“Come on in,” Leah said, opening the door and taking the first step up the little aluminum ladder. She lost her balance and fell backward a bit but I put one hand onto the small of her back to steady her, and she recovered.
Stepping inside, I had to duck to get through the doorway and realized I was probably going to have to keep myself bent at least a little the entire time. The trailers for the ladies seemed to be wider, but shorter ones, with more space and a few more amenities than I remembered having on my trailer, which looked exactly like the corral of trailers we passed before we got to these ones. I had a feeling the men’s trailers were a bit more basic but had more headroom.
But this was actually impressive, aside from the height. There was a tiny kitchenette that looked like it had a gas range, a small refrigerator that was humming due to what I assumed was either a small generator or a few large ones that were centralized and providing electricity, and a sofa next to a small, flat television. In the back of the trailer, there was a door, which I assumed led to an actual bedroom. It was frankly better than most of my friends’ first apartments.
There were white Christmas lights, glowing a soft yellowish tint, strung up along the top of the trailer running from one side to the other and then into a little curtained room that I assumed had a tiny commode. Across from it was a sink with a mirror and a standing closet that had Leah’s costumes hung from it. The one she wore earlier was missing, and I assumed it was taken by someone to a dry cleaner, though it might have been somewhere in the room too. It was impeccably clean, so I had no idea where it could hide, but I didn’t see it.
Beside the closet on the other side was what looked like a tall trophy case, and I peered into it. It was surprising how many trophies and buckles were in there, from various competitions but mostly from this particular circuit over several years. Leah crossed behind me as I stared at the various awards and went to the sink where she turned it on and splashed some cold water on her face and shook off some of the drunken cobwebs.
Leah then moved over to the bunk bed and sat heavily on the bottom bunk to take off her boots. As she did, she seemed to survey the size of the bed and then looked me up and down. Then her eyes went back to the bed again. When she stood up, wobbly and without boots on, she was a few inches shorter, swaying and looking perturbed.
“I think you might be right,” she said. “You aren’t going to fit on the bunk bed.”
“That’s fine,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted. “I can crash on the floor.”
“No, no, no, no, no,” she said, moving her finger back and forth and placing her other hand on her hip. It was meant to be sassy and protective, but it came off adorably silly. “I have other options. I can fit on the bunk bed and you can take my bed if you want.”
“I can’t take your bed,” I said flatly. “I couldn’t impose like that.”
“It’s not imposing,” she said. “I offered. You could sleep in there and I’ll sleep on the bunk and—hey wait a minute.”
She walked toward me, and for a second, I thought she was going to grab me by the shirt and pull me with her into the bedroom. If she had, I wasn’t going to fight her. Instead, to my dismay, she turned at the last second and squeezed by me, yanking the cushions off the couch and tossing them aside. I turned to see what she was up to just as she pulled what looked like a queen-size mattress out of the couch.
“I forgot I had this,” she said. “I only ever used it once, back when they were still renovating the other girls’ trailers. This was Georgia’s trailer then, and she had the bedroom. Tina and Lisa had the bunks, and I had the couch bed.”
“This will work perfectly,” I said. “Thank you.”
She nodded, and there was a moment where we swayed, just inches from each other, slight smiles on our faces and our eyes burning into each other’s. I could feel the intensity in that moment. The desire to reach out and touch her, for her to touch me, it was overwhelming and raw. But before I lost control and pulled her into me, she sauntered away, squeezing past me again and going to the little closet area. She returned with a sheet, a pillow, and a heavy comforter.
“Here you go,” she said. She smiled and then turned on her heel, heading back toward the bedroom door.
I sat down on the bed and groaned as I sank into it. I pulled off my own boots but elected to stay dressed. I didn’t want to give her the impression that I was expecting something, and worse, I didn’t want her to wake up in the middle of the night having forgotten I was there and find a naked man in what constituted as her living room.
She made it as far as the edge of her bed and flopped face first into it. Just seconds later, she mumbled something, and I knew she was sound asleep. I lay back and closed my eyes, smiling at the ceiling. It had been a long time since I met someone I wanted to spend more than one night with.
But perhaps, I might stick around a little while.
Chapter 8
Leah
I flung my hand in the general direction of my phone, slapping the mattress until it hit the hard plastic, and I pulled it toward me, blindly swiping in hopes of turning off the alarm. I forgot to turn it off before I went to bed the night before because… because…
Oh no.
I sat up, suddenly very aware of the fact that I not only went to sleep in my clothes but also with my makeup on and without brushing my hair. I was a mess. Also, sitting up was an invitation for the hangover headache to make me feel like someone smashed a spike in the top of my skull and was repeatedly hammering it deeper inside. My stomach was swirling and nausea was taking hold.
And unless he’d left, there was a gorgeous man on the couch who I brought home and not only didn’t sleep with but I fell asleep drunk and woke up in the same position after. I peered around the door slowly, hoping I didn’t wake him up or alert him to my being awake if he already was. I had to figure out how to get myself presentable before he saw me, and that was before I figured out what the hell we were going to do from there. Hopefully, I could keep from emptying my stomach long enough to get him outside or something.
My view of the room increased as I peered around the door and I breathed a sigh of relief to see he wasn’t there. Though after that sigh was a feeling of sadness. As terrible as it would have been for him to be there—and it would have been really terrible—I was hoping to get to know him better.
Frowning, I stumbled to the sink and washed off my face. It took a few minutes to not look like a raccoon with a personality disorder, but eventually I had a clean face and I pulled my hair up into a ponytail after brushing it. The water-sloshing feeling in my stomach was making it hard to move, and I had made the decision to just go ahead and get the worst out of the way. I turned toward the bathroom and took a deep breath, preparing to empty it all out when there was a knock on the door.
“Just a second,” I said, loud enough for them to hear me. It was probably Macy. She was usually up first and would likely already have a cup of coffee and want details of what she would likely assume was a night of drunken passion.
I wobbled my way to the door and opened it. The light was piercing and bright and I shut my eyes tight, the pain throbbing in my temples. I put my hand on the doorframe and held out one finger on the other hand for her to give me a second, and then when I felt like I wasn’t going to ruin her morning with my last night, I hesitantly opened my eyes.
But it wasn’t Macy standing there. It was Colt. With milkshakes?
“Are those…” I began.
“Chocolate milkshakes, yes,” he said, grinning and sipping through the straw of one of them.
“How? Why? What?” I said, getting through some of the more pressing journalistic requirements.
“I called the rideshare we took last night this morning. Turns out he’s a really sweet guy. Lives not far from here actually. Had him take me through the drive-thru. Here.”
He held out one of the milkshakes to me and I eyed it with suspicion.
“Milkshakes. At nine in the mor
ning?”
“These milkshakes have been curing hangovers for me for a decade. It’s a trick my brother taught me. Just give it a shot.”
“Colt, I don’t think it’s such a good idea,” I began. “My stomach…”
“It’s precisely for your stomach that it’s a good idea. Just trust me.”
I reached out and took one of the milkshakes, figuring if it all ended up coming back out right there at least I warned him. But the second the cold, frothy shake got into my mouth, I actually did feel a little bit better. I took a big, long sip and backed up, letting him in. He had made the bed before he took off in the morning, returning it to its couch shape, and he sat on it. I opted to take one of the small chairs by the table in the area of the trailer that cosplayed as a dining room.
“I would suggest a ton of water too,” he said. “Room temperature if you can stand it. It hydrates you faster that way.”
“That, I already knew,” I said. “But thank you. This is amazing.”
“Thanks. I thought you might need a little pick-me-up. You got blitzed last night.” The grin spread across his face and I knew he wasn’t poking at me out of meanness. There was a comfortable teasing nature about it, and I stuck my tongue out at him.
“Just so you know, that’s not something I do often,” I said. “As a matter of fact, I almost never go out on Friday night. I have competitions all evening. A hangover is just going to screw me up.”
“I figured it was just a celebration because of breaking fourteen,” he said.
I nodded, picking up the straw and stabbing it down into the milkshake. It was remarkable how much better I felt, but it was even more remarkable that I felt the way I was feeling about this man in the room with me. I didn’t want him to leave.
“So, where are you going after you head out of here?” I asked.
“I’m not sure,” he said. “I was planning on heading back to Montana to the ranch, but they don’t even know I’m coming, so it’s not like there’s a rush to get there.” He shifted in his seat a little and I saw a sparkle in his eye. “I was thinking, maybe I could hang out for the rest of the weekend. See the rodeo play out.”
I smiled. “I think that would be great,” I said. “I can give you a pass that will get you into all of the events. They’ll even let you get backstage so you can meet my horse, Renegade.”
“As much as I would love to meet your fine horse, I was kind of hoping to maybe hang out a little bit with you.”
I felt a rush of heat go up my cheeks and I smiled. “I would like that too. You can hang out with me when I’m not in the ring. If you have the time to kill, I guess.”
“Yeah,” he said, taking a big sip of his milkshake. “I think I have the time to kill.”
He smiled at me and I returned it and the heat that had been building all night last night was sparked right back up. There was something there that I couldn’t explain, and I knew I just didn’t want him to go. I liked how it felt when he was around. I liked how I felt when he was around.
He was charismatic and he laughed easily and freely. Not in that fake way that men sometimes laughed when they were trying to get women to think they were sweet but in a genuine way that came from somewhere deep. Like I was the only person who could make him laugh that way.
Plus, he had a lot of the same interests as I did, and with a similar history because of the rodeo, it meant we understood each other. He knew what my life was like, and I understood what his was too. Granted, I didn’t grow up on a farm the way he had, and I didn’t have a big family that I wanted to get back to, but the love of the rodeo from a young age and the desire to live that life, I understood that. So did he.
Suddenly, it hit me. He said he had recently semi-retired but never told me why and never said he was truly done. I wondered how hard I would have to try to get him to enter a competition. Certainly, his buckles told a story about his prowess, and from what I remembered of Googling him the night before, it seemed like it was legit, but I wanted to see it for myself. A lot of men talked big games about their abilities in the ring, some of them on our circuit, and it was always fun to see which ones could back that up.
“So you said you don’t compete anymore,” I said, stabbing at the remains of the milkshake. “Why?”
“Just thought I should take it a little easy,” he said. “I had been on the road for years at a time. Missed a lot at home and was starting to feel like I missed a lot in general. My brothers all started becoming adults, you know? Married, kids, the whole thing. Yet, here I was, still acting like the nineteen-year-old kid who took off to go chase a dream.”
“But if it’s your dream, why not?” I asked.
“Well, that’s the thing. There’s no reason not to. I just felt like maybe I was missing something on top of that. So, I thought I’d take some time off, maybe for good, but maybe not, and hit up some other rodeos and see if something struck me. I got a little bored with the life, to tell the truth.” He finished with his milkshake and tossed the cup away. “I love the competition, but I was kind of fed up with being lonely all the time.” His eyes roamed back up to mine and I could see a sadness in them. A pain. “I’m not always the easiest cat to get along with.”
I nodded and finished my own milkshake. “I had an idea,” I said, not looking directly at him. “What if what you miss is being in the saddle, and you just were around the wrong people?”
He shrugged. “Could be it,” he said.
“Then why don’t you see if I can get you some room to compete this weekend. Only if you want to, of course.” I left it hanging. I brought my eyes back up to his and he smirked at me. It wasn’t a jerkish kind of smirk, but one where he seemed like he was being called out.
“You know what,” he said. “I wouldn’t mind a chance to get back in the saddle, even if it’s just exhibition style. I don’t know if I am in shape to compete.”
“Are you kidding, look at you,” I said and then slapped my hand over my mouth. Apparently, hangovers meant not having a filter when talking to strapping, sexy men. “I mean, you don’t look out of shape to me. Matter of fact, you look like a Greek god next to some of these guys. Their idea of exercise is the walk from the parking lot to their horse and not much more.”
He smiled. “I saw some of the guys last night. They looked pretty damn in shape.”
“Come on,” I said, turning up a bright smile. “Pick your poison.”
He shook his head and grinned before looking back up at me, a strand of hair falling across one eye. “I’m a bareback bucking competitor,” he said.
I rolled my eyes. “Of course, you are,” I said.
I couldn’t deny it though. I wanted to see him compete. The grace and strength he showed just in dancing with me at the bar made me think he was the real deal. Men that could move like that could stay on the back of a bronco, and he could move. Eager to see him compete, I picked up my phone and texted Macy. I was going to get him onto the card if I had to bribe her.
Chapter 9
Colt
It didn’t take much convincing for the promoters to want me to join the competition. My name was known within other bareback riders, and the chance to pair up some of their regulars against me was enticing to not only the promoters, but to the boys in the show as well. I had no illusions I was going to make a bunch of friends. These guys wanted to beat me and, if they could, humiliate me. I was an outsider coming into their circuit, where they were big fish in a small pond. To say I was unwelcome was an understatement.
Still, the promoters and Leah’s friend Macy were happy to get me on the schedule. Since I had done a little exhibition for guys I was trying to help, I had my gear with me in the truck, which I had grabbed when I took the rideshare to get the milkshakes. The competition was later in the afternoon, which gave me some time to hang out with Leah.
Her horse was gorgeous up close, even more so than I thought. I could see the special connection they had together, and we spent a fair amount of time hanging o
ut in the stable.
When it was time for her to get ready, she dipped back into the trailer to get dressed, and I stayed outside like a gentleman. The tension between us was sparkling and I knew there was going to be a moment, probably soon, when I was going to have to make a move or decide that it wasn’t worth ruining the very real friendship that was budding there as well. We could go either way, it felt like, but the connection was so strong that it seemed a shame to let it slip through my fingers without trying.
But that was later. For that moment, I was just enjoying her company and the fact that the prettiest girl in the whole damn state wanted to just chat with me. Her friends filtered in and out as we walked around, most of them giving us a little space to get to know each other. There wasn’t any awkwardness from them, which I appreciated, but I did notice a few glares from the men. Several of them seemed to be making excuses to interrupt us and have private discussions with her. I assumed it was an attempt to get me jealous or to establish dominance, but I didn’t pay it much mind. For the moment, we were just friends, and there was no reason for me to feel any sort of way about her talking to other people.
Then again, when she ran her contest and ended up scoring well, but not as much as the day before, I expected her to be upset. Instead, she immediately came back to where I was stretching out, preparing for my competition, and hung out with me. There were only a few people ahead of me and I had to get out there to get ready when she grabbed me by the front of my shirt.
“I think you should go out there with one thing on your mind,” she said.
I had a momentary break with reality as I filtered through several ideas of what that thing could be. “What’s that?” I eventually said diplomatically.
“To have fun,” she said, smiling. She was awfully close to me, and her grip on my shirt hadn’t lessened at all. The urge to make a move was becoming unbearable. “That’s the most important thing.”
His Sexy Smile Page 5