Love You

by Stacy Finz

  The Ponderosa, also on the square, was the town’s only sit-down restaurant and doubled as a bar and bowling alley. As a kid, Win and his brothers had spent many Friday nights at the old-timey Western saloon. In recent years that too had gotten a facelift. Two women from the city had rescued the falling-down place and now ran it.

  Darcy leaned over the console and told Win, “I’ve never been here before.”

  “You grew up in Reno and never came to Nugget?” How was that possible? The two towns were less than an hour away from each other.

  “I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe we just don’t get around that much in Nevada. It’s cute, sort of.”

  “We used to kick their ass in football, though they always made it into the National High School Rodeo Finals. Glory Junction didn’t have a team.”

  “Do you know where you’re going?”

  “Of course I do.” He didn’t have a clue but how hard could it be to find a dude ranch owned by a celebrity bull rider?

  Twenty minutes later, on a dirt back road, he admitted he was lost. Their guests were too enthralled with the breathtaking landscape to notice. Win rolled down his window as he approached three men on horseback. On closer inspection, it was a man and two teenage boys.

  “Hey there.” He stopped, careful not to spook the horses, and stuck his head out. “We’re looking for Lucky Rodriguez’s Cowboy Camp. Any chance you know where it is?”

  The man rode closer and peered inside the van’s windows. “He expecting you?”

  “Yes, sir. We have an appointment.”

  The cowboy looked at Darcy and tipped his hat. She smiled back at him.

  “You want to keep going straight,” he said, and pointed to a bank of mailboxes up ahead. “See that stretch of fence? Hang a right at the last post and head up the hill about a mile. That’s when you’ll see the big entrance to the camp.”

  “Thanks.” Win waited for John Wayne to ride back to his posse and followed his directions, sliding Darcy a glance. “That your boyfriend?”

  “I wish.”

  Sue giggled. “Don’t we all.”

  “You ladies like them old, huh? Daddy issues?”

  Russell howled with laughter and Remy gave Win a high five.

  “Hey, both hands on the wheel.” That was Nervous Nelly Darcy for you.

  Sure enough, a big wrought-iron gate with lots of scroll-work in what looked to Win like a cattle brand announced that they had arrived. Win followed the signs to a small lot, next to a tidy wooden building, which he suspected was the office. Everyone hopped out of the van and a man wearing a Stetson and a silver belt buckle the size of a dinner plate came out to greet them.

  “You Darcy Wallace?”

  “I am.” She blushed.

  What the hell was it with Darcy and cowboys? He wanted to tell her to get a grip before she embarrassed herself.

  Darcy made the introductions and the guy turned out to be Lucky Rodriguez himself. He stood back for a second, examining the group.

  “Who’s gonna ride first?” Rodriguez looked directly at Darcy and grinned. “How ’bout you? You look tough.”

  Win thought she was going to faint, even though it was obvious the dude was joking.

  “I’ll go first,” Win volunteered, and Rodriguez took a minute to size him up, lingering on his hiking boots.

  “Those aren’t going to work but I’ll hook you up. Before we do anything, there’s a short safety orientation I need to go over and there’s the tour.”

  “Definitely the tour.” Darcy shielded her eyes with her hands and gazed around the property.

  Win got the impression that Darcy had never been to a working ranch before, which was weird since she’d said her ex-husband sold them. Win had been to many. Growing up in the Sierra it was unavoidable. Half the kids he’d gone to school with lived on one.

  Lucky showed them around, cracking jokes as he took them down rows of animal pens.

  The corrals were clean and the livestock looked well cared for. They stopped occasionally along the way so Lucky could scratch one of the bulls behind its head. Lucky bred and raised bucking stock for rodeos and Pro Bull Riders events, he explained. From here they looked docile and even a little sweet, but Win suspected that wasn’t the case once you got on one of their backs.

  It was a nice piece of property. Most of it was flat with rolling hills in the foreground and a spectacular view of the Sierra mountain range. There were a series of outbuildings, including several barns and a massive stack-stone and timber-log lodge that served as the camp’s mess hall and cantina. The whole setup was imposing and Remy, Sue, and Russell didn’t know where to look first. This was the real deal.

  Win couldn’t help but think that they should be doing more business together. A day trip with some of GA’s family reunions and corporate groups and vice versa with guests of the cowboy camp. They could trade expertise, cross promote, and make a fortune together.

  The business end of Garner Adventure was TJ’s bag but there was nothing to say that Win couldn’t be more assertive in that regard. It was time for him to take on more. To be more.

  “This is impressive,” he told Lucky. “Tell us what goes into being a world champion bull rider.”

  “A lot of concussions and busted teeth,” Lucky said, and spent the next twenty minutes describing life on the bull-riding circuit.

  He was a compelling storyteller and Remy, Sue, and Russell drank it up. Win figured the trio had never been to a rodeo, let alone a PBR event. He wouldn’t call them tech nerds exactly but they probably spent a lot of time playing video games, going to Coldplay concerts, and watching sci-fi flicks. Or maybe he was just stereotyping.

  Darcy seemed entranced too and she wasn’t even a rodeo buff. Just apparently a fan of cowboys, which was starting to piss him off.

  Lucky’s daughter, a cute tween with pigtails, joined them and followed Win around wherever he went, which wasn’t unusual. Kids liked him.

  “Katie, you want to do a barrel racing demonstration for our friends, here?” Lucky ruffled her hair.

  The girl trotted off and came back a short time later on the back of a horse. They followed her to a large ring where three barrels were already set up and took seats in the metal bleachers to watch. Win made sure to sit next to Darcy so he could give her a hard time about her cowboy fetish.

  “You’re crazy,” she said as he poked at her. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”

  He whistled the theme music to Bonanza. “That make you hot?”

  She shook her head. “I think you must’ve hit your head on our bike ride yesterday and got permanent brain damage.”

  He squeezed her leg because he couldn’t resist razzing her. Win hitched his head at the others, who stood leaning on the rails of the arena, watching Katie take turns around the barrels at breakneck speed. “I think it’s going pretty well, how about you?”

  “Now that you’re sticking with the program, I think it’s going great.” The corners of her mouth kicked up.

  She gave as good as she got, he’d give her that. But not with everyone. Colt barely looked at her and she shrank ten inches. Josh’s voice gave her the fidgets. TJ didn’t intimidate her as much as he used to and a few times Win had even heard her talk back to his brother. But she was her bravest with him. Hell, she was downright feisty. And Win liked it. A lot. He liked their banter, even when she was sticking it to him.

  “You ready to do some bull riding?” Lucky asked, and everyone hooted and hollered.

  He called to a couple of ranch hands and told them something in Spanish. Win picked up enough to know that he wanted them to load the chutes with some toros. “Mean as hell” might’ve been mentioned too but Win’s grasp of the language wasn’t good enough to know for sure.

  “What size boots you wear?” Lucky asked Win, and sent Katie off to fetch a pair.

  He had them follow him to one of the outbuildings, which turned out to be a small auditorium and did a slide presentation on safety and
bull riding. An oxymoron if Win ever heard one. He suspected it wasn’t half as easy as the PowerPoint made it out to be but he assumed the bulls they’d be using were for beginners. Gentle giants.

  There was a mechanical bull in the room and Lucky asked for a volunteer. Russell, God love him, jumped on it.

  Lucky winked at Darcy. “You next.”

  She turned beet red and Win had to keep from rolling his eyes.

  Russell got on the bull and didn’t make it anywhere close to the eight-second bell, the time he needed to stay on to qualify for a score. Yep, harder than it looked and the thing wasn’t even real. Lucky gave him a second try and turned down the bucking settings. Russell lasted three seconds longer than his first time but was still short of the bell, which equaled disqualification.

  “You ready?” Lucky asked Darcy. She responded by backing away.

  “I’ll pass,” she said, and clung to Win.

  “How about Remy or Sue?” Win said, and protectively wrapped his arm around Darcy. She didn’t have to do anything she didn’t feel comfortable doing. “One of you want to try it?”

  “I do,” Sue said.

  Lucky helped her get on the back of the bull and pulled the switch. Her time was better than Russell’s but only slightly. Remy was next to give it a try and didn’t even last three seconds. He laid on the rubber mat, laughing his ass off. At least everyone was having a good time.

  Lucky nudged his head at Win. “You want to try this or go straight to the real thing?”

  “Real thing.” He was pumped. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.”

  Lucky’s mouth twitched. “It’s pretty addictive.”

  Katie had brought him a pair of boots to change into and Lucky had him buckle himself into a pair of chaps and a helmet with a hockey mask. He also gave Win a glove to put on his rope hand.

  They went to the bucking chutes where Win climbed up and the ranch hands told him to straddle the bull.

  “This isn’t Bushwacker, is it?” Win asked.

  The men threw their heads back and laughed. Bushwacker was a three-time world champion PBR bull. He’d thrown off the greatest bull riders in the world.

  “Just making sure,” Win said, trying to find his center balance and imitate the technique he’d seen in the presentation by slipping his hand under the rope handle and wrapping the tail once around his grip.

  Darcy handed up her phone to the cowboy helping Win get settled. “Would you take a picture of him for me?”

  He snapped a few shots of Win grinning his ass off and handed the phone back to Darcy.

  “You feeling good?” Lucky asked him.

  As good as a guy could feel on top of fifteen hundred pounds of bull. “Yep. I’m supposed to keep my free arm in front and not touch the bull with it, right?”

  Lucky chuckled. “Just concentrate on staying on.”

  “Roger that.” He couldn’t stop smiling.

  After scooting up on the bull’s shoulders he gave the nod to let the chute operator know he was ready to go.

  The gate opened and the bull shot out into the arena, bucking hard enough to give Win a jolt. He held on for dear life, forgetting everything he’d learned in the PowerPoint. Somewhere at the back of his mind, he knew this was amateur night, that the bull was probably Katie’s pet. But it sure didn’t feel like it.

  “Five seconds to go,” he heard someone yell in the distance, and thanked God he had good core muscles. Because right now that was the only thing keeping him from the cold, hard dirt or worse, a pair of sharp horns up his ass.

  He started to get the hang of it when Lucky shouted, “Hot dog, you made it.”

  Win assumed that meant he’d conquered the requisite eight seconds. The question now was how to get off the dang thing. Ah, the hell with it, he was just going to jump and hope for the best. He’d taken worse tumbles down a ski slope so how bad could this be? Scoping out a good landing spot, he pulled his hand from the rope wrap, swung one leg over the beast, and dove off, landing on his feet. What he hadn’t calculated was the bull coming after him.

  The first thing he heard was Darcy scream and from the side of his eye he saw a blur of black run toward him. He rocketed to the fence, grabbed it with both hands, and hoisted himself up. Damn. When he looked over his shoulder to see if it was safe, two of the hands were shooing the bull away. A few new guys had joined Lucky, who stood with one foot resting on the first rung of the fence and his arms draped over the top, watching the action and laughing his head off.

  “You’re a natural,” Lucky called to him, and Win had a sneaking suspicion he was messing with him.

  But he’d made it. He’d made it to the bell and he was still in one piece. He snuck a peek at Darcy, who looked as if she was recovering from a heart attack. The others from their group looked damned impressed.

  “That was seriously righteous, dude.” Russell came toward him and gave him a high five. “Check it out.” He shoved his phone in Win’s face and played a video of him on the bull. “You mind if I post this on FlashTag?”

  “Knock yourself out,” Win said.

  “Be sure to tag Garner Adventure,” Darcy added.

  “And the cowboy camp,” Lucky said. “Now who wants to go next?”

  Silence. Not one person made a sound.

  What happened to Russell? He was usually game for anything.

  Win glanced his way. “You don’t want to try?” When Russell gave him a sheepish shrug, Win said, “No pressure.”

  “I’m out,” Remy said. “The mechanical bull was one thing, it didn’t have horns.”

  “I’m too chicken to do it too.” Sue scraped her upper lip with her teeth. “But how lame would it be for one of you to take a picture of me sitting on the back of a bull in the chute?”

  Win’s lips curved up. “Not lame at all, totally cool. Can we do that, Lucky?”

  “Absolutely.” Lucky looked at the others. “You guys want pictures too?”

  “Hells to the yeah.” Remy pumped his fist in the air.

  Sue was the first to climb up over the chute and straddle a bull named Crème Bulle. Where they came up with these names, Win would never know. Lucky popped his cowboy hat on her head and one of the chute guys took a few snapshots with her phone. Remy and Russell followed suit. The three of them stood in a huddle posting their pictures from their phones to FlashTag and various other social-media platforms.

  “What about you, Darcy Lou?” Lucky had certainly taken a shine to Darcy, which annoyed the crap out of Win. It shouldn’t have but it did. He told himself he was just being protective. Like a big brother. But no big brother he knew had seen his sister in a red teddy and imagined her in it. Often.

  “Not on your life,” she said. “I’m good right down here.”

  “Then come meet my wife.”

  A wife? Okay, that lightened Win’s mood. Lucky led them up a treelined path with a flagstone walkway to a small house, which turned out to be a boot shop and studio. Win had never seen so many cowboy boots. Exotic skins, distressed leather, round toe, pointy toe, fancy stitchwork, rhinestones, you name it.

  Win put his hand under Darcy’s chin. “Close your mouth, you’re drooling.”

  Lucky chuckled. “My wife, Tawny, designs them.” He pointed to a pair with a San Francisco Giants logo. “Those are for Bruce Bochy. That pair over there, Harrison Ford.”

  “You’re not supposed to tell anyone that.” An attractive brunette came out of one of the back rooms. “Cordovan-client privilege.”

  “She’s too ethical.” Lucky draped an arm over her shoulder and Win could see pride bursting from every pore in the cowboy’s body and wondered what it would be like to be that consumed by a woman. That in love.

  He sure hadn’t felt it with Britney or even Deb, who’d been the closest thing he’d ever had to a serious girlfriend. But it was nothing like what he was witnessing now. The air around Lucky and his wife crackled with electricity. No one could miss it.

  Lucky ma
de the introductions and they chatted for a while before everyone went off in different directions, looking at the boots. Even Win, who wasn’t much of a shopper, found himself trying on a pair. Tawny had said the ones in her shop were either samples, seconds, or custom orders that the client had never paid for. They were expensive but well worth the price, given the workmanship.

  He spied Darcy in the corner, modeling a red pair for Tawny, the two looking slightly conspiratorial. Win planned to ask her about it later. Right now, he just enjoyed watching her. Funny, how they had worked together for almost a year and it wasn’t until recently that he’d noticed how appealing she was. Smart, pretty, bullheaded. Okay, he could do without that last part but at the same time it sort of cracked him up. She was a third of his size but that didn’t stop her from telling him what to do.

  And knowing that she toed the line with everyone else made him feel special. With him, she felt comfortable enough in her own skin to push back.

  And thirty minutes later she was pushing back all right. To say she was livid was an understatement. Once again, he’d blown up “the plan” to eat at the Bun Boy, the burger drive-through he liked so much. They were supposed to have lunch at the Indian place in Glory Junction. But they were here now and all the time they’d spent on Lucky’s cattle ranch had made him hungry for beef.

  The Bun Boy didn’t have indoor seating and only a pickup window where a pimply-faced kid called your name when the food was up. Way more casual than Darcy wanted for their VIP clients. But Remy, Sue, and Russell seemed more than happy to sit outside at a picnic table, under a leafy oak tree and munch on curly fries while tourists on their way to the Feather River walked their dogs in the tall grass.