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❤️ MARRIAGE OF CONVENIENCE ALERT! ❤️ "First, her Highland steer nearly gores him. Then she embarrasses him at a wedding. Now Smith and Abrielle have one week to decide if they can stand each other long enough for a lifetime marriage of convenience. Enemies-to-lovers meets small-town charm!" One week. One ranch. Two wounded hearts. ✨ Excerpt: Was that a pig? Smith Long looked out from under the brim of his cowboy hat. Yup. It was definitely a pig waddling up the sidewalk of…he racked his brain. What was the name of this rinky-dink town in North Dakota again? His aunt had lived here all her life, but it was barely a dot on the map. Sweet Water. That was it. He looked again. Yup, it was a pig. Its hind end swung back and forth as it made its way up the sidewalk. It was early May, but at least the sidewalk was clear, the snow melted away for the winter. He remembered various times over the years visiting his aunt where there had been snow on the sidewalk in May. Even at a young age, he remembered thinking who in the world would want to live in a town that had snow in May? Someone who had lost everything and had nowhere else to go. That’s you. Slapping his leg, he adjusted the brim of his hat and stepped around his pickup. He couldn’t resist one last glance at the pig before he stepped up on the curb, right in front of Patty’s Diner. The new community center—new to him, although it had been built for a decade or so—was around here somewhere, and his great-aunt April would be there with her crafting group. They had a funny name for themselves, but he couldn’t remember that either. He supposed he spent a lot of his life focused on himself and not really paying attention to the people around him. That was why he couldn’t remember the name of the town or the name of the crafting group, and it could possibly be part of the reason why his wife had left him. It wasn’t the reason he had lost everything, though. Maybe his mind drifted a little, thinking about the things he’d done, and the decisions he made, and the one that still haunted him. He believed someone who had said they believed in him, and he trusted them far more than he should have. His line of thinking was brought up short, though, as what he would have sworn was a woolly mammoth—but he was pretty sure they were extinct, so it couldn’t have been—went flying by him. The tip of its horn just grazed his T-shirt right over his abs. If he’d been wearing a winter jacket, it would have hooked him. It was going full speed ahead after the pig. He sighed. Small towns. They always had those quirky things, didn’t they? Not that he’d spent much time in them. After being in the military, he settled in Raleigh, a nice, warm southern city, and started his own business. More aware of his surroundings, he took his eyes from the cow and looked back from whence it had come. Perhaps there was something else that was just waiting to run him over. He was glad he had looked. A woman, long brown hair streaming out behind her in curly waves, her face set in determined lines, her arms pumping as her feet slapped the sidewalk, raced forward, every line of her body straining to go faster. Smith almost grunted. This woman had a lot to answer for. He could have been killed by the horn that had—he looked down at his T-shirt to confirm his suspicion—poked a hole in his attire. “Excuse me,” he said, his drawl a little more pronounced, as it always was when he forced the politeness that had been stamped into him from birth. It always came out when he was hiding his emotions. At the same time he spoke, he stepped into the woman’s path. She took another three steps before she realized he wasn’t moving. She screeched to a halt, her arms flailing, her face lifting, moving from a determined frown to an annoyed grimace. “Excuse me. I need to catch that cow.” “Your cow almost caught me.” He pointed a finger at his T-shirt. Maybe the people of Sweet Water needed to catch up with the twentieth century, where people didn’t allow their animals to roam freely on the sidewalks and think that it was perfectly okay. He knew someone who was new in town probably shouldn’t ride in on the first day expecting to change everything, but this could be, quite literally, a matter of life and death. The woman looked at his T-shirt, the annoyance not leaving her face as she squinted. He thought, but couldn’t prove it, of course, that she might have been exaggerating her squint. “I’m sorry. I need a magnifying glass to see whatever it is you’re pointing at.” Smith managed to keep his lips from twitching. He liked a woman with a little spirit. Not that he was interested in a woman. “Nice. Sweet Water has entered the glass age, at long last.” Maybe that date thing was a little bit mean, a little hit to all the small towns that always had so much trouble leaving the past behind, and he must have poked this woman right where she was sensitive, because her lips tightened even more, and her back straightened like someone had jammed a rod down her backbone. “You can make fun of small towns all you want. There was no glass age.” “I’m sorry. You are correct. But there was definitely an age when people decided it was a bad idea to allow their animals to run all over town, and they kept them fenced in. Sweet Water hasn’t gotten to that age yet, apparently.” He raised his brows, annoyed that she hadn’t seemed to care about the tear in his T-shirt and the fact that someone could have gotten seriously hurt because of her animal running wild on the streets. “Spoken like someone who’s never owned an animal in his life before. If you had, you’d know that occasionally, despite your best intentions, they do get loose.” “Maybe you should have something more solid in your business plan than best intentions.” Best intentions were worthless without actual actions to back them up. And an ironclad, signed contract. He knew that from experience. “You must make friends everywhere you go with your honeyed words and happy compliments.” The woman looked like she was going to roll her eyes but stopped herself just in time. Back in the day, he was always happy. A bit of a goof-off even. He had a lot of fun with his buddies in the Air Force. He’d been serious when he needed to be, but he’d been able to cut loose with the best of them. But life had shown him that most of the time, the universe was conspiring against him, and if the universe wasn’t, the opposite gender was. He couldn’t really remember any woman ever being a faithful friend without an ulterior motive. Not even his mother. Certainly not this woman, who thought she owned the entire town and could allow her animals to run wild. “I’m not trying to make friends with everyone. I’m just trying to keep people safe. To keep them from being gored by runaway bulls charging through town.” “He’s not a bull; he’s a steer.” “Whatever. He put this hole in my shirt. Another couple of inches, and I’d be picking my intestines up off the ground.” “I suppose at that point, you’d still find the energy to lecture me, even if I offered to help you,” the woman muttered. “I wouldn’t want you to help me. You’d probably walk off with them.” “I can promise you, I’m not after your intestines.” “I wasn’t sure whether Sweet Water was in the selling body parts business or not.” The woman’s lips flattened. “Black hearts aren’t going for anything.” “I figured you’d know the market value of them if anyone would.” Get it HERE: https://www.amazon.com/Flyboys-Sweet-Briar-Collection-Dakota-ebook/dp/B0D1WF98Z1/?maas=maas_adg_B6B9D9060F5087AF0FBF20AFE695C245_afap_abs&ref_=aa_maas&tag=maas #RedemptionArc #SmallTownMeddling #HealingJourney