Welcome at Henderson's Ranch E-Book

M. L. Buchman

• Herausgeber: Buchman Bookworks, Inc.
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2017

Beschreibung

-a Henderson’s Ranch Big Sky romance story- Freelance journalist Colleen McMurphy finds her Irish penname far more professional than the Kurva Baisotei her Japanese parents perpetrated upon her at birth. Her “itinerant writer” role fit her deliciously single lifestyle, until an assignment sent her to Montana’s Big Sky Country to write an article about Henderson’s Ranch. Raymond Esterling, summertime cowboy, gratefully forgets his life beyond the prairie, at least for those precious months beneath the Big Sky. But when he meets Colleen, he can’t help but make her Welcome at Henderson’s Ranch.

Leseprobe

Welcome at Henderson’s Ranch

a Henderson’s Ranch romance story

M. L. Buchman

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1

Dateline: August 15, Henderson’s Ranch,

Bloody Nowhere, Montana

Colleen McMurphy could write this article in her sleep, with her keyboard tied behind her back, and…

“The wife and I had such a splendid time there. You simply must go and write us an article about it.” For some reason Larry always went old-school English whenever he got excited—which coming from her Puerto Rican boss who lived in Seattle seemed to be almost normal for Colleen’s life.

He, of course, was too busy being Mr. Hotshot Editor to write it himself. That and he couldn’t write his way out of a martini glass. He was one of the best editors she’d ever worked for—and as a freelancer that had included a suckload of them—but his twelve-year-old daughter could write new material better than he could. Hillary was named for Sir Edmund of Mt. Everest fame and just might follow her namesake at the rate she was being amazing. She was a precocious little twerp who was so delightful that she made Colleen feel grossly inadequate half the time and totally charmed the other three-quarters.

So, off to Montana it was. Magazine feature article—she was on it.

The most recent in a cascade of ever-shrinking planes banged onto the runway in Great Falls, Montana clicking all Colleen’s vertebrae together with a whip-like snap that surprisingly failed to paralyze her. A Japan Airlines 747 had lofted her from the family home in Tokyo to LAX. The smallest 737 ever made hopped her up to Salt Lake, and a wing-flapping 18-seater express fluttered as hopelessly as a just-fledged swallow to Great Falls. If there’d been another plane that was any smaller, they were going to have to put her in a bento box.

But finally she was here in…major sigh…Nowhere, Montana.

She’d used this job as an excuse to cut the two-week trip home in half. Two weeks! With her family? What had she been thinking? She was going to have a serious talk with her sense of filial duty before it dragged her from Seattle back to Japan again.

Outside the miniature plane’s windows the airport stretched away pancake-flat and dusty. Four whole jetways, the place was smaller than a bento box. But their plane didn’t pull up to any of them—because it was too short to reach. Instead, it stopped near the terminal and the copilot dropped the door open, filling the cabin with the familiar bite of spent engine fumes and slowing propeller roar. She’d spent the whole final flight glaring out at the spinning blades directly outside her window, waiting for one to break off, punch through the window, and slice her in two like one of Larry’s martini olives.

“Enough!” she told herself so loudly that it made the fat-boy businessman—who’d made the near-fatal mistake of trying to chat her up across the tiny aisle—jump in alarm. Twenty hours and nine minutes in flight didn’t usually make her this grouchy. Her parents did though.

“Why did you change your name?” Because everyone in America would laugh their faces off calling her Kurva—for the Hokkaido mulberry tree you conceived me under, much too much information by the way. It especially doesn’t translate so well for a girl who is Japanese flat. Besides there isn’t an American alive who can say Baisotei properly. Kurva Baisotei was not a moneymaking byline.

Then, not “When are you going to get married?” but rather “Why do you not give us grandchildren like your sister?” My sister has three. How insatiable are you as grandparents?

“Why do you not return home?” Because you live here.

“Ma’am?” Fat-boy was waiting for her to get out of her seat first. Maybe because he needed the full width of the tiny plane, or maybe he was just being nice. She was about to step back on American soil—even if it was Montana—so she gave him the benefit of the doubt and offered a “Thanks” with a smile that hopefully he didn’t read as encouraging.