Fall for Me (Cowboys of Crested Butte 1)

Liv picked up her tablet and hit repeat on the song playing through the wireless speakers. She intended to set the tablet back down on the ledge in the barn, but hesitated, and scrolled through a social media feed. It took her a minute to zip through the hundred new posts, but there was nothing from the only person she hoped for. Why would there be? It was ten in the morning.

Liv had checked at least four times in as many hours. What rock star was on social media between midnight and noon? Logical, but it didn’t stop her from looking. Besides, Ben would never define himself that way.

A car pulled up outside the barn as she tapped the screen to check another social media site, also for the fourth time that morning.

“Aren’t you getting tired of listening to this? It’s time for a new playlist.” Paige Cochran planted her heels in the dirt to shift the heavy barn door open. As usual, Paige dressed more as though she was going to a meeting at the investment firm she consulted for, not to visit her best friend’s barn.

“I love this song,” Liv muttered as she flicked through the playlists for something else to listen to.

“Here’s the thing—”

“Don’t say it. I can listen to whatever the hell I want to in my own damn barn.”

“A little testy this morning?”

“I’m sick of people complaining about my music,” Liv growled.

“People? What people? Who have you seen in the last few days other than Pooh and Micah?”

Pooh was a fourteen-year-old sweetheart of a mare. The Quarter Horse belonged to Renie, who stood firm on the name Pooh when they’d gotten the horse when she was ten. “You don’t know Winnie the Pooh is a boy. He might be a girl.”

“You’re right,” Liv had answered, rolling her eyes. “What was I thinking?”

The other horse, Micah, was Liv’s baby. The four-year-old Appaloosa gelding showed promise as a barrel racer. Liv didn’t want to part with him for proper training, and she couldn’t train him herself. Those days were over for her. They had been, since before Renie was born.

“You didn’t answer me. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. I’m getting tired of my own company. I’m bored, and sick of the cold weather. I’m ready for spring.”

“I sent a text asking if you wanted to meet for breakfast, but you didn’t answer.”

“Sorry, I haven’t checked my phone. I’m done out here. We can still go into town.”

“Let’s stay here. I know you have coffee and something fresh out of the oven that I shouldn’t eat, but will anyway.”

Liv made cinnamon scones that morning before she came out to the barn. With Renie away at college, she added most of what she baked to her already overloaded freezer.

“Aren’t you overdressed to have coffee with me?”

“I intended to talk you into going to Denver with me later this morning. Although I see you’re in no mood for it.”

Paige managed to get herself inv

olved in at least one new business venture a month. For someone semi-retired, she still worked fifty hours a week. If there was a deal to be made between Denver and Colorado Springs, Paige was usually on the inside edge of making it happen. She was very different from the room mom Liv met fifteen years ago when their daughters started kindergarten together.

“How about a different proposition? I’m going to Vegas next week. Mark said he’d horse-sit so you can come with me.”

When Liv met them, Paige’s husband, Mark, was traveling twenty-five days each month as the lead singer of a band. Diagnosed with cancer a year later, Mark retired and never looked back. Instead, he focused on their three children. Their youngest, Blythe, had remained Renie’s best friend since their kindie days.

Mark still wrote music, but spent most of his time picking up odd jobs, painting houses, or other handyman projects, often for friends. He never hesitated to help Liv, sometimes without her realizing she needed it.

Mark would come over to ride, but soon he’d be mending a fence, or heading into her house to fix something she hadn’t noticed was broken. Liv didn’t know what she’d do without the Cochrans. They were her lifeline now, with Renie at college.

“A trip to Vegas would help with the grouchy-bored thing, and get you away from the cold weather. Come with me. Sit in the sun. Get ungrouchy.”

“I don’t know.”

“What’s stopping you?”