Drifter's Darling (Culpepper Cowboys Book 12) Read online

  Drifter’s Darling

  Culpepper Cowboys Book 12

  Merry Farmer

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  About the Author

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright ©2016 by Merry Farmer

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Amazon.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill (the miracle-worker)

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  1

  Culpepper, Wyoming had never been a particularly hopping metropolis, but after eight years running the rat race in Denver, it was exactly the speed Elvie O’Donnell was looking for. There were more cows than people per square foot throughout the state, which was good for the vet business Elvie’s brother, Doc, had going in the remote ranching town. It was a vet business Elvie had happily joined when Doc floated the idea to her a couple of months ago. Culpepper was where her heart was.

  Culpepper was also a great place to hide.

  “Here you go, Raspberry Rush.” Denise Bonneville pulled a tube of lipstick from its display in the cosmetics aisle of Culpepper’s one and only convenience store and handed it to Elvie’s newly-minted sister-in-law, Nancy. “This one will match your complexion much better than the shade I saw you wearing the other day.”

  Nancy took the lipstick with a dubious expression. “I’m not used to wearing make-up in the first place.” She rolled the tube in her fingers, reading the ingredients on the back, of all things.

  Denise snorted and brushed away Nancy’s comment. “Honey, I’ll help you out all you want.”

  “You will?” Nancy’s eyebrows inched up.

  “Sure I will. I’ll do your colors too. Oh! Then maybe we can go on a big shopping trip to Cheyenne or something!”

  “You planning to do my colors too?” Elvie asked. Her smile reached all the way down to her gut. She hadn’t had a fun group of girl friends since high school.

  “I’d love to.” Denise brightened. “Although you’ll be easy to beautify. You’re so pretty already.”

  Elvie blushed. The last thing she ever felt was pretty. Competent, yes. Powerful, occasionally. But pretty just wasn’t something she’d ever cared about.

  “Thanks,” she managed at last. “I credit whatever prettiness I have to the O’Donnell genes.”

  “You guys sure have a lot of them,” Denise grinned, that look coming into her eyes that all women wore when talking about her brothers. “I had such a crush on Doc for all those years. Not that I do now,” she rushed to add for Nancy’s sake, holding up her hands to prove her innocence. “He’s all yours now, and I don’t believe in chasing other women’s men.” She paused. “At least, not anymore.”

  Denise’s lighthearted expression drooped. Elvie reached out to squeeze her arm. “We know you don’t.”

  “Yeah, and you’re right about the O’Donnell genes,” Nancy said, steered away from the painful subject. “I still can’t believe I managed to bag such a hot guy.”

  “They’re all hot, Doc, Sly, and Arch.” Denise perked up a little, then burst into a full, naughty grin. “I don’t know how you and Doc ever manage to leave the bedroom.”

  “Let me tell you,” Nancy drawled, arching one eyebrow. “There are days when we don’t.”

  “Eew, eew!” Elvie clapped her hands to her ears, laughing. “That’s my brother you’re talking about.”

  “Yes it is,” Nancy teased her, licking her lips. She held up her tube of lipstick. “And pretty soon, he’s going to have Raspberry Rush marks all over his body, including his—”

  “No!” Elvie laughed even louder. “Who do you think you are, Chastity Culpepper?”

  The three of them giggled like a pack of teenagers talking about the guys on the football team. It was the kind of thing that helped Elvie’s soul breathe. The few friends she’d made in Denver didn’t understand why she wanted to leave the vibrant city for Nowheresville, as they called it. But this was it. There was just something about the friendships a girl could make in a small town. These were the ladies she would call in the middle of the night if her crying baby was running a fever.

  Not that she had a baby.

  Not that she was likely to anytime soon.

  “So what shade would you recommend for me?” She turned back to the shelf of cosmetics. “Ooh! I like this one. Cinnamon Sunset.”

  She reached for the tube, but Denise pulled it out of her hands. “Not with your coloring. This one is too warm. You need a cooler shade.” She put the Cinnamon Sunset back and reached for a dark rose tube. “This one. Dusty Rose Dreams.”

  “Ooh!” Elvie took the tube, and turned to the tiny mirror built into the display, holding the lipstick up to her face. “I like it. Now all I need is someone to make kissy marks all over.”

  The other two laughed.

  “I’m sure you won’t have any trouble with that,” Denise said, growing wistful again. “Everyone and their brother is probably falling all over you, considering how few women there are around here these days.”

  “Not after Sly and Rachel’s stunt,” Nancy corrected her. “The hotel has been packed full of husband-seeking ladies from as far away as Seattle.”

  “That was a smart move on my brother’s part,” Elvie added. “And last I heard, Rachel’s underwear company had so many orders that it pushed them way into the black for the year.”

  “So she’s going to be able to keep the company?” Nancy asked.

  “Yep.” It felt incredibly good to say that.

  But as triumphant as Elvie felt, the feeling deflated as soon as she noticed Denise mulling over the lipstick with a sad frown. Elvie exchanged a look with Nancy. Neither of them were going to stand by and let Denise get depressed. Not since discovering how nice the woman really was underneath the layer of prickles and tragedy that Chastity Culpepper had started to scrape away back in the spring.

  “I think we need to find a great shade for you,” Elvie said, scanning the tubes of lipstick still in the display.

  “Yeah.” Nancy joined in. “We do have a town full of single men, after all. You’re bound to snag one of them.”

  “Sriracha Siren?” Nancy held up a spicy-looking tube of lipstick with a hopeful look.

  Denise tried to smile. “It’s not going to work,” she sighed.

  “Why not?” Elvie put an arm
around her and hugged. “If you think it can work for me…”

  “Yeah, but you’re thin and pretty and everybody likes you,” Denise said. “I’m fat and mean and I have a reputation.”

  “No!”

  “That’s not true!”

  Elvie and Nancy spoke over each other in their haste to set Denise straight.

  Denise held up her hands to stop them. “It’s true. You can’t argue with it. I’m all puffy and doughy.”

  “Men like curves on a woman,” Nancy argued.

  “And everybody knows all about how mean and spiteful I’ve been all these years,” Denise went on. “I’ve been a royal bee-otch since high school, since Wes Fulbright knocked me up and dumped me.”

  “Yeah, well, you ended up with the best part of that whole thing, Destiny,” Elvie argued.

  “It’s true, Destiny is an awesome kid,” Nancy agreed.

  “She is,” Denise admitted.

  “She’s been a super big help over at the clinic,” Elvie added.

  “I’m so grateful to you for hiring her after school,” Denise said, then rushed on with, “But that doesn’t change how I’ve behaved since she was born. It doesn’t erase years’ worth of being rotten. And every guy in town knows just how easy I was.”

  “Was being the operative word,” Nancy rushed to clarify.

  “Still, I don’t think I’ll ever find a guy who can love me,” Denise finished, taking the Sriracha Siren out of Nancy’s hand and shoving it back in the display.

  “You don’t know that,” Nancy persisted. “I ended up with Doc, even after a billion misunderstandings and false starts. Well,” she cocked her head to the side, “not a billion. But I found him, and I’m lucky.”

  “Yeah,” Elvie added. “And I never expected to find a guy who made my heart skip a beat and my girly bits tingle, not after—”

  She stopped, clamping her mouth shut. She’d just come way too close to blurting out the big secret she’d been sitting on since the rodeo last month. It wasn’t even a secret either, just something she hadn’t planned on telling anyone. How could she even begin to explain her excitement at the memory of those blue eyes and those shoulders, as broad as the Wyoming horizon, even if she’d only seen them once? Guys like that didn’t come around every day and—

  She blinked as soon as she realized her friends were staring at her. “What?”

  Nancy grinned and peeked at Denise. Denise smirked and crossed her arms. “You get the feeling there’s something she’s not telling us?”

  “Uh-huh.” Nancy crossed her arms as well and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Denise. “Spill it, sister.”

  Elvie’s cheeks suddenly went hot. The only way she was going to get out of this with her dignity intact was to act like it was no big deal. “It’s nothing. I was just thinking about the one that got away.”

  “The one that got away?” Denise’s expression was beyond curious.

  “I’ve never heard you describe Andy like that before,” Nancy added.

  “Andy?” Denise asked.

  “Her ex-fiancé. The one in Denver.”

  Elvie winced. “I’m not talking about Andy.”

  She instantly had both of her friends’ attention. “Oh, this is a story I have to hear,” Nancy said.

  Elvie sighed, blushing even harder. “Okay, okay. Remember the rodeo last month?”

  “Remember?” Denise snorted. “How could we forget.”

  “Mmm, underwear models,” Nancy added, then laughed out loud.

  “Yeah, well, there was this guy.”

  Nancy stopped laughing, her eyebrows shooting up to her hairline. Denise stood straighter.

  “He was helping out the rodeo organizers,” Elvie went on. “He was working in that temporary stable thing they set up when I was called in to check out a dog belonging to one of the competitors. We started talking, and…” She ended with a shrug.

  “Oh no.” Nancy shook her head. “You owe us more of a story than that.”

  Self-conscious down to her toenails, Elvie wandered down to the end of the aisle. “His name was Evan. Evan Lipinski.”

  “Lipinski?” Nancy giggled, holding up her lipstick tube.

  Elvie gave her a mock stern look. “He was super nice,” she went on. “You know how sometimes you just click with someone?”

  “Yes.” Nancy grinned.

  “No.” Denise sighed.

  Elvie felt terrible for her, but went on. “It was like that. We kept running into each other throughout the day, before and after the tug-o-war.”

  “And?” Nancy prompted.

  Elvie’s face grew even hotter, if that was possible. She distracted herself by running her fingers over the boxes of candy bars in the sweets section of the shelves, where they were now standing. She hadn’t intended to spill any of this, but as they said, in for a penny, in for a pound.

  “Okay, we ended up making out,” she blurted, hiding her face in her hands for a moment. “In one of the empty stalls at the end of the day. And it was awesome.”

  The other two squealed and giggled.

  “Details!” Denise laughed.

  “It was really hot, okay?” Elvie laughed along with them. “He was a great kisser, and his hands did some amazing things. Big hands, with just a hint of callouses.”

  Nancy gasped. Denise hooted.

  But Elvie’s grin switched from coy to wistful. “That was it, though. He walked me to my car, then headed back to the hotel, where all the rodeo folks were staying. The next day he was gone, moved on.”

  “What?” Nancy balked. “How could he?”

  “Yeah. Doesn’t he know how awesome you are?” Denise added.

  Elvie shrugged and held out her arms in defeat. “I guess not. I forgot to ask for his number too. But man, what I wouldn’t give to make out with him again!”

  “Lips Lipinski,” Denise giggled. Something on the candy shelf caught her eye. She grabbed a pair of big, red, wax lips and held them to her mouth, making kissy sounds. Nancy grabbed a pair and did the same.

  Seconds later, all three of them were laughing up a storm as they headed to the check-out counter. Elvie had thought she would be embarrassed by her story of kissing a strange man, but he hadn’t felt strange at the time. Nope, Evan the mystery man had felt a thousand times more present, more meaningful than her ex-fiancé, Andy, ever had. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever get over him or the way his arms had felt around her, his hands all over her, and yes, his lips mashed against hers.

  “Ha! Speaking of kissy lips.”

  Nancy’s odd comment shook Elvie out of her thoughts. She turned to find her sister-in-law plucking one of the tabloids from the display near the counter as they waited.

  “‘Kissy Lips Heir Still Missing,’” Nancy read the headline. “‘Search enters its third month, and still no sign of the new millionaire who has inherited the Kissy Lips wax novelty sweet empire.’”

  “Why would anyone skip out on millions of dollars?” Denise asked.

  Grateful that the conversation had moved on from her hot indiscretion and yearning heart, Elvie shrugged and said, “Maybe it’s not a matter of the heir avoiding it, but one of the probate lawyer having a hard time locating whoever was named in the will.”

  Nancy and Denise ‘oooed’ and ‘aahed’ as they stepped up to the register and put their make-up and wax lips on the counter to be rung up.

  “Look at you sounding all fancy,” Denise said.

  Elvie laughed. “That ex-fiancé of mine? He was a probate lawyer. And possibly the most boring person on the planet.”

  “How did someone like you end up with a boring guy?” Nancy laughed.

  “Okay, he was an attractive, boring guy,” Elvie confessed. “And he was capable of charm when he wanted something.”

  “All right,” Denise exclaimed, suddenly happy. She held up her hand for a high-five. “I’m not the only one who made a stupid mistake with a guy because he was hot and charming.”

  Grateful for the unde
rstanding—even though she still felt like a dweeb about the whole Andy thing—Elvie laughed and gave Denise the high-five.

  “That’ll be eighteen-fifty,” the bored cashier told them.

  The three of them argued over who would pay for the make-up and treats, causing the cashier to look even more bored. They finally agreed to let Nancy pay on the understanding that Elvie and Denise would treat her to lunch. Still gabbing about kissy lips and exes and the wild names that make-up companies came up with for their products, they turned and headed to the front of the store.

  “I can’t wait to see your Dusty Rose Dreams in action.” Denise was giggling so hard her face had gone red by the time they got to the door. “Do you think your one that got away would look good with big, rose-colored lip marks all over his chest?”

  “And lower?” Nancy added.

  Elvie laughed out loud and pushed the door open. “I’m sure he’d look as yummy as—”

  She stopped dead halfway through the door. Stopped because she suddenly didn’t need to imagine what Evan Lipinski would look like. Didn’t need to imagine because there he was, standing right in front of her. Right smack in front of her.

  Denise and Nancy didn’t expect her to stop and bumped into Elvie’s back, which propelled her forward, straight into Evan’s arms.

  “Whoa, watch it,” he chuckled, catching her and steadying her. “Wouldn’t want you to hurt yourself.”

  His hands stayed firmly on her arms. Tingles broke out not only in her girly bits, but along every inch of skin she had. She closed her mouth at last and glanced up at him. And up and up and up. Evan was every bit as gorgeous as she remembered. His smiling face had enough of a tan to suggest he’d been working outdoors. The highlights in his light brown hair hinted as much too. He’d been wearing a cowboy hat the day of the rodeo, but now she could see just how thick his hair was. As thick as his arms, which strained against the flannel of a simple working shirt. He smelled of old cotton and hard work and fresh air. It was amazing she was able to remain upright in the face of such hunky…hunkness.