Once a Champion

by Jeannie Watt

  “Only if you’ll come to drill practice tonight,” Andie said as she let go of the ticket.

  “I’ll come.” Even though Liv had concerns about joining a mounted drill team that had a reputation for speed. She and Beckett had belonged to a sedate parade team in Billings comprised of ten women who drilled at a jog. It was pattern work, but slow pattern work. Flying around an arena at high speed in intricate patterns with eleven other riders? Liv wasn’t so sure about that.

  It wasn’t that she wasn’t a decent horsewoman. In fact, she was quite comfortable on horseback, but while her stepsiblings, Brant and the wildly popular Shae, had both been members of the high school rodeo team, Liv had never joined. Why? Because she’d been shy and self-conscious and didn’t like people watching her. She wasn’t a huge fan of speed, either. According to Andie, the Rhinestone Rough Riders had only one speed and that was as fast as they could go. Intimidating, to say the least, but Liv needed to do something to build a social life now that she was back in town and she was determined to explore new horizons—something she’d wanted to do but hadn’t for the first twenty-some years of her life.

  “Promise?” her friend asked as she counted out dollar bills for the tip. Andie had always fancied herself the guardian of Liv’s social life, which was kind of funny, since Liv’s social life had always been practically nonexistent—especially in high school. Andie, on the other hand, had somehow straddled the line between being popular and walking amongst the common folk. She always included Liv in everything, even if Liv had been practically invisible in most social situations. She’d been so afraid of screwing up, saying the wrong thing, doing the wrong thing...afraid to let her true self show.

  “Yes. I promise I’ll come to practice tonight. Eight o’clock, right?”

  “Seven-thirty, but we don’t start riding until eight. You might want to come a little early, meet the other riders. You’re going to love it.”

  Liv hoped so. She had a ton she could be doing on the ranch to get the place back together before she established her practice, but since Tim bristled whenever she suggested that she do some real work, like, say, painting the house, she had free time that was driving her crazy. In a way she sympathized with her father. All he wanted was to be left alone while he pretended nothing was wrong, and Liv had ruined that by moving home. Maybe a few evenings to himself during the week would help.

  “So what’s up?” Andie asked as she closed her purse and set it on the table.

  “Up?”

  “Yeah,” Andie said, picking up her coffee cup. Apparently lunch was not yet over. “As in distracting you. We’ve hammered out a deal, gossiped and ate the best cheesecake ever, but your mind is somewhere else.” Her eyes narrowed suddenly. “Greg hasn’t been in contact again?”

  Liv snorted. “No.”

  The last time Greg had attempted to contact her, Liv had told him in no uncertain terms what she would do. A few of her threats had involved law enforcement. One had been more directly aimed at his private parts. That had shocked him. Quiet, cooperative Liv threatening violence. And she’d been serious.

  “Then what?”

  “I’m worried about Dad.”

  “With good cause,” Andie said. “Keep working on him. Try to wear him down.”

  “It’s like trying to wear down granite with a toothbrush,” Liv muttered. “But what’s really bugging me is that Matt Montoya stopped by the house.”

  Liv hadn’t intended to talk about the situation with Matt and Beckett because she was halfway hoping it would resolve itself; that once Matt had time to think, he’d realize that legally he didn’t have a leg to stand on and that Liv meant it when she said she wasn’t selling. But deep down she knew that wasn’t going to happen. Matt was nothing if not persistent. She’d seen it when he came to her twelve years ago, determined to pull substandard grades up not just to passing, but to As, and she’d also seen it in his rodeo career. Not that she was following it.

  No. This probably wasn’t going away.

  Andie’s face darkened. She was one of the few people who knew what had happened to Beckett. “No kidding. Why?”

  Liv folded her napkin and set it next to her plate. “Apparently Trena sold the horse to me without Matt’s permission.”

  “Of course she did. To save the animal.”

  “He wants Beckett back.”

  Andie set down her cup with a thunk. “You’re kidding. After what he did? What are you going to do?”

  Liv shrugged as casually as she could. “Nothing. Beckett was community property, so Trena had a right to sell, and I’m not letting him go.”

  “How’d he take it?”

  “I don’t know, and that’s what’s bothering me. I have a hard time believing that he took no for an answer so easily.”

  “Doesn’t sound like Matt,” Andie agreed.

  “He’s tenacious.” And confident, which had ended up biting him in the butt in high school, when he’d been overly confident in his ability to miss a huge amount of school due to rodeo and stay current in his studies. After being placed on academic probation, he’d asked Liv for help catching up on his studies.

  She was smart. She lived close by. She had a wild crush on him. Three things that made the situation perfect for Matt. She would have done anything for him. Liv didn’t know if Matt had been aware of the crush, but looking back, she didn’t know how he couldn’t have been. She could barely finish a sentence when he was around, unless that sentence involved derivatives or vectors.

  When he’d asked her for help, she’d thought she’d died and gone to heaven. Spending her evenings with Matt Montoya! Maybe he’d come to see her as a person. Maybe they’d become friends...and more.

  “More” had been a big part of her plan, but it hadn’t worked out. Once he was caught up and his grades were back where they belonged, he’d smiled and thanked her with a kiss on the cheek, followed by a bouquet of thank-you flowers delivered to the school. Liv had waited breathlessly for him to ask her out, now that they were no longer “professionally” involved.

  Less than a week later, he’d asked Shae to go to Rodeo Prom.

  Even now it made her cringe. Shae had known about Liv’s wild crush on Matt and she’d said yes to him anyway. To Shae it had been a matter of being realistic. If Matt had been interested in Liv, he would have asked her out. He didn’t and therefore he was fair game.

  They’d dated for all of two months and then Shae had dumped him and moved on. Shae was hell on men. Liv kind of wished she could be the same way.

  “Well, you know,” Andie said, “if you have any problems all you have to do is call.”

  Which was another reason she hadn’t said anything. Andie was wildly protective. Liv didn’t need protecting. Not anymore.

  “I won’t have any problems,” she said.

  “Are you sure?” Andie asked with a slight frown.

  “Yes.” Liv tilted her chin up. “I’ll handle this on my own.” She’d handle everything on her own—her dad, Matt, anyone else who might want to tangle with her—and not by using her old strategy of trying to negotiate peace and keep everyone happy, except for maybe herself.

  * * *

  WHEN LIV ARRIVED at the drill team practice that evening, there was a variety of horse trailers parked in the lot—fancy trailers with living quarters, small two-horse trailers and a long aluminum stock trailer that looked as if something had tried to fight its way out from the inside.

  She pa
rked her truck in the last space, next to the stock trailer, and pocketed the keys as she walked over to where Andie was saddling her horse, Mike. Liv felt awkward and out of place, and was nervous, even though she wouldn’t be riding tonight—all in all, she was feeling way too much like the old Liv.

  Those first months after she’d walked out on Greg had been sheer hell as she fought to let herself be less than perfect. She was better, much better, but still had her moments...like when she was faced with the unknown.

  “Glad you came,” Andie said as she set the saddle on the bay quarter horse’s back. “Gretchen isn’t going to make it and we need someone to shoot video. Linda’s husband does a terrible job.”

  “I can do that.” Liv had never filmed anything in her life other than a few minutes of phone video here and there, but, realistically, how hard could it be? And how perfect did she need to be? Not perfect at all.

  She needed to remember that.

  Andie finished cinching up, then slipped the halter around the horse’s neck and eased the bridle onto his head. “I’ll introduce you to the group.”

  The group consisted of ten women besides Andie. Liv knew some of them—Susie Barnes, who’d graduated the same year as she and Andie; Ronnie and Melody Churchwell, twins who’d been a few years behind her—and others she didn’t. At least four of the women were well into their fifties and Liv instantly lost track of names. She took note of what each one looked like so that she could quiz Andie later.

  “Well, ladies,” a smallish woman on a big buckskin horse said in a commanding voice, “it’s time to ride!” She moved her horse forward, saying to Liv as she passed, “You’re going to film for us, right?”

  “Yes,” Liv replied.

  A bald man instantly held out a video camera with an expression of relief. “I never do this to Linda’s liking,” he confided as the group rode in the arena.

  “I probably won’t, either,” Liv said, again ignoring a twinge of performance anxiety. She reached out and took the camera, turning it over in her hands. “How does it work?”

  The man gave Liv a brief rundown of the camera operation, then said, “You need to go up to the announcer’s booth and when the music starts, you film. Don’t forget to turn the camera on.” Then with a quick, tight smile, he headed for a truck parked next to the stands, walking quickly as if afraid that Liv was going to relinquish her responsibilities to him if he didn’t get away.

  Liv climbed the rickety steps up into the arena announcer’s stand and for the next hour watched as the women rode, stopped, argued, discussed, rode again, turning the camera on and off. On and off. She only forgot to turn it on once, and she was fairly certain that with the miles of film she’d recorded, no one would notice.

  By the end of the practice, she had a good idea of the dynamics of the drills. Whether she and Beckett could do them was another matter. At one point she’d caught her breath when it appeared as though the riders were going to run smack into each other, only to have the horses weave together in a long serpentine pattern. There was a lot of splitting and joining, rollbacks and spins—all at high speed.

  “So what do you think?” Andie asked after Liv had joined her at her trailer. She pulled the saddle off her horse and lugged it to the tack compartment. Liv automatically picked up a brush and started working on the bay’s sweaty back while Andie unbridled the horse.

  “I think it looks challenging.”

  “We all screw up out there, you know.”

  “Yes. I know. I have it on film,” Liv said.

  “Did you get the flaming argument between Linda and Margo?”

  “I tried for close-ups,” Liv said with a straight face.

  Andie laughed and leaned against the trailer. “So?”

  “I can’t wait to get started,” Liv lied. She was intimidated as hell, but determined to try new things, face new challenges. And give her poor father an evening or two to himself.

  * * *

  MATT HAD NOT in any way, shape or form, ever expected to become a babysitter—which was exactly what he was, even if the kid was fourteen.

  Craig seemed a lot more comfortable being in a strange place than Matt was having him there, which made him wonder how many times the kid had been dumped into someone else’s care...and why none of those someones were available this time.

  “I’m kind of curious as to why your mom is having you stay here,” Matt finally said after setting a grilled cheese sandwich in front of the kid at dinnertime. “Surely she has other friends in the area?”

  “She tried a bunch of them, but there were problems. Vacations, visitations. One of her friends, Gloria, had just gotten back from rehab—”

  “I get it.”

  Craig peeled back the edge of the sandwich to inspect the cheese. “This is a good opportunity for my mom. It’s hard to get horse jobs, which is probably why she has to cut hair on the side.” He spoke so earnestly that Matt hoped Craig didn’t think he was trying to get rid of him.

  “Do you like horses?” Matt asked as he sat at the table. They’d spent a long, silent afternoon together as he’d worked on his quarterly tax report and Craig had played games on his phone. Matt had needed that time to get his bearings, get used to the idea of sharing his house with a teenager, but the silence was getting old. And uncomfortable.

  Craig made a face before he bit into his sandwich. “Horses? No,” he said with his mouth full.

  “Roping? Rodeo?”

  “Uh-uh,” Craig answered through another mouthful of sandwich.

  “Oh.” Well, that squelched talking about roping techniques with the kid. “What do you like?”

  “I read a lot and there’s some TV shows I like. Have you ever seen Star Crusher?”

  “I don’t watch a lot of TV.”

  “But you do have satellite, right?” Something akin to panic lit the kid’s eyes.

  “Yes. So...what else do you like?”

  “The video games my mom allows, which aren’t many,” he said with a disgusted twist of his lips. “No exploding heads.”

  “Can’t blame her there.”

  “And I think old trucks are kind of cool.”

  Score. Maybe they could talk. “I had a Studebaker truck once that I was going to rebuild.” And it still stung that he didn’t have it.

  “I know,” Craig said excitedly. “I’ve seen it. That was what clued Mom in about your ex selling your stuff. Kirby Danson driving your old truck around.”

  “You know all about that?”

  “Well, Mom and her friends talk a lot.”

  “And you listen.” Great.

  “Well, she and I talk a lot, too. It’s just, like, the two of us, you know? That was bogus what your wife did to you.”

  And not something he wanted to discuss with a fourteen-year-old, not even one whose eyes were now ablaze with indignation on Matt’s behalf.

  “What are you going to do while you’re here?” Matt asked. “Besides play on your phone.”

  Craig shrugged. “Whatever, I guess.”

  Matt finished his sandwich and sat back in his chair. He would have liked to have had a beer with his meal, but didn’t know if that was allowable with an impressionable houseguest under his roof.

  “If you have any work or anything that needs to be done around the place, well, I could do that.”

  “Work?”

  “Mom thought it would be a good idea. Keep me busy.”

  Damn, this had to be tough on the kid
. The problem was that Matt’s place was well-kept. He had a cleaning lady and the guy who fed his livestock when he was on the road also did the maintenance.

  “Yeah. I can use some help.” Or come up with something. “I’d pay you.”

  Craig shook his head. “No. You’re giving me a roof and food.”

  “Your mom paid for the food.” Or had tried to.

  “A roof, then, and she didn’t pay for that.”

  “We’ll negotiate later, okay? You want to watch TV now?”

  “In the worst possible way,” Craig said. “Mom says I can’t watch someone else’s TV unless they invite me to.”

  “Consider yourself invited,” Matt said. “For as long as you’re here, the TV is yours.”

  “Thanks,” Craig said, gathering up his plate and heading for the dishwasher. Matt watched in surprise as the boy loaded his dinnerware, then added the dishes that had been soaking in the sink. A quick swipe of the dishcloth around the sink after he’d rinsed it, then Craig headed to the living room. Wow. Willa had taught her son well.

  As soon as the television came on in the next room, Matt opened that beer and sat at the table drinking it. Talk about a strange day. Found his horse, got an unexpected roommate—with whom he had nothing to talk about.

  Matt reached out and grabbed the newspaper off the sideboard where he’d stacked all the stuff that’d been on the table when he’d cleared it to feed Craig. He flipped it open with one hand and looked at his brother—make that his half brother’s—smiling face on the front page and almost closed it again. But he didn’t.

  Ryan Madison. The darling of the Montana rodeo circuit, who’d just done a charity roping clinic for the local kids, and who was also within striking distance of qualifying for the NFR for the second time in a row.

  Matt shoved the paper aside.