Cowboy Seeks Bride by Carolyn Brown Page B

razed by specialists, Sawyer, and you ain’t nothin’ but an amateur.”
    “Whew!” Rhett wiped his forehead. “Looks like you done met your match, Sawyer. How’d you know about his girlfriend, anyway?”
    She smiled and kept writing. “Tell me those kinds other than Studebaker again.”
    Coosie rattled them off so rapidly that she had to write fast.
    “And you are sure you won’t rent us yours?”
    “D-d-don’t nobody touch his wagon,” Buddy chuckled.
    “I didn’t build it so someone else could ruin it. Better quit your jawin’ and start your chewin’ ’cause the nooner don’t last half the afternoon.”
    Dewar set about eating like nothing at all had happened when their hands touched. Maybe he had a woman back in Ringgold. No one as handsome and sexy as he was could possibly be single. He had to be close to her age and that would put him at thirty or a little more.
    She shut her eyes and visualized the file that Carl had on Dewar back when they first came up with the idea of the cattle drive reality show. He was part owner and operator of a cattle-slash-horse ranch and that he could easily get a crew of six and a herd of a hundred cows together for the reenactment. It didn’t even have a place for married, single, or divorced.
    “Shit!” she mumbled and quickly jerked her head up to see if anyone heard her.
    He was probably engaged and that was the underlying reason that he did not want a woman on the drive with him. If she was his fiancée, she’d be on her way to drag his sexy little butt right back to Ringgold, Texas, as soon as the gossip hotline told her that H. B. McKay was not a stuffy, middle-aged man.

Chapter 5
    Dewar was sitting straight up when he awoke. Nerves on the back of his neck prickled and his heart thumped around in his chest like it was looking for an escape route. He quickly turned his boots upside down, shook any possible bugs out, and jammed his feet down into them. A lonesome coyote yipped in the distance, but he didn’t get an answer. Crickets and tree frogs chirped away. Still, something wasn’t right. He could feel it in his bones and they never lied to him. He quietly unsheathed his rifle and held it beside his leg.
    He scanned the campsite. Buddy even stuttered when he snored. Finn mumbled in his sleep, and Sawyer rolled from one side to the other, trying to get comfortable. The fire crackled in the moonlight, but everything and everyone looked all right.
    Until he turned around and realized Haley’s bedroll was empty. His gun was still standing beside the tree, which meant she hadn’t gone to check on rustlers again. Dear God! Someone had kidnapped her for a ransom?
    “Not without a fight from that redhead,” he mumbled. “She’d be pitching a screaming hissy fit.”
    Lord, why did H. B. McKay have to be a woman!?
    Everyone along the trail knew they were bringing a hundred head of cattle down the old Chisholm Trail. It would be easy to back a trailer right up to a gate on the far side of the pasture and drive off with a straggler or two or even half the herd. He could imagine a dozen places where it could happen that very night.
    He leaned against a scrub oak tree, keeping himself out of the moonlight as he scanned the area for stealthy rustlers. He felt a presence behind him, spun around, and whipped the rifle up to point right at Haley’s heart.
    “Shit! It’s me. Haley. Don’t shoot.” She grabbed her chest with one hand and held up her palm.
    He quickly lowered the rifle. “What in the hell are you doing out here?”
    “I might ask you the same thing,” Haley smarted off right back at him.
    “Trouble is brewing,” he said.
    “How did you know?”
    “It woke me up. Now you? What were you doing out here?”
    “I woke up and went down to the creek for a bath. When I came back you were gone and I came to see what you were doing sneaking around out here. We got more of them pesky kids trying to steal cows?” she whispered.
    The aroma of