Crazy Little Thing Called Love

The West Brothers Series – Book 1 – Zach
& Bluebell

Everyone in Fate, Texas knows that Bluebell
Carter has always been a little bit crazy. There was that time she
colored her hair pink and the time she keyed her boyfriend’s car
not to mention how she up and left town and her daddy in the dust
ten years ago. Rolling back home in an ugly orange bridesmaid dress
was not the reappearance she’d ever planned to make and staying in
town was the last thing she ever thought possible. Then again,
being in Texas does crazy things to her brain (maybe it’s the
heat?) because before she can say “bless your heart” she finds
herself tangled up with a handsome, hard-muscled cowboy.

Zach West earned his hard body the old
fashioned way – lots of hard work on hard Texas land. He’s spent
his life playing the role of responsible West brother, the oldest,
the protector and guardian. His father’s death left him to care for
two younger brothers, a grieving mother and a ranch. He’s had
enough of caring for other people to last a lifetime and zero plans
to add a woman to that list but Bluebell has a way of driving him
nuts that’s impossible to resist. He dreams about her long blonde
hair and even longer legs. She’s pretty enough to drive a man to
drink, to sin… but to love? Now that’s just crazy.

Smashwords Edition

CRAZY LITTLE THING CALLED LOVE

Copyright ©2013 by Jess Bryant.

Cover Art: Image Copyright ©82533550, Oleg
Gekman, 2013,

Used under license from Shutterstock.com

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or
are used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any
resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons,
living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Bluebell Carter had always been a little bit…
crazy. Not insane crazy just… different. Not collecting cats and
never leaving the house crazy but a tad irrational. Like that time
she colored her hair pink just for the heck of it or that time she
keyed her boyfriend’s car or better yet when she up and shipped off
never to be heard from again. Crazy.

Everyone knew good Texas girls sprayed their
hair high to heaven and wore their Wranglers tight but Blue had
never been a good Texas girl. She’d never even tried out for the
cheerleading squad which was just plain wrong. It was Texas after
all, the boys played football and the girls waved pom-poms. It was
bound to be in the bible somewhere.

Still, she’d gotten away with a lot since she
didn’t have her mama there to teach her. Liza Beth Montgomery had
been a real southern lady in her day. She’d been Homecoming Queen
and she’d have competed for Miss Texas if she hadn’t married that
Carter boy straight out of high school. It was no secret that her
daddy hadn’t been happy about her marrying the son of one of his
ranch hands but there was no talking sense into a girl in love.

After their wedding Liza Beth had taken over
the wifely duties at Montgomery Oaks Ranch and set about starting
her family. The little girl that finally came several long and
frustrating years later was the prize of her mama’s eye. She’d
dressed her in pretty pink and set about teaching her the things
any good Texas woman should know.

But when her baby girl was just five years
old Liza Beth, God rest her soul, was killed in a freak rainstorm
that washed the old Haggard bridge out. Her dreams of raising a
beauty queen baby died with her. Her little girl was left to the
care of Lyle Carter and he’d always been better with a herd of
cattle than playing pretty pretty princess.

Everyone knew Lyle had done the best he could
with what God gave him. He hadn’t sunk into the bottle or run away.
He’d pulled up his boot straps and taught his girl what he knew.
Course Blue learned more about branding and calving than etiquette
for meeting the Governor or the proper way to curtsy but he’d
tried.

There had been charm school and lessons.
There had been nannies and tutors. Some of it stuck, most of it
didn’t and Liza Beth’s little girl grew up running wild. Her
mish-mash childhood meant Blue could waltz as well as she could
curse like a ranch hand. She’d never been interested in
cheerleading, beauty pageants or even softball. Bluebell had fallen
from grace and all the townspeople said Liza Beth must’ve turned in
her grave the day her baby girl flipped the town the bird in her
rearview mirror and burned rubber in her old Ford as she headed out
for some fancy university up north.

She left behind her daddy and nobody heard
much from her after that. Rumor was she’d never married which was
just plain sad since she’d always been a pretty girl and landing a
man wasn’t really all that difficult. Even Anna Louise Sanchez who
did collect cats had managed to get a proposal out of Clive
Quentin, bless her heart.

And now Molly McBride was getting married
too. An event like that in a small town like Fate, Texas was news.
Molly marrying some out-of-towner she met at Tech was news. The
size of her dress and her ring was news.

But the biggest news was that Molly had asked
her old BFF from grade school to be one of her bridesmaids and now,
after all those long years away, Bluebell Montgomery Carter would
be walking down the aisle of the First Baptist Church. The gossip
mill was booming with whether she’d bring a man, if she’d packed on
the pounds, if she’d still be a little bit crazy and if she’d even
bother to go see her poor daddy.

Blue hit scan on the dash of her little red
sports car and listened as it did a full loop before coming to stop
on the lone country station once again. Miranda was singing about
setting a cheating ex on fire or something so she left it and
rubbed her eyes. She was getting close; the fact that the radio
could only find one scratchy station on the dial was proof enough
even if she didn’t recognize the sights, which she did.

The flat plains of west Texas hadn’t changed.
Everything out the windshield was brown and dusty. The side of the
road in both directions as far as the eye could see was more empty
hard packed dirt and the occasional wind turbine. This was
home.

Her stomach churned at the idea. She did a
pretty good job of not thinking about it in her daily life but no
matter how hard she tried now there was no escaping the truth. She
was back in Texas. That opened up a whole mixed bag of memories and
feelings she couldn’t escape.

Good memories, like the ones of her mother,
were hazy and yellowed at the edges from age. She remembered
pretty, frilly dresses and soft hands and smiles. She remembered
the smell of vanilla, the way it had always made her feel safe when
she curled into her mothers arms and let her hold her tight.

There were foggy memories of her mother’s
funeral too. Flowers, so many flowers piled high at the front of
the church. Bluebells, her namesake and her mother’s favorite, were
tucked into arrangements with roses and lilies. The benches had
been hard and so had her father’s hand as he took hers and led her
out of the church when she started to cry. His words that day were
crystal clear though, “Cowgirls don’t cry.”

Those words he’d spoken to her over the years
remained clear and fresh in her memory just as all the memories of
her father did. His big frame in shadow with the bigger Texas sky
behind him. His big hands lifting her and putting her in the saddle
of her first pony. His heavy scowl when she didn’t follow his rule
and a tear escaped unchecked.

Her relationship with her father had never
been easy. If it had been so before her mother died she didn’t
recall. The years after had been a game of sorts, one she always
lost. He pushed her to be stronger and she tried but it was never
enough. She pushed him to open up and he shut down. Eventually,
they’d given up the game entirely.

They’d stopped talking long before she packed
up and headed off to college. As a kid, she’d tried to be who she
thought he wanted her to be. She’d learned to rope and ride and
work the ranch but he just scowled and told her it was man’s work.
She thought he wanted her to be more like the wife he lost so she’d
played dress up and wore makeup and talked real pretty like a lady
was supposed to. He’d scowled at that too. So she’d just decided to
be herself, to be Bluebell Montgomery Carter.

That had set the town abuzz. Blue didn’t play
by the rules which she understood made her a little bit crazy in
their eyes. She didn’t cheer at the football games. She didn’t
tease her hair and bat her eyelashes. She didn’t speak pretty and
keep her emotions under wraps. She spoke her mind and yelled when
she wanted to yell. Sometimes she wore her makeup too heavy and her
skirts too short. It had gotten everybody in Fate’s attention but
the one man it was meant for. Her father simply ignored her.

So she left. That had been ten years ago.
She’d been back a few times. A couple of Christmases and
Thanksgivings, a birthday once or twice as well, they were always
short visits, a day or two of silent meals with her father and then
she kissed his cheek, told him she loved him and went back to her
real life. The last time she’d called to let him know she was
planning a trip home for his birthday he’d told her not to bother
because he’d be out of town at one of the stock shows. That had
been nearly three years ago.

Guilt threatened to suffocate her in the
small car so she flipped the window switch and breathed in a gulp
of fresh air. The wind whipped her long blonde hair but she ignored
it. She should have come back more, come back sooner but she could
be damn stubborn when she wanted to be. It was a trait she’d
inherited from her father. She told herself if he wanted to see her
he’d visit but he never did so she pretended it didn’t matter and
kept on moving.

Moving she was good at. Her father called her
a rolling stone and she wouldn’t argue with him. Six cities in ten
years and there wasn’t a one of them she’d called home.

She didn’t like sitting still. When she was
still she felt alone and she’d had enough of that in her life. As
long as she kept moving, kept meeting new people and trying new
things she didn’t have to think too hard about why it was she never
felt at home anywhere or with anyone.

Her job gave her the freedom to keep right on
moving. After years jumping from major to major and college to
college she’d earned a degree in journalism. She’d started out with
newspapers and then transitioned into magazines. She could
freelance from anywhere and go where the story took her.

The big metal sign on the side of the road
said it was just a few more miles to Fate, Texas. Blue rubbed her
eyes and slid the window back up. The story definitely didn’t take
her here. She couldn’t define what had.

She hadn’t kept in touch with many people
from her hometown over the years. Molly was one of the few. She’d
refused to be ignored or forgotten. Despite the distance they
emailed frequently and spoke occasionally. The invitation to be in
the wedding hadn’t come as a surprise. That had come when the
words, “sure, sounds like fun” had fallen from Blue’s mouth without
a second of hesitation.

Going home to Fate hadn’t been in her plans.
It wasn’t that she was avoiding her father either. She’d come to
terms with the fact he’d never be the open and loving daddy she
wished for just like she’d never be the son he’d wanted. So no, she
wasn’t avoiding him but she was avoiding Fate.

The good people of Fate were no doubt busy
gossiping about her arrival. They’d be dissecting her hairstyle and
her clothes the second she set foot in town. There would be the
questions of where she’d been and those would be followed with the
pointed looks that screamed of disapproval since she didn’t visit
her daddy often enough for their liking. Worse, she’d have to face
the scrutiny of having the audacity not to be married at 28 years
old.