The Princess of Coldwater Flats Read Free Page A

personally but hadn’t yet had the chance; he was still in the process of moving from southern California. Now, however, he’d gotten his first glimpse of her, and he was seriously rethinking his approach. She clearly didn’t want to sell. And it didn’t take a brain surgeon to recognize she was stubborn as a bad cold and maybe just as nasty.
    But Cooper was going to own that ranch. He had a plan, one he’d formed months—years—ago, really. Even before he and Pamela split up, he’d decided he wanted to own land, lots of land, the biggest spread around. And when he happened upon Coldwater Flats and knew he could buy up both Serenity and the Triple R, he’d started making his dream happen.
    Except Sammy Jo Whalen had proved to be a more prickly thorn than he’d anticipated.
    No problem, he thought with his usual arrogance. It was just a matter of time. Three months, to be exact.
    “If there’s anything else Valley Federal can do for you, Mr. Ryan?” Matt Durning had followed him out of his office and into the main lobby. Cooper examined the bank manager’s obsequious smile. Durning clearly liked the sum of Cooper’s collective bank balances.
    “I think we’re all set.”
    “Are you planning to relocate to Coldwater Flats completely?” Durning could hardly contain his excitement. He was as transparent as glass. Cooper could practically see dollar signs flash in his eyes.
    “Thinking about it,” Cooper answered in a blatant understatement. Like Sammy Jo Whalen, he was dressed for ranching. As soon as he’d bought Serenity Ranch, he’d tossed off his city clothes with unrestrained release. Growing up in a small Idaho town hadn’t prepared him for his years as a southern California corporate rancher. Oh, he’d been successful. More than successful, really. But talking about profit and loss with ten other men and women in sterile, air-conditioned offices on the thirtieth floor of some skyscraper, enduring meeting upon meeting with a host of bank managers and vice presidents and assistant vice presidents and assistant-assistant vice presidents, then going home to an equally sterile apartment with piped–in Muzak…‌well, his patience for the rat race hadn’t been much to begin with. Now it was nil. Zippo. Nada. It had died an unlamented death when he’d turned thirty-five, looked at himself in the mirror and asked, “When the hell is the life I want going to start?”
    The answer came on a weekend trip across Oregon on his way back to Idaho. On a lark, he’d taken a side road and unexpectedly bumped into the hamlet of Coldwater Flats. Clean, open, uninhabited spaces and a horizon that stretched endlessly east one way, and to the Cascade Mountains, west and south.
    Love at first sight.
    He purchased the ranch next to Gil Whalen’s that very week though he’d thought that the place was poorly named. Serenity Ranch? Good grief, it sounded like a substance-abuse center. Cooper determined he would change the name as soon as possible, but then a myriad of responsibilities had gotten in his way. He couldn’t move as fast as he wanted. Too many loose ends to tie up. Hell, he’d had a corporation to sell. Consequently, it had taken the better part of a year to divest himself of his old life and in the interim he’d let Jack Babbitt and his wife, Lettie, take care of Serenity until he got here. They’d done a decent job and had been the ones who’d unwittingly let Cooper know about the neighboring Triple R’s rocky finances.
    “The old man’s gone stark out of his skull,” Jack had reported with a bewildered shake of his graying head. “Ain’t buyin’ any new livestock. Sellin’ off that prize bull. His daughter’s scramblin’ around, trying to put things right, but every time she plugs a hole, Gil punches two more open.”
    “It’s affected his mind, sure enough.” Lettie pursed her lips, folded her arms under her ample bosom and nodded as if she’d uttered the definitive last