The Entire (Unedited) First Chapter of Misplaced Cowboy

I gave you the first chapter of Muscle for Hire last week, one of my upcoming Samhain releases, so today I thought I’d give you the first chapter of Misplaced Cowboy, one of my upcoming Ellora’s Cave releases (and the second book in the Foreign Affairs series I’m co-writing with Mari Carr. Squee! How cool is that??)

It’s totally untouched by my editor (the fabulous Kelli Collins) so please excuse all mistakes and typos. I promise they won’t be there in the published version. Honest *grin*

***

Chapter One

New York

 

Dylan Sullivan gazed up at the Empire State Building towering a thousand feet above him and thought, Bugger. I’m lost.

He considered going with the tried and true “I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore, Toto” but seeing as he’d never been to the U.S. before now, let alone Kansas, and he didn’t have a little yappy dog prancing around his feet, he decided it was both clichéd and inappropriate.

Dylan’s chest squeezed tight. His dog—Mutt—was on the other side of the world, probably curled up asleep in the back of Dylan’s pickup on the cattle station he and his brother ran. Either that or causing havoc with the wild kangaroos that kept seeking out water around the main house. The fact Mutt was not at his side, a place the dog spent pretty much every minute of the day when Dylan was working, just drove home the point even further that Dylan was out of his comfort zone. Way out.

An Australian stockman had no place being in America. None at all. Especially one who didn’t own anything to wear except faded blue jeans, worn dress boots, and flannel shirts.

Reaching up, Dylan removed his hat—a thoroughly beat-up, well-worn Akrubra—and dragged his fingers through his hair. Fair dinkum, even his hat was a give away he was a fish out of water.

What the bloody hell had he been thinking flying to America?

What had you been thinking? You’d been thinking about Annie. About finally meeting her face to face. About seeing if she smelt as good as you think she does. About finding out if her lips were as soft as they looked…

Yeah, that’s what he’d been thinking. Of course, when he’d touched down at JFK International Airport, Annie had been a no-show. Which left Dylan, well…screwed.

Turning away from the Empire State Building, he surveyed the mass of people swarming around him. It had seemed like a good idea at the time to leave the airport. Annie hadn’t arrived but that didn’t mean she’d stood him up. After a few months of talking on the net, he figured her to be a pretty decent woman. Not the kind to leave a man in the lurch after agreeing to this cross-global meeting. Hell, she’d been all for the challenge of a city girl and a country boy facing off and he’d told her what flight he was coming in on in his last email. But the moment he’d debarked the plane, things had started going wrong.

He didn’t believe in omens, not like Aunt Joyce back home who wouldn’t leave her home if she saw a row of ducks break formation, but when he’d gone to collect his luggage—one solitary duffle bag—and found it missing, he should have suspected things weren’t going as planned.

After two hours of waiting for Annie, of standing in a busy airport surrounded by people who all looked like they were in a major rush, some who gave him curious sideward glances, some who passed whispers after casting him in head-to-toe glances, he’d decided to brave the unknown world beyond the glass doors and seek her out. He had her address. Perhaps there was something wrong? A problem preventing her getting to the airport?

A traffic jamb had brought the cab to a problem however before he could make it to Annie’s apartment. Determined not to wait in the stuffy vehicle, he’d elected to walk the rest of the way.

He hadn’t expected a doorman who wouldn’t let him pass. Why would he? He’d spent his entire life on Farpoint Creek cattle station, a place half the size of Texas and roughly a thousand kilometers from Australia’s closest high-rise apartment complex.

The man, a round and somewhat squishy bloke decked out in a burgundy suit complete with gold buttons and matching cap, stood in Dylan’s path, staring up at him with unwavering determination. “I’m sorry, sir.” He shook his head, his American accent only serving to highlight how disconnected Dylan felt from everything he knew. “But Ms Prince is not in residence and I cannot let you pass.”

Dylan frowned, his exhausted brain telling him he’d missed something really important in the man’s statement. “Sorry? What did you say?”

The man straightened a little more. “Ms. Prince is not home.”

Dylan let out a ragged sigh. He removed his hat, raked his fingers through his hair and returned the damn thing to his head. Not home? Maybe she was at the airport waiting for him after all? Was it possible they’d just crossed paths? “Do you know when she will be back?”

If possible, the doorman snapped his spine straighter. Dylan wondered for a jet-lagged second if the bloke thought he was going to throw a crocodile or something at him. “I cannot divulge that information, sir. Now, if you will please step away from the door?”

There was a threat in the words. Even in his tired state, Dylan could hear it. Or a promise: Walk away from the door before I call the authorities.

Dylan walked away from the door. It wasn’t in his nature to back down, but he’d come to New York to meet Annie Prince, the woman he’d been…flirting…with for three months on the net, not start an International conflict between Australia and the US.

Crossing to the side of the building’s double glass doors, he leaned his back against the cool marble stonewall. He’d wait it out. Wherever Annie was, she’d come back, find him there—the unmistakable Aussie stockman in a sea of suave New Yorkers—laugh at his obvious fish-out-of-waterness and then they’d go inside and see if they had the same chemistry in the flesh that they did online.

A lifetime on Farpoint Creek had, if nothing else, taught him patience.

Forty-five minutes later the doorman stormed over to him, squishy face set in a menacing glare. “Listen, buddy—”

Dylan stuck out his hand. “Dylan Sullivan.”

The doorman blinked. Jerked his glare—now a slightly confused glower—to Dylan’s extended hand, and then back up to Dylan’s face. “Err…Tommy. Tommy Taberknackle.”

Dylan gave Tommy a smile and a nod. “G’day, Tommy.”

The doorman blinked again, his hand slipping into Dylan’s.  “I…you shouldn’t be…that is, Ms Prince isn’t…”

A naked, entwined couple moving behind Tommy caught Dylan’s attention.

He frowned, watching the utterly erotic sculpture of a man and a woman making out jiggle across the footpath. Or rather, jiggling in the slim arms of someone he couldn’t quite see. The sculpture stopped on the side of the road. The arms joggled it some more, as a leather-clad and finely boned knee came up to balance it precariously before one of the slim arms waved about in the air. A husky female voice called out, “Taxi!” a fraction of a second before the utterly erotic sculpture tumbled sideways.

Dylan leapt forward. He snared the sculpture—bronze? Was it bronze?—just as it fell from the unseen, husky-voiced woman’s arms.

She spun to face him, a gasp escaping her full lips, black sunglasses hiding her eyes, and then let out a hiccupping laugh as Dylan held up the sculpture for her to see. “Don’t worry, love.” He gave her a lopsided grin. “I got it.”

Those full lips of hers curled into a smile. “Thank you,” she said, her accent subtle and—to Dylan’s ears—very very sexy. She reached out to take the sculpture back but he shook his head.

“It’s alright.” He repositioned the artwork in his arms, definitely bronze judging by its weight and surface temperature and smiled some more. “I’ll keep a hold of it until you get a taxi.”

“Thank you.”

He nodded. “Welcome.” Damn, she was pretty. Even with the sunglasses hiding her eyes he couldn’t help but notice. The kind of pretty that came with a finely structured face, thick black hair that fell about her shoulders in an unruly mass of waves and a turned-up nose just made for dropping a kiss on.

“Are you Australian?”

Dylan grinned. “The hat doesn’t give it away?”

She laughed, the sound warm and relaxed and thoroughly…stimulating. A tight heavy pressure pulled at his groin, making things down there a tad tight. “The hat may have helped. But I have to admit, it was mainly the accent.”

Dylan did his best to ignore the completely unexpected physical reaction to her laugh. “Bugger. I was hoping I’d blend right in around here.”

The woman’s lips twitched. Dylan got the distinct impression her sunglasses-hidden gaze was taking him in from head to toe. “I think,” she leaned forward, like she was sharing a secret, “the chance of you blending in anywhere is fairly remote.”

Dylan’s cock jerked. He swallowed, his grip on her sculpture tightening. His sleep-deprived brain told him she’d just paid him a compliment. His red-blooded male hormones told him just as quickly what to do about that compliment. His common sense however, told him he’d flown halfway around the world to meet with Annie Prince and whoever the woman with the sexy voice, kissable lips, gorgeous mane of hair and all-together too concealing sunglasses was, she sure as hell wasn’t Annie.

He swallowed again, unable to think of a single bloody thing to say.

Fair dinkum, Sullivan. How ‘bout ‘Do you know Annie Prince?’?

Before he could open his mouth, the woman before him said, “So, what’s an Australian cowboy doing in New…”

Her question stopped dead. She stood motionless for a split second, her lips parted, and then pushed those dark sunglasses of hers up onto the top of her head and stared at Dylan with eyes the color of a cloudless summer’s day. “You’re Australian.”

Dylan frowned and nodded. Hadn’t they already established that?

Her blue gaze roamed over him from the tip of his hat, to his boots and back up to his face. “You’re a cowboy.”

“Stockman,” he said. “We’re called stockmen back home. Or graziers. But yeah, I guess over here you’d call me a—”

“Cowboy,” the woman said, an almost breathless quality to her voice. “You’re an Australian cowboy, the Australian cowboy. Although I have to say, Annie was right. There’s nothing boyish about you at all.”

Something hard and hot smashed into Dylan’s chest. “Annie? You know Annie Prince?”

“You’re her Aussie cowboy,” the woman continued, as if Dylan hadn’t said a thing, her gaze taking him all in, her eyebrows knitting in a slight frown. “And you’re here. You’re here and she’s…” Her stare returned to Dylan’s face, her teeth—white and even and perfect—catching her bottom lip.

Dylan’s heart beat faster. “She’s what?”

The woman let out a shaky laugh. “Oh shit, you’re here and Annie is in Australia.”

“She’s where?”

The question burst from Dylan a bit louder than he’d intended. He adjusted his grip on the lovers in his arms, fixing the woman before him with a dumbstruck stare. He knew it was dumbstruck by the way his mouth hung open. If he was back home he’d be catching flies by now. Of course, he wasn’t back home. He was bloody seventeen thousand kilometers away from home. He was on the other side of the bloody world to see a woman he’d met online and now he was being told that woman was back where he’d come from? Fuck a duck, his brother was going to laugh his arse off when he found out.

“She’s in Australia,” the woman not seventeen thousand kilometers away told him, an expression part worry, part mirth playing with her features. “She flew out the yesterday.”

“Why the bloody hell did she do that?”

Once again, Dylan’s voice was louder than he’d intended. Of course, nothing had gone as planned in the last twenty-four hours so why should his voice start toeing the line now?

The woman before him laughed, that deep, throaty laugh that played merry-hell with his senses. If he hadn’t been so gob-smacked by what she was telling him, he was pretty certain it’d play merry-hell with them some more. “She went to meet you.”

 

 

Monet Carmichael knew she shouldn’t be laughing. Nor smiling. The poor cowboy in front of her truly looked like the definition of confusion. But oh boy, what a beautiful definition it was. Okay, not so much that he was confused, but just the way he looked in general. His strong lips and chiseled bone structure, the perfect growth of honey-brown stubble on his jaw and chin, the hat…she’d bet the price of the sculpture he was holding there wasn’t another hat like it in New York and the sculpture he was holding was worth over eight thousand dollars. Every inch of him screamed man. Virile, sexy man. Growing up a dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker meant he was her first, in-the-flesh cowboy and what a cowboy.

Stockman, Monnie. He’s a stockman.

She caught her bottom lip with her teeth again, the junction of her thighs doing a funky little twisty thing she enjoyed very much.

Man was correct. A beautiful man. A goddamn gorgeous, sexy man. Complete with a goddamn gorgeous body his faded jeans and well-worn flannel shirt couldn’t hide at all.

If it wasn’t for the fact he’d flown from Australia to meet her best friend, Monet could quite happily stand still for ever and take him all in.

Preferably in her studio. Naked. Him naked. Her ready to capture his utterly male perfection in clay. Maybe her naked as well. It was her preferred state when she worked with clay after all. Both of them naked. And—

She caught the wildly inappropriate thought before it could form a wildly inappropriate image in her wildly visual mind.

Just.

“Let me get this straight,” the Australian cowboy said, his light green stare doing all sorts of wickedness to Monet’s resolve. Even his eyelashes were perfect. She could imagine drawing each one in charcoal. Imagine even better the way they would feel against her lips as she—

“Annie Prince flew to meet me in Australia yesterday, despite the fact I flew to the US to meet her?”

Once again, Monet caught her lip with her teeth. She nodded. “You sent her an IM with flight details. Well, some flight details. The day, the airline, the arrival time. Although you were wrong by an hour on that one. Her flight didn’t touch down in Sydney until—”

“Wait wait wait.” The cowboy’s confused frown grew deeper, his Australian accent turning the word into a drawling song Monet found quite enjoyable to listen to. “I IM’d her about a Qantas flight to New York. The one I was thinking of getting. And then the next day I emailed her the actual details of the flight I’d booked a seat on.”

Monet blinked. Annie hadn’t said anything about the email. In fact, Monet had been sitting right beside her best friend when she’d bought her airline ticket to Australia, a Qantas flight touching down in Sydney on the day her online Aussie cowboy…friend…had told her. Surely Annie would have known he was flying over to her? How could they get their wires crossed so badly if she hadn’t?

She opened her mouth—to say what to the man she didn’t know—damn, what was his name? Annie had said it enough times over the last few months, but Monet shut her mouth again when the doorman of her building suddenly appeared at the cowboy’s side.

“Everything okay, Ms Carmichael?” Tommy’s gaze flicked back and forth between the Australian and Monet. “Mr. Sullivan’s not giving you—”

Dylan Sullivan!

The cowboy’s name popped into Monet’s head, along with an image of a clean-shaven man without a hat smiling somewhat nervously into a camera.

Monet shook her head, unable to take her gaze from Dylan’s still troubled face. “Everything’s fine, Tommy,” she assured him, even as she compared the beautiful hat-wearing male before her, his stubble as sexy as his accent, his accent as mesmerizing as his eyes, with the clean-cut man in the photo on Annie’s laptop. He looked nothing like that man. Nothing.

“Are you sure?”

She flicked Dylan a quick look, her pulse beating far to fast for her peace of mind. “I’m sure.”

“Cause he was asking about Ms Prince—”

“It’s okay, Tommy.” She cut him off with a smile. “I know Dylan. We were just going to catch a cab to the gallery.”

Dylan blinked.

“Oh.” Tommy nodded. “In that case…” He stepped one foot into the curb and let out a sharp whistle.

Before anyone could say a thing a taxi pulled to a quick halt on the road beside them.

Monet gave her doorman another smile. “Thanks, Tommy.” She opened the back passenger door of the cab and extended an arm towards its grimy interior. “After you, Mr. Sullivan.”

The brim of his hat cast his eyes in shadow, and for a brief moment Monet thought he was going to refuse. And then he grinned, a loose, lopsided grin that got the junction of her thighs all twisted. Again. “I take it the lovers sit between us?”

She nodded. “The lovers do.”

“It’s probably better you better climb in first then, love.”

Her pulse fluttered. Love. Who would have thought she’d get so flustered over such an almost antiquated term. She had a strictly no-pet name policy with all her previous lovers: no babes, or hons, or sweethearts allowed. But the term love coming from Dylan’s lips.

Wait a minute, Monnie. He’s not your lover. He’s potentially Annie’s. So what the hell are you doing contemplating what he calls you?

The thought was unnerving. The whole situation was unnerving. Annie on the other side of the world. Dylan here in New York. Her own reaction to the man.

She dove into the cab before Dylan Sullivan, her best friend’s would-be Aussie cowboy, could see the flush painting her cheeks pink. Or the unexpected desire no doubt shining in her eyes.

Oh boy, this was…inconvenient.

***

So? What did you think? You can find the entire first chapter (edited and perfect) of Misplaced Princess, the first book in the Foreign Affairs series right here at the International Heat blog. Yay! Oh, and you can pre-order Misplaced Princess (which releases the 20th of this month) at Ellora’s Cave, Amazon, Barnes and Noble and just about every other ebook reseller.