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Cowboy of Interest (Cowboys of Holiday Ranch), by Carla Cassidy
Ebook Cowboy of Interest (Cowboys of Holiday Ranch), by Carla Cassidy
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Cowboy turns murder suspect in New York Times bestselling author Carla Cassidy's high-octane romance!
Determined to see ranch hand Nick Coleman jailed for her sister's murder, Adrienne Bailey introduces herself with a quick jab that leaves him black-eyed and bewildered. Still, the injured cowboy wants to prove his innocence and suggests they work together to find the real killer. Reluctantly, the grieving sister agrees.
As other credible suspects emerge, Adrienne's distrust of Nick turns to a surprising attraction. He's too handsome, and one night of passion awakens unfamiliar emotions for them both. But until they catch the killer plaguing the ranch, neither she nor Nick is safe.
- Sales Rank: #345273 in Books
- Published on: 2015-06-02
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.61" h x .59" w x 4.21" l, .24 pounds
- Binding: Mass Market Paperback
- 288 pages
About the Author
Carla Cassidy is an award-winning author who has written more than fifty novels for Harlequin Books. In 1995, she won Best Silhouette Romance from RT Book Reviews for Anything for Danny. In 1998, she also won a Career Achievement Award for Best Innovative Series from RT Book Reviews. Carla believes the only thing better than curling up with a good book to read is sitting down at the computer with a good story to write.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
Nick Coleman needed to get drunk. Not buzzed, not loopy, but brain-dead, blackout drunk. It was the only respite he might find from the vision burned into his head of seeing Wendy Bailey's dead body stuffed under the floorboards of an old shed on the ranch where Nick worked.
He'd been responsible in his plan to drink himself into oblivion. He'd contacted his good friend Chad Bene from a neighboring ranch to pick him up, bring him here to the Watering Hole and then make sure Nick got back to his bunkhouse on the Holiday Ranch safe and sound.
Chad nursed a soda while Nick motioned to the waitress for a second beer. "You know, getting stupid drunk isn't going to change things, except that tomorrow you're going to wake up and feel as though you've wrestled with the biggest, meanest bull in the entire county," Chad observed.
"But at least maybe tonight I'll sleep without nightmares," Nick replied. It had been three days since Wendy's body had been found, along with six older skeletal remains. It had been three long nights of sleep haunted by the visions of the vivacious black-haired, blue-eyed twenty-three-year-old who had blown into town two months before and instantly attached herself to Nick like an affectionate little sister.
And now she was gone…dead. According to the coroner, she had been stabbed twice in the chest. She had been murdered. If that wasn't horrific enough, Nick knew he was the prime suspect in her murder.
Janis Little, the waitress serving their small two-top table, brought Nick a fresh cold bottle of beer and gave him a quick, sympathetic pat on his shoulder before going back behind the bar to serve other awaiting customers.
At least Janis apparently didn't see him as a murderer, he thought, but that didn't take away any of the heartache and horror he'd lived with for the past couple of days. He couldn't believe that Wendy was dead. She'd had a light too bright to be snuffed out. He couldn't believe that anyone would have wanted to take her life.
"Dillon has the whole ranch basically shut down as a crime scene area," Nick said. He opened the beer, took a deep swallow and then continued. "He's actively working Wendy's case but has called in a forensic anthropologist from Oklahoma City to help with the investigation into the seven skeletal remains. She's supposed to arrive sometime next week."
Chad shook his head. "I still can't believe all those bodies were hidden under the shed. If they're just skeletons, then their murders had to have happened some time ago. I wonder if Cass knew anything about them."
"We'll never know, since Cass is dead." Nick took another drink, and for a few minutes the only sound was the raucous noise of the popular bar on a Friday night.
Thinking about Wendy was almost as painful as thinking about Cass Holiday. Nick had been a sixteen-year-old runaway when he'd been brought by a social worker to Cass Holiday's sprawling ranch to work.
Over the past fourteen years, Cass had been his surrogate mother, his mentor and the best thing that had ever happened to him. Then, a little over two months ago, she'd been killed in a tornado that had ravaged the Oklahoma countryside.
She'd been hit in the head by a tree branch. Her body had been found between her big ranch house and the bunkhouse where her cowboys lived. They all believed she'd been on her way to warn them about the approaching vicious weather when she'd been struck down.
For the dozen cowboys Cass had nurtured from troubled teens to good, responsible ranch hands and upstanding, confident men, nothing had been the same after she was gone.
"Why don't we go shoot a game of pool?" Chad suggested and gestured toward the back room, where three pool tables were located. Two were in use, but one was vacant.
"You're not going to distract me from my mission of drunkenness," Nick replied wryly. "Besides, shooting pool has never been my thing."
"It's a stupid mission, Nick," Chad replied. "If you want a mission, then you should be spending your time helping to find out who killed Wendy."
Nick frowned. "I'm not on the police force. I'm a person of interest in the case."
"There's no way I think that Dillon really believes you had anything to do with Wendy's murder," Chad protested. "He hasn't even brought you in for questioning yet."
"Yet being the key word in that sentence. He will. I'm sure I'm at the top of his list. The problem is Wendy and I spent a lot of time together, and as far as anyone can tell, I was probably the last person who saw her alive."
Nick took another drink of his beer and wished he'd never met Wendy Bailey. If he hadn't have met her then he wouldn't be hurting over her loss right now.
"She was missing for almost a month," Chad continued. "From what I've heard, they haven't even been able to pinpoint the exact time of death. Everyone thought she'd just left town. Her motel room was empty and her car was gone."
"I thought she'd left town," Nick agreed. "I was surprised and a little hurt that she hadn't told me goodbye, but she was an impulsive free spirit who I figured just heard the call of a new adventure and went for it. When they found her she was wearing her café work T-shirt, so she was probably killed on Friday night after her shift and after she visited me at the ranch."
"Obviously somebody went to a lot of trouble to make us all believe she'd just moved on. Her car and personal items have never been found." Chad frowned as Nick downed the last of his second beer and motioned to Janis for another.
"Stop giving me dirty looks," Nick said. "I'm only just now starting to get a little bit of a buzz."
"You've always been a lightweight drinker, and the way you're slamming back the beers, I figure within a half an hour or so there will be at least three of us pulling you out from under the table and carrying you to my truck. And just so we're clear, if you throw up in my truck, I'm beating the hell out of you tomorrow when you get sober."
Nick was surprised by the small burst of laughter that escaped his lips. "You and what army?" he replied. Chad was half a foot shorter than Nick's six-two and weighed at least twenty-five pounds less.
Janis arrived with the third beer and the two men once again fell silent. Nick brooded, drank and listened to the ancient jukebox where somebody had paid a quarter to hear an old sad George Jones song.
Nick had no idea why Wendy Bailey had glommed on to him in the initial days of her arrival in Bitter-root. They'd met at the café, where she'd gotten a job as a waitress, and before Nick knew it, they were sharing a pizza or going to a movie together or just sitting under the stars and talking.
Nick had never had siblings and found his role of surrogate big brother to her a surprisingly pleasing one. He'd known if she'd grown more comfortable with some of the younger crowd in town she would have drifted away from him, and that would have been okay, but she'd never gotten the chance.
In the first week of Wendy's disappearance, Daisy, the owner of the café, had printed up posters indicating that Wendy was missing. She was adamant that Wendy wouldn't have just left town without telling Daisy she was going. Even after chief of police Dillon Bowie had checked out Wendy's motel room and found it empty, Daisy had been hard-pressed to believe that the waitress had just up and left town with no notice to anyone.
Daisy had been proved right. Wendy hadn't left town. She'd been murdered. Like Cass's death, Wendy's murder was a tragedy on a hundred different levels, and for Nick it was a personal loss in a stream of losses that had begun in his dysfunctional youth.
"So what did you tell Penny you were doing tonight?" he asked Chad in an effort to stop his mood from plunging to new depths, if that were even possible.
"I told her the truth, that a friend needed me tonight and I'd talk to her sometime tomorrow."
"She's a keeper. You going to marry her?"
Chad grinned. "If she'll have me. I've already bought an engagement ring, but I haven't given it to her yet. I've got to figure out some amazing way to officially propose. Penny won't settle for anything except amazing."
"Then, why is she with you?" Nick replied with a forced lightness.
"Ha-ha," Chad replied. His gaze went over Nick's shoulder at the same time an unfamiliar female voice spoke Nick's name.
"Yes, I'm Nick Coleman," Nick replied.
He half rose from his chair and turned to see a petite woman with long chestnut-colored hair and blue-green eyes.
Before he could say another word, her arm reared back and her small fist connected with his left eye, a perfect center smash that drove him back into his chair.
"What the hel—" he sputtered.
She swung at him again, her eyes swimming with tears as her arms windmilled in an attempt to connect with him.
He jumped up out of his chair, vaguely aware that everyone in the crowded tavern had frozen, their attention on Nick and his pint-size attacker.
Nick had never seen the woman before. He had no idea what her problem was, but there was no way he intended to just stand there and get pummeled in public. Especially by a woman. He already felt the pressure of his eye swelling from the sucker punch she'd managed to land.
He grabbed her and trapped her arms at her sides, but she immediately started to use her feet as weapons. She kicked and thrust her knee upward in an attempt to make dangerous bodily contact with him.
Nick would never hit a woman, but he definitely needed to take control of the situation. He heard the low rumble of male laughter coming from the crowd, laughter that assured Nick he'd be fodder for the gossip mill the next day.
With Wendy's murder, there was already enough gossip swirling around town with his name all over it. Nick drew a deep breath, dodged another knee to his groin, then finally managed to pick her up and throw her over his shoulder like a sack of squirming potatoes.
She smelled like lilacs and vanilla, he thought, even as she kicked and screamed and beat her fists on his back. He carried her through the bar and out the front door. He put her down on the sidewalk and then stepped back a safe distance from her.
"Lady, what in the hell is your problem?" he demanded.
For a long moment, she looked stunned, and tears streamed down her face. "It was you," she finally said. "It was you who murdered my sister."
It was only then that Nick realized the small firecracker standing before him, the pretty woman who had hit him hard enough to swell his eye almost shut, was Adrienne Bailey, Wendy's older sister.
Adrienne stared up at the tall cowboy with his darkening eye and was appalled by her own actions. She'd never hit another person in her entire life. She'd just wanted to get a look at the man she believed had killed her sister, but the moment he'd turned to face her she'd completely lost her mind.
Anger and grief had taken control of her senses, and she'd reacted with raw, unbridled emotion, something she'd never done before in all of her thirty years.
Although still driven by rage and sorrow, a deep embarrassment now swept over her. She backed away from him and quickly swiped the tears from her eyes.
"I didn't mean to… I'm sorry…" Those were the only words she got out before she turned and ran down the sidewalk.
"Adrienne, wait!" he called after her. "I didn't kill Wendy. Do you hear me? I cared about her and had nothing to do with her death."
Liar.
The derogatory name rang in her head as she headed for her car in the distance, cursing the heels that kept her from running all out. Tears started falling once again, but this time she didn't bother trying to swipe them away, even as they trekked down her cheeks and blurred her vision.
Liar!
She glanced behind her only once to make sure he wasn't following her. Seeing that the sidewalk behind her was empty, she slowed her pace, gulping in deep breaths in an effort to gain control of herself, but it didn't work.
When she reached her car, she threw herself into the driver's seat and locked the doors, then lowered her head to the steering wheel and allowed herself to cry until she couldn't cry any longer.
When chief of police Dillon Bowie had contacted her the day before to tell her about Wendy's death and that a positive identification had been made by Wendy's boss at the café where she'd been working, Adrienne had gone through the first two stages of grief in the matter of an hour.
She started her car and pulled out of the parking space and headed for the Bitterroot Motel, where she'd checked in just an hour or so before. Wendy had been living at the motel at the time of her disappearance. Adrienne's unit was two doors down from the one that now sported crime scene tape across the front.
Her initial reaction to Chief Bowie's phone call had been immediate denial. Wendy couldn't be dead. Murder happened to other people, but not to Wendy. She was too full of energy, too filled with the joy of life to be dead.
But she'd known that Wendy had been in Bitter-root, Oklahoma, and it had also been a month since she'd heard from her little sister.
Denial had transformed into a grief so all-consuming that she'd barely been able to think or do what needed to get done to leave her home and travel to the small town. It had been only this morning that she'd finally managed to pack up her car and make the drive from her home in Kansas City to Bitterroot.
She'd arrived much later than she had expected. By the time she had checked into her motel room and unloaded her things from the car, her grief had been overwhelmed with growing rage, a rage focused on the man she believed responsible for Wendy's murder—Nick Coleman.
She pulled up in front of her motel unit and parked her car. She wiped at her eyes and grabbed her purse off the seat. As she walked to her door, she consciously kept her gaze away from the unit two doors down.
Most helpful customer reviews
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Five Stars
By Susanna Mazzella
Love it
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful.
Very good book
By S. Frank
At the end of the previous book, A Real Cowboy, a body and six skeletons were found under the floor of a shed that was being torn down. This made the ranch a crime scene, and each of the cowboys who worked there were persons of interest. When the body was identified as Wendy Bailey, Nick became more of a suspect because he had spent a lot of time with the young woman.
Adrienne Bailey arrived in Bitterroot convinced that Nick was the one who killed her sister. In her conversations and texts with her sister, Nick was a huge part of them. Adrienne is certain that Nick killed her in some sort of lover's quarrel. She confronts him by punching him in the eye, accusing him of murder and then walking away. Nick is stunned by her attack, and upset himself over his friend's death, follows her and tries to tell her that he's innocent. Adrienne is having none of it, certain that she's right. Nick finally convinces her that her best option is to work with him to find the real killer.
I liked Adrienne, though I got a bit frustrated with her tendency to jump to conclusions. It was obvious that she had loved her sister, though the two had had some issues. Their mother died when Adrienne was eighteen, leaving her to raise her younger sister. Adrienne had worried about Wendy's wild tendencies, causing her to be pretty strict, and creating conflict between the two. Now Adrienne is feeling guilty about those issues, and deals with it by focusing on finding the killer. Her distrust of Nick is logical to her because of what she believes, and she is reluctant to give that up, in spite of the number of people who tell her otherwise. When she is attacked by someone who is clearly not Nick, she has to finally admit that he isn't the one. That opens up a new problem, one of the attraction she feels for him.
Nick is one of twelve cowboys who came to Holiday Ranch as troubled teens. He had been abandoned by his mother when he was eight, spent years in foster homes, and was living on the streets when he taken in by Cass. His fellow cowboys are his family, but he keeps his heart well guarded. Besides wanting to clear his name, there is something about Adrienne that is starting to get to him. He feels protective of her after the attacks, and his attraction to her is growing every day.
Their relationship is an interesting one. It had quite an interesting start, with her attack on him. Once they got past that, they connected through their desire to find the killer and also through the stories they shared about Wendy. I liked the way that Nick was able to ease some of Adrienne's guilt. They tried to fight the attraction between them, because Nick had made it clear that there was no future in it. Even after he tells her about his past, he can't allow himself to let it go. Adrienne realizes her own feelings earlier, but believes that they are unreturned. I liked that she had the courage to tell him how she felt and that she knows he has the capacity to love if he'll just take the chance. Even after he nearly loses her, Nick still resists giving in to his feelings until it's almost too late. I did like the way he came through at the end.
The progression of the mystery was really good. I liked seeing Nick and Adrienne working together. They were a good balance for each other. Adrienne especially needed someone who could rein her in on occasion. She drove me a little nuts with the way she would suddenly decide one person was guilty, and focus on that person until it was proved they were innocent, instead of trying to look at the bigger picture. Her determination helped pull Nick along, even when he thought it was better to back off a little. The attack on her at the hotel, and later on them both outside the bar, had them thinking that they were making the killer nervous with all their questions. There were several suspects that were being investigated, and following the leads kept the suspense intense. I never got a feel that one was more likely than the other, and when the final confrontation came, it had a completely unexpected twist.
The mystery of who killed Wendy was solved, but the six skeletons are still an unsolved case. The local police chief has nothing to go on, and the arrival of the forensics doctor is adding to his stress. Not much progress is being made on the crime scene analysis. I expect more will be discovered in the next book. Meanwhile, the fate of the ranch is still up in the air as it remains a crime scene, and Cassie is anxious to get back to New York.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
Another good one from Carla Cassidy
By Jenny_C
Good book. I am enjoying this series.
Some fav quotes:
"She could scarcely believe how she’d reacted the night before at the sight of Nick Coleman. Adrienne Bailey, control freak and always responsible, a stickler for rules and political correctness, had momentarily gone stark raving mad."
"He saw no wounds, except in those eyes of hers, which held a stark terror he could barely stand to see."
“I can’t take away the wounds you’ve suffered in your past. I can’t imagine how the rejection from a mother would scar a little boy. All I can tell you is that I love you with all my heart and soul, and if you could just tap into that guarded place in your heart, I believe you love me, too.”"
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