My Cowboy Promises
(The Cowboys Series, Book #4)
By Z.A. Maxfield
Blurb:
A real man needs a real love…
To become the man he’s meant to be, one cowboy will have to be the man he never wanted anyone to know he was…
Ryder Dent is a true-blue cowboy. A devoted son, husband and father, but one who is living a costly lie. When they were both young, Ryder and his closest female friend Andy thought they’d found the perfect solution to both their problems—she was single and pregnant, and he was secretly gay—so they got married and raised Jonas together.
When Ryder gets hurt at a party, his son’s new pediatrician comes to the rescue. The connection between Ryder and Dr. Declan Winters is sudden, powerful, and undeniable. Ryder loves Andy and the family they’ve created together—but they both need more. Can they pursue their hearts’ desire without destroying the life they’ve built and losing the son they love?
What’s my favorite scene in My Cowboy Promises?
Blog posts are a great opportunity to share a favorite scene! In this one, Ryder has gone to see how Declan’s pretty, hundred-year-old house survived a storm. The power is out, and Declan invites him in for a drink. Once there, Ryder finds out Declan isn’t exactly the super healthy eater he pretends to be:
“How long does the power usually stay out? Long enough for my food to go bad?” The food in question was all arranged in neat containers and labeled by date. Practically everything said “Natural” or “Organic” or “Non-GMO.” Even his beer looked wholesome.
I took the bottle he handed over and borrowed an opener to pry off the cap. It was crisp. Rich. Hoppy. The beer I normally drank didn’t compare. “The power usually doesn’t stay off for too long, but you never know. Best to only open the icebox as much as you need to. Your food will stay cold for a while.”
“Icebox.” He smiled around the neck of his bottle as he took a sip. “That’s quaint. Maybe you’d better stay and help me eat some of it. I have ice cream.”
“I thought you were some kind of health nut.”
He shrugged. “There’s healthy and then there’s sacred. What kind do you want?” He opened the door to his freezer and pulled out one of the three gallon–sized vanilla ice-cream drums he had sitting on the shelves.
“Uh . . . vanilla?” I guessed. “I gotta say I didn’t have you figured for a vanilla man, Doc, but vanilla is good.”
“You have much to learn, youngling.” His grin was indulgent.
“Me? You’re the one with three gallons of white ice cream.”
“Oh ye of little faith.” He winked at me as he opened a cupboard full of syrups and candies and marshmallows and nuts—the fake hippie f*cker. “Let’s mix up a few concoctions before we lose the light, shall we?”
“When you say concoctions—”
“I mean, what do you like in your ice cream? I like honey-roasted peanuts, fudge sauce, peanut butter, and chocolate chips.”
“Oh wow. I’ll have that.”
“Eeeeexcellent.” He said the word like a cartoon villain. “Let us begin your training. Bwah-ha-ha.”
He took out a big glass mixing bowl and got to work, mashing in handfuls of ingredients with a pair of oversized spoons.
“The trick,” he said seriously, “is to mix it roughly, so you get mouthfuls of everything separately. You’ll see what I mean. It’s an art, not a science.”
“Where did you learn to do this?”
“You don’t learn to do this. You’re born to do it. When you’re eleven, you get a letter in the mail inviting you to go to a special school you can only reach through a portal in the freezer section of a grocery store in Nova Scotia. Didn’t you get yours?”
“Nope.”
“Bummer. You’re an ice-cream muggle.” He shook his head sadly. “I’ll bet you never even knew there was a world outside your drab little ice-cream sandwich existence.”
“And now I wonder how I’ve lived this long.”
He offered me one of his spoons and we ate from the same huge bowl. The flavors were astounding. Salt and honey and roasted peanuts, rich chocolate fudge, and peanut butter. Ice cold, tiny bittersweet chocolate chips crunched between my molars. It was a delicious mess, but what I loved most was the easy way Declan talked to me—as though he’d found a way to forgive me for my bizarre behavior and was willing to give me a second chance.
“So where are Andi and Jonas tonight?”
“They’re out at the Rocking C. They still have power out there so they’re going to let Sterling and Elena spoil them with good food and video games.”
He put his spoon down. “How come you didn’t stay out there with them?”
“I wanted to check on the shop. I couldn’t get through on the phone.” He had dot of chocolate sauce on his chin that begged to be kissed off. I agonized over it, finally ignoring it out of sheer cussed anxiety that doing the wrong thing would get me tossed out of his good graces forever.
He licked it off himself, and I thought I’d die of envy. “You could head back there. Spend the night with them. It’s not that far.”
“I need to be at work early in the morning even if the lights don’t go on.” My gaze fell to the ice cream on my spoon then went back up to his lips. “I’m staying in town.”
A long pause. Neither of us moved. He whispered my name. “Ryder?”
“Yes?”
“Do you want to spend the night with me?”
As all the blood drained from my head, the kitchen seemed to tilt. “Yes. I would like that very much.”
hottest guy I ever saw was playing “Pop Goes the Weasel” on the piano while
fifteen cagey preschoolers circled fourteen chairs. My father-in-law’s annual
Fourth of July shindig—the biggest event of the year—was a family picnic. We’d
set aside a play area for the littlest kids and I’d volunteered to supervise,
but the piano man blindsided me and I nearly missed an outrageous hair- pulling
incident.
a too bright pair of headlights on a moonless night, he was all I could see.
Calder Hamilton—a cartoon bear of a man with a white handlebar mustache—snuck
up on me with one of those painful backslapping man hugs.
Dent, you son of a bitch. Which one is your boy?”
Jonas.” I pointed out my son. “Blue plaid shirt, cowboy hat. Crass determination
to win?”
know that look, I see it every day when I look in the mirror. But how can that
be him? Last time I saw him he was half that size.”
do people always say that? Is it some rite of passage? Am I going to be
surprised kids grow someday too? “We had to buy him a new pair of cowboy boots
just last week.”
a fine-looking boy. Where’s Andrea?”
doesn’t come to these things to hang around with me.” I glanced toward the
windows. “You’ll find her wherever there’s dancing.”
leaves you in charge of Jonas?”
yeah. Andi’s the social one. She likes to kick up her heels and I don’t mind if
she wants to have some fun.”
have you met our new doctor yet? Isn’t he something? I have never seen anyone
play piano like that.”
Weasel” like a Russian folk dance, all the while yelling Hai! Hai,! Hai! Hai! The music stopped and the chaos
started. Jonas ended up on another chair.
Team Jonas!” I pumped my fist like a goofball.
Go, boy, go!” Hamilton was already tipsy enough to be unaware he was shouting
right in my ear. It didn’t matter; I was going deaf from all the kids squealing
anyway. “I’d like to ask your help with something.”
thing, Mayor. Shoot.”
need you and your family in a campaign ad”
family?” Good grief.
Bitterroot’s founding fathers would shit in their graves at such an idea. “I don’t think we’d make a very
good ad.”
He punched my arm. “You and Andrea are both attractive. Jonas is a cute kid.
You had to make some tough choices in the beginning, but look where you are
now.”
. . . I don’t think—”
need a family exactly like yours to represent my
campaign to the twenty-somethings. I need them to believe they’re important to
me.”
Andi? My
stomach did a full 360, front to back, as if I was on a Six Flags ride. Mayor
Hamilton wanted some picture-frame perfect family, and we were not it. Plus, we
hadn’t exactly voted for him. “I’ll ask Andi about it, but—”
dad just told me he’s backing me all the way again this next election.”
he?” That figures. Her dad
likes politicians to owe him.
“So you just tell her you’re
doing it, okay?”
I’ll mention it, but—”
wife, Sally, came up to collect him. “C’mon Cowboy. There’s someone I want you
to meet.”
grabbed his hand and, after a good-natured tug-of-war, they left together. I
breathed again. Andi’s dad ran one of the most successful ranches in the area.
If he wanted to see my family on a billboard, I’d have to figure a way to get
out of it or learn to say “cheese.”
was pretty hard to say no to Sterling Chandler. I’m not sure he understood the
word.
new doc managed to make “Pop Goes the Weasel” sound like a funeral dirge and
the children all lurched around like little zombies. Then he turned it into a
raucous honkytonk song.
was this guy?
got eliminated fourth from last but he wasn’t crushed by the loss. His
attention shifted right away to the buffet, where the cater-waiters had
installed several trays of Texas-sized cookies, all colored with red, white,
and blue sugar crystals in honor of the holiday.
Chairs, the Survivor edition, came down to two particularly crafty-looking
femme fatales. One wore a jeans skirt, cowboy boots, and a pretty white blouse,
and the other had on a daisy-printed sundress with lacy socks and jelly shoes.
Lacy socks girl won by body-checking white blouse girl out of the way and
pouncing on the last chair. She gripped the seat so tight with both hands no
one could get her off it.
new doc consoled the runner-up with a box of big-block Legos and gave the
winner a play set with pink and purple Ponies but it seemed she thought she was
getting the chair as her prize. Eventually her mom pried her up and they all
wandered off to join the party outside.
Winters was left to tidy up. I figured I ought to help, being family and all.
Plus, it might get me out of small talk outside.
the doc was the best looking man I had ever seen up close. I was bound to mess
up and say something super stupid, and Andi was going to hear about it, and
then she was going to tease me for the rest of my life, because she was just
waiting for me to lose my shit over some guy.
Doc Winters, M.D., The Yankee Doodler?
be the guy.
Cowboys!
i cant wait to read this book..congrats
Loved the blurb. I have not read this one yet it is on my must read list.
I loved both excerpts! Thanks for the giveaway.