Cash (Lucky River Ranch, #1)

by Jessica Peterson

If Garrett were still alive, we’d be in an ATV at this hour. Too hot to be on horseback if you don’t need to be. Probably over by the bend in the Colorado River that marks the western boundary of Lucky Ranch. We’d be surveying wildlife, maybe, or casting a line in a shady spot. Garrett loved the river. Almost as much as he loved hunting, nineties country, and spicy ranch waters. But he loved nothing more than the daughter he talked about often, but who never came to see him. Why the fuck did he say he was leaving Lucky Ranch to me if his will said something different? We talked constantly about the ranch’s future. He was obsessed with the place. Like me, ranching was in his blood. His granddaddy bought the first ten thousand acres that eventually became Lucky Ranch back in the early 1900s. It’s been in the Luck family ever since. Garrett took me under his wing when I was 19, right after my parents died. I’d dropped out of college to care for my four younger brothers and run our family’s ranch. He helped me set everything to rights. Even if that did mean selling off every last steer and spare tractor tire to pay my parents’ debts. I swore I’d restore Rivers Ranch to its former glory one day. But back then, it was about survival. With nothing left for us on our ranch, Garrett hired my brothers and me to work on his. It was fair pay, plus we got room and board. We couldn’t afford the upkeep on our family’s house on Rivers Ranch, so being able to live in the cushy bunkhouse Ga...