Blame It On The Cowboy. Delores Fossen

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       CHAPTER ONE

      LOGAN MCCORD HATED two things: clowns and liars. Tonight, he saw both right in front of him on the antique desk in Langford’s Interior Designs, and he knew his life had changed forever. He would never look at a red squeaky nose the same way again.

      Ten minutes earlier

      LOGAN GLANCED AT the four signs and groaned.

      Marry

      Me?

      You

      Will

      It was not the way he wanted to present this proposal to his future wife.

      His younger brother, Riley, was carrying the You. His twin brother, Lucky, the Will. Riley’s wife, Claire, the Marry. Lucky’s girlfriend, Cassie, the Me?

      “Unless I want this proposal to sound like Yoda, switch places,” Logan insisted.

      Since everyone but Logan had clearly had too much to drink in the precelebration prep for this occasion, he took them by the shoulders and one by one put them in the right places.

      Lucky. Riley. Claire. Cassie.

      “Will you marry me?” Logan double-checked. Then he checked again.

      Logan wanted this to be perfect while still feeling a little spontaneous. Just the day before, his longtime girlfriend, Helene Langford, had told him he should be a little more whimsical.

      Somewhat wild, even.

      Logan was certain most people in their small hometown of Spring Hill, Texas, wouldn’t consider him wild even when the expectations were lowered with that somewhat. That was his twin brother Lucky’s specialty. Still, if Helene wanted something whimsical, then this marriage proposal should do it.

      Helene was perfect for him. A savvy businesswoman, beautiful, smart, and her even temperament made her easy to get along with. She’d never once complained about his frequent seventy-hour workweeks, and he could count on one hand how many disagreements they’d had.

      She was the only child of state senator Edwin Langford and a former Miss Texas beauty contestant. Her family loved him, and Logan was pretty sure his own family felt the same way about her.

      “You got the ring?” Lucky whispered. Or rather, tried to whisper.

      Yeah, his siblings, sibling-in-law and future sibling-in-law were buzzed on champagne, all in the name of celebrating the fact that he was finally going to pop the question to the woman he’d been dating all these years.

      Logan double-checked the ring. The blue Tiffany box was in his jacket pocket. It was perfect, as well. A two-carat diamond—flawless like Helene—with a platinum setting. It would look just right on the hand of the woman who would eventually help him run McCord Cattle Brokers.

      He took another bottle of chilled champagne from his car. This one he would share with his future bride right after she said yes, and he’d do that sharing without his family around. He wanted to get Helene alone, maybe show her just how spontaneous he could be by having sex with her on her pricey antique desk. The very one she had professionally polished every week.

      “All right, no talking once we’re inside,” Logan reminded them. “No giggling, either,” he warned Claire.

      It was dark, after closing hours, and any chatter or giggling would immediately carry through the building and all the way to Helene’s office in the back of her interior design business. He wouldn’t have to worry about other customers, though, since it was Wednesday, the night that Helene used to catch up on paperwork.

      Logan eased his key into the lock, turning it slowly so that Helene wouldn’t be alerted to the clicking sound. He gave the sign crew one last stern look to keep quiet, and they all tiptoed toward the back. Well, they tiptoed as much as four drunk people could manage, but he wouldn’t have to put up with their drunken giddiness much longer. Logan had already arranged for the town’s only taxi driver to pick them up in fifteen minutes.

      Leading the way, Logan headed to Helene’s office. The door was already cracked so he pushed it open, motioning for the others to go ahead of him and get ready to spring into action. They did. Lucky. Riley. Claire. Cassie. All in the correct order, but what they didn’t do was hold up their signs. That’s because they froze.

      All of them.

      They stood there, signs frozen in their hands, too.

      Logan’s stomach went to his knees, and in the split second that followed, he tried to figure out what would have caused them to react like that.

      Hell.

      If Helene had been hurt, at least one of them would have rushed to check on her, but there was no rushing. Even though it was hard to wrap his mind around it, the freezing could mean they’d just walked in on Helene doing something bad.

      Like maybe she was with another man.

      She couldn’t be, though. Helene had never given him any reason whatsoever not to trust her. Ditto for giving him any reason whatsoever to believe she was unhappy. Just an hour earlier she’d called Logan to tell him she loved him.

      Riley looked back at Logan, shaking his head. “Uh, you don’t want to see this,” Riley insisted.

      But Logan did. He had to see it. Because there was nothing in the room that was worse than what he was already imagining.

      Or so he thought.

      However, Logan was wrong. It was worse. Much, much worse.