Wild cowboy, p.1
Wild Cowboy, page 1
Table of Contents
Books by Gemma Snow
Title Page
Legal Page
Book Description
Dedication
Trademark Acknowledgements
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Epilogue
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About the Author
Totally Bound Publishing books by Gemma Snow
Triple Diamond
The Lovin’ is Easy
Wild Flowers
Most Wanted
Heart of the Storm
The Sinclair Seven
Home Run Cowboy
The Sinclair Seven
WILD COWBOY
GEMMA SNOW
Wild Cowboy
ISBN # 978-1-83943-639-0
©Copyright Gemma Snow 2022
Cover Art by Erin Dameron-Hill ©Copyright November 2022
Interior text design by Claire Siemaszkiewicz
Totally Bound Publishing
This is a work of fiction. All characters, places and events are from the author’s imagination and should not be confused with fact. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, events or places is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any material form, whether by printing, photocopying, scanning or otherwise without the written permission of the publisher, Totally Bound Publishing.
Applications should be addressed in the first instance, in writing, to Totally Bound Publishing. Unauthorised or restricted acts in relation to this publication may result in civil proceedings and/or criminal prosecution.
The author and illustrator have asserted their respective rights under the Copyright Designs and Patents Acts 1988 (as amended) to be identified as the author of this book and illustrator of the artwork.
Published in 2022 by Totally Bound Publishing, United Kingdom.
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the authors’ rights. Purchase only authorised copies.
Totally Bound Publishing is an imprint of Totally Entwined Group Limited.
If you purchased this book without a cover you should be aware that this book is stolen property. It was reported as “unsold and destroyed” to the publisher and neither the author nor the publisher has received any payment for this “stripped book”.
Book two in the
Sinclair Seven series
Submitting to this wild cowboy is one hell of an adventure…
Environmental journalist Reece Prescott never expected to see the mysterious woman from the Turkish marketplace again, so to meet Morgan Tempest in the middle of a summer storm at the top of the Blackleaf Mountains knocks him sideways.
Their instant connection blows him away…and makes him want to return to The Ranch, the secret club he owns with six of his friends. It’s the closest thing he has to home and the place he always finds himself avoiding when the anniversary of the worst day of his life rolls around. For Morgan Tempest, though, he might just be able to handle it.
Morgan has spent the last year reclaiming her independence and rebuilding her business. She’s in control and saying yes to life now. That includes the wild cowboy she meets in the mountains…and The Ranch, a place where everything she thought she knew about her boundaries—and desires—is challenged.
But before Reece and Morgan can explore everything the other has to offer, the real world comes crashing in, bringing with it climate disasters, armed mercenaries, corrupt politicians and their own troublesome pasts.
If they can survive all that, then maybe, just maybe, they’ll be ready for that next great adventure—falling in love.
Dedication
To all those working to advocate for and protect our planet. We are all in your debt.
Trademark Acknowledgements
The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction:
AMGA Rock Guide: American Mountain Guide Association
Stetson: John B. Stetson Company
Gatorade: PepsiCo, Inc.
Advil: Pfizer Inc.
Carhartt: Carhartt, Inc.
Prologue
Istanbul, Turkey
He shouldn’t have come. It didn’t matter that this assignment in Istanbul would be the first time his byline appeared next to a cover article.
Reece Prescott, One Leap Magazine reporter.
It had seemed so important at the time, seemed like the life-changing move that would take him from fluff pieces and filler columns to the big leagues. It had seemed like that up until the minute he found himself in a busy bazaar, and every clink of a silver spoon against a teacup, every harking call of the mosaic sellers, every spliced conversation in a thousand different languages, cut through his calm and stirred a sense of panic deep in his gut.
One year. One year he had been sitting behind a desk, creating articles from images found on the computer, other people’s adventures, from quotes and stories and journeys taken by men and women far braver than he was. It didn’t matter that he sat on a comfortable, cushioned couch in a corner of the tea shop patio, half-hidden from the undulating movement of the marketplace. He could have been sitting on a rooftop high above the city, and he still would have felt every footfall of every mother and tourist and salesman as if they fell upon his own skin.
He tried to focus on the individual details. A year of therapy, therapy his dear old, departed daddy would have called a ‘load of bullcrap’, had taught him grounding techniques, ways of bringing himself back to the present, back to the moment, away from what his brain was making up and back to what was actually happening.
Two tents down, a family was selling spices, and every time the young girl scooped saffron or smoked paprika from the large piles into smaller paper bags, the warm summer wind would catch the scent and bring it down the road, until he was smelling reds and oranges and sweet, hot flavors, rather than the metallic scent that clung to him when the fear was closer than the rationality. His tea, which had grown cold in his hands despite their warmth and the warmth of the day, was rich and fruity and thick in the air as well, along with the rows and rows of loose leaf on display just through the open door behind him.
At some point, he was going to have to do his job.
There were a thousand reasons why he was where he was right now and the rational part of his brain repeated again and again that he was lucky for the opportunity, lucky that the scars were only scars, that the limited mobility in his left hand would one day ease, and that he hadn’t been left with any lasting damage. He knew all of that rationally. And yet…
Somewhere off in the distance, a motorcycle backfired, and none of it, not the hibiscus or the saffron or the chimes or the cushions under his legs, mattered. The market was spinning, kicking into overtime, and the languages—Turkish and Arabic, English, Armenian, French, German—they blended together, a cacophony of sound that roared in his ears, the din making it impossible to hear his own rational voice in his head, making it impossible to feel the ground below his feet or the metal table he grasped with both hands.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
Pop. Pop. Pop.
If he could get one breath in, one good breath, he could focus, he could get the marketplace to stop spinning in circles around him and he could focus.
He tried to reach for the tea on the table, but gave up when his trembling hands spilled cold tea across the table and stained the white napkin beside it. He just needed to count backward. Or count forward.
He needed to get the fuck out of here.
Then he saw her.
It was as if the sea of tourists parted just to let him catch a glimpse of her through the movement and the bustle of the marketplace, as if time slowed, not just to its normal pace, but slower still, quieting the voices and the sounds, the clanging of pots and the haggling of customers, quieting it all until the only thing Reece heard was the breeze, as it whipped a few loose black curls that had come free from her head covering.
Her eyes were striking, blue as the lapis lazuli on the traditional Turkish bowls, and her gaze held his across the marketplace. She was the most wildly beautiful woman he had ever seen in his entire life, and when she caught his eye, that gaze piercing and overwhelming in its comfort, and smiled with full, lush pink lips, he felt the cushion below him, tasted the hibiscus on his tongue, heard the distant bustle of cash registers dinging and scales shifting. When she smiled at him, he
Reece was up and out of the chair before he could think, tossing a few bills on the table in a single movement. The sea of people that had parted for him to see her seemed to have filled back up again and he saw her getting further and further away, no matter how he tried to make his way through the crowd to get to her.
She turned around one last time and he savored her smile, the brilliant glow in her eyes, the knowledge of the universe trapped in a color he would never forget. Then she turned away and walked up to a man at one of the stalls, tall, broad-shouldered, clearly American. He put his arm around her and led her from the stall, disappearing them into the crowd and away from Reece forever.
Chapter One
Three years later
Blackleaf Canyon, Montana
Pain sizzled through her hand as acutely as if she had high-fived a skillet on the fire, and Morgan pulled back and shook out her palm. Montana got hot. She was a California girl, tried and true, and shame on her, but she’d been expecting something of a nip in the air, not the scorching hundred-degree weather that made the limestone rock face almost too hot to touch.
She glanced up, the sun partially obscured by the brim of her hat under her climbing helmet. It was midday, and her skin was coated in layers of sweat and dust and…
And she wasn’t going to give up, damn it. She was on this mission not because she loved the burning ache in her shoulders, not because she could actually sleep out under the stars without the claustrophobic ceiling boxing her in overhead. She was out here for all those reasons and so many more. Because she deserved a life without fear or boundaries holding her back. Out here in the open air, she was good enough just as she was. Morgan Tempest, not afraid of anything.
Yeah, right.
That part, the not jumping at the sound of a glass tumbling off a tray in a busy restaurant, the not clenching her fists until her fingernails dug into the flesh at her palms when she heard a man yell in the park, that was going to have to come. The not being afraid didn’t happen overnight, didn’t happen in a year. The only thing she could do was to keep climbing, and right now that was to be taken literally.
She swung her arm up and grabbed the next hold with ease. One arm, one foot, hand, leg. All her muscles burned and sweat slid down her back, sticking her tank top to her skin, skin she knew was catching too much sun in the late afternoon.
Easy-access sunscreen.
She added it to her list—the list in her mind, at least, because she hadn’t come up with easy-access notebooks just yet.
Practically speaking, this trip was a way to take the company—her company—to the next level. She was supposed to be making every note she could about what the modern woman wanted on her next trip around the world. How could she stay safe, engaged, and fully herself, while also tackling the tall, distant mountains?
It was a hell of a question to try to answer, and not just for the business. But if the last six months—hell, the last nine years—had taught Morgan anything, it was that staying at the bottom of the mountain wasn’t necessarily safer just because it was easier.
One step. One foot. One hand. One arm.
Out of the corner of her eye, she caught sight of a flash of white, brighter than the limestone, and she realized there was another climber resting on a small ledge maybe fifty feet above her, his feet hanging off the edge like he didn’t have a care in the world.
Wouldn’t that be something? To be carefree again.
Soon enough, the sun still beating against her skin, her muscles burning, her hands calloused and rough against the even rougher stone, she made it to that small ledge. She found her water bottle first, downing a few large gulps of water, then leaned back against the cool, shaded rock and looked out over the edge.
Fancy that, she could just sit on a mountain’s edge and watch the world around her.
So, Morgan did. She watched the clouds, watched the tips of her toes, watched the little ants climbing along the rock like they weren’t nearly three hundred feet in the air.
As she was watching the ants, Morgan noticed something tucked away in the shadow of the rock. A small black notebook. She picked it up. The spine was thick and the pages had clearly gotten wet at some point. There were small stickers on the bottom, from different campsites across the country, and the familiar campfire logo she recognized as One Leap Magazine. Whatever was in the notebook, it was clearly loved, and she tucked it into her backpack, hoping for the chance to run into the man who had been climbing here before her. Perhaps she would even make a friend on this trip if she did.
I’m seeing things.
It must have been the glare overhead, the bright summer sun bouncing off the limestone and frying his brain. Or maybe he’d been abducted by aliens in his sleep and discarded in the wilds of Montana without his memories. Whatever it was, Reece knew it was something because there was no reasonable, logical, or rational explanation for why he was seeing the woman from the marketplace here, three years after his trip to Istanbul, three years and nearly six thousand miles.
He grabbed for a hold and secured his grip on the stone. At least that was real. He could always count on the sensation of stone in his hand, of dirt below his feet, of the wide-open sky high above. No matter how many cities he had lived in, no matter how many trains, planes, and automobiles he had taken over the course of his career, it always came back to him and the great wild wilderness.
All that explained why he was out climbing, this week of all weeks. But it didn’t explain why he hadn’t just picked up his damned phone and texted Caleb and Dante and Van when he had flown back into Bozeman or why he hadn’t dropped them a line in the three days he’d been adventuring around the state. And it sure as shit didn’t explain why he was seeing the woman from the marketplace here, of all goddamned places on earth.
It wasn’t the first time. In the years since that first trip, she had become something of a talisman. He knew it was probably creepy as hell, but when the sight of something beautiful and safe—the sight of a woman he would never see again—kept his panic attacks at bay, then he didn’t ask questions. All he knew was that when his skin got itchy and his neck got hot, as it had done so much more that first year, he could think of the stranger’s smile in the market, and he could feel the ground under his feet again.
Even though he had caught sight of her in his dreams as well, weaving in and out of marketplaces in Morocco and Santiago, showing up in the maze of places he had spent his life exploring, the sight of her had never precipitated a panic attack. She always came after, and she always grounded him before things got worse.
Back to the beginning, what the hell is she doing here?
Reece chanced a look down the mountain’s edge. The climb wasn’t the hardest he’d ever been on, but it pushed him enough to forget about the date on the calendar and it was sufficiently challenging to keep most other climbers away.
Not her.
It was probably some innocent brunette woman who was just trying to get her climb in for the day and he had gone ahead and projected a boatload of issues onto her. Thinking about her meant not thinking about other things and so he placed his foot in the next hold and picked up speed. Icarus, reaching for the sun.
The sun that was, unfortunately, starting to settle itself on the far end of the mountain range. He probably had another hour of good light and he wanted to get to some of the hiking trails to set up camp before it got dark.
The shadow of a cloud fell over the canyon and for a brief moment, Reece wondered if his dark mood had summoned it into existence. But when he glanced up, he realized that the near-white summer sunshine was suddenly nowhere to be found, and that dark and, admittedly, very ominous looking cloud wasn’t the only one in the sky.
Stay focused.
If he knew one thing about survival, it was that it didn’t do a guy any favors to be caught thinking about something else when he was six hundred feet in the air on a five-point-eight climb. Above him, a crack of lightning shot across the sky, illuminating the valley below in sharp, jagged shadows that struck like predator’s teeth.
