A Cowboy for Holly
Maureen Child

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

Title Page

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Copyright

Chapter One

Holly Banks sat in the spring sunshine and tipped her face up to the sun. It was good to be back in New York City. And if she kept telling herself that, she might even believe it in, say, a year or two.

“You’re doing it again.”

“Hmm?” Holly glanced at one of the two women sitting with her, enjoying their lunch break. “Doing what?”

“Sighing,” her friend Katie pointed out. “You’ve been doing that a lot since you got back. I thought vacations were supposed to make you feel good—not depressed.”

Frowning a little, Holly argued, “I’m not depressed, I’m…”

She wasn’t sure what she was. Happy to be home, sure. Grateful to be at work again at her job in Waverly’s Auction House, you bet. Glad to see her friends and share lunch while they watched Manhattan parade past, of course.

But…there was a part of her that was still in Montana on the Bar G luxury guest ranch. And she had the sneaking suspicion that it was her heart.

“I’m fine,” she insisted. “Just easing back into life in the fast lane.”

“Uh-huh.” Charlotte “Charlie” Potter gave her a hard look, then shook her head. “So why don’t you say what’s really going on, Holly. You’ve been back a week now and you’ve hardly told us anything about the ranch. You saved up for a year to go on that vacation and you don’t have pictures? Stories? Tales of adventure?”

“Or romance,” Katie put in as she crumpled up her lunch bag and tossed it into a nearby trash can.

Holly took a breath and held it. She couldn’t tell her friends what had happened to her in Montana. It still felt too raw. Too…tender. So instead, she smiled and took a sip of her soda before giving them just enough, she hoped, to satisfy their curiosity.

“Let’s just say that cowboys are everything I dreamed they would be.”

Charlie gave a little sigh, her soft heart filling in all of the blanks. But Katie narrowed her gaze on Holly and said, “No details?”

“No,” she answered. She didn’t want to give them the details because she didn’t want to think about a certain cowboy. Didn’t want to remember cold nights and chill mornings as dawn stained the mountains with glorious color. Didn’t want to remember horseback rides through meadows so beautiful they’d taken her breath away. Or the picnics by a swiftly flowing river. Didn’t want to think about dark brown eyes and long, slow kisses that set fire to everything inside her.

It had all been a lie anyway, she reminded herself firmly. He had pretended to be something—someone—he wasn’t. She had assumed he was just a simple cowboy. A regular guy. But he wasn’t, so there was no point in torturing herself with the memories, was there?

The sting of hurt was still with her and Holly knew it always would be. She could pretend everything was all right. She could lie to her friends and tuck the hurt aside during the day. But at night her dreams were filled with what-might-have-beens. With images of him. With the memory of his touch. His smile. His—

“Earth to Holly,” Katie said, giving her friend’s knee a shove. Then she frowned. “Hey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Holly insisted. And she would be. One day. All she had to do was concentrate on her job. Her life. Her future. All right here in the biggest city in the world.

The Fifth Avenue sidewalks were packed solid. New Yorkers on their lunch breaks hurried through the crowd while the tourists who flocked to Manhattan every year slowly meandered, getting pushed and shoved out of people’s way. The tourists lifted their gazes to admire the reach of the tall buildings, they took pictures and risked their lives stepping off curbs into Manhattan traffic.

These were the sights and sounds of home. Taxis blasting impatient horns, a hot-dog vendor shouting at a boy trying to slip away without paying, and on the corner a guy selling knock-off purses. It was spring in the city and busy enough to keep even Holly’s mind occupied. She hoped.

“Well,” Katie murmured from beside her, “looks like Montana’s not the only place to find a cowboy.”

“What?”

“Oh, my…” Charlie’s words were a whispered hush of admiration.

Holly followed their gazes and her heart jolted. He was taller than everyone else on the crowded sidewalk, and the wide-brimmed cowboy hat he wore set him even further apart from the people surrounding him.

She couldn’t see his face yet, but Holly felt his presence in every cell of her body. It was the same zip of electricity she had felt from the moment she met the tall, broad-shouldered cowboy. Beside her, she sensed Katie and Charlie both turning their curious eyes toward her, but she couldn’t tear her own away from the man fast approaching.

Even from a distance, she saw his brown eyes flash as his gaze locked on her. She took a deep breath, hoping to steady nerves that were already fluttering to life in the pit of her stomach.

When he broke free of the crowd and headed straight for her, Holly knew she was in big trouble. She should be running away from him, but all she wanted to do was throw herself into his arms.

“Holly?” Charlie whispered. “You okay?”

“Really not,” she answered.

She hadn’t expected this. Never would have thought that he would come here. To New York. Why would he come? Why would he follow her? And why did he have to look so good?

She could hardly breathe as she watched him come closer. Her heartbeat quickened even faster and every breath was rapid and shallow. Her stomach was doing somersaults and her mouth was dry as a desert.

He stopped in front of her.

Chapter Two

His jaw was tight, his eyes squinted against the midday sun, and he was oblivious to the stir he was causing. Every woman he passed turned to give him a slow once-over. His long-sleeved white shirt was open at the collar. He wore faded jeans and a pair of scuffed brown boots. He was tall and gorgeous and should have seemed completely out of place in midtown Manhattan. Instead, he looked…dangerous. Sexy.

Then he was there, standing right in front of her, staring down at her out of eyes as warm and rich as melted milk chocolate. He reached up, pulled his hat off and raked his fingers through his long, dark brown hair. He nodded briefly at Katie and Charlie then locked his gaze on Holly.

“What’re you doing here?” she asked when she could find her voice again.

“What the hell do you think I’m doin’ here, Holly?” he demanded. “You left without a word. I’m here to find out why.”

Ben Gray took just a minute to enjoy the sight of the woman he’d followed halfway across the country. When she’d left, he had been out on the mountain helping his wranglers round up a few lost cows who’d wandered off the pasture. He’d gotten back to the main ranch house only to be told she had checked out.

She hadn’t left a note. Hadn’t explained why she was taking off. She was just gone, leaving behind an empty guest room and an equally empty space in his heart.

He hadn’t thought to give chase. After all, Ben Gray didn’t have to hunt a woman down. They were usually throwing themselves at him. But he hadn’t been able to forget Holly Banks. And so, after a week of nursing his own temper, here he stood, in the middle of Manhattan.

She seemed…different here, he thought. In her pretty dress and high heels. She was still beautiful, and one look into her eyes told him this was the same woman who had so captivated him. But damned if he didn’t miss how she looked in jeans and a T-shirt and boots. He missed her smile—which was notably absent at the moment. And he missed knowing she was there. With him.

He gazed down into her wide eyes and felt as if he could drown in those lake-blue depths. Hell, he pretty much had from the moment he’d first seen her on his ranch. She had come, as so many people came, to be a guest on his luxury ranch. For ten years, he’d opened his home six months out of the year to people who wanted to experience life in the high country.

But this was the first damn time he’d had his feet knocked out from under him by one of them.

“Okay…” one of the women alongside Holly said, “I think we should go back to work.”

Holly didn’t even glance at her. She kept her eyes locked with Ben’s as she said, “You guys go ahead. I’ll be there in a bit.”

“Are you sure?” the other woman asked.

He admired her friends’ loyalty even while he wished they’d teleport to the other side of the planet.

“It’s okay, Katie,” Holly assured her.

Ben couldn’t stop looking at her. He hadn’t seen her in a week, and damned if it didn’t feel more like a year.

No woman had ever walked away from him, and he told himself that it was pride that had drawn him away from the ranch to the middle of Manhattan. But now that he was here, drinking in the sight of her, he knew that it was more than pride. It was want. Hell, need.

The woman had touched something inside him he hadn’t even been aware of. With her, he’d been a man who could enjoy simple pleasures. Walks in the moonlight. A canoe ride on the lake—a ride that had ended with laughter when she’d tipped them both into the water. Hell, he couldn’t even walk across the ranch now without thinking about her—and how great it had been between them—and he wasn’t going to let her just turn her back and walk away without so much as an explanation.

When her friends moved off, Ben finally spared them a glance, but only to make sure they were leaving. Then he looked back at Holly and asked, “Why? Why did you run off without even talking to me?”

“Because,” she said, lifting her chin and straightening her shoulders, “I didn’t want to hear more of your lies.”

“Lies?” He scowled at her as frustration frothed inside him. “I didn’t lie to you.”

“There’s another one.” She shook her head. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

“Find out what?” He threw both arms wide and let them fall.

Holly stepped in close and poked his chest with her index finger. “That you’re not just a cowboy…you own that ranch.”

Ben scraped one hand across his face. “That’s why you left?”

“Yes.” She stepped past him and tried to walk away, but Ben took hold of her arm and kept her in place. She stared down at his hand with a look hot enough to singe his skin.

He didn’t let go.

“I didn’t lie to you about that,” he muttered, dipping his head closer to hers. God, he caught her scent—a fragile blend of flowers, spice and Holly—and dragged it deep inside him. Just being this close to her again…touching her again…made him hungry for more.

To disguise his own desire, he gritted his teeth and said, “I just didn’t tell you everything.”

“That’s a lie, in case you were wondering,” Holly snapped and tugged her arm free.

Chapter Three

Holly had never dreamed that Ben would come to New York.

Their two weeks together in Montana had been like a dream. She’d fallen fast and hard for the man she’d thought was a hardworking cowboy and hadn’t even second-guessed her decision to sleep with him almost immediately.

That wasn’t like Holly at all. She was more the slow and steady type when it came to relationships. She had never—before Ben—jumped into bed with a man she barely knew.

But from the first, Ben had been…different. It was as if a part of her had always known him. There was an almost instantaneous connection between them that had only grown deeper and richer the more time they spent together.

And as the end of her vacation had loomed, Holly had been trying to think of a way to stay. To leave behind her lonely life in New York for a chance at something more with a magnetic cowboy who lit up her insides like a Fourth of July fireworks show.

Then she had found out the truth. That he wasn’t a struggling cowboy—he was a billionaire. That he had lied to her from the beginning. So, with her heart aching, she’d run for home. Back to safety. Back to what was familiar and what she was sure of. Her house. Her job. Her friends.

She had never expected to see Ben again, and having him here, now, was staggering. She knew she had done the right thing in leaving him, but even so, her body was betraying her with every breath. Her blood was buzzing and her heartbeat was thundering in her own ears.

But she wasn’t about to let her own hormones dig an even deeper hole for her heart to fall into.

“I have to go back to work,” she said.

“Fine.” He was still scowling. “What time do you get off?”

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