Cowboy Trouble: Love n Trouble

By Autumn Piper

She's decided to make some bad choices this weekend.

Susie Howell has always done what her family expects of her, but they don't know about the divorce papers she's just signed (or the secret torch she carries for sexy ranch hand Cash). When keeping the secret gets to her, she flees her brother's wedding reception. Determined to live a little, she swipes the nearest truck from the ranch and heads to Sin City.

Cash Acosta has worked hard for everything he has, and nobody is taking off with his truck. When he sees it driving away, he jumps in—and becomes the unwilling passenger of a ready and willing woman he's forbidden to touch. Hell-bent for trouble, the boss's daughter has already earmarked him as one of her "bad choices".

And Susie intends to get what she wants.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Autumn Piper
• Release date: Mar 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781386778608

Autumn Piper

Born and raised in itty-bitty Rifle, Colorado, Autumn Piper studiously avoided trouble…but is now inclined toward it, particularly in her novels. She thinks the best things in life are funny, and the runners-up, romantic. An admitted carb addict, Autumn writes, edits, and cares for her two grown kids, a cat, a box turtle with a huge personality, one husband and many supersize houseplants, and does the cooking and cleaning when forced to.

Book preview

Cowboy Trouble

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Autumn Piper

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Copyright © 2014 Autumn Piper

All rights reserved.

Cowboy Trouble

She’s decided to make some bad choices this weekend.

Susie Howell has always done what her family expects of her, but they don’t know about the divorce papers she’s just signed, or the secret torch she carries for sexy ranch hand Cash. When keeping the secret gets to her, she flees her brother’s wedding reception. Determined to live a little, she swipes the nearest truck from the ranch and heads to Sin City.

Cash Acosta has worked hard for everything he has, and nobody is taking off with his truck. When he sees it driving away, he jumps in—and becomes the unwilling passenger of a ready and willing woman he’s forbidden to touch. Hell-bent for trouble, the boss’s sister has already earmarked him as one of her bad choices.

And Susie intends to get what she wants.

Table of Contents

Cowboy Trouble

Table of Contents

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Other Books by Autumn Piper

Dedication

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To those who've fallen head over heels for a bad choice.

CHAPTER ONE

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A wedding. Of all the places to be.

Susanna Howell-Pembroke, now once again Susie Howell sighed, careful to maintain her ever-present, serene Laura Bush smile as she took her seat along the aisle. Despite issues in her love life—or lack thereof—she was happy for her little brother and his cute, feisty bride. Cleve and Kiersten were made for each other.

The pang of jealousy she felt was probably part regret, for ruining her own marriage, dooming it from the start. Marrying the guy everyone else thought was her Mr. Right had been the easy choice, but it sure hadn’t been the launchpad to forever love.

MaryEllen passed her a tissue with one hand while grabbing their rambunctious three-year-old nephew with the other. Here. I don’t know about you, but I can’t make it through a wedding anymore without bawling.

Thanks. Susie took the tissue from her big sister and feigned interest in the crowd. She’d rather be back home, keeping an eye on HonkyTonk Lady as she got close to foaling. As much Susie’s pet as an investment for her stable of prize quarter horses, Lady was the first of the foals born on the Sleepy H to now drop a foal of her own. With a champion sire like Jim Dandy Can, Lady’s baby would put Susie’s stables on the map.

Quite the crowd at the ceremony, for being way up a gravel road in the Rocky Mountains outside of Rifle, Colorado. Looked like The Great Texas Invasion, judging by all the cowboy hats, boots, and western shirts gathered under the pattering aspen trees. Cleve sure had settled in a nice spot, to go with his nice little wife. At least, she seemed nice. According to the family, Kiersten had given Daddy a run for his money—literally—when he’d tried his usual high-handed tactics to obtain her family ranch. Somehow Miss Day had managed to get his forever-right-hand-man Chaz fired and sent back to Texas.

Susie chuckled to herself at that. Chaz was a relic anyway. Plenty of times, he’d let her know a woman didn’t belong in business raising horses. Daddy giving her the funds to start her own ranch had rankled the chauvinistic old pig. Sometime she’d have to sit down with Kiersten and swap stories.

Glancing over her shoulder to see how things were progressing, she saw the ushers—Cleve’s shipped-from-Texas ranch hands—Dusty and Cash, still seating guests. Dusty was so shy, he blushed every time he took some lady’s arm to lead her to her seat. Dark and shifty Cash was cool with the ladies, but seemed uncomfortably overdressed in his white dress shirt, bolo tie and black vest. She could easily imagine him in nothing but a leather vest and worn Wranglers. And a cowboy hat. But it needed to be rugged and used, maybe a little grungy. And, Lord God, please make it that pair of Wranglers. The man wore them well. Darn, he had an exemplary backside.

It sure was warm out here, for being in the mountains, in the shade. Not a thing in her purse to fan herself with either, and the tissue from MaryEllen was useless.

He turned at the end of the aisle and grinned right at her.

Lord. She couldn’t breathe.

Cash. She bet it wasn’t his real name. Her brothers talked about how good he was at cards, so maybe that’s where he got his nickname.

Not that she’d ever held a conversation with him. She and MaryEllen had always been under strict instruction to steer clear of the cowhands, and if they wanted a horse saddled up they had to go through the foreman. Period. Judging by the way those guys avoided her and her sister, the help had probably also been given the same directive. Not fair at all, since her brothers had been allowed free rein to hang out with the cowboys. They’d spent more time with Cash than the others, since he’d been so young when he came to work for Daddy. He was probably only about three years older than her; he’d still been finishing his last year of high school when he moved onto the Flyin’ H. Young enough her daddy had considered him a threat to his daughters’ virtue.

Huh. Well, she was a grown woman now and she’d do whatever the h-e-double-toothpicks she wanted.

Which maybe one day would include confessing to her family that she’d done the unthinkable and divorced golden-boy-of-society, moneyed, attractive Harrington Pembroke the Third, for no good reason other than she couldn’t keep living the lie and pretending she was in love with a man who deserved better. But no matter how amicable and quick it had been, and even though she’d lost none of the Howell fortune in the process, Daddy would be irate, and Mama would be disappointed. Her brothers and sister? Well, they’d be plain surprised. She never stepped out of line, hadn’t done anything unpredictable in probably...ever.

As the band struck up a loud note for the Wedding March and the guests stood, she wished she’d had a chance to spill her secret before now. Maybe then it would have been glossed over in this hooplah.

Dang it all.

Maybe there was a Guinness Book entry for keeping a divorce secret from one’s family. She could work on setting a new record.

Cleve and his groomsmen, aka brothers, strolled down the aisle, looking handsome as ever, as did dear Harry, who’d agreed to help her keep up appearances. To be fair, he also considered Cleve a friend and hadn’t wanted to miss the wedding. And how awkward would it have been if her family had known they were separated—scratch that, divorced—while he was here. So maybe she’d done the right thing by keeping mum, after all.

Harry winked as he passed by, genuinely being sweet, not as a means of keeping up the charade. And...hello, waterworks. Good thing for that tissue MaryEllen had provided. Lord, how could she explain to everyone else that she’d always love him as a dear, dear friend, but she couldn’t fake a romantic interest in him anymore? Surely she was broken, else a man who meant so much to her would have eventually come to be the one she loved. Whether she truly hadn’t hurt him by asking for a divorce, or he hid his heartache to spare her guilt, she