She was twenty-nine years old, single, and – if she was honest – had no idea what she was doing. Back home in New York City, this had seemed like a such a good idea: sign up with a mail-order bride service! Move to Nevada! Spend the rest of her life in the Wild West with cowboys and country music!

Carla still remembered the exact moment when she’d begun to think about moving out West; she’d been on the subway, doing her daily hour-long commute to a waitressing job she hated, when she’d noticed a poster. New York’s subways were plastered with posters, and she rarely paid much attention to them, but this one had stood out as though it was meant for her.

Ranch Romeos – Believe in True Love!
it had said, the words printed over a picture of a smiling couple, holding hands in a meadow of wildflowers in front of a setting sun. It was a picture of everything Carla wanted and didn’t have.

Looking at that happy couple, while she sat in the dark, dirty underground subway tunnel, bumped and jostled by the crowd around her, knowing that her thirtieth birthday wasn’t far off and that she had no one to share it with... she’d promised herself right then and there that she would do whatever it took to change her life.

It had been a rushed few weeks since she’d contacted Ranch Romeos; she’d quit her job, packed her things, and then the final step of boarding a plane to Nevada. Carla felt like she’d hardly had a moment to breathe. All she’d thought about had been silly fantasies: wondering if it was hard to learn how to ride a horse, and if people really square danced, and if she should buy a cowboy hat to take with her. It was only now, as she was standing here alone in an unknown airport, that doubts began to stir in the back of her mind.

Ranch Romeos had matched her with a man named Diego Ramirez, and in his emails Diego had agreed to pick her up when she got off her flight. Carla looked around the airport, but saw no one who looked anything like the photo she’d seen. Granted, it had been a small, grainy thumbnail, but she still should have been able to recognize
someone
.

She watched as a woman who had been on her plane ran up to a waiting man and threw herself into his embrace; Carla looked away with a pang of longing. All around her, people walked confidently forward, knowing where they were going. Many of them were greeted by family and friends, and others headed straight to the doors that opened out to the warm autumn sunlight.

Carla felt awkward and alone, which wasn’t a new feeling for her. She looked down at herself, abruptly wishing that she’d worn nicer clothes. It had been a long flight – ten hours, including the layovers – and she’d decided to dress for comfort in loose black pants and an oversized blouse. Sure, it was cozy, but it wasn’t what she wanted to be wearing for her first meeting with her future husband.

He was probably expecting a slick city girl, like the skinny models or fashionable businesswomen that had always made Carla feel invisible. She was a big woman, with wide hips and plenty of ass, balanced by a round belly in the front. She’d hoped that she would fit in better here in Nevada, but all the women she saw were tall and lean, looking like they spent their free time roping cattle and running over the hills – or whatever it was that people did in the country. With a sigh, Carla was forced to admit that she had a lot to learn, if she was going to spend the rest of her life here.

She picked up her luggage and walked toward the other side of the airport, in case Diego was over there. It was a small airport, without a single coffee shop or gift store. The entire building was no bigger than a city block, with barely enough room for one baggage claim and a handful of counters. There definitely was no place for Diego to hide.

Maybe he forgot
, Carla thought, watching the handful of other passengers still in the airport.
Maybe there was an emergency that he needed to take care of. Maybe he saw me and ran off to cancel the wedding plans
.

Carla was tempted to turn right around, climb back onto the plane, and beg them to take her home. She didn’t want to go back to New York, though. She knew that most people dreamed of moving to the big city, but Carla was just the opposite. She’d spent all her life there, and at twenty-nine she was sick of it. She was sick of the noise, the grime, the crowds, the way no one ever had time for a few friendly words, the way everyone was always rushing off to something new.

It was cheesy, but what Carla dreamed about was a house of her own – an
actual
house, not a one-bedroom apartment – complete with a lawn and a garden and maybe even a white picket fence. Why not, after all? If she was dreaming, she might as well go all out. She’d have enough space to get a dog too, a big dog, like a german shepherd or a golden retriever. There would be peace and quiet, and she’d live in a town like the ones she saw on TV: the kind of place where everyone knew one another, and they smiled and waved as they walked down the street, instead of hiding behind sunglasses or lowered umbrellas.

Maybe places like that didn’t really exist. Or maybe they did, but they weren’t for people like Carla: fat and shy and, it was beginning to seem, incredibly gullible. What had she been thinking, coming all the way to Nevada to marry a man she’d never met? She had been so stupid, to believe in a silly advertisement.

Still, she couldn’t run back home yet. For one thing, she didn’t have a return ticket. No one else was left in the airport and, not knowing what to do, Carla wandered toward the main entrance, which led to the parking lot.

The sunlight was so bright outside that she had to cover her eyes until they’d adjusted. When she lowered her hand, the first thing that struck her was the sky. It looked enormous, which sounded ridiculous; of course the sky was always the same size. But back in New York, tall buildings had usually blocked her view. To see the sky actually stretching from horizon to horizon made her feel like a tiny speck, like she might somehow fly up into that infinite blue.

Carla gazed up at the sky, almost forgetting where she was, until she felt the tingling sensation on the back of her shoulders that meant someone was staring at her. She turned and saw a man standing on the sidewalk, leaning one shoulder against the wall while he watched her. He was tall and muscled, and Carla’s instinctive annoyance at being stared at vanished as she met his eyes. He was looking at her so openly and frankly that she couldn’t help looking back.

And he was worth looking at. He was big, with broad shoulders and thick legs. His hair was jet-black and just a little shaggy, with one lock falling from his forehead into his eyes. His jeans were pale blue, soft and creased from long use, and were molded to every curve of the muscles of his thighs and the trim lines of his hips. He wore a button-down shirt that strained to contain his shoulders; the sleeves were rolled up to reveal the bronze skin of his forearms, dark and thickly muscled from working outdoors.

Every inch of him was like her favorite fantasy of a cowboy: a manly man, strong and handsome and rugged, from his deliciously sharp cheekbones all the way down to his feet, enclosed in a pair of real cowboy boots.

She was so caught up in admiring his body that she hardly noticed anything else. When she finally managed to tear her gaze away from his warm, amber-brown eyes, she realized that he was holding a sheet of white paper with
Carla Jenkins
printed across it in big block letters. Her eyes skipped back up from her name to the man’s face, unable to believe what she saw. He was looking for
her
!

Could this be Diego Ramirez, the man she’d come here to marry? They’d exchanged emails, of course, but they were still mostly strangers to one another. Carla’d had to cross her fingers and hope for the best, but now it seemed as though all her prayers had been answered. Because in person? Diego Ramirez was the most handsome man she’d ever seen.

She swallowed against a suddenly dry throat, and realized that she was frozen to the spot, staring straight at Diego. She forced herself to move, hoping that he hadn’t noticed her acting like she’d been struck by lightning, hoping that she would manage to behave normally and not immediately throw herself at him.

She was newly aware of her own body, and how much she wanted him to touch her, how much she wanted those big hands to map her curves and those full lips to kiss her breasts. She wondered if his cock was as big as the rest of him, and then shoved that thought away, at least until after she’d introduced herself. She wasn’t normally so forward, but she was reacting to Diego in a way she’d never experienced before.

Carla decided that signing up to be a mail-order bride might not have been such a bad idea.

2. Diego

Diego Ramirez stood by the entrance of the airport, watching the new arrivals walk past. One of the people coming off of this plane would be his future wife. His bear stirred impatiently, wanting to know which of these women it was, eager to smell who they would be taking home.

Diego would have liked to go into the building instead of having to wait out here, but his bear was too excited to take that risk. He had never been quite comfortable around crowds, and the confusing smells of jet fuel and strangers and metal, not to mention the anticipation he felt at finally getting to meet this Carla Jenkins, meant that he might not be able to control his bear. Changing into a massive grizzly before he’d even said hello was
not
the sort of first impression he intended to make. It would be hard enough to explain the whole shifter thing to her without terrifying her right off the bat.

Maybe a mail-order bride company wasn’t the best way to find a wife. If he had waited a little longer, let his parents set him up on a few more blind dates, maybe he wouldn’t have had to explain the shifter thing at all. He would have found a girl who already knew all about it, maybe even who was a shifter herself.

But Diego had been waiting for years and still hadn’t met his mate. He was tired of date after date that didn’t work out, of raising his hopes only to have them disappointed, of women who wouldn’t make a commitment if he wasn’t their mate.

Diego liked the idea of true love, of seeing someone and instantly knowing she was The One, but it looked like he was never going to find her. Some shifters wasted their whole lives waiting to encounter their mates, and ended up dying alone and dissatisfied. That wasn’t going to be Diego. Fate hadn’t given him his mate, but hell, he wasn’t giving up. He’d just found a new way to get what he wanted.

Diego might be a shifter, but that didn’t mean he had to do everything the shifter way. If humans could find spouses and make happy lives without their true mates, so could he. Even if it meant he had to go through the extremely embarrassing process of writing down all of his secret hopes and dreams for a company called Ranch Romeos... what a name. But it would be worth it to find a woman who understood him and his goals, and who was willing to work hard to build a relationship without the lightening bolt magic of being mates.

The rush of people coming out of the doors slowed to a trickle of one or two, and then finally no one else came out at all. No one had even glanced at the sign he held up, and Diego slowly lowered it to his side.

His feelings were a mix of relief and disappointment. None of the women he’d seen had stood out to him, and his bear hadn’t noticed any particularly appealing scents either. He wouldn’t have wanted to marry any of them. And yet, he’d been so excited on his drive here, so certain that he was doing the right thing....

And what had happened to Carla?
Maybe she got cold feet and never boarded the plane?
That was possible, but surely she would have called or emailed in that case. Could she still be inside?

Diego closed his eyes and centered himself, preparing to head through the doors. Although there were fewer people in there then when the plane had first landed, it was still many more than he was used to.

Out on his ranch, he rarely saw more than three or four people a day, and that was outside, with plenty of fresh air and open space to keep him from feeling crowded. Few shifters managed well in cities, and for bear shifters it was particularly hard. In his emails he’d told Carla that he would always be a country boy, and she’d written back that she was happy to leave the city behind. Maybe she’d changed her mind.

His bear suddenly focused, catching a scent that drove all the other thoughts from Diego’s mind. It was like honeysuckle and ripe red berries, sun-warmed grass and cool water: every good thing the earth provided, mixed up with
human
and
woman
and
sex
.

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