by Claire Adams
I sighed and shook my head. “You’re probably right,” I said, taking one last glance back at the bull. “So, I guess drinks are on me tonight.”
I couldn’t quite quell the surge of bitterness inside me as I said the words. I wanted so badly to be able to help Vanessa, but at the same time, I knew that Brent was right. Unless I planned to move away from White Bluff, there was no way I’d be able to drum up enough bets to help her raise the thousands of dollars that she needed. And offering anything short of that would just feel like I was belittling her efforts, not understanding the full scope of the project.
I shook my head again and went to order another round of drinks.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Vanessa
I disgustedly shoved a bookmark in my book and put it on the coffee table, having read the same line over and over about ten times without really taking in anything that it said. I just couldn’t seem to focus on the words, or on anything else, for that matter. I desperately wanted to call up Trethan, to ask him to come over and help me get out of this funk, but I knew that he was out with Brent, having one final night together before Brent moved to Helena. I had to respect that.
I only hoped they weren’t having too much fun. I knew the kinds of things that he and Brent got up to. Even if I trusted them not to be doing drugs now, with Brent just recently cleaning up his act, I was worried that together, out at the Roasted Bison, Trethan might start chatting up some other woman and forget all about the thing that we had.
Not that we really had much of a thing. We hadn’t discussed what we were to one another. For all I knew, we were just casually fucking, as far as he was concerned. He would be well within his rights to sleep with someone else if he wanted to. It wasn’t as though I was his girlfriend. Not anymore.
I swallowed hard, fighting an irrational surge of jealousy at the thought of Trethan with someone else. I was tempted to head down to the Roasted Bison myself, just to check things out, but I reminded myself again that this was meant to be one last guys’ night before Brent moved out of town. It wouldn’t be fair for me to intrude on that. And, I didn’t want to seem like one of those girls, who couldn’t go one night without their man. Trethan would never put up with that, nor should he have to.
Anyway, I knew exactly why I couldn’t concentrate on anything. It was this gallery business.
I still couldn’t figure out how to make up the remainder of the money. At this point, I considered lying to the bank to get the money. What if I applied for a student loan, but instead of applying it toward college courses, I put it into funding the gallery? The gallery could be counted as an internship project, couldn’t it? At least in some tangential way?
I knew that was wrong, but I couldn’t come up with any legitimate way to raise thousands of dollars in a short amount of time.
I started to get worried, too. Not because I didn’t think that things were going to happen in due time. Not because I was worried about having to move out of White Bluff at the end of the summer, my dreams unfulfilled for now. Although I really, really hated the idea of leaving Trethan again, especially knowing how badly he’d taken things that last time I’d left.
No, the main worry was Dad. His heart was in the right place, and I knew he was just trying to do whatever he could to support his baby girl. He’d always tried his best to give me the world, and that had only increased since Mom had died. But at the same time, I didn’t want him to do something drastic like sell the ranch or cash in on his savings.
As much as I hated to admit it, Dad was getting older. At the moment, he wasn’t having any problems getting things done around the ranch, especially not with Trethan helping out as much as he could. But there would come a time soon enough, when Dad wouldn’t be able to do much around the ranch anymore. I didn’t want him to have to keep slaving away on the ranch because he couldn’t provide for himself otherwise.
And not knowing how long it would take before the gallery took off meant I couldn’t plan to help Dad out, either, if he needed me to. Not that I thought he would accept my money anyway, even if it was money earned because he had sacrificed his own retirement funds to help me get the business off the ground.
The main problem was that the ranch had never turned that much of a profit. It had always done all right, of course. But Dad emphasized having fair rates for our riders and boarders, building a community rather than an empire. And there were always those things that could devastate a ranch, like diseases. Or even just years when there weren’t that many people interested in boarding their horses for the summer. That also happened sometimes.
But the ranch was still home, and I wasn’t going to risk anything happening to it.
It wasn’t just Dad who wanted to help me out with the gallery, though. Julie called me nearly every day to discuss options for funding, to see if we couldn’t brainstorm our way to something brilliant. We had yet to come up with a solution. She was busy with her own life, with taking her kid to daycare and running errands. Still, I was touched that she called and tried to devise a solution.
And then there was Trethan.
I hadn’t expected Trethan to be as interested in the gallery as he was proving to be. It all came back to what I’d said to him when he’d first asked about it: I just hadn’t thought he was all that interested in art. I still doubted he was interested in the art part of it, but it was touching how much he genuinely seemed to care about my happiness.
Or maybe he was just worried about the idea of me moving away from White Bluff again.
I grimaced. I hated the fact that Dad had mentioned that one to Trethan, but it wasn’t like I could have told him not to. Dad still didn’t know that Trethan and I were dating again. He probably suspected something was happening since I wasn’t around the ranch all that much, usually at times when Trethan also wasn’t around the ranch. But he hadn’t mentioned anything yet, and I hadn’t mentioned anything to him, either.
As soon as I told Dad that Trethan and I were seeing one another again, I was going to start getting my hopes up. I was going to start thinking that maybe Trethan was the one, that maybe we were destined to be together. We had both changed so much since high school, and maybe we could do things right this time around.
I couldn’t get my hopes up, though. As good as things were going with Trethan in my life, I couldn’t help but worry that they were all about to come crashing down soon.
For now, though, Trethan was a spot of brightness in my otherwise frustrating time here in White Bluff.
I sighed and curled up in a blanket on the couch, looking out at the night sky. It was a clear night, not a cloud to be seen, and the stars shined brightly. But with Dad off at a friend’s house for poker night and Trethan out with Brent on their guys’ night, I couldn’t help feeling lonely.
I debated calling Julie and seeing what she was up to, but I felt bad calling her this late in the evening when I knew she needed her rest. Danny was toddling around the house already, and with Liam taking some night courses over at the local college in addition to the work that he did during the day, Julie had her hands full when it came to running errands and cleaning up the house during the day. At night, she needed to relax.
Especially since she had another one on the way already.
I smiled to myself and put a hand over my own flat stomach. I wondered what that must be like, to have a child growing inside of you. Julie seemed to think of it as one of the best things in the world. And, I had to admit that Danny was pretty cute.
I wondered wildly if Trethan and I would ever have kids. We weren’t to that point yet, and once upon a time, I would never have considered him father material. But I was starting to see a different side of him, and I could only imagine what a few more years of maturity might bring to both of us.
Plus, I liked thinking about that — Trethan with a little daughter in his lap, reading her a book, teaching her to ride a bike.
It was another of those things that we’d have to talk about. I st
ill struggled to come to terms with the things that he’d admitted about his father. I had a hard time reconciling the image of the man I’d always known with the man that Trethan had known. And, I knew that Trethan must be terrified about being just like his dad.
I was lucky to have been born into such a wonderful, caring family.
I shook my head, glancing out toward the yard. It was dark, but I could still see the tire swing hanging from the old oak tree out front. I had an image of Dad out there, pushing his little granddaughter on that swing. Showing her around the ranch. Teaching her to ride horses.
Trethan and I needed to have a serious talk about having children because the more I thought about it, the more I knew that I wanted them. And, I wanted those children with him.
But I was getting ahead of myself. First, Trethan and I had to figure out exactly what we were to one another. I felt tears prick the corners of my eyes as I reminded myself that for all I knew, Trethan thought we were just having sex.
Frustrated at the turn of thoughts, I reached for the remote control, hoping that maybe there would be something engrossing on TV.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Trethan
I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up again for the third time in about half an hour. I looked back over my shoulder, and sure enough, the man in the corner still stared at me.
“I’ll be right back,” I told Brent, hopping off my stool and stalking over toward the man’s table. “Can I help you?” I snapped, folding my arms across my chest.
I didn’t know why him staring bothered me so much. I was trying to have a good night with Brent, and between the frustration of not being able to bet my way toward helping Vanessa with her gallery and now this, I was a little on edge, and I could honestly do with a bit of a fight to get the antsy feeling out of my system.
The man didn’t seem fazed by my argumentative tone, however, and he didn’t look like he wanted to pick a fight. Instead, he just kicked out the chair across from him, inviting me to sit down.
“I’m drinking with my buddy,” I told him. “It’s his last night in town for a while, so if you’ll fuck off and bother someone else, that’d be greatly appreciated.”
“Now come on, just have a seat for a minute, son,” the man said, a lazy drawl in his voice. “You’ll like what I have to say, I promise you.”
I glanced back toward Brent, but he was chatting with Bobby. Finally, I sank into the chair across from the man, who held out a hand for me to shake. “I’m George Jacobsen. I’m new in town. Are you from around here?”
“Yeah,” I said shortly. “My name’s Trethan Frye.”
“Trethan,” George said, nodding. “Well, Trethan, I saw your performance up on the bull. It was quite the show. You know, I really thought you were going to come off right there at the beginning. I reckon you did, as well, but you did a great job of pulling it back together.”
“Thanks,” I said suspiciously, wondering what his angle was. “Did you want to take a shot at beating me? Put your money on the table, and we’ll go head to head.”
George laughed. “Oh no,” he said. “This old body’s bull-riding days are all done, I’m afraid. However, I am a big rodeo fan, amongst other things.”
“You’ve probably come to the wrong place, then,” I told him, shrugging. “White Bluff doesn’t have much of a rodeo scene. That there with the mechanical bull? That’s pretty much the closest any of us come to rodeo. I mean, there are some of us who work with horses and livestock, but there’s no real bull-riding around here.”
“I’m about to change that,” he said, a glint in his eye. “You see, I’m looking to put together an amateur bull-riding competition. I’ve already lined up the sponsors, so all that’s left to do is find the riders.”
“And these riders, what’s their deal?” I asked. “Why would they want to take part?”
“There’s a cash prize,” he told me. “Half the proceeds will go to charity, but the winner will walk away with a cool ten grand in their pocket.”
I stared at him for a moment and then laughed harshly, ready to stand up. “You’re fucking with me,” I said. “There’s no amateur bull-riding competition that would offer that kind of money as a prize!”
“There is now,” he said confidently. “Like I said, I’ve already lined up the sponsors. I’ve got Larry Cobb lined up as an instructor at the riding school I’m opening. All of the sponsors jumped at the chance to be a part of something that has the legendary Larry Cobb involved.”
I stared blankly at him. “Sorry, but I don’t know who that is.”
That scandalized the man. “You don’t know who Larry Cobb is?” he asked, as though the emphasis might make me remember who this guy was. I’d never heard of him before in my life.
I shrugged. “I’m not really into the riding schools and all that,” I told him. “I work out at the Lazy J, but that’s more because John hired me than because I went looking for work on a ranch.”
“Larry Cobb is one of the most famous former professional riders,” George told me. “He was an absolute monster on the pro-riding circuit until a career-ending injury a few years ago. But he’s made his way back, no doubt through many hours of physical therapy, and now he’s agreed to be an instructor at my school.”
“Huh,” I said. I gave George a once-over, noting the slicked-back hair and the expensive-looking cufflinks glinting at the end of his shirt sleeves. He had East Coast written all over him, but for some reason, he was out here, trying to start up a rodeo. He couldn’t have a clue what he was doing. And to think that he was planning to open a riding school on top of that was just crazy.
“Look, not to burst your bubble, but don’t you think that maybe you’re in over your head?” I asked him. “You’re not from around here. You don’t even look the part. Who would trust you with their riding lessons, in your fancy-shmancy suit?”
George laughed. “You know, I like you,” he said. “You’re blunt, and I always admire that in a man. Takes a lot of balls to tell the truth straight, sometimes.”
I rolled my eyes. “You can’t pick rodeo riders just because you like them,” I pointed out.
“That’s not what I’m proposing to do,” he said, a twinkle in his eye. “Like I said, I saw you on the mechanical bull just now. Your form could use a little tweaking, but you seem pretty solid on there. What’s the longest you’ve ever managed to stay on a real, live bull?”
I stared at him for a moment, wondering if I should lie. But there was no way he would let me ride out into a competition without seeing me on the real thing. He’d find out soon enough if I lied to him; better that I just tell the truth. “I’ve never ridden a live bull before,” I admitted.
George’s brows drew together in consternation. “You’ve never ridden a live bull before?” he asked incredulously. “Well, now.”
“I imagine it can’t be too different from riding the mechanical bull, though, can it?” I asked. “I mean, I can ride the mechanical bull at the top setting. That’s got to count for something. I’ve got the record in this bar and everything.”
Someone dropped into the chair to my right, giving a derisive snort as he joined us. “Can’t be too different,” he muttered, looking disgusted. He stared at me with chiseled emerald eyes for a moment before looking over at George. “George, I thought you said you’d found us a man.”
“I think I have,” George said, folding his arms across his chest. “You haven’t seen the boy ride the mechanical bull. I think he’s got something that you could work with. He’s not perfect, of course, and his attitude will need some work, but I think you’ll be able to make a rider out of him.”
“Stop talking about me like I’m not here,” I snapped.
“You’re right,” George said, inclining his head toward me. “Trethan, this is Larry Cobb. Larry, meet Trethan.”
I raised an eyebrow at Larry and then glanced around the bar, wondering how many people in this place would recognize him. The ro
deo wasn’t a very big deal for most people in White Bluff, but that didn’t mean there weren’t enthusiasts there. Fortunately, no one seemed to be watching our table too closely.
George laid his hands flat on the table. “All right, Trethan, I’m going to tell you how it is,” he said. “I’m willing to let you compete in my rodeo. And in preparation for that rodeo, I’ll let you have lessons with Larry here, free of charge. If you win, you could be walking away with ten thousand dollars.”
“What’s in it for you?” I asked. “You need comic relief when I get myself trampled?”
“Under no circumstances would that be considered comic relief,” Larry snapped, narrowing his eyes at me. “If I’m going to train you, you’re going to need to show some respect for the sport.”
I rolled my eyes. “Who said I agreed to train with you?” I asked. “I still don’t understand what’s in it for you guys.”
“I’d require a cut of your winnings, should you ever end up going pro,” George said. “But we can discuss the logistics of that later. Really, what it comes down to is I need publicity for my school. And nothing would do that better than to have the underdog come out on top.”
“Explain,” I said shortly.
George laughed; but it was Larry who answered. “The crowds will go nuts when they find out that your first attempt to ride a real, live bull came just a month before your first competition. You’re the automatic underdog. Everyone would be cheering for you. They wouldn’t expect you to do well.
“But now, imagine if you were to win the whole thing. Everyone would wonder who managed to train you up that quickly. And when they found out it was me, they’d start paying for lessons at George’s new riding school.”
I frowned, thinking it over. It seemed like a pretty good deal from my end of things. Especially if I was able to win the thing. “I just go out there and ride the bull and see if I can pull the fastest time?” I asked, just to confirm.