cowboys & angels { dustin lynch }

prologue.

Jackson Hole, Wyoming. A small yet bustling town on the outskirts of Yellowstone National Park, shielded and protected by the Grand Teton Mountains that towered behind it. Each of the hundreds of thousands of tourists that flocked to Jackson in the summer months had a different way of describing it; some described it as an array of bars and overpriced restauraunts placed in the middle of nowhere, while the more poetic of these sightseers would say it was a scene snatched right from an old Western movie, a crucial piece of history with many hidden secrets and stories to tell. Dustin Lynch, however, would simply describe it as paradise.

Dustin had moved to Wyoming when he was nineteen years old, straight out of high school and more than eager to escape from the blinding lights of Nashville. His sights had always been set much further than the Tennessee borders, and his dreams had always been filled with visions of wide open spaces, destinations where there were no fences or barriers to hold him back. He longed for a place where skyscrapers were replaced with cliffs and snow-covered peaks, a place where he could finally and truly breathe without inhaling the pungent scents of exhaust fumes from foreign cars crowding the streets. It was precisely for these reasons that as soon as Dustin had driven his old hand-me-down Silverado past the Teton County line, he knew he had finally found where he belonged. Jackson was rugged, wild, and untamed--just like he was.

It was a sort of twisted fate that Dustin had come across the place where he now called home, a grand log cabin on a farm that his grandparents had decided to leave to him a decade earlier. He loved everything about the ranch, from the horses grazing just outside the living room window to the lake in the back, a body of water stocked with a variety of trout and other edible fish. This was where Dustin spent most of his time, sitting on the makeshift wooden pier that he had built himself with his prized rod and reel.

Although there were plenty of other more rewarding careers in town, Dustin was content with working on both his ranch and the one of his neighbor, Luke Bryan. Luke had been a rancher in Wyoming for his entire life, and thanks to his dedication and the hardwork of his farmhands, Thomas Rhett, Brett Eldredge, Justin Moore, and Easton Corbin, he had become one of the richest and most powerful farmers in the entire state of Wyoming. Like Dustin, none of these men were locals, instead hailing from various places across the country; Georgia, Illinois, Arkansas, and Florida, respectively. Somehow, their unique lives had brought the five together, causing them to find their way to the Grand Teton Ranch and creating a strong and unbreakable bond that more closely resembled that of brothers.

Athough Dustin had close friends, a steady job that he enjoyed, and lived in a place that was his own version of heaven on Earth, he lacked a steady relationship. He had been through his share of girlfriends, both in Nashville and since he had moved to Wyoming, but he was yet to find someone who accepted his style and his way of life. It should have been easy, living in a place like Jackson Hole, to find a woman who didn't judge his hat and black snakeskin boots, but Dustin had long since realized that the modern century wasn't very welcoming when it came to true, old-fashioned cowboys like himself.

However, Dustin would soon learn that the mantra that had been passed down over hundreds of decades was true, and that good things would indeed come to those who wait. He would find out that love wasn't something that you could time or expect, and that fate had a strange way of bringing two people together, no matter what odds were stacked against them. Wyoming was a place where things could change in the blink of an eye, and in a split second, Dustin's entire life would be changed by a chance meeting with an angel, sent from heaven to bring him a sense of joy and happiness that he had never dreamed he could call his own.