Read Online Harvest at Mustang Ridge by Jesse Hayworth - Free Book Online

okay, but it’s the same thing. He’ll be at breakfast tomorrow.”
    “I don’t know,” Jenny said, shaking her head. “This is Wyatt we’re talking about. Your one-and-only. There’s a whole lot of worms loaded to come out of that can.”
    “I’m not opening any cans. I’m just hiring a wrangler.”
    “There’s nothing ‘just’ about it. You were head over heels for the guy, and he took off without an explanation.”
    Krista stared into her wineglass for a moment. “He explained.”
    “He left a note. That’s not the same thing.”
    “Hang on. Time out.” Shelby made a “T” with her hands. “What note? What happened between you two? It’s hard to know whether to hate him or give him a second chance when I’ve only got the CliffsNotes.”
    It was part of the Girl Code that they tried not to swap each other’s secrets. Otherwise, Jenny would’ve undoubtedly spilled the whole cringe-inducing story. A few minutes ago, Krista might have said it didn’t matter how it ended, only that it had. But wine and friendship made it easier to say, “Wyatt and I met our senior year, right after spring break. And if it wasn’t love at first sight, it was darn close.”
    She had ridden out that day with her friend Darcy, and on the way home the conversation about their final projects—converting a multigeneration cattle station into a dude ranch for her, eco-friendly guest accommodations for Darcy—had turned to gossip about the new guy at the barn. “He’s older,” Darcy had revealed. “I heard that he rode bulls for five or six years between high school and college. And he’s got that swagger, you know?” She made an “mmmmm” noise of approval as Krista maneuvered her horse to open the gate and let them through the perimeter fencing. “Sooo cute. And nice! Even cranky old man Briggs likes him, and he doesn’t like anybody. In fact, I heard— Oh!” Darcy squeaked at the sight of a small herd in the courtyard. “There he is!”
    The cowboy was still astride, guiding his horse from one student to the next as they climbed down and fumbled with their reins and cinches. He sat straight and easy in the saddle, his cues nearly invisible, reminding Krista of the hardcore, tell-a-man-by-his-horse cowboys who worked for Big Skye.
Yum,
she thought. But when he turned and looked at her from beneath thebrim of his chocolate-brown Stetson, Krista saw that Darcy had been way off. There was nothing cute about his square jaw and the aggressive jut of his nose, nothing so bland as nice about the way his dark eyes locked with hers. He was gorgeous. Arresting. One hundred percent male. And the way he was staring back at her suggested that he liked what he saw.
    “He asked me out the next day,” she told Shelby. “We went to dinner and a movie, and he kissed me good night. Then a couple of days later, we took a long moonlit ride out to this little hidden waterfall he knew of. It was . . .”
Magical.
“Overwhelming. It was like I had designed my perfect match from the ground up, and then he turned real. I didn’t tell him about Mustang Ridge right away, but when I showed him my final project, he understood what I was going for right away and had some ideas of his own. Good ones. Eventually, I told him it wasn’t as much of a dream as it seemed—that I had the property in my family, just had to get the others on board. We used to stay up late, talking about what it would be like to run the guest ranch together.” She hesitated. “I thought we were planning our future. So I didn’t listen when his roommate tried to warn me off.”
    “That would be Sam Babcock?” Shelby asked.
    Krista nodded. “He wasn’t talking behind anybody’s back—he’d said it right in front of Wyatt, how I’d better watch out because for him relationships were like bull riding, only the buzzer was set for eight weeks, not eight seconds.”
    Shelby winced. “Ouch.”
    At the time, it hadn’t stung so much as annoyed her. “I