Only a Cowboy Will Do: Includes a Bonus Novella (Meadow Valley Book 3) Read online

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

  Copyright © 2021 by A.J. Pine

  Sealed with a Kiss copyright © 2017 by Melinda Curtis

  Cover design by Daniela Medina

  Cover photography © Rob Lang

  Cover copyright © 2020 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

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  First Edition: March 2021

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  ISBNs: 978-1-5387-4986-9 (mass market), 978-1-5387-4985-2 (ebook)

  E3-20210301-DA-PC-ORI

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Epilogue

  Discover More

  Don’t miss the first book in A.J. Pine’s Meadow Valley series!

  About the Author

  Also by A.J. Pine

  Praise for A.J. Pine

  Sealed with a Kiss by Melinda Curtis Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Looking for more Western romance? Take the reins with these cowboys from Forever!

  For anyone who needs a reminder that there is more than one way to HEA.

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  Acknowledgments

  Thank you, first and foremost, to my early readers who have been asking about Jenna’s happily-ever-after since Second Chance Cowboy. I knew the second I “met” her in that very first book that she was going to capture my heart, and I’m so happy she captured yours (and Colt’s) too! Thank you for being patient as you waited for her story. I’m so thrilled to finally share it with you!

  Thank you, always, to my agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, for your constant support. I’m so grateful to have you in my corner, and look forward to many more books (with HEAs, of course) with you!

  To my editor, Madeleine Colavita, thank you for putting up with my mixed-up timelines, my incessant need to sneak Marvel references into a story whenever I can, my apparent (who knew?) love of names that start with C, and for your magical way of always knowing what a story needs to make it shine.

  Chanel, Jen, and Lea—I write this not knowing what the state of things will be when this book releases, only that it’s thanks to you (and CLOY) that my mental health has survived this year so far. Love you all. I can’t wait until we can pile in a hotel bed and eat popcorn again—but maybe not in my bed?

  S and C, there is no one I’d rather be with every single day than you two—quarantine or no. I love you 3,000 x infinity.

  Chapter One

  Jenna Owens loved a good party. She could turn the smallest of celebrations—like her great-nephew, Owen, pitching a no-hitter—into the biggest deal. Ice cream (always), cake, a water balloon fight, you name it. If she could think of an excuse to get festive, she’d do so in a heartbeat. The only person she tended to forget to celebrate was herself.

  Thanks to her family, that so was not the case now as she stood over a three-tiered double chocolate cake alight with forty-one candles—yes, she counted—the one being for good luck. Next to the blaze of firelight sat a tub of strawberry ice cream—her favorite—just waiting to be scooped on top of its first slice.

  She held her blond hair back from her face as the rest of the roomful of people sang the final “Happy birthday to youuuuuu!”

  She was surrounded by everyone she loved, but what made the occasion even more special was that it was planned by her three nephews—Jack, Luke, and Walker. Although she’d raised them through their teen years, they were grown men now, taking care of her on her special day, and her heart swelled to three times its size at the constant reminder of the amazing men they’d turned out to be.

  A loud squawk came from the floor below, and Jenna laughed. She almost forgot her partner in crime—Lucy, her sometimes psychic chicken.

  “Looks like someone thinks it’s time to blow out the candles,” Jack Everett—the eldest of her three nephews—said. “Does it count as psychic ability if she’s warning you that the cake might catch fire when we can all see that the cake is about to catch fire?”

  Jenna waved him off. “Can y’all just give me a second to think of the perfect wish? This is the big four-oh, after all,” she chided. “Plus everybody knows Lucy’s only psychic about matters of the heart. She’s special, but she does have her limitations.”

  Lucy squawked again.

  “All right, all right,” Jenna said with mock irritation.

  She glanced around the room that was filled with everyone she loved. Her heart felt full to bursting. She had everything she wanted, yet…

  No. It was too silly to put all the magic of a wish into that. It was selfish. It was— Dammit, it was her fortieth birthday, and she was going to wish for whatever the hell she wanted.

  Okay, birthday wish goddess or whoever you are…would a fairy-tale ending of my own be too much to ask?

  The only problem was that Jenna didn’t know what that meant for her. She didn’t know how her story was supposed to go, only that since her early twenties it had veered onto a course she’d never expected to take, and now she was forty and still clueless. Her farm and selling her eggs were successful enough. Her family, albeit unconventional, was one she loved. Her nephews, though, were grown and had started their own families. After the better par
t of two decades, they could take care of themselves now. What was the rest of her life if it wasn’t taking care of them?

  But fairy-tale endings came in all shapes and sizes. She just wasn’t sure which one would fit her. So she’d let the wish take care of it.

  And with that, she sucked in a deep breath and saved the B&B from being engulfed in flames.

  Happy birthday to me.

  She pulled a candle from the cake and skimmed it, even though it was chocolate-covered, across the top of the ice cream tub until she had equal parts chocolate and strawberry. Then she grinned and licked the candle clean.

  “What’d you wish for?” Jack’s wife, Ava, asked, then immediately covered her mouth. “Wait! Don’t answer that or it won’t come true.”

  Jenna raised her brows. “Oh, I know the rules of wishin’,” she said. “My lips are sealed.”

  Lucy flapped her wings, getting everyone’s attention, and once again squawked.

  Jenna rolled her eyes. “Not sure what’s up with her tonight. She doesn’t usually get her feathers ruffled about something so common as a birthday.” Then she shrugged. “Oh well. Who wants cake?”

  After one slice too many—not that she was apologizing for overdoing it on her birthday—Luke popped open another bottle of the Crossroads Ranch and Vineyard’s most recent vintage.

  “Wait, wait, wait,” his fiancée, Lily, said before he poured his aunt another much-anticipated glass. “It’s time for presents!”

  Before Jenna could protest that the party was enough, Olivia began piling wrapped gifts onto the long wooden table in the bed-and-breakfast’s common room. It wasn’t a huge pile. After all, the party was intimate enough. But still, didn’t they get it? She was blown away by the party as it was. Jenna wasn’t used to so much attention, and she certainly didn’t need it. All she needed was to be surrounded by the people she loved, and she had that in spades. Now there were gifts?

  “Open mine first!” Owen said.

  He was twelve now. How was that possible? It would mean she was…Jenna laughed.

  She was forty. Forty. Yet she still didn’t feel a day over twenty-one.

  Forty was a grown-up. Forty meant she had life all figured out.

  Forty was a big, fat lie. Happy? Sure. She was happy. Wizened with all the answers? Not even close.

  But she had presents. And that wasn’t so bad.

  “Okay, nephew of mine,” she said to Owen. “Yours first.”

  He handed her the small, square box covered in her favorite recycled wrapping paper from the gift shop in town. She could tell he’d probably wrapped it himself, and that made her heart swell all that much more.

  “What could it be?” she asked, carefully peeling off the tape in the hope of maybe using the paper again.

  She held the plain white box in her hand and gave it a little shake.

  “Hey,” Owen said. “That’s cheating. Mom and Dad don’t let me shake my gifts, which means you don’t get to shake yours.”

  She laughed, and there it was again, that heart swell. Jack didn’t even know Owen existed before his son turned nine, and now here the boy was, calling him Dad like he’d been doing it since day one.

  Fairy-tale endings abounded in the small town of Oak Bluff, California, which meant her wish wasn’t so off base. Was it?

  She lifted the top flap of the box and pulled out a mildly scuffed baseball, one that bore a signature on the cleanest patch of white.

  OWEN EVERETT.

  “From my last no-hitter,” Owen said, his cheeks turning pink. “Coach let me keep the game ball and…I mean, I know you’re just being Aunt Jenna when you say I’m gonna be in the major leagues someday, but in case you’re right, maybe this will be worth something, and you can sell it for buckets of money.”

  Ava, Owen’s mom, swiped at a tear under her eye. She and Jack sure had raised one hell of a kid.

  Jenna stood and wrapped her great-nephew into the biggest hug, marveling at how he was almost as tall as she was.

  “Not even if it was worth a million dollars—or more,” she said. “No way in the world I’d sell something as important as this. Consider it priceless.”

  Owen let out a nervous laugh when she released him from the hug. “Okay, Aunt Jenna,” he said, the pink in his cheeks blooming to a full crimson. “Anyway. Happy birthday.”

  She opened the rest of the gifts with a full heart and belly but with just enough room for another glass of wine. When she had a stack of perfectly preserved wrapping paper, her youngest nephew, Walker, slapped a white business-sized envelope down on the table in front of her.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  Walker gave her a single nod, one that told her to just open it already. Even after all these years, he was still a man of few words, yet he could say so much with a simple look.

  He crossed his arms and planted his feet next to his brother Luke, who stood to Jack’s right. All three of them had their arms crossed over their chests. All stared at her with a strange gleam in their eyes, though she noted Luke had to push his overgrown blond hair—the same color as his brothers’ yet desperately in need of a cut—out of the way so he could give her that mysterious look.

  They were a heartbreakingly gorgeous trio, inside and out, and Jenna liked to think she had a part in them turning out the way they did. So what were they up to now?

  “Y’all are making me nervous staring like that,” she finally said.

  Jack raised his brows.

  Luke shrugged.

  And Walker maintained his stoic expression.

  She lifted the envelope and gave it a little shake, not that she expected to hear anything inside.

  “Cheating,” Owen reminded her.

  “Chea-ing!” his toddler sister, Clare, parroted from her booster seat on the other side of the table.

  Jenna laughed. “Okay, okay.” Then she tore at the envelope, careful not to rip whatever was inside, until she pulled out one single tri-folded piece of paper.

  Her brows furrowed. “It’s a reservation for a two-week stay at the Meadow Valley Guest Ranch. That’s Sam and Ben’s place up north, isn’t it?”

  The three men nodded in unison. Hell, they could be mistaken for triplets if you didn’t know there were two years between each of them.

  “For me?” she added.

  This time Ava, Lily, Olivia, and Cash—Owen and Clare, too—nodded along with her nephews.

  “I still don’t get it,” she said. “I can’t leave the farm for two weeks. And—and this had to have cost y’all a fortune. I can’t possibly—”

  “You can,” Walker said, interrupting her.

  “We’ve got the farm covered,” Lily said, snaking her arm through Luke’s. “Between all of us here—including the sheriff—”

  Cash grunted his agreement, though Jenna wasn’t sure if he’d volunteered for the duty or gotten roped into it by Olivia. It didn’t matter. They’d planned it all out, her wonderful unconventional family. Her pulse quickened, and her belly flip-flopped. When was the last time she’d taken time for only herself without worrying about anyone or anything else?

  She couldn’t remember. She couldn’t fathom the idea of being carefree for even a day, let alone two weeks.

  “But what about—” she started.

  Jack cut her off. “Sam’s fiancée, Delaney, has an animal shelter on the property. Lucy will be right at home with the menagerie I hear she has there already.”

  “But how will I…I mean, my truck isn’t meant for distance driving,” she said.

  “Colt Morgan—Ben Callahan’s buddy, who owns the other third of the ranch—he’s in town for the weekend to see his sister,” Luke told her. “He’s picking you up at eight o’clock sharp tomorrow morning, which means you’re spending the night with Jack and Ava at the ranch. He’ll give you a lift up north. And we got you booked on a puddle jumper to come back home when your stay is done.”

  Jenna didn’t know what to say. Her eyes were leaking something fi
erce, so she was at least conveying her gratitude even if she couldn’t think of the words.

  Jenna had taken over the family farm in her early adult years when she lost her parents and had never thought twice about it. In fact, she’d grown to love it. When her nephews needed her at the most difficult time in their lives, she’d stepped up to the challenge without batting an eye. Not once had she asked for anything in return. Family was everything, and you did what you had to do for the people you loved.

  But now they were doing for her, and she’d never felt more loved in her entire life.

  She stood and strode to her nephews, attempting to wrap them in a group hug, but they were too tall and too broad.

  “Oh, for crying out loud,” she said with something between a laugh and a cry. “Hug the hell out of me if I can’t hug all of you.”

  The three men breathed a collective sigh and wrapped their strong arms around her.

  “It’s not even close to what we owe you for all you’ve done for us,” Jack said, softly so that only the four of them could hear. “But it’s a start.”

  He was wrong, though. They’d done as much for her as she’d done for them. Maybe even more. They’d brought love and connection into her life when she’d lost her parents and then her sister, Clare—their mother—as well.

  But she couldn’t get the words out for fear she’d start sobbing all over their shoulders. So she said what she could until she could compose herself better.

  “Thank you.”

  And then she hugged them a little harder, hanging on to the moment for as long as they’d let her.

  That night, when she crawled into bed, she found a wrapped rectangular box—the size of a large picture frame—waiting on her pillow.

  She pulled the small card from its envelope and read.

  Dear Jenna,

  I found an old box in the attic a couple weeks ago—stuff that belonged to my mother and I guess you too. I hope it’s okay I waited until now to give it to you. And I hope you enjoy the gift.

  Love,

  Jack

  Jenna’s throat tightened at the mere mention of her sister, Clare. It didn’t matter how many years it had been since she’d passed. Grief was forever.