Tourists may flock to Rustler Mountain, Oregon for its Wild West reenactments, but for locals, the feuds between the outlaws and the lawmen are still very much alive in this swoon-inducing contemporary western series from New York Times bestselling author Maisey Yates - ideal for fans of Lyla Sage, Elsie Silver, Jennifer Ryan and Robyn Carr.
Good guys and bad guys . . . myth and legend . . . gold and ranching. That’s what historic Rustler Mountain, Oregon, is made of, complete with feuding families descended from outlaws and lawmen. A century later, their grudges still hold—but for a new generation, when opposites attract, it might be time to surrender . . .
From killers to courtesans, the Hancock family has what might be called an eclectic history. But they’ve managed to leverage it into something respectable, creating the popular Hancock Wild West Show. The event features reenactments and trick riding—the latter performed by clever, charismatic Jessie Jane Hancock.
Jessie is usually unflappable, but lately something’s needling her—and it’s not just her annoying attraction to exasperatingly sexy Flynn Wilder—whose great, great, great, great, great grandfather was betrayed by Jessie’s just-as-many-times-great grandfather. It’s the upcoming mayoral election. Specifically, the unopposed candidate: Danielle LeFevre, mean girl, all-around awful person, and Flynn’s not-so-beloved half-sister. Jessie wants to keep Danielle from winning . . . and the only person who bothers Flynn more than she does is Danielle.
“I want you to be my first man.” Jessie Jane is hot enough to make him hallucinate, but her request is very real. Jessie wants to run for mayor, and she wants him by her side, as her fake fiancé. A Hancock engaged to a Wilder. An outsider against the status quo. A drama their town will devour. Flynn always knew Jessie was a wild card, but bringing down his corrupt stepfamily is a temptation he can’t resist. Just like the vexing spark between him and Jessie. And once that fire catches, the real showdown begins . . .
Publisher:
Kensington Books
Print pages:
272
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I never was a lady, but now I think I’ve gone too far.
—Belle Martin’s Diary, July 1865
Jessie Jane Hancock was the proud owner of a whole collection of toxic traits.
Generally, she found them to be a good time at the very least. But currently, her desperate need to climb impossible mountains was eating at her. Making her life downright miserable, in fact.
So miserable that she got distracted and did something she rarely ever did: Jessie Jane missed a trick. Which was how she found herself tumbling off her horse face-first into the arena dirt.
“Whoa there.”
She popped up and looked across the arena at her older brother West, who was not on his way to help her up. Instead, he was sitting there on the back of his horse, his arms crossed across his broad chest as he stared at her.
“Thanks for the help,” she groused as she stood up and hauled herself up onto her own mount.
West only looked at her, the maddening fool. “If you fall off the horse, you have to get back on again. No one can do it for you.”
“Well, aren’t you a big old Magic Eight Ball.”
“I’ve been called a lot of things, Jess, but rarely that.”
“Rarely isn’t never, West.”
She was supposed to be rehearsing a new routine for this summer’s opening of Butch Hancock’s Wild West Show. Instead, she was stewing. About the upcoming mayoral election. The thing was, everyone hated the current mayor.
Well. That wasn’t true; Danielle had been elected. But she was a mean girl. She had been a mean girl in high school, and she was mean now. She had very notoriously stolen the town librarian’s fiancé—though Jessie Jane definitely believed that the man in question needed to be held equally accountable. But the man in question was basically a turnip with testicles. So she gave him less credit for the seduction because he was an idiot.
Danielle wasn’t an idiot. For all that she was an awful human being.
Rustler Mountain was a small town nestled in the southern Oregon mountains only eight miles from the California border. It had a rich gold rush history, and was steeped in the myth and legend of the Wild West. The Hancock family had made money off that myth and legend for years.
With their reputation, there was nothing else to do but lean into it.
In Rustler Mountain, things were black and white. It was as simple as good guys and bad guys. Some of the town was descended from lawmen, while other folks … Well, they were outlaws.
The Wilder family being the most notorious of the outlaws, given that back in the late 1800s Austin Wilder had been shot dead in the main street of Rustler Mountain by Sheriff Lee Talbot. So when, one hundred and fifty years later, a Talbot and a Wilder had married, the narrative of the town had been suddenly disrupted.
It was like a mountain that had stood unchanging for centuries had suddenly ruptured, reordering the landscape around it.
Those clearly defined lines weren’t so cleanly delineated anymore.
There had been big pushes to correct some of the misinformation that had stood as history for well over a century, and as the local narrative changed, so did some of the ways that the whole town worked.
She couldn’t lie—it was a little bit annoying to have more of the nice townies in her favorite bar on the weekends. But it was also nice to have some more locals showing up to the Wild West Show.
The Hancocks’ show, which featured historical reenactments and trick riding, along with rodeo events, was extremely popular with neighboring communities, but was often wasted on their own. But again, that had to do with the reputation of the Hancock family.
A reputation that rarely bothered her. Except now …
“I can hear you thinking.”
“I doubt it. I assume deep thoughts operate at a frequency you can’t actually hear.”
West snorted. “If only. But unfortunately, I know you too well.”
“That viper is running unopposed.”
“The viper?”
“Danielle LeFevre. There is no other mayoral candidate, and just three days left to declare.”
“Not your problem.”
“It’s everyone’s problem. You know that noise ordinance she’s been amping for is going to affect us—which isn’t even fair. Her parking permit stuff is outrageous, and she’s misallocating funds—you can be sure of that. She wants to gut funding for the Historical Society, and she’s now reversing her stance on the new plaques in town saying we’re … revising history or something when you know it was about correcting lies and making sure people know the truth about the history of this place.”
“I agree with you. She sucks. But why you?” West asked.
She didn’t answer that question directly. “I just can’t understand why no one else is running against her.”
“They aren’t dying to be in charge of a town with under two thousand people so they can lord their supposed authority over everyone around them?”
“All right. When you put it like that.”
“Danielle isn’t your problem. She’s just going to do what she’s going to do. Spend money on silly trips that probably should’ve gone to patch cracks in the sidewalk. End up stealing the librarian’s fiancé, which I wouldn’t even kick up a fuss about except that he has the same name as her brother.”
Jessie made a face. “Ugh.”
“But hey,” West continued, “our ancestors were full-on betrayers and murderers.”
“Not all of them. Just one of them was.”
“One of them was a courtesan.”
“You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Jessie Jane grinned widely at her brother.
“No, I didn’t. I’m just pointing it out.”
“If something is in demand, it’s a smart business decision to go into that business. And I think we know what sells. Always,” she pointed out.
“I’m certainly not dragging the great and glorious Belle Martin. Not for any reason at all. My point is, we have an eclectic history.”
“Sure.”
And that history pretty much never included walking the straight and narrow. Oh sure, they were on the up and up with the Wild West Show. But Jessie couldn’t deny that she had some side hustles that were a little less than scrupulous. Her farrier business, on the other hand, was totally scrupulous.
And anyway, regarding the gambling, it was her opinion that if people wanted to bet their hard-earned money on horse races, fistfights, and football games, it wasn’t her job to talk them out of it. And she made a little bit of cash whenever she talked them into it.
She was good at explaining a position. Holding it.
If she knew one thing, it was that she was … Well, one of her friends in high school had said that she should start a cult. Because for all that she was rough around the edges, she had a way with people.
A hard-earned way.
Not with everybody, though. Flynn Wilder came to mind. He was not charmed by her. Not at all. Annoying, because he was a sexy bastard. Another unclimbable mountain, but one that Jessie had long ago accepted she would never scale. There were a lot of handsome men. If she wanted to hook up, she could just … pick one of them. She didn’t need to borrow trouble with a Wilder.
But what a spectacle it would be …
“You’re literally scheming,” West said.
“I’m not scheming.” West continued to treat her to the patented hard glare that many women about town called sexy and she called annoying. “Okay. I’m lightly scheming. It’s a mild scheme. But it will probably never make it out of the scheming phase.”
He lifted his brows. “And if it does?”
“At that point it will become a plot,” she explained.
“Tell me more.”
“If we execute it, then it’s a crusade. Maybe even a quest.”
“We?”
Jessie looked out at the mountains, at the jagged line where the pine trees met the wide blue sky. “Don’t worry. I’m not going to involve you in anything. Yet.”
“What I would like to involve you in is a perfectly executed trick-riding routine where you don’t break your neck.”
“I can do that.”
She urged her horse forward, but she couldn’t keep the idea from turning in her head, over and over again.
She had lied to her brother. This was more than just a scheme. More than a plot.
She had a feeling that before the day was out, it was, indeed, going to become a quest.
And when Jessie Jane Hancock went on a quest, she didn’t come back home empty-handed.
Flynn Wilder was happy that his brothers were happy. He really was. But there was some complexity to that happiness on his end.
Austin and Carson being happily hitched changed the dynamics at the family ranch. It was all good. Of course it was.
It was only that it meant things were different. They didn’t all go down to The Watering Hole in a big group anymore. Most days it was just Dalton, his lifelong best friend, and his younger sister Cassidy. And he was getting a little tired of Cassidy hanging out with them.
She had a crush on Dalton, and everybody knew it. It was damn near embarrassing to witness. He never wanted to say anything about it, but it wasn’t like Dalton didn’t know. It was impossible to not know.
Though he was pretty sure Cassidy didn’t know, or rather, she pretended not to know.
“Your sister’s a nice girl,” Dalton had said just the other day. “But I have literally known her since she was a snot-eating child.”
“She was nine when she moved here. She wasn’t exactly a snot-eating child.”
He wasn’t sure if calling what Cassidy had done “moving here” was the correct choice of words. She had been abandoned by her mother at Christmas, brought to live at the Wilder Ranch when she had never met her father’s side of the family.
He was well aware of the complexities of family issues. He might have different ones from his younger sister, but he had plenty.
Hell, they all did, really. His older brothers were actually his half brothers. Their mother had taken off when they were young. His mother lived in town but …
She’d married into a real family. The right one. All respectable and rich, and definitely nothing to do with their dad and his bad reputation and all of his issues.
Flynn had gone to visit his mom, even though his dad had primary custody.
She had always made the custody arrangement out to be a kindness. She had wanted Flynn to stay with his brothers. But … after his dad had died, when he was still a young teenager, she hadn’t rushed to get him.
He had continued to see her on some holidays. Sometimes over the summer.
When his grandpa, James Parker, had died, he’d left Flynn Lonesome Ridge, a rocky, nearly inhospitable mountaintop where Flynn had had a house built. He hadn’t seen the point of turning down this acknowledgment from his mother that he was connected to her family.
But he had always been a Wilder. That was the thing.
No one thought of him as part of his mother’s new family, and certainly not his stepfather’s family.
Not even now that his half sister was the mayor.
She was also a deeply unpleasant human being, so he basically wanted nothing to do with her. It went both ways. Fine with him.
His younger half brother, Mike, was a douchebag who sold insurance. Yeah. He was happy with their lack of interaction. He knew he made Mike and Danielle uncomfortable, and that was wild to him, because he didn’t make anybody uncomfortable. The Wilder family outlaw reputation had been difficult for Carson and Austin. Flynn had sunk right into it. Maybe it was because he had a whole other respectable family to rebel against. Maybe that made being an outlaw feel good.
He had actual enemies to flaunt his bad boy reputation at.
Sometimes he could see the envy in Mike’s eyes. Back when they’d been kids. When Flynn had ridden up to school on his motorcycle, or on the back of his horse. When some aspect of his unconventional upbringing had been on show.
Yeah. Because what teenage boy wanted to try to live up to the insurance sales legacy of Mike’s father? Especially when his half brother was getting to smoke, drink, and have all the sex he wanted?
Flynn had lived for that. For being the envy and outrage of his maternal relatives.
The truth was, he still did.
But right now, he wasn’t looking for envy and outrage. He was looking for a cold drink, and maybe an easy lay. That was the other problem with Cassidy tagging along. It made things a little awkward.
Mostly because she wasn’t doing the same thing. She was always outside the action, and he had a feeling it was her crush that kept her like a vestal virgin.
He wanted to tell her to knock it off. To go find some guy besides Dalton and have a good time, for God’s sake. Life was too short to moon after people who didn’t want you around. He was intimately acquainted with that truth.
But he couldn’t say so to Cassidy. Well. He could. He just wasn’t going to. Because while he wanted to give her advice, he also figured her pride was an important piece of this equation. He would never do anything to injure her pride.
Because that was another thing he knew as an unwanted child. It took a lot to build damaged pride up. He had found it in claiming his connection to the Wilder family. And he knew that Cassidy had done the same. But sometimes he could still see the little girl who had been left on their doorstep at Christmas. He never wanted her to be hurt.
“What are we drinking tonight?” Cassidy asked as they walked into The Watering Hole. It was a dive. And he loved it. The place was grimy in all the best ways. The neon sign out front made it clear exactly what kind of establishment it was. And if that didn’t tell you, the line of motorcycles parked by the curb ought to give you another hint. If you still didn’t catch the drift, walking in and actually seeing who populated the place would do it.
Of course, the vibe was a little bit watered down now. Austin had married Millie Talbot, the town librarian, daughter of the former sheriff, descendent of the actual sheriff who had killed the first Austin Wilder in a shoot-out in the 1800s.
Millie liked to come to the bar now. And sometimes she brought her friends. Who had then started bringing their friends. They clustered about like anthropologists observing a society they didn’t belong to.
Granted, their presence had freshened up the dating pool. Of course, he used the term dating loosely.
“Why don’t you choose tonight’s drink, Cass?”
Cassidy’s eyes widened with glee. “Really?”
“Sure,” Dalton said.
Cassidy practically skipped over to the bar, and Flynn and Dalton exchanged a glance. But they didn’t say anything. Flynn had only had a couple of conversations with Dalton about her crush. Anything more felt disloyal.
Flynn scanned the crowd, looking to see if any of the women caught his eye.
“Redhead,” said Dalton.
Flynn glanced in the direction his friend was looking and nodded. She was pretty. Not really what he was looking for right now. What are you looking for?
Well. That was an interesting question.
There was a restlessness inside him. It had something to do with his brothers getting married. He knew that. This feeling that the band was breaking up. That they weren’t just outlaws riding endlessly into the sunset. His brothers were grown men now with responsibilities. Austin was a father now.
He had a feeling Perry and Carson wouldn’t waste a whole lot of time before having babies.
It made him feel … Well, like the ridiculous youngest brother that he was.
And then the door opened. He saw the crowd’s reaction to whoever it was before he turned to look.
His heart slammed against his rib cage, and all his blood rushed south of his belt buckle. There she was. Long brown hair cascading over her shoulders, tight black tank top showing off her incredible rack. Her jeans were bedazzled, those rhinestones flashing as her hips moved.
Jessie Jane Hancock.
The woman drove him nuts. In all the ways a woman possibly could.
“Damn,” Dalton said.
“Yep,” Flynn said, gritting his back teeth.
He couldn’t even deny his attraction with a snarky comment. Because she was looking so fine, it would be a criminal lie to pretend otherwise.
Jessie’s eyes scanned the room. And when her gaze landed on him, he felt it. But what shocked him more than anything was that she began to walk toward him, those glittering blue eyes laser focused.
It was like an electrical current arced between them, and he found himself taking a step toward her.
“Well, howdy, Flynn Wilder,” she said. “Fancy meeting you here.”
“I’d ask what a girl like you is doing in a place like this, but this is exactly where a man goes to find a girl like you.”
“Touché. Usually when I’m looking for a man like you, I go to the streets.”
“Careful,” he said. “Perilously close to calling yourself a lady of the night there.”
“Oh, if I intended to say that, I would.”
They regarded each other for a moment. Sometimes he wondered whether they were closer to a fistfight or fucking against the nearest wall.
He didn’t hit women.
So in truth, it could only be the one thing. On this, he had to congratulate himself for his self-control. Despite all the years and all the sparks, he’d never once made a move on her.
“I have no doubt. I’m not going to bet on any team, buy a piece of land from you, or invest in something, so if this is a scheme …”
“That’s funny. My brother said that I was scheming earlier today.”
Well, he didn’t like her brother either.
“Are you?”
One of her brows lifted, and her pink lips curved into a smile. “Maybe. And believe me when I say, you’re going to want in on this.”
“I doubt it.”
“You don’t know what I have to say yet.”
“Well, let’s see. You are Butch Hancock’s great-great-great-great-great-great-granddaughter. And he betrayed my just as many times great-grandfather. Historically, alliances between the Wilders and the Hancocks don’t really work out.”
“Well, I promise I won’t frame you for murder.” She smiled, and right then he was actually certain that she would frame him for murder if the need arose. Because that innocent smile was a lie. There was nothing innocent about Jessie Jane. The trouble was, that was exactly why she appealed to him so much.
“I’ll make sure I have an alibi if we should ever speak again.”
“Just give me thirty seconds,” she said.
He looked toward the bar. Cassidy was on her way back with the drinks. “I’m about to have a drink.”
“Thirty seconds. Just step outside with me.”
She wanted to step outside? Now his curiosity was aroused as well. He held a finger up, caught Cassidy’s gaze, and mouthed One second.
Then he followed Jessie Jane out of the bar and into the warm evening. The pink sign with the buxom cowgirl leading her horse to water cast an electric glow over her. The truth was, Jessie Jane could be the cowgirl on that sign.
Hell, maybe somewhere inside his imagination she was.
Though he preferred not to acknowledge that she lived anywhere in his imagination.
He and Jessie circled each other. They both frequented this bar. He’d watched her leave with a man on any number of occasions, and she’d most certainly watched him leave with a woman. They never left with each other.
Except … they just had.
Not really, though. He was going to go back inside. Any minute now.
“It’s an election year,” she said.
“Oh, I am well aware.” He couldn’t walk past a well-manicured lawn without seeing a sign that had his half sister’s overly smiley face on it.
“No one has declared that they’re running against Danielle. There are three days left to enter the race and, well … I’m going to run for mayor.”
He stared at Jessie Jane, and he couldn’t help himself. He laughed. He laughed as if it was the funniest goddamned joke he’d ever heard in his life. Because it was.
“You,” he said when he finally caught his breath.
“Yes, me.”
“What’s your ticket? The yellow-bellied coward and dissolute gambler ticket?”
“I don’t think anyone could accuse me of being a yellow-bellied coward. Don’t confuse me with an unfortunate man in my lineage. And I won’t confuse you with yours.”
“Everybody else does.”
“I didn’t mean Austin Wilder. I meant Mike.”
She made such a regretful, scornful face that he couldn’t help but laugh again.
“Fair enough.”
“I thought you would be interested, since I imagine you don’t exactly love watching Danielle flex her influence all over town.”
“You don’t know anything about me or my relationship with my mother’s family.”
“I know that you consider your half sister your mother’s family.”
“You don’t know anything else.”
“I pay attention, Flynn. I’m not blind to the dynamics.”
“Well, good for you. What’s a little family dysfunction?”
“Nothing. Hell, in my family it’s fun. But what do you think about the outlaws staging a takeover of the town?”
“I’m not following you.”
“I want you to be my first man.”
“What?”
“This town loves drama. People love that more than heroes; they love it more than sinners. And you know what they really, really want? A good old-fashioned showdown.”
“I don’t …”
“Outlaws versus lawmen. Jessie Jane Hancock, many times great-granddaughter of Butch Hancock the traitor, engaged to marry Flynn Wilder, running against Danielle, who is engaged to be married to your sister-in-law’s ex-fiancé. That’s not just drama; that’s a whole soap opera. And you and I are going to be the stars.”
When I was little, I used to dream of wearing fancy dresses. I wanted to be like one of the ladies who walked by Ma and me where we sat, waiting for a man to come and pick Ma up for the eveni. . .
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