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Reclaiming the Cowboy
Kathleen O'Brien
This cowboy isn't so easy to catch! When Mitch Garwood ran away with Bonnie O'Mara, he thought he'd found forever. But all his dreams crashed the morning he woke alone. Months later, he's immune to her reappearance. Even if she's now using her real name–Annabelle Irving–and ready to tell him her secrets, he's done.Too bad the situation is not that simple. Annabelle's willingness to leave her money and position behind so she can work at Bell River Ranch and be near him surprises Mitch. Despite his resolve, the spark of attraction flares again. The most compelling part? Her determination to win him back!
This cowboy isn’t so easy to catch!
When Mitch Garwood ran away with Bonnie O’Mara, he thought he’d found forever. But all his dreams crashed the morning he woke alone. Months later, he’s immune to her reappearance. Even if she’s now using her real name—Annabelle Irving—and ready to tell him her secrets, he’s done.
Too bad the situation is not that simple. Annabelle’s willingness to leave her money and position behind so she can work at Bell River Ranch and be near him surprises Mitch. Despite his resolve, the spark of attraction flares again. The most compelling part? Her determination to win him back!
Belle’s heart was beating so fast she wasn’t sure she could speak.
“I tried not to come,” Mitch said. His voice was dull, like a man in a trance.
“Mitch.” She moved in front of him, reached up and touched his cheek. “It’s all right. I wanted you to come.”
“It’s not all right,” he said. He shook his head slowly. His stubble was raspy, yet soft, against her fingertips. “It’s all wrong.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m here for one thing only.” He looked at her with those glimmering eyes. “Do you get that? I’m here because I want to make love to you. I’m dying, Belle. I’m burning up with it.”
Her breath suddenly went shallow, as if her lungs were too small.
“I want that, too.”
Dear Reader (#ulink_d948a77a-7749-5866-b640-b3bcee0392ad),
Shakespeare once wrote that “what’s past is prologue.” William Wordsworth said, “The child is father of the man.” They, and probably a thousand other great thinkers, obviously believed your childhood sets the stage for your adult life.
But what if your childhood wasn’t all that great? What if you were horrified to be told old patterns must be repeated forever? That’s how Belle Irving—the mystery woman you met in earlier Bell River Ranch books as Bonnie O’Mara—feels. She’s haunted by memories, terrified she’ll never be able to shake off their shadows.
She’s been running from her past a long time. Now it’s time to stop. Time to fight. And where better to make her stand than at beautiful Bell River Ranch, where the indomitable Wright sisters have carved out a victory over their own troubled history?
And where Mitch Garwood, the man she’s loved and lied to for so long, has been waiting…she hopes.
From your emails and letters, I know that you (just like poor Mitch) have been impatient to learn the truth about Bonnie. It hasn’t been easy for me, either! I’ve been dying to reward this brave, lonely woman with her happily ever after.
Probably, like me, you believe we all have the power to rewrite our own stories and make them end more happily than they began. So I hope you’ll enjoy watching her find her courage and fight her way to the future she deserves.
Warmly,
Kathleen O’Brien
PS—I love to hear from readers! Come say hi at kathleenobrien.com (http://kathleenobrien.com), facebook.com/kathleenobrienauthor (http://facebook.com/kathleenobrienauthor) or twitter.com/kobrienromance (http://twitter.com/kobrienromance).
Reclaiming the Cowboy
Kathleen O’Brien
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#ulink_8fcce41a-d8f7-51fc-8f70-b015353cb746)
KATHLEEN O’BRIEN was a feature writer and TV critic before marrying a fellow journalist. Motherhood, which followed soon after, was so marvelous she turned to writing novels, which could be done at home. After decades of fun with her emotional counterpart—she’s the mushmellow, he’s the stoic—she’s convinced that opposites really do attract, even heiresses and cowboys. The scuffles that inevitably follow? They’re just part of the thrill!
Contents
Cover (#u4855edf4-1b6d-5ed3-a1b9-0a1e9a3e4ab6)
Back Cover Text (#u457f881d-7d1e-5066-aacf-abb21bc2257e)
Introduction (#ubdffd282-409c-56c7-b5cf-48a8b4e9505b)
Dear Reader (#ulink_16c95e7f-808d-52cc-83ea-c878e5c57df9)
Title Page (#u01320f9a-8e7d-5a9b-b3ed-edc2a2b4d812)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#ulink_fcdf55d8-131a-5ccd-b8e9-bbbc5c7977ce)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_aa8d10da-9804-5d10-9cc7-9bcb94b56a96)
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_35ed4d5a-a0c1-5010-acd9-74c6c83b0956)
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_cd38fc83-396f-52be-83f6-add3bb7dfd75)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_010c824f-56e0-56f3-8fbe-dc0a65803ac0)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EXTRACT (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_a88ad570-a992-5e12-9b64-2bbed1e90622)
IT WAS A MEAN March midnight, the road a sludgy river of asphalt oozing in slow loops under an icy moon. Mitch Garwood’s mood was sour and his face frost-burned as he rumbled up to the back door of his cottage, one of the six they’d recently finished on the eastern edge of Bell River Ranch.
Tilting off his helmet with one hand, he twisted the key with the other, silencing the growling motorcycle before any of the adjoining guests woke up and complained. Although why they should sleep soundly when he knew darn well he wouldn’t...
Still astride the bike, he stared at the dark windows of the cottage, envisioning the cold, half-empty spaces within. A bed. A sofa. A bookcase. A refrigerator full of bottled water and blackening guacamole dip. Six hours of tossing and turning...alone...till dawn, when he could finally get up and distract himself with work.
This was a life?
It was his choice, of course. He’d never been forced to be alone, not since he hit puberty and discovered that rusty-brown hair and a few freckles over a goofy grin actually appealed to some females.
He definitely hadn’t needed to be alone tonight. At least fifty bored women from a cosmetics convention in Crawford had jammed into the Happy Horseshoe Saloon. Two-thirds of them were nice, half of them were hot and at least two of them were both.
But not one was interesting enough to take home.
He shoved his helmet into the storage bubble on the back of the bike, a little too roughly. He heard the fiberglass crack against the rim. He’d better watch out—he’d already fractured two helmets this way. He’d probably coil himself up so tight he’d break his own bones if he didn’t find a woman soon.
Problem was, the only woman he wanted was the one he couldn’t have.
Bonnie. His chest did a painful cramping thing, as if the two syllables were electric prods applied to his heart. Bonnie, he thought again, like the masochist he was, just to feel the reaction once more.
Bonnie O’Mara. If that was even her name.
For one amazing year, the beautiful mystery woman had seemed like his own personal miracle. Turned out she was a mirage instead. Nearly nine months on the road together, running from something only she could see, and then, one morning, Mitch woke up and she was gone.
That was six months ago. So yeah—he needed someone new.
He inhaled deeply, the Colorado frost stinging his lungs. Too bad he didn’t drink. His friends assured him that getting lightly buzzed could put a sparkle into even the dullest diamond.
But he’d tried that once, a few months ago, on his twenty-seventh birthday. He’d found a bottle of Johnnie Walker and a smart, lively redhead visiting from Crested Butte, and he’d mixed them together to see what happened.
He told himself it was allowed, darn it. He wasn’t ready to be a monk just because True Love had spit in his face. At the very least, he owed it to himself to make sure his machinery still worked, right?
But—get this—he’d been bored to death. Apologizing as politely as he could, he’d left the confused woman after about five minutes and five kisses, already feeling the hangover churning in his stomach. He’d spent the rest of the night chucking big ugly rocks to see if he could bust a hole in frozen Silverbottom Pond. He’d only succeeded in scaring the deer.
So no more nights like that. The machinery could shrivel up and fall off before he’d repeat that pathetic fiasco.
Mitch rocked the bike up onto its kickstand, then took the steps to the cottage two at a time. If he had to go in, he might as well get it over with.
But the minute he opened the door, he froze. Something felt...different.
The house wasn’t empty and still. Someone was here.
He left the lights off as he moved through the kitchen, using only the weak beams of the fingernail moon and the LED displays on the appliances to guide him. As he entered the living room, he picked up a poker from the fireplace, holding it over his shoulder like a baseball bat.
Then he heard a woman’s voice, softly, from the darkness.
“Mitch?”
His grip went numb. The poker clattered from his hand. “Bonnie?”
A shadow near the sofa stirred. It formed into a human shape and then became a blur as she ran blindly toward him.
It was. It was Bonnie. He knew her silhouette. He knew her scent. He knew the way she ran and the way her boots lightly tapped across the hardwood floor.
He was only ten feet away. She crashed into him hard, wrapping her arms around him and burying her head in his chest. He had to take a step backward to balance against the collision.
For a split second, he was reminded of the desperate embraces he sometimes got from his nephew, Alec, when the boy was in pain. When the poor kid had run over a squirrel with his bike or found a dying baby bird, fallen from the nest.
But then, as Bonnie lifted her pale, moonlit face to his and smothered his cheeks, his chin...and finally his lips...with kisses, all thoughts of Alec evaporated.
All thoughts of anything evaporated.
His brain shut down entirely, his body taking over.
“Is it really you?” He dug his hands into her silken hair and pulled her as close as he could, close enough to smell her, taste her, own her. Close enough to make the six months of loneliness go away.
“Bonnie,” he whispered against her mouth, and maybe she said his name again, or maybe she merely moaned. Her lips were wet where he’d moved over them and so warm. He dragged his kisses, hard and possessive, down the column of her throat and up again. His hands stroked her back, down to her hips, tracing the sweet curve he knew so well.
After so many dreams, so many ghost Bonnies that had come to tease him in the night, only to disappear just short of heaven, he had to convince himself she was real.
She was. He had no idea how this gift had come to him, but he was beyond questioning it now. He lifted her legs so that she nestled against the fire between his, and they both groaned, remembering.
He stumbled backward, not caring whether he was loud or clumsy. Not caring whether he broke everything in the cottage or whether he looked a fool. He kissed her as he walked. He bent his head to find her breasts, though he nearly killed them both as he keeled backward toward the wall.
He made his way, somehow, to the bedroom. He fell with her onto the bed. She was fumbling with his belt and with her own, and he was tearing buttons, hers and his, and shedding clothes and boots as fast as he could.
And there she was, open to him. The same—oh, heaven help him—exactly the same as his dreams. Her breasts were like snow in the moonlight, and he claimed them because they were his. They had always been his, whether she was in his bed or lost in some invisible nowhere.
He went lower, then lower still, as she wriggled under him, wrestling free of scraps of denim and lace. And then he couldn’t take it anymore. He rose swiftly up on the heels of his hands, ready.
She fumbled with him, and he realized she was covering him with a condom. He groaned. Even that light touch was torture. And did they need this? She was on the pill...or had been...
Somehow she got it on, though her fingers trembled. When she finished, she lay back with a soft gasp and lifted her legs again, clasping them around his hips.
He had to have her. He didn’t care why she felt they needed protection. Maybe she had been...or maybe she thought he had been...
He couldn’t think. He couldn’t slow himself down. He’d hungered for her so long. He’d been so unbearably alone.
He murmured her name once more. Then, though he knew it might be too soon, he drove into her, at once animal and poet. Master and slave.
Every inch of his body pulsed and burned. His rhythm was hard, fast, relentless, and he heard the tiny hitch in her breathing that meant she was ready. Her head tilted back, exposing her creamy throat. Her legs tightened. Her heels dug into him, asking for more.
