Page 2 of Unforgettable Cowboy (Montana’s Rodeo Cowboys #1)

The familiar voice rolled over her and even though she would have rather faced anyone else, save Chance Meyers or maybe a tweaker looking for something to steal, relief made her knees feel JELL-O-like.

Apparently, she wasn’t going to have to fight for her life, but the primitive part of her brain was having a hard time accepting that reality. Fight or flight was a bitch at times.

Bailey pushed back the hair that had fallen in her eyes and gave the man in front of her an accusing look. “You scared the crap out of me, Hayes.” The words came out in gasps as her lungs fought for air. This was not how she’d envisioned a reunion with the man who’d once tied her in knots.

“I thought you were a thief.” He, too, was breathing heavily. “What the hell are you doing here?”

A reasonable question since she hadn’t been on the ranch since she’d broken up with him many years ago. Bailey braced her hands on her thighs as she pulled in a couple of deep breaths that did nothing to slow her heart rate. “Robbing the place, of course.”

Hayes made a noise that sounded like a growl, and she lifted her head. “I’m working for Wade.”

“Since when?”

“Since mid-July.” Two months. Another deep inhalation, then she rose to full height. Better. “I take it you and Wade don’t talk too often?”

It was a little jab. Undeserved, because, as demonstrated that morning, Wade might communicate regularly with his nephews, the boys he’d raised from toddlers to adults, but he wasn’t about to tell them that he was having issues running his ranch. Not unless his back was against the wall.

“We talk,” Hayes said. “Were you here when the accident happened?”

“I’m the one who called the ambulance. His new mare fought him and went over. Landed on him.”

“Shit.” He rubbed a hand over the back of his neck.

“The mare is in the barn. She hurt her leg in the accident. Wade asked me to take care of her.” She’d stopped by to check on her way home from a fruitless early evening visit to the hospital. Wade had been out of surgery, but no visitors were allowed except immediate family.

Hayes’s gaze came up, his eyes looking more silver gray than blue thanks to the odd tint of the overhead pole light. “ Why are you working here?”

He made it sound as if she should have learned her lesson the last time she’d been hired on to the Tree Fork, which had been the summer after her stepdad walked out on the family and she and her mom needed income.

Wade, their closest neighbor, had reached out to help the struggling mother-daughter duo, hiring them for day work, despite not needing additional help the way he did now.

Hayes had been in the middle of his second pro rodeo season and had come home to recover from an injury.

Wade, of course, put him to work while he was home, doing what he was able to do with a bad elbow.

Bailey had worked with him, mainly to keep him from reinjuring himself, and it didn’t take long for sparks—the good kind—to ignite between them.

“It’s temporary. I’m spending the summer on the old place and stopped to tell Wade that he had a neighbor when I first arrived.”

Bailey had always harbored a soft spot for the man, who’d broken character to help her and her mom, and apparently that went both ways.

It wasn’t until he offered her work “if she wanted it” that she came up with the idea of trading man-hours for boarding Dakota Sunshine in a safe place.

A place where it was unlikely Chance would look.

“We worked out a deal where I’d do some day work for him until the Copper Mountain Rodeo.

” Which was now two weeks away. Her friend Jenna, who’d been in radio silence for almost two weeks now, had promised her that she’d find another place for the mare by then, thus freeing up Bailey to head to the western gear shows where she made a fairly decent living selling her hand-engraved silver. “He needed an extra hand.”

“Nice of you.”

He spoke as if he sensed there was more to the deal.

“He agreed to board my horse, too. My place isn’t safe.

Mom’s been leasing the homestead to Jim Reed and his sons since we left.

The fields are in good shape, but the corrals are wrecked.

” She looked past him to the lighted barn window, wishing that Wade had managed to stay on his horse that morning.

Hayes was studying her intently when she turned back to him, making her wonder just what he saw.

A woman he hadn’t set eyes on in almost ten years who now meant nothing to him?

Or was he, like her, feeling the tug of unfinished business?

“Do you have an update on Wade? Have you seen him?” His expression shifted at the question. “I stopped by the hospital earlier,” she explained, “but I couldn’t get any information.”

“He was sleeping when I stopped by, but yes, I saw him.”

“Good.” The word hung, the silence emphasizing the many things that had been left unsaid between them because of the chicken-hearted way she’d ended things. She wasn’t a coward—far from it. But after watching everything her mom had gone through, her feelings for Hayes had terrified her back then.

“Are you okay?”

Bailey didn’t know if he was referring to her lapse into silence, or her physical well-being after being knocked around. “I am.”

She was also itching to get to the safety of her truck where she could catch her breath both figuratively and literally.

She’d known that at some point she’d run into Hayes again, but in her mind, they’d have a cool, it’s-been-a-long-time-hope-you’re-doing-well type of reunion. Adult-like. No running, no punching.

“Are you okay?”

Hayes opened his mouth, as if surprised at the question, then closed it again. Bailey studied his ridiculously handsome face as she waited for an answer, a face that had gotten better with age. How was it that men could do that? “Yeah,” he said grimly. “I’m good.”

“Then I should go.” There was no point in continuing this conversation now that they’d settled the important issues. They were both okay and neither of them was there to rob the ranch or steal a horse.

“Will you be back?” he asked. “To work I mean?”

“That’s the deal I made with Wade—unless you want to change it?”

“No.”

She gestured toward the barn. “I didn’t get a chance to turn off the light, but the horses have been taken care of.”

“I’ll get the light.”

Bailey nodded and started toward her truck, nerves thrumming—the aftermath of being chased in the dark and then having to face the guy she’d ghosted so many years ago.

Oh, Wade. Why couldn’t you have stayed on that mare?

*

Questions. Hayes had a ton of them, but the top two were why was Bailey staying at her old place after not setting foot on it for a decade, and why had she left him so abruptly years ago?

The second question had rattled around in his brain since he found the note she’d written him, becoming more a matter of curiosity than anything else as time passed—or so he’d thought until he’d come face-to-face with his runaway cowgirl again.

Maybe he’d get some answers. Or maybe it was a good time to leave well enough alone.

After checking on the mares in the barn, Hayes shut out the light and let himself out into the cool night air, wondering if his uncle had purchased the palomino beauty in the stall next to the injured roan or if she was Bailey’s boarded horse.

The mare was obviously the culmination of a careful breeding program, showing all the characteristics of a classic quarter horse—dainty head, large eyes, sturdy well-muscled body and a square stance.

Not Wade’s type of horse. He was a big believer in plain brown horses of questionable breeding and the palomino was well beyond the quality of any horse Hayes had ever seen on the ranch, including Trev’s roping horses.

Whoever owned the mare, they had a prize on their hands.

Hayes let out a long breath as he headed for the dark house.

It had been a twilight zone of a day, starting with his sticky-note resignation and ending with the discovery that the woman who’d wrecked him was once again working for his uncle.

He rubbed the area just below his clavicle where she’d connected with her punch.

He’d have a bruise and he was probably lucky she hadn’t landed her punch any higher.

She might have broken her hand and/or dislocated his jaw.

Weird, weird night.

And it would no doubt be followed by a strange morning.

Hayes pushed open the door of the house he’d grown up in and was struck by the scents of his childhood—cooking, because the exhaust fan had never worked in the kitchen, ranch mud, and horse.

A dirty saddle blanket lay in a crumpled heap next to the washing machine.

Hayes hoped that Wade didn’t plan to wash the thing.

The hair would do a number on the filter.

After hanging his jacket in the mudroom and kicking on his boots, he snapped on the kitchen light.

The room showed the usual signs of bachelor living: a half-rebuilt carburetor on the kitchen table, the usual jumble of mail and things that tended to collect when one lived alone.

But there were no dishes in the sink and the coffee pot had been cleaned. Wade had his routines.