Montana Cowboy

By Debra Salonen

Austen Zabrinski looks the part —

He’s got the ranch, the boots, the hat and even a few head of cattle, but everybody in Marietta, Montana, knows the former golden boy of Marietta High is a wealthy politician, not a cowboy. And even though that nasty scandal in Helena might have knocked him down a notch or two in the polls, what kind of a fool would trade access to the halls of power in Helena and a Harvard law degree for a ranch in western Montana? Possibly one whose new neighbor, Serena James–the woman the guys at Grey’s Saloon call “…the Red Hot Llama Mama”–makes him start to think about what he wants out of life, instead of what’s expected of him.

Serena James knows trouble when it hops her fence–

Moving to Montana and deleting her blog seemed like the perfect solution to her online stalker problem. Serena’s ready for a fresh start, but when her escrow on her ranch falls through, she has to scramble to find an immediate but temporary safe haven to rent for her herd of 50 alpacas, two llamas and one giant dog. Serena’s barely moved in when Austen Zabrinski–the man her landlord called “my absentee ranch owner brother who lives and works in Helena”–hops the fence in need of a lift. Even at first glance, Serena can tell he’s nobody cowboy, but who’s to say that isn’t a good thing? A little tryst with her gorgeous, sexy, here-today-gone-to-Helena-tomorrow neighbor might be the perfect welcome to Montana.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tule Publishing
• Release date: Aug 28, 2014
• ISBN: 9781940296807

Debra Salonen

Susan was born with a book in her hand. Okay, maybe not quite, but she did begin reading at the age of four and hasn't been able to stop. Her mother enrolled her in the Weekly Reader Book Club before she went to school, and provided her with books in all shapes, sizes and genres. Born and raised in northwestern New Jersey, Susan grew up in a houseful of readers. Trips to the library were frequent, and she always participated in summer reading programs and read-a-thons. (Though getting sponsors, if they knew her voracious appetite for books, wasn't always easy.) Named valedictorian of her high school class, Susan also cowrote the school's alma mater - and married her cowriter/high school sweetheart after college. With a love of books and schooling, it was only natural that she become either a teacher or a writer. And she's been both. Graduating from Douglass College - Rutgers University - with a B.A. in psychology, and certified to teach early childhood/elementary school, Susan went on to a nine-year elementary teaching career, teaching second and fourth grades. Her favorite part was passing on her love of reading and books to a new group of eager students each year. She left New Jersey in June of 1996 to follow her husband's career, which first took them to Clarksburg, West Virginia, and then a year later to Erie, Pennsylvania, where they still reside. Erie is the setting for her first novel. Getting her teaching certificate in Pennsylvania turned out to be more hassle than Susan wanted to deal with, so she taught in a private school for one year, then homeschooled her own son for a year, then turned to writing in an effort to restore her sanity, having discovered that instructing one child of her own was far more challenging than teaching 25 kids who belonged to other people. She admires the people who can homeschool and do it well. In December of 1999 she was facing her 35th birthday and the turn of the century. She knew it was time to set some goals, to figure out what she wanted to do with the rest of her life. The goal she set was to sell a novel to a major publisher within five years - before her 40th birthday - but she reserved the right to reevaluate the goal in five years if she hadn't succeeded. In January of 2000, she enrolled in an online class on "Writing and Marketing the Category Romance," started her first romance novel and was off and running. She submitted The Baby Plan to Harlequin Superromance in April of 2001. At the end of August the full manuscript was requested, and the "hear-by" date was set at April of 2002. In February of 2002, Susan Gable got "The Call" from Harlequin. In November of 2002, she held the culmination of her dream in her hands. "I do believe dreams can come true," she says. "You just have to work hard at it. It's not enough to just dream it. You have to go after the dream with a plan for success. Henry David Thoreau said, 'If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.' And I really believe that." What are her hopes for the future? "To keep writing and selling books. And hopefully to have readers enjoy reading them as much as I do writing them. It's just as much fun on this side of a book." Any regrets at this point in her career? "That my sophomore English teacher, Mr. Solomon, didn't live to see this. He always hassled me about starting sentences with conjunctions in my creative writing assignments, and I'd tell him that published authors did it all the time. He told me when I was a published author, then I could do it, too. Look, Mr. Solomon. I can start a sentence with a conjunction now."

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Dedication

For Paul—my one and only

Dear Reader

Dear Reader,

Welcome to Big Sky Mavericks Country!

Meg, Austen & Mia Zabrinski are true children of the vast northern plains. They grew up believing each would soar to success. After watching the movie, Top Gun, they gave each other Call Signs and adopted the motto: Dream big and reach for the sky.

Unfortunately, life hasn’t turned out exactly the way they planned.

Meg Lone Wolf Zabrinski sacrificed a personal life to the important work of re-populating the wolves of Yellowstone. Only now, on the eve of her fortieth birthday does she question her choices. But her soul-searching retreat at her mountain cabin turns into a real life search for a missing child and brings her face-to-face with her most outspoken critic. Together, the yin and yang of animal rights prove adversity makes great bedfellows.

Mia Nitro Zabrinski’s perfect life just went down in flames. Sharing a life raft with two angry teens who blame her for not holding her marriage together while piecing together the body that betrayed her, Mia wonders what happened to the fearless girl who once flew higher, faster and with more style than her twin brother. To her family’s surprise, she finds the answer in the arms of a younger man with ghosts of his own.

Austen Striker Zabrinski never lost at anything...until he lost almost everything. Second-guessing his choices goes against his grain, so instead, he re-invents himself...with the help of his beautiful, independent neighbor. A beautiful, independent neighbor who raises alpacas.

Since the only thing I knew about alpacas before I started this book was they are fuzzy and adorable, I am forever grateful to Casey and Steve Aitchison of Epic Alpacas for sharing a day in their action-packed lives to introduce me to their herd. Any mistakes are mine, but I could blame the alpacas because they are so darn cute, and I’m so easily distracted by cuteness.

As always, my heartfelt thanks extend to my editor, Sinclair Sawhney, and to Tule’s one and only Meghan Farrell. And, of course, to my family for giving me the time and support to write. Every book, I dream big and reach for the stars. Thank you, dear readers, for flying with me.

Happy reading,

Deb...or as my Top Gun call sign would have it: Lt. Debra Bookshelf Salonen

CHAPTER 1

Austen Zabrinski's horse spotted the snake before he did.

Probably because Austen was texting his ex-not-quite girlfriend, Sheri Fast. Not quite girlfriend, but definitely ex, if the hostile tone of her text was any indicator.

Whoa. Shit. No. God dammit.

The last came in one of those slow motion howls that got big laughs on TV, but sent the fear of broken bones through the person crying out.

His impact with the parched late August earth of southwestern Montana blasted the breath from his lungs like a kid popping a blown-up paper sack. The ringing in his ears and bright shards of light dancing across his vision made him wonder if someone had set off a bomb nearby. Was that what made his horse shy?

No, his half-functioning subconscious shouted. Snake!

He shot to his wobbly legs like a drunken pledge and looked around. No coiled rattler ready to strike. Thank God.

No horse, either.

Mother f—

He mumbled the rest of the epithet. His mother had been on his case for cursing in front of Emilee and Hunter, his twin sister's kids who were staying at the Zabrinski family homestead until Mia got her life back on track—or moved home—whichever came first.

Austen had flown to Cheyenne twice in the past couple of weeks to 'help,' but other than ferrying the kids to Marietta in time for the Big Marietta Fair and delivering one box of crap to his ex-brother-in-law, Austen couldn't say he'd done much.

When they were kids, he and his twin were inseparable. Then competition happened. There could be only one winner and each wanted that title, whether it was Valedictorian or first to pass the Montana bar.

Austen won his share and then some, but Mia was first to marry, first to have kids—their parents' first grandchildren—and, unfortunately, first to divorce.

And I thought my life was f-ed up. He almost muttered the thought. But talking to oneself in the middle of nowhere beneath a clear blue Montana sky was a sure sign of impending craziness. A point Sheri had made in her last text: U R crazy. Nobody gives up a promising career in politics to be a cowboy. NoBody. The capital B proof she was texting heatedly. With passion.

Sheri Fast did everything to the hundred and tenth degree. Her focus and drive drew him to her, but she loved the fast, highly connected life they'd each embraced in Helena ...before everything turned to shit. She attributed his decision to give up politics to hurt feelings.

Pull up another layer of big boy pants, she'd advised, never one to mince words. You're a politician. Things get ugly. What did you think would happen when you work for a snake? Sometimes, the snake handler gets bit.

Austen had been bit hard. For a time, it had appeared as though he'd be censured by the Montana Bar Association and lose his license. Fortunately, he'd invested well and he owned his ranch, the Flying Z, free and clear.

The ranch had originally been named the Crooked K, supposedly a nod toward the curious bend in the creek that meandered through his property. The silly name seemed down right ridiculous when the new owner was a lawyer, so Austen changed it.

He'd bought the place a few years back as a tax write-off. Ever since the proverbial buffalo dung hit the fan earlier this year, his log home had become a haven of a different kind. A place he could use to figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life. A fact nobody seemed to accept—especially the people who knew him best. His family.

Mia seemed the most affronted by his plan to sell his condo in Helena and move to the log home he'd had built to impress his city cronies twice a year, once when hunting season opened and then throughout the spring when he courted favors for Jim Crandy Crandwell, Austen's boss, mentor, and, Austen had believed wrongly, friend.

Logically, Mia's refusal to accept his decision to bow out of politics was less about Austen giving up and more about the fact her relocation from Cheyenne to their hometown of Marietta, Montana, was not one of her choosing. She'd been at the top of her game when a double whammy blindsided her. First, her husband of nearly fifteen years knocked up his summer clerk—not necessarily his first affair, Mia came to find out, but the first he cared enough about to leave his wife for, then her monthly self-exam showed an anomaly that turned out to be Stage 1—thank God she caught it early—breast cancer. But Mia, who never did anything halfway, chose the most extreme treatment possible. Every step in the process depleted her strength, and the soul-crushing circumstances surrounding her divorce sapped her spirit.

Austen hated feeling so damn powerless to help when the person closest to him was in pain. But what could a single, presently unemployed, lawyer dealing with his own monumental failures do to help two kids who were angry, confused, and disillusioned?

Disillusioned. The word came up a lot lately.

Where's my fu-frigging phone, he muttered, scanning the clumps of sagebrush and dry grass.

He spotted his hundred and eighty-five dollar Larry Mahan hat playing chicken with a dust devil and took off on a run... or, rather, a hobble. His hip hurt and his shoulder started singing the blues the moment he reached for the filthy, tan felt brim.

Crap. He liked the hat. A lot. It was the first one that didn't make him feel like an 'all-hat, no cattle' imposter.

Technically, he could call himself a cowboy. He owned a ranch. He owned cattle—a hundred-plus head, according to his foreman, Stuart Briggs. And despite his graceless nosedive a few minutes ago, he wasn't a rank amateur when it came to horses. He'd ridden with the Sheenan boys every summer growing up.

But the bottom line—Sheri's favorite expression—was undeniable.

I'm no cowboy.

He put the hat on his head and did a slow, achy-breaky three-sixty. He needed a massage from Lani, his favorite therapist in Helena.

Thinking about the life he'd left behind in Montana's capitol city aggravated the precursor to an ulcer his doctor had warned him about. The stress of this lousy job of yours is eating you alive, the specialist he'd seen for chronic indigestion told him. Austen, you've got the gut of a seventy-five-year old man. Get out of politics while you can still enjoy real food.

He unconsciously rubbed a tender spot right above his belt line.

His doctor got his wish. Austen was out of politics. He'd been the sacrificial scapegoat—and again not by choice—who took the fall for the man he'd loved like a father and once admired for his honesty and convictions. Austen's fall from grace didn't hurt nearly as much as the blistering process of having his rose-colored blinders sandblasted from his eyes.

Where am I?

About as far from his three-bedroom cedar log home as possible on his two-hundred-and-fifty-acre ranch. He didn't ride this area often. Actually, he rarely saddled up when he was at the ranch. He'd acted on a whim that morning... or, maybe, he was still processing the long talk he'd had with his brother's future father-in-law, OC Jenkins.

You know what your problem is, Austen? Marietta's so-called Fish Whisperer had asked. "You don't know how good you have it. You're smart, healthy, and young. You live in God's country... hell, you own a big piece of it, but you're too busy trying to be a somebody to enjoy what most every nobody like me would give their eye teeth to have."

Since that conversation at the Big Marietta Fair, Austen had taken a cold hard look at his life. He'd even sat down with a yellow legal pad and made two columns labeled: pros and cons.

As much as it galled him to admit it, OC was right. The Flying Z was a huge asset that he'd basically ignored or was content to use as a tax haven. He might not have any natural aptitude or experience when it came to ranching, but he'd graduated from frigging Harvard, for God's sake. He ought to be able to figure out a plan.

So, he'd saddled up Jake... Johnny Boy... the brown horse that Stuart claimed was kid-proof and set off to take stock of his assets.

Unfortunately, the Flying Z was bigger than it looked on paper and his sense of direction wasn't that acute when he was on the ground.

He turned toward the nearby hillock. His nostrils crinkled and his stomach lurched. If the whiff of animal stink was a valid indicator, he was within hailing distance of his brother's place. According to Stu, Paul Zabrinski had rented the former Jenkins's ranch to a California woman some were calling a 'hot llama mama'.

Lord, Austen muttered.

His imagination supplied an image of a hippy-dippy chick in long skirts and a tie-dyed shirt. He hadn't met her. Didn't even know her name. Hell, he wasn't a hundred percent certain he knew what a llama was. It wasn't a breed of cattle, he knew that much. And people in Montana raised cows. Period.

He set off at his usual places-to-go/people-to-see pace but froze when he heard the most dreadful sound of all.

Not a rattle.

A crack.

He looked down. Sure enough, when he lifted the toe of his black, triad skull and crossbones boot, the lens of his brand new iPhone sparkled like a shattered crystal spider web.

He picked it up and kept walking... his cuss words painting a blue streak against the bright Montana sky.

The low rumble in Beau's throat quickly escalated from suspicious question to full-on bark. The big, quaking woof of a Great Pyrenees who took his job of protecting hearth, home, and master very seriously was not something you ignored—even if you could.

Is Jason here? Serena James asked, abandoning the sloppy, icky mess of mucking out a stall filled with ancient... well, many years old... horse manure. She kept a firm grip on her flat-nose shovel, just in case the call to alarm involved a slithering vertebrate with rattles, and followed the big white dog to the open doors of the barn. It's about damn time.

She'd been waiting over an hour for her recently hired high school helper to show up. She'd hung a 'Help Wanted' sign on a community board at the Marietta Library last week. Jason... she couldn't remember his last name... had been the only call back so far.

I need someone on Friday morning. I pay fifteen dollars an hour. Cash.

Since school didn't start until Monday, she figured she'd get some kind of response from kids who spent their wad at the fair and needed a buck or two. Jason promised to show up.

She turned her ratty, old ball cap—stolen from her brother, Peyton, years ago—bill forward again before reaching the bright sunlight. She'd worn it backwards to avoid banging her crown on the built-in feeding bins. Someone had taken good care of the animals at some point in the old barn's life. She didn't know who that person might be, because she'd only arrived in Marietta, Montana, a week and a half ago.

Where is he? She turned toward the road, squinting as her eyes adjusted from the gloom. I don't see a truck turning in. She hadn't heard an engine, either, but that wasn't surprising given the fact she'd had the volume turned up on her snazzy little portable mobile speaker, which was tuned to the Mostly Country playlist on her iPod.

Woof.

The thick white hair on Beau's back rose like a two-inch Mohawk. His gaze pointed her in the opposite direction. Holy smokes. That's something you don't see every day.

A person. On foot. Crossing the open field beyond the gate that adjoined her farm's property to her neighbor, a man she believed to be her landlord's brother.

You'll probably never see my brother, Paul Zabrinski mentioned when she signed the lease agreement. A year seemed