep.” Now Lyla had taken on a sarcastic tone which Madi appreciated even less than her all-business tone. “He’s not the kind of guy who’s going to jump into bed with just anyone.”

  “I didn’t hear any of that. And I’m not that kind of girl either.” Madi straightened in her saddle staring straight ahead. “I just thought we had a connection and that he felt it too. He’s the one who should choose his words more carefully.”

  “He does like you.” Lyla turned in her saddle to face Madi. “You really didn’t hear what he told you?”

  “I had my air pods in. I couldn’t hear anything except for my meditation app.” Madi turned as much as she dared to face Lyla. “If he likes me, why is he blowing me off? Is he afraid I’m going to take advantage of him or something? I wouldn’t have thought about doing anything in that stupid motel room if he hadn’t made the first move. He better have a damn good excuse for—”

  “—He’s saving himself,” Lyla blurted. “For marriage.”

  Madi stopped. “He what?”

  “He’s waiting…” Lyla emphasized the word with all the meaning she didn’t want to put into words.

  So, Madi did it for her. “Cash is a… virgin?”

  Chapter Eleven

  Cash hadn’t been the closest to Madi when Brownie took off, but he got to her before anyone else could try. Brownie was a good horse. She wouldn’t have bucked Madi, but Brownie wasn’t going to stop as long as she thought Madi’s flailing legs hitting her flanks meant Madi wanted her to go faster. Madi bounced up and down in the saddle, clutching the saddle horn as tightly as she’d clutched her phone when he’d challenged her to go without it. She couldn’t ride worth a hill of beans—yet—but the girl had grit. It took a special kind of determination to stay on a trotting horse without any reins. For someone who could barely handle stepping off an escalator, Madi took to horseback like a natural.

  As he’d hurried his horse to catch up with her, Cash had to decide whether to pull Madi off Brownie before she came off or to take a more measured approach. In the end he went with the second option, even though his heart had beat wildly and he’d gripped his reins so tight his hands hurt. The thought of anything happening to Madi drove him to the point of desperation, and the burning in his lungs hadn’t stopped until Madi was safe.

  Once he’d rescued her, it had killed him to leave her. What if Brownie took off again on the ride? Brownie knew Cash the best. The horse had a mind of her own, but she always listened to him. He’d been the one to break her. The problem was, Cash knew Madi had the potential to break him—or at least his heart, which still pounded long after he rode away from her to do the “chores” he hoped would put his head back where it needed to be.

  “Let’s go, Scout!” he called, and the dog came bounding back from following the group. Cash didn’t blame him for wanting to go. He was fighting the urge pretty hard himself.

  He did allow himself a last look which lasted until Madi was nothing but a blur with a pink dot on the horizon. Then he took off his hat to run his hand through his hair. Cash was a goner for sure, and the further he stayed from Madi, the better it would be for his heart.

  He needed hard physical labor to take his mind off Madi: working with one of the new broke geldings would do the trick. Nudging his horse into a gallop, Cash steered him toward the barn with Scout bounding at their heels. Cash could always count on Scout to stay close by.

  The bay he caught and led to the corral wasn’t in the mood to be told what to do, and Cash was grateful to the colt for making his job harder. The less he could get distracted, the bett
er.

  For the next three hours, Cash gently prodded the colt with reins, spurs, and whispers to get the young horse to do what Cash wanted. Breaking a horse was more about teaching him what he already instinctively knew, not forcing him to do what the rider wanted. Cash’s favorite thing about ranching was working with the horses. He could talk to horses. And once he’d made friends with a horse, that horse was loyal to him until the end. Lots of people had complimented him on his skill with ponies, but he knew he’d done his job right when a pony was willing to leave the herd when Cash approached. The chipped teeth and broken bones were worth the sense of accomplishment he got when a horse did that.

  When the bay let Cash halter him without complaint, Cash decided to end the lesson for the day. He nuzzled the horse’s mane and neck, telling him what a good job he’d done and thanking him for his cooperation. Then he sent him galloping back to the pasture to join his friends.

  “I love watching you with horses.” Lyla’s voice startled him, and he turned to see her sitting on the top rail of the corral.

  “You oughta get off that rail sometime and help me.” He pulled off his gloves as he walked toward her. “How’d the ride go?”

  “I’ll do the riding and let you do the training. I don’t have your touch.” She jumped down as he approached and followed him toward the barn. “Ride was good.” She took the halter he handed to her and hung it up. “Had an interesting conversation with Madi.”

  Cash opened the cooler they kept in the tack room and grabbed a bottle of water. He took a long sip. Those three hours of not thinking about Madi had been exactly what he needed, but he supposed he wouldn’t have gone much longer even if Lyla hadn’t brought her up. “Is that right?” He screwed the lid back on the bottle then unscrewed it just for something to do. Lyla wouldn’t need any prodding to tell him what she was dying to.

  “She didn’t hear what you said the other night.” Lyla dug her hands in her back pockets and smirked. “She wasn’t blowing you off. She had earbuds in, listening to a meditation app. Don’t you dare roll your eyes at that.”

  Cash waved a fly away and got a whiff of just how hard he’d been working. “I’ve got some hay to bring in. You want to help?” He grabbed a piece of jerky from the saddlebag hanging near him. He always kept some on hand, but today he was hungry enough he wouldn’t have minded going inside for some dinner, except he’d run into Madi, and he needed to sit with what Lyla had said.

  “That’s all you’re going to say? The problem’s fixed.” Lyla opened the flap on his saddlebag and got her own piece of jerky. “She knows you’re a virgin. No big deal.”

  “She what?” Of course his sister had told Madi everything. She couldn’t just leave it where Cash had at being too tired. Nope. Lyla had to tell her everything.

  “She doesn’t care,” Lyla quickly added as Cash tore off a piece of jerky with his teeth and stared at her.

  “Let’s go,” Cash growled and turned his back on her. “Little sisters are the worst.”

  “Fine. Be that way, Mr. Strong and Silent.” Lyla rolled her eyes. Cash knew it without even looking at her. “I’ll help you. But you’re gonna have to listen to everything she told me.”

  “I’ve got some earbuds of my own. Apparently, that’s all I need when I don’t want to hear something. Waves with wind chimes—or some other meditation crap—in the background, that’s all it takes to ignore somebody.” Sometimes Cash’s temper got away from him. This was one of those times. Of course he wanted to know everything Madi had said, but he was letting his ego do the talking, and Ego was pretty banged up from thinking Madi had rejected him to now having her know all his business.

  Cash headed to the new barn without looking back to see if Lyla followed. He was madder at himself than he’d been at Madi. How was he supposed to back down and let Lyla tell him what he wanted to hear without looking like the same kind of idiot he’d been chasing after Lindsey? A decision his baby sister had warned him about.

  “You coming?” he called over his shoulder when he’d almost reached the barn where Early kept all the fancy new equipment. Cash preferred the old hay baler he’d used his whole life before his dad sold out, but Early had been suckered into buying tractors with all the bells and whistles that only made the work slightly faster and a lot less fun. Sitting in an air-conditioned cab didn’t feel natural. Sure, he didn’t get bits of hay blown in his face through the open window, but he also didn’t get engulfed by the intoxicating smell of freshly mown alfalfa.

  “You should give her a chance. She’s nice,” Lyla said when she caught up with him; a fact he didn’t need anyone telling him about Madi. He already knew she was nice.

  “And she’s not Lindsey,” Lyla added, stopping Cash in his tracks. She wrapped her arm through his and nudged him forward. “You gotta put it in the past. Let go of that and being mad at yourself for leaving the ranch. Dad would have sold eventually even if you’d said you wanted to stay. He was tired of the stress, and the money was too good to pass up. Things weren’t going to stay the same, with or without Lindsey.”

  He shook her arm off and walked faster. “She’s not the kind of girl who’d leave LA, and I’m not making the mistake again of thinking I could live there for any woman.” Lyla might have been right about things not staying the same, but that didn’t mean he needed to go looking to upend the last bits of normal left.

  “She’s got more cowgirl in her than you think. Definitely more than Lindsey.” Lyla took a big enough step to hip bump him, then she took off running. “I’m driving! You can load the twine!”

  He could have beat her, but he didn’t want to give her the satisfaction of thinking he wasn’t mad at her for bringing up Lindsey and their dad in the same conversation. In general, those topics were off limits, but talking about the two together was crossing every boundary Cash had. He’d worked hard over the past couple years to forget Lindsey, and it had mostly worked.

  It was harder to forget how he’d told his dad he wasn’t sure if he’d ever come back to the ranch when he followed Lindsey to LA. Dumbest decision he’d ever made. He knew his dad couldn’t run the ranch without him, but he let his heart get in the way of thinking straight. He knew now that he’d never be happy living anywhere else, especially a big city. But it had taken losing the ranch to teach him that.

  So, while he might have been relieved Madi hadn’t purposely shut him out after he opened up to her, he wasn’t quite ready to take that risk again. Flirting had been fun with her, but if he let himself fall for Madi, there’d be no recovering from it. And he was in real danger of falling. That much he knew.

  So while he couldn’t help but be curious about what Madi had said to Lyla, those words were best left alone. Madi obviously wasn’t the marrying kind. She’d made that clear at The Trail’s End. Cash guessed she’d want even less to do with him now that she knew why he’d seemingly rejected her. Letting himself dwell on other possibilities wasn’t really an option. Not when his heart was at stake.

  Lyla had claimed the driver’s seat by the time Cash got to the tractor. She had the door open, watching him as he approached. “She thought it was pretty cool, if that’s what you’re wondering,” she called from her perch. “‘I admire that’ were her exact words. ‘That’s the kind of man I could see spending a lifetime with,’ I think is how she put it.”

  “I don’t need her approval.” He didn’t look at his sister, instead making his way to the baler to make sure they had enough twine, the words “spending a lifetime with” ringing in his ears. “Check that storage box to make sure we’ve got some extra bundles in there,” he yelled back to Lyla, trying to act as normal as possible even if he couldn’t keep his hands steady.

  “Already did. We’re good.”

  “Then start her up.” He was grateful now that he could walk out some of the energy pulsing through him.

  Lyla swung her legs inside the cab, but she didn’t shut the door. “You may not need her approval, but you’re going to have t
o do some work to find a girl willing to marry you if you ever want to fix that condition of yours. I’d be careful finding reasons to write off too many of them.”

  She slammed the door and had the engine roaring before he could answer her. She waved as she pulled out. Cash thought about giving her a one-fingered wave back but stopped himself. He hated it when his little sister bossed him. He hated it even more when she was right.

  Cash hopped on a four-wheeler to follow Lyla to the alfalfa field. When he got there, he walked behind the tractor ready to unravel the twine when it got bunched up. The job was tedious and didn’t work nearly as well as training colts had at keeping his mind off Madi. His brain stayed firmly fixed—no matter how hard he tried—on the idea that Madi liked that he was a virgin. Admired it even. Could see herself with someone like him.

  But could she see herself with him?

  Cash’s stomach dipped, even though he hadn’t hit any bumps.

  Could he see himself with her?

  It was a lot easier picture to paint than he would have thought. Even with her pink hat in that portrait.

  Chapter Twelve

  Madi had a lot of time to think about what Lyla had told her as they followed the well-worn trail from the ranch house to the hills behind it. Once Brownie had her spot at the head of the line right behind Cowboy Owen, she had no interest in running off. Madi could sit back and relax, taking in the scenery while mulling over what she’d learned about Cash.

  He was a virgin? Not that there was anything wrong with that. In fact, it shouldn’t have been as much of a surprise as it was. Lots of people were, she supposed. Just not very many that she knew. At least not anyone over the age of twenty-five.