Shared By the Cowboys by Cassie Cole

1

Rebecca

“Where the hell is the ranch?” I muttered to myself. I had been driving down the dirt road for close to an hour. It was bumpy enough that I couldn’t go very fast, but even still I should have reached the ranch by now.

I glanced at my phone on the dashboard. I had lost cell signal half an hour ago. All I knew was that the driveway would be on the right. I should’ve downloaded a map of the area ahead of time. Then again, what parts of America didn’t have cell signal these days?

“The middle of nowhere, Montana,” I answered out loud. “That’s where.”

Despite my frustration, the view was incredible. The road wound through the middle of a Montana valley, with green fields leading up to alpine trees in the foothills of the snow-tipped mountains, jagged peaks which scraped across an impossibly-blue sky. A river flowed next to the road, with a wood-and-wire fence just on the other side.

It was gorgeous out here, that was for sure.

Now if only I could find this damn ranch…

I’d had butterflies in my stomach since leaving Great Falls three hours ago. It was all the nervousness of starting a new job, mixed with the excitement of working on a ranch again. I hadn’t set foot on one since I was a girl helping out on my family ranch. I was eager to get my hands dirty after being a city girl for the last five years. I wanted to get to work.

Not just on the ranch, either. My real work was in the laptop bag on the passenger seat next to me…

I gave a start as I came across the first sign of humanity in over an hour. On the other side of the river, underneath a lone tree, a black horse was tied to a fence. Its head was bent low while it grazed on the grass.

And laying against the tree was a man.

I pulled off the road next to the river and rolled down the passenger window. “Excuse me?”

The man had a black cowboy hat pulled down over his face. I was too far away to see anything else, so I got out of my car and walked to the edge of the river. It was twenty feet wide, with the tree just on the other side. From here I could see the man more clearly: he was wearing jeans and a T-shirt, and had tribal tattoos covering both arms. I couldn’t tell if he was breathing.

“Are you okay? Are you… alive?” I asked.

“Fuck off,” he replied gruffly.

The response startled me. I steeled myself and asked, “I think I’m lost. Can you give me directions?”

He raised his hat high enough that I could see the dark eyes underneath. “I said. Fuck. Off.”

Something told me I didn’t want to push him further, so I muttered, “Asshole,” under my breath and got back in my car.

I drove along the road for a few more minutes. My phone still had no signal. Where the hell was this place? I felt like a girl on the first day of school, running down the hallway looking for her classroom.

Finally the road crested a small hill, giving me a longer view of the valley. Less than a mile out, on the other side of the river, was a ranch. Smoke drifted out of a chimney from the ranch house. Farther to my right, dozens of black dots marred the green fields. Cattle.

“Thank goodness,” I said as I continued driving. But when I reached the driveway entrance by the river, the dilapidated sign over the bridge wasn’t what I expected.

BLUE SKY RANCH

I cursed under my breath. It wasn’t the one I was looking for. I looked away from the driveway and gazed farther down the road. It didn’t look like there was anything else for miles.

I had been driving too long. Which meant I must have missed my ranch.

Rather than turn around, I turned my car down the driveway toward the ranch with the tendril of smoke coming out of the chimney. Hopefully they would be friendlier than the black-hatted guy who refused to give me directions. Most Montanans were friendly, in my experience, but the rude ones were really rude. There were a lot of doomsday preppers out here who were suspicious of anyone new. The last thing I wanted was to be greeted by a man with a shotgun barrel pointed at my car.

The ranch house was a big A-frame. It looked like a fancy log cabin with two floors and a wrap-around porch, but it had seen better days. It had been brown, once, but now the paint was cracked and faded to a depressing drab color. One section of the porch sagged a little bit lower than the rest. The barn on the other side was even more dilapidated—one of the doors was crooked on its hinges.

I stopped the car and paused. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. I was alone, and I had no cell signal. If something happened to me…

A man walked out the front door and gave me a little wave. I rolled down my window.

“You Rebecca?” he called.

“I… I am,” I said, surprised.

The man grinned. “Welcome to Cassidy Ranch, your home for the next three months.”