Last Chance Cowboy

Also In this Series:

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  Stone Cold Cowboy

  June 1, 2026
  

• 

  Slow Hands Cowboy

  August 18, 2026
  

Excerpt

            Chapter One

Since moving to Mustang River, Oregon, and beginning her new life at the Painted Ridge Ranch and Resort, Cara had learned that if you wanted to bait a horse, you needed sugar cubes or alfalfa.

If you wanted to try to bait a man, however, she’d learned that strawberry rolls were much more effective.

Bait being the operative word, because tame definitely wasn’t it.

Zane Barton was as wild as the landscape around Painted Ridge Ranch, and twice as deadly. There was no taming to be had. Not that she wanted to tame him, she just…

She was fascinated by him. That was the word that she’d arrived at a couple of weeks ago. Crush felt silly, frothy and young. She didn’t feel young, and he wasn’t frothy or silly, so that was out.

It spoke to unrequited feelings that a person didn’t necessarily need to act on, though, and in that sense, she supposed it was close.

But it was still too juvenile for her to bear. So, fascination it was.

She had a fascination with Zane.

He had nothing of the sort with her, but he did seem to like her baked goods. So, there was that.

The fascination with her baked goods was also why she was being sent to his house – a place she had never been before – to try and sweeten him up.

When Cody had asked her to do this, she had laughed.

Because one did not sweeten up Zane Barton, that would imply that there was some sweetness there to be increased.

She might be fascinated with him, but she was also realistic about him.

She wasn’t entirely sure what Cody was to her. He was her landlord, owned the land that her bakery was on. So, not really her boss, even though he did take a percentage of the bakery’s sales. It was more of a collaboration. He was also in a relationship with her former sister-in-law.

Before all of this, Marlowe had been married to Cara’s brother for five years, and they’d been together much longer than that. Cara barely knew life without Marlowe. Cara was about nine when Marlowe and Aiden had started dating. Marlowe was a sister to Cara in every way that mattered.

Which was why, when her brother had revealed that he was cheating on Marlowe, and wouldn’t be going with her to the Painted Ridge Resort to start their new job as planned, Cara had insisted they still go.

It was why Cara had never questioned where her loyalty lay.

And that made Cody feel a little bit like family, even if there was no neat way to describe that on paper. He would feel like a brother-in-law, because Marlowe felt like a sister.

While her own brother…

Well, he had come out here and tried to win Marlowe back.

He had tried, also, to fix his relationship with Cara.

It hadn’t worked.

Because Cara had found that a lot of her old resentment had come rushing to the surface. Resentment that had nothing to do with Marlowe, and everything to do with the last few years.

With the way that Aiden hadn’t been able to handle their mother’s deteriorating health, hadn’t helped Cara with caregiving.

Every time she’d asked for more support, he’d had excuses. He’d sent money instead of himself because he was too busy. He was building a life — a life for a family — he was trying to get to a place in his life where he was stable enough to have children, and he had to be loyal to Marlowe and the future that they wanted to build.

But Cara wasn’t stupid. She knew that none of that had ever been about Marlowe, and after it had come out that Aiden had cheated on Marlowe, Cara’s suspicions had been laid out in front of everyone.

The reluctance to get involved had been about Aiden’s avoidance.

How nice for him. But both children couldn’t be avoidant. Not when their mother needed to be taken care of.

Somehow, he had been confident that it could all be left up to Cara, and everything would be taken care of.

He’d been right. She would have never left their mother without care. Not ever.

But it hadn’t been fair.

That chapter of her life had dominated her late teens and early twenties. Now here she was, twenty-four, pretty damned estranged from the only immediate family she had left, living across the country, owning a brand-new business, and… thriving?

Was this thriving?

She felt so much like herself, just in a new place.

But somehow she seemed like she was thriving enough to be the one who had been chosen to try and convince Zane to allow Cody to expand trail riding on the ranch to include a trail that went through his property.

She found it interesting that he’d been a firm no with Cody.

She knew next to nothing about Zane — except she knew he’d met Cody in the rodeo circuit and had moved to Mustang River because of him. Cody was the only person that Zane was even remotely close to.

Even so, he’d told Cody in no uncertain terms that his property was not open to guests.

It was Walker, Cody’s younger brother, who had suggested Cara try to charm him.

Zane had put a lot of work into the bakery. He’d done some of the construction on the building before she’d arrived, he’d mounted her shelves. He ate there every morning. And maybe if it was framed as something that might increase the flow of guests overall, keep the bakery and the business solvent…

Though Cara had asked why, as someone who worked on the ranch, he wouldn’t purely be motivated by the business doing better because they had increased the offerings.

Walker had looked at her and flatly stated that she would have better luck because she was pretty.

Walker was charming, so she’d giggled and agreed.

But ever since then, all through baking the special batch of strawberry rolls she was going to take to Zane’s house, packing it in a little basket with a pink cloth, and getting dressed in a floral sundress to go up to his place, she had been questioning everything.

Mostly because even if that were true, even if she were remarkably attractive – and she didn’t think she was – Zane had never indicated that he was the sort of man who cared about that. The kind of man who valued it or made decisions based on it.

Walker probably would. And maybe that was the issue. Walker was thinking that to him, the messenger would matter. Send a pretty girl in a short skirt, and he would say yes and probably seduce her.

Zane?

Likely not.

Though the idea of seduction made her cheeks feel a little bit warm. Was that seduction in general? Could she transfer it to someone like Walker?

That would be easy. He was really handsome. He was also, per every report she’d heard on him, easy. The kind of man a woman could have an experience with and then move on and still be friendly with him.

And yet. Something about the word easy didn’t create that same delicious tension inside her.

Someday, she was going to psychoanalyze this. The fact that this entire ranch was complete with gorgeous cowboys, and the one that intrigued her the most, the one that made her heartbeat just a little bit faster, was the least friendly, least accessible, least appropriate one for her to be interested in.

Interested was a strong word.

She wasn’t interested.

It was just that you couldn’t help who you were attracted to.

Maybe she could, but her issues were conspiring against her.

All she knew in life was impossible, disconnection, and a distance from people she wished she could be closer to. And maybe part of her wanted to keep it that way.

Maybe part of her wanted to always be thwarted. Maybe part of her wanted to keep relationships off limits and out of reach because it just seemed safer.

At this point, her entire life had been a front-row seat to heartbreak and loss.

There were very valid reasons that she wasn’t amped to jump into anything like that. Of course, she also felt like she was being left behind, that she was tragically inexperienced for a woman of twenty-four, and that if she looked at Zane for too long, she was going to spontaneously combust.

Those things were related.

“No combusting,” she said to herself as she got out of her little car and grabbed her basket full of rolls.

She looked like Little Pink Riding Hood, well, without the hood. But she felt a little bit like she was heading toward the Big Bad in Wolf’s cabin.

It was a cabin. Small and rough-hewn, set back in the trees. There was a wide front porch that had a rocking chair on it. There were no planter boxes, no landscaping at all. All the plants around the cabin grew wild. Ferns and manzanita, and behind it, towering pine trees that created shade over the whole place.

It was a beautiful, peaceful spot, and if the trail were anywhere near his house, she could understand his resistance.

She took a step toward the house, and then, there was a rustling in the bushes just to the left of the house.

She stopped, clutching her basket and holding it to her chest.

Was it a bear? A deer? A squirrel, maybe, since they did make an awful racket for their size. She could fight a squirrel.

Everything else was a firm no.

But, she wanted to know what it was so she could decide whether to run, stand her ground, or dash back down the hill.

A figure came around the side of the foliage, neither bear, deer, nor squirrel.

Just the Big Bad Wolf himself.

Zane.

He held a black cowboy hat in his hand and wore a pair of blue jeans that rested precariously low on his hips.

He was not wearing a shirt.

His dark hair was wet and pushed off his forehead. His body was…

She swallowed hard.

His chest was broad and muscular, covered in dark hair, his abdomen ridged and glorious.

She hadn’t seen him shirtless before, and she really hadn’t known how beautiful he was.

He was the type of guy who was clearly built, even fully clothed, so she’d suspected, certainly, but she hadn’t really known.

Now she did.

Her mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow.

“What are you doing here?”

He stood there, looking at her, and he could not have had a less welcoming expression on his face. He was angry that she was there. That much was obvious.

Walker had made this seem like a fun, easy little proposition. She should’ve known better than to listen to him. He was the kind of man who got women into trouble, because he seemed light and free and easy, and also charming, and then the things he said seemed like they might be true, but of course they weren’t.

Zane was glaring at her like he wanted to roll her down the hill she had just driven up.

“I brought you some rolls,” she said, lifting the basket.

He jerked his head back, and she thought again of her analogy regarding horses. Right now, he looked like a wary stallion.

“What kind?”

“Strawberry,” she said, taking a step toward him.

“Why?”

“Because. Because I did. Because it’s…oop!” She took a step forward, and her ankle rolled slightly when she stepped on half a pinecone. She steadied herself and smiled. “Nice.”

“Why,” he repeated, this time, not a question, but a demand for an answer.

“Okay, Cody was hoping that I would talk to you about using your property for trail rides.”

“Fuck him and no.”

“But—” He turned away from her and began to walk up the front porch.

Wow. The muscles on his back were amazing.

Wow, that is not your goal here.

“But,” she started again. “He’s your best friend.”

“Yes. He is my best friend. He’s my only friend. And fuck him. I’m not letting him use my property to run tourists through it like it’s a goddamned theme park. Does this look like the happiest place on earth to you?”

“Clearly not. I don’t think he’s suggesting he bring the crowd up to roll merrily all over your land. I just think he wants to run a trail ride through the far end. Way, way, far away from your house. Anyway, you would benefit.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Why did they send you?”

“The way to a man’s heart is through his stomach?” She lifted the basket up higher. He turned toward her, cocking his hip and leaning against the railing on the porch.

He made a low, growling sound. “That may be true. If the man has a heart.”

The statement made her feel breathless, and she didn’t know if she wanted to roll her eyes at him or herself. Both, honestly. “I think you have a heart. I just think you’re stubborn.”

“Is this news?”

“I don’t see why you won’t do this for him.”

“Why do you care?”

“Honestly? It could be good for my business too.”

“He can run a ride up to the trail once a week. Once a week. That’s it. Then I don’t want to hear anymore. No more badgering me, no more trying to get me to give up more space. I’ll give what I give. That’s it.”

He turned away from her again.

“Wait,” she said, launching herself forward, and when he turned again, even though he was two steps above her and she was on the ground, he was far too close.

She sucked in a sharp breath, everything in her freezing. “Strawberry rolls.” She held the basket higher.

They were the only words she was capable of uttering.

“I don’t need a bribe.”

Except he had agreed only when she had come up here. Maybe… Maybe he had agreed because it was evidence that they found him so unreasonable they were willing to send anyone and everyone up to convince him. Maybe this had been a bit.

He reached out and grabbed ahold of the basket. His rough hand brushed hers, and she felt something like fire shoot through her veins.

He was awful. Genuinely. The least friendly, the least welcoming, the least accommodating man she had ever met.

So why was she breathless?

His eyes were a deep forest green, and she couldn’t help but notice the color right now. Really notice it. There were glimpses of gold in his eyes, and a darker ring around the outside. For a moment, she was held completely captive by those eyes.

For a moment, she couldn’t think, much less speak.

“Go on,” he said. “You’d better get.”

“Fine,” she said. She didn’t know what she had meant to say. She didn’t know if maybe she could’ve come up with something cleverer if she had given it a minute. But she hadn’t.

So instead, she got back into her car and drove down to Cody’s house. Well, Cody and Marlowe’s house. They still stayed in the apartment at the hotel sometimes, but mostly they lived at Cody’s place. He had a huge, beautiful ranch house out in the middle of the property, and they ate there a couple of nights a week.

Cara was in something of a unique position. Because while she worked on the Painted Ridge Ranch, she did not live there. That was most of the employees, to be fair, but she was someone with an ownership stake, someone who was close to the family by proxy, and yet, she wasn’t right there with all of them.

Zane had his own place, of course. His own property. But even still, he was a neighbor.

Cara lived in the town of Mustang River, about twenty minutes away.

It was a cute town, and she liked that she could walk to shopping, restaurants, and local bars if she wanted to.

In theory. She didn’t do much of any of that. Mostly, she worked on recipes, got up early, and made sure the bakery was perfect before opening every day, so that all of the sweets were ready to go.

Then at the end of the day, she had a drive home. So even though she ate with everyone sometimes, she didn’t do it as often as they did.

It made her feel a little bit outside of things. But it was a choice that she had made. She shrugged off her discomfort, chalked it up to the fact that she had just had a strange encounter with Zane.

Truth be told, every encounter with him made her feel like running a lap and throwing up.

It was like a pure shot of adrenaline into her veins, even if the encounter was completely benign. And this hadn’t really been benign.

She parked alongside Cody’s truck and could see that Walker, Lila, and their family friend Nolan were already there as well.

She got out and saw that the whole family was out back, standing around the barbecue, baking in the late June heat.

“Hello,” she said.

She received staggered greetings from the group in response to hers.

She took a deep breath. “Zane agrees. You can run a trail ride on his place once a week.”

Cody’s head jerked up so fast his cowboy hat nearly fell off his head. “How did you get him to agree?”

“I told you,” Walker said. “Beauty tamed the savage beast.”

Cody looked extremely put out by that, and Cara wasn’t sure why.

Marlowe put a hand on her man’s arm. Calling Cody a boyfriend was juvenile, like the term crush. He wasn’t a boy. But he and Marlowe weren’t engaged yet, and lover was just creepy.

“That’s not what happened at all. Though, he did take my bribe. I think he’s just tired of being bothered. Which is actually why I think you sent me, Walker, giving him an indication that he was going to be harassed until the end of days if he didn’t say yes.”

Walker looked innocent. “Me? Stoop to emotional manipulation like that? Yeah. That sounds trite.”

“God help any woman stupid enough to ever try to tangle with you,” his younger sister said, shoving him so that he went off balance and nearly tumbled onto the grass.

Nolan crossed his arms, grinning. “She kind of has a point,” he said.

“You’re really going to side with my sister?” Walker looked offended.

Nolan shrugged. “When she’s right. As rare as that is.”

Lila looked like she was about to launch a verbal assault on Nolan, and Cara barreled right along, not allowing a fight to break out between the two of them. If Lila and Nolan got going, no one else would get a word in.

“Anyway, it’s fine. You got what you wanted, and I’m unscathed.” Which was a strange way to put it, considering she felt like she had been skinned alive.

“Happy to see it,” Cody said.

“And happy to get your way,” Marlowe said.

“That’s fine. I just expect to be paid in steaks.”

“We can help you with that,” Walker said, walking over to one of the tables that were set up by the barbecue and handing her a plate. She went and stood by Cody, who was still grilling, and held her plate out, looking at him expectantly.

He did feel like an older brother in a lot of ways. Like an older brother she hadn’t had.

Cody was the type who had taken care of everyone and everything, always.

Maybe that was why she liked him so much. Maybe that was why she felt a kinship to him. Because even though her family had been smaller, her responsibility was not quite as great as his. She knew what it was like to feel like everyone’s well-being rested on her shoulders.

“We’re all going on a ride tomorrow,” Lila said, moving up beside her. “Do you want to come?”

Cara felt slightly uncomfortable. “Oh. I mean, I have the bakery.”

“I know,” she said. “But we were planning on going after hours.”

Cara still hadn’t ridden a horse. This brought her back to the baiting.

It didn’t help that she was a little bit afraid of horses. Just a little bit. They were really big, and once when she was a kid, she had gone to visit a farm for a field trip with her kindergarten class, and one of the horses had bitten her on the shoulder. She wasn’t sure why. It probably had something to do with the rowdy little boys who were acting up near her, or maybe it was because her coat was orange and she looked like a carrot. Either way, she had been bitten, and horses had not really been her favorite ever since.

She’d tried to… commune with a couple of the horses. She found them a little bit scary. Building herself up to let one suction a sugar cube off of her flat, open palm had been a feat of bravery. Actually riding a horse?

Ugh.

She wasn’t taking advantage of living in the country.

Wasn’t taking advantage of her new home in all the ways that she should.

Going home to her quiet house, where she had her books, TV, and crochet, felt like a reminder of the fact that she had essentially been living like a septuagenarian for the last few years. Because that’s what her mother was. And she had been taking care of her mother. Full-time, with no days off for a very long time.

Her hobbies and lifestyle had adapted.

That was normally fine. But right now it felt a little bit lame. Because they were all going riding, and she didn’t even know how to do it.

Marlowe had learned how. Marlowe had taken this move and really grabbed the bull by the horns. Or the cowboy by the horn, so to speak. Cara had… launched a successful business. It wasn’t nothing, but in terms of personal growth, it wasn’t really as much as she had been hoping for.

“I think I’m going to be busy.”

She wasn’t that thrilled with herself for that decision. Because it would be so much better to go with them. It would be so much more… It would be a bigger move. But they would have to take their time to teach her how to ride, it would cut into their trip. Maybe sometimes she would ask for help learning to ride. Maybe she would ask Walker. Because he was easy.

Or even Cody, because he was like the big brother that she’d never had.

But she didn’t need to go cramping their style.

She would just close the bakery like usual tomorrow, go back to her house, make a cup of tea, sit down with her crochet, and watch British murder shows.

That seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do.

“Okay,” Lila said, though she looked disappointed.

Cara knew that Lila really wanted to befriend her. It wasn’t that they weren’t friendly. It was just that Lila was prickly and brash, and liked to do outdoor activities, and Cara was not those things.

She also had minimal experience befriending people her own age. She’d spent many hours in the kitchen of her childhood home chatting with her mother’s friends who came to visit when her mother was too unwell to go out.

Lila had a reckless confidence to her that Cara found intimidating. And also, she didn’t know what they could do that they would both enjoy. Cara didn’t have the lay of this land yet.

Cara loved living here. It was beautiful. She had always lived somewhat in the country. Though, her family home had been in a nice neighborhood, not outside of town. But they had lived in a small town, a tight community where everyone knew each other.

It was idyllic, except for her circumstances. She could remember riding her bike around town before she could drive, picking up groceries, and taking them home in the basket on the front of her handlebars.

The owner of the grocery store would always chat with her, the baker would always wave as she rode by while he was loading bread into his delivery truck, and ask how she was doing.

Everyone did.

They would ask how her mother was doing.

That became stifling when the answer was always bad.

When she couldn’t tell them that she was getting better. Couldn’t tell them anything at all except lies, because who wanted to pause their momentum to say: she remembers less every day, and I’m living with my mother’s ghost while she’s still breathing?

It was easier to say: She’s doing great.

She’d told herself that was a fine thing to say as long as her mother wasn’t actively dying.

It was only when her mother had been put on hospice that Cara had felt obligated to say that. When her mother passed away, she just didn’t want to stay in that town anymore.

She couldn’t imagine. Because people asking how her mother was were going to turn into people asking how she was. Or telling her stories about her mom, telling her how much they missed her.

And Cara did too.

But Cara also knew the great and terrible guilt of feeling relieved that her long years as a caregiver were over.

She didn’t think she could ever bring herself to speak those words out loud to anybody.

She got her steak and sat down. It was Marlowe who settled up next to her, looking concerned.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” she said, thinking it was somewhat ironic that her sister-in-law had just asked her that when she had been thinking about how much she didn’t want random people around the town asking her that very question.

It was different with Marlowe, though. Because she actually knew her.

And around Mustang River, people didn’t. Which was honestly a relief. Because when they asked how she was doing, it was just a pleasantry. A light greeting.

It didn’t mean anything.

“I’m fine. Really. You know how Zane is.”

“Intense.”

“Very.” Thinking about his intensity made her shiver, and she tried to hide it by taking a particularly fierce bite of her food.

“He wasn’t mean to you, was he?”

“A little bit mean, but I can handle it.”

She and Marlowe took turns babying each other, which was a little bit silly. They were both tough, resilient. But when Marlowe had been at her lowest after Cara’s brother had left her, Cara had done her best to make sure that her sister-in-law was still doing okay.

Marlowe bumped her shoulder with her own. “You could come riding.”

Cara grimaced. “Honestly. I’m happy with a night in.”

As she drove home, she had to wonder what it was going to take to get her to make some changes. She couldn’t help but feel frustrated.

She was nothing like Zane Barton. Nothing at all.

And yet, maybe she was destined for that kind of future. To be alone, by herself, walls up around her heart, her life, but instead of doing whatever he had been doing, off in the woods without a shirt, it would be her, her cup of tea, and her murder mystery shows.

It was a sobering thought.

Then she pushed it out of her mind as she picked up her yarn.

This was a problem for another day.

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