Free Learning To Love (Contemporary Cowboy Romance) (Carson Hill Ranch series:Book 1) by Amelia Rose

off this wedding idea of his father’s for as long as possible. Long enough, hopefully, that she’d get tired of waiting and head back to wherever it was his father had found her. Ladies like her didn’t belong out here, especially not ones who made hungry field hands who’d been up working since before dawn stand when she entered a room and eat with their elbows off the table. Meals weren’t about social niceties, they were about getting enough food into you to hold you until the next meal, with hours and hours of back-breaking, sometimes life-threatening, work in between.
                  But there was one thing Casey knew a city girl could do for this ranch, and that was give Bernard something to do. The old man was really feeling the strain of being cooped up inside his own house, a house that he helped build with his own two hands in his younger days. There aren’t many people on this planet who could have done what Bernard Carson had accomplished; if he wanted to spend his retired days being fawned over by a delicate daughter-in-law and bouncing grandbabies on his knee, that was not too much to ask after the decades of hard work he’d put into the ranch. And that work was all going to be left to his sons. Maybe it wasn’t too much to ask that those sons show some gratitude by leaving the man a family legacy.
                  Casey shook off the thought and returned to the tack room to saddle his horse. He had fifty miles to cover before lunch break, and he was doing it on only a couple hours’ sleep, thanks to that frilly girl and her stupid suitcases. Casey couldn’t believe his father actually made him go back out in the dark and retrieve them, like they wouldn’t have still been sitting there in the morning. It was no concern of his if she had to wear the same clothes two days in a row. Hell, half the men out here only owned two shirts and they wore them for a solid week at a time.
                  “Well, look who’s able to walk around today,” Jack called out with a leer in Casey’s direction. “I’d a thought you wouldn’t be able to get outta bed today, what with that pretty little woman of yours keepin’ you up all night.”
                  “Close your mouth, Jack. You and I don’t have anything to say about that. Besides, she’s not my wife and I didn’t sleep with her.” Casey kept walking toward his horse, reaching down the brush from where it hung on a nail inside the barn. He began scrubbing down his horse’s flanks, readying it for the saddle for the long morning ride.
                  “Well, hell, if you ain’t got her in the bed her yet, I’m happy to step in, get her all ready for ya,” Jack offered spitefully, laughing with some of the other men working among the stalls.
                  Casey balled both fists and stomped in Jack’s direction, suddenly not too proud to beat a man who had to be at least fifty years old. For his part, Jack threw both hands in the air in surrender and took a step back.
                  “Don’t go gettin’ defensive now, young ‘un, I’d hate to have to put you in your place in front of all these men. Remember, you might be up for ownin’ this ranch one day, and when that day comes, you’re gonna need ranch hands who are loyal to you. You don’t wanna go pissin’ on the men who are gonna care for your cattle and drive your herd, or accidents could happen,” Jack hinted through clenched teeth.
                  “Any ‘accident’ that happens around here is going to involve your head under some stampeding hooves. You’re not the only man who knows how to spook a horse until it throws its rider,” Casey whispered in Jack’s face, reminding the foreman of the suspicious death of a new ranch hand last year, his accusation thick in his words. “And ‘that woman’ is my future wife. You don’t touch her, you don’t look at her, and you