The Wildest Ride--A Novel

by Marcella Bell

  “Thank you. Chow time.” She gave him a little salute before turning her attention to roasting her marshmallows, holding the stick well away from the flame as she rotated slowly and evenly, like a human rotisserie.

  She was one of those people.

  AJ sat beside her and stuck his own marshmallows directly into the flames. When they caught fire, he pulled them out, blew on them, and then squished them between two graham cracker pieces with a bit of chocolate beneath them.

  Lil waited until he was finished to say, “You’re a monster.”

  Her marshmallows had taken on a golden brown color and were evenly plump all around. She sandwiched them between graham crackers and chocolate, set her stick down, took a bite, and moaned.

  AJ’s jeans squeezed.

  “I love s’mores,” she said.

  “Who doesn’t?” he asked, mouth dry.

  Lil smiled. “My gran hates them. Hates sweets, altogether. Prefers salty.”

  “The Old Man’s the same way. Personally, I prefer spicy—be it sweet or salty.”

  “Sweet spicy?” she asked before polishing off her s’more. As she licked her fingers, AJ didn’t need to ask which she preferred.

  He did, however, need looser pants.

  Answering her question, he said, “Rebanaditas—chili watermelon suckers—those are my favorite.”

  She wasn’t licking her fingers to make a production of it—he knew that, logically—she did it just to get the marshmallow off. That didn’t change the fact that her full lips wrapped around each digit and sucked it clean in a way that had him imagining her working on other things.

  “So what’s your real story?” he asked lightly, hoping the subject change would get his mind out of the gutter. “Lil Sorrow can’t be your real name.”

  Her eyes widened in surprise, like she’d thought he would never bring it up.

  When he’d just about given up on her answering, she replied, “It is, actually. Lilian Sorrow Island. I really do go by Lil, though.”

  Lilian. It was so...feminine. Like sunsets, lemonade on porch swings, and class. It was so far from the world of rodeo and yet, taking in her fine-boned strength, it absolutely suited her.

  He didn’t say that, though. Instead, he said, “Your middle name is Sorrow?”

  She shrugged. “It’s a family name.”

  “So Lil Sorrow is your real name. I thought it was a stage name. You know, because you reap sorrow, leaving a trail of cowboy dreams in your wake.”

  Lil groaned. “You and everybody else. It would have been simpler if Gran had signed me up with my regular name.”

  “It’s got a nice ring to it.”

  Giving him a baleful look, she said, “No, it doesn’t.”

  AJ’s grin turned wicked. “Lilian. I think it’s time we address the elephant in the room.”

  She side-eyed him dryly. “We’re not in a room, Garza.”

  “I think we’re on more intimate terms than that, Lilian.”

  Her name rolled off his tongue with a smoothness that demanded a second taste. Everything about her demanded a second taste.

  “We kissed, and then near did more.”

  “Nothing to talk about,” she said with a shrug. “It was just a kiss and drinking too much.”

  “And you’re just alright at riding.”

  Her cheeks darkened once more and his chest warmed. He liked making her blush.

  “You’re truly amazing, you know,” he added.

  Instead of brushing him off, she surprised him by saying, “Thanks. For a long time, it was all I wanted to do.”

  “What changed?” He found himself holding his breath for her answer.

  “I—” She seemed at a loss. Then she frowned and continued in a lowered voice, “I gave up.”

  He hadn’t expected the answer from her and he found himself disappointed. Still, he asked, “Why would you do that? You’ve obviously got prize money in you.”

  Lil looked up at the sky, full dark now and peppered with stars.

  “I gave up because I was a girl.”

  Her words hung heavy and ridiculous in the air until AJ said, “That’s quite the statement.”

  Lil chuckled, “No, no. I don’t mean girls give up. I gave up because I’m a girl and I couldn’t ride bulls.”

  AJ smiled. “You’re not really making your case stronger.”

  The joke earned a full laugh from Lil and AJ felt like he’d just earned another buckle.

  “I’m a great bull rider,” she said, continuing, “even better back then—more fire, less caution. But no one would let me compete in professional rough stock events outside of the INFR.”

  “You could have done barrel racing.” He glanced at her out of the corner of his eyes. “Unless that was too girly for a tough cowpoke like you?”

  She wrinkled her nose at him.

  He didn’t think he’d ever noticed her doing that before.

  “Not at all,” she said, adding, “I’m an excellent barrel racer, too, which you’ll see soon enough. I just wasn’t willing to settle for almost when it came to rodeo.”

  Her words sank into him and he understood—in his forever-aching shoulder, his long-ago healed bones that still hurt, and in the rhythm of his heart. They gave voice to the same part of him that could see himself doing rodeo, and nothing else, for the rest of time.

  Though at the moment his mind wasn’t having any trouble coming up with other things for him to do.

  His eyes found Lil’s and they both paused. Their breath synchronized and deepened until her chest’s rise and fall became a gravitational pull. He fought the urge, but lost, his gaze drifting lower.

  Her black Western shirt didn’t offer much for the imagination to work with, but he looked nonetheless, noting her slight shivers.

  “Why didn’t you say you were cold?” he asked, roughly cutting into the soft sounds of fire crackling against the night.

  “What?” Lil looked down, startled. “Oh. I guess I hadn’t noticed.”

  AJ lifted an eyebrow. “Well, you’re cold.”

  She laughed. “Just not much for complaining, I guess.”

  “Or asking for help,” AJ said gruffly as he stood, walking to the saddlebag and rummaging through until he found the sheep’s wool–lined jean jacket he’d packed for the challenge.

  “Here.” His fingers brushed against her skin as he handed her the jacket, sending a jolt of electricity up his arm.

  Her eyes glittered in the firelight, and her skin felt like some kind of hybrid of silk and baby powder, far softer than any bull rider had a right to. Especially one as good as she was.

  This close to her, the vanilla bourbon scent that was hers whispered its way to his nose and he took a deep breath.

  Beneath her clothes, her body was defined and strong, he knew, like an Olympic athlete’s.

  She might be petite, but he’d never have to worry about breaking a woman like her.

  Keeping his thoughts to himself, though, he said, “Your braid is loose.”

  It was true. The sleek line was messier than he’d ever seen it. Even the tightest coif wasn’t a match for getting dragged off a horse.

  “I can help you with it,” he offered.

  Eyeballing him like he’d grown horns and a pencil ’stache, she said, “You do hair now?”

  He grinned and shrugged. “Pays to be diversified.”

  Her gray eyes narrowed to slits. “You got a lot of practice, then?”

  He winked. “Probably about as much as you.”

  “Somehow I doubt that...”

  “I’d be willing to bet I make a better girl than you,” he claimed boldly, ridiculously.

  Laughing, she angled her head to the side and said, “Oh really? I used to wear pink, you know.”

  Lips stretchin
g he said, “Somehow, I doubt that...”

  She smiled. “It’s true, though. It helped me stand out in the crowd.”

  He’d never known a woman whose banter included rodeo strategy, but he found he loved it. He countered with, “Helps even more to actually compete.”

  “They’ve got to let you first,” she shot back.

  “They let women in all over the place now.”

  She looked away. “It’s too late for me. I stopped wanting it.”

  “But you used to?”

  “A long time ago.”

  He wasn’t so sure about that. He asked, “So why are you here now?”

  She looked away, shame clouding her expression. “My granddad took out a reverse mortgage on our ranch and we don’t have the money to get it back. This was the only way we could think to come up with quick cash.”

  “Excuse me?” He pressed his lips into a line. It was never a good idea to use rodeo for investment purposes. That he’d made a lifetime of doing so was beside the point.

  Lil’s explanation was staccato and matter-of-fact. “My gran got the bright idea to sign me up for the circuit, certain I would take home the top prize and save the homestead.”

  The story was absurd, something worthy of a soap opera. So absurd that for a moment, AJ didn’t say anything. He opened his mouth to try a few times, only to close it again and frown.

  Finally, he said, “Your Gran kind of pimped you out.”

  Lil looked like she didn’t know whether to be outraged or to laugh. She decided to laugh. A lot.

  She laughed so hard, tears came to her eyes. Wiping them from the corners, she said, “She sure did, the wicked old woman.”

  Her reasons for riding the circuit weren’t that far from his own, but the motivation for them couldn’t have been more distant. She would happily walk away when the whole thing was over because she didn’t really want to be there. She was a star rider who could walk away.

  What that must be like...

  That line of thinking brought a heavy feeling to the pit of his stomach and nothing good ever came out of that, so he changed the subject.

  “So what’d you do when you quit rodeo?”

  A bubble of laughter escaped her lips, and he felt his own quirk upward. He liked that she was as quick to laugh as she was to temper.

  “You make it sound like I did it cold turkey. It wasn’t like that. I just decided not to pursue a professional career. I went to college on a rodeo scholarship, actually.”

  AJ smiled. “My best friend did that. He’s a lawyer in Arizona, now. What did you study?”

  “Nonprofit management,” she said. “Thought I would go into addiction recovery work.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t. Granddad died right after I graduated, so I stayed home and ran the ranch with Gran for a while. We were bleeding out, though, without the supplemental income from Granddad’s drives.”

  “Drives?”

  Lil nodded toward the cows. “Right up until the end we thought he was still taking two to three cattle drives every year. Turned out that wasn’t the case—he’d stopped when he’d just got too old but was too ashamed of the fact to tell us.”

  Her words bounced around in his chest uncomfortably, echoing Diablo’s and The Old Man’s. “I know the type. What’d you do?”

  “I tried to get a few drive commissions, but nobody wanted to send a young woman out on a drive team. Things have been tight, but we’ve been managing—until we got the notice that the terms of the reverse mortgage had come due.”

  AJ smiled. “We never expect the piper, do we? The Old Man started CityBoyz to give boys who lived in Houston a chance to learn how to cowboy. One of his old sponsors loved the idea and funded the whole project. When that sponsor died suddenly this year, the money disappeared in an instant.”

  “And he never got nonprofit status?” she asked. “I remember that from your bio.” She added the last bit at his look of confusion.

  He grinned. “You read my bio?”

  Lil’s cheeks turned pink. “I read everyone’s bio.”

  His right dimple peeked out with a smile and a spark lit his eyes. “Sure you did.”

  “I did,” she insisted.

  The other side of AJ’s lopsided smile lifted. “Sure you did,” he repeated.

  “You don’t have a lot of friends, do you?” she asked irritably.

  He shook his head. “Not really, no. You either, I bet.”

  She hit him on the shoulder, but smiled and didn’t lie. “Nope.”

  He shrugged. “It’s lonely at the top.”

  “You’re impossible.”

  “I think I’m very possible. Want to try me?”

  Lil made a choking sound in the back of her throat and scooted away from him. “No thank you. Not one for cowboys, myself.”

  “Funny, that’s not been my experience,” he said, returning her long ago words to her with delight.

  Outrage lit her face. Eyes narrowing, she sassed, “Cowboys aren’t known for their stamina...”

  AJ gave her his best stern look. “Now don’t go making any eight-second-ride jokes. You’re better than that.”

  She shrugged, a mischievous light coming to her eyes. “If the shoe fits...”

  AJ scooted closer. “I could show you how it fits.”

  Lil scooted away like she she’d touched fire, eyes wide and glittering. “No thanks. I’m good.”

  AJ stretched lazily and watched her eyes follow the movement. She was lying. But all he said was, “Suit yourself.”

  “I will,” she said with too much conviction.

  AJ chuckled. “Tell me more of the Lilian Sorrow Island story.”

  She shook her head. “Nope. It’s your turn.”

  “I won’t do it. Not until you give me more. You don’t know your daddy, but what about your mom? What was she like? You talk about your grandparents. Do you have any memories of her? How did she die?” It was strange, the way the spare details of her life had stayed with him. He’d never been good with birthdays, names, or faces—for AJ, if it wasn’t attached to rodeo it didn’t stick. At least that’s how it had been. Until Lil.

  Her smile froze before she took a moment to look down and straighten his jacket, pulling it tighter around herself. When she looked back up the smile was still stuck on her face, though her eyes had gone as cold and gray as a lake he had seen during his first trip to the snow. “I was four when she died and three when she started down the path, so mostly she’s fuzzy, but I remember her singing. She loved to sing and dance.” What had started out terse and matter-of-fact had softened into sad before his eyes, but AJ didn’t think Lil had been aware of the transition.

  As honored as he was that she had opened up, even slightly, he wanted her smile back more.

  “And she died in a horrible dancing accident?” He was solemn, placing a hand over his heart.

  Again she punched his shoulder, this time adding, “Excuse you. That’s got to be speaking ill of the dead or something.”

  Looking affronted, he said, “I don’t see how so. People die dancing all the time. Sounds to me like you’re the one being disrespectful, acting like death is some kind of absurd comedy.”

  She shook her head. “Impossible.”

  He grinned, licking his lips as he did. “We’ve already gone over this, but if you want to again...”

  Closing her mouth, she crossed her arms tight in front of her chest and puffed it up. “I certainly do not, thank you very much. And no, my mother did not die dancing. She died of being wild and brokenhearted.”

  Her show of affront was admirable, but he sensed the truth in her words. And something else.

  “And it was a cowboy that broke her heart?”

  Lil sucked in a breath and gave a short nod, he
r posture going stiffer than he’d ever seen it—so stiff she could no sooner ride a bike than a horse or a bull. It was strange to see her like that, the body he’d spent so much time watching as closely as he had gone alien in its lack of flow.

  And he realized another thing.

  “That cowboy was your daddy.”

  Lil let out the breath she’d been holding and her shoulders sagged—but only for a moment. Then the line of her lips firmed, her spine straightened, her shoulders squared, and she gave him a smile that was real, if tired. “He was. At least that’s what we’ve pieced together from the bit she let slip. The way I see it, the best thing to do is avoid cowboys altogether.”

  AJ snorted. “What is history for if not to learn from the mistakes of the past? We’ll be more careful.”

  Lil laughed. “Said every fool ever.”

  “How’re you ever going to find your daddy if you avoid cowboys?” he challenged.

  Lil made a rude noise in the back of her throat. “Who says I’m looking for my daddy?”

  AJ aimed a dry look in her direction. “Just a few things...”

  “I did not come to the rodeo looking for my daddy, thank you very much.”

  He loved how she could simultaneously sound like a septuagenarian and a playboy bunny at the same time.

  “Right...” Provoking her had become one of his favorite pastimes.

  But instead of rising to the bait, she just shook her head at him, smiling all the while. “I see what you’re doing, but I’ll let you get away with it. Except for one thing—I came to the rodeo because of my granddad.”

  “How’s that?” he asked, loving the way the fire cast dancing shadows and light across her skin, heating the smug ease with which she regarded him into something deeper, something real, and comfortable—into the kind of thing that lasted.

  “When I was four, just before my mom died, my granddad was out in the pasture working with a wild horse. Gran had left the door open for just a second, but it was long enough for me to run outside and straight into the front pasture to him. Granddad did some fancy tricks, including a bareback mount I’ll remember to the day I die. He kept me out of harm’s way that day, and gave me the bug at the same time.”