Trail Rides and Starry Eyes - Softcover

Emmel, Katrina

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0593904060 ISBN 13: 9780593904060

Verlag: Random House Children's Books, 2025

Inhaltsangabe

A swoony, sweet YA rural romance between a rancher and the Hollywood hotshot she's tasked with turning into a cowboy—perfect for fans of Kasie West, Erin Hahn, and Kristy Boyce!

Sixteen-year-old Cassidy Sterling can't imagine life beyond her family's Wyoming ranch. Her days are filled with colt breaking, cattle rustling, and an online Intro to Astronomy class. Seventeen-year-old Wilder Nash also has his sights set on the stars—the ones on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. A teen heartthrob, he's now he's ready for the big time. To land a lead role as a cowboy in a prime-time mini-series, he must convince the casting director he's an experienced horseman. The problem? He’s all hat and no cowboy.

With less than a month to learn to ride, Wilder heads to Silver Stallion Ranch.

Cassidy's quiet life is disrupted when Wilder arrives. As he mucks out stalls and grooms horses, Wilder begins to see there's more to life than his looks. And Cassidy starts imagining a future beyond the ranch. The growing spark between them threatens to ignite into something more, but Cassidy must decide if she's brave enough to take the reins of her own life. Meanwhile, Wilder faces a choice: the glamorous life of a star or a simpler life under the stars.

Über diesen Titel

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Katrina Emmel

Auszug. © Genehmigter Nachdruck. Alle Rechte vorbehalten.

Chapter 1

Cassidy

The heap of carrots in front of me shrinks as I peel them for Sunday dinner. I’ve al-ready finished with the potatoes, which are cubed and in a pot on the stove, ready for boiling and mashing. I’m so used to peeling, dicing, and slicing up veggies for dinner that I barely think about it anymore.

When I was younger, the piles of vegetables seemed insurmountable, and I used to get blisters where the ancient metal peeler rubbed against the soft pad of my palm. Now that I’m seventeen, I have years of experience and hard-earned callus-es to protect me.

Rough skin.

Ragged nails.

Rope burns.

A hand model, I’ll never be.

I toss the carrots with salt, pepper, olive oil, and a few sprigs of fresh rosemary from the garden before spreading them in a baking dish. The cowboy steaks are seasoned and marinating, ready for Dad to throw on the grill as soon as he and Grandpa get back from riding out to the south pasture to check on the cattle.

Hardly anything goes to waste here on the ranch--not if we can help it--and the hogs are more than happy to snack on our kitchen scraps and week-old leftovers. I use the back of the knife to scrape the vegetable peels off the cutting board and into the antique enameled slop bucket. I can remember my grandmother having me hold the bucket for her while she scraped kitchen trimmings in. The kitchen is full of reminders of her.

A collection of tea tins.

Hand-tatted doilies.

The kitchen witch she made hangs over the sink, the doll’s frizzy gray hair billow-ing out under a crooked black hat. She sits on a broomstick of sticks and dried wheatgrass. When I was little, Grandma and I would gather up twigs, herbs, and bits of leftover twine, and we’d sit on the back porch while she taught me to make little brooms that I’d leave as gifts for all the fairies I was sure lived out by the duck pond.

Grandma’s been gone for two years, but sometimes the grief rushes at me from out of the blue.

I blink back tears and grab the slop bucket. The handle squeaks as I make my way from the kitchen to the mudroom. My sturdy red rubber boots are on a mat by the door, snuggled between Dad’s old work boots and Mom’s gardening Crocs. I slide my feet inside the boots and clunk over to the screen door, where a warm, soft breeze floats in.

June in Wyoming smells like warm grass and sunshine, with just a hint of barnyard. It’s my third favorite smell after Mom’s fresh-from-the-oven wild huckleberry pie and the scent of sweet pea blossoms on a dry summer day.

The dirt path from the main house to the pigsty cuts through the kitchen garden where we grow most of our produce. Honeybees hover around the fragrant laven-der blossoms. Cucumbers, peas, and beans grow up trellises, and watermelon and cantaloupe vines attempt to flee the raised-bed planters and stretch toward the goat pasture.

Like me, their roots are firmly planted at the ranch. Ever since I can remember, I’ve been fed stories, along with my peas and carrots, of the intrepid Sterlings who traveled from England to Wyoming in search of a better life. What started as a sheep farm in the 1860s eventually became a cattle and horse ranch. And, as an only child, I’ll be expected to take over someday.

I love it here. I do. But lately I’ve also been wondering what lies beyond the soil at my feet. Beyond our kitchen garden. Beyond Silver Stallion Ranch’s ten thousand acres.

It’s not like I’ve never left the ranch--Jackson’s only a little over an hour’s drive away. We make monthly shopping excursions into Casper or Salt Lake City. And there’s always our annual New Year’s trip to Denver for the National Western Stock Show.

Sometimes it just feels like I live in a completely different world.

Maybe I do.

At least, compared with the other students in my online distance learning classes, who are always chatting about the things they do for fun.

They play on sports teams. I play mechanic on the old tractor.

They go to concerts. I go on cattle drives.

They act in the local theater’s plays. I act like life on the ranch is . . . enough. And it should be, right? It was enough for Grandma, who left behind her life in New York City to marry Grandpa after a love-at-first-sight chance meeting while she was va-cationing in Denver. It’s been enough for Grandpa and Mom and Dad. But there’s a voice in the back of my mind that reminds me it wasn’t enough for Uncle Alex.

That it might not be enough for me.

Trouble, one of our farm cats, is sunning herself between the rows of bee balm and lemon balm. She peers at me with suspicious yellow eyes, her calico tail swish-ing.

“Cause any chaos today?” I ask.

She replies with a salty “Meow.”

We originally named her Sweetie, before we knew just how much of a menace she can be. Shortly after we got her, she climbed Mom’s brand-new lace curtains in the living room, completely shredding them in the process. We’re still finding tiny white strands of thread that haunt us like old Christmas tinsel. A few days after the curtain catastrophe, she ran into the main house with a live squirrel and then let it go right in the middle of dinner. Imagine our shock when the squirrel ran across the table, knocked over the gravy bowl, and then flipped Grandpa’s plate right on-to his lap.

In his frustration, Grandpa wiped a clump of mashed potatoes from his cheek and exclaimed, “That cat is trouble with a capital T.”

And the rest is history.

I take the path between the rustic greenhouse Uncle Alex built from old doors and reclaimed windows and the cozy guest cottage that sits next to the duck pond. I wonder if Uncle Alex dreamed of building his new life in California while he was hammering in the nails. Was he thinking of Hollywood when he cut the scavenged hardwood to size?

The goat pen is straight ahead, but I turn and head toward the pigsty. A few of our hens peck at the dirt and cluck to each other. Most of them ignore me, but Birdzil-la, an ornery Rhode Island Red, fluffs up her feathers and stomps her foot. Usually, her bawking is worse than her bite, but she’s definitely one to watch out for.

Hogwash squeals as soon as she sees me coming, and the sudden burst of noise sends Birdzilla scampering back toward the chicken coop. Hogwash jumps up against the wooden plank next to the gate, and immediately Pigsly and Lizzie Boarden join her, snuffling and grunting and making a ruckus. Duchess of Pork ris-es from her mud bath, gives a little regal shake, and struts across the pen to pre-side over the commotion with a bellowing oink.

“Afternoon, ladies,” I say. “How about a little snack?” I upend the slop bucket into the trough to a deafening chorus of oinks and grunts. The minute the scraps land, the pigs line up in a row and their anxious squeals turn to happy slurps.

As I turn to head back to the main house, a commotion catches my eye. Trouble must have followed me over from the garden. Usually, the farm cats and the chickens get along, but Birdzilla is uppity today and Trouble is . . . well, trouble.

The hens are not happy to see a cat strutting through their terrain. Like mini-velociraptors, the chickens fan out in a circle to surround her. Trouble sits and glances around, her tail twitching. Birdzilla mock-charges and Trouble gives her a lazy blink before lifting a paw and licking it.

A few of the chickens lose interest and go back to pecking at the dirt. Birdzilla scratches an itch. Trouble yawns.

Then all hell breaks loose when Sergeant Peeper and Tyrannosaurus Pecks rush...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Random House Children's Books
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2025
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 0593904060
• ISBN 13: 9780593904060
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Auflage: 1
• Anzahl der Seiten: 289
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland