Her Cowboy Hero (The Colorado Cades) Read Free

Reed had become like a big sister. Annette and her husband were trying to have kids; meanwhile they doted on Evan, helping create the extended family he’d never had. Annette was a blessing in their lives, even if she was slow to embrace Hannah’s “bright side” philosophy. The other woman didn’t fully understand that the determined optimism was the only thing that had kept Hannah going during the bleakest period of her life, that Hannah owed it to her son to prove good things could happen if you worked hard enough.
    “Sweetie, please be careful,” Annette entreated. “You wouldn’t be the first woman in the world to get in trouble because she confused a hot guy on a motorcycle with destiny.”
    “Hot guy?” Hannah froze, glancing out the window into the dark, as if making sure Colin Cade couldn’t overhear them. Which was insane since he was a quarter of a mile away, and she was locked into her house with a watchdog for company. “I never said he was hot.”
    “Not in so many words, but it was in your tone. What’s he look like?”
    Dark, with that shaggy, rich brown hair and unshaven jaw. Chiseled. And she didn’t just mean the muscles outlined beneath his T-shirt. His features, though striking, looked as if they’d been carved from stone. Had the man ever smiled in his life? Not that it matters. Being charming wasn’t a job requirement. She needed someone efficient and unflinching in the face of setbacks.
    “He has blue eyes,” she said noncommittally. Light blue with a hint of green. “And he’s tall.”
    Her friend guffawed. “Next to you, sweetie, everyone’s tall.”
    She ignored the crack about her height. “Annette, this isn’t me getting my hopes up for no reason. The guy came here specifically looking for me, looking for this ranch.” Granted, Colin had seemed more shell-shocked than enthusiastic when he’d realized he found her. “An old friend of Colin’s told him I was hiring and he wanted more information.” She’d kept her answers in the bunkhouse brief and cheerful, barely mentioning Henry White, the well-intentioned, semiretired ranch hand who came by at least twice a week.
    “Did you tell him the truth?”
    “More or less,” she said, hearing the defensive note in her tone. “I mean, I didn’t volunteer that today was my fifth bank meeting and that I got turned down again. I said that I’d inherited a family ranch, have plans to turn it into a cross between a small dude ranch and bed-and-breakfast but have yet to put together a staff.” Unless one counted seventy-year-old Henry and his wife, Kitty. “I invited him to the main house for breakfast so we can discuss details. I’m making my homemade coffee cake.”
    “Ah. Pulling out the big guns, then.”
    Hell, yes.
    As far back as Hannah could remember, she’d always had a plan. Her first one had been Get Adopted. That one had never worked out, but years later, for one shining moment in time, her marriage had made her part of a family. Eyes stinging, she batted away the memories and focused on the present. Current plan: rehabilitate the ranch that had been in her late husband’s family, build it into a legacy for her son. And to do that, she needed Colin Cade.
    She was a persistent woman looking to hire help, and he was a man with ranch experience who needed a job. A match made in heaven! How hard could it possibly be to convince him to stay?
    * * *
    “G OOD MORNING !”
    Colin hesitated on the bottom step of the wraparound porch, momentarily stunned by Hannah’s brilliant smile. And bright yellow peasant blouse. She would be murder on a man with a hangover.
    As he’d mulled over the circumstances last night, he’d tried to keep thinking of her as the Widow Shaw, but he couldn’t reconcile that moniker with the woman who’d stepped outside of the two-story house to meet him. She looked as fresh as a spring morning with her feet bare, revealing hot-pink toenails, and her inky hair pulled high in a ponytail.