Colby

By Becca Fanning

Gemma hated cowboys. Some people hated things because they didn't understand them. That wasn't the case here: Gemma knew cowboys all too well. Growing up in Nevada, she had her fill of the big hats and bigger egos. She moved out of her daddy's ranch the second she could and went about becoming downright civilized. Now, the next bucking bronco that crosses her path might find himself a gelding.
Colby lived in eight second bursts. On a bull, that's all the time you had. You had to respect a massive beast who could easily stomp your skull into the dust if you crossed it. You had to be at your very best for those eight seconds. Pure adrenaline, pure focus and pure concentration. But the devil must've heard his plans because right as he was about to chase his glory, he knocks the wind out of some little metropolitan thing. He knew he could take a girl's breath away, but this was ridiculous...
This 10,000+ word BBW Bear Shifter Romance Novella has all the heat and passion you expect from a Fated Mates story!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gizmo Media
• Release date: May 23, 2021

Book preview

Fanning

Chapter 1

Gemma Thomas had no intention of going to the rodeo. Just because she lived in the west, just because she lived in Reno, and just because this year Reno was getting more than one rodeo in more than one series didn't mean she had to go anywhere near any of them.

Gemma's west was civilized. She loved to hike in the foothills but not in the dead of summer. Most of the time she didn't hike long enough or go far enough to need to carry water. She was just as happy strolling by the Truckee River in one of the downtown parks. The city aspect of Reno was nice. Indoors was nice. Mucking around in the dirt and dust wasn't part of her lifestyle.

Neither were cowboys. She'd grown up around cowboys. She'd grown up outside of Winnemucca, Nevada, not even in the town itself but on her father's ranch. After that, as an adult, she'd become – in her opinion – civilized.

No cowboys. And rodeos bred cowboys. That was her theory. Most of the men who lived in Reno drove normal cars (not beat up, full size farm trucks), wore normal shoes (not cowboy boots that just might reek), dressed like they understood the century they lived in and the society around them. They worked out in gyms. They bathed regularly.

Add a rodeo and drop men she was acquainted with into that picture, men she knew from jobs and friendships, otherwise reasonable men who lived in metropolitan areas. They suddenly start chewing tobacco, spitting, drinking beer from a can, wearing cowboy boots and calling the women around them darlin'.

No way she was going anywhere near all that. Gemma moved from her daddy's ranch outside Winnemucca the minute she turned 18. She wasn't looking to go back. She moved, she lost the horse droppings under her boots and started wearing sandals and heels. She graduated college and got a job at the newspaper, worked her way up to lead freelance writer for a lifestyle magazine, an upstart startup that Marla the editor liked to call it because it was a glossy hard copy in the age of e-magazines and the post-recession collapse of so many magazines.

Gemma had a college education, a condo in a downtown high-rise (a converted casino, very trendy), a Mitsubishi Spyder convertible, and she freelanced, writing articles for a living.

No cowboys. No rodeo. No roping of calves. No riding of bulls.

No thanks.

So Marla assigned her the stories about the rodeo.

This is not happening, Gemma muttered, stepping over horse droppings outside the fairgrounds convention center pavilion and trying to convince herself she wasn't really there and that the sights and smells all around her didn't remind her of home.

Anyone could like the smell of hay under the late June sun, right?

When she wrote freelance articles for what was essentially the last business magazine in the state, she did interviews by phone. She wrote for a local foodie magazine and the lifestyle magazine and she usually didn't have to go anywhere – phone interviews worked just fine.

Phone interviews would have kept the sun off her shoulders and the hay out of her nose. All around here there were mud splattered horse trailers and people in snap-button shirts and huge hats. There were cowboy boots and cowboy voices filling the air and the peculiar and familiar feeling of hot sun giving way to the shadowed heat of barns.

Marla