Big Bad Cowboy Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2018 by Carol Pavliska

  Excerpt from Book Title tk copyright © 2018 by Carol Pavliska

  Cover photography by Rob Lang, design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes. Cover copyright © 2018 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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  First Edition: October 2018

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  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-6343-8 (mass market), 978-1-5387-6342-1 (ebook)

  E3-20180530-DANF

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Epilogue

  A Preview of Cowboy Come Home!

  About the Author

  Newsletters

  To Jeff, my real-life cowboy. You and your boots, cargo shorts, and Red Hot Chili Peppers T-shirt just plain do it for me.

  Acknowledgments

  It takes a village just to get me out of the house before noon. It took a global network of enablers to help me write Big Bad Cowboy.

  Extra special thanks to my B Team—Amy Bearce, Alison Bliss, and Samantha Bohrman. You long-suffering ladies read every version of this manuscript with a bottle of wine and a stress ball. I see right through your empty threats of Never Again! and I know you’ll be there for the next This Has to Be Fixed Right Now crisis. How awesome is that (for me)?

  Thank you to Jessica Snyder for coming all the way to Texas for a taco-eating brainstorming session and for introducing me to the hilarious Pippa Grant! You make writing fun. And to Erin Quinn—I’d be a nobody without you! Thank you for “discovering” me.

  Warm hugs and kisses to my reading group, Carly’s Bloomers, and to my fellow SARA’s in San Antonio Romance Authors. You inspire me every day.

  Thank you to my wonderful agent, Paige Wheeler, for working so hard on my behalf. I still remember our first phone call, and how Freddy Mercury crowed his wicked heart out the moment I said hello. I might have been your first client to apologize for her rooster.

  Thank you to Michele Bidelspach for letting me know that Travis’s secret dream was to be a real cowboy. He’d have no hat without you!

  And thank you to my editor, Madeleine Colavita, for pretending I don’t have an italics problem. Your invaluable wisdom and guidance brought Maggie and Travis to life. Please don’t ever stop dropping smiley-face bombs on my manuscripts. And to everyone else at Grand Central Publishing, especially Joan Mathews, huntress of dangling modifiers, thank you for knowing what you’re doing!

  Extra special thanks to my family. You are my world, and without your faith and support, I’d never reach The End.

  Finally, thank you to my readers. You complete me.

  Chapter One

  White caliche dust clung to Travis Blake’s boots as he slammed the squeaky door on the mailbox. Or tried to anyway. It was smashed nearly flat, because not much had changed in Big Verde, Texas, during the twelve years he’d been gone. There were still a few idiots who thought it was fun to hang out of truck windows while blasting down dirt roads taking out mailboxes with baseball bats.

  Travis stuck the mail under his arm—he’d face whatever holy hell it contained when he got back to the house—and squinted up and down the dirt road. Whoever had destroyed his mailbox was long gone. He added Replace mailbox to his endless mental list of things to do and headed for his truck idling on the road.

  He dumped the stack of mail on the center console and put the truck in Drive, just as a small voice piped up from the backseat.

  “Uncle Travis, you’re not s’posed to leave me in the truck while it’s runnin’.”

  Travis jerked and looked over the seat, blinking slowly until reality clicked into place like a steel vault door. It had been eight weeks since he’d gotten out of the Army with meticulous plans for the rest of his life, and six weeks since those plans had been annihilated by a phone call from a social worker.

  Six weeks since he’d met his nephew, Henry, for the first time.

  “You were fine. You couldn’t get out of that contraption you’re buckled into to save your soul. And even if you did, why would you be stupid enough to try to drive the truck?”

  “Because I’m a kid!”

  Travis didn’t have much experience with children, but Henry struck him as being smarter than the average five-year-old, which was probably the very worst kind of five-year-old.

  Henry kicked the back of Travis’s seat because he knew Travis hated it, and Travis clenched his jaw and ignored it because he knew Henry hated that. He slowly drove up to the big iron gate adorned by the ranch’s brand, an H with a rising T in the shape of a horseshoe.

  When Travis was thirteen, his father, Ben Blake, moved him and his brother from a trailer park on the outskirts of Houston to the two-hundred-acre Texas Hill Country ranch known as Happy Trails. Rags to riches. And often back again. That was high-stakes professional poker in a nutshell.

  Being a naive kid, Travis had thought all three of them would immediately become real cowboys. His dad had even bought him a black gelding named Moonshine, who he’d promptly lost in a bet. The only thing the man had ever managed to hold on to was the ranch. Which was good, because Travis intended to sell it.

  “Mrs. Garza says you don’t know what you’re doing,” Henry said, seeking another button to push.

  “Well, thank God for Mrs. Garza,” Travis said. And he meant it, too. If it wa
sn’t for Mrs. Garza taking care of Henry after school and on weekends while Travis did light landscaping work, he didn’t know what he’d do. His final pay from the Army was being held up in a tangle of bureaucratic red tape, and he couldn’t start his new job in Austin until he’d tied up the loose ends at Happy Trails. He glanced at Henry in the rearview mirror. The child was more of a thrashing, uncontrollable projectile than a dangling loose end. It was hard not to feel sorry for him, though. Henry’s daddy was currently a guest at the Texas State Penitentiary in Huntsville. And his mama had just died of ovarian cancer.

  The social worker seemed to think Travis was Henry’s only living kin not serving time behind bars.

  Yep. Definitely hard not to feel sorry for the kid.

  Travis pushed the remote on the visor and waited for the gate to open.

  And waited.

  “Goddammit.”

  “That’s a bad word,” Henry spouted.

  The remote for the gate didn’t work. Travis got out—turned off the fucking truck so Henry wouldn’t chide him about it—and trudged over to open the gate manually. A white piece of paper flapped in the breeze.

  YOU ARE IN VIOLATION OF AGRICULTURAL CODE 246.4B AGAIN. IT IS NOT MY RESPONSIBILITY TO KEEP YOUR COWS OFF MY PROPERTY. IT IS YOURS. FIX YOUR DANG FENCES.

  Travis yanked the note off the gate, crumpled it up, and dropped it.

  “Litterbug!”

  Henry was in prime form. He’d fallen asleep in the car seat, something he invariably did about three minutes before they got wherever it was they were going. Stopping the truck was like poking a nest of hornets, and that’s why Travis had left it idling.

  He leaned over and grabbed the wadded piece of paper, held it up for Henry to see, and then shoved it in his pocket. The gate groaned loudly as he pushed it to the post and hitched it on the wire. Then he got back in the truck, started it, drove through the gate, stopped the truck, turned the goddam thing off while giving Henry the evil eye, and climbed out to close the gate behind him.

  By the time he finally got back in, an audience had lined up on either side of the lane; young bulls on one side and heifers on the other. At least those fence lines were holding. The same couldn’t be said for the one separating his east pasture from Honey Mackey’s apple orchard. The crazy old lady kept leaving him threatening notes. He’d patched the fence multiple times, but it didn’t hold. It needed to be completely replaced. The only things required were time and money, both of which were in short supply.

  The herd followed them along as they drove up the lane, even though the bed of the truck was loaded with a lawnmower and a weed whacker—tools of his temporary trade—and not hay. Henry waved at the cows until the truck turned left at the split and continued up to the house.

  The windmill rose above the trees as they hit the top of the hill, and Travis automatically depressed the accelerator at the tug of its familiar silhouette. His dad, always full of cowboy dictums, had said windmills made a horse’s hooves trot a little faster and a man’s heart long for hearth and home. The effect it had on Travis was surprising, since neither hearth nor home had ever quite risen to the occasion.

  Unlike the windmill, the sight of the house stirred no warm, fuzzy feels. The attic windows stared angrily, like a glowering monster. A new coat of paint would probably do wonders. Make the place more Southern Living and less Amityville Horror.

  “Let me out!” Henry said. Then he convulsed and rocked in his seat until Travis reached back and sprung him.

  “Stay out of the cookies. You’ve got to eat supper first.”

  Henry jumped down, leaving supper—a greasy paper bag from the drive-thru hamburger joint—on the seat next to his backpack. It was the best Travis could do after a long day at work, where he’d grubbed, dug, and planted at the Village Chateau, the fanciest hotel in Big Verde. And when he was done with all that, he’d helped get the place ready for Annabelle Vasquez’s Halloween party. She’d kept a watchful eye on him as he’d installed a fake graveyard and set up a pumpkin patch. He’d politely turned down the invitation Anna had offered when he left. He didn’t much care for parties, and this one seemed especially awful as it required a costume. He shivered at the thought as he followed Henry through the back door.

  Anna had also invited him to bid on a landscaping project for her new house. He’d turned that down, too. For one thing, he didn’t intend to remain in Big Verde long enough to complete a lavish Annabelle-style project that he was woefully unqualified to install. For another, it wasn’t a good idea to work for someone you’d slept with.

  * * *

  Fishnet thigh-high stockings with silly bows on the back and a skirt so short it might be illegal—both in red. Maggie sighed. Why had she trusted Claire to rent a Halloween costume for her? She kicked off her sensible shoes and tossed her jacket on the bed while eyeing her best friend and co-worker, who had never owned a pair of sensible shoes in her life. With dark auburn hair and curves right out of a 1950s lingerie catalog, Claire was the opposite of Maggie, who looked more like your average little sister. Or—she ran her hands over the area where most women had hips—your average little brother.

  “What do you think?” Claire asked. One corner of her mouth twitched. She knew exactly what Maggie thought and was clearly enjoying the hell out of it.

  “Were they all out of stormtrooper costumes?”

  Claire rolled her eyes and then held up a microscopic wisp of fabric with laces. “This is going to look fantastic on you. Way better than a stormtrooper costume.”

  “Is that a corset?”

  Maggie had never seen a corset in real life, much less worn one. Maybe it would give her some curves if she yanked those laces real tight…

  “Red will look great with your platinum blond hair.”

  “It’s dirty blond, not platinum, and red washes me out. Also, stop trying so hard.”

  She took the corset from Claire and held it up against her yellow work polo with the green Petal Pushers logo. Pop, her blue-haired French bulldog, gave a bark of approval.

  “I’m not trying. This will look great on you.” Claire lifted a few strands of Maggie’s hair out of her eyes. “And you call this pixie cut dirty blond?”

  “Well, it’s not platinum.” Depending on how much Maggie was outdoors—which was a lot since she was a landscaper—her hair color ran the full gamut of sun-streaked caramel to light blond. People thought it was lighter than it was because of her ridiculously dark eyebrows and brown eyes. “And it’s not a pixie cut,” Maggie added, tossing her bangs out of her eyes. “A pixie cut is a hair-do and I don’t do dos. Anyway, I can’t wear this costume. It’s demeaning.”

  “It’s sexy. You can’t clunk around a client’s masked gala in a stormtrooper costume.”

  The client was Annabelle Vasquez, who was doing her best to spend a recent divorce settlement. “Would you stop referring to this silly Halloween party as a masked gala?”

  “That’s what the invitation said.”

  Annabelle was a pretentious snob. But Maggie really wanted to do the landscaping for the McMansion she’d plunked on top of the highest hill in Big Verde. It would be a challenge to make something out of that mound of limestone, but Maggie was looking forward to it. It wasn’t often that she was able to work on a project in this small town that utilized her master of landscape architecture degree from Texas A&M.

  “Travis Blake better not bid on that job,” she said.

  A couple of months ago it would have been a given for Petal Pushers, the garden center and landscape business Maggie owned, to win the contract. But now she had competition. Travis Blake. Just the thought of him made her shudder in revulsion.

  “He’s been aggressive about getting business since moving back to Big Verde,” Claire said. “So, I’m actually not surprised.”

  “He’s nothing but a glorified lawn boy,” Maggie grumbled. “He’s not remotely qualified, and besides, I bet his landscaping business isn’t even a legit operation. You know he’s
an ex-con, right? He’s probably a bookie, and the landscaping thing is just a front.” She didn’t know what a bookie did, but it was something shady and involved gambling, which was a known Blake family vice.

  “I don’t think it’s a front,” Claire said, picking up the micro-skirt Maggie was expected to squeeze into and holding it up to her own frame. “And besides, he’s not an ex-con. You’re thinking of his brother, Scott.”

  Nice boys, those Blake brothers. One of them—Maggie didn’t even know which—had married Lisa Henley, knocked her up, and then, in the words of Maggie’s dear dead grandmother, Honey Mackey, That boy done run oft.

  Lisa had recently passed away, leaving behind a young child. Maybe that was why Travis was back. The kid must be his.

  “Maybe you could take him a pie,” Claire continued. “And sit down like neighbors to discuss his power grab.”

  Maggie laughed at the audacity of taking Travis Blake a pie. And only a girl like Claire, raised on a twelve-thousand-acre ranch, would consider Maggie and Travis neighbors. Maggie couldn’t even see the Blake house from hers. And unbelievably, she hadn’t seen Travis either. She wouldn’t know him if he held a door for her while tipping his hat. Although she doubted he was that polite.

  “You really shouldn’t mess with him the way you do,” Claire said. “You know, just in case he is every bit as horrible as you like to imagine.”

  “I don’t mess with him. I leave informative notes on his gate. He needs to keep his scraggly cows on his side of the fence.” She smirked and added, “I quoted agricultural codes.”

  “You know agricultural codes?”

  “No, but I’m betting he doesn’t either.”

  Claire crossed her arms over her ample bosom. “You weren’t terribly bothered by the cows getting into Honey’s apple orchard before Travis got here. I think you’re just itching for a fight with a Blake boy.”

  Grandma Honey had engaged in an epic battle of wills with Ben Blake over the damn cows getting in her apple orchard. But when he’d passed away four years ago, and Lisa and her baby had moved into the ranch house, Honey had merely chased the cows back in with a broom and a few choice words, because That girl’s got enough problems.