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  Pepper Bourne has big plans for her stepdaddy’s Arizona ranch. The physician’s assistant dreams of opening a community garden for Angel Crossing’s neediest. The only thing standing in her way is the tall, rugged cowboy who just inherited the property!

  Former bull rider AJ McCreary gave up the rodeo to raise his baby girl, and selling the ranch is the only way he can support her now. While Pepper’s claim on the property may be uncertain, there’s no denying her claim on AJ’s heart. He’s ready to become a family man. But can he prove it to the one woman who makes his family complete?

  “I can be a jerk—just ask around—but not tonight.”

  AJ’s words drifted over Pepper’s head, making her hair move.

  She relaxed into his embrace, surrounded not only by his warmth but by something more. A comfort that surprised her because she wanted to lean into him, let him take on her fear, disappointment and anger. Just for ten seconds. Yes, for ten seconds, she could let someone else take on the responsibility. She wrapped her arms around him, pressing her face into his shoulder, into the muscled solidity of him. Substantial and safe.

  She counted off the seconds in her head, but somewhere around six, her brain stopped and she let herself just feel. He pulled her more tightly against him. She wanted to melt into him.

  “Pepper?”

  She looked up at him. His gaze roamed over her face, and she felt herself soften and heat. She tipped up her chin, offering herself to him.

  No. She couldn’t. She needed to step away. She needed to—

  Dear Reader,

  Kentucky and cowboy don’t go together like peanut butter and jelly…or do they? I watched the television series Justified, featuring a Kentucky lawman in cowboy hat and boots. That kernel of an idea led to my next story in the Angel Crossing, Arizona series.

  AJ McCreary, my Bluegrass State cowboy (who isn’t a lawman), has had a rough few months, finding out he has a daughter and her mama wants cash in exchange for custody. Then his mentor and friend dies. AJ quits bull riding to care for his baby girl and heads west to look for work and pay his respects at his friend’s memorial. That’s when things get really interesting. He meets his mentor’s stepdaughter, Pepper Bourne, a practical and caring physician’s assistant who is committed to keeping Angel Crossing healthy and whole. With a cast of characters both human and animal, these two find themselves at odds and in love.

  As I write new stories, I don’t forget about my other characters, bringing them back for guest appearances. I love being able to see what they are up to and how life is treating them. Next in Angel Crossing, the retired bull rider/mayor and baby brother of the Leigh sisters meets up with his first love and rides again.

  If you want to know more about my inspirations and musings or drop me a note, check out my website and blog at heidihormel.net, where you can also sign up for my newsletter. Or connect with me at Facebook.com/authorheidihormel, Twitter.com/heidihormel and Pinterest.com/hhormel.

  Yee-haw,

  Heidi Hormel

  THE KENTUCKY

  COWBOY’S BABY

  Heidi Hormel

  With stints as an innkeeper and radio talk show host, Heidi Hormel settled into her true calling as a writer by spending years as a reporter (covering the story of the rampaging elephants Debbie and Tina) and as a PR flunky (staying calm in the face of Cookiegate). Now she is happiest penning romances with a wink and a wiggle.

  A small-town girl from the Snack Food Capital of the World, Heidi has trotted over a good portion of the globe, from Tombstone in Arizona to Loch Ness in Scotland to the depths of Death Valley. She draws on all of these experiences for her books, but especially her annual visits to the Grand Canyon State for her Angel Crossing, Arizona series.

  Heidi is on the web at heidihormel.net, as well as socially out there at Facebook.com/authorheidihormel, Twitter.com/heidihormel and Pinterest.com/hhormel.

  Books by Heidi Hormel

  Harlequin American Romance

  The Surgeon and the Cowgirl

  The Convenient Cowboy

  The Accidental Cowboy

  Get rewarded every time you buy a Harlequin ebook!

  Click here to Join Harlequin My Rewards

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  Thanks to my editors, who don’t say no

  when I suggest llamas, alpacas or cowgirls

  and cowboys who don’t fit the mold.

  Contents

  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

  Excerpt from A Bull Rider’s Pride by Amanda Renee

  Chapter One

  EllaJayne was gone. The car seat in the back of the battered king-cab pickup was empty, the door hanging open. Even flat-as-a-pancake Oggie, her toy doggie, had vanished. AJ had been right there, fixing the loose hose while his daughter slept in her safest-for-its-price-tag car seat. He’d been standing right there. He hadn’t heard a damned thing. He should have a loyal dog so no one could sneak up and— Call the cops, his mind snapped.

  He pulled out his phone as he scanned the dusty lot stretching behind a stuccoed cement-block building. Empty, except for a purple SUV. He ran, his well-worn boots kicking up whirls of bleached-out grit. No EllaJayne in or behind the small SUV. How could he have forgotten she was Houdini in a diaper? No sign of her in the dirt-and-gravel parking lot baking in the Arizona high-noon sun. The emergency operator picked up as he raced back to his grimy truck for one more check in every nook, cranny and crevice.

  “What’s your emergency?” the operator asked.

  “My daughter’s gone.” He ran for the short alley that ran along the building and onto the main street. “Shit,” he said.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  He kept moving. “Get the police out here. She might have gone onto the road.”

  “I’ll need your location, please.”

  Her voice was too calm. He wanted to reach through the phone and tell her that his baby girl had disappeared. Instead, as he panted for breath against the heat and the pain in his hip, he said, “I’m in Angel Crossing. I only stopped for a minute to check the truck before I went to find Gene’s—” He stopped the rush of words. None of that mattered. “My daughter is sixteen months old. She has dark hair and eyes.”

  “What’s she wearing, sir?”

  “Purple shirt with sparkles.”

  “A little more information, then the police will contact you. I’ll need your full name, place of—”

  He hung up. He couldn’t run and talk. They should be sending police, the K-9 unit, not asking him stupid questions. He stared up and down the uneven, broken sidewalk that stretched in front of the bright-colored facades of empty buildings. Had someone driven in and stolen his daughter while he’d had his head under the hood? A wailing, escalating cry drifted to him. He squinted without his hat brim to shade his McCreary-gray eyes, hoping to catch a glimpse of his sturdy toddler daughter, with hair as dark as his own, its straight-as-a-preacher silkiness direct
from her out-of-the-picture mama. He took off, ignoring the sharp bite of pain in his hip and back.

  Was the crying closer? The familiar piercing sob was one he’d come to dread, his daughter letting him know he had no business calling himself her daddy.

  “EllaJayne. Where are you, baby?” He kept moving as he yelled, not caring that his Kentucky twang had thickened. The cries stopped. He stopped. Where the hell was she? Dear Lord, he’d been so sure he was better than any foster parent or her mama could be. Now he’d lost his baby girl.

  After searching another five minutes without hearing her voice again, AJ turned back the way he’d come, moving as fast as he could down the uneven concrete. Where the heck was she? He stepped into a hole where there should have been sidewalk and sharp pain shot down his leg. He hobbled two more steps until the sign for the police department and town hall sprang up like an oasis in the desert. He raced toward it and yanked open the door into a narrow lobby with plastic signs lining the walls. He scanned them looking for...on the right, a small sign in red declared: POLICE. He hurried to the door. Beyond it, a battered metal desk with neat in and out trays stood empty. He didn’t hear anything.

  “I want to report a missing child.” He raised his voice, needing to talk with someone, right now, or he’d—

  “What the hell’s going on?” asked a tall, blond, unexpectedly familiar man. “AJ? What are you doing here?”

  “My daughter.” He pulled in as deep a breath as he could with his heart pounding enough to hurt his ribs. “Are you a cop now? I need a search party.”

  “Not a cop. Mayor. So you’re the daddy.”

  “Where is my daughter?” he asked slowly, with menace. He wasn’t playing here. No matter this was Danny Leigh, his old partner in crime. The big blond angel—fitting that he was mayor of a place called Angel Crossing—to AJ’s dark-haired and black-hatted devil.

  “Pepper said she found the baby walking around by herself.”

  “Where is she?”

  “I don’t mean to tell you your business, but—”

  AJ had been right there under the hood while Baby Girl slept after hours of crying. He’d been right there. “I’m getting my daughter.” AJ turned from Danny, whom he’d last seen at a rodeo in Tulsa. Now it seemed neither of them was following the money on the back of a bull.

  AJ listened for his daughter’s cries, but the blood roared so loudly in his ears he wouldn’t have been able to hear a jet take off.

  “Let me get the chief,” Danny said, his hand on AJ’s arm. Tight. AJ hadn’t lost an ounce of muscle since “retiring.” He used it to throw off his friend. Danny let go but stayed beside AJ, saying, “I heard them talking about calling Child Services.”

  Every one of AJ’s straining muscles tightened until his back sent a shooting pain down into his still-aching hip. Even if he’d been able to speak, he wouldn’t have known what to say to such crap, except a lot of four-letter words, which he tried not to use anymore because of EllaJayne. Everything he did now was to protect her. He’d quit riding bulls and wrangling for the rodeo.

  No one was taking his daughter. He’d rescued her once. He’d do it again. AJ moved past Danny to the doorway beyond the desk. Finally, he heard voices and—“EllaJayne,” he shouted, except he felt like he’d been gut-punched and only had enough air for the shout to be a strained whisper.

  Danny moved past him in the narrow hallway, through an open archway on the left and said, “She belongs to my buddy. He’s one hell of a bull rider.”

  AJ followed him into the room with a fridge and microwave. There she was. Baby Girl in the arms of a woman wearing scrubs, her hair in a no-nonsense golden-brown ponytail. The disapproving line of the woman’s mouth couldn’t mar its soft pink charm. He held out his arms for his daughter. EllaJayne lifted her head from the woman’s shoulder, tear tracks silvery bright on her rounded cheeks where strands of her McCreary raven-black hair lay in a sticky mess. His heart hurt. His baby girl had been crying...again. He sucked at this father stuff.

  “She was wandering around on her own. She could have ended up getting hit by a car or kidnapped,” said the woman’s voice, firm and soft at the same time.

  “My daughter,” AJ said as he continued to hold out his now shaking hands. The woman glared at him.

  “Absolutely not,” she said, clutching the girl tighter to her.

  He dropped his arms. “I was fixing a hose. She was asleep.”

  “You should have been paying more attention,” whispered the woman as she patted the little girl’s back, soothing her into laying down her head. “I found her wandering and brought her to the police. I could probably report you for neglect. I’m a physician’s assistant and we’re obligated by law to—”

  “Neglect?” AJ didn’t try to keep his voice down and Baby Girl’s head popped up. He moved closer to snatch EllaJayne away.

  A large man stepped in front of him. Where had this guy come from? “Now, sir, I’m Chief Rudy and we need to have a talk before I can release your daughter to you.”

  The man, just shy of AJ’s six feet two inches with close-cropped, cop-style graying brown hair, took AJ by the shoulder with a big hand and steered him out of the break room and down the hall. He directed him into a cramped office. “Sit.” The chief pointed to a chair across from a wooden desk that nearly filled the room, his steel-blue gaze clearly telling AJ he was taking the situation seriously. “Seems like you know our mayor, but I still want details and information so I can check your background.” The man pushed a paper across the desk.

  AJ felt a yawning chasm of fear and despair opening at his feet. The same one that had been showing up in his nightmares as he and his daughter worked their way across the country, and before that, when he’d learned he had a daughter in foster care. He’d hooked up with her mother during a stint in Kentucky when he’d been drinking more than he should. When he’d first seen EllaJayne... He couldn’t think about that now. The police chief wasn’t fooling around, no matter this town wasn’t much more than a wide place in the road. Then there was the woman, who didn’t look old enough to be such a...stick in the mud. Why hadn’t she just found him and chewed him out instead of going to the authorities? He focused again on the paper asking for his vital details. He filled it out quickly and handed it to the uniformed chief.

  “Stay here while I run this.”

  AJ stood and paced in what space there was in the room. What the hell would he do if they didn’t give him back his daughter? He didn’t have money for an attorney. Nothing like this had been covered on any of the parenting sites he’d been reading every night. Other parents didn’t lose their kids.

  He’d had to fix the truck and she’d been sleeping after screaming at the top of her tiny lungs on their trip into Angel Crossing. He’d only stopped here to pay his respects at Gene’s memorial, then they’d head to California, where an old rodeo buddy had promised him work and regular hours. He wasn’t going back to Kentucky no matter what.

  When he’d found out about EllaJayne less than three months ago, he’d vowed he’d be a better father than any of the long line of McCreary men had been. He’d ditched life on the road and promised himself no women who would come into and out of the little girl’s life. She’d already had more knocks than any child deserved.

  “Mr. McCreary,” the police chief said. “Your record looks clean, other than two drunk and disorderlies. Mayor Leigh said those were ‘misunderstandings.’”

  AJ relaxed by a millimeter. “I’ll take my daughter and be on my way.”

  “Before you do that, I’d like you to talk with Miss Pepper. I know a little one can be tough to keep track of—you’re not the first daddy I’ve had in here. But...Miss Pepper’s heart and her worries are in the right place. Plus, being a medical professional, she’s got to be extra careful about these kinds of situations.”

  AJ st
ayed silent, following the chief back to the break room. The Pepper woman was seated at a table, holding his daughter. EllaJayne didn’t even turn to him when he said her name. That hurt.

  “The little darling’s daddy checks out. He’s here to take her back.” The officer hovered just behind AJ.

  “Did you hear that? Daddy’s here,” Pepper said, turning her head, pinning AJ with a glare of condemnation from her autumn-brown eyes.

  “Baby Girl,” he said, walking to the woman, holding out his hands for his daughter. Contrary as any McCreary, she pulled away and buried her face in the stranger’s shoulder.

  * * *

  PEPPER BOURNE HELD tight to the little girl. No matter what this tall man with his worn jeans and boots said now, he couldn’t be much of a father if he hadn’t even known his child had wandered off. She’d seen plenty of cowboys like him over the years, especially friends of Daddy Gene’s. Just thinking that name still hurt. She snuggled the toddler closer.

  “Hand her over,” said Chief Rudy. “Kids wander off. It’s happened to every parent.”

  “Are you sure? Her diaper was dirty.”

  “That happens to all kids, too,” the cowboy said swiftly. “I was right there. Under the hood.”

  “And that worked so well, didn’t it? She didn’t even have a hat or shoes. What are you doing in town?” Not that it was really her business.

  “Come to pay my respects to Gene Daniels. Got word he’d passed, and there was a memorial.”

  Pepper squeezed the little girl who squeaked in protest. Daddy Gene had been gone for a month. Tears filled her eyes and she couldn’t choke out the words. A tiny hand patted her cheek. Pepper feared she would burst into ugly sobs.

  “How did you know him?” she asked to distract herself.

  “Barely kissin’ cousins and the rodeo,” the man answered. “Now, if I can have my daughter, I’ll be going.”

  “Chief, I don’t know that I’m comfortable with the situation.” She stared hard at the toddler’s daddy, while ignoring the muscled strength and length of him. “Where’s your wife? Your daughter’s mother.”