Last of the Red-Hot Cowboys

by Tina Leonard

  “Judy and her team. I told them I’d let them take me out to dinner after I visited Ivy. Judy said if I came home with so much as a whiff of perfume on me or a smudge of lipstick, there’d be no Saturday Night Special for me tomorrow night.” He looked chagrined. “You’ll experience this one day, Trace.”

  “Experience Judy reading me the riot act? I get that plenty, thanks. I try to keep it to a minimum.”

  Steel laughed. “You’ll experience wanting one woman so much that no other woman looks half as good to you.”

  “Hell, I hope not,” Trace said, looking out the window, thinking he’d rather be dead than tied to one woman.

  But then he thought about Ava, and told himself that if a man was dumb enough to fall for a woman like her, then he deserved all the misery he had coming to him. Steel just didn’t understand that life was short but that fortunately, women were plentiful. And available.

  * * *

  Judy pulled what she called her “big-ass” silver crew cab truck into the parking lot at Wild Jack’s training center. A big red barn and a large riding ring were visible from where they parked under a stand of peach trees.

  “Come on, girls, let’s dig up some trouble,” Judy said, and they dutifully followed along. Judy’s gait was full of determination, and Ava thought it had been ungentlemanly—if possibly correct—for Trace to mention that Judy had brought them to Hell under false pretenses.

  Trace was the kind of man who thought he knew everything.

  Four men came out of the barn, sans shirts, wearing dusty jeans and worn belts, their backs and arms dark and gleaming with the heat of the day’s sweat.

  “Wow,” Cameron said. “Those are some hunks.”

  “I’ll say.” Harper sounded surprised. “The Outlaws made it sound like these guys were the scourge of the earth.”

  “Oh, you can’t listen to Trace and Company,” Judy said. “Trace’s ego is only exceeded by his mouth. And his lecturing.”

  This job had to work out—she wasn’t about to go back home without succeeding at her dream of bull-riding—and whatever she had to do to help Judy succeed, that’s what she planned to do. She wouldn’t let Trace and his wonderful, talented mouth become a problem—even if she couldn’t stop thinking about the way he’d kissed her.

  “Miss Judy,” a man called, setting down a rectangular hay bale and shooting her and her companions a smile. “We don’t see you out here enough.”

  “A sight for sore eyes indeed,” a dark-haired man said, looking right at Ava, and she blinked.

  She could easily see why Trace had nothing good to say about this crowd. They oozed testosterone, confidence, and swagger.

  Trace just couldn’t handle the competition.

  What a braggart.

  “What brings you out, Judy?” a tall man wearing a black hat and a mischievous grin asked. “Whatever it is, don’t let it keep you from introducing us to your new friends.”

  “These are my girls,” Judy said. “Ava Buchanan, Cameron Dix, and Harper Castleberry. Ladies, I’d like you to meet Buck St. John, Jake Masters—his father owns Wild Jack’s—Rebel Wright, and Fallon O’Rourke, Declan’s brother.”

  They shook hands, and Ava was struck by how friendly the men were. Trace carried such an attitude that no one would call him friendly in the least.

  “Riding lessons, huh?” Rebel asked. “What kind?”

  “Not so much riding lessons as bullfighting lessons,” Judy said, and they stared at the tall mayor, perplexed.

  “Bullfighting?” Fallon shook his head. “Judy, you know women don’t do that. It’s too dangerous. It’s too—”

  “I know. ‘It’s a man’s sport.’ You sound just like Trace Carter,” Judy said, throwing down the gauntlet, and Ava watched with astonishment as the Horsemen glared a bit at her comment.

  “Why don’t we get out of the sun and discuss this a little,” Buck said, eying Ava, then Harper, then Cameron.

  They followed the men into the red barn, sat down at a dusty desk crouched in a dustier office. Ava slid onto a cracked stool, waited to see how Judy worked her crowd of suddenly interested admirers.

  “So, bullfighting.” Buck looked at Judy with a gleam in his eye. “And Trace turned you down for this venture?” His gaze skimmed the Belles, studying Cameron with more interest than necessary.

  “Trace turned me down flat. He has his ways; he has his principles.” Judy shrugged. “Trace is a fine man, but he has no sense of compromise.”

  Ava had to agree that she hadn’t seen a whole lot of compromise in Trace Carter.

  “Why do you want to learn to bullfight, Ava?” Jake asked, and she looked at the too-sexy scoundrel-in-boots cautiously. If Trace gave off lazy sexy appeal, Jake seemed focused and interested.

  “Judy has a novel idea.”

  “Bullfighting is a training process that can’t be learned in a day,” Jake said. “We don’t have any experience teaching it to speak of.”

  “Not like the Outlaws do,” Judy said smoothly, “but you raise bulls that rodeos like to use. Not as many rank bulls as Judge Rory Nunez, maybe, but you know the business. You talk to the cowboys and the top ranches.”

  “Oh, you think we’d have some connections.” Jake glanced at his friends, who looked thoughtful. “You want us to find someone who might let your girls train at their establishment.”

  “And you’d teach them,” Judy said. “They need to be ready to travel in a few months. We have a charity rodeo coming up that I’d like to start the girls in.”

  Buck looked at Cameron again. “Have any of you ever ridden a bull? Or a bronco?”

  They shook their heads.

  “Now, what’d you ask such a dumb question for, Buck?” Jake asked. “What you’ve ridden doesn’t matter. What matters is how much spirit these ladies have. And it looks to me like they have plenty.” He sized Judy up for her reaction to his pronouncement.

  “Jake Masters, don’t patronize me,” Judy snapped. “This is serious business. Either you can help us or you can’t. Don’t waste my time if you can’t.”

  Rebel grinned. “Miss Judy, we’re just trying to figure out the best way to help you. You know we don’t lightly pass up a chance to annoy Trace.”

  “And it would annoy him if we took you on,” Fallon said. “Let’s have a drink on this and think a bit.” He brought out a whiskey bottle from underneath the dust, grabbed a tray of jelly glasses Ava didn’t think could be all that clean, considering the rest of the barn.

  “No, thank you,” Judy said crisply, and Ava was relieved. “The girls are in training. No alcohol, and no late nights. So get those charming grins off your faces. You’re not taking us seriously at all.” She stood, towering over the seated men. “Come on, ladies.”

  Ava agreed with her. She followed Judy from the barn toward her truck, feeling a bit sorry for their fearless leader.

  “Judy, let us think on this some,” Buck said as he and other men caught up to her. “Maybe we can come up with an idea.”

  “Maybe you can, probably you won’t.” Judy got in her truck. “Imagination has never been your strong suit.”

  He and his buddies appeared displeased by her comment. The team got into the big-ass truck.

  “Judy, if we can’t make this work, I’ll need to know soon so I can get another job,” Ava said, under her breath so the men couldn’t hear.

  “Never you mind that.” Judy backed the truck up with a whirl, making gravel fly. “We’ve planted the seed. Let’s see if it grows.”

  “Why don’t they get along with each other?” Cameron asked. “The Horsemen and the Outlaws?”

  “Because one has a conscience and the other group not so much. Trace’s conscience slows him down at times, makes him methodical. But nobody likes a challenge better. The Horsemen were rivals of theirs in high school, and then college. Half the Horsemen—that’s the name those of us in the town gave them—dropped out to start their own business. The Outlaws went off to serve together, and when t
hey came home, they opened up their training center—direct competition. Ever since then, the Horsemen have struggled with their business, as you may have noticed by the condition of their barn. It’s their own durn fault. Everybody knows they’re not as straight-up as the Outlaws. Trace and Company work their asses off. Oh, hell, girls.”

  She pulled over, and Trace’s black truck pulled alongside.

  “Judy,” Trace said when she’d rolled down her window, “send Ava to my truck. I want to talk to her.”

  “No way.” Judy shook her head. “If you think I’m letting one of my chickens go off with a bona fide wolf, you’re not thinking straight, Trace Carter.”

  “Send her over, Judy. Ava, time’s wasting and the sun’s going down. Move along.”

  “Arrogant ass,” Ava said under her breath. “I’ll go see what he wants.”

  “Are you sure?” Judy asked. “I don’t like the look in his eyes.”

  They studied the cowboy glaring out his window at them. He wore a black hat and a dark scowl, and Ava favored him with a frown to match his.

  “It’s okay,” Ava said. “I’m not worried about the look in his eye. Or anything else.”

  She got out of Judy’s truck and jumped in the passenger side of Trace’s. “Do you always boss people around?”

  He waved at Judy and headed down the road. “Pretty much. Will that be a problem for our partnership?”

  “Partnership?” She wished he wasn’t the type of scoundrel who made her body take notice. Not just take notice, but admire and desire. “As I recall, we have nothing near a partnership.”

  “Do you have one with the Horsemen?” he asked, his tone soft and somehow dangerous.

  She looked at Trace with disgust. “Really? You couldn’t just ask Judy what you wanted to know? You had to use me as your pigeon?”

  He laughed. “And a cute pigeon, too.”

  “Why do you care, anyway? You turned us down.”

  “That’s true. And I haven’t changed my mind. I just think you and I can come to a different set of terms.”

  “I doubt it very seriously.” Something inside her hoped they could. “You’re just trying to thwart Judy.”

  “Judy needs to be thwarted. At times Judy is Judy’s own worst enemy.” He turned down a lane shrouded by big, leafy pecan trees.

  “Where are we going, anyway?” Wherever it was, it looked peaceful—and too secluded.

  “We’re going to the pond. I do my best thinking at the pond,” Trace said cheerfully.

  “I didn’t know you did any good thinking at all.”

  Trace shook his head, his grin huge. “Can I give you a little advice?”

  “None that I’ll welcome.”

  “Don’t listen to everything our darling little mayor says. Judy is the most wonderful woman in the world, and she’s a master of a thousand faces. She has all kinds of tricks up her sleeves. Men lose their cool around Judy, and she darn well knows it.”

  “But not you.”

  “That’s right. Not me.” Trace grinned hugely and parked his truck near the lake. “Now, hop out and grab those two fishing rods. And if you’re in as good a shape as you claim, grab the bucket of worms, too.”

  She didn’t get out of the truck. “I’m not going fishing.”

  He opened her truck door, pulled her out of the truck. Appeared to give her weight consideration as he held her in his big, strong arms. Arms that felt amazingly and alarmingly wonderful.

  “Put me down.”

  “I like a woman with curves, just for the record.”

  “Put me down.”

  He set her gently on the ground. “Shall I get the worms, then?”

  “I’ll walk back to town if you don’t get to the point immediately.”

  “Sassy. I do love a lady with spice. Okay, no worms. We’ll use corn.” He grabbed the fishing poles and a plastic bucket and headed down a path to the blue-green pond she could see just at the edge of a few oversized willows.

  Ava looked around, annoyed. She could follow him, find out what was on his mind. That would be what Judy would advise. Clearly he had something on his mind or he wouldn’t have gone to the trouble and ruse of dragging her out here to be his fishing buddy.

  She doubted very seriously Trace had fishing on his mind.

  She could hear him whistling at the water’s edge, setting up a couple of camping chairs he’d pulled from under a tree. “You ass,” she muttered. “You really think the world turns because you say it does.”

  Her gaze fell on the shiny set of keys hanging from a Billy Bob’s key chain, dangling from the ignition. Where she came from, a man’s truck was his castle.

  A castle with keys in it was just too hard to resist.

  She got in the truck, turned the engine on, and drove away, Trace’s yells following her for a good hundred yards.

  Chapter Four

  Ava let out an oof! and a shriek when something hard and heavy landed on her in the night, bringing her straight out of a deep sleep in which she’d been dreaming of Trace and his sexy mouth and the magical things she imagined that mouth could do. She recognized the very appealing aftershave, and the bull-in-a-china-shop style of the bent-out-of-shape cowboy. Not to mention his body felt exactly as hot and sexy as she’d thought it would.

  It would do no good to let Trace know that she wasn’t entirely immune to his roguish charm.

  “Get off!” She shoved him. “Have you lost your mind?”

  She turned on a lamp so she could glare at him.

  He blinked at her pink T-shirt.

  “Pink?” Trace said. “I had you figured for black and high-necked.”

  “Get out!”

  He put his hands behind his head against the headboard, quite at home, his boots off the bed and not on top of the coverlet—probably only because it was his bungalow and not out of real courtesy to her. “By chance have you seen my truck keys? A woman with a firecracker temper stole my truck today.”

  “Maybe I have seen them,” Ava said. “I may even give them to you. Depends on how nice you are. And how fast you leave my house.”

  “My house.”

  “Not at the moment. Not while Judy pays rent.”

  “Judy hasn’t paid me a cent—yet.” He crossed his arms, checked out her T-shirt again. “What does it say?”

  “It says, Get the hell out of my bed.”

  “Very funny.” He tugged at it so he could read the silvery letters. “ ‘Where have all the cowboys gone?’ ” he read, grinning. “You’re looking in all the wrong places, gorgeous.”

  She wasn’t going to favor him with a reply, not while those dark brown eyes grinned at her, pleased with himself for putting one over on her in return for her stranding him at the pond.

  “So you don’t like to fish.”

  “That obvious, huh? You are fast.”

  He chuckled, slow and deep, and Ava’s senses went on red alert. The man was too sexy for his own good, and he knew it, and that was a terrible combination.

  Super-scoundrel.

  “I surrender. If I give you your keys, will you get out? Judy has us up early tomorrow to ride at the Horsemen’s place.”

  The smile disappeared, replaced by a scowl. “That’s a really bad idea.”

  “So you keep saying. But you don’t offer a better solution, cowboy.”

  He traced a finger along her bare arm. “As I told you before, Judy’s been known to hatch a half-assed scheme. We tolerate it because we love her, but I hate to see you get caught up in it.”

  She smacked his finger away. “You’re not exactly fully baked in my opinion yourself. And honestly, I am so not interested in your small-town drama here. I need a job, so I applied for Judy’s team. Nothing else interests me.”

  “I’ll train you,” he said, standing.

  She stared at him, too sexy in a denim shirt and worn jeans, his collar-length dark hair seemingly never combed and always somehow contributing to his overall rascal persona. “To do what?”
>
  “Ride.”

  “I can ride, damn it.”

  “I saw your riding. It’s not bad. I won’t train you to bullfight. But if you want a chance at a real working act, you girls ought to think about becoming the Hell Belle’s riding team.”

  “That’s not what Judy has in mind. You’d have to talk to her.”

  “A trick riding team,” he elaborated, and in spite of herself, her attention caught.

  Not because she’d get to work with Trace. Not at all.

  “There are many teams that can do amazing things. I think Judy wants something bigger, something that Hell can brag about, own as a first-ever.”

  “You’d be surprised what a well-trained horse and well-trained riders can do. If Judy’s serious about setting up a rodeo here in town, we could advertise our own Hell Sweethearts as an innovative act. Maybe even barrel-racing acts, too.”

  She looked at him, stunned that he seemed to have put a lot of thought into this plan. “I don’t know what Judy would say. I’m just giving this gig a shot for a couple of weeks.” She tossed his keys at him from her nightstand drawer. “Nice truck, by the way. Great tunes on your iPod.”

  He grinned, swept his eyes over her T-shirt again as she lay against the pillows. “Anytime you want to know where the red-hot cowboys are, sugar, you just come ask me. I’ll be happy to show you.”

  She tossed her pillow at him, hitting him square in the face. Laughing, he left, a jackass who thought way too much of himself.

  Sexy jackass, damn him.

  She wasn’t going to get a wink of sleep, and no doubt, that had been his intent.

  * * *

  “Ava,” Judy said the next day at practice at the Horsemen’s riding ring, “Did I see a black truck outside your bungalow last night?”

  It was six A.M., far too early to fend off Judy’s curiosity. “Yes, you did, Judy.”

  The mayor smiled. “He is a sexy devil, isn’t he?”

  Ava cantered around the ring again before stopping in front of Judy, who for now was training the team herself until she got a proper offer—or so Judy said. “I don’t know if ‘sexy’ is the word I’d use.”