Austin (New Horizon Ranch Book 8) Read Free Page A

had been killed. She and Julie lived about two hours away but this was the closest opening he could find on short notice and he’d grabbed it.
    He was tired but too wound up to sleep, so when he got home, he worked out with the free weights he had set up in the stable stall next to his horse. His mind was stuck on the blonde in the traffic stop. She’d been something. He’d told himself it was a normal traffic stop, just like the hundreds he’d made before, but he knew he hadn’t ever made a traffic stop like that one.
    Something about Jolene Bartee had his attention. Her sassiness and her big, blue eyes were part of it but something kept telling him that meeting her was an important moment in his life.
    And that was an odd feeling to have.
    His muscles burned and sweat dripped down his back when he set the weights down after an hour of hard lifting. He wiped his face with the towel, slung it over his shoulder, and then stretched his shoulder. The old wound always screamed a little louder than his other muscles after a workout. That was all the more reason to keep the shoulder loose. He felt restless tonight. More so than he had in a long time. Deciding against going for a ride, he headed inside and took a shower and then stretched out on his bed and stared at the ceiling. He had so much on his mind these days, sleep was as elusive as the bobcats he knew roamed the woods.
    He closed his eyes and immediately saw pretty blue eyes and a pair of sassy full lips.
    She’d been something. And he would see her in the morning on the roundup at New Horizon Ranch… He drifted off to sleep with images of her on his mind.
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    The sun came up early and Jolene had been up long before it peeked over the horizon. Saddled and ready before everyone else, she felt a sense of anticipation as she headed to breakfast with the other hands. They were a great group. There were four of them that were mid-twenties and one who was almost thirty. Derek Bravo had recently taken the job after he was released from the military. Turned out that Treb, whose apartment she’d taken, was ex-military and Derek was part of his combat patrol.
    Quiet and with eyes that seemed to see everything, he kept his back turned to the wall and his face turned to everything else. He had arms the size of tree trunks and a chest the size of a redwood, tapering down to a waist with washboard abs most men would give an arm for. She couldn’t help wondering what his story was.
    Ty met her at the steps of the bunkhouse. “Mornin’, Jolene. You make it okay last night?”
    “Are you kidding me? That bed was like a feather. I slept like I’d been drugged.”
    He grinned. “CC, our boss who built this place, believed in good beds for his hands. He said if his hands gave a hard day of work, they deserved for him to provide them with a top-notch mattress.”
    “He did right by me, that’s for certain.”
    “Good. Let’s head down here, to the chow hall. We haven’t used it that much until recently when we finally hired George. He’s a retired rodeo clown with a way with a skillet. Works great for the ranch. Rafe’s wife Sadie filled in for a while till we found a real cook.” Ty paused and a deep burgundy stained his neck. “I didn’t mean that to be disrespectful. Sadie tried really hard but George can cook without having to try.”
    She found out what Ty was talking about soon enough. George was stocky, with a grizzly beard and a big barrel chest that was covered with a red apron and the slogan Chow’s Ready.
    The man made biscuits so fluffy she thought they might be marshmallows. And homemade grape jelly. The eggs and thick slabs of bacon were delicious too but Jolene was in love with the biscuits.
    She was tossing her cleaned plate in the trash when the door opened and the deputy she’d met yesterday strode into the building. She almost didn’t recognize him because he wore a faded red chambray shirt with long sleeves and a pair a