How To Rope A Wild Cowboy (Silver Springs Ranch Book 1) Read online

  How To Rope A Wild Cowboy

  Silver Springs Ranch: Book 1

  Anya Summers

  Published by S & G Books LLC

  P.O. Box 3353

  Ballwin, Missouri 63022

  USA

  How To Rope A Wild Cowboy

  Anya Summers

  Copyright © 2020 by Anya Summers

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written consent of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, businesses, characters, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, actual events or locales is purely coincidental.

  Cover Art by SteamyReads.Net

  Amazon Print Book ISBN 979-8-6765861-2-6

  Ebook ISBN 978-1-7356398-0-2

  www.anyasummers.com

  Contents

  About the Book

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Also By Anya Summers

  About Anya

  About the Book

  Emmett Benson makes no apologies for his bachelor status. He revels in a woman’s surrender but does not want the responsibility of claiming a submissive for his own, because no one is worth the price of his freedom. He appreciates his friends, loves his horse, and fancies wrangling cattle every day over interacting with people. When it comes to his life, he figures he has it made, and that there is no reason to alter things—now, or in the future.

  But all it takes is one lousy spill off a new, temperamental thoroughbred to cause a load of trouble. One look at the prim and proper new town doctor, and Emmett wants nothing more than to ruffle her cool demeanor. The woman is likely too tightly wound to even consider submission. He cannot desire her. It is out of the question. He must be delirious from the pain of his injuries to even be contemplating the possibility of claiming her, even though she makes him want to mark his territory and challenge any man who comes near her. Still, he convinces himself it is not an issue after he leaves her office.

  But then the doctor makes an unexpected house call and, with her sweet, feminine scent clouding his senses, Emmett makes her a bargain. He will behave like the perfect patient, for the cost of a single kiss, freely given. He never expected her to accept his offer.

  He thought he was in trouble before, but after just one kiss, every dominant part of Emmett’s being thunders: MINE.

  1

  The front door of her office swung open with such force, it knocked the ancient bell from its dangling perch above. The bell skidded and tumbled across the golden pine hardwood floor, clanging with each roll, until it stopped beneath a chair in the small, square waiting room with the blue and white checkered furniture. The furniture was the same as it had been when she had first arrived seventeen years ago, a lost and bitter teenager.

  But coming to Winter Park had been her salvation back then.

  And now the family practice belonged to her.

  Grace had debated changing anything in the office because everything else in her life had changed. The familiarity—the comfort—she derived from that place was a bit like an old sweatshirt: even though it was worn and threadbare in spots, you hung onto it because it was so comfortable.

  “Ahhh, I told you I don’t need a doctor!” came a deep male roar, infused with agony.

  Heavy, booted footsteps stomped over the hardwood floor of her entryway.

  Doctor Grace O’Neal, in her white lab coat, prim gray slacks, and blouse the color of the noon day Colorado sky, was already in motion as the four large cowboys entered and crowded her waiting room. Dust from the outdoors coated their jeans and button-down shirts. And while the waiting room was a decent size for a single physician’s small-town practice, the four men were big and rangy, overwhelming the space. Before, the waiting room had been empty but now, upon their loud entrance, testosterone jammed the room due to their presence, making it feel cramped and tiny.

  The cowboy they were carrying was minus his hat and displayed a full head of thick, inky black hair. His square jaw was covered with a few days’ growth of dark stubble. Bags of ice had been taped in a haphazard fashion to his left shoulder. With his face in a dark scowl, he snarled, “Put me down, I don’t need a—”

  “Shut it, Emmett, you do,” the apparent leader of the dusty cowboy group interrupted with a firm command. Tufts of dirty blond, sun-streaked hair curled out from underneath his ivory Stetson. He had cheeks that were sharp like razor blades in an angular male face that suited his tall, lanky frame. His navy and white checkered button down dress shirt was the least dirty in the bunch.

  The cowboy on the injured man’s right, black hat askew at a crooked angle, dark brown hair poking out from underneath it and wearing a wide, gregarious smile on a face that Grace was pretty sure could lead a number of women into damnation, laughed at his friend’s antics. “At least I got it all on camera.”

  The one bringing up the rear with a kind moss green gaze, ensuring the injured in their party didn’t skedaddle right back out the door, said, “He’s lucky he’s not dead is what he is, to try a stunt like that.”

  Grace whistled, a loud, piercing sound that stopped the group in their tracks.

  “What do we have here?” she asked, attempting to assume command of the situation.

  All four cowboys swiveled their attention her way. Each man assessed her from head to toe. She spied male appreciation in their eyes, with the exception being the wild, ill-tempered cowboy they were carrying. Pain and anger blazed in his eyes.

  “Yes, ma’am, we’re here to see Doc O’Neal. If you could tell him that Colt Anderson is here with an injured Emmett, that would be great.” Colt was the apparent leader of the ragtag group, and seemed more refined than the others.

  “I’m Doctor O’Neal. Let’s get him into room two. Then you can tell me what happened.” Grace gestured the group toward the back, holding open the door between the waiting room and the hall with the exam rooms.

  “A woman doc? What the hell happened to the other one?” Emmett growled with a scowl marring his forehead.

  “He died,” Grace replied sternly, ignoring the raging grief that was still fresh and had the ability to cut her off at the knees. “Now, do you want to help me get the patient into a room, or are you all just going to stand there with your mouths agape?”

  Colt took the initiative. “Come on, boys, let’s do as the doc says. Get the bonehead into room two.”

  The three uninjured cowboys carted their snarling, ornery, injured friend into room two. Grace had thought having all four of them in the waiting room had infused it with a bunch of testosterone, but in the smaller, more intimate exam room it overflowed, bulging at the seams. She marched in behind the pack of cowboys.

  “Out of my way.” She shoved one of them aside when the patient wobbled on his feet. The idiot man was acting like he was going to walk out of there under his own steam when he was quite clearly hurt and in need of care.

  Emmett pitche
d forward. With the fast reflexes she had developed from years of working in the Emergency Room, Grace caught him—with help from one of the cowboys—before he did a nosedive onto her spotless pinewood floor. Instead, his face ended up pillowed on her chest. A multitude of scents assailed her: sweat, and rough and tumble man. Not the fake cologne smell; just pure, undiluted alpha male who spent the bulk of his life working outdoors. It made her belly clench in sexy delight. Then again, she had always had a fascination with cowboys. They just weren’t good for her.

  “Help me get him up on the table,” she ordered the cowboy helping keep him upright.

  “Yes, ma’am. Colt why don’t you and I lift—”

  Grace cut him off. “On three, two, one.” And then she and the cowboy hoisted the man onto her exam table.

  “Hey. Ahhh, fuck, stop moving me,” Emmett groaned, his voice thick with agony.

  “Emmett, I need you to calm down,” she ordered. “And I need you to help me hold him steady, um, sorry I don’t know your name,” Grace said to the guy who had helped her get him on the exam table.

  “Emmett’s always been a bullheaded idiot, ma’am, don’t take it personally. I’m Maverick, but you can call me Mav.” Mav grinned, displaying a row of straight, white teeth and sexy pair of dimples. The twinkle in his tawny amber eyes let her know in all of two seconds that the man was a heartbreaker, and proud of it.

  “Mind telling me what happened?” she asked the group, while Emmett struggled on the table. The damn man wasn’t sitting still. If he didn’t settle down, he would injure himself further. She glanced at Colt. “I need you over here with Mav, holding him steady while I gather some supplies.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Colt gave her a nod and took up her former position. “Emmett got rolled under a finicky new thoroughbred stallion by the name of Wildfire, who got spooked. After bucking him off, the horse trampled him a bit. He’d be worse off if he hadn’t rolled out of the way.”

  “Okay, that gives me an idea of what to check for.” She slipped on a pair of latex gloves, then gripped Emmett’s head, staring into eyes that reminded her of a frosted blue lake coated in ice. His pupils were slightly dilated. There was a small contusion on his forehead about half an inch in length that wasn’t deep enough to need stitches, but would need to be cleaned and bandaged. “Looks like he might possibly have a concussion. Any vomiting, nausea, blurry eyesight, or confusion, Emmett?”

  “No.” Emmett growled through clenched teeth while he watched her work.

  She removed the icepacks. Her fingers moved swiftly and found the source of most of his pain. He howled when she touched his shoulder.

  “Fuck, god damn, son of a bitch!” Emmett yelled and glowered at her. She didn’t back down, just kept up her cool as she examined her patient.

  “Emmett,” Colt derided.

  “No, it’s okay. The cursing doesn’t bother me. It looks like his shoulder is dislocated.” She felt along his chest. “Tell me if this hurts at all,” she ordered Emmett, watching for any signs of distress.

  The man had a powerfully formed chest, with loads of taut muscles. He gritted his teeth and hissed when she reached the ribs on his right side. So the left shoulder was injured, and then the ribs on his right hand side. They’d said he’d rolled away from the bucking horse. Grace unbuttoned his plaid green shirt, revealing ripcord muscles with dark whorls of chest hair that covered his pectoral muscles and tapered into a single dark trail over his corded abdominals. As a doctor, she appreciated a man who was in optimal physical condition. And normally that was where it stopped. She knew how to keep a line of demarcation between herself and a patient. But as a woman, she experienced a rush of pure feminine lust in response to the exposed rock-hard flesh of an alpha male in his prime.

  Grace commanded herself to focus on the man’s injuries and not on the sudden need to affix her mouth to various parts of his body. It had to be the overabundance of testosterone in the room. That was the only logical explanation she had at the present time. “Emmett, I need you to take a deep breath for me. We need to get your shirt off. It might hurt a bit. I’m going to go real slow, okay? If it hurts too much, tell me, and we will cut your shirt the rest of the way off. Once we get it off, we’re going to move you over into X-ray so I can get confirmation on the shoulder. I need to make sure nothing’s broken before I reset it in the socket. Do you understand?”

  Those ice blues eyes studied her in an assessing fashion until he finally nodded, his wide lips, the bottom one fuller, compressed into a firm line.

  As carefully as possible, Grace peeled the shirt from his uninjured arm, making sure she didn’t jostle his body and cause him further pain.

  “Okay, Colt, can you undo the buttons at his wrist for me?” she ordered, not stopping, expecting the command to be followed without hesitation.

  With Colt’s help, they were able to get the shirt the rest of the way off.

  Grace kept her face serene when she saw the bruising on Emmett’s chest and right obliques. “Horse got you good, didn’t he? We’ll have to see if those ribs are fractured or broken too. Okay, let me go fire up the X-ray machine. If one of you could help him remove his boots, that would be great, because those spurs will rip up my X-ray table. Get his belt and jeans off, too, I can’t have anything metal from the hips up. You can wrap this gown around his waist. And so help me, do not jostle that shoulder.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” they replied with nods.

  “Mav, Duncan, stay with Emmett. Make sure he doesn’t escape, and do what Doctor O’Neal asked. Mind if I walk with you?” Colt asked, acting like a gentleman. He held the door to the exam room open, as if they were merely heading down the hall to have a spot of tea instead of to figure out how injured his buddy happened to be.

  “Not at all. Come with me.” She gestured then, exiting the room, she grabbed a patient form on a clipboard from the reception desk. “I’m going to need you to fill out all his information on this.”

  He took the clipboard from her hand. “Understood. I will get it done. Any bills that we don’t cover here today, and his insurance doesn’t cover, I want you to bill to my ranch. We will cover all the expenses.”

  “That’s not a problem.” Grace liked the sound of being paid, especially now that she no longer had a large hospital entity with corporate dollars behind her. She had plenty in savings that she’d inherited from her parents after they died, and what she had inherited from her grandpa in the last week had been added to the pot. Financially, she was set, but that didn’t mean she could afford to run a business that didn’t make money. She headed into the X-ray room at the end of the hall, and Colt followed.

  “Can I ask, what happened to Joe? He’s been my family’s physician for ages, it seems. I saw him not two weeks ago on a trip into town,” Colt said as he filled out the form.

  The question was bound to come up until everyone in town had heard the news. Grace knew that. She had prepared herself to hear it multiple times in the coming weeks, but it didn’t make the question any easier. She’d sent a notice to the paper today with his obituary, and had published a small statement on the practice’s website. But she had not gotten around to mailing all her grandpa’s patients a letter informing them of his passing, and letting them know that she was the new doctor in charge. It was on her agenda to send those out this week.

  “Heart attack a week ago. He was sixty-nine and should have retired a long time ago. In his will, he asked to be cremated and did not want a funeral,” Grace said, proud that her voice didn’t waver with grief as she brought the X-ray machine online. Grandpa had kept working much longer than he should have. Some of that was her fault, and she accepted the blame for the part she had played. For the last two years, he had pestered her to come join his practice, and she’d kept putting him off.

  Until it was too late, and he was gone. And all the excuses she had given him seemed petty and self-serving.

  The guilt layered on top of the grief was staggering.

  “Th
at’s a damn bleeding shame. He was a good man. Well liked around here. And you two are related then?”

  Pasting a smile on her face, she replied, “Yes. I’m his granddaughter, Grace. He left his practice to me. Today’s my first day running the show. Before this, I worked as an emergency room trauma doctor at Denver Memorial.”

  Colt said, “Well, let me welcome you to Winter Park. Not to tell you what to do, but your grandpa was well liked and respected in town. You might want to consider a celebration of life event that wouldn’t go against his wishes; let the town folk know about his passing. You could make it a party instead of a mournful event.”

  “It will be in the newspaper, and I’m sending out a letter to all his patients this week.” She blinked back the onslaught of tears. It didn’t seem real that her larger than life grandpa was gone, nothing more than ashes resting in an urn on the mantel above the fireplace at the house. He had raised her when her parents died, paid for private school, and helped her go to college where she had decided to follow in his footsteps and go into medicine.

  “Fair enough, but if you’d like, Silver Springs Ranch would be happy to host a barbecue and cookout in his honor. The town would show up for that.”

  “That’s kind of you, but—”

  “Just think about it,” Colt replied with a kind smile. He was an attractive man, with his dirty blond hair and quiet commanding strength. Too bad he was a cowboy. They all were, and Grace had a strict no cowboy policy after Richard the slimeball.