The Last Cowboy. Lindsay McKenna
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Shorty said, “The doc said if her mare’s conformation was okay, she wanted to hire you to train both of them for level one riding.”
Nodding, Slade interpreted this as money coming into his coffers to keep the bank at bay. He had weekly training sessions with nine male students. He knew how to get a horse ready for an endurance ride, whether it was a twenty, fifty or a hundred-mile challenge. And he also knew how to get the rider in shape, as well. “Okay, that sounds good. She got a background in endurance racing?”
“A little,” Shorty hedged. “I really didn’t get into much of a discussion with her on that, Boss. I figure you’ll sort it out with her when she arrives here this afternoon.”
“Okay,” Slade said. Tucking the paper with the doctor’s name and phone number into his dark red cotton cowboy shirt pocket, he said, “Let’s get back to work. We need to start separating the calves from their mothers, branding and vaccinating them.” That would be a weeklong activity. And Slade only had one wrangler. He worked from four in the morning to midnight every day. And every hour of daylight was precious.
“Right,” Shorty murmured, following him to where their horses were tied to the corral fence.
As Slade mounted his buckskin quarter horse, Dude, his mind wandered back to Dr. Jordana Lawton for just a second. Slightly curious if she was a good endurance prospect, Slade hoped that it would work out so he had more money flowing in. He’d find out soon enough.
JORDANA LAWTON carefully negotiated the rutted dirt road. She drove her dark blue Ford three-quarterton pickup truck as if she was driving over hens’ eggs. Behind her in a dark blue two-horse trailer was her gray mustang mare, Stormy. One never took a deeply rutted road with a horse trailer at a high speed. It would bounce the horse around so much that it could either cause an injury or send the animal into a frantic emotional state akin to trauma.
And trauma was something Jordana knew inside and out as an emergency-room physician. Glancing at the clock on the dash, she knew she was going to be late. She hadn’t anticipated the dirt road being in such bad shape, but thunderstorms coming over the Tetons last week had made a gooey mire of every ranch road in the valley. And she wasn’t going to hurry in order to get there on time. Slade McPherson, the national-champion endurance rider and trainer, would just have to wait.
The windows were down in the cab, and her shoulder-length black hair flew in wisps across her face. Jordana pulled the errant strands away and then placed both hands back on the steering wheel. In the two years that she had lived in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she had come to find that the majority of ranch roads in the valley were not paved. Most of the owners had a tractor, and they would drive out with a blade attached and smooth out the ruts.
Frowning, her focus on her driving, she worried that Stormy might lose her footing on the thick rubber mats. Jordana wanted this experience for the mare to be a good one. It only took one bad ride in a trailer to spook some horses. After that, the horse would refuse to ever enter the trailer again. That couldn’t happen because Jordana had high hopes that this mustang mare would be good enough to start competing at the top endurance level in the United States. And she wanted Stormy always to look forward to entering the trailer, instead of dreading it. Slow but sure…
SLADE GRITTED his teeth as he looked down at the watch on his thick wrist. He’d just rode in from the pastures where he and Shorty had been separating cows from calves. It was hard, sweaty work. And he didn’t want to waste time. Dr. Lawton was already ten minutes late. Slade didn’t like people who weren’t punctual. He had gone in and checked his answering machine to see if she’d called and canceled the appointment. There were no calls. Wasn’t that just like a woman? Isabel, his ex-wife, had always been late.
He hated dealing with women in general. He much preferred working with men who wanted to train for endurance riding. Ever since his divorce from city slicker Isabel Stephens four years ago, Slade had taken on a distinct dislike of the opposite sex. Isabel hailed from New York City, had rich parents and possessed the emotional maturity of a sixteen-year-old girl. She had never been on time for anything except their impromptu wedding. Slade had developed an intense dislike of city dwellers, New York City types, in particular. Isabel had left a bad taste in his mouth. She’d hired a rich New York City attorney and had taken him to the cleaners during their divorce proceedings.
Grimacing, Slade kicked the red dirt with the toe of his scarred cowboy boot. Isabel was the reason his beloved ranch was teetering on the edge of foreclosure. She’d taken him for every penny he’d ever earned. All his savings that had kept the ranch on sound financial footing had gone to her. Now, four years later, Slade continued to wrestle with every penny that came in on a monthly basis. He had nightmares about losing his parents’ ranch. It had been in the family for over a hundred years. There was no way he could lose it. Being a rancher was all he knew. Anger stirred in him as he relived the divorce from petulant, spoiled Isabel.
Pulling in a deep, ragged breath, Slade recalled how he’d fallen in love with the sleek, beautiful Isabel. A dressage rider from the East Coast, she’d come out to Jackson Hole for a two-week vacation with her rich corporate friend who owned a ten-million-dollar home here in the valley. Isabel had met Slade at the Tetons fifty-mile ride, her first endurance contest. Isabel knew her horses. And when Slade had seen her in the crowd as each rider rode up and waited to be released by the judge every five minutes, his heart had pounded. Slade could never remember a woman who had affected him so profoundly as Isabel had.
And it hadn’t hurt that he’d won that race on his flashy medicine-hat mustang stallion, Thor, either. Isabel had had stars in her eyes for him as he’d rode in first among a hundred other contestants. They’d had dinner and gone to bed that night. And Slade, stupid idiot that he was, impulsively married her a week later.
“What a loco decision,” he groused, looking at his watch again. The dirt road to Tetons Ranch curved, so he wouldn’t see a truck and horse trailer until the last moment. He saw no one driving around that corner. “Damn,” he added, now walking angrily back to his ranch house. Where the hell was this woman? If she couldn’t even be on time for this first meeting, what would it be like if he accepted her as a student later? If her horse had the potential? Not good. Not good at all. Damn her. Why couldn’t she call and let him know where she was at?
JORDANA GAVE A GASP of surprise. As she slowly pulled around the last curve, she saw the iconic Marlboro Man cowboy from the cigarette ads. Oh, she’d seen photos of Slade McPherson, but in real life… My God…
Most things didn’t unsettle Jordana one way or another. But the fierce-looking, rugged cowboy did. As she drove her horse trailer between the barn and the ranch house where he stood, Jordana felt her heart unexpectedly begin to pound. This wasn’t adrenaline. She was a physician, and she knew the difference. No, this was her womanly side wildly responding to the man she saw standing there, his hands tense on his narrow hips, watching her approach.
Jordana knew Slade McPherson was a loner. Everyone in Jackson Hole had told her that. A strong, gruff, even antisocial rancher who knew more about breeding endurance horses than anyone else in the nation. She’d done her research. And in her eyes, after learning all she could about this hardened, rugged cowboy, he was the best at what he did: a champion endurance rider and breeder.
Not expecting to have such a powerful physical reaction to seeing him in person made Jordana feel giddy like a teenager. As she put on the brake, she saw his large gray eyes narrowing speculatively upon her. Suddenly vulnerable beneath that incisive, probing gaze, Jordana felt like Jell-O melting out in hot sunlight. Even her lower body was reacting to him! Good grief! What was this all about? Unhinged, Jordana suddenly felt unsure in this man’s towering presence. He wore a set of dusty Levis that perfectly outlined his long, powerful legs and thick thighs. His hands were long and large, draped over his narrow hips. The dark red cotton cowboy shirt did nothing but emphasize his square face that was burned dark by the sun. The slashes at the sides of his full mouth and the crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes told her this man regularly challenged the weather in any condition—and won.
Her intuitive sense told Jordana he was armored up. The realization hit her