The third installment in Kari Lynn Dell's Texas Rodeo series, Tougher in Texas, is out now!
He’s got five rules
And she’s aiming to break them
all
Rodeo producer Cole Jacobs has his hands full running
Jacobs Livestock. He can’t afford to lose a single cowboy, so when Cousin
Violet offers to send along a more-than-capable replacement, he’s got no choice
but to accept. He expects a grizzled Texas good ol’ boy.
He gets Shawnee Pickett.
Wild
and outspoken, ruthlessly self-reliant, Shawnee’s not looking for anything but
a good time. It doesn’t matter how quickly the tall, dark and intense cowboy
gets under her skin—Cole deserves something real, and Shawnee can’t promise him
forever. Life’s got a way of kicking her in the teeth, and she’s got her bags
packed before tragedy can knock her down. Too bad Cole’s not the type to give
up when the going gets tough…
Kari's Favorite Fictional Cowboys – For the Love of a Difficult Woman
I adore difficult women...and the cowboys who love them because of it, not in spite. You don't
get much more difficult than Shawnee Pickett in Tougher in Texas. And as Cole Jacobs learns, it only gets harder
the closer you get to her. Under that brash, outrageous surface is one tough
woman who's gonna make you prove you deserve her...and that she deserves a
happily ever after.
My two favorite difficult movie women aren’t known for westerns.
Laura San Giacomo starred in the sitcom Just
Shoot Me, and as Julia Robert’s wisecracking best friend Kit in Pretty Woman, but in between she turned
in an incredible performance as Crazy Cora, who latches onto Tom Selleck in Quigley Down Under, insisting on calling
him by her estranged husband’s name. Much of the humor is on the dark side and
the film delves into some deep subject matter—including the systematic genocide
of Australia’s aboriginal people and the source of Cora’s madness. San Giacomo
flawlessly portrays everything from borderline slapstick to intense grief while
being a near constant annoyance to Matthew Quigley—except when the chips are
seriously down, which is why this Wyoming cowboy can’t help falling for her. And
did I mention staring at Tom Selleck for a couple of hours doesn’t suck?
I have to reach even further back for my second difficult
woman—Shirley McLaine in 1970’s Two Mules
for Sister Sara, which marked the last time Clint Eastwood would take
second billing in a major film role. The movie is set in Mexico during the
1860’s War of French Intervention, with Eastwood and McLaine assisting the
rebel Mexican forces. He is also forced to become the reluctant savior and
guardian, but it is clear that Sister Sara has her own agenda and no qualms
about using this mercenary to achieve her ends. It’s no great surprise when the
cigar-smoking sister’s habit turns out to be a disguise—which clears the path
for an equally smoking romance—but he never gains the upper hand. You gotta
love that about a female character in an early Eastwood western. You go,
Sister.
And now for an excerpt from Tougher
in Texas, which features Shawnee in prime difficult woman form.
***
The parking
Nazis attacked before Shawnee turned off her pickup. Red-faced and dripping
sweat under their neon-yellow plastic vests, they waved their orange-painted
sticks so frantically you’d think she’d landed a 747 in the contestant lot.
She rolled down her window. “Is there a problem?”
“You can’t park here,” the taller one declared, jamming his thumbs
in his pockets and thrusting his beer gut at her.
Shawnee ran a deliberate glance around the clipped grass field,
dotted with live oaks like the one she’d parked beneath. Four hours before the
first rodeo performance, only seven other rigs had arrived, all lined up with
military precision along the back fence. “Looks like there’s plenty of room.”
“There is now.” Beer Gut attempted to radiate pompous authority in
a dime-store cowboy hat. “But it’ll get crowded once the rest of the
contestants arrive. We have to keep it organized so no one gets blocked in.”
Shawnee gave him the closest thing she had to a polite smile.
“Well, then, there’s no problem.
I’m with the stock contractor. I’ll be here for the duration.”
“Oh. Then you belong over there.” The skinnier of the pair gave a
dramatic wave of his stick, toward where the two Jacobs Livestock semis, an
elderly travel trailer, and Cole’s rig were lined up near the stock pens. There
wasn’t a tree within fifty yards.
“I don’t think so.” Shawnee turned off the pickup and opened her
door, nearly clipping the big guy’s chin with the side-view mirror.
They both jumped back, then blustered along behind her as she
strolled to the rear of the trailer to unload her horses. “You can’t just pull
in and take the best parking spot!”
“Why not? My horses and I will be here all week. The contestants
will come and go in half a day, at most.” She flipped the latch on the back
door and swung it open. The flea-bitten gray in the rear stall cranked his head
around to show her the whites of his eyes. Shawnee stepped aside and waited,
holding the door wide.
“But…” Skinny began, then faltered, as if he wasn’t sure where to
go with it.
“We got rules,” Beer Gut announced. “Contestants park where we
tell them to park.”
“I repeat, I’m not a contestant.” A few tentative thuds sounded
inside the trailer as the gray attempted to find reverse gear in the confined
space. “And if I were you, I’d take a step back.”
The big guy stepped closer. “Listen, missy—”
Whatever wisdom he intended to impart was cut short by a clatter
and a bang that rocked the entire trailer, then a huge thud as the gray took
one big leap and missed the back edge of the trailer floor with both hind feet.
His rear legs buckled from the twelve-inch drop that took him by surprise every
single time. He plopped onto his ass, nearly squashing Beer Gut. The gray
teetered on his haunches, looking shocked and perplexed, then flopped over onto
his side. Shawnee caught the halter rope as the horse scrambled up and stood,
legs splayed, quivering as if he wasn’t sure the ground would hold him.
“He has issues,” she told the goggle-eyed parking attendants.
Among them, she suspected, a total lack of long-term memory. Or short-term
common sense. The horse snorted and Beer Gut stuck out a hand to ward him off.
Shawnee slapped the halter rope into his palm. “Hold that, would
you?”
He blanched like she’d tossed him a live cottonmouth.
She didn’t wait for an answer, just stepped up into the trailer to
trip the latch on the stall divider and release the second horse, a sorrel who
eyed her doubtfully, then began feeling his way backward. At the edge, he
extended one foot and waved it around, searching for solid ground. When he
found it, he eased on down.
“Here.” She tossed that halter rope to the skinny guy.
He fumbled to grab it, dropping his pretty orange stick. “Now,
wait just a minute—”
Shawnee went to the front of the trailer and tripped the last
latch. Her good buckskin, Roy, paused long enough to let her scratch his
forelock, then ambled out of the trailer and calmly surveyed the latest of the
innumerable stops they’d made together. Shawnee tied him on the shady side of
the trailer and went to retrieve the other two.
Beer Gut practically threw the halter rope at her. “Look, lady. We
already said you can’t park here.”
“And I asked why.” Shawnee persuaded the gray that the grass
wasn’t actually quicksand laced with alligators and dragged him around to tie
him next to Roy. “You haven’t given me a reason, other than that rules are rules bullshit.”
Beer Gut puffed up like an angry toad. “We were given our orders
by the committee president. We have full authority to tow any vehicle in
violation.”
“Is that right?” Shawnee did a quick scan and located the rodeo
office, a small white building to the left of the bucking chutes. “Let’s just
go have a chat with him, shall we?”
She strode away without looking back, ignoring both the outraged
squawking and, “Wait! What am I supposed to do with this horse?”
***
Cole heard the sound of agitated voices, closing in fast. Katie
scrambled to attention as the office door burst open, framing the female
version of a Tasmanian devil—glittering eyes, wild hair, and a wide, malicious
grin. One of the parking attendants huffed up behind her. Over their shoulders
Cole spotted a second, skinnier guy holding a lead rope and standing well back
from a sorrel horse that regarded him with equal distrust.
The parking attendant shoved into the office, his face
frighteningly flushed, and zeroed in on Cole. “You’re the contractor, right?
Jacobs?”
“Yes,” Cole admitted reluctantly.
“Well, this one—” The attendant jabbed a thumb at Shawnee, who
gave a cheesy finger wave. “She claims she works for you, but she won’t park in
your area.”
“I’m happier with the contestants. And shade. But if you insist—”
She flashed Cole a smile so loaded with sugar it made his teeth ache. “I
noticed there’s an open spot right next to you. I suppose I can move if I have
to.”
He’d rather do CPR on the entire parking staff. Cole drew in a
deep, supposedly calming breath. “Leave her be.”
Shawnee made a triumphant so there noise.
The parking attendant muttered and growled, but turned on his heel
and marched off, leaving his bug-eyed partner to deal with the horse, which
Cole assumed must belong to the natural disaster now surveying the office like
she couldn’t decide what to destroy next.
Cole heaved a beleaguered sigh and gestured toward the rest of the
crew lounging around the office. “Everyone, meet Shawnee Pickett.”
***
KARI LYNN DELL brings a lifetime of
personal experience to writing western romance. She is a third-generation
rancher and rodeo competitor who works on the family ranch in northern Montana,
inside the Blackfeet Nation. She exists in a perpetual state of horse-induced
poverty along with her husband, Max and Spike the (female) Cowdogs, a few
hundred cows and a son who resides on the same general segment of the autism
spectrum as Cole Jacobs and doesn’t believe names should be gender-limited.
Snag your copy of Tougher in Texas now!
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