“I know.” She laughed.
“Will you marry me? I don’t have a ring right now. But I’ll get you any ring you want. Just say that you’ll make me the happiest man alive and become my wife.”
She seemed pretty shocked that I had slid down on one knee as was asking her to be my wife. But it hadn’t happened overnight, and I knew she was the right one. I knew long before that moment and I wanted her to know it to.
“Yes,” she said with a sultry smile. “I’ll be your Mrs. Levy.”
“Yes!” I screamed as I grabbed her into my arms and hugged her.
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COWBOY BOSS
By Claire Adams
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2017 Claire Adams
Chapter One
Pete
Friday
I kicked back in my chair and put my feet up on the porch railing. This was my favorite time of day: right after breakfast, reading the paper I picked up in town after rustling up some breakfast, sipping on a mug of stale coffee with my scrappy old mutt lying next to me. It was going to get hot and sticky later in the afternoon, but right now, the weather was mild with a light breeze. Just the way I liked it, in other words.
“You ever do any work, Pete?”
I looked up to see Lacey standing on the bottom step up to the porch, grinning like the troublemaker she was. She had on the usual — a worn flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up past her elbows, a pair of blue jeans, and her old brown cowboy boots. Her light hair was pulled back and hidden beneath her dusty cowboy hat, nothing but a thick yellow braid sticking out of the back. She was one of the best riders in the county, male or female, and she knew her way around a ranch.
“A man’s got to stay up on current events,” I said, smiling, too. “There’s coffee inside if you want it.”
She stepped up onto the porch, bent to scratch Riley behind the ear, and took the seat next to me. “I don’t want any of that stale crap you call coffee.”
“Suit yourself.” That meant more for me, anyway.
“You have to be the only twenty-eight-year-old who actually reads the newspaper. My granddaddy doesn’t even read it, and he’s nearly eighty.”
Laughing, I went back to looking at my paper, even though I knew I wasn’t going to get much reading done with her around. “Ain’t nothing wrong with reading the paper. I don’t have time to read anything else with how busy the ranch keeps me.”
She sat back in her chair, stretching her long legs so she could rest her heels on the porch railing, too. “I sure was sorry to see Sandy go.”
“Yep,” I said, dipping my head into a nod. “Me, too.” Sandy was a quarter horse Lacey’d trained from the
time she came to the ranch as a gun-shy filly. She'd left a top notch, fearless barrel racer. I tried to keep from getting too attached to the horses we raised and sold here, but Sandy had been a favorite of mine. It had been hard letting her go. But I couldn’t turn down the money she’d fetched. I had to keep this ranch up and running. That sometimes meant making hard choices.
“I’ve got a new one coming in,” I said, looking over at Lacey. She was staring out at the field. It was second thing in the morning, so the horses weren’t out there yet. “I just bought a colt from a rancher outside of Dallas. He’s spirited, I’m told.” I took a sip of my lukewarm coffee. “I’m driving out there tomorrow, if you want to ride along.”
“Hell no,” she replied, that troublemaking grin on her face again, her brown eyes squinting at me as her eyebrows scrunched down. She had a spray of freckles traveling from one side of her nose to the other, but none on her tanned cheeks and forehead. “I have no interest in running up to Dallas and back again in one day, especially not with all the work that needs doing around here. I’ll help train the new colt once you get him, though.”
“I’d hope to hell so. Why else am I paying you?”
She gave a deep belly laugh and reached to sock me in the arm. She was skinny but solid, so her fists packed a punch. “You’re lucky I like you, Pete Gains, or I’d leave you to make the big bucks at some other ranch.”