He grinned. “You want to do it again?”
Her blush was hot enough he feared she might spontaneously combust.
“You’re a shameless man,” she hissed.
He shrugged, laughter in his voice when he answered, “So long as I’m your only man, it doesn’t matter.”
“Very evolved of you.”
“I think so.” He patted his thigh and said cordially, “Care to come ride on my lap over here?”
“Excuse me?” She was incredulous, as if he were really inviting her to sit on his lap while they traveled at a steady trot, surrounded by cows.
So of course he said, “I invite you to slide your sassy ass across my lap and rest your head on my shoulder.”
Laughing, she said, “You wish.”
He grinned. “Sure do.”
She sucked in a breath, but he saw the tension in her body relax as her exhale morphed into a laugh. If she wouldn’t take the ride, he’d just have to keep her laughing as much as he could until they were done with the challenge.
“Gran always says you can wish in one hand and spit in the other and see which one fills up first.”
“That a dare?”
Her eyebrows shot up. “What? No! How’d you get to that?”
Rather than answer, he commented, “Your gran’s version is a lot cleaner than my grandpa’s.”
She ran it through a couple times in her head before it hit her—he could virtually see the wheels turning, as well as the ah-ha.
A chuckle escaped her lips and she tried to disguise it by looking back at the cattle, but it didn’t work, and never would, because he somehow knew that she’d never be able to hide herself from him.
She had snagged his attention, sharpened it, intensified it in a way unlike any he could recall experiencing—more like the way he felt about rodeo than women.
“So that’s a no on the ride?” he verified.
He was being ridiculous. He knew it, and would stop the second it started to make her uncomfortable. For now, though, whether she realized it or not, it made her forget how much they still had left to do.
“Are you always like this with women?” she asked, playing the part of the exasperated woman perfectly.
He paused, initially for dramatic effect, but in that brief space, he realized he couldn’t remember this kind of ease with any other woman.
When he answered, his face was thoughtful, his answer devoid of facade or charm. “No.”
Lil rolled her eyes. “Now you’re going to tell me it’s because I’m so special.”
He shook his head and said, “Nope,” even though it was true. She was. Perpetual grin returning, he said, “It’s because the women came after me.”
Tone effortfully casual, she said, “You’re ridiculous, but not lying. The way they go after you is over-the-top.”
She emphasized over-the-top as if she were worried he was going to miss the fact that she was calling him that, but he didn’t care. He was more interested in the thread of jealousy woven through her words. That she’d noticed—and been bothered by—the buckle bunnies that forever followed him made him feel all warm and fuzzy inside.
“If I really wanted to get over-the-top, I’d pull the evergreen buckle bunny move of bribing security so I could sneak into your room, take off all my clothes, slip into your sheets, and wait for you to find me. How’s that sound?”
“Stalker-ish.”
AJ laughed, “I thought so, too. Didn’t sleep with that one.”
“I should hope not. If you did, anything that happened after would be your own damn fault.”
“Agreed. Any more sage advice, oh experienced one?”
She turned as bright red as the tomatoes she shunned. Recovering herself, she rolled her eyes and said, “How about you getting back into position so we can finish this thing.”
“I like it when you talk dirty to me, Liliana,” he said before checking on the cows over his shoulder, and adding, “Seems like we’re finishing just fine with me where I am, so I’ll kindly pass on your offer.”
“Impossible.”
“To stay mad at me, you mean?”
“Something like that,” she muttered.
“So what do you do when you’re not breaking the rodeo?” he asked casually.
Lil’s laugh bubbled out like she couldn’t help herself. “Run a ranch.”
“The ‘all work and no play’ type, then?”
Lil’s eyebrows drew together. “I know how to have a good time.”
“Is that so? All it seems I’ve heard about is work and more work. What do you do for fun?”
Lil thought for a moment before replying, “I ride my horse.”
“Alone?”
She nodded.
“Do you ever go out?”
“You mean to bars and the like?”
“And the like,” he said dryly.
She shook her head. She explained, “I’ve lost people to drugs and alcohol. A bar’s not typically my scene.”
“That doesn’t have to keep you from going out,” he pointed out.
“Bars are the only place to go out in Muskogee.”
“You don’t have longtime girlfriends you drink wine with? You strike me as the kind who’d have two best friends she’s known since childhood.”
“How’d you come by that?” she asked with a laugh.
“You’re covered in that homegrown country girl thing. Usually comes with the territory.”
Lil laughed, shaking her head. “Well, I don’t. A combo of not having many neighbors and not having much in common with my fellow homegrown country girls. They were more interested in winning crowns than buckles. Our paths didn’t cross much.”
“But you did go to school, though?”
Lil rolled her eyes. “Rather than take offense, I’ll just write that question off as city-boy rudeness...”
AJ laughed. “So why no lifelong school friends?”
“I do have two friends now, you know. Good ones. I just haven’t known them since back in school. Back then, I suspect my lack of friends was due to the same reason that your own best friend is from CityBoyz.”
“Rodeo,” he said.
He knew it even as he realized he’d known before he ever asked her the question in the first place.
Rodeo, real passion for it, didn’t leave much room for friends—especially non-rodeo friends. To be close, people had to be willing to travel long dusty roads at your side, or be comfortable with your absence. Middle schoolers and high schoolers weren’t particularly known for being comfortable with anything, let alone the complications of long-distance friendships.
She had people in her life now, though.
“So you work and ride your horse?”
“And sign up for harebrained rodeo contests in my spare time.”
“The simple life.”
She laughed, “Yeah. It’s the simple life, alright. Riding bulls by night and chasing cows by day.”
AJ grinned. “What more could you ask for?”
“What more, indeed. And you. Do you go out?”
AJ’s grin stretched further. “Of course. I go out all the time.”
“’Cause you don’t have a real job?”
“I had a real job, once. The pay sucked.”
Lil snorted. “And what was that?”
“I was an EMT.”
Her mouth dropped open.
Dryly, he said, “Rather than take offense, I’ll just write that face off as country girl rudeness.”
Lil closed her mouth, but still managed to convey complete shock. “When did you have time for that?”
“Right after high school. Only way my mom would sign off on me going pro instead of going to college.”
“Technically, you didn’t need her permission.
You were eighteen.”
He laughed, “My mom’s a badass, though, remember? My going into pro rodeo didn’t fit with the gentleman scholar image she had for me.”
“But that would have never worked for you. Your dad did that.”
Her words slipped through his shields like small fish through a loose net, and he wondered if she saw through him as clearly as he through her.
He nodded. “He did.”
Lil gave a little sigh. “But she’s still a college professor, so what can you expect?”
“Exactly. EMT training was as good a compromise as I was going to get, so I took the deal.”
“She suggested it?”
“She did.” He looked into her eyes and grinned. “Looking back, I’m sure she chose emergency response because she wanted to scare me away from rodeo.”
Lil’s answering grin brought a light to her gray eyes. “Didn’t work.”
“It certainly did not. But it got me through those lean early years as a pro—before the prize money really started flowing in. And it turns out emergency training comes in handy at the rodeo.”
“I can imagine,” she laughed. Gesturing to the pasture around them, she added, “And on the range, too.”
He tipped his hat to her in agreement. “And on the range.” Using her segue as a way to check in, he asked, “How’re you feeling after the fall, by the way?” He was worried about the possibility of concussion.
“Good.”
“Good. You should take it easy after the challenge. A hot bath would be best, but a shower in the RV will have to do.”
“Bossy.”
“I’m a professional.”
“Are you? Don’t you have to keep up some kind of license for that?”
He raised an eyebrow. “And what if I do?”
Once again, she looked shocked. “Do you?”
“Your country girl rudeness is showing again.”
She flipped him off and he smiled.
“I told you it comes in handy,” he said. “I once saved a man’s leg, resetting it after a bronc stomped him. Stopped a lot of blood flow over the years. Kept young fools from riding with concussions, that kind of thing.” He said the last bit looking her over, and she stared coolly back, eyebrow lifted.
Behind them the cows mooed.
She ignored him, asking instead, “Will you go back to it when this is over?”
He hated every version of the “what are you going to do next?” question, even coming from her. It was hard to say exactly what you were going to do with the rest of your life when you’d climbed your personal Everest by thirty-six. “No. You’ve got to get off on the job for it to last. I was happy to say goodbye.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “There’s a lot of stuff you can’t save and I was already in love—with rodeo. Leaving emergency response was like coming home from a long stint away—and I never even stopped rodeo.”
“Good skills to have, though,” she said.
He nodded. “Good skills to have. You never know when the next emergency is going to show up.”
As if his words had conjured the moment, the cows erupted in frantic mooing. A knot formed in the left flank of the herd, while several cows from the front and right flank broke into a trot, stretching and elongating the herd block like pizza dough. Looking around to see what had startled them, he saw a strange moving dust mote on the horizon. As he watched it, it grew larger, coalescing into the shape of the camera van.
“Ah shit, camera crew startled them.” Lil’s curse wasn’t panicked, merely resigned, and it calmed AJ. She began to nose her horse toward the knot of cows, but AJ maneuvered to block her.
“Let me do it,” he said.
“You don’t know what to do.”
“Tell me.”
“Takes too long to explain,” she said testily.
He didn’t have to say anything for her to sense that he would not be moved.
She heaved a frustrated sigh. “Fine. Go check out the bunch. You’ve got a set of skills, so assess the situation and determine which one to use: rope, tie, wrestle, or herd.”
He moved as soon as she was done speaking, guiding his horse toward the bunch. Lil turned her horse the opposite direction and began to pick up speed.
What’s she doing? he wondered. He figured she’d hold tight where she was, but as she surged ahead of the scattering cows, he realized she was recapturing the lead. She looked like something from a movie, her hair whipping and coming undone in the wind behind her as she rode. But as much as he wanted to, he couldn’t afford to spend any more time watching her in action—he had his own mess to untangle.
24
Lil allowed herself only a moment to watch AJ ride toward the distressed cows before she took off to catch the rest of the herd. She had to recapture the lead before they built up too much steam. So far things were controllable, but even a docile herd could become dangerous if they got too riled.
Lil and Becky the Horse broke ahead of the trotting cows and then slowed their pace.
“Whoa, there. Atta girl.” Lil spoke louder than she needed to—her calm, soothing command voice wasn’t for the horse. It was for the cows.
Herd animals craved cool and competent leadership. Give them that and they were down to follow you wherever.
And follow they did.
It was almost comical how easily they settled down and got in line behind her. Their sea of moos beginning to fade.
Lil twisted around in her saddle to check on AJ.
As always, and even from a distance, the sight of him made her heart do a little flip. He was gorgeous in his seat, expertly nosing his horse between cows to break up the cluster.
One by one, cows broke free from the chaos and trotted to rejoin the rest of the herd with Lil, until all that remained were a single female and a younger male.
The male’s rear left foot looked to be stuck. The female mooed anxiously at his side.
Lil was relieved. The female was probably the male’s mother and when he’d gotten stuck, she’d stopped in her tracks and sent off the distress call, causing a mini traffic jam.
Lil sat back and watched as AJ circled the two cows, deciding what to do next.
The rest of the herd had recoalesced behind Lil, who had them clustered and relatively still. They grazed patiently, now that they felt safe.
AJ circled his duo one more time, and Lil wondered if she should ride out and help him. She hesitated. The cows behind her would be easy to spook again, and twice spooked was twice as hard to calm back down.
But AJ looked like he needed help.
Resolved, she began turning her horse to ride his way only to see he didn’t need her help after all.
His lasso floated through the air like it was weightless itself to gracefully land around the male’s neck.
Lil kept her eyes glued on AJ. His roping was so smooth, you’d think he’d been born and bred on a ranch.
He tightened his end of the rope and gave it an experimental tug with his arms. The cow budged, but didn’t come free.
Holding the rope still, he twisted around to face forward in the saddle and wrapped the rope around the pommel a few times, then spurred his horse forward.
The horse pressed forward only to stutter into a sidestep, not expecting the resistance of the cow’s weight. Then the horse’s instinct to pull kicked in and it surged forward, this time prepared for its load.
The cow came free with a distressed moo, then proceeded to try to buck and kick itself free from AJ’s hold. After a handful of halfhearted attempts, the freed cow resigned himself to the rope around his neck, thereby allowing AJ close enough to release it from its bondage.
There was a metaphor there, but Lil was more interested in the way AJ’s muscles bulged as he freed the cow. He coiled his rope back up wit
h grace, his movements economical and practiced, and watching made her heart pound. Her very own private show from the world’s greatest rodeo cowboy. She’d come a long way from the ranch.
In fact, they were both a long way away from everything. Just the two of them, a herd of cows, and the open range all around. Heat rushed to unmentionable places and she sucked in a deep breath.
Not again. As much as the idea burned in her gut, it could never happen again.
A magical, once-in-a-lifetime moment beneath the stars was one thing, a clandestine affair was something else entirely. Something she didn’t do.
Just like you don’t do cowboys, an unrepentant internal voice sneered in reminder.
But she could be harsh and ruthless too, and she shoved it down. She had broken rules around AJ, but she wouldn’t continue.
He was her competition and, besides that, he was a rodeo cowboy through and through. Being the world’s greatest only made him more so.
Infinitely more so.
Which meant no future, no second time around, and absolutely no to the longing pulsing in her heart.
She wrested her attention back to the cows.
Heifer and son were nearly caught up to the rest of the herd and AJ nearly back to the rear flank, where he should have been the whole time and where she knew he wouldn’t stop now.
Sure enough, he didn’t.
Returning to his place at her side, he exuded everything that was male, exhilarated, and satisfied.
She cut off his nonsense before it could start: “Pretty bold to come right back to the place you got in trouble.”
“That was amazing. You were right. I knew how to do everything.”
His grin flashed and her stomach flipped.
The man was too much.
“You’re just going to ride here the whole day, aren’t you?”
He nodded and started to whistle a tune.
“And what happens if I take rear?” she asked.
“I’ll be there,” he said.
And so she did the smart thing and let it go.
The adrenaline of their mini scatter was fading.
Lil stole a glance at AJ.
He was strong and firm outside, and good and upright inside, and it showed all over.
The Wildest Ride--A Novel Page 23