Grumpy Cowboy: A Hot Single Dad, Enemies-to-Lovers Romance Read online

  Grumpy Cowboy

  Published by Max Monroe LLC © 2021, Max Monroe

  All rights reserved.

  ISBN: 9781735381169

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Editing by Silently Correcting Your Grammar

  Cover Design by Peter Alderweireld

  Cover Photo: Wander Aguiar Photography

  Model: Jaden G.

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Author’s Note

  Dedication

  Intro

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Epilogue

  Single Dad Seeks Juliet Excerpt

  Intro

  Chapter One

  Acknowledgments

  Grumpy Cowboy is a full-length romantic comedy stand-alone, sexy single dad novel.

  At the end, we’ve included an excerpt of Single Dad Seeks Juliet, the first hilarious romantic comedy stand-alone from our best-selling Single Dad Collection.

  Now that you know, don’t contact a witch to put a hex on us because Grumpy Cowboy concludes at around 90%. We are horrible at writing through any sort of pain. ;) ;)

  Also, due to the hilarious and addictive nature of this book’s content, the following things are not recommended: reading in public places, reading in bed next to a light-sleeping spouse and/or pet and/or child, reading while eating and/or drinking, reading while operating heavy machinery, and reading during your (or your children’s/spouse’s) Zoom meetings. Also, if suffering from bladder incontinence due to age/pregnancy/childbirth/etc., we recommend wearing sanitary products and/or reading while sitting directly on a toilet.

  Happy Reading!

  All our love,

  Max & Monroe

  To Max’s knowledge of bull sperm collection—Monroe both loves and hates you for it.

  And to anyone who says romance novels aren’t real books—with all due respect, you can kindly go fuck yourself. Kisses! Mwah!

  May 8th, Saturday

  Circle Dub Ranch, Hollow Rock, Utah

  Rhett

  “Who’s watchin’ Joey tonight, Rhett?” Chase Walker asks from his spot ten feet away, atop the fence rail to one of the paddocks on his parents’ ranch, Circle Dub.

  We’ve known each other since we were in diapers and went through school together at only a year apart, but our lives these days couldn’t be any more opposite. He’s on the Professional Rodeo Circuit, making a living as a bucking bronc rider, and I’m here in Hollow Rock, running my family’s ranch, Shaw Springs. I’m a single dad raising my five-year-old daughter, Josephine, and he’s a single guy with a laundry list of rodeo cowgirls he’d like to work through by the time his birthday hits.

  Yeah. Completely different lives.

  Still, he’s a good friend, and nights out like this for me are beyond a rarity. Sometimes, it’s nice to let go of all the pressure of being a single father and a boss and just have a good fucking time.

  “My mom has Joey,” I answer. “She likes to do a girls’ night with her once a month. Somethin’ about reminding her that there’s more to life than dirt and horse shit.”

  “There is?” Lynn, another bronc rider from the professional circuit and a guy I’ve only met a half a dozen times, asks, smiling flagrantly. “Maybe that’s my problem. My mama never taught me that.”

  “You’ve got a helluva lot more problems than an affinity for horse shit,” Cutter James, a younger bull rider from the circuit I’m hanging out with for the first time, challenges with a chuckle. “According to Mandy Waters, one of them is in your fucking pants.”

  “What?” Lynn retorts. “She said that shit?”

  Chase and Cutter just laugh and take swigs of their beers.

  “Who is Mandy Waters?” I ask, and Chase smirks over at me.

  “She’s the exact kind of woman you’ve been known to despise.”

  I quirk my brow. “What do you mean?”

  “A rich, gorgeous, perfectly done-up city girl who found her way to a rodeo and had the unfortunate opportunity of getting up close and personal with Lynn.”

  “You got a thing against city girls?” Cutter questions, and I roll my eyes.

  “I don’t have a thing against anyone. I just have preferences. And I prefer them to be natural, raw, wild. Women who’ve never stepped foot on a ranch and spend more time in the bathroom piling on makeup and hair spray have proven to be nothin’ but fuckin’ trouble for me.”

  “Yeah, but your baby mama Anna is as wild as they come, certainly knows her way around a ranch, isn’t from the city, and look where that got ya,” Chase teases, and I can’t not laugh.

  Frankly, he’s not lying. Anna is as wild as they come, and our relationship ended with me being a single dad and her still running around trying to sow a whole county’s worth of oats.

  “Maybe me and women just don’t mesh at all,” I respond, and Chase chuckles.

  “Maybe you just need to spend a night with a crazy-ass, nothin’-but-trouble cougar of a woman by the name of Donna Dorset—that fucking woman loves her some rodeo cowboys—and you’d realize sometimes a little trouble is worth it.”

  Instantly, Lynn and Cutter burst into laughter, but also, they nod at me with wide, knowing eyes.

  “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about or who Donna is,” I say with a shake of my head. “But by the sounds of it, I’m thinking that’s a good thing.”

  “You don’t know because you’re here in Hollow Rock, pissin�
� into the wind on your daddy’s ranch instead of out there on the road with us,” Chase teases with a knowing smirk. “When are you gonna grow a set and tell your old man where to shove it? You shoulda never left the tour.”

  I laugh. I’ve spent a lot of years wishing I’d had the courage to tell off my dad and keep riding broncs, but the more time that’s passed, the easier it’s become to accept. My daughter Josephine sure as hell has a better, more stable life here, and all it takes is seeing her hardly present mama blow through town every six months or so to hammer that in. Plus, it’s been a decade since I stepped out of the rodeo spotlight, and I’m pretty sure the statute of limitations on my stepping back in has long passed.

  Not to mention, I wouldn’t dream of shaking up Joey’s life like that.

  My daughter is my priority. Always.

  Chase is still a kid at heart, however, and I’m about as well-off wasting my breath on detailed explanations with him as I’d be slicing my own throat. No, to get him off my ass, I simply have to dish the shit-talking back just as hard as he serves it.

  “I don’t know,” I retort with a sly grin. “Maybe I’ll tell him when you tell yours you’re out here in the middle of the night ridin’ next year’s crop of broncs that aren’t supposed to have ever been rode before.”

  “Shit.” Chase snorts, spewing some of his beer all over his shirt. “I guess I’ll just have to wait and see you in hell, then. My dad catches wind we’re out here, and all four of us will be in the back of a cop car. And I don’t know about Cutter and Lynn, but I know for a fact you and I aren’t that fond of the law,” he adds as he jumps down off the fence and crushes the mostly empty beer can, tossing it to the side.

  “You mean the law isn’t that fond of us,” I correct.

  You’d think with the way Chase talks, we’re still wild, twenty-year-old stallions with something to prove, but I’m thirty-six. I’m a responsible, grown-ass adult now, with a daughter to think about when I make decisions, but back when I was younger, I made a lot of questionable choices and partook in a number of dangerous exploits. The sheriff knows my first name intimately, and Chase Walker was right there with me more than a time or two.

  Hell, that’s part of the reason why my dad didn’t want me to stay on the rodeo tour. There was always some sort of trouble, and like it or not, I had a real way of finding it.

  It’s also part of the reason Joey’s mama Anna and I weren’t meant for the long haul. I grew up; she didn’t. In fact, she’s still following the rodeo circuit just like she was when we first met. Most likely, drinkin’ and partyin’ and knockin’ boots with a new guy every weekend.

  And the only feelings I have about that revolve around our daughter and wishing Joey didn’t have to pay the price for her mama’s immaturity.

  “Yeah, I guess you’re right,” Chase agrees. “Anytime I see Sheriff Laycliff in the diner, he gives me more than a small amount of stink eye. Pretty sure he’d be happier if the tour ran yearlong and I never came back home.”

  I don’t bother mentioning that at thirty-five years old, pretty soon, he’s going to age out of the rodeo lifestyle anyway. Or that he should probably start trying to make a better impression now if he plans on coming back to Hollow Rock full time.

  But nights like this aren’t the time for serious talks of that sort. I’ll reserve the call to reality for an occasion with less company and harder liquor.

  Nights like these are meant for laughing, cutting up, and shit-talking.

  Which I have no problem doing.

  “Well, the sheriff isn’t the only one who prefers not to look at your ugly mug.” I smirk. “Frankly, I’m thankful for the low-light conditions tonight.”

  “Fuck you, Jameson,” Chase crows, using my last name for added emphasis. Lynn and Cutter snicker from their spots on the top of the fence rail across the paddock. “You’re sure doin’ a lotta shit-talkin’ for a guy who hasn’t gotten on a bronc yet. Cut, Lynn, and I have all been on a couple tonight. What’re you? Scared?”

  I roll my eyes at his baiting and take a swig from my can of Coors. “I haven’t been on a bronc because I’m not an idiot. I’ve got responsibilities to go back to, unlike the rest of you. A ranch to run, a daughter to raise, that sort of thing.”

  “Hey!” Cutter yells, offended, although I’m sure it’s only on a very shallow, superficial level. There’s still a smile on his face and a beer in his hand, and if he’d really taken issue with what I’d said, he’d have already been off the fence and headed my direction at full speed.

  That’s the thing about most of us cowboys—we’re hotheaded.

  Crazy. Wild. Hair-trigger type of people. If we weren’t, we probably wouldn’t get on the backs of angry, thousand-pound-plus animals every chance we got.

  “Come on,” Lynn taunts. “All I hear every night on the road is the legend of former bronc rider Rhett Jameson. How unbelievably good he is. How natural his fucking seat seems. How I’ll never live up to his record. How the women wet their panties for him every time he stepped into the ring. I mean, I’m finally in the Oh Great One’s presence, and I’m not even gonna get to see you take a ride?” He shakes his head and turns to Cutter. “It all sounds like bullshit to me. I think Chase has been mooning over a figment of his imagination all these years, Cut. What do you think?”

  Cutter smirks, his big mouth curling up mischievously. “I think you’re right, Lynn. I don’t see any champions here. Just a big ole pussy and his favorite admirer.”

  They both laugh boisterously, and Chase cuts hard eyes in my direction, clearly more affected by their razzing than I am. It makes sense, though. As of tomorrow, after they leave to head to their next stop on the tour, I won’t have to hear any more of it. Chase, on the other hand, will be eating shit until the end of time if I don’t step up to the challenge plate.

  After I consider it for another long moment, the familiar excitement of giving myself over to the power of a wild horse sings through my veins, and the pull of my long-standing friendship with Chase pushes me over the top.

  Fuck it.

  These assholes want something to talk about after they leave, I’m going to give them something to fucking talk about. It’s been a year or two since I’ve been on a bronc bareback, but your muscles don’t forget something you’ve trained them to do for nearly thirty years. No, they remember, even when you feel like you don’t.

  I toss my mostly empty can aside and jump off the fence, into the paddock, and start walking in the direction of the grazing pack of geldings. They look mild-mannered enough from here, but I know for a fact that the moment I toss myself up on one of their backs, all hell is going to break loose and then some. Chase’s dad is one of the biggest, best bronc contractors in the West. He supplies broncs to rodeos all over this side of the country, but this crop here is meant for next year’s professional circuit. They’re the meanest, baddest, biggest bucking horses the world has to offer. They’ve literally been bred for the sole purpose of sending cowboys flying toward the earth at speeds much greater than gravity.

  And yet, I keep heading toward them. There’s probably a reason my mama always told me I must have been born with one screw loose.

  Chase whoops and hollers in the background, telling Cutter and Lynn things like I can’t wait to watch you eat shit and Both your mamas are about to spread their legs in their beds without knowing why.

  Rhett Jameson, he says, is so fucking good on a bronc, he makes women orgasm telepathically.

  The corner of one side of my mouth curves up at that last one because even I have to admit, Chase Walker is one hell of a hype man. The truth is, he’s giving me a lot more credit than I’m probably due. It’s been almost a year since I’ve made a woman come, period, let alone with the power of my mind. Since Samantha Holsten, my occasional hookup, went and met some beef farmer and got married, I haven’t had it in me to troll the waters for a new partner.

  Scanning the group of horses, I pick through the ones in the front quickly. Two
on the left have already been worked over by Chase and Cutter tonight, and one on the right has been subjected to the same from Lynn.

  Two in the middle look at me out of the sides of their eyes, watching my approach closely, and I study the minute differences in their stances. One, a red roan, and the other, a bay with legs the color of midnight.

  I have no doubt they’re both more of a ride than the average Joe would bargain for, but the bay, in particular, looks like he has the kind of flare that, if being scored, would land me right at the top of the leaderboard.

  And tonight? After the way Cut and Lynn threw down the gauntlet? He’s the one.

  “Somebody got a timer ready?” I ask, glancing back over my shoulder. Chase holds up his phone as evidence that he’s more than just a mouth, and I turn back to my opponent and heave one last relaxing breath.

  It’s just like old times, I tell myself silently. Just do exactly what you’ve always known how to do and don’t overthink it.

  Eight seconds. Eight fucking seconds.

  Feet soft as a whisper, I move toward the bay gelding slowly. He watches me the whole time, and I know, without a doubt, I’m going to have to get ahold of his mane as soon as I’m at his side.

  One step, two, and a final third, I reach out slowly and grab a huge chunk of shiny black hair in my hand, say a prayer, and swing myself up and over his back in one smooth motion.

  As soon as my ass hits his back, he explodes like a stick of live dynamite. Straight up at first, and then ass over end, he bucks like his one and only goal in life is to put my face in the dirt.

  Vaguely, I can hear Chase as he cheers with every passing second. Around to the left and back to the right, this bad boy is quick as a whip. My legs chug with the pump of his bucks, and my heart pounds wildly inside my chest.

  This thrill—it’s one of a fucking kind. It’s exhilarating in a way I can’t describe and terrifying in a way that makes me want to do it even more.

  It’s a test of mental and physical endurance that only a select few can handle, and by the growing sound of Chase’s roars, it seems like I’m still one of them.