Excerpt: 'Part Time Cowboy' by Maisey Yates

Maisey Yates shares an excerpt from Part Time Cowboy (out this week!), book one in her new Copper Ridge series.

First, here's the blurb about the book (courtesy of HQN Books):

A onetime bad girl comes home to small-town Oregon in the first in a sexy, heartfelt new series from Paste BN bestselling author Maisey Yates.

Sadie Miller isn't expecting any welcome-home parades on her return to Copper Ridge. Least of all from part-time rancher, full-time lawman Eli Garrett. The straitlaced, impossibly hot deputy sheriff glares at her as if she's the same teenage hoodlum who fled town ten years ago. But running from her demons has brought Sadie full circle, ready to make a commitment at last. Not to a man, but to a bed-and-breakfast. On Garrett land. Okay, so her plan has a tiny flaw…

Eli works too hard to let a blonde ball of trouble mess up his town. But keeping an eye on Sadie makes it tough to keep his hands off her. And if she's so wrong for him, why does being with her feel so right?

Maisey sets the scene …

Maisey: In Part Time Cowboy, Eli and Sadie are definitely opposites attracting. Eli is a classic good boy, who's never put a toe out of line, while Sadie spent a lot of time sowing wild oats back in her high school years. Now the two of them find themselves in a position where they have to deal with each other — and a very unwanted attraction. In this scene, Sadie has decided to call a truce (complete with an apology azalea), and Eli isn't having it.

EXCERPT

Sadie felt an unfamiliar surge of raw, unmitigated anger course through her veins. This was not her style. It was not her game. She didn't do toe-to-toe shouting matches. Not with men, not with anyone. No. She did yoga. She meditated. She had a pottery wheel somewhere. That she never used, but still, she had outlets. Outlets that were not screaming like a child. Or hitting people with your fists until the anger beast cooled in your chest.

She didn't believe in giving free rein to negative emotions. It was healthy to acknowledge feelings, yes, and to talk about them in a safe space. But to let them explode out of your mouth and through your chest and let them take over all of everything? Which was what was happening right now, whether she wanted it to be happening or not.

She was…seething. And it was overflowing. Onto her, onto him, onto everything. And sure, maybe planting the azalea had been a step too far. But Lydia had shown up when she was dropping it off. And something about the other woman made her feel…competitive. Which was annoying.

But somehow she'd told Lydia that she was supposed to be there. Planting the azalea. And Lydia had lingered. Her mere presence a challenge. So plant it Sadie had.

And he was rejecting it. Honestly, even if her gesture was weird, it was nice. And he was being an ass.

"I bought you an azalea!" she said, the words shooting out hard and short, intense like gunfire.

"And I didn't want it," he said, taking a step toward her. "I don't want it here, I don't want you here."

"Why?" she asked, moving nearer to him, compelled forward by the kind of deep, negative emotion she hadn't even known she'd possessed. "Because I'm getting my dirty, been-arrested, other-side-of-the-tracks, poor-girl filth all over your hallowed Garrett walkways?"

"Because," he said, "you are a mess. And I spent most of my life managing a giant ass mess, and I don't see any reason why I should willingly subject myself to another one. I have things just the way I want them." He moved closer, a muscle in his square jaw ticking, the cords on his neck standing out. "And I do not need you coming in and ruining anything."

"Oh really?" She moved nearer to him, so close she could feel the heat of his breath on her face. "I guess you are awfully neat and tidy," she said, her gaze flickering over his uniform, so perfectly pressed and…sexy, in spite of everything that was going on between them. "It would be a shame if I got my mess on you." And before she could police herself, she'd reached out and grabbed his tie, her dirt-encrusted hands sliding over the fabric, leaving a pale dust streak and tugging his face down closer to hers.

Her heart was pounding so hard it was making her light-headed, her blood pumped to parts…more southerly. She had no idea what was happening to her. This was no sexual attraction as she knew it. It wasn't anything as she knew it. She was angrier than she'd been in recent memory, and a hell of a lot more turned on, and she genuinely didn't know how to process the two together.

She also didn't know how to process that she was inches from his face, his tie clutched tight in her hand, as his dark eyes blazed rage into hers. Rage and something else. Something hotter. Something that looked a lot like the fire burning in her belly felt.

And then…and then he dipped his head, his lips crashing into hers. And that's what it was. A collision. It wasn't a testing, or a tasting, or anything tentative at all. It wasn't nice, or fun, or easy. It was gasoline on a lit match. An instant conflagration that had gone from spark to out-of-control at the moment of contact.

She had no idea what was happening, only that she didn't want it to stop.

She tugged tighter on his tie and angled her head, parting his lips beneath hers and slipping her tongue into his mouth. He groaned, rough and raw and not anything like the good guy he seemed to want the world to think he was.

He locked one arm around her waist, drawing her tightly against his hard body. His lips were firm and sure. And everything about him, about this, was so much more intense than she'd imagined it could be.

Find out more about Maisey and her books at www.maiseyyates.com.