Second Chance Cowboy--A Clean Romance

  “What brings you to Shelter Creek?”

  Wes looked at her with a steady gaze she remembered far too well. “I’ve wanted to come back here for a very long time. I couldn’t, until now.”

  “You couldn’t. Because you were what...a secret agent on a mission? Prevented by some invisible force field from crossing the Sonoma County line?” Oops. She hadn’t meant for her resentment to show.

  “I would have come back sooner, if I felt I could.”

  “I see.” She wasn’t going to get into this with him. He’d made his choice all those years ago, and over and over again with every year that went by without a word from him. “Well, enjoy your visit.”

  “I’m hoping to stay here. In Shelter Creek.”

  Emily swallowed. It was hard to talk when her lungs seemed to have lost the ability to process oxygen.

  Dear Reader,

  Emily Fielding, Shelter Creek’s only veterinarian, has been working with the Shelter Creek Wildlife Center since its start. She helped Maya and Caleb trap a mountain lion in Reunited with the Cowboy, rescued coyote pups with Liam and Tricia in Her Surprise Cowboy, and tended to injured animals on Aidan’s ranch in Rescuing the Rancher after a wildfire swept through his property.

  I always knew Emily would have her own story. She had a father whom she adored and who’d left her his practice when he retired. His were big shoes to fill, and there were clients who didn’t believe Emily could fill them because she was a woman. Emily also had a heart that had been broken and had never quite healed, even though she pretended that everything was fine.

  Emily needed a hero who would be patient with her and who would love her for who she is. Wes Marlow is that man and I adored him from the moment I saw him walking down Main Street in Shelter Creek. I hope you like him, too, and that you enjoy this sweet story of love lost and then found.

  Warm regards,

  Claire McEwen

  Second Chance Cowboy

  Claire McEwen

  Claire McEwen writes stories about strong heroes and heroines who take big emotional journeys to find their happily-ever-afters. She lives by the ocean in Northern California with her family and a scruffy, mischievous terrier. When she’s not writing, Claire enjoys gardening, reading and discovering flea market treasures. She loves to hear from readers! You can find her on most social media and at clairemcewen.com.

  Books by Claire McEwen

  Harlequin Heartwarming

  Heroes of Shelter Creek

  Reunited with the Cowboy

  After the Rodeo

  Her Surprise Cowboy

  Rescuing the Rancher

  Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.

  For Arik, Shane and Chauncey the dog. We stayed home all day, every day, while I wrote this book. I can’t imagine any other people (or dogs) whom I could spend that much time with and still smile and laugh every day. I am so grateful for our little family.

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  EXCERPT FROM THE DOCTOR AND THE MATCHMAKER BY CHERYL HARPER

  CHAPTER ONE

  EMILY FIELDING SLUMPED on the bench outside the Creek Café. She could move no further until she’d had a few sips of her coffee. The first taste of the rich brew burned away the outer layer of her fatigue, but sitting down like this was a mistake. The bench had its own gravitational force, strong enough to keep her aching body from ever rising again.

  She leaned her head back against the café wall and closed her eyes. At least it was Friday. All she had to do was get through today. Saturdays were easier because she only worked a half day at her veterinary clinic, unless some poor animal had an emergency.

  “You’re not really going to sleep here, are you?”

  Emily forced her eyelids open. Her friend Vivian was standing a few feet from the bench, grinning down at her. Vivian’s dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail and she was wearing a navy blue sweatshirt with the logo of the Shelter Creek Wildlife Center on the chest. “Of course not.” Emily tried to smile, but it came out as a yawn and she clapped her hand over her mouth. “Just refueling before I go into the clinic.”

  “Let me guess. You had a late-night call?”

  “An early-morning one. A breeched calf out at Pacific Pride Ranch.”

  “Oh, no.” Vivian was a wildlife biologist, but she lived on a cattle ranch with her husband and understood the dangers of a complicated birth.

  “We got him out, but it was a little sketchy for a while there.” That was putting it mildly. Delivering that calf safely had taken every trick Emily knew. “I managed to get back home afterward for a shower and nap, but I’m still sleepy.”

  “And now you have to work all day?” Vivian shook her head in dismay. “You work way too much.”

  Vivian was probably right, but there wasn’t much Emily could do about it today. She shrugged off her friend’s concern. “I’ll be fine. Who needs sleep when there is coffee?”

  “Of course you need sleep! Have you had any luck finding another vet to come work with you? Didn’t you say you’d placed an ad?”

  “I did, but no one has answered it.” Emily pushed herself up to sit a little straighter. “I guess there aren’t a lot of veterinarians who want to work in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere.”

  Vivian waved her hand in a vague gesture encompassing the quaint downtown around them. “How can they not want to live here?”

  Emily glanced around. Shelter Creek woke early on a sunny February morning. Shop owners on either side of the café were getting ready for the first weekend tourists. Minnie Layton, who owned Wild Poppy Fashion, was hauling a rack of sale clothing out onto the street. She was chatting with Sally Smith, owner of the yarn shop next-door, while Sally cleaned her front display window.

  Over the years, as tourists discovered the sleepy ranching town just a few miles inland from the Pacific Ocean, the cottages and run-down storefronts had been restored. Their clapboard walls were painted in pale greens and blues, whites and yellows. Flowers bloomed in every available patch of soil, and picket fences framed pretty gardens. Wine tasting rooms and restaurants had sprung up, along with boutiques and galleries.

  Emily relished another sip of coffee. “It’s a great place to live. Hopefully, I’ll find someone to work with me soon.”

  “Speaking of work, I’d better head into the café before all the muffins are gone,” Vivian said. “Maya and I are meeting this morning and I promised her a treat.”

  “Gotta keep the boss happy,” Emily teased. Maya Burton ran the wildlife center, so technically she was Vivian’s boss, though she was also a great friend to both of them. “Tell her I’ll be by this afternoon to check on that gray fox.”

  Vivian nodded. “I hope it’s okay. The poor thing seemed really lethargic last night.”

  “The antibiotics probably hadn’t kicked
in yet,” Emily reassured her. The fox had been caught by a local farmer who’d seen it limping across her field of organic kale. Emily had drained an abscess in its paw yesterday and now the little guy was recuperating in the wildlife center’s hospital. “Call me if it’s still sleepy when you get there.”

  “Will do. Hopefully it will be grumpy and upset. Then we’ll know it’s on the mend.” Vivian took a step toward the café, then paused. “I won’t see you this afternoon. I’m only working until noon so I can take the kids shopping in Santa Rosa. Get some rest tonight. Okay?”

  “I will... I hope,” Emily said. “See you at book club on Wednesday night?”

  “Absolutely. Don’t forget, we’re having a dessert buffet. Promise you’ll make your amazing mocha brownies?”

  “Sure.” Emily raised her cup. “They have coffee in them.”

  Vivian laughed at Emily’s lame joke and headed into the café. Emily reached into her jeans pocket for her car keys and jiggled them in her free hand. What was her first appointment today? It might be Mrs. Crawford’s two Persian cats, big fur balls with pretty blue eyes and razor-sharp claws. Their annual checkup usually resembled a wrestling match. It might require a second cup of coffee. For her, not the cats.

  Heaving herself up from the comfortable bench, Emily shuffled toward her white truck with the clinic’s black logo on the door. Hopefully, there wouldn’t be any emergencies today. Maybe she could even get home by six and crawl straight into bed. She took one more look around downtown Shelter Creek, so pretty in the clear morning light, and froze.

  A tall man in a black cowboy hat was walking along the sidewalk across the street, looking idly at the shop windows. His face was angled away, but still, he looked so familiar. Emily’s ribs tightened around her lungs. Something in his profile, the tilt of his jaw, reminded her of Wes. But that was impossible. Wes had left Shelter Creek when they were in high school. And he’d certainly never worn a cowboy hat.

  As she watched, the man turned farther away from her to peer into the hardware store window and she took in his broad shoulders and his long legs in black jeans. He was wearing a worn denim jacket. There was something about this man... An old ache pulsed in her chest. Would Wes have become someone who dressed like a cowboy?

  Emily pictured his crooked smile and the sparkle in his eye when he used to come riding with her at the stable where she boarded her horse, back in high school. But Wes had never reached out, never come back. Why would he be here now? Emily took a gulp of her coffee. Maybe she was having hallucinations from lack of sleep.

  The man glanced toward her, as if he sensed her watching him. Instinctively Emily ducked down behind her truck. Squatting on the sidewalk behind the cab, she put a palm to her forehead. This was ridiculous. There was no reason to hide. This guy couldn’t be Wes. And even if it was, what was she so afraid of? She wasn’t the starry-eyed kid she’d been back then.

  Her truck was parked in front of Hubert’s Collectibles, and fortunately, Hubert, owner of Millicent, a teacup poodle who’d been to visit Emily for a tummy ache last week, didn’t open his shop until eleven. Otherwise he might be wondering why the town’s vet was cowering next to a parking meter.

  She should stand up. She should get to work. She set her coffee down and crawled a few paces forward so she could peek around the front of the truck. The man had moved on. He was walking at a faster pace now, moving past Emily’s friend Eva’s art gallery. There was something about his walk, the swing of his arms, the way he kept his body so straight and his weight slightly back... If she didn’t know better, she could swear it was Wes.

  Emily picked up her cup and stood up slowly. She’d worked for years to forget Wes Marlow. Not that it had worked, obviously, since she was thinking of him now. But at least memories of their high school relationship had faded, and the hurt he’d caused had turned to tough scars long ago.

  She should go. Just get in her truck and drive to her clinic. Instead, Emily started walking, keeping pace with the man, staying just behind him on the opposite side of the street. He was leaving the more touristy shops behind now, passing the auto parts store and the vacant lot with the dusty oak tree in the corner. The next building was the vast Tack and Feed Barn, located, as its name implied, inside an old barn. The man went inside. Emily waited for a few cars to pass before she dashed across Main Street and followed him in.

  He wasn’t near the entrance. Maybe he’d gone straight to the back of the shop. Emily set her cup on a shelf by the door and walked the first aisle, running her hand along the rack of fancy dog leashes. The comforting scent of leather, grain and dust brought her to her senses. What was she doing?

  Heat rose in her cheeks. Good thing there was no one in the front of the shop to see her making a fool of herself, chasing after a cowboy. But since she was here, she might as well visit the saddle she’d had her eye on forever. Someday she’d buy it, or one like it, when she finally got a horse of her own again. Emily walked deeper into the barn until she came to the cool, dim tack section. She found her saddle and traced her fingertips gently over the floral design etched into the leather.

  “Are you finally going to buy it?”

  Emily jumped back, her heart in her throat. “Lloyd, you startled me!” Lloyd Layton, owner of the Tack and Feed Barn and brother to Minnie, who owned Wild Poppy Fashion, was leaning on one of the old posts that supported the barn.

  He chuckled. “You look like you’ve been caught trying to steal it.” For once Emily wished he’d turn down the volume of his warm, booming voice. She was supposed to be sneaking around, not attracting attention. “You know, Em, I won’t have this one around forever. Someone was looking at it pretty seriously just last week.”

  Glancing regretfully at the delicate silver lacing at the edge of the seat, Emily sighed. “I don’t need it. I don’t have a horse.”

  “You will, once you slow down a little at that job of yours. Buy it now and you can display it in your living room until you’re ready.”

  She had a little extra in her bank account, but she’d only recently finished paying off her vet school loans. “I don’t know, Lloyd. It’s such an impractical saddle. I won’t need something this pretty.”

  “Suit yourself.” Lloyd held up both his hands as if proclaiming his innocence. “I’m not trying to make a sale, here. I just don’t want to see the look on your face when you walk in here one day and this saddle is gone.” He smiled. “Though, you know, if you keep at this, you might just break the world record for time spent contemplating a purchase. So that’s something.”

  Emily grinned. “That certainly is.” She gave the saddle one last glance. “I’ll think about it.” She shot him a wink. “A little more. Meanwhile, I’d better get to work.” She’d forgotten for a moment about the man she’d been following. Good. It was her lack of sleep that had her acting on such a strange whim. “Take care of my saddle.”

  Lloyd’s laugh rang out behind her as she stepped back out into the pet section of the feedstore. And there he was, the man she’d followed, standing directly in front of her, examining a selection of dog bones. A small squeak escaped from deep in Emily’s throat. This close she could see that under the brim of that black cowboy hat it was him. Wes Marlow. The boy who’d gone missing and broken all their hearts.

  Wes looked up at the sound, and for a moment he didn’t move a muscle. Then he took a step in her direction, peering down at her from a height he didn’t have back in high school. “Emily?”

  “Wes.”

  His eyes were still the green she remembered, but it was impossible to read the expression in them. He had a slight smile on his face, but he didn’t look happy. Instead he looked wary.

  Well, he should look wary. If she hadn’t set her cup down she’d be tempted to dump her coffee right on top of that fancy hat of his. But the changes to his face distracted her. He still had thick, black hair, long enough to hang in shaggy
edges below the brim of his hat. But the dark stubble lining his jaw was unfamiliar, and his face had lost any boyish softness. It was more defined, more lined, more lived-in.

  Emily swallowed, trying to hold down the panic that suddenly flooded her system. She’d followed him in here on a vague instinct. She hadn’t considered what she’d do if the mystery man really was Wes. Words. You need to think of words. “Why are you here?”

  He gestured toward the rack of dog treats. “Getting a few things for my dog.”

  That wasn’t what she’d meant by her question. But maybe small talk would give her a chance to recover. Her ears rung with a buzzing sound and her hands had started to shake. “What kind of dog?”

  He cleared his throat. “A husky.”

  “Oh.” He had a husky. It was just about the only thing she knew about Wes Marlow right now and she used to feel like she knew him better than anyone else. But that was a long time ago. She straightened her shoulders and plastered what she hoped was a neutral expression on her face. “What brings you to Shelter Creek?”

  He looked at her, right at her, with a steady gaze she remembered far too well. “I’ve wanted to come back here for a long time. I couldn’t, until now.”

  “You couldn’t. Because you were what...a secret agent on a mission? Prevented by some invisible force field from crossing the Sonoma County line?” Oops. So much for neutral. Maybe she hadn’t buried her hurt feelings quite as deep as she’d thought.

  His smile curled into something more genuine. “I didn’t notice any force field on the way in.”

  “Oh. Good to know.” Emily waited for Wes to elaborate more, to finally explain why he’d waited so many years to come back. He was silent, smiling at her, studying her, as if taking inventory of the changes in her.

  Picking up the nearest dog bone, pink rubber with white spots, Emily fidgeted with the toy, trying to hide her shaking hands. She didn’t want shaking hands. She didn’t want any reaction to him whatsoever. So what if he was back now? He’d made his choice all those years ago, and over and over again with every year that went by without a word from him. She set the pink bone back on the rack, accidentally squeaking it in the process. She started at the unexpected noise, her face blazing as Wes chuckled softly.