Bounty (Colorado Mountain #7) by Kristen Ashley
Dedication
This book is dedicated to the memory of Greg Bullard.
A simple kind of man.
A good friend. A great husband. A loving father.
The best kind of man.
“All I want for you, my son, is to be satisfied.”
You are missed.
And to his family who I hold deep in my heart.
His wife, my beautiful Bethy,
his awesome son, Jackson,
and his gorgeous daughter, Kate.
***
This book is also dedicated to the living spirit of Kara Bombardier.
My sister from another sister.
My gypsy.
Acknowledgements and Author’s Note
Many thanks to my girl Stephanie Redman Smith for a lot of reasons, but as pertains to this book, moons ago she sent me a link to Hozier’s “Work Song.” Upon listening, I knew that song needed to be in a book. It fit perfectly here. I hope you’ll agree.
And much heartfelt thanks to Mark Ashley. I decided I was going to descend into the art of writing lyrics and we’ll just say I didn’t succeed all that well. But my Mark, he’s got a poet’s soul and the talent to make words sing. So he took my scary song that was supposed to say everything and made it into a thing of beauty. Thank you, honey!
Finally, as ever, I’d like to encourage readers to seek out and listen to the music I note in this novel. Especially this one as Justice is a singer-songwriter and she speaks a great deal through the words she sings. As I often suggest, and will do so again here, there will be scenes in this book that you’ll enjoy to the fullest if you listen to the songs they refer to while reading. And to make things easier for you, these songs include Linda Ronstadt’s “When Will I Be Loved” and “It’s So Easy,” Jim Croce’s “Time in a Bottle,” The Goo Goo Dolls “Come to Me,” Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man,” Hozier’s “Work Song” and the Zac Brown Band’s “Free.”
Enjoy!
*****
Prologue
The Only Man Here
Justice
“I’m not sure I wanna be saved, just sayin’.”
I looked at my friend Bianca. She had that glint in her eyes as she whispered this to me and Lacey before being led to the dancefloor by a biker.
This was not surprising. After three days at a local dude ranch, she was ready for a switch-up from cowboy to biker.
And the tall, angular biker who seemed determined to dance to “867-5309/Jenny” with Bianca was worth the not-so-coded message that we were on our own for the rest of the night and she’d fend for herself to get back to the ranch. This meaning she’d be doing it on the back of a bike likely sometime tomorrow morning.
I stopped watching Bianca head to the crowded dancefloor and looked to Lacey, our other friend, who had two bikers on her hook—both standing close, fencing her in at her stool at our table, taking turns buying her drinks, this having been going on for over an hour.
She wasn’t blotto, as most people would be after they’d imbibed as much as Lace had. She could hold her liquor, my Lacey. We all could. That’s what happened to dedicated party girls whose lives included nothing but bouncing from one righteous experience to the next, sucking all we could get out of it before we moved on.
Lace gave me a wink that indicated her approval of Bianca’s dance partner then turned back to her bikers.
I looked into the crowded bar, did a scan, saw one or two guys had eyes on me, but my glance slid through them.
Nothing had changed since the last scan.
This meaning nothing there.
Nothing at the dude ranch either, except I dug the horses. We’d ridden the trails. Learned how to lasso. Sat by a campfire. Had our massages and facials at the spa. Did the river rafting trip.
The cowboys were fine as they were intended to be considering how many single women were there for vacations and bachelorette getaways.
But, as I sat in that biker bar, watching the drinking, talking, dancing, biker-style flirting, general good-time-being-had-by-all, it came to me I was over it.
Not the dude ranch.
Not the biker scene.
I was just over it.
All of it.
And I was over it because I’d been on this course since I was born, in one way or another.
Sure, I’d never been to a dude ranch but I’d been to plenty of cowboy bars, and biker bars, and clubs in New York, LA, Chicago. Festivals in Nashville and Austin. On the back of some dude’s bike riding through Death Valley. In a private jet, flying to Boston just to have fresh lobster for dinner. Wandering around St. Ives on a ghost tour at midnight. Up in a treehouse in Oregon to meditate with a guru. Sitting at the side of a runway during fashion shows in Paris. On a yacht in the Mediterranean, on a speedboat in Tahoe, on a houseboat on Lake Powell, snorkeling emerald waters in northern Venezuela, partying on a beach in Thailand. Backstage at so many concerts, there was no way to count.