Rodeo Christmas at Evergreen Ranch (Gold Valley #13)(112)

And Tala could only smile, because what had started as a dark and stormy night, was leading to a bright and sunny future.

A life filled with all the love that they could ever hope to have, and give. And this was only the beginning.



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Keep reading for an excerpt from Rancher’s Christmas Storm by Maisey Yates.





Rancher’s Christmas Storm


    by Maisey Yates


   One


As Honey Cooper looked around the beautiful tasting room that—other than the vineyards themselves—was the crown jewel of Cowboy Wines—she thought to herself that if she had a book of matches and just a tiny bit more moxie, she might’ve burned the entire place to the ground.

Not that it could ever be said that she was lacking in moxie—maybe it was just the desire to avoid prison. Perhaps not the best reason to avoid engaging in the torching of her family winery. Scratch that, her family’s former winery.

Until it had been sold to Jericho Smith. Jericho Smith, who was the most infuriating, obnoxious, sexy man she had ever known.

He made her itch. Down beneath her skin where she couldn’t scratch it. It drove her crazy. And now he had her legacy. Just because her brothers were no longer interested in the day-to-day running of Cowboy Wines and her father wanted to retire, Jericho had offered to buy and her father had sold. Sure, she had a tidy sum of money sitting in her bank account that her father had felt was her due post sale, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t the point.

Maybe she should go find a matchbook.

Instead, she looked down at her phone—she had bought herself a smartphone with her ill-gotten rage money—and saw that it had lit up again. She had a message.

It was from Donovan. Which thrilled her a little bit.

Donovan ran an equine facility up north, on the outskirts of Portland. She had met him on a dating app. A dating app. Yes, Honey Cooper had signed up for a dating app.

But the thing was, she was really sick of the pickings down in Gold Valley. She was sick of cowboys. She was sick of everybody knowing her brothers. Her father.

Jericho.

She was untouchable here. They might as well up and put her in a glass case. Everybody acted like they were afraid of getting punched in the face if they came within thirty yards of her. In fairness, they probably were in danger of getting punched in the face. Jackson and Creed weren’t exactly known for their measured temperaments, and when it came to Jericho... Well, he was the older brother that she absolutely didn’t need.

He twisted her up in ways she hated, and had for as long as she’d noticed that boys were different from girls. Of course, the problem with knowing a man that long was that he could only see you as the pigtail-wearing brat you’d once been and would never really see you as a woman.

There was also the fact she knew all too well that Jericho’s personal policy when it came to relationships was that they were best as a good time, not a long time.

But he was just so hot.

So was Donavan though. You know, if the pictures that she had gotten from him weren’t a lie. No, they weren’t those kind of pictures. He had not sent her his nudes. She wasn’t sure if she was offended by that or not, as she had it on very good authority—TV—that men often sent women their anatomy when they wanted to hook up.

Not that they physically sent their anatomy, but pictures of them.

Still, she was on the road to getting out of Gold Valley, to getting away from the winery—without setting it on fire—and getting away from Jericho once and for all.

That was part of the problem. The proximity was killing her. She still lived at Cowboy Wines. And she felt surrounded—absolutely surrounded—by her father’s perfidy.

So she was going to run away to Portland. Take a job at a different ranch. Maybe lose her virginity to Donovan.

No, she was definitely going to lose her virginity to Donovan.

For Christmas.

And she would forget all about Jericho and the fact that she thought he was hot. And the fact that he had devastated her by buying the winery. The winery that had been her only dream, her only goal for as long as she could remember. She’d knuckled down and worked the land, worked it till her knuckles bled, the same as the rest of them, for years. And now it was gone.

To add insult to injury, she still thought he was hot. Even while furious with him. Even while he took a new woman into his bed practically every night. Which didn’t matter.

She didn’t care about that. She didn’t care. Because she didn’t actually want to date him. She just wanted to climb him like a tree.

And who didn’t? Honestly. He was incredibly beautiful. Tall, broad and well muscled. Sin in cowboy boots. And in a cowboy hat. And a tight T-shirt. And as much as she would like to actually be sick of cowboys, it was kind of her aesthetic.

She’d lost her mother when she was only thirteen, and it had stuck with her. There was something about the loss that was a lot like the bottom of the world had fallen out, and she’d done her best to cling to what she could.

She had her dad, she had her brothers and the most important thing to her had been to fit in with them.

She knew that dealing with her in her grief had been hard for her dad so she’d done her best to be more stoic. She’d pushed off her desire to experiment with makeup or clothes or anything like that.