Excerpt: 'Bad News Cowboy' by Maisey Yates

Maisey Yates shares a scene from her new Bad News Cowboy, book four in her Copper Ridge series.

About the book (courtesy of HQN Books):

Can the bad boy of Copper Ridge, Oregon, make good—and win the rodeo girl of his dreams?

Kate Garrett keeps life simple—working hard, riding her beloved horses, playing cards with her brothers. Lately, though, she feels a bit restless, especially when family friend Jack Monaghan is around. Sexy and shameless, Jack is the kind of trouble you don't tangle with unless you want your heart broken. Still, Kate could always use his help in learning how to lasso someone a little less high risk…

Jack can't pinpoint the moment the Garrett brothers' little sister suddenly stopped seeming so…little. Now here he is, giving flirting tips to the one woman who needs zero help turning him on. Love's a game he's never wanted to play. But he'll have to hurry up and learn how before the best thing that ever entered his life rides right back out again…

Maisey sets the scene for us …

Maisey: Kate has been living in denial about her feelings for Jack — the best friend of her two older brothers — for a long time. Increased proximity brought about by a charity rodeo the two of them are working on is starting to make it harder and harder for her to deny that the biggest reason she feels so hostile for him is that she'd much rather kiss him than kick him.

Jack is a shameless player, and Kate is way too innocent for the likes of him. Still, he can't resist teasing her. But when they go to Ace's Bar – a popular hang out in Copper Ridge – after a meeting of the local rodeo club, he finds out that teasing Kate is dangerous, because she's one woman who can give as good as she gets.

EXCERPT

Jack was feeling pretty irritated with life by the time he and Kate walked into Ace's. He was pretty sure his half sister had attempted to make a pass at him, and Kate was acting like he'd put bugs in her boots.

He also couldn't drink, because he was driving.

Irritated didn't begin to cover it.

He was getting pretty sick and tired of Kate's prickly attitude and now he'd gotten himself embroiled in a whole thing with a woman who was the human equivalent of a cactus.

He really needed the drink that he couldn't have.

Though maybe if Kate had one, she would calm the hell down.

"Can I buy you a drink?" he asked.

"A Coke," she said.

"You want rum in that?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because making an ass out of myself in front of a roomful of people is not on today's to-do list. I'm a lightweight."

He laughed. "Okay, I'm a little bit surprised that you would admit that."

"Why?"

"You're the kind of girl who always has to show the boys up. I would think you'd want to try to drink us under the table."

She arched her brow. "I'm way tinier than you. I'm not drinking you under any table."

"All right, one Coke for you."

He turned and headed toward the bar, and to his surprise, she followed him rather than going over to the table where her friends were already seated. "Why are you buying me a drink?"

"I was hoping to trick you into getting drunk so you wouldn't be so uptight," he said, because he always said what was on his mind where Kate was concerned. Neither of them practiced tact in the other's presence.

She sputtered. "I'm not uptight."

"You're something."

Kate's lip curled upward. "Now I don't really want you to buy me a drink. I don't like your motives."

"I'm not going to sneakily give you a rum and Coke. I'm ordering you a soda."

"But it was not born out of generosity."

"Will you please stop making it impossible for me to do something nice for you."

"But you aren't doing something nice for me," she insisted. "You were trying to…calm me. With booze."

He turned, and Kate took a step back, pressing herself against the bar. He leaned forward, gripping the bar with both hands, trapping her between his arms. "Yes, Katie, honey, I was."

Her dark eyes widened, her mouth dropping open. Color rose in her cheeks, her chest pitching sharply as she drew in a quick deep breath.

He looked at Kate quite a lot. He saw her almost every day. But he'd never really studied her. He didn't know why in hell he was doing it now.

There wasn't a trace of makeup on her face, her dark lashes long and thick but straight rather than curled upward to enhance her eyes. There was no blush added to her cheeks, no color added to her lips. It exemplified Kate. What you saw was what you got. Inside and out.

And for some reason the tension that had been gathering in his chest spread outward, spread around them, and he could feel a strange crackling between them. He wasn't sure what it was. But one thing he was sure of. He'd made a mistake somewhere between calling her "honey" the first time, days ago, and the moment he'd pressed her up against the bar.

Everything he knew about her had twisted. The way Kate made him feel had shifted into something else, something new.

If it had been any other woman at any other moment, he might've called it attraction.

But this was Kate. So that was impossible.

And then the sort of dewy softness in her eyes changed, a kind of fierce determination taking over. She took a step away from the bar, a step closer to him, and reached up, gripping his chin with her thumb and forefinger, tugging hard, bringing his face nearer to hers. "Look, Jack," she spat, hardening every syllable, "I think you need to back off."

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