Summertime on the Ranch

Also by Carolyn Brown

Lucky Cowboys

Lucky in Love

One Lucky Cowboy

Getting Lucky

Talk Cowboy to Me

Honky Tonk

I Love This Bar

Hell, Yeah

My Give a Damn’s Busted

Honky Tonk Christmas

Spikes & Spurs

Love Drunk Cowboy

Red’s Hot Cowboy

Darn Good Cowboy Christmas

One Hot Cowboy Wedding

Mistletoe Cowboy

Just a Cowboy and His Baby

Cowboy Seeks Bride

Cowboys & Brides

Billion Dollar Cowboy

The Cowboy’s Christmas Baby

The Cowboy’s Mail Order Bride

How to Marry a Cowboy

Burnt Boot, Texas

Cowboy Boots for Christmas

The Trouble with Texas Cowboys

One Texas Cowboy Too Many

What Happens in Texas

A Heap of Texas Trouble

Christmas at Home

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Books. Change. Lives.

Copyright © 2021 by Carolyn Brown

Cover and internal design © 2021 by Sourcebooks

Cover design by Stephanie Gafron/Sourcebooks

Cover image © TwentySeven/Getty Images

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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

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Published by Sourcebooks Casablanca, an imprint of Sourcebooks

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Contents

Front Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Excerpt from Secrets in the Sand

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

About the Author

Chapter 1

Becca scolded herself for leaving the door open.

Now Dalton’s pesky dog had snuck into the watermelon wine shed. If he scratched off a hair and it landed in one of the containers of juice, she intended to strangle the shaggy critter and hang him out on the barbed-wire fence to show all the other ugly mutts in southern Oklahoma what happens when a dog hair got into her wine.

She crammed the air lock down on the bottle, wiped the outside, and hurried over to the door. Get out of here! she yelled as she pointed outside. Austin had trusted her with the wine shed for a whole week, and she was not going to let her boss and best friend down.

Tuff rolled over on his back and looked up at her with big, brown eyes. I said, go! She stomped her foot, but the dog just wagged his tail. Who names a raggedy-ass mutt, Tuff, anyway? She grabbed a broom, and his tail flipped back and forth so fast that it was a blur.

He ain’t afraid of a broom. Dalton’s deep Texas drawl startled her. I use one just like that to scratch his tummy out in the barn, and he’s named after Tuff Hydeman who is a world champion professional bull rider. He gave a shrill whistle and Tuff jumped up from the floor and stood at attention. Come on, boy. We won’t stay where we’re not wanted.

Shaggy from the old Scooby-Doo shows fits him better, Becca said.

Now, you’re just hurting the poor little fella’s feelings, Dalton said. Don’t pay no attention to what she says, Tuff. She don’t know jack squat about a good rodeo dog like you.

Becca popped her hands on her hips. I’ve been to rodeos, and I grew up on a ranch. Don’t tell me that I don’t know nothing about cattle dogs.

Dalton Wilson’s confidence oozed out of him, but then there wasn’t a woman in the whole universe who wouldn’t jump at the chance to walk down the aisle with him. Sweet Lord, the cowboy looked like sex on a stick.

Dalton flashed a brilliant smile that softened his square jaw. You should never judge a book by its cover. He gave another shrill whistle and Tuff pranced toward the door, head and tail held high as if he was marching up to the judge’s stand to receive the biggest trophy in a prestigious dog show.

In Becca’s opinion, he was still as ugly as sin on Sunday morning.

Together, Dalton and Tuff strutted out of the shed. One sexy cowboy that Becca was determined not to let get under her skin or in her heart, and a wiry dog that shared DNA with steel wool.

Dammit! Becca swore under her breath. I’ve probably joined all the women in the universe in admiring him, but the difference is that I’m stronger than they are, and I can damn well fight off his charms.

Becca McKay lived up to her Irish heritage with her flaming-red hair and mossy-green eyes. She loved Irish coffee and Irish food and had a little of the Irish accent, just like her daddy who’d been born in County Cork. When it came to music and the southern accent in her voice, she was her mama’s daughter, and she was country through and through.

Becca had covered songs by Tanya Tucker, Reba McIntire, Dolly Parton, and a whole host of other female country artists from the time she could hold a microphone at county fairs, family reunions, or anywhere anyone would let her sing. With stars in her eyes, she’d gone to Nashville right out of high school, intent on making a career as a country music recording artist. By Christmas, she figured she would have a contract, and all the folks back home in Ringgold, Texas, would be listening to her sing on the radio.

Yeah, right.

At Christmas, she was working for one of the dinner theaters in the evenings and singing on street corners just to make rent for the one-bedroom apartment she shared with four other girls. Ten years later, she was working at Tootsie’s Orchid Lounge as a bartender at night, in a winery during the day, and living in the same walk-up apartment. At least by that time, she was sharing the place with only one other girl, who was just as desperate as she was to get a toe in the door as a country singer.

The previous December, she had been on her way home from Tootsie’s sometime after two in the morning when the high heel of her boot stabbed a piece of paper. No matter how hard she shook her foot, it wouldn’t let go. Finally, she leaned against the brick wall of a building and removed it with her fingers.

The streetlight illuminated the paper enough that she could identify it as the last page of a contract that had no signature. The next morning, her grandmother, who lived just over the Red River from Texas in Terral, Oklahoma, called to tell her that she had fallen and twisted her ankle. Could Becca come home for a few weeks to help her out? Everything seemed like an omen—the contract with no name on it suggested that she would never sign with a record company, and her grandmother, who never asked for help from anyone, seemed to say that Nashville would never really be her home.

Becca gave notice at both her jobs, handed her set of apartment keys to her roommate, and drove west, watching her hopes and dreams fade away in the rearview mirror. Grammie McKay, Irish to the bone and with a thick Irish accent, got her the job with Austin O’Donnell’s wine business. Grammie’s ankle healed, and she was getting around really well these days. Becca enjoyed her work, but Terral, population less than four hundred, sure didn’t provide many opportunities for her to sing.

Maybe that’s a good thing, she muttered as she closed the door to the wine shed and went back to squeezing the juice from the first watermelons of the season.

The door hinges squeaked, and Becca flipped around, ready to yell at Tuff if he’d figured out a way to get inside again. She might not like Dalton’s dog, but her pulse jacked up a few notches at the thought of seeing Dalton a second time that morning. She was already visualizing him in those faded tight-fitting jeans, scuffed-up cowboy boots, and his dusty old straw hat as she turned away from the watermelon she was cutting into chunks. In her mind’s eye, she could see his dark hair curling on his chambray shirt collar, and his bright blue eyes twinkling as he teased her about his worthless dog.

Rodeo dog, my butt, she muttered.

You callin’ me a dog, darlin’ girl, or have you given up singin’ and gone to ridin’ bulls? Grammie McKay’s accent jerked the picture of Dalton right out of Becca’s head.

No, ma’am, she answered. I was fussin’ to myself about that mutt of Dalton Wilson’s. Seems like every time it gets a chance, it comes lookin’ for me.

Grammie sat down in a lawn chair. This morning she wore a bright-green sweat suit that brought out the glimmer in eyes that were almost the same color as Becca’s. Her red hair, now sprinkled with gray, was