Page 18 of Wild Love, Cowboy (The Portree Cowboys #1)

Grant

The early morning air clings cool to my skin, thick with dew and the quiet promise of another blistering day. The saddle creaks beneath me as Midnight carries us deeper into the quiet. The sky’s just beginning to blush, all pinks and golds bleeding across the eastern horizon like a slow burn.

Midnight’s hooves make soft, deliberate thuds along the dirt path, her breath visible in the crisp dawn.

She doesn’t need much direction—just a loose rein and my weight leaning slightly to the left.

She knows these trails like muscle memory as we set off to patrol the fence line, checking each fence post and strand of barbed wire for breaks or sagging lines along the ranch’s perimeter.

We pass the cottage across the road from my ranch house.

It's the kind of place you don’t notice until you do—and then you can’t stop staring.

Weathered white wood and soft green shutters, the kind faded perfectly by time.

A wrap-around porch hugs the frame like it’s holding the house together, its railing dotted with rusted lanterns and wildflower pots in mismatched ceramic.

Morning mist curls through the garden, making the lavender and foxglove shimmer like something out of a damn fairytale.

It shouldn’t feel magical, not this close to my own place—but it does.

Like the land itself is holding its breath, waiting for something.

I give Midnight the lead, trusting her to follow the trail while my thoughts wander freely. They inevitably circle back to Mia—to the way her body felt pressed against mine, to the surprising softness of her lips, to the close to panic in her eyes before she fled.

The path ahead forks, and I automatically guide Midnight to the right, away from the river. I haven't ridden the trail on the left since Jake died eight years ago. The realization hits me deep in my chest and I physically rub the spot—I'm still avoiding that water, still running from that pain.

Just like I've been running from anything real with women for the last eight years.

I've kept it casual, fun, temporary. No one gets close enough to see the guilt I carry, the fear that lingers beneath my confident exterior. No one except maybe Mason, who was there the day we pulled Jake's body from the water. Who watched me fall apart and never mentioned it again.

But Mia saw something. I could tell by the way she looked at me, like she was peeling back layers I didn't even know I had. It terrified me and strangely exhilarated me all the same.

“What the hell am I doing?” I mutter to Midnight, who flicks her ears as if to say, “finally asking the right question, dumbass.”

The saddle creaks beneath me as Midnight carries us deeper into the quiet. Dawn spills pink and honey gold across the horizon, turning the grassland into something soft and surreal. But I don’t feel calm. I feel like I’m losing my mind.

I shift in the saddle, dragging in a breath like that’ll help me settle. It doesn’t. The morning air is cool, but my skin feels hot—tight with tension, like I’ve been pulling a rope I should’ve let go of long ago.

Why her?

There have been other women—easier, simpler, safer. But none of them ever made me feel like I’d forgotten how to breathe. None of them ever looked at me and made me want to be better just so I didn’t disappoint the idea of me they seemed to see.

This is ridiculous.

I barely know her. I shouldn’t feel like this.

Not over someone I kissed and tasted once, talked to on all of three occasions, and barely managed to convince to stay seated at a bar with me for more than an hour.

She’s probably long gone already—back on a flight to New York, returning to her high-rise apartment and her glossy life.

Maybe she’ll write a smart-ass article about the strange little cowboy town where she accidentally kissed one of the locals like it was the damn climax of a Nicholas Sparks novel.

And I’ll still be here.

Riding bulls and broncs, working the ranch and fixing fence lines—just doing what I always do.

But that doesn’t stop me from remembering that little black dress she wore that made my knees buckle a little just looking at her. And her scent?

Soft. Sweet. Fresh. Like...

Like bluebonnets blooming after spring rain. The thought crashes into my mind before I can stop it.

Bluebonnets?

Fuck me, I actually just compared a girl to a flower. What the hell is wrong with me?

My mind flashes back to Mia’s face and the glint in her eyes that drew me in most. Those striking blue eyes that said everything her mouth was too stubborn to admit. The way she tried so hard to pretend none of this was getting to her, but her eyes gave her away every damn time she looked my way.

The way she looked at me when she thought I wasn’t watching—like she saw something in me I didn’t even know I’d buried.

That’s the part I can’t shake.

I lean forward, rubbing Midnight’s crest, trying to distract myself. She flicks her ears back at me, like even she’s tired of my brooding bullshit.

Fuck.

“She’s gone,” I mutter. “Let it go Taylor.”

It’s not like anything could’ve worked anyway. That’s what I tell myself—again—clinging to the excuse like it’s gospel. I don’t date. I don’t open up. I don’t give anyone the kind of power Mia had in the palm of her hand after five damn minutes.

But when she talked about Cold Springs, about needing to escape the small town life for the noise and anonymity of the big city—I understood her in a way that startled me. It was like she wasn’t talking about geography at all.

It was about needing to outrun the shadows chasing you. About trying to find yourself somewhere new, hoping distance would dilute the pain.

I’ve been doing the same thing from the comfort of my own damn porch for years.

I should’ve walked away the first time she smirked at me, like she could dismantle me with one sarcastic quip and sideways glance at a time.

Instead, I kissed her.

God, that kiss.

Seared into my mind, like the blueprint for every kiss that’ll ever come after. Like my body learned something it’ll never unlearn. And I’ll compare every future kiss to it, every touch, every woman—because none of them will be her.

And I knew it the second my mouth met hers—that I was in trouble. That I’d just sealed my fate with lips, I was never meant to taste twice.

She'll move on. Hell, she probably already has.

And now I’m out here, trying to outpace a ghost who probably left town already.

Bluebonnets.

For fuck’s sake.

It’s pathetic.

Shaking my head at my own dumbass, I start steering Midnight back towards the ranch.

One day, years from now, I’ll probably look back at this and call her the one that got away. The one I let go because I couldn’t bring myself to figure out what it meant to want someone for real. The one I convinced myself didn’t matter because wanting her would hurt more than ignoring it.

So yeah, I’ll file her away. Keep it a distant memory. A flash of heat in a life too rooted in routine. A reminder that I’m still capable of feeling something real, even if I never get to touch it again.

And that’s fine.

It has to be.

Because I’ve got rodeos to catch, a ranch to help run. A family who counts on me. I don’t have time for soft eyes and city girls and this ache in my chest that won’t fucking quit.

But something tells me, forgetting Mia Bonney will be the hardest damn thing I’ve ever tried to do.

***

By the time I return to the ranch house, the sun is high overhead, and sweat trickles down my back. I stable Midnight, brush her down, and head to my house where smoke greets me before the door even swings open.

“Christian? You burning down the damn kitchen again?” I call, stepping inside.

Lily appears from the living room, phone in hand. “He's trying to bake another batch of donuts for Mama. Lord help us all. It's not going well.”

“I can see that,” I say, choking and waving away smoke. “Guy can disassemble a machine gun blindfolded in a sandstorm, but give him a mixing bowl and a stove, and he triggers a biblical fire.” I mutter as I walk to crack open a window.

“Any reason he's destroying the kitchen unsupervised?”

“I'm supervising,” Lily protests, though her attention is clearly on her phone. “Oh, by the way, did you know there's someone staying in the rental cottage across the road?”

I freeze for a second, my heart doing a strange skip. “No. Who?”

“Some woman from out of town.” Lily continues to scroll through her phone, disinterested. “Dad said she booked in yesterday. Said she needed a place while she sorts out some travel issues.”

That gets my full attention, and I freeze mid step, but I try to keep my voice casual. “Did he mention her name?”

“Nope.” Lily glances up, suddenly more attentive. “Why? You think it's your mystery woman?”

“She's not my mystery woman, Lily” I say automatically.

Christian emerges from the kitchen, flour covering most of his face and clothes that’s not protected under the apron he brought with him. “Who's not your mystery woman?”

“The new tenant across the road,” Lily explains. “Grant thinks it's his city girl.”

“I never said that.” I protest, though my mind is racing with possibilities.

Christian wipes his hands on his already-destroyed apron which features the picture of a half-naked woman’s body in a tiny string bikini, the full length of the apron, the breasts now covered in flour.

“She’s not your mystery woman, huh?” He smirks with one quirked brow “That why you look like someone just kicked your puppy and proposed at the same time?” He tosses over his shoulder as he walks back into the kitchen through the smog of smoke.

“Better fix your face, Grant. If she sees that pout, she’ll think you’re constipated, not contemplative. ”

Lily snorts and yells after me as I move to the lounge opening more windows. “Why don't you go find out for yourself?”

Before I can deliver a comeback worthy of my blood pressure, we hear it—a sound that chills the soul.

Gurgle.

Then…

BLOOP.

Then—

“Uh, guys?” Christian calls from the kitchen, his voice shooting up an octave like he’s just discovered a live grenade. “I think we have a problem.”

Lily and I both bolt into the kitchen.

…And find hell .

Dark, sludge-colored water bubbling up from the sink like a cursed potion. It spills over the rim in slow, sludgy waves, pooling across the floor in a foul-smelling tide that makes my nose wrinkle.

“What. Did. You. Do?” I bark, leaping toward the faucet and wrenching it off, though it makes absolutely no difference. The water keeps coming.

“Nothing!” Christian says too quickly, hands up in surrender. Then, with the hesitation of a man reevaluating every life choice: “Well, maybe I poured some oil down there. And possibly… some flour. And… maybe a couple of eggshells.”

“ Fuck sakes , Christian!”