When his best friend Wesley orders up a mail order bride, Everett leaves Hard Luck Ranch for good. Or so he thinks…until he realises that there may be room in their marriage for one more.
Emma came out West to marry a man she’s never met but she’s already fallen in love with Wesley through their letters. Life at his home, Hard Luck Ranch, is far better than she ever imagined with a loving husband and a prosperous farm. The only hiccup in her plans for the future is Wes’ best friend, the local sheriff Everett Montgomery, who may share more than a boyhood with her husband.
Everett is trying to drown his misery over his friend’s marriage with shots at the local saloon and sex with the local madam’s brother, Kenneth. But Ken isn’t Wes, the man Everett has loved since he was old enough to know what love was. While Everett loses himself in his heartache, he stays away from the ranch. But he doesn’t expect Emma to come out to find him—nor does he realize that she’s guessed his secret.
Emma loves her husband dearly and she wants him to be happy, even if it means sharing him with Everett. But will the sexy lawman be willing to accept her as part of the bargain?
Publisher's Note: This story has been previously released as part of the Lasso Lovin' anthology by Totally Bound Publishing.
General Release Date: 27th June 2014
Hard Luck Ranch.
The name was supposed to say it all, Emma guessed. Hard Luck for its owner, no doubt, trying to scrabble a living out of a few hundred acres of land. And tough luck for her, who had no choice but to come here.
The path to the ranch was certainly hard enough. The wagon on which she was perched had only a plain wooden board in place of a seat and the entire structure bounced mercilessly over each rocky turn in the road. Several times she’d predicted that she would simply be pitched bodily over the side, but each time she credited the driver’s skilled handling of the lone nag as they managed to stay upright for mile after lonely mile.
Emma held onto her hat, now viciously mangled from the dry wind and sharp eddies of dust that blew into her face every minute or so. She tried to picture her home back in New York State. Her father’s home, truly, and now, more than anything, her stepmother’s.
The image of warmth and genteel comfort would not come.
Perhaps it had never existed. What warmth had been in her life had been in the form of her lovely young mother, now more of a vague sense than an actual memory. She’d died when Emma was three and her father had mourned long and earnestly, leaving Emma to be raised by a succession of governesses.
She’d been neglected, she realised now when she looked back over her last twenty motherless years. But she’d forgiven her father almost before she recognised her right to a grievance. Her mother had been his childhood love. They’d grown up next to each other and been betrothed since they were old enough to be considered of marriageable age. An age Emma herself was now well past, as her stepmother delighted in reminding her.
Emma lifted her chin and with that gesture she nearly lost hold of her precious hat.
Well, she’d shown Mabel, hadn’t she? She managed to get married all on her own—and forever escape from Mabel’s terrible suffocating presence.
“Hold on,” the taciturn driver told her as he made another sharp turn for no reason at all, as far as Emma could see.
She held onto the side of the wagon for dear life.
Yes, she’d gotten herself married. Why was it that the idea that had seemed so good in New York looked so miserable here in Texas?
* * * *
“This is the most stupid idea you’ve ever had, Wes, and no doubt about it.”
Wesley Miller peered at his reflection in the wavery-looking glass and adjusted his string tie once again. It was his best one, with a wide silver clasp, but it—and him—felt woefully inadequate at the moment.
And it didn’t help that his only friend in the world seemed to think the same.
Wes turned away from the mirror. He could hardly make out his own face in the battered glass so what was the point in trying?
“Come on, Ev, give it a rest now,” he said to his friend. “I need to do this.”
“A wife?” Everett Montgomery practically spat the word out. “There are plenty of substitutes for one in town. No need for you to shackle yourself to a strange woman you’ve never met for no reason at all.”
“There is a reason,” Wes said softly, looking around his house.
It was large and so new that the boards were still bright and yellow, not yet faded to the mellow gray colour of every other house surrounding the town. But the vast rooms were bare and unsightly, kept only minimally clean by his housekeeper, Dorry Jenkins.
The house needed the tender care of a woman. And so did he.
Nan Comargue is a romance and erotic romance writer who has been reading romance novels all her life. She prefers sexy confident heroes who win over slightly introverted heroines (read: nerdish types) but she writes about everything from angel-warriors to cowboy ménage.
Nan blogs about her writing journey and other interesting topics (zombies!) here but lately she tweets more than she blogs (and sometimes more than she writes).
Nan is Canadian, eh?
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