The Cowboy's Lucky Hand
(2026)(The fifth book in the Worthingtons Bluff Cowboys series)
A novel by Ember Nash
She heard him say she wasn't his type.Seven months later, she's living in his house.
Cassie Jones is good at starting over. Cheyenne, Chicago, Sacramento, Wyoming — she's done it four times. Pack the truck. Build a careful life. Don't let anyone close enough to leave a mark.
The plan was working. She had her cabin, her job at Worthington Holdings, her plant on the windowsill. She had a senior role lined up in New York that would carry her cleanly out of Wyoming come February.
Then Simon Miller's cousin called him at three in the afternoon and three children showed up at his ranch by nightfall.
Now Cassie's making lunches for kids who aren't hers. Braiding ten-year-old hair. Cataloguing seven-year-old rocks. Sleeping ten feet down the hall from a man whose laugh has been landing in places she can't control since the night they met.
She's done this before. She fell in love with two girls in Sacramento and walked off a front step at six in the morning with two garbage bags and a cab she couldn't pay for. She's not doing it again.
Temporary. Professional. Manageable.Three words she's repeating until she believes them.
The trouble is Simon Miller is the steadiest man she's ever met. He makes her coffee every morning. He fixes the gate hinge before she asks. He looks at her across the dinner table like she's part of the picture, and she's letting herself look back, and the wall she built out of seven words at a fence line is starting to crack.
He doesn't know she heard him say them. He doesn't know why she went cold seven months ago. He thinks the distance is just her.
She has four months. A contract on the desk. A door she's keeping open.
The question isn't whether she's leaving.
The question is whether anyone's going to ask her to stay.
Genre: Romance
Cassie Jones is good at starting over. Cheyenne, Chicago, Sacramento, Wyoming — she's done it four times. Pack the truck. Build a careful life. Don't let anyone close enough to leave a mark.
The plan was working. She had her cabin, her job at Worthington Holdings, her plant on the windowsill. She had a senior role lined up in New York that would carry her cleanly out of Wyoming come February.
Then Simon Miller's cousin called him at three in the afternoon and three children showed up at his ranch by nightfall.
Now Cassie's making lunches for kids who aren't hers. Braiding ten-year-old hair. Cataloguing seven-year-old rocks. Sleeping ten feet down the hall from a man whose laugh has been landing in places she can't control since the night they met.
She's done this before. She fell in love with two girls in Sacramento and walked off a front step at six in the morning with two garbage bags and a cab she couldn't pay for. She's not doing it again.
Temporary. Professional. Manageable.Three words she's repeating until she believes them.
The trouble is Simon Miller is the steadiest man she's ever met. He makes her coffee every morning. He fixes the gate hinge before she asks. He looks at her across the dinner table like she's part of the picture, and she's letting herself look back, and the wall she built out of seven words at a fence line is starting to crack.
He doesn't know she heard him say them. He doesn't know why she went cold seven months ago. He thinks the distance is just her.
She has four months. A contract on the desk. A door she's keeping open.
The question isn't whether she's leaving.
The question is whether anyone's going to ask her to stay.
Genre: Romance
Used availability for Ember Nash's The Cowboy's Lucky Hand