It wasn’t until a car accident during Athena’s senior year of high school that Nancy had taken a hard look at her life and decided to change. She’d sobered up, gone into treatment, and finally gotten on a good medication that helped her handle her emotional swings. It had been a grueling experience for both of them—for Nancy to claw her way back to some stability and for Athena to make ends meet and support them both financially—but it had all paid off in the end. The last thing Athena wanted was to throw that past in her mother’s face. The best she could hope for was that her mom would laugh it off as a joke in poor taste. When she heard the water from the kitchen sink shut off, she knew she wasn't going to be so lucky.
“Athena,” her mother started, her voice quiet, almost contemplative.
“Please, Mom, don’t,” Athena answered quickly, almost desperately, “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I said that.”
“You may not know, but I do.”
“Because I’m being a brat,” Athena groaned, shutting her eyes and wishing mightily for the ability to turn back time.
“No, that’s not it. You’re not being a brat. You’re being honest. And this is something we should probably have talked about a long time ago,” Athena’s mom sighed as she slid into the chair across from Athena at the kitchen table. She smiled a small, sad smile, and grabbed for a cookie of her own.
“Mom, really, we don’t need to talk about anything,” Athena groaned, “it was just a stupid, off-hand comment.”
“No, it wasn’t. It’s a comment born in truth. I wasn’t there for you when you were growing up. I know that now. I wasn’t the kind of mother I should have been.”
"Mom—" Athena said desperately. Her voice broke on just that one word, and she had to shut her mouth again. She wasn't going to sit at the table and cry. That was one thing she absolutely was not going to allow.
"No," her mother pushed forward gently, "I'm going to say my piece. You're a strong woman, a capable woman. Some of that is just who you were born to be, but some of it is because you had to be. I own the way my mistakes shaped you. I failed you, did it many times over. But you have to be the one to make the choice now."
“What choice?” Athena whispered, her voice terribly small and reminiscent of a child.
“The choice about what to do with the hand you were dealt. I know how much you gave up to stay here and make sure I was taken care of, honey. I’ll never stop being grateful for it—but I’m also ashamed that taking care of me meant that you never got a chance to go after everything you wanted. You’ve got that shot now. You just have to choose if you’re going to keep letting your past dictate your future. You get to choose if you use the past as an excuse not to live your life.”
“I don’t know what that means,” she choked miserably, fixating on the table top.
“It means that you get to decide whether or not you take on the risks that could make you a star. I heard about the competition you turned down, baby girl. And judging by the fact that you’re sitting at my table instead of at the stables, getting in some practice, I’m beginning to think you might be planning on skipping out of the big competition with Nate Grant.”
“Mom—"
“No,” her mother insisted, “no. You have earned this competition. You’ve earned this platform.”
“Right, but if I do the competition, I’ll just be playing into Nate’s PR stunt. I want to be more than that.”
“Oh, baby girl,” her mother answered, leaning forward with tears in her eyes and taking one of Athena’s hands in both of hers, “if that’s where your head is, you’re looking at this all wrong.”
“What do you mean?” Athena asked uncertainly.
“I mean, you look at Nate and see a man who’s focused on publicity—but I look at him and see a man who’s focused on you. Yes, he gets things wrong sometimes and yes, his perspective is skewed. But that’s where you can be good for him, sweetheart. You can ground him while he lifts you up. He can help you navigate the press and deal with being a celebrity, and you can remind him how to connect with real people like your rodeo girls. That’s what love’s all about—shoring each other up, and leaning on each other.”
“But how do I know if he really loves me? I thought… maybe… but then—”
“Darling, you can never be completely sure. There’s always going to be a risk in putting your heart out there. But what you need to ask yourself is… is he worth the risk?”
* * *
Nate paced the floor behind the rodeo arena doggedly, as if his walking might actually be able to accomplish something. He'd been pacing the tight space for at least thirty minutes, but it felt like a whole lot more. Every time he heard a noise that had even the smallest possibility of being Athena, he stopped and turned to face it. His heart started thumping wildly in his chest, only to leave him disappointed and feeling slightly sick. By the time he turned to see Ian standing there and looking at him, he felt about ready to burst out of his skin.
“Jesus, brother, what do you think you’re doing startling me like that?” Nate said hotly, cracking his knuckles and starting his pacing again before he could get a good look at the bewildered expression on Ian’s face.
“All right, man, I give,” Ian answered, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender, “what’s going on here?”
“Nothing,” Nate snapped, “it’s just nerves, is all.”
“If you say so, but I’ve never seen you this riled up before a competition. What’s got you so rattled?”
Instead of answering, Nate looked around for what had to be the thousandth time, searching for some kind of sign that Athena was coming after all.
He'd spent the last week telling himself that there was nothing else he could have done. The blow-up with Athena had been inevitable. He’d been stupid to get involved with her in the first place, knowing all the risks of things going south.
The problem was, his life seemed a whole heck of a lot emptier without her in it. He tried to find an excuse to see her, but his obligation to her girls was over and with the two of them at odds, he couldn't exactly show up to do extra classed like he'd been doing before.
But it was more than that, as much as he had come to care about those little ladies. It was Athena herself. She’d affected him in a way he couldn’t understand—or deny. Nate had made a practice of keeping himself unattached. It was something he had been proud of. Athena, though? She had gotten under his skin something fierce, and now that she was there, there was no getting clear of her again. More importantly, he didn't want to get clear of her. He only wanted to see her again. He wanted to see her and tell her how many mistakes he had made, how sorry he was—and all the ways he wanted to make it up to her.
“Hey, Nate. Earth to Nate!” Ian said loudly, “What’s going on here, man? Seriously. I’m getting a little worried about you.”
“Don’t be worried about me,” Nate shot back, “just tell me whether or not you’ve seen Athena. Truthfully, I don’t think she’s coming, but—"
“Athena?” Ian interrupted with a slow smile, “You mean the same Athena who’s sitting in the makeup chair behind you?”
“What?!”
Nate whirled around so quickly he got dizzy, but when he saw what Ian was looking at, he didn’t care in the slightest. Because it was real. It was her, Athena, leaning back in a chair and letting somebody mess with her hair. Despite the surge of nerves that flooded his stomach, Nate couldn’t help but smile. He was well aware of how much Athena hated being primped and fussed over. He could see it all over her face. Until she caught sight of him watching her in the mirror, that was. When their eyes locked, her expression changed to something he absolutely couldn’t read.
“Hold on a second,” he said vaguely to Ian, already headed towards her chair, “I’ve got to take care of something.”
He walked towards Athena on legs he couldn't feel, his mind racing a million miles a minute. There were dozens of things he could think to say to her, and not a single one of
them felt like the right thing. After the mess he'd made, he wasn't sure that there would ever be a right thing. All he knew was that he needed to try. If he didn't at least try to get her back, he thought he was going to regret it for the rest of his life.
“I... I didn’t think you were going to come,” he whispered. As opening lines went, it was about as lame as things could get, but it was a start.
“I know,” she answered softly, “I didn’t think I was going to either.”
“I want to concede to you,” he said in a rush, “I don’t want anything to do with the competition. I want you to have it. You deserve it. You deserve this and so much more.”
“Nate, I—"
“And I want to give it to you, Athena,” he continued in a rush, “I want to give you everything you deserve. Because I love you, Athena. I love you so much it hurts.”
“Are you done?” she said with a smile.
“Yes,” he sighed, defeated by that one word, “I’m done. I tried, right?”
“You did, and now I’m going to give you my answer. You can’t concede.”
“But—"
"You can't concede because I love you too," she said, a slow grin spreading across her face, "and I want to help you finish this thing. I want you to get your sponsor, and I want the two of us to give it a real shot. Do you think we can do that? Do you think we can give it a go?"
Because he couldn't find any words to do justice to the way her words made him feel, Nate scooped Athena out of the chair, swung her around like the two of them were in a movie, and planted her with a kiss.
Epilogue
“All right, girls, anyone have any questions? Are we all clear on what we’re going to do here?”
“Yes, Mr. Grant,” the girls—who Nate still thought of as Athena’s little ladies—answered in a chorus.
“Are you sure?” he pressed, “Because this is a big deal. This is the biggest deal, my friends. This is your basic life or death situation.”
“Come on,” Gretta half-laughed, half-groaned, “nobody’s going to die. You’re just being silly.”
“Bite your tongue,” Nate said with mock horror. Except that he kind of meant it, at least in part. He’d been through plenty of competitions, plenty of scenarios that warranted a surge of adrenaline, but nothing in his life that came anywhere close to this. Out of everything he had done, this was the only thing that felt like it really counted, and the competition wasn’t even his own.
"Does she know anything?" another girl asked, her little face beet red with excitement, "Like, do you think she's got a clue?"
“I don’t know,” Nate answered suspiciously, folding his arms across his chest for good measure, “it depends. Did you guys keep my secret?”
The girls gave him an enthusiastic “yes,” a couple of them shooting him looks that made it clear how little they appreciated his lack of faith.
And he did have faith in them. He had been helping Athena with them from time to time ever since their legendary competition, the one in which she had beaten him soundly. He had still gotten his sponsor despite losing. All the publicity from the reality show and from their very real relationship had seen to that. In the end, though, it had hardly seemed to matter. It was Athena that mattered. It was what the two of them had together, and he reminded himself of that fact every day. He was lucky to have her. As far as he was concerned, he was the luckiest man alive.
Athena’s career had taken off after the commotion too. She’d been able to start working on the rodeo circuit, just as she had always wanted. She still taught classes for her girls—she did that because she wanted to, not because she needed the money. That love for her girls was what had given him the idea for what was about to happen. He already had a bus at his disposal from his travels, and it hadn’t been a hard sell to get Athena to take it for the trip to her Dallas competition. The girls had been so happy to be a part of his surprise that they had actually tried to spend the night on the bus for fear of being left behind.
“Mr. Grant!” Gracie whispered shrilly, tugging on his shirt, “She’s coming! You better get ready!”
Nate didn’t have time to say anything in rebuttal. Athena was halfway up the stairs to the bus before she realized that it wasn’t just going to be her and Nate. When she saw all of her girls sitting there on the bus with him, she stopped and stared, her face such a perfect mask of surprise that Nate couldn’t help but laugh.
“Um, hi, girls,” she said cautiously, “what’s going on here?”
“Nothing much,” Nate answered as casually as he was able. He shoved a hand into his pocket, holding fast to the box waiting there. Anytime he stopped touching it, he started to panic that it wouldn’t be there anymore.
“Nate? Please tell me they have permission to come to the competition,” she started to say doubtfully, “because they need things like parental approval, you know? They—"
“I got it, honey,” he interrupted, “give me a little credit, will ya? I’ve been doing this for a year now. I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two. They’ve got everything they need.”
“That’s right, Miss Athena!” Gretta piped up, no longer able to contain herself, “We’ve got everything we need, including this!”
Before Nate could stop her, Gretta grabbed the sign carefully hidden beneath her seat and held it triumphantly over her head. When Athena saw what it said, her hands flew up to her face and tears sprang out in her eyes. Nate groaned, but he couldn’t stop his grin.
“This wasn’t exactly how it was supposed to go,” he said, rolling his eyes dramatically at Gretta, who gave him a sheepish smile in return, “I had a whole plan. I was going to wait until you won the competition and there were going to be flowers. I feel like there should be flowers with this sort of thing.”
“Right,” she answered distractedly, her eyes never leaving the poster her girls had worked so hard to create, “does that say what I think it says?”
“The sign? Well, if you think it says ‘Will you marry me?’ then you would be right.”
He had a whole speech planned out, one in which he would tell her all of the amazing things she was and all of the ways she had changed his life. Before he got a chance to say anything else at all, though, Athena was up the rest of the bus’s steps and in his arms. She kissed him deeply, her face so close to his that he could feel the wet from her cheeks on his own. She was pressed so tightly against him that he could hardly manage to get the ring box out of his pocket. When he did, he held it out for her and smiled gently when she started to cry even harder.
“Well? If you need some time, sugar, I understand, but I’m not going to lie. I’m kind of dying here. I—"
“Yes!” she shouted so loudly that it made the girls sitting closest to them jump, “The answer is yes, cowboy. Now you’re stuck with me for good!”
“Well, it’s about time!” Ian’s voice rang out from behind the two of them.
“Damn right,” Jonah agreed with a hearty laugh.
Nate kissed Athena deeply, and then turned to face his brothers. He raised both of his fists over his head in a gesture reminiscent of Rocky throwing his hands up in victory, and they both laughed, just the way he knew they would.
He wanted to remember this moment forever, and not just because Athena had agreed to be his wife. He wanted to remember Ian and Jonah and him, the three of them together again and all of them finally happy. For the first time in a long, long time, the Grant brothers were all settled in their lives.
Nate couldn’t wait to see what the world had in store for them next.
End of The Cowboy’s Rodeo Rival
Grant Brothers Book Three
The Cowboy’s Surprise Nanny
The Cowboy’s Contract Marriage
The Cowboy’s Rodeo Rival
Want to saddle up with another cowboy? Please keep reading for a preview from Breaking the Cowboy’s Rules.
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About Leslie
Leslie North is the USA Today Bestselling pen name for a critically-acclaimed author of women's contemporary romance and fiction. The anonymity gives her the perfect opportunity to paint with her full artistic palette, especially in the romance and erotic fantasy genres.
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BLURB
Ranch owner, Trevor Wild, loves nothing more than spending his day in the saddle riding in the Texas sun. He’s passionate about being the latest generation of Wild man to breed quarter horses on Wildhorse Ranch. But in the aftermath of inheriting a bad business deal the Ranch is in serious financial trouble, and this serious cowboy needs to look outside the box to save his family’s pride and joy.
The Cowboy’s Rodeo Rival: Grant Brothers Series Book Three Page 11