Her Cowboy Distraction
Carla Cassidy
The Cowboy on her Bucket List
She'd been watching the handsome rancher for a while, just a lone cowboy eating pie with an empty chair beside him. One night, Lizzie Wiles, Cowboy Café's feisty new waitress, went over and dared to interrupt his tortured solitude. Daniel Jefferson seemed shocked by her boldness as he buried himself in guilt over his wife's mysterious death. Lizzie tried to penetrate his gloom, but in the end, found herself falling in love. Having plans to leave town, she didn't want to think of these consequences. Worse, someone really wanted her to disappear-now! Attacked and warned to leave, Lizzie had every reason to go...but she had one undeniable reason to stay.
"I need to get upstairs and take a shower."
"Yeah, I need to do the same," Daniel replied.
"We could always shower together and save water."
She had to be joking, Daniel thought. But as he turned and looked at Lizzie there was no teasing light in her eyes. It stole his breath away.
She took a step closer to him, her whiskey eyes inviting him to imbibe, to become intoxicated with her. "I didn't tell you about one of the things on my bucket list."
"And what's that?" he asked, aware that his voice sounded half-strangled with his need of her.
"To make love to a man I'll never forget. I believe that you're that man, Daniel. I want to make love to you, and when I leave here I'll have the warmth of that memory of us together to carry with me for the rest of my life."
Dear Reader,
I can't think of anything more distracting that a hot and sexy cowboy with a hint of darkness in his eyes. In Her Cowboy Distraction, my hero, Daniel Jefferson, is that man.
There's something enduring and solid about a cowboy, and I love writing cowboy heroes. This is the first book of a series that centers around a café in the small town of Grady Gulch, Oklahoma.
Daniel Jefferson has suffered enormous tragedy in his life and has no desire to ever reach out for love again. Lizzy Wiles is a woman on a mission and isn't ready for a relationship with any man. But when she breezes into the Cowboy Café to take a waitressing job and becomes the target for a killer, her world collides with Daniel's in a way neither of them could have expected.
I hope you enjoy reading Her Cowboy Distraction as much as I enjoyed writing it.
As always, thanks for your support.
Happy reading!
Carla Cassidy
Chapter 1
Lizzy Wiles blew a strand of her long brown hair away from the side of her face as she poured George Wilton another cup of coffee. "How's that meat loaf?" she asked the old man, who seemed to wear a perpetual frown every time he came into the café. She already knew what the answer would be because they had had this same conversation every Friday night for the past month since Lizzy had started working as a waitress at the Cowboy Café.
"Dry. The meat loaf is always dry," George grumbled.
"George, every Friday night the special is meat loaf, and every Friday night you come in here and order the special. Why don't you try something else if you don't like the meat loaf?"
George's grizzled gray eyebrows pulled together across his forehead. "But, I like Mary's meat loaf. It's just dry. Why would I want to order anything else?"
"Just asking," Lizzy replied with a wry smile as she turned to put the coffeepot back on the burner. She grabbed a clean wet towel to wipe up one area of the long counter and gave a quick glance at her wristwatch.
Quarter to seven. On Friday and Saturday nights the café stayed open until midnight. For the rest of the five days a week the usual closing time was ten o'clock.
Lizzy came in at two in the afternoons and closed six days a week. She'd blown into the small town of Grady Gulch, Oklahoma, a month ago and had decided that the Cowboy Café was the perfect place to accomplish two of the items on her bucket list at the same time: meet a cowboy and work as a waitress in a small café.
Mary Mathis, the pretty owner of the café, had taken Lizzy under her wing, not only giving her a job but also a place to stay in one of the four small cabins directly behind the restaurant.
As she wiped the counter she glanced around the café. The dinner crowd had finally thinned out, and for the first time she felt as if she could take a deep breath and slow down the crazy pace she kept up from four to about six-thirty each evening.
She checked her watch once again. Five minutes and he'd walk through the door. Every Friday night that she'd worked there he'd always arrived at precisely seven o'clock.
He always sat in the same place, the third booth next to the window. Lizzy worked the counter, never the booths. She'd asked Candy Bailey, the waitress who worked the booth section of the restaurant, what she knew about the lone cowboy, but Candy had been working at the café only a few weeks longer than Lizzy and didn't know anything about him.
Not that Lizzy really wanted to know any intimate details about him. It was just idle curiosity, that's all. He was hot and handsome and always alone. It was just interesting. Still, at seven o'clock when the little bell over the door tinkled and he walked in, Lizzy's heartbeat quickened more than just a little bit.
He was a tall drink of water clad in a worn pair of jeans, which hugged his slender hips and long legs, and a white T-shirt that stretched taut across his broad shoulders.
The first thing he did after entering the front door was remove the black cowboy hat from his head and hang it on one of the many hooks that were screwed into the wall by the door.
Mary Mathis had a rule in her establishment: no hats allowed while eating. She'd made it easy with the hooks for the cowboys coming in to abide by her strict rule.
Mr. Hot Cowboy's slightly unruly dark hair showed no residual effect from having worn the hat. His hair held just enough lazy curl to make a woman want to run her hands through it. Not that Lizzy would ever consider doing that. It was just something she'd noticed.
She rewashed the counter area she'd just cleaned as she surreptitiously watched him walk to the third booth, which had last held a rather unruly family of four.
He sat, as he always did, on the side of the booth facing the door. He never picked up a menu, and he rarely greeted anyone else who might be in the café at the same time.
He was like an island unto himself, sculptured features set in granite as he stared at the laminated tabletop as if it might hold all of the answers to life's mysteries.
There was no question that he pulled a sharp physical response from Lizzy. She'd been in town for a little over a month, and she definitely thought he was the hottest thing walking in the small town of Grady Gulch.
"Lizzy, order up," Mary's pleasant voice called from the pass window.
Lizzy turned away from the eye candy and hurried to the window that separated the dining area and the kitchen. "Tell Fred that the steak is grilled just the way he likes it, still half mooing on the plate," Mary said. "And you can take a break if you want to. Things have slowed down since the dinner rush has passed."
"Thanks, Mary." Lizzy picked up the platter that held a rare steak, an oversize baked potato and green beans. She walked down to the end of the counter where Fred Jenkins, who worked as the town's only vet, sat on the end stool.
"Mary said it's still mooing, so you should be happy," she said with a smile at the balding middle-aged man as she placed the platter in front of him.
"That's the way I like it, either rare on the plate or healthy on the hoof," he replied. "Hey, by the way, I've got a litter of schnauzer pups I'm trying to find homes for. You interested in a puppy?"
"No thanks," she replied quickly, although her mind instantly filled with the vision of adorable button brown eyes and sweet puppy kisses. "I love dogs, but my lifestyle just isn't conducive to me having one. Footloose and fancy-free, that's me. But, if you'd like, I'll ask around for you."
"That would be great," Fred replied.
"Anything else I can get for you? I'm going on break."
"Nope, I'm good," he said. "Enjoy your break."
A few minutes later Lizzy sat at a table near the counter with a cup of freshly brewed coffee before her. There was a small break room in the back, but Lizzy rarely took her breaks there. She preferred to sit here at the small table in the dining area and people watch … especially on Friday nights when he came in.
She took a sip from her cup and glanced in his direction. Candy was in the process of delivering his order. He always ordered the same thing, two pieces of peach pie and one cup of coffee.