Hope on the Range

by Cindi Madsen

  He couldn’t wait for Turn Around Ranch to show up ready to take names and show the townsfolk what the teens could accomplish when they put their minds to something. In fact, he supposed it was time for a bit of trash talking.

  Brady pulled out his phone and tapped out a text.

  Brady: Two minutes into our training, and I’m actually starting to feel bad about the whooping my team’s gonna give yours.

  Tanya: Liar.

  He was about to send a not-so-innocent “Who, me?” reply, but his phone buzzed with another message.

  Tanya: You forget that I’ve been around you when you go into competitive mode, and feeling bad about winning is hardly your MO. Since I haven’t even formed my team yet, sounds like I’m gonna have to play a little dirty.

  Brady’s heart thumped harder in his chest, and for reasons he couldn’t explain, the phrase play a little dirty flashed through his mind like a neon light. He hovered his thumbs over the keypad and searched his brain for a witty comeback. Once again, Tanya was faster.

  Tanya: Speaking of whipping, I think I have a nice braided whip in the tack room. Sounds like I’m going to have to dig it out and teach you a lesson.

  Holy shit. Brady’s throat went dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Like her tit-for-tat comment about showing each other theirs, he was sure she hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding so…dirty.

  Then again, she did say she was gonna play dirty. His mind hovered over the gutter, one wrong stray thought from diving in. Was this a tactic? Using her feminine wiles on him to throw him off his game?

  Nah. That wasn’t her style. In fact, he’d be in danger of bodily harm if he so much as implied she’d stoop that low. This was his dry spell messing with his head again. Brady exhaled a shallow breath and reminded himself that when it came to his best friend, inappropriate thoughts crossed a serious line. Picturing her in a leather dominatrix outfit was also off-limits, and he slammed that mental door shut as fast as he could.

  But that blip of the image he’d unintentionally conjured was liable to haunt him for days.

  With his brain tiptoeing into dangerous territory, he needed to get his head straight. No letting the heat of competition trick him into contemplating things about Tanya that he hadn’t pondered for years. First during that reckless dance at prom, and another stretch of time last year, when they’d been road-tripping along the rodeo circuit and he’d let himself wonder what if too many times.

  Before promptly shutting the thought down, the same way he was doing now.

  Brady pocketed his phone and continued pacing the line of training drills. After some time to cool down, he’d think up a clever comeback. One that didn’t have a big ol’ undercurrent of perviness to it.

  Chapter 4

  The first few trail rides with a new group were often the longest. Not in terms of distance but in how long it took the people visiting the dude ranch to ride less than a mile. For a lot of their clients, it was one of their first times on a horse—if not the first—so Tanya did her best to keep her patience.

  Diesel, however, didn’t even try. As a result of their rodeo glory days, her stocky paint horse was used to charging through gates at ridiculously fast speeds. The tight turning skills that’d been honed from years of barrel racing also meant that he’d bolted for Loretta Wilson’s apple tree the instant Tanya had loosened her grip on the reins and twisted to check on the dude-ranch crew.

  The leather of the saddle creaked as Tanya leaned over the horn to whisper soothing words in his flickering ears. “I know you like to go fast, buddy, but we have to wait for the rest of the group.”

  Diesel nickered and stomped a foot, heavy on the attitude. If Tanya could get away with that move without looking like a crazy person, she’d do the same. She could hardly lecture Diesel on patience when hers was stretching thinner with every minute that passed without a response from Brady.

  About ten minutes ago, she’d been texting away, alternating currents of glee and anxiety making a mess of her internal organs. She was being bold and flirty, and in response, she’d gotten nada. What fun was trash-talk if the other person didn’t respond in kind?

  Had she been too bold? Sent too many texts too fast? One of the tips in her dating book suggested walking away after delivering a great line. Theory being, the guy’s head would keep spinning on it, leaving him wanting.

  Either wanting to explore more, which left the ball in his court, or he wouldn’t take the bait and that probably meant… A lump formed in her throat.

  What am I gonna do if he’s completely uninterested? Tanya had tried so hard to shut off any romantic feelings for Brady, to no avail. Now she was thinking she should’ve never sent that retort involving a whip. She’d giggled as she’d typed it, quickly hitting Send before she could chicken out. That was the nice thing about texting. If she’d had to look Brady in the face while saying it, her mouth never would’ve followed through.

  Tanya lifted her phone and growled at it for not having a message. Man, this dating thing was frustrating and complicated, especially when she factored in the friendship aspect.

  But the same as the most formidable competitions at the biggest rodeos, it was better to try than to always wonder what could’ve been, right?

  At the sound of approaching horses, Tanya slid her phone in her pocket. One at a time, the stragglers crested the hill, her coworker Miguel bringing up the back.

  Eric sat astride Taffy, one of their older, milder horses. The guy rode super bumpy, bouncing instead of syncing his movements along with the horse, but that took time. Riding also took a toll on the inner thighs if you weren’t used to it, and the way he fidgeted suggested he was feeling it.

  “How’s it going?” Tanya asked as he sidled up beside her and Diesel.

  “Fine.” Eric relaxed his stiff arms, and Taffy interpreted that as being time for a grazing break. “Ahhh, wait, no!”

  Eric teetered forward, the saddle horn digging into his gut and saving him from sliding down the horse’s neck. Tanya snagged the reins, tugging Taffy’s head back up and giving Eric a chance to regain his bearings.

  “I have ridden before,” he said. “It’s just been a while.”

  “That explains why you ride like popcorn kernels in boiling oil,” she teased. Judging from the scrunch of his blond eyebrows, her joke had gone over his head. “You know. Bouncing and popping.”

  “Oh, I definitely heard some popping. I’m afraid to climb off the horse and see which part of me it was.”

  Tanya laughed, and a smile spread across Eric’s face. Admittedly, it was a handsome face—something Mom unsubtly pointed out this morning. The polished, clean-shaven, suit-wearing men had never been Tanya’s type. Not that it mattered to Mom. Regardless of how long or short their guests planned to stay, if one of them was even semi-near Tanya’s age, Mom attempted to play matchmaker. Once with a guy who had a girlfriend, and it’d been super awkward to explain that she understood his need to clarify, but she wasn’t the one who’d left the flirty note with her number on the nightstand.

  Almost as awkward as gathering all your courage to send a racy text to your best friend, only for him to completely ignore it.

  “How far should we go today, boss?” Miguel hollered in her direction. “Everyone’s gotten a breather, but I’m thinking we should stop at the stream for lunch.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  A groan came from Eric. “I’m afraid to ask and sound like a kid on a road trip, but how much longer is that?”

  “About an hour,” she said, and Miguel was close enough to overhear and snort. In addition to Winston, Pops occasionally referred to Miguel as one of Tanya’s strays. The nineteen-year-old had come up through Turn Around Ranch. As soon as the kids turned eighteen, the Dawsons had to bid them farewell, or then they would have an “adult” with the “kids.”

  The rules of
Miguel’s parole stated he needed a job, and since he had experience with livestock and the dude ranch needed more help, Tanya had hired him. Which led to a lecture from Pops on being too hasty and not checking with him first, but now both her parents adored him.

  Didn’t mean they’d ever rescinded their lecture.

  Admiration for Eric set in as he exhaled, lifted his reins, and set his chin.

  “I’m kidding,” Tanya said. “It’s only ten more minutes.”

  “Thank God.” A relieved breath whooshed out of him. “I was about to call up my buddy and forfeit our stupid bet.”

  Tanya opened her mouth to ask for details, but then her phone buzzed. She whipped it out of her pocket so fast it almost flew out of her hand, like a slippery fish hell-bent on returning to the creek. The edges of the blasted device dug into her hand as she clung on, and she tightened her grip even more when she saw Brady’s name on the screen.

  Brady: You’ll have to show it to me when I come over later this week.

  A squeal escaped, one that made a couple of the riders glance in Tanya’s direction. Diesel snuffled, conveying his dismay they still weren’t moving, and she clicked her tongue and urged him forward, only vaguely paying attention to the trail. Diesel knew it as well as she did.

  It worked! It worked! Tanya did a jig in her saddle, her excitement pumping as quickly as her heart. Unless…

  Fingers crossed this wasn’t one of those misunderstandings where she was the clueless girl who believed she’d done an amazing job flirting, only for Brady to show up ready to play Indiana Jones, like when they were little.

  Every time they’d found an ancient treasure—rusted tractor gears, a shoe that’d been lost for decades, and arrowheads—he got to make up the story of what they were and how the clues tied together. In her frustration, she’d pushed past her fear of snakes and caught one solely to wave it in Brady’s face. Then he’d said, “Cool, let me hold it,” and she’d had to remind him that Indiana Jones was afraid of snakes.

  Ooh, maybe there’s a let-me-hold-your-snake innuendo in there. Heat crawled up Tanya’s neck, and she decided she’d been bold enough for one day. But the next time she saw Brady in person, she’d study how he acted toward her and then judge if and when she should amp things up another level.

  Still, she clung to that glimmer of hope and vowed to spend the next couple of days devouring and highlighting the book that’d gotten her this far.

  * * *

  Harlow extended a coil of rope to Maddox, who stared at it like it was a snake that might bite.

  Given his puckered expression, she wouldn’t mind if the rope managed to grow fangs and follow through.

  Since the Dawsons had hired her to help, Harlow did her best to stifle her irritation with the judgmental jerk and put on her teacher hat. “Do you have any experience with rope?”

  Maddox’s features morphed into a suave expression that probably worked way too well on most females. “You mean tying girls to the bed on their request? Because then—”

  “Gag.”

  “I’ve got some experience with that, too,” he said, that stupid smirk still quirking his lips.

  Harlow brought out the hard glare, the one she’d used when boys at school thought it’d be funny to toss innuendos her way, as if she were too naive to understand them. The glower had been pretty successful at getting them to back away.

  Maddox didn’t exactly withdraw, but he did hold up his hands in surrender. “Just messing with you, trying to find any entertainment I can get.”

  “Well, I’m not here for your entertainment.” Until Harlow had said it aloud, she didn’t realize she’d quoted a P!nk song, and residual pride bolstered her. Just because she wasn’t going out with a guy every weekend or bragging about how older men always fell for her like it was her cross to bear, the way her ex roping partner did, didn’t mean she was a clueless pushover.

  With a sigh, Maddox took the rope from her. “We’re going to be spending a lot of time together, aren’t we?”

  “Gosh, I hope not. But it’ll probably be more than either one of us would like.”

  Two creases showed up between his dark eyebrows, as if he couldn’t imagine a world where a girl wouldn’t fall all over him. Harlow gripped the honda, fed her rope through, and flipped the loop, repeating the move until it was armpit height.

  Then she stepped closer to Maddox to show him she wasn’t affected by his hotness, and she sure as heck wasn’t scared of him. “Here, hold the rope like so…” She expected more pushback, but Maddox did as instructed. “This is called a honda.”

  “Does it help if I know a lot about the type of Hondas that have four wheels?” he asked, and a misguided flutter careened through her belly as he flashed her a smile that seemed more genuine than sarcastic.

  Focus, Harlow. No letting him distract you, because that’s what he’s really after. She showed him how to swing, calling attention to the way she twisted her wrist.

  One thing was for sure: this guy was gonna be trouble. Sure, it was the kind of trouble that’d be fun at first, but falling for his charms meant a painful fall on her butt later.

  On the bright side, a little verbal sparring might make training more fun. Lately, she’d lost a bit of her spark when it came to that. It wasn’t that she didn’t like barrel racing, but her true love was team roping.

  Without a partner, she no longer had the same drive she’d had earlier this summer.

  What was hardest about letting go of winning the team roping event and securing the All-Around Cowgirl title was that she’d poured everything into that goal. To the point she didn’t have a lot of friends or other activities to keep her busy. Because good or not—and she was dang good—couldn’t compensate for not having a partner.

  It was kind of the entire point of team roping.

  * * *

  Maddox couldn’t help watching the emotions flicker across Harlow’s face. They changed so quickly as she’d demonstrated how to form a lasso and how to throw it, from concentration to annoyance aimed at him. Followed by a flicker of happiness as soon as he’d shown interest in the mechanics of what she was trying to teach him.

  “Okay, so I make the loopy thing…?”

  “You’re holding it in the wrong place.” Harlow stepped closer, and as she readjusted his grip on the rope, he studied the freckles on the bridge of her nose. They drew his focus downward, to unique, heart-shaped lips that were thin on top and plump on the bottom.

  Maddox’s fingers twitched with the urge to withdraw the pencil he always had in his pocket and sketch them. Unfortunately, his pad was in his room, hidden away from prying eyes.

  “Are you payin’ attention?” Harlow asked, and he nodded, even though he was paying attention to all the wrong things.

  Or maybe they were all the right things.

  When Brady announced they’d be training for the local rodeo, Maddox had thought Kill me now. The last thing he wanted to do was ride horses and chase after cows, much less put on a display for an audience full of strangers.

  His instructor pulled at the rope, making the loop bigger. “Once you get the hang of it, you’ll see that it’s even more fun than it looks.”

  Give him a souped-up motorcycle and a busy road, and he could show the girl across from him what fun truly was.

  Not that Harlow would get on the back of his bike, and she was far from his type, anyway. There was something adorable about her, though, like a happy chipmunk who’d found a discarded Cheeto.

  For a blissful second, Maddox hadn’t even realized where the memory of the chipmunk had come from, but the instant it hit him, it punched him in the gut.

  Camping with his mom. Back when he had one of those. Those had been the simpler days, when he’d thought her spur-of-the-moment adventures were fun instead of a way to avoid people to whom she owed money. Before he was old enough to
determine that her being high was what led to poorly planned trips without much to eat.

  The stupid squeeze in his heart intensified, so he gritted his teeth and dragged the rope through his palm, focusing on the way the rough fibers scraped his skin. Remembering what it felt like to be loved—even in his mother’s fleeting lucid moments—to have a home and a family, wasn’t good for him. Happy memories made reality harsher, and how could you get harsher than no motorcycle, on a ranch in the middle of nowhere, away from his job and his friends and his semblance of what family meant nowadays?

  “You okay?” Harlow asked, and with her all up in his grill, he noticed the contrast between the caramel-and-honey-colored strands in her loose braid. She looked as if some fairy had perfectly highlighted her hair while she’d been sleeping in the forest—which she probably did.

  “I’m fine. I mean, I could use a little breathing room.” He lifted the lasso the way she’d demoed the move. “Or did you want me to smack you in the head with the rope?”

  Her face fell, and he felt like the ass that he was. He opened his mouth to apologize, but she’d turned away, and it was for the best. This was just another temporary situation with temporary people.

  Not sure why the judge thought it would convince him to magically change his ways.

  He’d get through it like he’d gotten through the other shitty stops forced upon him. Head down, emotional tap turned off, and minimal engagement as he counted down the days.

  Maddox began to swing the lasso again, but shouts cut through his iffy concentration. A calf was charging toward him and Harlow.

  Aiden and the cute blond he was always with were hot on its swinging brown tail.

  “Stop him,” the blond shrieked, and Maddox dropped the rope and lunged, tackling the calf to the ground.

  It bellowed and mooed, and Maddox craned his neck to check if the cow was okay—he’d wanted to stop it, not hurt it. The calf licked his hand, leaving enough saliva for a hundred envelopes, and seeing no other option, Maddox pulled a face as he wiped the hand on his jeans.