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Little Bandit Press
September 22, 2026


Wild Card Cowboy

When the two most stubborn people at the Mustang River Resort have to work together - sparks are bound to fly.

When Nolan and Lila are tasked with designing a challenging new trek for the resort’s most adventurous guests, they’ll have to plan the route, organize the supplies, and test every mile together. Which would be easier if they didn’t already get on each other’s last nerve.

Nolan is a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed mountain man, who likes his whiskey strong and his relationships uncomplicated. Lila is a hard-drinking, foul-mouthed mountain woman who prefers wood carving, solitude, and ignoring her older brother’s best friend whenever possible.

Any attraction between the two of them is laughable. And off-limits. Nolan would never, ever touch his best friend's presumably-untouched sister...

Until long days on horseback lead to even longer nights beneath the stars, and irritation soon gives way to a secret, scorching affair. There’s only one problem: the tent seems to be the only place they can get along.

Neither Nolan nor Lila grew up knowing what safety felt like. Both carry the scars of neglect, disappointment, and people who should have loved them better. Now Lila is falling hard, and the intensity of it makes her want to run. Nolan knows she has already been let down too many times—and he refuses to become the next person who fails her.

Can two fiercely guarded alphas risk tenderness long enough to reach the summit together?

Also In this Series:

  • Stone Cold Cowboy

    June 1, 2026

  • Last Chance Cowboy

    July 14, 2026

  • Slow Hands Cowboy

    August 18, 2026

  • A Mustang River Christmas

    September 25, 2026

Excerpt

Chapter One

Lila Grayson could remember, vividly, the first time her eyes had ever offended her.

During her life she hadn’t spent very much time in church. But she could recall one time when she had been dragged there by a friend. In hindsight, she didn’t think the girl had actually been a friend. Rather, she was pretty sure the girl’s parents had forced her to befriend Lila on account of they were worried about her eternal soul because she was a child who was too skinny, too mean, and swore too much.

Regardless of the circumstances, though, Lila could remember the sermon. The pastor had gripped the pulpit and leaned forward, and proclaimed that the Bible said, if your eye offends you, you ought to pluck it out.

At the time she hadn’t been able to think of a single reason her eyes could offend her. She’d imagined them turning inward, pupils facing her brain, telling her she was stupid.

It had made her laugh in the pew, and she’d never been invited back by that friend’s family, and she hadn’t thought of it again.

Until, one day years later when she’d suddenly remembered the sermon and had understood exactly what it actually meant.

She had been roughly twelve years old and had seen a seventeen-year-old Nolan without a shirt at the swimming hole. It was not the first time she had seen Nolan without a shirt. She had grown up with him. So, seeing him in a state of partial undress was a relatively common occurrence.

But she didn’t know if it was something about the light, the way the water had gleamed and glistened on muscles that were getting more and more defined as the years progressed, or if it was just that unfortunately for her, that day, her hormones had come online.

She would never really know.

But for whatever reason, that day, seeing him without a shirt had done something to her. Shifted something inside of her.

She had never felt more offended by her eyes in her life.

The second time her eyes had offended her — well and truly — she had caught Nolan making out with a girl in his truck in the parking lot of the apartment complex that they shared. Truly one of the least subtle moves a man could have ever made.

Why a girl would have lost her head so much to make out with him in the broad light of day in a place that was that unromantic, in his beater of a truck, she swore she couldn’t say.

She had never told anyone she’d seen that, least of all Nolan, partly because she couldn’t face anyone knowing that it would mean a single thing to her.

He was like her brothers. For the streets.

There was no point angsting about that sort of behavior. It just was what it was.

And yet, much like that day at the river, it was a moment burned into her memory. The way that his hand had skimmed along that girl’s face. The way that his mouth had moved. The way he moved his body.

It was a side of him she had never seen before, and a side she hoped to never see again. It had haunted her. Kept her awake at night. Made her ache for things that she had never before considered. And every time he treated her like a child, she thought of that, and it made her painfully aware of how much she just hated him.

Because she had seen him. And he had never once seen her. Not that she wanted him to.

It had grown into an ache that she had just learned to live with, honestly.

Lila wasn’t a person lacking in courage or conviction, and so absolutely would have plucked her own eyes out if she hadn’t also found it utterly impractical.

Because she was practical above all else.

You had to be when you grew up in a state of relative poverty, figuring out how to make your own way.

She had the best older brothers in the world, which more than made up for a mother who had been disappointingly obsessed with a man who would never want her back, and a father who hadn’t given a single shit about his own children.

That being said, she felt that she needed her eyes, offensive, though they may be. And they had continued to offend.

Nolan irritated the ever-living hell out of her. Their relationship was a complicated one, and had only gotten more tangled up after she’d made a real ass of herself one night after a rodeo event, though Nolan always acted like he didn’t remember it. He’d been pretty hammered too, so maybe he didn’t. But what had always been a volatile relationship had become a lot more explosive after that – again, that was her fault.

But for the last four years, she hadn’t been able to say if he was offensive and irritating simply because he was, or if it was her own solution to not being able to pluck out her eyes.

Hold him at a distance. That was the only thing for it.

She didn’t hate Nolan. In fact in spite of how much they clashed he remained one of the people she spent the most time with. He remained one of the most important people in her life even when she wanted to punch him, and herself.

But he picked on her too in his own way. He treated her like she was an annoying younger sister – when he wasn’t treating her like she was a prop to move around. And that was mostly fine. Truly.

It helped to make interaction with him routine.

She was on the offense, not the defense. The one setting off sparks between them, and deciding exactly what kinds of sparks they would be.

But then there were days like today. When she wished that she had gone and plucked her eyes out back when she had been twelve years old.

Because it was a hot day, and she and Nolan were doing trailblazing that had required him to get out more than a machete to clear some logs out of the way. And then, the work of cutting wood with an axe had gotten so hot he had removed his shirt.

Twelve-year-old Lila had been deeply impressed by the lean muscle and hairless chest on seventeen-year-old Nolan.

Twenty-five-year-old Lila was about to spontaneously combust over the well-developed, broad chest covered with dark hair on thirty-one-year-old Nolan and she hated it.

Yep. Should have just plucked those eyes straight out.

“My God,” she said. “Can you move fucking faster?”

He straightened up and looked at her, dark eyes indulgent but irritated. Then he grabbed his T-shirt and dragged it across the beaded sweat on his chest, and her stomach swooped. She gritted her teeth to try and minimize the feeling.

“This isn’t a photoshoot, princess,” she said. “We’re trailblazing.”

“Didn’t know I was picture perfect to you,” he said.

Her teeth were still gritted, but she felt something radiate through them like a shockwave.

“I just recognize a pose when I see one,” she said. “Now, can we keep things moving?”

“How much do you intend to get done for the day?”

“How far have we gone?”

He lifted his wrist and looked down at his watch. “Oh, half a mile.”

“I think we can get half a mile more, don’t you?”

He nodded once. She knew that even if he didn’t think that he would never admit it, because, of course, he would need to match her competitive spirit.

That was the thing about her and Nolan. They were always doing that. Butting heads and somehow turning those head-butting sessions into something productive.

They were like oil and vinegar. They stayed separate, they clashed, but they made a damn good salad dressing.

“I’m going to have to take a chainsaw to the stuff up ahead. There’s no way around it.”

She squinted and looked ahead at the solid wall of trees and foliage.

They had made an arrangement with the neighboring ranches to take the trail they were blazing across their land. They had agreed to give those ranchers a percentage of the revenue from the endurance rides.

All in all, it would be a fifty-mile round trip, twenty-five miles from the Painted Ridge Ranch, across some of the most beautiful, scenic countryside in Mustang River.

Of course, that was a great idea, and even going through the trail and marking it had been fun and exciting. But now here they were, several weeks into blazing said trail, and it was starting to feel a little less exciting and a little bit more grueling.

They were five miles in, just about.

Once they got any further than that, they were going to start camping out and working for several days without going back home, something she wasn’t looking forward to. Yes, they could hire people to help. They could get a bigger crew, but then that would require putting more money out.

Her older brother Cody was definitely testing her with this.

He didn’t have to do that. He could have pitched some of his own money in, but he hadn’t.

And she was excited about it. Really, she was. But the money that she had earned barrel racing wasn’t the same as the money that her brothers had earned in bull riding and calf roping. And certainly not the same as the money that Nolan had earned riding saddle bronc. Not that she needed a whole lot of money to live. She had a house on the Painted Ridge Ranch, she had a great job, the family tended to share food, and when she needed a new outfit, she went down to the farm and garden and picked up a pair of jeans, a sensible tank top or a button-up flannel, and she was good to go. The only thing she spent serious money on—and she did have a problem—was boots and hats.

She had an array of western-style boots, hiking boots, and hats.

And if you wanted nice hats and boots, you had to invest some cash.

Still, given her other expenses, it just wasn’t all that much.

But she felt a hint of risk associated with this project, and it made it feel almost exciting. The rest of it was wearisome, and scary, a little bit. Because if the more extreme events didn’t bring people like they hoped, then she and Nolan would just have failed with their contribution to the ranch.

Walker was a silent investor, meaning he had paid money, but he wasn’t putting in any sweat equity.

Unsurprising when it came to Walker, who was about the smoothest motherfucker that Lila had ever known.

It was a gift that he had.

Probably inherited from his dad. He had just admitted to her recently that the father they’d thought they all shared—who was a rich deadbeat that had left them this property—wasn’t actually Walker’s father.

It made no difference to her.

Parentage didn’t mean much of anything when none of your parents had been all that great.

But she’d been lucky. She had Walker, she had Cody.

And Nolan, she supposed, though he was not her brother.

She was very, very clear on that.

He had never felt like her brother, even if he did sometimes treat her like a sister.

“Well, chainsaw it up, bro,” she said.

He laughed and reached for the large pack that he had hauled in.

They were getting to the point that, when the weather was good, they were leaving some of their supplies behind so they didn’t have to pack it in every day.

Shirtless, dirty, and looking far too good for her own peace of mind, Nolan picked up the chainsaw and headed forward.

He lifted it up, the muscles on his back flexing, and then he pulled the rip cord. Twice, three times, every time her heart pounding against her chest, and then it started up, the high-pitched buzzing sound reverberating through her as he began to take some of the larger branches down.

They were doing their best to cut into everything as little as possible. They weren’t using bulldozers, they weren’t using heavy equipment, but they were carving the trail just as wide as a horse would need to get through.

They would be leaving the trail relatively rocky and rough, rather than leveling everything out.

This wasn’t supposed to be an easy little walk in the woods, it was an endurance ride. And it was supposed to be a challenge.

Twenty-five miles’ worth of challenge.

Of course, riding the trail once it existed would be much easier than creating the trail.

The one thing Lila could admire was her biceps. The work she had put in with the Pulaski, chopping roots and saplings to help with major obstacles, the bow saw, and an axe had done a lot to refine her arms.

Not that anybody enjoyed that.

The trouble with being in a town this small, and staying in a town this small, was that she knew all the idiots that were her age. And she wasn’t into them, and the feeling was pretty much mutual.

And yes, part of the problem with her was that her reputation as being blunt to the point of deadly preceded her. And it was a reputation she had earned.

As sharp as she could be now, she had been much worse when she was younger.

She’d had a chip on her shoulder, and she had made it everybody else’s problem.

And while her brothers were relatively amused by the way people in the town seemed to like them now that they had money, Lila didn’t find that amusing.

Her entire childhood had been marked by an inability to make friends, or to only make friends who saw her as a sort of Pygmalion that they could mold and shape and make over. Turn her into whatever their version of acceptable was. Make her more feminine, more fashionable, more pious. Teach her to talk like a lady, sit like a lady, walk like a lady.

Before she had stopped bothering with those sorts of charity friendships, she could remember one of her friend’s moms walking behind her and making a comment about how Lila needed to learn to walk across the ground, rather than sinking into each and every step like she was a lumberjack.

Her response to that had been to tell her friend’s mom, deadpan, absolutely seriously, that Lila would love to grow up to be a lumberjack.

And while she wasn’t a lumberjack, there was a significant amount of jacking lumber involved in this job.

So, goal achieved.

And that little mental detour had at least taken her mind off Nolan for a moment.

But now she was looking at him again, at the way he maneuvered the chainsaw, bringing the chain through the wood like butter.

She watched the way his muscles shifted, the way the tattoo on his forearm—a swirling mix of mountains, clouds, and trees—shifted along with that movement.

Working with him in proximity had been a unique challenge.

The situation with him was prickly, yes, but it was also something she had been dealing with for more than a decade.

Even though they saw each other a lot, this had increased their togetherness time. And it was a lot more time alone than she was used to.

Nolan did a lot of work on the ranch that had nothing to do with her—he had carved a lot of the art features around the place, he led a lot of trail rides—while she managed some of the logistics with employees at the hotel, on the grounds and dealt with vendors and orders on a practical level, they still often found themselves intersecting on the same projects. And when she had come up with the idea to bring more extreme outdoor activities to the ranch, Nolan had been the person to go to about it. Because Nolan was the kind of person who would want to do those things.

Part of the issue with him was that they were a lot alike in some ways. But also very different in others. It was those strange meshes and clashes that created inflection points that were often difficult to see coming. But, of course, most of those inflection points were inside of her, and not something that he ever had any idea about. Which was for the best. Definitely for the best.

He turned around, just as he kicked the chainsaw off, and swung his arm down at his side, giving her an obscene view of his chest and ab muscles, sweat trailing down between them.

Life would be easier if she had approached sex differently. This was the problem.

Her problem was she had compared every guy she’d even almost tried to date with what Nolan made her feel just looking at him fifty feet away.

And maybe that was unrealistic.

Maybe real physical contact wasn’t supposed to feel like that. Maybe only fantasy was supposed to make your heart beat faster and your knees shake. Maybe only fantasy could wind you up to the point that you had to yell at the object of your fantasy to keep them from getting too close to you.

So maybe when a guy that took her out to dinner and put his hand over hers failed to make an impact, she shouldn’t be surprised. Maybe you had to actually ride the horse to get that experience.

But the trouble was, nothing had made her want to mount the horse — so to speak — not when she could go have a fight with Nolan and have a full body response. Something entirely different and more exciting, enervating and exasperating than anything that happened on one of those dates.

She was under-kissed, underwhelmed, and sadly, virginal, which was annoying because she didn’t like that as a label at all. It suggested a level of softness and innocence that she simply didn’t possess and never had.

She felt, philosophically, like she would be a great candidate to be a good-time girl. Like she had the kind of mentality that would allow her to have casual sex. To simply hop on, get what she came for and hop off, never think about the guy again.

She had attachment issues, and who could blame her, and that kind of thing seemed like it would make casual sex easy.

She felt completely philosophical about that. She felt like there was really no big deal to be made of it. Tab A, slot B, and there you go.

But in reality, she just thought that she didn’t want to have sex that wasn’t exciting. She didn’t want to have sex that didn’t thrill her, and so that left her intimately untouched.

Which didn’t match up with her personality at all. She wasn’t shy, she wasn’t retiring, she wasn’t prudish in any regard.

Yet, she had never even kissed one of those other guys.

She just had this weird fucking obsession with her brother’s best friend, and she couldn’t get rid of it. It made her hate him even more. Made her want to punch him in his beautiful face, and then made her want to…

No. She wasn’t going to go there. She couldn’t go there.

“Forge away, Lila. You’re the one that wants to get another half a mile today. That’s going to take another few hours, and then we’re going to have to hike back.”

“Are you questioning things?”

“I’m not questioning anything, I’m just telling you, it’s going to be a twelve, so we’ve gotta keep going.”

“I’m the one that was just telling you that.”

“Well, now you’re just standing there.”

She growled and moved over to grab her tools, then brushed past him.

She was sawing at branches and clearing the pathway until her muscles ached.

Sweat was rolling down her back, trickling down her temples.

Doing this in September had been a choice. It was just still so hot.

And fall wasn’t showing signs of trying to get there any faster.

The sun was brutal, and there was some lingering smoke in the air from wildfires that were a few hundred miles away.

It made the sun just a little bit orange, and made it feel like you were close to a campout.

“Defeated yet?” Nolan asked, wiping his own brow again.

Still shirtless.

“Yeah, I think I’m ready to call it a day since we still have to hike back. Can we just leave everything?”

“I don’t see why not,” he said.

He bent down and picked up a giant log that was lying there in the middle of the trail and then threw it like he was in some kind of Highland Games competition, the movement looking effortless, and as the log hit the ground with a thud, she felt it echo between her legs.

She decided not to say anything. Not even anything snarky.

Because heaven help her. She just needed to get some space.

She took her phone out of her pocket. It was overheating. She really needed to get a new one. Her brother Walker always had the latest phone. He replaced things like that once a year. She’d had hers for about four years, and it could barely keep a charge, and overheated terribly in weather like this. The screen was dim, but she could still read Cody’s text to both her and Nolan, asking if they wanted to have dinner.

Great.

She could say no. She could say she needed to get back home and get in a cool shower, because she did.

But then she would have to cook for herself, and she didn’t want to do that. Also, by the time they hiked out of here, they were going to be very hungry.

“Did you see Cody’s text?”

She nodded and shoved her phone back in her pocket. “Yeah. Once we get out of here, we can just drive straight over.”

“I think he proposed to Marlowe.”

“Today?”

“It’s my understanding.”

Immediately, she felt irritated that Nolan would know that and not her.

Of course, that was probably a normal thing to share with your friend and not your younger sister, but still.

The idea of Cody getting married, having kids, it gave her such a strange, happy ache in the center of her chest.

Sore and happy. He deserved it, of course he did. And she was happy.

But it was also sort of a strange jealousy.

Because she had been the person that he took care of. He was this essential part of her life. Of her family.

And now they were adding Marlowe to it, which was wonderful, but it was also this breaking apart of the thing that they had always been.

“You good?”

“Yeah,” she said.

She pushed ahead of Nolan on the trail. And tried to just focus on the trail. How good it was looking, how much work they had already done. They had five miles of groomed trail to walk back on because of everything that they had put into it. That there was going to be about two hours of walking with Nolan was a little bit annoying.

But there was nothing to be done about that.

“You seem upset.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Fractious.”

She stopped and turned to face him, fury churning in her gut. “I’m not a baby, Nolan.”

His dark eyes flickered up and down just for a second. A fraction. And it made her feel so hot she thought that she might combust.

“Great. Glad we had that discussion. I’m not upset. I may be a little bit annoyed that you know that my brother is getting engaged, and I don’t. And you told me.”

“Sorry. I kind of thought that you knew he was going to propose.”

“No. I didn’t.”

And that made her feel a strange sort of worry, like maybe Cody hadn’t told her on purpose. Like, maybe he hadn’t told her because he didn’t think that she could handle it, or that she would be weird. And maybe she was being weird. Maybe he was right.

That made her feel even worse.

“I don’t think it’s personal. I just think that he probably told the guys.”

“The guys?”

“He talked to Walker, I know that. I think Zach because Zach and Cara got engaged so fast that… Well, he has experience with it.”

“Zach and Cara got engaged too fast,” she said, sniffing.

She didn’t even mean that. She liked Cara. She liked her so much, and she felt like a jerk saying that while she wasn’t here. She also thought that Cara’s love story with Zach was one of the most surprising, beautiful things that she’d ever seen, but she was so goddamn allergic to sincerity that she had a hard time showing that, or admitting it. And right now, she just felt annoyed, so she was having difficulty not being like that. She definitely didn’t want Nolan to know that she felt any vulnerability around this.

Around all the change that was happening.

Change was good. She welcomed it.

It had been a lot of years of change, but her family had moved as a unit. They had done all those changes together, and this was one of those things where she was just being left behind.

Walker was with Addison now, and even though they weren’t engaged, that would happen. It just would. She knew that. Because the thing about her brothers was they had all been so commitment averse, that the minute they found a woman that they were willing to commit to, she knew that it was going to be forever. It was obvious to her that Cody was going to marry Marlowe. It was obvious that Walker would marry Addison, who had been his sworn enemy for years, and now suddenly was the love of his life.

Cara had come to the ranch with Marlowe—her former sister-in-law—and Lila had made friends with her, and Cara had immediately coupled up, and Lila was the sad virgin who didn’t even know how to make a step forward into having a second date, much less… Relationships.

And she couldn’t really say that she wanted one. She was pretty happy with her life, but…

She could feel Nolan’s eyes on her, and she bristled. “Let’s just pretend you didn’t tell me,” she said. “Then I can act surprised.”

Which was exactly what she did when they finally arrived at Cody’s house, exhausted, sweaty and starving.

The heat had made Lila evil, and she was doing her best not to snap.

Especially when Marlowe ran to her and showed her the giant ring on her finger.

“Holy shit,” Lila said. “Cody, do you have any money left?”

Cody was smiling, very smugly. “I have enough.”

This was real. Real, real, the rock on her finger was lifetime stuff.

And Lila found that she really was happy. Ninety-eight point nine percent happy.

“Burger?” Nolan shoved a plate toward her.

She looked over at him and scowled. “I’m congratulating the happy couple.”

“You’re hungry,” he said.

“No kidding, I’m starving. But I can take a minute to congratulate my brother.”

“Simmer down,” Nolan said.

He had found a shirt between the trail and here, and that actually kind of made her mad too, because now he wasn’t acting like he had been swanning around with his muscles out all day giving her issues.

Making her want to pluck out her own eyeballs.

“You’re tired,” Nolan said, wrapping his arm around her waist and lifting her up a couple of inches off the ground. She gasped, and then froze, going stiff like a plank in his arms. Her back was so hot against his broad chest. Hot against her shoulder blades. She thought she was going to spontaneously combust. It was like he had taken her entire body and dipped it in liquid fire. And she could feel her heart beating faster, her breasts getting heavy, her nipples tight, a thick pulse pounding between her legs, and the absolute horror of that made her want to commit a crime against him.

He was treating her like she was a piece of furniture.

That was the thing that really killed her, the thing that washed over her then. It was like he had picked up a folding chair to relocate it, and nothing more. And it was the humiliation of those two truths, that she was as turned on as she might have been if she was naked and in his bed, and the fact that he saw her as an inanimate object, or even worse, a younger sister, that made her lose it right then.

She twisted in his grasp and elbowed him directly in the midsection. He released his hold on her, a harsh sound escaping his lips as he dropped her to the grass. She landed on her knees, sprawling out. And he was standing above her, still holding that hamburger on a plate. Furious now, she kicked herself up into a standing position.

“Give me the burger,” she said.

He did, and she jerked it out of his hold.

Her pulse was pounding, her blood running just a little bit too hot, a little bit too reckless. She was about ready to lose it entirely. But she didn’t want to mess up the engagement. It was important, and she was happy for Cody.

Even if she was having some feelings about it. And about Nolan treating her like an inanimate object.

You’ll figure it out. You’re not going to die feeling like this.

She wouldn’t. She made that promise to herself then and there.

At some point, very soon, she was going to exorcise her desire for Nolan Wright out of her body. She wasn’t going to use a priest, she was going to find a hot man to fuck all this right out of her. Because this was unbearable. She just couldn’t do it. Couldn’t watch everyone around her happily couple up, couldn’t have him touching her, teasing her, being flagrantly obnoxious to her, while she was burning with need that she didn’t even want. She sat down angrily with her hamburger, and took a large bite of it, chewing with a little bit too much gusto.

As soon as this project was finished, hell, when they even came to a stopping point, she was going to deal with this once and for all. And when Lila Grayson put her mind to something, she damn well did it.

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