Catching the cowgirl, p.1
Catching the Cowgirl, page 1
Catching the Cowgirl
Lacy Williams
Contents
Exclusive invitation
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Epilogue
Exclusive invitation
The Cowboy’s Honor sneak peek
Also by Lacy Williams
Exclusive invitation
Are you a member of Lacy’s email newsletter? Right now you can receive a special gift, available only to newsletter subscribers. Jonas’s Daughter is a 45-page short story and will not be released on any retailer platform—only to newsletter subscribers.
Thirteen-year-old Breanna White discovers a secret that turns her life upside-down.
Click here to subscribe and get your free gift. Unsubscribe at any time.
Prologue
1903 - Philadelphia
"You're going out early."
Adam Cartwright had been heading through the foyer but stopped at the voice from the darkened library. Where—?
There. His brother Reggie sat in his wheeled chair, half-hidden behind a sofa. Adam would've passed by the room without ever seeing him if Reggie hadn't spoken.
"Does your nurse know you're down here?" Adam asked. Reggie had been wheelchair bound for near fifteen years. He rarely came downstairs anymore, mostly staying confined to his rooms.
"Where are you going?" Reggie shoved the wheels of his chair almost angrily, rounding the sofa.
Where are you going? It was an echo of the younger brother who had once followed Adam everywhere. Even that last, fateful day.
Adam blinked away the memories.
A shaft of moonlight had fallen over Reggie, and Adam could see his eyes were bloodshot. He stank of being unwashed. And there was a tremble in his hand where it gripped the wheel.
"Have you been down here all night? I'll ring for Miss P—" What was her name? Adam could never remember. Powers? Peters?
"Don't bother. She left, and she's not coming back."
"Don't think you're rid of me so easily." Soft yellow illumination lit the front hall as a slender woman wearing an apron bustled out of the kitchen and past Adam. Obviously, she'd been listening at the door.
Some nameless emotion crossed Reggie's expression but was quickly blanked.
"You stink," Miss P. said in her brisk, no-nonsense manner. Frankly, Adam was surprised she'd lasted six months.
Adam had barely spoken to his brother in all that time. Reggie stayed locked away, and Adam couldn't bear his company. Not after what Adam had done.
This was not the time for self-recrimination. He had a very short window before he had to be back at the newspaper.
He slipped out of the house as Miss P. hustled his brother away to bed.
An hour later, the sun was up, and Adam was standing on an expansive green lawn, well back from the estate house.
"Hallo, you.” His friend Frank extended a hand. “It's been too long. I hardly recognize you."
Adam took the hand, smiling and shaking his head when Frank shook it with far too much enthusiasm. "It's only been a couple of months," Adam said.
"Try eighteen."
"No!"
"That's far too long to go without seeing your blood brother." Frank was joking, wearing a hearty smile, but Adam heard the undertone of seriousness in his voice.
Adam rolled his shoulders beneath his suit coat. He'd been busy chasing stories for Father. The last time Frank had been in Philadelphia, Adam had been on assignment in New York City. But eighteen months? Where had the time gone?
Adam and Frank's parents had been friends for decades. The boys had been all of eight when they'd pricked their thumbs with a dull pocketknife and sworn a brother's loyalty to each other.
That had been fourteen year ago, a lifetime for Adam. More. Their swearing ceremony had been mere months before Reggie's accident.
Adam didn't want to think about the darkness he'd left behind at home on Warburton Street. He had a few hours of freedom from the desk this morning, and he intended to make the most of it.
"Where is she?" he asked.
"Ah. The truth comes out." Frank didn't sound perturbed in the least as he inclined his head toward the dirt track that bisected the rolling green grass. "You didn't come to see your blood brother after all. You came for her."
The her was a sleek chestnut mare currently being led toward them by a short, whip-thin man.
"She's incredible." Adam couldn't keep the admiration out of his voice. The mare was muscled with clean lines. She’d been brushed so her coat had a gorgeous sheen. "Where did you find her?"
"A farm in Kentucky. She's too rough for this year's Preakness, but next year..." Frank nodded, and the jockey climbed into the exercise saddle and reined the horse to the dirt track that Adam knew made up a quarter mile circle in the otherwise empty field.
The horse shifted, and Adam almost missed the moment she burst into motion, it happened so quickly.
He squinted against the morning sunlight, not wanting to miss one breath of the display. The mare's long stride ate up the track. Each beat of her hooves against the soft dirt took only the fleetest second. It was as if she were flying.
It was beautiful.
This sight, Adam could never hope to capture behind a desk. The breathless beauty of a horse racing not because she was forced, but because she lived for these moments.
Like another she had.
For one moment, he felt the wind cool against his face, heard an echo of laughter, and was back in BelAnders Park with Breanna White of the Bear Creek, Wyoming, Whites.
He'd been instantly smitten by the girl—for she had been a girl then—who would challenge him to race when he'd been surrounded by a group of friends. Her wild beauty had captivated him. And then she'd disappeared, presumably to return home to the West.
Three years, and he still wondered what might've happened if he'd abandoned his horse and his friends and followed her through the city streets.
Nothing. Nothing would've happened. She'd been a girl, a teenager really, but still in the last throes of childhood.
And he was rooted here in Philadelphia. Chained to the Daily Explorer. Entrenched in his mother's social machinations.
Frank's mare rounded the last curve and past the two men, sand flying even as the jockey slowed and then walked her again around the track.
"So...?"
"She's worth her weight in gold," Adam told his friend.
Frank punched a fist into the air. "I knew it," he crowed. "I knew it the moment I laid eyes on her. You've the best eye for horseflesh I know. We'll be taking home the Stakes next year."
Adam clapped his friend on the back, laughing as he spun dreams out, the same dreams Adam had once dared to hope for.
Two hours later, Adam was hunkered down over the battle-scarred desk where Father had pigeon-holed him two years ago. The Explorer office bustled around him, other reporters banging away at their typewriters or muttering in conversation with each other. Typesetters worked on tonight's edition that would hit the streets tomorrow morning before dawn.
Father hadn't known the freedom Adam would find in writing, even if it was only a window cracked open occasionally. Not the door meant for escape.
Across the office, a telephone rang. Adam’s typewriter seemed to almost glare at him, waiting for something meaningful to pour from his fingers onto the page.
It rarely did.
Adam's gaze flicked to his father's office. Maybe today he would march in there and quit. He struck the fanciful thought. Father would disown him.
Father's light was off, the door closed tightly. Had he gone home early?
No.
More likely, he'd run off to some important meeting with his cronies. Father was never home early, not once in all the years Adam could remember. He worked from dawn until dusk, sometimes later. Adam saw him more often at the parties Mother either hosted or attended than at the supper table.
Father wanted Adam to be just like him. To take over the paper, eventually. It had been Adam's duty since birth.
Adam could think of no worse fate. Oh, he knew the business. Father had insisted he start work as a hawker at age fourteen. He'd learned typesetting at seventeen. Then he'd been promoted to junior reporter.
Groomed to take over.
He tugged at the collar of his shirt, suddenly feeling the closeness of the walls, the strangling sensation of expectation that permeated every surface inside this building.
Marry well. Run the newspaper. Take care of the family. Reggie.
Be his father.
He ran his hands down his face, struggling for focus.
It was only because he'd taken the morning to see Frank, to see the mare. Being out of his routine has shaken him, reminded him of old dreams. Dead dreams.
The swirl of thoughts in his head wasn't going to produce words on the typewriter before him.
Suddenly, there was a new buzzing in the office. He braced his shoulders, straightening, expecting to find his father looming over him, but it was a boy of maybe ten who ran straight toward him, panting as he drew to a stop just outside Adam's cubicle. Adam
"Your mama needs you," the boy panted. "It's your papa. He's collapsed."
1
Six weeks later - Bear Creek, Wyoming
Breanna White could never resist a dare. Today was no exception as she and her opponent waited on horseback near the train tracks at the edge of town.
She'd been sent to town because Ma wanted new fabric for the little kids, who were outgrowing their duds almost faster than she could sew them. Also at home were Pa and six out of seven of her older, adopted brothers. Breanna’d already bought the fabric and been on the boardwalk, ready to head home, when she’d been talked into this nonsense.
She could just go home. Or maybe shop for fabric for a dress for herself, something that would shock Ma completely. She should ignore the gaggle of boys nearby murmuring and laughing like geese clustered just beyond the train platform. On the edge of town, where the prairie spread out in front of them, there was less foot traffic, but someone could still see her, and everyone knew gossip traveled faster than the breeze around here. And a whole heap of passengers had just disembarked from the train, probably doubling the crowd on the platform.
Eighteen is too old for childish stunts. She could hear her brother Oscar in her head as if he'd just spoken the words. Or maybe it was Cecilia, one of Oscar's adopted daughters and Breanna's closest friend, who was now away at the Normal School studying to be a teacher.
But Breanna didn't wheel her horse and ride away.
She never walked away from a race. Or a wager. Abe and Dougie and Tommy had talked their friends into parting with their hard-earned money, and the pot was up to twenty buckaroos.
Behind her on the platform, the conductor called for the last passengers to board. It was almost time.
The noise from the crowd on the platform faded away. The grass smelled sharper beneath the scents coal and steam.
Beneath her, Buster shifted as if he felt the same anticipation she did, the same pounding of her heart in her throat.
The other racer moved, his horse stamping his feet.
She glanced to the side. Tommy was more acquaintance than friend. He'd moved to Bear Creek several months ago with his mother, who ran a dress shop, and a passel of younger sisters. He was her age, give or take a year.
"Anybody asked you to the Founder's Day picnic yet?" Tommy asked.
Snickers broke out from her other side, where Abe and his buddies stood watching and waiting for their race. She ignored them, her heart suddenly fluttering against her breastbone.
Tommy was reasonably handsome. Not as handsome as her father. Someone had broken his nose at least once in the past, and it remained slightly crooked, but the dancing light in his eyes more than made up for that.
There was a hiss as the train's brakes were released, and Breanna knew it was moments from pulling out of the station. She was distracted by Tommy's invitation, but not so much that she'd lost track of the race.
The picnic.
Not one boy in town had ever asked her to go walking with him, much less to an event like the picnic.
You're too much of a tomboy to catch a beau. That was her brother Seb's teasing voice.
She didn't want a beau, did she?
Still, it was nice to be asked. And if she accepted, her brothers might shut up about her future prospects.
Tommy tilted his head, his smile just a hint mysterious.
And her insides got hung up, twisting and coiling. "No one's asked me," she said softly.
He sidled his horse slightly closer, but he was a half-length behind her, which meant she had to crane her neck to keep looking at him. And she didn't look away from his smile, even though she was aware that the train was leaving the station, its rumble getting louder and closer to where they waited near the tracks. There were mere seconds until the whistle—their starting gun—and she was...flirting?
Girls don't race.
She shook away the internal whisper and turned her head more fully toward him.
"Would you—?" he started.
And then two things happened at the same time.
The train whistled.
And Buster bobbed his head, but it was too late. Breanna had been so distracted by Tommy that Dougie had snuck up to her gelding's head and slipped the bridle over his ears.
The sixteen-year-old jumped out of the way.
The bridle hung useless beneath Buster's chin.
And Tommy responded to the whistle by kicking his horse into a gallop, surging past her, his shirt flapping behind him.
It had been a trick. His flirting and almost-invitation had been meant to distract her while his friend handicapped her. Cheaters, the both of them.
Anger surged alongside the excitement of the race, and she nudged the gelding with her legs before she'd really thought it through. The animal responded almost as if he could read her mind.
She would beat that cheating coward, and she would beat the train, too.
The gelding's stride lengthened as she leaned close over his back. She didn't need reins to control the horse. She'd trained him herself, hadn't she? She and Buster thought as one.
As they gained on Tommy and his horse, which only had a couples of strides on them, the train bore down from behind. It was a quarter mile to the winding creek flanked by scrub brush, and she had to jump the creek to win.
Tommy didn't matter at all. He was less than nothing. She was already drawing even with him. It was the train she had to beat.
A lesser horse would've balked at the train’s clatter, the ground shaking beneath their feet. But not Buster.
Each beat of the gelding's hooves was like a drumbeat inside her, her heartbeat matching the rhythm. Buster was the fastest horse in three counties. And he proved it as he outpaced Tommy's horse.
She heard the other boy shout over the roaring of the train.
Picnic. One beat, and her thoughts crashed. She lost focus.
Was she so shallow that she'd been easily distracted by an invitation to a picnic? Not even an invitation. A hint at one.
She didn't need a man in her life. Not one bit.
The train whistled again. At her, and at Tommy, who were probably too close to the tracks for the engineer's liking. Too bad.
She bent closer to Buster's neck and murmured to him, asked for more.
And he delivered. He burst forward with one more surge of speed as the train thundered up beside them.
And there was the creek.
She exhaled as they went flying over it, a trick her brother Oscar had taught her years ago. She was one with her horse. They breathed as one, jumped as one.
And they won. They'd beaten the train by inches, but it counted.
It should've been difficult to direct Buster without reins, but he responded to the minute change in her posture and slowed. When she applied the pressure of one leg, he turned a wide circle, now in a smooth lope that brought her back to the train yard. She let her weight settle in the saddle, and he slowed.
She didn't wait for the horse to come to a complete stop before she kicked one leg over the saddle and slid to the ground. The momentum pushed her toward the knot of boys, and they scattered.
But not quickly enough.
She grabbed hold of Dougie's collar and, even though he was several inches taller than she, she shook him good. "Touch my horse again, and you'll be missing fingers."
His face went pale even as several of the others laughed and jeered. He shoved a wad of crumpled bills into her hand, and she let him push away.
She ignored the rest of them. Twice as much Tommy when he rode back and dismounted, talking in a low voice to the other boys.
Boys. That's what they were. Playing pranks like little children. Cheating.
What did that make her? She'd been the one unable to walk away from the bet.
She strode back to the gelding and had to pretend her hands weren't trembling as she worked to right his bridle.
