Accidental Cowgirl
Read Accidental Cowgirl Online
Authors: Maggie McGinnis
Accidental Cowgirl
is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or locales is entirely coincidental.
A Loveswept eBook Original
Copyright © 2013 by Maggie McGinnis
Author photograph © 2013 Geoffrey McLoughlin
Excerpt from
After the Kiss
by Lauren Layne copyright © 2013 by Lauren Layne
Excerpt from
Slow Summer Burn
by Elisabeth Barrett copyright © 2013 by Elisabeth Barrett
Excerpt from
Claimed
by Stacey Kennedy copyright © 2013 by Stacey Kennedy
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House LLC, a Penguin Random House Company, New York.
L
OVESWEPT
is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Random House LLC.
Cover photograph: George Kerrigan
This book contains excerpts from the forthcoming books
After the Kiss
by Lauren Layne,
Slow Summer Burn
by Elisabeth Barrett, and
Claimed
by Stacey Kennedy. These excerpts have been set for this edition only and may not reflect the final content of the forthcoming editions.
v3.1
To my sweeties—big, small, and in between
You are my everything
Contents
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36Chapter 1
“Roadkill?
Again
?” Kyla braked to steer around the third animal in as many miles, but this time, the ancient rental car jolted the other way, yanking her hands right off the wheel as it beelined for the carcass.
“Eww! No! Bad car!” She stomped on the brake pedal with both feet, but instead of slowing down, the car jerked back to the right with an ominous clunking sound that grew louder as she death-gripped the wheel. For a long half-mile she thought
she
might be the next body to litter this deserted Montana highway, but finally she managed to muscle the car to a stop in the breakdown lane. A loud hiss preceded another thump, and as the car leaned suddenly to the right, steam billowed from the hood. She looked in the rearview mirror, fully expecting to see pieces of metal strewn in a path behind her, but the highway was empty.
She whacked the wheel. “Seriously, car? You couldn’t think of a more original way to die?”
Kyla looked out the open driver’s-side window, where the shimmering August sun was heading toward the horizon. Perfect. It was about to be dark, she was still probably an hour south of the rent-a-ranch, and now her lemon of a rental car had imploded.
Never take the last car on the lot
, she could almost hear Gramps chiding her.
There’s a reason it’s still sitting there
. She sighed, wishing he had added,
And also, never agree to marry a man who’s planning to steal millions of dollars, send it to the Caymans, and set you up to take the fall
.
For a moment, she pictured the seedy hotel she’d spotted as the plane landed at the tiny airport. Even with hourly rates and a neon sign missing half its letters, it was looking better right now than this barren landscape. Too bad it was now two hours behind her and she had no way of knowing what was between here and the dude ranch her two best friends had booked for the next two weeks.
She dug her phone and AAA card out of her carry-on, but the phone’s empty bars just taunted her. Uh-oh. No signal. Prickles spiked the crown of her head, creeping downward toward her ears as she looked at the empty landscape. She tried to force her shoulders to relax as she
exhaled again.
It was okay. She could handle this. It was just a little case of Dead Car. On a deserted highway. In freakin’ God’s Country, Montana, which was only about twenty-five hundred miles from her tiny Boston apartment. No problem.
She pushed the door open and stepped out gingerly to check the car, hoping maybe there was a way to milk it to the next town if she drove really, really slowly. The steam was clearing, but as she came around the rear, she saw that the back tire was so deflated the rim was practically touching the gravel shoulder of the road. She looked down at her silk blouse, pencil skirt, and heeled sandals. She was still dressed for court, not for doing a tire change on a dusty highway.
She took a deep breath and pulled on the trunk latch, trying to keep the panic at bay. So she was alone. So it was getting dark. She wasn’t helpless. She knew how to change a tire. She didn’t need any big, strapping AAA mechanic, right?
She opened the trunk and sighed as she viewed the contents. Her friend Hayley had promised big skies, fun, and cowboys. Kyla looked back at the setting sun, then up at the pink clouds. Big skies? Check. Too bad they were getting darker by the minute. Fun? Not yet. Cowboys? One with a lug wrench would be really handy right about now.
Once she had Gramps’s old army duffels lined up on the grass, she reached into the trunk and pulled on the loop that should have revealed the spare. Instead, all she found in the wheel well was a pile of fluff that looked suspiciously like a mouse nest. She shuddered and closed the hatch before a set of twitchy whiskers could appear.
Kyla walked around to the right side of the car to take another look at the tire, wondering how far she could get on just the rim. No way was she going to sit out here on this highway all night long with no way to get hold of anyone. How long would Hayley and Jess wait before they got worried and came looking for her?
She grimaced. When she’d called from the airport, they’d been headed out on a twilight trail ride. They wouldn’t get back to the ranch and find her missing until after dark.
Kyla muscled the duffels back into the trunk and slammed it shut, taking in one of the deep breaths her PTSD therapist was always advising. At least this time, she wasn’t trapped
inside
her car at the bottom of a ravine. At least
this
time, she could still walk. At least
this
time, her fiancé—ex-fiancé, that is—was in jail, rather than emptying her bank accounts while she lay unconscious in the hospital. So really, she was ahead of the game, right?
She glanced toward the sunset, trying to estimate how much daylight she had left. Unfortunately, she was used to gauging time by where the sun was in relation to the Prudential building, not an actual horizon. It looked like there was nothing but rolling prairie between her and the mountains in the distance.
She kicked off her heels and hoisted herself up on the trunk to see if she could get a better view from up higher. “Damn, damn, double damn,” she muttered as she looked around. The view was stunning, and if circumstances were different, she’d be awed by the darkening grass rippling toward the jagged Rockies.
As it was, she tried not to think about just how many animals emerged out here at dusk, hoping for a human-sized snack. She clambered up the back windshield to the roof, hoping against hope that she’d see something useful from that vantage point, but no. Still just grass.
Kyla looked up at the purpling sky and decided to try out her very rusty praying skills. “If I promise to be really, really good this entire vacation, could you please just send someone to help me, like maybe one of those cowboys in the brochure?” Right. Like those existed outside of a Madison Avenue studio shoot.
As she circled slowly on the roof, a low hum made her jump. She peered back toward where she’d come as the hum slowly grew louder. She thought she could see a dust cloud coming her way. Oh, happy day. She was saved.
As a rusty blue truck crested the rise behind her, she waved crazily from the roof of the car. There really was no way the driver could miss her, but she wasn’t taking any chances. The sun was hitting the windshield just right, and she couldn’t tell who was behind the wheel, but she caught her breath when she saw a blue light flashing as the truck pulled up behind her car.
Kyla’s chest constricted as she froze, watching the blue light spin. Visions of Wes’s arrest catapulted through her brain in painful slow motion, followed by flashes of the days she’d spent in an airless interrogation room. It had been like a made-for-TV movie with the acrid-smelling coffee, the blazing lights, and even the good cop–bad cop routine.
She forced herself to puff out little rhythmic breaths as she heard the truck door creak. She needed to calm down. She was in Montana, for God’s sake. Wes was in jail. She’d been found innocent. They weren’t after her anymore. She didn’t need to be afraid. Maybe, just maybe, she was about to be rescued by a handsome Western lawman.
The driver’s-side door opened fully and a wizened old man eased himself out of the
truck. He was dressed in wrinkled khaki pants and a leaf-print golf shirt that looked like it might be more at home in Florida than Montana. Her lawman fantasy quickly fizzled.
As he shut the door, he shook his head. “Lady, what in tarnation you doin’ on top o’ your car? Did you see a bear?”
“Bear?!” Her voice came out in an
eep
! “No. No bear. I have a flat tire.”
“So you got on top o’ your car?” His hands stayed near his gun belt while he studied her, but she couldn’t tell whether he had a gun.
Was this how cops dressed in Montana? Where was his uniform? “I don’t have a spare. I was just trying to see if I could see something besides … grass from up here.”
“And
do
you see anything besides grass?” He strode up to the driver’s side of her rental car, eyeing it suspiciously.
“Besides the Rockies on the other side of it? No, not really.”
“Huh.” He looked at her quizzically. “How ’bout you come down from there and we’ll check out that tire?”
“Oh, thank you. I’m so relieved you came along.” Kyla slid gingerly down the windshield on her rear end, then scooted down the hood, wincing at the dirt she was probably collecting on her backside. As she jumped off the bumper, her right leg buckled and she lost her balance, swaying for a long moment.