Page 1 of Call Me Yours (Lodestar Ranch #4)

STEVEN

Three Months Ago

It had already been a shitty day when the SUV I had tried to flag down slowed its roll just enough to open the passenger door and toss a pig out of it. The pig landed with a splash of mud and a terrified squeal that made every cell in my body cringe.

Now it was a really shitty fucking day.

“Assholes!” I shouted, like that would make them see the error of their ways.

The pig stared at me with its little piggy eyes, and I stared back. It was a still a juvenile, maybe twenty pounds, and obviously in pain, judging from the way it refused to put weight on its left hind leg.

It wasn’t my pig. There wasn’t a single reason in this goddamn world why I should make someone else’s pig my problem.

Except…well, it didn’t seem like an ordinary pig, the kind that would one day find itself on a breakfast plate.

No farmer who raised pigs for food was gonna toss one into a field to become a mountain lion’s dinner any more than he’d tear up a hundred-dollar bill.

Anyway, it had a pampered look about it.

It was weirdly clean for a pig, and someone had painted its hoofs pink.

Jesus fucking Christ, it was some asshole’s pet.

That still didn’t make it my problem. I had enough problems. The dead battery in my truck being one of them.

Another was the lack of cell service along this stretch of highway between Aspen Springs, Colorado, and my corner of land four miles from the outskirts of town.

Those two problems together made the low rumble of thunder an even bigger problem.

But the pig kept right on staring at me with pathetic piggy eyes.

Goddammit.

I was such a fucking sucker.

“All right,” I groused. “All right. Let me see your leg.” There was a hand gun in the glove compartment of my truck, so if the leg was broken, I could give him a merciful ending. I did not tell him this as I squatted down for a better look.

The pig made sad snuffling noises as I poked and prodded its leg. It didn’t feel broken. Dammit. That meant I couldn’t just shoot the darn thing and be done with it. I had to actually do something.

A fat raindrop splattered on my bare forearm. It was quickly followed by another, and a roll of thunder directly over our heads.

“We can wait in the truck,” I decided. “Someone will be along eventually and give us a jump.”

Us . Like we were in this together. Just me and the pig against the world. Fucking hell.

I had zero experience with living pigs—horses were my business—but this one wasn’t any bigger than a small dog, so I looped my arms around it and pushed upright.

And it fucking screamed like a hellhound had nipped at its tail.

My teeth clanked together and my soul damn near departed my body at the sound.

I was going to hear that scream in my nightmares.

It scrambled my brain long enough for the pig to squirm free and land in the mud with another ear-shattering squeal.

“Goddammit!” I shouted. “Hold still and let me help you!”

I lunged, he dodged awfully quick for an injured animal, and I landed on my knees in the mud. The pig darted through the raindrops to a storm pipe, kicking mud on my gray t-shirt for good measure.

I peered inside. It was dark and cramped. The pig huddled out of reach.

“I’m not going in there after you,” I informed the little shit. “You’ll have no one to blame but yourself when get eaten by a mountain lion.”

I reached for him, just to verify, and he took a step deeper into the pipe. His pink hoof paint glittered in the low light, a reminder that he was someone’s pet. Dammit.

“I hate you,” I said as I lowered to my belly. It made a gross sucking noise as I flattened against the damp ground.

I wasn’t even sure this would work. My shoulders might be too broad for the narrow opening of the pipe. I rolled to my side, stretched my arms overhead, and wiggled my torso inside. It wasn’t great. I could fit—barely—but I couldn’t move much at all. I was wedged in too tight.

It was a lost cause, saving an animal that wasn’t inclined to be saved. But I kept stretching, kept reaching, kept trying like a fucking loser who didn’t have enough sense to know he was beat.

Something pushed roughly at my knee, startling me, and I banged my head against the top of the pipe.

“Shit,” I muttered. I didn’t even have enough space to rub away the ache.

“What are you doing?” a mean woman’s voice demanded.

I knew she was mean because I recognized the voice as belonging to Chloe Adams, and Chloe Adams would never say a single nice word to me even accidentally.

She said What are you doing in the same tone she had said Get the hell out of here, Steven not four hours ago at the Aspen Springs Library.

She’d followed that with a tirade that had scraped me raw and left me arguing uselessly with her in my brain all these hours later.

I’d probably still be searching for a comeback at three a.m.

“There’s a pig in here,” I grunted. “I’m trying to get it out.”

“What a coincidence. There’s a pig out here, too.”

“Oink, oink, baby,” I said sarcastically.

Her laugh ended on an abrupt throat-clearing, like she didn’t want to give me the satisfaction of her amusement. “Is there really a pig in there?”

I blew out an exasperated breath and stretched a little harder. Nope. “Why the hell would I lie about that?”

“Who knows why you do anything, Steven? Maybe you listen to too many angry white men podcasts. Maybe your delicate psyche is too fragile for an equal playing field. Or maybe you just weren’t raised right.

” She paused. I gritted my teeth. I still didn’t have a comeback, and that one hit a little too close to home.

“I guess I can’t think of a reason why you would lie about a pig, though. ”

“Gee, thanks.” I wiggled my body back out of the pipe and found myself staring straight into Chloe’s pretty, bitchy face under the shelter of a red umbrella. “And don’t say shit about my mom. That’s out of bounds.”

Her head tilted consideringly as she stared down her nose at me. The angle was unflattering. It gave her a triple chin and I could see straight up her flaring nostrils. It pissed me right off that even like this, she was still so fucking pretty.

“What’s the problem with the pig?” she asked.

“Some asshole tossed it out of a car. It’s hurt and scared. I tried to pick it up, get it into my truck, and now he wants nothing to do with me.” Frustration seeped into my tone. “And I’m too big for this fucking hole.”

Her lips twitched as the words hung between us. They’d slipped out of my mouth without a damn thought, but I heard the innuendo now, and I knew she did, too. In that quicksilver moment, I imagined what her laugh would have sounded like and felt some kind of way about never finding out.

“Hmm.” When she leaned down to peer into the pipe, her long brown hair brushed my face and I caught the scent of her strawberry shampoo, which only aggravated me more, because of fucking course she smelled like a sweet summer day. “Oh! There is a pig in there!” she exclaimed.

I snorted. She hadn’t really believed me at all. “What are you doing here, Chloe?”

She straightened and met my glare with the barest quirk of her eyebrow. “I saw your truck on the side of the road and figured you might need some help.”

There was something in the way she phrased it, something about the way she hadn’t been especially gentle when she’d kicked my knee, and the what are you doing , not are you okay that put me back a step like the earth had tilted under my feet. “You knew it was me and you stopped anyway? Why?”

She looked at me like I was stupid. “I just told you. I thought you needed help. You were lying down in the rain like you’d had a heart attack or something.”

“But you hate me.”

She twirled her umbrella and regarded me with narrowed green eyes. “Sure do.”

“But you stopped anyway.” I couldn’t wrap my brain around it.

Her eyebrows pushed together like she didn’t understand the connection.

After a moment of reflection, her expression cleared.

“Oh, I get why you’re confused. See, I’m a good person.

I think people owe each other basic human decency.

” Her head tilted and her thick hair cascaded down her shoulder.

“You still look confused. See, basic human decency means?—”

“You’re such a bitch,” I muttered.

Her teeth flashed in a smile. “Only to the deserving. Most people think I’m delightful.”

Once upon a time, I’d been one of them. Chloe had worked at Jo’s, the only coffee shop in our small town of Aspen Springs, Colorado, since before I’d landed a job training rodeo horses at Lodestar Ranch.

I didn’t get into town much, but I’d always made a point of grabbing a coffee when I did.

I’d looked forward to seeing her. There was something about her wry observations of the most mundane shit that always had me lingering, stretching out my coffee order just a little bit longer than necessary.

All that changed after her best friend, James—who was also the head trainer at Lodestar, so technically my boss—fell off a horse and bruised her ribs, and okay, yes, I’d had something to do with that, but swear to god, I hadn’t hurt her on purpose. I would fucking never .

But Chloe clearly didn’t believe that, because the next time I stepped foot in Jo’s, she had kicked me right out again. I’d tried again sporadically for the next couple months, but Chloe held a grudge like an elephant. If it had been directed at anyone else, I might have considered it a virtue.

Directed straight at me, I didn’t like it so much. I liked it even less at the library this morning. Her words were still ringing in my ears like she was screaming them in my face.