How to Train a Cowboy Read online

  Lessons in Lassoing

  Though marine hero Benjamin Graham doesn’t know the first thing about ranching, his new job is the lifeline he desperately needs. Without the help of feisty cowgirl Emily Davis, though, he’s lost—in more ways than one. But as their attraction turns combustible, the hardened battle vet turns away from the gorgeous college coed. She might know every inch of her family’s homestead, but Graham doesn’t want her to know his pain.

  Even if the world is Emily’s oyster, all she’s ever wanted is the family ranch. And though rugged new ranch hand Graham seems like an unlikely trainee, he is taking her dreams of running the ranch more seriously than anyone else. As they grow closer during hot days—and nights—working the range, Emily starts to think that maybe the ranch is only a piece of her dream…

  He held her just right, his arms across hers, no accidental brush against her breasts, no awkwardness in trying to avoid touching certain parts of her, either. He’d just come up behind her and enclosed her in his arms, sheltering her from the cold just as he’d sheltered her from the bar fight. It was heaven to be with a man who knew what he was doing.

  Being the helpless one was every bit as addictive as she’d been afraid it would be.

  She was strong and strong-willed—stubborn, her mother called it—and she needed to continue being both if she ever hoped to prove to her family that she belonged in the ranching business.

  But for tonight…

  Right this moment…

  She let herself relax in Graham’s arms. She was tired of proving herself to her family. She was tired of playing the social games at college. For just one night, she wanted to be wanted without having to work for it.

  Nothing would change if she gave herself one night with a man who knew what he was doing.

  * * *

  TEXAS RESCUE:

  Rescuing hearts…one Texan at a time!

  Dear Reader,

  I hope you enjoy reading every page of the book in your hands. I’ve been asked if I enjoy reading my own books. It’s tricky as an author, because I’ll see sentences I wish I could tweak, but it’s like baking a cake. Even when you’re the one who did the work, the finished cake still tastes delicious!

  But…

  Is it enjoyable while I’m writing? It’s magic when I’m so immersed in the book world, I lose track of time. But sometimes, I stare at the computer, convinced I’ve got no idea what I’m doing. I take heart from knowing I’m not the only one, though. We all have moments where we feel like impostors, don’t we?

  The hero of this book, former marine officer Benjamin Graham, feels disconnected from life. He isn’t a failure in the civilian world, but he still feels like that impostor. He’s given up and settles for a ranch hand’s meager pay. The problem is, he really is an impostor when it comes to being a cowboy!

  But…

  Sometimes when we think we don’t know what we’re doing, we’re doing the right thing, after all. For Graham, finding the only ranch hand who has the patience to teach him turns out to be the right thing…because that rancher is the woman who becomes the love of his life.

  I wish us all many happy days of reading, of working and of loving.

  Cheers,

  Caro Carson

  PS: I’d love to hear from you on Facebook or at www.carocarson.com.

  How to Train a Cowboy

  Caro Carson

  Despite a no-nonsense background as a West Point graduate, army officer and Fortune 100 sales executive, Caro Carson has always treasured the happily-ever-after of a good romance novel. As a RITA® Award–winning Harlequin author, Caro is delighted to be living her own happily-ever-after with her husband and two children in Florida, a location which has saved the coaster-loving theme-park fanatic a fortune on plane tickets.

  Books by Caro Carson

  Harlequin Special Edition

  Texas Rescue

  A Cowboy’s Wish Upon a Star

  Her Texas Rescue Doctor

  Following Doctor’s Orders

  A Texas Rescue Christmas

  Not Just a Cowboy

  Montana Mavericks:

  What Happened at the Wedding?

  The Maverick’s Holiday Masquerade

  The Doctors MacDowell

  The Bachelor Doctor’s Bride

  The Doctor’s Former Fiancée

  Doctor, Soldier, Daddy

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  Join Harlequin My Rewards today and earn a FREE ebook!

  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

  http://www.harlequin.com/myrewards.html?mt=loyalty&cmpid=EBOOBPBPA201602010002

  This book is dedicated to

  my fellow Harlequin Special Edition authors.

  Thank you for being the colleagues who understand me, the friends I love to spend time with and the authors who write the stories I love to read.

  Contents

  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

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from The Rancher’s Unexpected Family by Helen Lacey

  Chapter One

  January 2015

  He didn’t belong here, either.

  Graham pushed his empty beer glass toward the bartender and abandoned his bar stool. He hadn’t belonged anywhere in a good, long while. He should have known a honky-tonk bar in Texas would be no different.

  He’d been seduced by the appearance of this bar, he supposed. Something about the way it stood alone on the side of a rural road had caught his eye. The cinder block building was just old enough to prove the bar knew what it took to satisfy its customers, new enough to flaunt a pre-fab extension, all wood and aluminum. If it hadn’t been the look of the building, then Graham would have stopped because the size of the dirt parking lot meant that the place must see enough business to keep its kegs fresh, even if the parking lot and the bar inside had been nearly empty as twilight set in. He hadn’t expected such a fresh-faced crowd to start filling up the place so quickly after dark, though.

  He should have. It was only Thursday, but the University of Texas in Austin was an hour east of here, and the massive army base, Fort Hood, an hour north. The average age inside the bar couldn’t be more than twenty-one, even though it wasn’t yet the weekend. Students and soldiers laughed and drank and tried to shout over a band that played Southern rock far too loudly for the low-ceilinged space.

  No, Graham didn’t belong here.

  Eighteen months ago—a lifetime ago—he’d been Captain Benjamin Graham of the United States Marine Corps. For eight years, he’d served everywhere he was needed, from Japan to Europe, but after his last deployment to Afghanistan, he’d had the distinct feeling he no longer belonged in the military. His body had taken a beating in those years. The daily wear and tear of backpacks and boots had taken as much of a toll as the bursts of adrenaline that kept a Marine from noticing that he was bleedin
g while returning enemy fire.

  But it was more than that.

  Graham had simply known, one average day on an average rifle range while safely stateside, that he was done. He’d proven whatever it was young men had to prove when they volunteered for the service. He’d served his nation and he’d served with good people—but it was time to move on. Graham had submitted the proper paperwork to his chain of command. In short order, he’d gotten his final orders and left.

  Those eight years felt like eighty, sometimes. Like now. Graham worked his way toward the exit, leading with his good shoulder as he snaked his way through the impossibly young crowd. He might have felt like the oldest thing around, but he knew he wasn’t. The three-man band kept riffing—endlessly—on a Lynyrd Skynyrd tune that was older than he was. There were clusters of weathered men here and there, men like his uncle, who’d lived most of his sixty years outdoors, working a ranch.

  The man ahead of him abruptly cut out of the traffic flow to join a group wearing black motorcycle jackets that matched. The biker lowered himself onto a bar stool as if his whole body ached, a feeling Graham knew too well. But the biker had gray in his beard; Graham was thirty. Maybe Graham had seen too much overseas to have anything in common with the young college crowd, but surely he didn’t belong on a bar stool next to that biker. Not yet.

  A woman stumbled into him, one of the college set.

  He caught her with one hand as she glared over her shoulder at the girls who had pushed her into his path. Then she turned her attention to him with a flip of her hair. She bit her lip and checked him out from his eyes all the way low to the zipper of his jeans.

  “Sorry,” she said over the music, with a smile that said she wasn’t sorry at all. Her top was cut low, her breasts were pushed high and she nudged against him as the crowd pushed them together.

  Graham assumed the attention meant he must not look as old as he felt—which changed nothing.

  “No problem.” With an attempt at a polite smile, he turned sideways and stepped around her, leading now with the shoulder he’d shattered on the other side of the world. The shrieks of her girlfriends followed him. He was so not into you carried over the music, and was gone.

  Graham soldiered on. The traffic flow was hampered by the pool table and a foosball game. He spotted another motorcycle jacket, but it sported a different logo than the bearded man’s club. Bikers, college kids, soldiers and locals—too many people in too small a space, with alcohol thrown into the mix. By the time that mix went sour, Graham would be long gone, but since everyone was peaceful for the moment, he changed his target from the exit door to a side hallway that held the restrooms. He didn’t know how far he had left to drive tonight, maybe sixty miles. Best to hit the head while he could.

  There was a line for the bathroom, but at least the hallway was marginally quieter, since it was out of the direct blast of the band’s oversized speakers. Conversation continued all around him as he took his place in line with the men. Women formed a line on the opposite wall, the sexes as segregated as they’d be at a dance in a middle school gym. Each time a person came out of either of the bathrooms, bright light and the sound of running water spilled into the little hallway.

  Graham resisted the reflex of closing one eye at each burst of bright light. This wasn’t a combat zone. He didn’t need to save the night vision in one eye each time the enemy sent up a flare. He let the back of his head rest on the wall and closed both eyes, weary of his own habitual alertness.

  “Come on. Just one drink. I’m buying.” A male voice, cajoling.

  “No, thanks.” A female voice, polite.

  “Don’t be like that. You’re too pretty to pay for your own drinks.”

  Spare me from college hormones.

  Graham had turned thirty this fall on a college campus while in pursuit of an MBA. Although he’d realized pretty quickly that going back to graduate school wasn’t right for him, he’d forced himself to finish the semester. Most of his fellow students had entered straight from their bachelor’s degree programs, which meant they were twenty-one-year-olds like this guy, who was green enough to try to seduce a girl who needed to use a bathroom.

  Graham had quit the MBA program a few weeks ago, at the end of the semester. The university had a nicer name for it; they’d charitably listed him as on sabbatical, but Graham doubted he’d return. He didn’t belong there, with the college boys.

  “Come on,” this college boy said. “Dance with me.”

  She doesn’t want to dance if she’s got to pee, pal.

  If being thirty meant one had lived long enough to gain a few scars, it also meant one had gained some practical wisdom—or at least better control over one’s hormones. Either way, he was grateful that he wasn’t desperate enough to pursue a woman in a bathroom line. Graham opened his eyes and took the burst of bright light as the door opened.

  “You gotta forgive me sooner or later,” the young man said, managing to whine and laugh at the same time. “Come on, let me see that pretty smile. You want to smile for me, Em, I know you do.”

  Graham glanced at the man: button-down shirt, blond hair, tanned skin that said he’d probably spent the Christmas holidays somewhere tropical. The look on his face wasn’t confidence but cockiness.

  The woman whom the man seemed to think owed him a smile had her back to Graham. He let his gaze follow her dark brown hair as it flowed over the large, loose ruffles of her light blue dress, stray curls detouring on their own little paths here and there. Her hair fell all the way to the small of her back, capturing what light there was along the way, lustrous with youth and health.

  The door shut, leaving them all in the dark.

  Em, the man had called her. They knew one another.

  “Why don’t you go back to Mike and Doug?” This Em spoke almost like a teacher, not shrill, no giggles—a teacher whose patience was being tested as she tried to redirect a student’s attention to something more appropriate. “I’ll stop by in a minute and say hi. You don’t want to stand in line here with me.”

  “I’m not leaving until you say yes.” The man leaned in closer. “Come on. Say it. One little yes. You won’t regret it.”

  Graham felt older than ever. Had he ever been that cocky? At what age did a man learn that persistence was annoying, not charming?

  Then the ladies’ room door opened again, the woman turned away from the college guy, and in the sudden bright light, Graham saw her face.

  For one moment in time, just one suspended moment, Graham stopped thinking. The Marines, the bar, the MBA, everywhere he’d been, everywhere he was going, everything just ceased for a moment of blessed...interest. He looked at her, and he wanted to know her.

  She was beautiful. Of course she was, but there was something about her, something that appealed beyond an oval face and pink lips and the smooth skin of a young woman, something in her expression—it felt like morning, to see her face in the bright light. For the first time in years, something, someone in the world, was interesting.

  Their eyes met and held for a fraction of time, but then she blinked and turned back to the man who stood too close to her.

  The guy poked the corner of her mouth with one finger. “Smile for me, baby.”

  She stepped backward.

  Graham stepped forward.

  Her back was to him, so he doubted she knew he was standing behind her like some kind of bodyguard, but he stayed where he was. She didn’t want to be touched by that guy. The way she’d jerked out of his reach made that obvious. She didn’t even want to talk to the guy, but she was being too polite about it.

  Women were too polite too often, something Graham had realized after playing wingman to an endless number of Marine buddies over the years. The awkward chuckle, the gentle no, thank you, the drink or the dance they ended up accepting although they didn’t really wan
t it at all—these were common ways women dealt with unwanted attention.

  They shouldn’t have to. How old did a woman have to be before she skipped right to telling a persistent creep to go to hell?

  “Go to hell,” said the woman in ruffles.

  Graham looked at the back of her head and almost smiled.

  The college guy looked surprised. “Don’t be like that, Em. You’ve gotten all uptight, haven’t you, without getting any—”

  “Go to hell.” She didn’t raise her voice. “We’re through. We’ve been through. We’re always going to be through. I don’t want to drink, and I don’t want to dance. Leave me alone.”

  She turned her back on the guy, but since she hadn’t known Graham was so close behind her, she nearly collided with him, her cheek grazing past his chin.

  “Oh, sorry.” Her apology was automatic, a reflex.

  He put a hand out to steady her, also reflexively. But over her head, he locked gazes with the other guy deliberately.

  “I heard her,” Graham said. “Didn’t you?”

  The guy glanced at the way Graham kept his hand on her arm, and he hesitated—his first smart move. For all the guy’s youth, he was still a grown man, only an inch shorter than Graham, but there was nothing he could do that Graham could not counter, bad shoulder or not. That wasn’t cockiness; that was confidence, earned the hard way, year after year in the Marine Corps.

  Think about it, pal, before you put another finger on her.

  Graham waited, hand lightly resting on her soft skin so he could get her out of the way if push came to shove.

  Another opening of the door, another burst of light. The woman called Em nodded politely at Graham and stepped around him, her ruffles and soft hair whispering past his shoulder. Then she was gone inside, disappearing along with the light as the door slammed shut.

  The woman who’d exited the ladies’ room drawled an approving hello in the dark as she rubbed her way past Graham to head back into the crowd. His night vision was shot, but he didn’t need it to know the college guy had made the smart choice and beat a retreat.