Table of Contents
Mailing List
About this Book
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
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
About the Author
BRONCO
by
H.P. Mallory
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BRONCO
Copyright © 2017 by H.P. Mallory
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof, may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or places, events or locations is purely coincidental. The characters are all productions of the author’s imagination.
Kindle Edition
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ALSO BY H.P. MALLORY
Standalone Contemporary Romances:
Bronco KINDLE
The Handbook Coming Soon!
Mountain Man Coming Soon!
Paranormal Romance and Fantasy Series:
The Jolie Wilkins Series:
1. Fire Burn and Cauldron Bubble KINDLE
2. Toil and Trouble KINDLE
3. Witchful Thinking KINDLE
4. The Witch Is Back KINDLE
5. Something Witchy This Way Comes KINDLE
6. Be Witched (Novella) KINDLE
The Bryn and Sinjin Series (Spinoff to the Jolie WIlkins Series):
1. Sinjin KINDLE
2. The Scent KINDLE
3. Blood Lust (Novella) KINDLE
4. The Gentleman KINDLE
The Dulcie O'Neil Series:
1. To Kill A Warlock KINDLE
2. A Tale of Two Goblins KINDLE
3. Great Hexpectations KINDLE
4. Wuthering Frights KINDLE
5. Malice In Wonderland KINDLE
6. For Whom The Spell Tolls KINDLE
7. A Midsummer Night's Scream KINDLE
8. Grave New World KINDLE
9. Pride And Poltergeists KINDLE
The Lily Harper Series:
1. Better Off Dead KINDLE
2. The Underground City KINDLE
3. To Hell And Back KINDLE
4. Persephone KINDLE
5. The Bladesmith (Novella) KINDLE
6. Book 5 Coming Soon!
The Peyton Clark Series:
1. Ghouls Rush In KINDLE
2. Once Haunted Twice Shy KINDLE
3. Big Easy Murder (Novella) KINDLE
4. Book 3 Coming Soon!
Co-Authored Series:
The Ice Wolf Series (Co-Authored with JR Rain):
Ice Wolf KINDLE
She Wolf (Coming Soon!)
About Bronco
SUMMER
Two people I trusted betrayed me.
Because of that, I don’t ever want a relationship again.
But I can’t stop looking at Jake.
He’s not just a cowboy.
He’s the devil with blue eyes and hard muscles.
I don’t want to want him.
But I do. Badly.
JAKE
It was lust at first sight.
She’s a spoiled Back East girl but an elite horsewoman.
My boss says Summer is off-limits but that just makes me want her even more.
She’s all wrong for me, but I can’t stop thinking about what could be.
Temptation never tasted so sweet.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Mailing List
Books by H.P. Mallory
About this Book
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
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
About the Author
Bronco
Chapter One
Summer
I wasn’t even sure who I was any longer. That might sound trite, but sadly, it was true. I was also completely cried out. In fact, I was numb. The only creature who allowed me to feel anything close to happiness happened to be munching her hay inside the rusting aluminum tin can I’d purchased with the last few dollars I had left to my name.
Who would ever have thought I would have suffered such a reversal of fortune?
Summer Camille Sellers. The girl who had been born with a silver spoon in her mouth. The girl who’d never wanted for anything. The girl who was now nothing more than the punchline to Fate’s twisted joke.
It was only a couple of months ago when Dad and I drove past the old horse trailer parked off the side of the road, a sign in front of it reading: For Sale. Now that exact same decrepit trailer was hooked up to an almost as old Chevy truck (my other recent purchase). Both had matching rust stains. The day I’d driven by the old trailer with Dad, I’d scoffed at it and tipped my nose up haughtily like the snotty bitch I’d once been.
Dad had looked sideways at me and smiled but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was more a smile that said he felt sorry for me. “Be thankful that you have all you do. Not everyone has the things you take for granted.”
And, now, as I thought back to that conversation, I wondered if he knew then what I knew now. When he’d said those words, did he know what he was going to do?
The tears came again and I swiped them away. So much for being cried out.
My horse, Aria, and I would be okay, I promised myself. We had to be. We didn’t have any other choice.
But we had to leave Connecticut far behind in order to start fresh, to start new. I prayed the truck and trailer would make it to Colorado and to my new job. My first job, ever. Thank God Liza had the contacts she d
id and hooked me up, so to speak.
Because of Liza, my long-time coach and trainer, it looked like maybe I’d be able to leave the mess that had become my life behind me—that mess including the unfortunate string of events my life had become.
That unfortunate string included my mother, who, just after I graduated high school, slept with my boyfriend. A boyfriend I’d never even had sex with, I might add. And, yes, to this day I was still a virgin. And I wasn’t exactly happy about it either. Now it was four years later and my mother and my ex-boyfriend were still together—shacking up in what I was certain was a pretty lavish apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan.
Truth be told, I was over it and over him. I’d chalked the whole thing up to another instance of my mother’s inability to consider anyone else’s feelings other than her own. She was and always would be self-centered, egotistical and the most narcissistic person I’d ever known.
So that was just one of the messes I was leaving behind—old friends, old boyfriends, a mother who never cared about me, painful memories—you name it, and I was leaving it. And I’d never felt more secure in a decision before. As far as I was concerned, it was the only decision. Staying another second in Connecticut would suffocate me. No, it was time for a new start, time to leave the past firmly where it belonged.
Liza had arranged the trip west for Aria and me, making sure we had a place to stay every night. And traveling with a horse didn’t make arrangements easy. But somehow, Liza set us up with people in the horse world she called friends which meant every stop was well-equipped with stalls or pens for Aria. And that was all that mattered to me. Escaping and doing it with the love of my life.
The day I’d left, I’d hugged the woman who was way more of a mother to me than the one who’d given birth to me as tightly as I could, sobbing as I thought of letting her go.
“Are you sure about this, Summer? You can stay with us. You can earn board and training for Aria by working for me.” Liza tucked a loose strand of her graying brunette hair back into her hair tie and gave me a sympathetic smile, tears swimming in her eyes.
I forced a smile in return. “As much as I want to, you know I can’t. I have to start new, start over. And I just can’t do that here.” I shook my head. “I need to go someplace where no one knows me, and no one knows what happened.” And then something occurred to me. “You didn’t say anything to your cousin about any of the particulars… I hope?”
She laid a hand on my shoulder. “No. I didn’t. I did tell him that you’d had some tough times lately and you’d need your space. Brady is a good guy. He can be kind of rough around the edges but he’s fair and he’s honorable. He’s from a different part of the horse world than we are, Summer. Everyone in Colorado is. It’s going to be a bit of culture shock for you, and it worries me that all of this change might make things… worse for you.” She sighed. “It’s not going to be easy, sweetie.”
“I don’t expect any of it to be easy but it’s still what I need,” I insisted with a clipped nod.
“You’re strong and you’re a fighter so I’ve no doubt you’ll be fine.”
Liza knew that once I’d made up my mind, there was no swaying me. So, she helped me load Aria onto the ancient trailer. After I hugged her for the nth time and promised to call her every night, I pulled away from Hewlitt Ranch and started down the road, heading for a whole new life.
And so, for the next week, Aria and I drove from Connecticut to Colorado. The day I crossed the Colorado state line, I breathed a sigh of relief. I hadn’t actually expected to make it the whole way in the old Chevy without incident. But it appeared luck had been on my side. And now, Aria and I were headed into Colorado Springs and I couldn’t have been more excited.
I followed the GPS on my phone and twenty minutes out, my nerves started taking over as I wondered what my new life would be like. But there was no point in fearing the unknown or being unnecessarily anxious, so I shelved my nerves and pulled through a rustic looking wrought iron gate with a sign over it that read “Springhill Ranch.” The place was beautiful—an old, sprawling, two-story white house set against the Front Range, pasture land surrounding it with grazing cattle and horses. The sky was a hazy blue with scattered clouds floating above. It was like I’d just stepped into an old western movie.
I drove down the long dirt road that opened up to a full working ranch where I spotted a decent-sized arena with a guy on a bay quarter horse roping a steer. Another cowboy spotted me, and pointed to an area that I assumed was where he wanted me to park and unload.
A nice, large, wooden barn stood behind the arenas. It had that log cabin thing going on—very rustic and very different from the white clapboard barn I was used to in Connecticut. I parked the truck and hopped out. Almost immediately, a tall cowboy approached me, his hand outstretched.
“Brady Lawson,” he said and tipped his hat like they did in John Wayne movies.
I shook his hand and smiled back up at him. “Nice to meet you. I’m Summer.”
Up close, Brady was even taller than I’d thought. In fact, he stood a few inches over six feet and next to my 5’3” frame, he looked gigantic. He was probably about fifty-something, with warm brown eyes and a mop of sandy blonde hair that stuck out from underneath his hat.
“My cousin said good things about you.”
“Don’t believe them.” I tried to laugh and make light of my discomfort, even though I was still nervous as hell about whether or not I would fit in here. As much as this trip was about me getting away from the drama of home, it was also about finding a new home, somewhere I fit in. No one out here knew anything about me and for the first time in my life, I could shape my entire world.
And that was a thought that filled me with more hope than I’d felt in a very long time.
Aria let out a shrill whinny as soon as she realized there were horses close by. I was suddenly overcome with the hope that everything would work out here.
“I’ve got some work to do, but Jake will show you where to put her,” Brady said and nodded toward the same cowboy who was roping the steer when I pulled in and was now dismounting his horse.
“Jake, come meet Summer and get her a stall for her horse, please,” Brady yelled to Jake.
As I opened the trailer door, Jake yelled back to Brady with a southern twang to his voice. “Yep. Be right there. Let me just tie Jenny up.”
I stepped up into the trailer and approached Aria who had a bit of a wild-eyed look to her at the moment. She was as nervous as I was, and about ready to come unhinged. That made two of us.
“She’s a big girl. Beautiful,” a deep male voice said from behind me. The southern twang made his words sound almost musical.
As soon as I turned around and took him in, I couldn’t help but stare. There was just something about him. He was larger than life with his cowboy hat, boots, plaid shirt, a pair of Wrangler’s, and a serious set of blue eyes. They were the bluest eyes I’d ever seen, especially with his chestnut hair. And his face! With his square jaw, stubble, strong nose and full lips, he looked like he’d just stepped off the pages of an LL Bean catalog.
He. Was. Gorgeous. Like gorgeous times ten.
The lines of his plaid shirt outlined the curves of his huge shoulders and prominent chest, making them stand out. It was pretty obvious that this guy was packing some serious muscle and I found myself completely tongue-tied as I gazed at him.
He smiled and it crinkled the corner of those crazy blue eyes. “Jake Lawson. Pleased to meet you, miss.”
I gripped Aria’s rope tighter as I begged my tongue to work. “S-Summer Sellers. And, um, this is Aria… my horse.”
Jake chuckled at me, apparently because I’d had to point out that Aria was a horse when it was fairly obvious that such was the fact.
“Nice to meet you, Summer,” he said, dimples lighting up that devilish smile. He looked like he was in his early to mid-thirties maybe. “What do you say we get her settled?”
“Right,” I
answered as I inwardly pinched myself and wished I hadn’t come off like a tongue-tied, total dork. “Yes, and nice to meet you, too. Thanks.”
I followed him into the barn and down the aisle, all the while trying to force my attention off his incredibly shaped ass. But it wasn’t easy to do. The guy had a body and then some.
Chapter Two
Jake
“You’re from back east?” I asked, walking ahead of Summer and her horse. I couldn’t help but study her and wondered what the hell an east coast debutante type was doing all the way out here. Brady’s ranch wasn’t exactly high society.
I had to admit that when I’d first approached her in her trailer with her filly, I’d first noticed her butt. It was high, round, wide and looked delicious in her blue jeans. But when she’d turned around... wow. She had these light green eyes that reminded me of a piece of jade I kept tucked away in my nightstand. And that long strawberry-blond hair made me immediately think about running my fingers through it. Summer Sellers was one attractive woman and if I had a weakness, it was for exactly that.
“Connecticut. I’m from Connecticut,” she answered with a quick, nervous smile before glancing down at the ground again. I couldn’t help but wonder if I made her nervous. I hoped I did.
“Never been there,” I answered as we walked the length of the barn aisle. A breeze passed through that caught her scent, reminding me of orange blossoms. I noticed her looking around the place. It was a good size, housing up to fifty horses but I wasn’t sure how it compared to whatever she was used to. Her mare was going down on the far right end.
“Oh,” she replied. “It’s um, it’s cold in the winter, and it’s uh, well, it’s pretty. You should try to visit sometime.”
I glanced back at her and raised my brows in a way that said I had no interest in big city living. We held each other’s gazes and there was something about those intense green eyes—a vulnerability there that I thought I recognized. Not that I gave a rat’s ass. I’d just met the girl so she wasn’t anything more to me than a pretty face and a fine backside. Well, it looked like she had a hefty pair of breasts, too. Not that I was looking…