Page 51 of September’s Cowboy Travis

“You're sure?”

Travis slid his hand around the back of my neck. “Very.”

I smiled. “Then maybe it's time I brought the rest of my stuff.”

His grin widened. “About damn time.”

Tomorrow I'd drive back to Bozeman to pack. Then I'd come home to the man who’d shown me who he was and finally trusted me enough to believe me when I chose him.

EPILOGUE

BEAU

The curvy blonde walked into the barn and said, “Take off your shirt.”

I looked up from the buckle I was adjusting on Hank's harness.

The woman standing ten feet away didn't seem particularly bothered by what she'd just asked of a man she'd never met. She had a tablet under one arm and a paper coffee cup in her hand. The look on her face was one I usually saw on somebody trying to back a trailer through a gate two inches too narrow.

She pointed at me with the coffee. “The flannel first. Then let me see what we're working with.”

I pulled myself up to my full height. Hank shifted next to me, the leather traces creaking as he moved. At almost eighteen hands, he had a habit of making most people look small. His partner, Gus, stood hitched next to him, one back foot cocked and his head lowered like none of this had anything to do with him.

Smart horse. I should've followed his lead. Instead, I looked back at the woman.

She was maybe five-five in her boots, which meant she had to tip her chin up farther than most people when she looked at me. Her dark blonde hair was twisted into something at the back of her head that had probably been neat when she left the house. The Montana wind had already pulled a few strands loose around her face.

She was curvy, too, in a way her jacket wasn't doing much to hide. My mouth went dry before I could stop it, and for a second, I lost track of what I was supposed to be arguing about.

She didn't look embarrassed. If anything, she looked impatient.

“You want me to take off my shirt.”

“Yes.” Her attention dropped to my chest, but not in a way that suggested she was enjoying herself. It was more like she was evaluating fence posts. “The blue is all wrong and doesn't work with your eyes.”

I glanced down at the faded flannel I'd thrown on over a plain gray T-shirt before leaving the ranch. “Wrong for what?”

She arched a brow. “The shoot.”

That cleared up exactly nothing.

Behind her, Mustang Mountain's rodeo grounds were in the early stages of turning into something no one had seen coming. Orange flags marked off vendor rows. Two men were unloading temporary fencing near the arena. Somebody had stacked pumpkins next to the entrance sometime after I'd pulled in, and a hand-painted sign reading MUSTANG MOUNTAIN HARVEST FESTIVAL leaned against the ticket booth waiting to be hung.

Two weeks from now, this place would be packed. Today, it was me, two Clydesdales, a restored freight wagon, half the town committee, and a stranger who wanted me naked before ten in the morning.

I rubbed my thumb over the edge of Hank's breast collar. “Do you always introduce yourself like this?”

Her brow furrowed with irritation. “Only when I'm behind schedule.”

“And today you are?”

She took two steps toward me, her grip tightening on her cup of coffee. “Roll the sleeves first.”

I stared at her.

“Please.”

“That's better.” Though I still had no intention of taking off my shirt or rolling my sleeves or doing anything else until I got an explanation.