Page 2 of Oops I Fell For The Cowboy Next Door

Great. My first day in Montana and I'm running a bed and breakfast for someone else's cattle.

I step off the porch carefully, avoiding the broken step, and walk toward the fence. The grass is tall enough to brush my calves. Beyond the property line, the land opens into rolling pasture that stretches all the way to a tree line half a mile out. A creek cuts through the middle of it, shallow and bright, catching sunlight.

Pretty. Really pretty.

Also clearly not my land. The fence marks the boundary, and on the other side of it, cattle are scattered across the field like they've been there since before this cabin was built. Which, based on the condition of the fence, might actually be true.

I'm crouching by the sagging wire, trying to figure out if I can push the posts back into place myself, when I hear the horse.

Hooves on packed earth. Steady, unhurried. Coming from the north along the fence line.

I stand up, shading my eyes with one hand.

The rider comes into view around the tree line, and my brain does something unhelpful.

He's big. That's the first thing. Broad across the shoulders in a way that has nothing to do with a gym and everything to do with years of physical labor. Dark brown hair pressed flat where a hat sat all day, the hat itself pushed back on his head now, revealing a face that looks like it was carved from the same rock as these mountains. Square jaw. Dark stubble. Hazel eyes that land on me from fifty feet away with the precision of a man who's been scanning his property line for trespassers since before breakfast.

He's on a paint horse, dark and white, and the horse moves under him like they share the same nervous system. One hand on the reins. The other resting on his thigh. Calloused fingers. Weathered denim. Sun on his forearms where his sleeves are rolled to the elbow.

He looks like a ranching magazine cover that got rained on and left in the sun.

He also looks pissed.

The horse stops about ten feet from the fence, and the man looks down at me the way you'd look at a speed bump on your own driveway. Slow assessment. Zero warmth.

"You the new tenant." Not a question.

"Piper Langdon." I stick my hand out over the fence wire. Smile. Full wattage. "Just moved in today."

He looks at my hand like I'm offering him a live snake.

"Your fence is down," he says, ignoring the handshake entirely. His voice is low, rough, the kind of voice that sounds like it hasn't been used for casual conversation in a long time. "Those are my cattle in your yard."

I pull my hand back. Let the smile cool by about ten degrees. "I noticed. I was trying to figure out the post situation when you rode up."

"Post situation." He says it flat. Like I just called a transmission a car thingy. "That fence has been sagging for two years. Last owner didn't care because I had an understanding with him about creek access."

"Creek access."

"My cattle water at that creek." He nods toward the bright ribbon of water cutting across the far end of my property. "Have for a decade. I run them through this section twice a day. Never been a problem."

I look at the creek. Look back at him. "That creek is on my property."

Something shifts in his jaw. A muscle tightens just below his ear, and those hazel eyes go from cool assessment to something harder. "That creek has been part of my water rotation since before that cabin had indoor plumbing."

"Okay, well, it has indoor plumbing now. And a tenant. With a lease."

He swings down off the horse in one fluid motion. Lands on his feet like gravity is just a suggestion. Standing, he's taller than I expected. Six two, easy. The kind of tall that makes my five seven feel specifically noticed.

He steps up to the fence line. We're separated by sagging wire and about two feet of charged air.

"Ma'am." The word has zero gentleness in it. "I've been ranching this land since I was twenty-two years old. That creek is the only reliable water source for my east herd in the dry months. I'm not rerouting two hundred head of cattle because someone signed a lease three days ago."

"I didn't reroute anything. I just pointed out that the creek is on my side of the fence."

"The fence is wrong."

"The fence is the property line."