Canary Street Press
April 29, 2025

The Outsider

There are two things Bix Carpenter is good at: making moonshine and surviving. However, now that she’s officially out of the family bootlegging business, those “getting by” skills are going to come in handy. But getting caught camping on Four Corners Ranch property isn’t the best way to kick off her newfound independence—especially when the man who catches her, unruffled ranch owner Daughtry King, makes an intriguing proposition.

Daughtry offers Bix a job in exchange for room and board. The straitlaced cowboy doesn’t seem like the type who’d take to her feisty ways, but Bix reluctantly accepts. Daughtry is the best man Bix has ever met, and she’s never felt good enough, but she finds herself falling for the stoic cowboy. Can she get past his defenses so the two of them can go from just surviving to thriving?

Also In this Series:

Her First Christmas Cowboy

October 1, 2021
#.5
The Cowboy She Loves to Hate

December 1, 2021
#1.5
Unbridled Cowboy

May 24, 2022
#1
(Sawyer Garrett's Book)
Merry Christmas Cowboy

October 25, 2022
#2
(Violet Donnelly's Book)
Cowboy Wild

February 21, 2023
#3
(Elsie and Hunter's Book)
Her Cowboy Prince Charming

September 1, 2022
(Novella released in print in Merry Christmas Cowboy)
Her Wayward Cowboy

January 1, 2023
(Novella to be released in print with Cowboy Wild)
The Rough Rider

July 25, 2023
#4
(Gus's Book)
The Holiday Heartbreaker

September 26, 2023
#5
The Troublemaker

November 28, 2023
#6
The Rival

April 23, 2024
#7
A Summer to Claim Her Cowboy

October 15, 2023
(This is a novella in the Four Corners Series)
Wild Night Cowboy

August 1, 2023
(This novella is available in print in The Holiday Heartbreaker)
The Hometown Legend

July 23, 2024
Hero for the Holidays

October 22, 2024
(Landry and Fia's Book)
The Rogue

July 29, 2025
Cowboy, It’s Cold Outside

October 28, 2025

Excerpt

Bix Carpenter knew how to do two things well. Survive and make moonshine. In her experience, one was often linked to the other. And especially now that she was officially out of the family business, it was good that she had the knowledge to carry on herself.

Well. The family business itself had been dissolved when her father had been sent to prison. Her half-siblings—younger and older—were either strangers to her or didn’t want anything to do with her. Which was fair, because she didn’t want anything to do with them either.

But she still had her contacts in the liquor world, and she knew what she was doing.

It could be worse. It could be meth.

She told herself that a lot.

Though, she had to be honest and admit that one of the biggest reasons it had never been meth was that there had been a massive explosion in one of the trailers in the park back when she was fifteen or so, and any designs her father’d had on cooking the more volatile substance had gone out the window then and there.

If you were doing illegal things to survive, there wasn’t much sense doing an illegal thing that could kill you.

She could almost justify making alcohol. Her father had passed on so many opinions on the Oregon Liquor License Commission and the racket they were running that she could nearly make a case for the actions being benevolent.

But mostly, she didn’t care.

The truth was, life had beaten any desire to be benevolent right out of her.

She’d had a criminal record since she turned eighteen and could no longer rest on the possibility of her juvenile record being expunged. She had never really cared. No one in her family lived on the right side of the law. The law, in her estimation, was mostly designed to set up roadblocks to keep people like her down. At least that was her experience.

Her experience was the only one she cared about.

Empathy for others was hardly going to put a roof over her head.

But thankfully, this new place had. The spring in the area had come highly recommended to her by some other moonshiners who her dad had known back in the day, and they’d made alcohol here years back that they’d claimed was the best around.

She’d only just barely made it here. Her van’s starter was shot, and she needed to earn money to get her going again. She was all right if she could get a jump—sometimes. But she wasn’t going to head down to Humboldt with things going that badly, and being in a position where she was going to be dependent on the kindness of strangers.

For two reasons: She didn’t do dependence, and she didn’t believe strangers were kind.

So she’d taken the van over here, pulled it into an alcove along the highway and as deep into the woods as she could, concealed behind some trees.

Then she’d decided to set up her still.

The spring was further into the woods, and while she could sleep in her van it wasn’t convenient and it was nearer to the road than she liked.

She’d been slowly scoping the property out for the last five days. And it seemed to her that it was unusual for anybody to come to this end. She wasn’t entirely sure where things began and where they ended, but as far as she could sus out this was a massive ranching spread, with more outbuildings than she could count.

And it definitely had more outbuildings than anybody went into with regularity.

This thicker, more wooded part of the mountainside hadn’t had a single soul wander through the whole five days she’d been up here. She’d moved into the cabin, which gave her a little break from the van and got her farther off the road, with her knapsack and her supplies, and hadn’t been bothered at all.

Maybe she could settle here for a while. That would be nice.

She’d been running for so long.

Thankfully, she didn’t have any warrants presently. Though, the one thing about prison was at least you had a place to sleep. And food.

Not that any of her stays had been extensive.

She was well acquainted with misdemeanors, but nothing that had gotten her more than a few weeks and probation. Which, in her family, was underachieving. If anything.

She was trying to decide if she was grateful that she’d been forced to quit smoking simply because she couldn’t afford the habit. Right now, she wished she had a cigarette. But that was the kind of thing that tempted her to shoplift, which was the kind of thing that often landed her in the sort of silver bracelets a girl didn’t like to wear.

She chuckled to herself and settled back in the clean corner of the cabin she currently called home.

It was quiet. She kind of liked that. She wasn’t used to quiet. When they lived in the mountains in their cabin, there were still a lot of loud familial fights. When they’d lived in the trailer park, they’d been able to hear the whole neighborhood fighting. She’d been on her own for a couple of years now, but she’d never lived anywhere quiet.

She looked at her fishing pole, and wondered if she should head down to the river. Technically, she supposed she was a poacher. But she ate everything that she caught, and her dad, she believed, was right about a few things.

One of them was the fact that the state monetizing things like fishing, trapping and hunting by making you get permits made it impossible for people to be self-sufficient.

And if there was one thing Bix prized it was her independence and self-sufficiency.

That was two things. But whatever.

She had some ramen and other easy, cheap foods in her pack, but fish would be nice.

Decisively, she got up and snagged her pole, heading down a path in the woods that she knew led to the river. She bent down and started digging in the dirt, finding an earthworm and baiting her hook as she walked down to the river’s edge.

She wasn’t often thankful for her dad. But he had taught her how to get along. So right then, she sent up a nice thought for him—and whatever cell he was in currently—and cast her hook into the water. She had a couple of fishhooks in her backpack, but she had to be very careful in rivers like this. If she got her hook hung up on the rocks and lost it, then it was going to make her life a lot harder. And she really didn’t need her life to be any harder than it already was.

She felt her line jerk, then go tight, and she yanked upward, making sure that if there was a fish on, she’d gotten it secured. And then she started to reel it in. The movement on the line told her that she absolutely had something.

She said a little prayer of thanks to whoever was watching out for her. Then she realized it was herself.

“Thanks, me,” she said, as she reeled the line in, and brought in a wiggly rainbow trout.

She was looking at the fish when she heard a sound. She looked up, and there across the river, emerging from the trees, was a man.

He was tall. And broad. Well muscled, with a tight black T-shirt and cowboy hat. There was an air of authority about him that made everything inside of her go quiet. It was familiar.

He wasn’t specifically. It was the vibe he gave off.

A cop.

That was what he reminded her of. She could feel that big pig energy radiating from across the river. She was frozen, with a wiggling fish on the end of the line that she was holding up, and she knew that he saw her, and yet he hadn’t said anything. She wasn’t going to lose her fish. She grabbed it, defiantly, and dispatched it. Then she gathered her things and took off at a run, up the path, and headed back into the woods. He wouldn’t be able to see where she went.

Her heart was pounding. Terror and adrenaline pumped through her in equal measure.

This spot was perfect. She was not going to let the sighting of one man ruin it. She would give it twenty-four hours. If he came back, came sniffing around, she would leave. But she had a roof over her head for the first time in a while, and she didn’t want to lose it. She looked at the fish and knew a moment of despair. Because she was not going to be able to risk lighting a fire tonight. She didn’t want to waste it either.

She was never going to kill an animal and then not make use of it. Even if it was an ugly fish.

She blinked hard, denying all of the emotion that rose up inside of her. She wasn’t going to cry.

It was cold outside. Or at least, pretty cold. And she knew she had a couple of options. She dug in her backpack for a plastic bag, and took it out. She decided to wrap the fish carefully, and bury it in the cold dirt. Deep enough that hopefully it wouldn’t attract any bears, and that it would also be insulated. She trusted the idea well enough, or at least, trusted it as much as she did anything. Because hey. If there was one thing Bix Carpenter knew, it was how to survive.

“I think we might have a squatter.”

“And what evidence do you have, Sheriff?”

Daughtry King leaned back in his chair, and took a long drink of his beer. He could argue with his brother about him calling him Sheriff. He was a state trooper, not a sheriff. He didn’t even work for the sheriff’s department. But then, his brother obviously knew that, and was just being difficult.

A hallmark of Justice King if ever there was one. Oftentimes he could appreciate that—today not so much. He was tired. And if he said anything about being tired then his brother would remind him that taking two jobs was his idea.

True.

But, he considered it part and parcel of trying to do something to redeem the King name.

So when he’d decided to go into law enforcement, he hadn’t even bothered to have the discussion about the fact that he was trying to carry a new legacy for the family on his shoulders. Especially at the time, Arizona hadn’t cared at all. Denver and Justice still didn’t. Landry understood. But then, his younger brother had always seemed to care just a bit more about the things their father had done to them. And what they might have to do to fix it.

Especially now that his brother was a father—well, his brother had been a father for thirteen years; it was just that the kid had lived with him, and the rest of them hadn’t known—but now that he was actually the custodial parent of his daughter, and had another kid on the way, if anything Landry cared even more.

Mostly though, being understood wasn’t high on Daughtry’s list of things he needed.

“I saw them. Across the river. Fishing.”

“Sounds like we have a poacher.”

“Well. That too.”

“You don’t think it was one of the ranch hands?”

“It was a kid, I think. I mean, had to have been. Skinny. Not very tall. Hard to tell, though. Giant baggy sweatshirt and dirty pants. It didn’t look like one of the ranch hands.”

“And you’re going to say that this is lawman intuition?” Justice asked.

His brother was such a smart-ass.

“Yes,” he said. “Because I’ve seen things. You just get used to evaluating people.”

The truth was, there wasn’t a whole lot of crime in the area. It was patrolled primarily by state police, and there was a small outpost, and a few officers. But it was all the same crime you found anywhere else, and most especially in areas where there was poverty. Shoplifting, drugs, domestic violence. When life got hard, people got desperate. And he’d seen a lot of that. The person across the river had a desperate look about them. The way that they had clung to the fish…

The thing was, he was kind of tired of arresting the same people. That was what happened in an area like this. Every so often there were people who passed through, new kinds of trouble, but that was temporary. A lot of it was the same person driving without a license. Their sixth DUI that year. The same violent husband who you saw, but could never hold, because his wife would change her story the next day and refuse to press charges.

The same kids drinking. The same drug users. And back out on the street the next day. And around and around it went.

If he had gotten into law enforcement to solve anyone’s problems but his own he would’ve been very discouraged by now. But luckily, he had just enough of his dad’s narcissism that his primary goal had been to make the community associate his family name with something different. Now at least Officer King was associated with the family name. So, there was that.

Justice’s best friend, Rue, came into the room. “What’s all this?” Rue asked, hands planted on her hips. Daughtry noticed a ring flashing on Rue’s left hand and made a mental note to ask Justice about that.

“Daughtry thinks that there is a squatter and fish poacher out on the ranch.”

“Oh,” said Rue, frowning. “That’s scary.”

“It’s not scary,” said Daughtry. “It’s a half-pint trout poacher. There’s nothing scary about that. But I promise I’ll go out first thing tomorrow morning and have a look.”

“Ah,” Rue said. “The big scary man that carries a gun for a living doesn’t think it’s scary, so what does a woman know about safety?”

“It isn’t scary,” said Daughtry. “Because I think it’s like a fourteen-year-old kid. I only saw them from a distance but they were small.”

“Well, what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to do what any decent human being should do. I’m going to see if they need help.”

Bix stirred when she heard the sound of footsteps near the cabin. She froze. This was what she had been afraid of. The man was back.

She hadn’t left any sign outside that would indicate there was a person in the cabin, but he was only a hundred yards or so away.

That would definitely clue the person into the fact that someone was nearby. Or at least, had been.

He already knows that. Because he saw you. So just don’t panic about it.

Panicking didn’t help anything.

She just hoped he didn’t find the van and have it towed. That would be a disaster.

Him finding the still wouldn’t be ideal either.

Moving as silently as possible, Bix crept up to the window, and peered just above the ledge. She could see movement outside, but the glass was so dirty it was impossible to make anything out clearly. The good news was that meant it was difficult for anyone out there to tell what was happening inside.

But just in case, she opened up the crawl space hatch, and slipped down inside, closing it behind her. She had stashed all her stuff down in there earlier except for her blanket. The door to the cabin opened, and she heard heavy footsteps above her. She quit breathing.

Maybe this was better. Yeah. Maybe it was better. Because he would check all around here, and he wouldn’t see her. So, he would let it go.

You just want to stay for a while. You’re always so desperate for a home without wheels.

She shoved that thought to the side. It didn’t do her any good.

She waited. The minutes ticked by. They seemed like hours. Wasn’t he satisfied yet that there was nobody in here?

Finally, the footsteps went back toward the door, and it closed behind him.

And then she waited for what felt like an eternity. Because she knew she was in a dark space where there were probably rodents and spiders, and she hated all of it, thank you.

Bix was self-sufficient, and able to do what needed doing. But she wasn’t entirely without phobias of weird creepy animals. It was just that usually she had to deal. Finally, she took the chance and exited the space.

She waited several hours before she really started moving. She decided to make a fire. She prepared her fish, and she cooked it. And it was delicious.

Her packaged food could wait. It was a good day when she had something fresh like this.

She had some traps, and she was tempted to try to find places to set some up. She never set traps anywhere someone could get hurt, and she needed to get the lay of the land before she did anything like that.

More than anything, she wished that she still had her gun. That had been shortsighted. Getting rid of that. She had sold it for a few hundred dollars, which had felt like a boon at the time. Because ammunition was a damned sight too expensive anyway, and it had seemed like maybe it was just better to off-load it and get what she could. But it limited her food options in a way that really sucked.

Oh well. Fish was healthy. And the river seemed to have a supply. It was just too bad she had to stand out in the open to fish.

It wasn’t until late afternoon that she decided to go and check on the still. It wasn’t exactly high-tech. But she had to get creative, especially since she had to try to transport the still with her when she moved. And frankly, the bigger pieces were just impossible. So, a cheap pot and a five-gallon bucket were the big parts, and cheap enough to replace, and anything specialty was small enough to pack up in her bag.

It wasn’t the most subtle-looking thing, out there in the middle of the woods. Her current bucket was bright orange.

She went over and bent down beside it, and what scared her the most was that she didn’t hear anything. Not a footstep. Not a breath. Just the voice.

“Well. I thought I just had a squatter. Seems I actually have a whole criminal.”

She straightened and turned. And there he was. The man. In a uniform. Well, hell. He wasn’t just a man.

Turned out her intuition had been bang on the money.

Turned out, he was a cop.