The Princess And The Cowboy. Martha Shields

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СКАЧАТЬ don’t want to hear it, Aggie.” Buck placed a hand on the gelding’s rump as he stepped around him and into the trailer. He grabbed the padded horse blanket made especially for steer wrestlers and threw it on the bay’s back. “She cornered me. There was nothing I could do about it.”

      Get yourself hitched. That’ll shake the loop out of her lasso.

      Buck paused with his hands on the saddle as his grandfather’s words drifted back to him. Buck’s mother had been after him to marry some rich society girl ever since he’d come home with a master’s degree in finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business.

      He’d escaped the same way he’d escaped his socialite parents’ clutches since he was a boy—by going to the ranch his mother and father eschewed as beneath them. His grandfather, Bowen Buchanan, had been alive then and welcomed him, protected him.

      Buck had earned his nickname on the Double Star by riding anything that couldn’t stand a saddle. He’d lived in relative peace until five years after he graduated—when his grandfather died.

      Since then, his mother’s unrelenting pursuit of a “suitable” daughter-in-law had driven him from the ranch his grandfather left him. He’d gone rodeoing to escape. Most of the time she didn’t know where he was or the unlisted number of his cell phone, so he had weeks of precious solitude.

      Then, when he least expected it, she’d find him.

      Get hitched. He rolled the idea around in his mind as he picked up his bulldogging saddle and settled it on Aggie’s back.

      Getting married would certainly foil any plans his mother had about foisting some debutante off on him. But hell, he’d been looking for a woman to love ever since he graduated. He sure didn’t want a spoiled, rich, American princess whose only thoughts were of which parties she was invited to or the designer gowns she’d wear to them.

      He wanted a woman who was as comfortable in a doublewide as she was on the back of a horse. A woman who didn’t mind mucking out stalls.

      A trailer-park queen. That’s what he wanted. He’d always preferred women a little on the trashy side. But he wanted one with a brain, so she wouldn’t bore him to death for the rest of his life.

      He snorted. As if a woman like that existed.

      Still, he considered the problem as he led Aggie toward Auburn, California’s McCann Arena, which lay just beyond the lot where his trailer was parked among thirty-odd others.

      Maybe he was going about this all wrong. He didn’t necessarily need to be married forever—just long enough to convince his mother to lay off. Hell, he could pay some woman to marry him. Have her sign an ironclad prenuptial. A trailer-park queen would be grateful to earn as much money as he could afford to give her.

      They’d get divorced after five or six months, and he’d have years to “recover” from his wife leaving him. Surely by then, he’d find a woman who’d make him happy.

      Buck grinned. This sounded like a plan.

      Now all he had to do was find himself a bride. The trashier, the better.

      “Oooouuuuweeee! Will you look at that long, tall drink of sweet water?”

      Buck tightened the cinch on Aggie, then turned to see what had his fellow steer wrestler so excited.

      The sight of a young woman walking around the corner of one of the campers kicked him in the gut like his horse’s hind leg. Leading a dun mare, she moved as if on the runway of the Miss America Pageant, though she was dressed in the gaudy starred-and-striped sequined weskit of the rodeo “court” and white jeans so tight he wouldn’t be surprised if they’d been painted on.

      As he watched, she paused and glanced around, then twisted to tug at the seam riding up her rear end. The action was so sexy, Buck reacted as if she’d stripped right in front of him.

      “Damn.” He shifted his stance to ease the sudden tightness of his own jeans.

      The other cowboy whistled. “I ain’t never seen her around here before. Have you?”

      “She must be that princess the rodeo director’s been looking for.” Buck stared at her through the chaos of horses, cowboys and cowgirls—a hunter whose crosshair was squarely on his quarry. “And maybe the one I’ve been looking for.”

      “What’s that?”

      “Nothing.” Buck quickly wrapped off the cinch. “I’ll go tell her they’re waiting on her.”

      “Hey, I saw her first,” the cowboy complained as Buck walked toward the young woman.

      “Too bad.” Buck threw a grin over his shoulder. “This little filly could be the answer to my prayers.”

      “Howdy, Princess.”

      The sound of her title made Josie’s heart slam against her ribs even before she could untwist from her awkward position. She straightened to find a tall, broad, incredibly handsome cowboy smiling down at her. The sight as much as the panic at being found so quickly made her stammer. “What… How…”

      With a smile that could melt the rock cliffs of Montclaire, he drawled, “They’re looking for you.”

      Her eyes widened further. “For me? They are?”

      Oh, no. How could they have found her already? Though it had taken an hour to ride across the fields toward the rodeo, she didn’t think they’d even miss her by now. It was barely dark.

      “Can’t open a rodeo without all the princesses leading the procession.”

      She blinked hard. “All the princesses?”

      “There are six of you, I think, not counting the queen.” He pushed his hat back on his head. “Didn’t you practice with the others?”

      “Practice? No, I…” Josie dragged her gaze away from the cowboy’s sexy blue eyes so she could think.

      There weren’t any queens or other princesses in California at the moment, that she knew of. These must be the beauty queens America was so fond of crowning. Melissa had said rodeos held a contest for a “queen” and her “court,” but why would this cowboy think she was one of them?

      A quick glance around the area told her. In the limited light, she could see three other young women wearing a sequined blouse identical to the one Josie had “borrowed.”

      Mon Dieu, I can’t even steal properly.

      After she’d cleared the fence that separated the Porter ranch from the rodeo property, she’d quickly realized her ball gown would stick out like a black sheep in a flock of white merinos.

      Luckily—or so she’d thought at the time—these tortuous pants and the red-white-and-blue sequined blouse had been hanging on a trailer door at the edge of the lot. There’d even been a hat and boots to complete the outfit. She’d been desperate enough that it didn’t take long to overcome her scruples about taking them. As she’d changed behind the trailer—one end of which bounced and squeaked rhythmically—she could hear loud moans coming from СКАЧАТЬ