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February 25, 2020

A Cowboy For All Seasons

Discover the power of family in this uplifting quartet by New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates, USA TODAY bestselling author Caitlin Crews, Nicole Helm and Jackie Ashenden.

June Gable left each of her four granddaughters a handwritten bequest—to spend a season at her beloved farmhouse in Jasper Creek, Oregon, before they sell it. These cousins were once as close as sisters, but time and family betrayals have pushed them apart…

In spring, polished city girl Keira must find her country roots—and reconnect with an old flame. In the summer, tough tomboy JJ needs to tap into her softer side helping a single dad and his daughters. Cheerful dreamer Lila has to help coordinate the town craft fair in autumn, under the stern eye of the handsome cowboy she loved as a girl. And as winter falls, headstrong, independent Bella must learn to ask for help from the one man she believes she can never have.

The four cousins will have to confront secrets from the past, deal with old wounds they’d rather hide, and tangle with their hardheaded cowboys before they can find love, healing and the true meaning of family…

Also In this Series:

A Good Old-Fashioned Cowboy

January 26, 2021
Sweet Home Cowboy

March 29, 2021
The Comeback Cowboy

April 26, 2022
#4

Excerpt

Excerpt from Fall in A Cowboy For All Seasons

Dearest Lila,

It’s a very strange thing to get old, to know that eventually the world will go on without you. To see clearly your successes, and your mistakes, and still not know what you could have done about either.

You, my head-in-the-clouds girl. How I’ve missed your imagination and your spirit brightening my summer days. I know this autumn will be hard on that soft heart of yours, but the simple truth of life is that one can never wish away all the bad or hard. Sometimes, a girl has to roll up her sleeves, make an apron for a chicken tea party and find her spot in the real world.

I have many things to ask of you this autumn. You’ll hate most of them, and they’ll test all of those skills you doubt yourself on. But you’ll always know, if you can organize the Red Sled Holiday Bazaar, you can survive anything.

Let my spirit guide you in all that you do, let this house take care of you as it has always cared for me, and I have the upmost confidence you’ll find that anchor you’ve been searching for.

Love always,

Grandma June

CHAPTER ONE

Lila Frost stoodin the center of her grandmother’s driveway. Her feet were firmly planted in the gravel, her eyes fixed on the white, weathered farmhouse. On the dogwood tree in the front, with its red leaves burning bright, standing in evidence of the fall season.

She had never seen the dogwood tree in fall.

She had only ever come to see Grandma June in the summer. When everything was bright and green, the rolling hills stretching back to the mountains and touching a bright, faded denim sky.

The sky was still clear, but the blue was different. An intense jewel color that seemed to ignite the tree, making it look like a burning bush in the middle of the desert. Alight, but not consumed.

It was different. And Lila didn’t like it. Not at all.

It was different because the tree wasn’t as it should be. Because the house looked weathered and worn.

Grandma June was gone.

Life was different, and it would never be the same again.

She swallowed hard, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before taking a deep breath and walking up the two front steps to the porch. She kneltdown and lifted the mat, where she found the key.

She held it in her hand, flat. It was a skeleton key with a compass on the top.

She could hear Grandma June saying North, south, east, west, and at the end of the key is home.

Jasper Creek had not been home for a very long time.

It had never been her home for real. But it had been her home away from home for many summers when she had been a child. After she’d grown up, she’d still visited as often as possible in the summer. But jobs and life had gotten in the way. Her work at a florist in Portland was demanding in the summer, all of the June and destination weddings taking up her time.

But she was home now.

Only the thing that made it home—the person that made it home—wasn’t here. And she never would be again.

She stepped forward, inserting the key in the lock and turning it. The door gave easily, and she stepped inside.

The house felt empty. Cold.

She knew that her sister had only left a week or so ago. And that JJ was now living with a single father just a few doors down on his ranch.

Lila would have never suspected that JJ would do something quite so spontaneous or…domestic. She had certainly never figured her sister for the type to fall for a single dad. Much less a cowboy. Not because JJ didn’t like the outdoors—she did—it was just that that type of man seemed to get JJ’s hackles up more than anything else.

Lila wished that cowboys weren’t her own personal weakness. But sadly, they were.

Or, rather, one in particular. Whoshe was not thinking about. Not now. Not in her first moments in the farmhouse since her grandmother had died.

That would be incredibly inappropriate.

Sadly, Jasper Creek was inevitably bound up in thoughts of Everett McCall. Always had been, and…well, she hoped after this, no longer would be.

She didn’t have time to think about Everett. And wouldn’t the whole time she was here. Since the task that her grandmother had given her to complete was organizing the Red Sled Holiday Bazaar, which June had spearheaded every year for the past thirty years.

There would be a whole committee of women for Lila to organize. And she… Well, the very idea made her want to lie down and wrap herself in a soft blanket and never, ever emerge.

Lila was not a take-charge person. Lila did not like confrontation.

Lila did not like lists, she did not like making decisions and she did not like raffia scarecrows.

All of which the Red Sled would require an abundance of.

But it was up to Lila not to let it down, and that was a whole lot of pressure on someone who had barely ever planned out a birthday party successfully without getting distracted.

But she could do it. She could. If her grandmother needed her, she would be here. Maybe she hadn’t been here the way that she could have for the last few years. It was difficult. With her mother sinking deeper into her bitterness and needing Lila to make sure that she left her house, that she bought groceries and that she ate.

Especially since just mentioning June often upset her.

Lila’s mom had always felt that her own mother had disapproved of her greatly. Especially after her divorce from Lila’s father.

Lila knew that her mom’s relationship to Grandma June had fractured long before Lila was even born, but for as long as Lila had known her grandmother, she’d been trying to fill the cracks. Whatever had happened back then, she’d always been good to Lila, and she’d always tried to reach out to Lila’s mom.

But that hadn’t been enough for her. She’d been hypersensitive to Lila’s relationship with Grandma June and any mention of the farmhouse, or of June-created drama that Lila didn’t like being in the middle of.

She had no time for drama, not now. Not drama from her mama, and not drama in the form of Everett McCall. Not that he cared about her at all. Or even ever thought of her.

But for her, thoughts of him would always be tied to Jasper Creek.

The last time she had seen him she had made a ridiculous fool of herself. She had been seventeen, to his twenty-seven. And had tearfully confessed her undying love to him at a potluck one hot summer afternoon.

Okay. Not just a generic potluck.

The potluck that had been thrown down at the river to celebrate his engagement.

His engagement to a woman who was very much not her.

It was the one time she’d broken her rule about confrontations.

Thankfully, he had not returned the sentiment, and if he had, she would have lost respect for him forever, really. The kind of man who would run off with a teenager at his own engagement party was not the kind of man that you would want returning your declarations of undying love.

A thing that she knew now at the ripe old age of twenty-four.

It hadn’t felt like a good thing at the time.

The pain and humiliation had faded, but when she came to stay with her grandmother, she avoided town and town get-togethers. She helped with chores in the yard, clipped flowers from the garden and enjoyed freshly made strawberry lemonade with berries from the patch out back.

She stayed for a week, and then she left. And managed to avoid the cowboy that had ground her heart to pieces beneath his boots.

And she would be avoiding Everett McCall until she left here at the end of November, if she had anything to say about it.

It should be easy enough. The man was the definition of a dude.

He was certainly not going to get anywhere near the Red Sled. And maybe Tonya, his wife, would. But seeing Tonya wasn’t going to hurt her. It wasn’t like she was still in love with him. Or anything like that.

Maybe, just maybe, he was still the one and only thing that stoked the fires of her passion. And maybe that was the reason that she hadn’t quite been able to…

Maybe it was the reason her dating life was a little bit of a nonstarter.

He probably had a beer gut by now. He had probably gone bald. Yes. Men like him had a very short shelf life. Hard bodies did not stay hard forever.

That was just a fact.

And now, she was done thinking about Everett.

She took a breath and turned around in the entryway of the house, the wood planks creaking underneath her feet. It felt damp inside. And old. The paint was peeling, not just from the outside of the house, but inside as well.

Had it always been this derelict, and it hadn’t felt that way because of June’s spirit?

She could see it.

Her grandmother had been so warm and sensible. A wealth of wisdom that Lila herself didn’t seem to have inherited it all. Lila was a dreamer, a constant disappointment to her mother, who was decidedly grounded on earth, and bitter about most things, particularly since her divorce from Lila’s father.

Although, Lila had always felt that she had much more call to be bitter about it than her mother did.

The breakup between the two of them had been so acrimonious that they had basically pulled a Parent Trapon herself and JJ. Separating the two of them.

Of course, they had known about each other, which was a little bit better than the movie. Though, neither of them had meddling nannies or butlers to help them bridge the gap, either.

Still, for all that they knew about each other, they were not close—something that wounded Lila and seemed to be somewhat neutral to JJ. But they had grown up in different states. They had different lives.

And while they had come together here at the farmhouse as girls every summer, even then it had been difficult for the two of them to connect. JJ had run around with the boys and Lila…

Had typically sat under trees trying to make chickens engage in tea parties.

For the record, it was very difficult to get a chicken enthused about a tea party.

Of course, your sister is a stone’s throw away. You could go to her. Right now. You don’t have to stand in this drafty house by yourself.

Lila did not care for her own internal musings. JJ might not want to see her. She had responsibilities and things now.

Lila sighed and tapped her feet on the floor.

This was home for the foreseeable future. Her boss at the florist’s in Portland had allowed her an extended leave. Gretchen had seen this as a trip to Lila’s own true self and had given her blessing for Lila to go. She had more than one artist who worked on arrangements, and since Lila’s current obligations were filled, she’d been fine with giving her space, and also had made it clear she was welcome to come back after the three months were up.

She was happy with where she was, but it wasn’t her dream. Some time away from it…well, it would only be a good thing.

And she had a holiday bazaar to plan. So she had better get settled in and get to work.

Starting, she decided, with her grandmother’s garden. There hadn’t been a frost yet in Jasper Creek. She had checked before she had come. And that meant that there was a possibility for early fall tomatoes, and most definitely the possibility that there would be zucchini. A horde of it. And that meant Lila could bake zucchini bread as a peace offering for the old crones—the distinguished ladies of Jasper Creek—who would likely take a dim view of Lila spearheading this year’s event.

Grandma June understood, though, that Lila could do this. Yes, Lila could be scattered. And, yes, sometimes Lila left important paperwork in a kitchen cupboard. Or the fridge. But she was also a dreamer. And she already had big plans for the decor of the Red Sled.

She went into the kitchen and opened up one of the distressed wooden cupboards, the green paint beginning to wear thin.

She fished around inside until she found a bowl, one large enough to take on the tomatoes. Then she grabbed a basket from a hook just above the sink. She stacked the bowl inside the wicker basket and made her way out the front door, down the steps and around to the back of the house.

The garden was fenced, with a very, very high fence designed to keep the mule deer out, although, occasionally a very ambitious one found its way inside. And then had often found itself being chased back out by Grandma June and her broom.

Lila snuggled into her knitted sweater and pushed the gate open, smiling as she looked down at the rows of vegetables. There were even pumpkins, transitioning from green to orange, knobby and hideous, as a good heritage-garden pumpkin was wont to be.

She bent down, her copper hair falling into her face as she began to pull zucchini off the vine and put them into the basket. She wrinkled her nose when she encountered a cluster of aphids, wiping her hands desperately on her jeans, but continuing to work.

A flash of movement caught her eye, and she saw a little gray cat picking through the dry weeds on the other side of the fence.

“Kitty,” she said. “Kitty, kitty…”

“There you are,” a familiar and booming voice said from behind her.

The cat bounded off. And Lila froze.

Just the sound of the voice sent shivers all the way down her spine and caused something warm and not entirely unpleasant to pull in her stomach.

Everett.

She recognized that voice seven years later. Without even a visual. How annoying.

Grandma June had been close to the McCall family, and Lila had grown up with a starry-eyed crush on the much older Everett. But she had been a fool then. And the sad thing was, she was a little bit of a fool now.

You’re not foolish. You’re optimistic. It’s not like being a pessimist makes anything better.

No, that was true. But then, pessimists probably didn’t confess their undying love to remote and unreachable men in public spaces. And she had most definitely done that.

“Yes,” she said, picking up her zucchini-laden basket and clutching it with both hands. She steeled herself, taking a breath before turning around.

He will be ugly,she said to herself. Maybe he has a wart on his nose. Maybe he has a peg leg.

She turned. And her stomach crashed down into her boots.

Oh, there had been no way to prepare herself for this. Even with the wicker basket held tightly in her hands like a lifeline, she felt like she might become unmoored from the earth and float away into the clear fall sky.

Everett McCall had somehow taken his good looks and multiplied them at least tenfold in the past seven years.

Granted, Lila herself was much better-looking than she had been when she was seventeen. Her face no longer round with youthful puppy fat. But still, her improvements were nothing compared to his.

He seemed taller, which she knew wasn’t true, because he had been twenty-seven the last time she’d seen him. But he was definitely, and most assuredly, broader.

He was wearing a black cowboy hat, pulled low over his eyes, but she knew exactly what color they were. A blue not unlike the sky she had just been pondering falling into, and she had to wonder if that was a coincidence, or if it was, in fact, related to Everett McCall’s eyes.

In addition to the cowboy hat, he had on a snug black shirt with three buttons at the neck and long sleeves. And though his arms were covered up, she could tell that years of manual labor had only served to increase his physical strength.

His jaw was squarer, the whiskers on his chin darker. His hands were larger, she was sure of it.

Neither leg was pegged.

Drat.

“Of course I’m here,” she said. “My grandmother asked me to be. I would do anything that she wanted.”

“Except come back to visit more often,” Everett said, leaning against the open gate, his arms crossed over his broad chest.

That galled her. “I came to visit quite often, actually, Everett,” she said. “It’s just that I didn’t look you up when I came.”

“You hadn’t been for more than two years. Don’t think June didn’t tell me. Every time she came by with a jar of preserves or some zucchini bread.” He looked meaningfully at the basket in her hand.

“It just so happens,” Lila said, “that I am going to make some. But it’s not for you.” His wife could make him some. That was not Lila’s job. “It’s for the ladies who help run the Red Sled Holiday Bazaar. If you don’t know, I am planning it this year. My grandmother left me the responsibility.” She flashed him a grin.

And take that. She was not young, impetuous, irresponsible Lila Pauline Frost anymore. No, she was dedicated, responsible, creative and cheerful Lila Pauline Frost, and Everett and his mysteriously compelling disapproval were not going to change that.

“I do know,” he said, his tone going very grave. “The Red Sled is being held at my ranch this year. And June didn’t just ask you to plan it. She asked me to help.”