Second Chance with the Rancher

When Mieka Young breaks her arm in a freak accident, her dance company takes it as an opportunity to not renew her contract, calling her “too old” to dance for them. Now, literally broken and jobless, she retreats to her sister’s ranch in Colorado for a little rest and relaxation, along with some much-needed clarity.

However, the ranch is not all horses, goats, and newborn foals. There, Mieka must face a part of her past that still holds a tender space in her heart. She must figure out where Nate fits in her world, if at all. Ranch life isn’t for her, no matter how hard he tries to convince her otherwise.

Nate Harris falls in love every Friday night and falls out of it every Saturday morning. However, one hot night last summer everything changed when he and Mieka finally succumbed to their chemistry. Then she vanished, returning to work dancing on cruise ships, and living her best life. Only, now, Mieka is back at the ranch and Nate’s determined to show her the love, purpose and beautiful future she’s searching for.

“Stupid piece of shit Ford,” Nate muttered, as he hunched over even more under the hood of his pickup to get closer to the problem. “Found on road dead. Fix or repair daily. Stupid fucking piece of shit.” He let out another string of colorful words that would probably make a sailor turn scarlet in mortification when the crunch of gravel broke through his soliloquy of swear words. He didn’t recognize the sound of the approaching vehicle’s engine, and normally he could tell which truck or car was ambling down the long drive of the ranch just by the engine and the way the tires rumbled over the gravel.

No riding tours were on the books for today, and they hadn’t officially opened the petting farm on weekdays yet. They’d do that soon, once all the kids got out of school for the summer. It was nearly the end of May and although the mornings and evenings were still cool, the days had already grown hot and sweat beaded on his brow like a string of salty pearls. They also hadn’t had rain all month, so things were already bone-dry and dusty.

The car probably just belonged to one of the many families that paid to board their horse on the ranch. As another stream of income, Nate and his brother Asher made a sweet killing offering stables to those who wanted horses but had nowhere to keep them. They boarded them, looked after them and charged the owners a pretty penny to do so. The weekends were busier, of course, but there was usually an owner—or their horse-obsessed teenage daughter—milling around, brushing their horse or taking it for a ride.

He lifted his head to greet the new arrival only to bash it mighty hard on the inside of the hood.

“Jesus Christ, motherfucking piece of shit! Fuck!” He closed his eyes and rubbed his head. He’d have a goose egg for sure.

The vehicle came to a stop.

A door opened. Another door opened but only one closed. There were voices. A man and a woman. Then feet on the gravel followed by another door closing and tires spinning in the gravel as the car—he’d determined quickly that it was a car not a truck—turned around and headed back toward the main road.

Still rubbing his head from where he’d smashed it against the hood, he squinted into the afternoon sun at the slim figure walking gracefully toward him.

Shielding his eyes with his hand—even though he didn’t have to, he knew that walk and those hips well—he sucked in a sharp breath and watched Mieka Young walk toward him, awkwardly pulling a suitcase behind her with one hand, while her other arm and wrist were in a cast that covered the length of her forearm from her elbow to her wrist.

Help her, you dumbass.

As if smacked in the back of the head by an imaginary Nana somewhere, he shook his head to free the cannoning thoughts that had left him paralyzed, and raced forward. “Let me help you.”

Mieka smiled shyly. “Thank you.”

His heart lurched in his chest. It’d been a while since he’d seen her. And the last time that he had it’d been under unusual and difficult circumstances.

“How are you?” she asked, her full lips pulling sideways into a small, awkward smile.

“Busy,” he said, doing everything he could to slow down his heart rate. His knuckles ached from how tightly he was squeezing the handle of her suitcase. He needed to calm the fuck down.

“Never a moment’s rest when you run a ranch I suppose,” she said, throwing in a sexy, husky chuckle.

“Nope.”

Casting her gold-flecked brown eyes around the big open driveway that separated the main barn from the farmhouse, she cradled her broken arm against her abdomen and allowed her shoulders to droop. “Is my sister around?”

“Triss and Ash are out in the back field. They’ve gone to give Dare some news. He’s a daddy. Little Daria was born last night.”

Her eyes perked up. “A new foal?”

Nate nodded and his pulse relaxed a bit. Anything to do with horses eased his troubles, and right now, he was troubled. “Wanna come see?”

Her smile was big and bright and only added to her incredible beauty.

He tucked her suitcase next to his truck and jerked his head toward the barn just as a series of barks erupted from the south side. A moment later, Nate’s Blue Merle Aussie Shepherd came racing around the corner, his tongue lolling out the side of his smiling mouth. He recognized Mieka right away and zoomed up to her.

“Hello, Bruno,” Mieka said, pausing to bend down and pet Bruno who was lapping up her affection like he hadn’t been given any attention in a month. “I love his different colored eyes—brown and blue,” she said. “They’re so cool.”

“It’s why I picked him,” Nate murmured, waiting until Mieka and Bruno got reacquainted and the dog stopped trying to smother her with love and kisses.

Eventually, Bruno settled down and the three of them got back to their task of going to check out the new foal.

Curiosity burned hot inside him as he tossed some side-eyed glances toward the caramel-brown-haired beauty. What was she doing here? Did Triss know she was coming? Was it as awkward for her as it was for him? How long was she staying?

He opened the side door for the barn and allowed her to walk through first. He tried hard not to inhale when she walked past him, but it was fucking impossible. Her coconut shampoo went straight up his nose and made a beeline for his balls. Fuck.

“Which mare did Dare have a foal with?” she asked, turning to look up at him with those unusual brown eyes he’d gotten lost in one night. He’d never seen eyes with so much gold in them before, and then he met the five Young sisters and saw five sets of the unique and beautiful eye color. But Mieka’s were lighter brown than the others and seemed to sparkle more, too. Or at least that was his opinion. It might be because he was also hung up on the woman. Who knows?

He cleared his throat and answered her. “Greenleigh. Moved her to a bigger stall since there are two of them now. They’re down at the end.”

Mieka nodded and continued on down through the barn, petting the cheeks and long faces of each horse she passed. She was a lot like her older sister, Triss. Both women seemed to be naturals with animals. He'd noticed it first when she came last summer for Asher and Triss's wedding. All the creatures on the ranch were drawn to her. And that was one of the things that had drawn Nate to her. She had a wildness about her, but as much as she was wild, she was also soft and gentle. Which was something animals—particularly horses—needed.

She poked her head over two adjacent stalls. “These mamas look ready to pop, too.”

“Callie and Hula-Hoop are due with Mercy’s foals any day,” he replied.

“Oh, how fun. A field full of foals for the summer.”

She reached Greenleigh’s stall and peered over the side where Greenleigh was busy nursing a healthy little filly they’d named Daria after her late father—Dare. Dare had been Asher’s horse, but after a freak accident a couple of winters back, Dare had fallen into a gopher hole in the snow, broke his leg and they were forced to put the gentle giant down. Fortunately, they still had a few of Dare’s samples left in the vet’s freezer, so they were able to continue his legacy posthumously. That was where Triss and Asher were right now, telling Dare’s ashes under the old maple tree that he was a daddy.

“She’s beautiful,” Mieka cooed, opening up the stable door without asking and stepping inside. She’d been here before, and was very comfortable around the animals, so Nate had no issues with her opening the stable door and entering. Bruno nudged Nate’s leg and Nate bent down and gave his trusty companion a thorough scratch behind the ears while eying the slim dancer as she cautiously made her way to the side of Greenleigh’s head. “Hello, lovely mama. What a gorgeous little girl you have. Dare would be so proud, I’m sure.” She scratched the long bridge of Greenleigh’s nose until Daria stopped nursing and came over to sniff and check out Mieka, too. She nudged her a couple of times, pulling a laugh from Mieka, who eventually petted the foal, too. “Brazen little thing, hmm?”

“We’re going to keep her and raise her to be a therapy horse for the clinic,” Nate said, hating the awkward silence between them and feeling the need to keep talking like an idiot.

“That’s a great idea. Triss said business is booming and the waitlist is getting longer by the day. It’ll be great if you can offer therapeutic riding and camps for special needs kids and stuff.” She wasn’t looking at him, but rather giving all of her attention to the horses.

“That’s the plan.”

“Well, I’d love to help out any way I can with the upcoming other births.” She finally turned to face him. “That is, if you need help.”

“Can always use another set of hands during a birth. Can always use another set of hands on the ranch.”

He glanced out one of the barn windows to see Triss and Asher making their way back hand-in-hand through the field. Several horses were grazing and he could hear their hired ranch hands feeding the chickens, mucking stalls and tending to the goats. A couple of other hands were out riding the fence looking for holes, and two homeschooled teenage girls whose parents paid for their horses to be boarded at the ranch, were in the outside coral practicing jumps. It was a weekday so things were quiet. It was the weekends and when summer was in full swing that things got hairy. Multiple dude ranch guided rides a day, the petting farm would open up soon, and all the kids with boarded horses would be around riding as much as they could while school wasn’t in session.

It was their best money-making time, but it was also insane and they really could use all the help they could get.

She lifted her casted arm. “Not sure how much help I’ll be, but I’ll do what I can.”

“What happened?” he asked, holding open the stall door so that she could step back out. Macklin, the attention-whore horse who would literally try to sit in your lap if you sat down in his stall made huffs and brays of frustration that he hadn’t been given love yet, so Mieka made her way over to his stall, nuzzling him as soon as she got there.

“It was stupid, really. My own fault.”

He waited for her to elaborate.

“I’m not a spring chicken anymore and can’t do the moves I used to do in my teens and twenties.” Her face fell and she kissed Macklin’s cheek. “I did a flip and went to land on one hand—something I’ve done, or did thousands of times before—but this was a new routine and I was out of practice. My arm twisted, which messed with my balance, then I fell funny and snapped my radius.”

“Fuck,” he murmured.

“Yeah.”

“How long are you out of commission?”

Her bottom lip wobbled for a moment, then she huffed out a sarcastic one-breath laugh. “Well, that depends on who you ask. My doctor says I’ll be in a cast for about six weeks—it’s already been almost two weeks. I might be able to get an air cast sooner if the healing is quick. I’ve got about six screws and two plates in it which will speed up the healing. But if you ask our choreographer and the manager of the production company I was with on the cruise ship, my career is over.”

“What?” Anger lashed through him. “You broke your arm, not your ankle or hip.”

“Thirty-four is old for a cruise ship dancer. They’re surprised I’ve lasted this long without breaking something. My contract was up and they took this break as an opportunity not to renew with me.”

A red heat wormed its way through Nate’s body. “You’ve got to be kidding me?”

Tears welled up in Mieka’s eyes and her throat bobbed on a harsh swallow. “That’s what I said. But nope. So, I’m jobless, homeless—since I lived out of a suitcase on the ships for years, and—” she lifted up her casted arm, “literally broken.” She sucked in a rattled breath and it looked as if she was about to break down into sobs, but Triss’s voice interrupted them and caused Mieka to sober, wipe her eyes and throw on a big smile.

“Mieka?” Triss said.

“Hey, sis,” Mieka said, grinning.

“I … this is a surprise.” The sisters embraced, but Triss cast a curious glance at Nate over Mieka’s shoulder. “Is everything okay?” They broke their embrace and Triss’s gaze fell to Mieka’s casted right arm. “Oh my God, what happened?”

“Spring chickens are made of rubber, old stewing hens like me are apparently made of porcelain and break easily.” Her tone was full of anger and sarcasm and Nate one hundred percent understood why.

“Huh?” Triss glanced at her husband, then at Nate, her brown eyes— slightly darker than Mieka’s but with the same gold-flecks—narrowed in confusion.

“I did a move I’d done a million times when I wasn’t a washed-up old hag and my brittle bones couldn’t handle it, so they shattered like fine crystal on a tile floor,” Mieka said. “Now, I’m jobless, homeless and according to my asshole choreographer Martin, I’m also washed-up.”

“What the fuck?” Asher muttered. “He said that?”

“Martin has no filter,” Mieka replied. “We’ve never really gotten along since he took over for Stefan last year. I was dance captain and Martin just came in with a chip on his shoulder and a hate-on for me. Apparently, he treated all the dance captains he’s ever worked with like they were dirt.” She shrugged. “I never let him bother me, until he called me washed-up, that is.”

“We have a baby sister with no filter, but even Rayma wouldn’t be so mean as to call you—or anyone washed up. A broken arm does not mean you’re incapable. It will heal and you can go back to dancing on the ships, right?” Triss rubbed her sister’s back affectionately.

Mieka sniffed and shook her head. “They wouldn’t renew my contract. I’m old.”

“Oh my God, you’re not old. You’re thirty-four. That’s not old.” Triss rolled her eyes. “They’re idiots. You’ll get hired on by another cruise line or production company or whatever, no problem. I know it.”

Uncertainty shimmered in Mieka’s eyes, along with fresh unshed tears. As much as she hoped her sister was right, Nate could see that Mieka was convinced her dancing days on the luxury cruise ships were over.

Nate knew nothing of that world or industry, so he wasn’t planning to weigh in, but the look of pure defeat and sadness in Mieka’s eyes had his protective instincts kicking in. He was a fixer. He fixed things. Broken vehicles, injured animals, rickety fences. He fixed.

But a sad woman—who he had carnal knowledge of—was a completely different thing and he wasn’t sure he even knew where to begin when it came to mending her broken heart and tattered spirit. He sure as hell wanted to try, though.

“So, I’m here to drink until I forget how to dance, cuddle foals and bake bread, or pies or whatever. Put me to work. I don’t know how much use I’ll be mucking stalls and stuff with only one arm, but I’m happy and willing to pitch in wherever I can. And we can get shitfaced every night and talk trash about our parents and Royal Olympian Cruise Line.”

Triss’s mouth twisted in a funny way and she cast a cursory glance at Asher who shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans, then rocked back on his heels. “I um … I won’t be getting shitfaced with you, unfortunately,” Triss said.

Mieka studied her sister in confusion for half a second, then her eyes went wide. It took Nate a couple more seconds to clue in, but then he did, too, his eyes shot to his brother who was all cocky grins.

“A baby?” Nate asked, all excited.

Asher smiled wider. Nate knew that his brother and Triss had been trying to conceive for the last six months, so the fact that it’d finally happened, had joy replacing all the anger that he’d felt in his heart a moment ago over the injustice of Mieka’s circumstances. His brother also looked happy enough to explode, and that was saying a lot since Asher was typically always mildly irritated in some way.

“We’re going to have a little cowboy or cowgirl,” Triss said softly, resting her hand on her flat belly.

“Rancher,” Asher corrected.

Triss smiled and rolled her eyes. “Right, rancher.”