“And an ambulance.”
Damn. “I don’t suppose we’d be lucky enough that Flash was the one hospitalized?”
Pete shook his head.
“Who?”
“Tex McGraw.”
Double damn. Not only was Tex one of the few people who could outride Flash, but he had several hundred thousand followers that could easily be mobilized to put Flash’s head on a pike. He was popular, dammit.
And Flash wasn’t. Of all the people her irritating baby brother could have gone after... She ground the heels of her palms against her eyes. “And that’s why no one was feeling friendly toward me this morning.”
“Could be.” He cleared his throat. “But at least it wasn’t personal. They aren’t feeling too kindly toward any Lawrence right now.”
If this were a nightmare, she’d love to wake up right now.
Alas, this was no nightmare. “How bad is Tex?”
Pete swallowed. “Broken jaw, broken knee.”
“Knee?”
“Lawrences fight hard,” Pete said with an attempt at a smile. But all he managed to do was look as sick as she felt. “He’ll be out for the season. He’s, uh, already contacted his lawyer.”
“Usually Flash calls me.” Because, in addition to running the rodeo, her other job was keeping Flash out of trouble. As if anyone could. “Why didn’t he call me?”
Her phone rang. But it wasn’t Flash, nor was it the Greater Sikeston Police Department. She glanced at the name, even more dread building. How much more dread could one person feel? “Oliver.”
She needed to answer this. But...
“That’d be why, I figure.” Pete took a step toward her. “Hon, I’m sorry.”
“You didn’t land Flash in the pokey,” she replied.
He lifted her bruised hand and pressed another surprisingly tender kiss to her knuckles. “I’m sorry about how we parted last night. I’m sorry I gave you cause to worry this morning.” A little of the tension drained from her shoulders. “I know we still haven’t discussed the parameters of my job but...”
“Crisis management has to come first.” Her phone buzzed again. “Look, Pete—”
But he beat her to the punch, so to speak. “Right. We have to protect the rodeo, first and foremost. And...” He swallowed. “And we probably shouldn’t be involved while we’re working together. More involved.”
“Yeah.” Sure, she’d been about to say that exact thing, but her pride still smarted a little. She covered it with a weak grin. “One of these days, we’ll come to terms. But until then...help?”
“Always, babe. You deal with your family and the press. I’ll deal with the rodeo. Okay?”
A small part of her wanted to argue against that because if Pete were really working to push her out, this was a gift-wrapped opportunity for him.
But what was she supposed to do here? Because, if the morning had been any indication, no one was going to talk to her for the rest of the weekend, much less follow her directions. Someone had to keep the rodeo on track and Pete had the skills and the connections. She needed Pete right now in a way that had nothing to do with how he filled out those Wranglers or how he’d made her feel last night.
So she swallowed her misgivings and gave her smile her level best. “Got it. Go, team?”
He leaned forward to brush a quick kiss against her lips and then he was gone, the ghost of his kiss still lingering there.
Well. At least things couldn’t get any worse.
* * *
“Dare I ask what the hell you were thinking?” Chloe said, barely keeping her anger reined in. She was exhausted, worried, furious and still nauseous. But she didn’t get the luxury of hiding under the covers until the world went away.
Flash might not have been carted off to the hospital, but he hadn’t gotten away scot-free. Stripped of his Stetson and his boots, her little brother looked surprisingly young in jail-issue orange. He had two black eyes and the left side of his face was so swollen that he was almost unrecognizable. His knuckles were scraped raw and she could tell by the way he was sitting that he hurt.
Didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to feel bad for him. He had brought this on himself, just like he always did.
He looked up, his left eye completely bloodshot. Tex had gotten in a few good licks before he’d gone down. “You wouldn’t understand,” he said, his voice flat.
How had Chloe come to this place in her life, where the only man who treated her with anything that resembled respect was Pete Wellington? “No, I’m sure I wouldn’t. I’m only your older sister and in charge of the rodeo, which, I’d like to point out, you’ve done more to destroy in a single night than Pete Wellington has done in ten years.”
Flash tried to glare at her, but he winced in pain. “Now is not the time, sis.”
“I beg to disagree,” she said, feeling her temper slip through her fingers. “Because you do have time. Oliver and I agreed. You got yourself into this mess—you can get yourself right back out. You may have permanently ended the career of one of the best riders on the All-Stars circuit.”
“And the biggest asshole,” Flash muttered.
Chloe ignored that. She was not allowing a strong contender for that title to interrupt her tirade. “You may have torpedoed your own career in the process. And you undermined my position as a manager who can successfully run the rodeo. You don’t have any friends left, Flash. No one wants to put up with this crap. Especially not me.”
He crossed his arms and stared at the top of the table.
If she could reach through the mesh wire separating them, she would strangle him. “You wanted to prove that you got where you are without cashing in on the family name? Now’s your chance, buddy. Because family is not going to bail you out. Not the rodeo family, and not me. You’re going to sit in this jail cell. You got there all by yourself.”
“You weren’t there,” Flash yelled, slamming his hands down on the table. “You didn’t hear the things he said. I’m not going to let any man talk about a woman the way he talked about her!”
Chloe had grown up with Flash. Hotheaded, short fuse, quick on the trigger—he’d always been like this. Calm and sullen one moment, raging the next. She wasn’t even a little surprised about his outburst. “Her who? And what was he saying?” she asked, trying to stay calm.
If Tex had gotten sloshed and was talking about women as disrespectfully as the way those two drunks outside of Mike’s had treated her, then she could at least understand why her brother had flipped out. Flash loved women. Sometimes too much.
If what Tex said had been abusive or even just misogynistic, Chloe needed to know before she attempted to make amends with him. She wasn’t going to make someone who denigrated women the focus of any future All-Stars marketing campaigns.
Flash fell silent again. Chloe rolled her eyes. “Fine. Oliver is sending a lawyer, but you’re on your own for bail and damages. You are hereby suspended from the All-Stars until further notice.”
“What?” Flash exploded again, but Chloe was already standing. “You can’t do this to me!”
She shook her head as she walked away. “Flash, you did this to yourself.”
She was done. As she waited for the officer to open the door, she tried hard to find a silver lining in this situation. The only one she could come up with was that at least no one had caught her and Pete together.
“Does Oliver know about the deal you made with Wellington?” Flash called out behind her.
Chloe froze. Point of fact, Oliver did not. Mostly because it wasn’t relevant to the current situation she was dealing with. But also because she’d put good money on the fact that Flash had already threatened Pete and she’d be willing to bet Oliver would do the same thing. Except Flash’s threats tended to involve fights and Oliver’s threats tended to involve expensive lawsuits.
&nb
sp; She couldn’t bring herself to lie, because lies were easy to prove wrong. But this was Flash, after all. She had no problem hedging the truth a little. “Like he cares,” she said, doing her best to sneer dismissively. “The only thing Oliver cares about is that the All-Stars runs smoothly and profitably without him having to get his hands dirty. So if you think you can redirect Oliver’s anger away from you and onto Wellington, I’d think twice before waving that red flag in front of that bull. Wellington isn’t the reason Oliver called me this morning.”
Behind her, the door clicked open and, without waiting for a reply, she turned and walked away.
She didn’t even wince as the door slammed shut behind her and locked with the dull, metallic clunk.
* * *
Of course things got worse. Because the rodeo was family and some family squabbles could be kept quiet but this? This was not one of them. Not with the front-page headline of the Sikeston Standard-Democrat blaring about the fight in huge type and the editorial asking if it was safe for the town to continue hosting the rodeo.
What Chloe pieced together made it clear that the her in question had been Brooke Bonner, country singer and Flash’s current infatuation.
As best Chloe could tell, Tex had been remarking that he didn’t like Bonner because...well, the because was fuzzy. Tex wouldn’t say much beyond Flash was a crazy bastard who was going to pay and Flash refused to say anything else in his defense. She got seven conflicting stories from eyewitnesses that ranged from Tex saying Brooke was getting fat to stating she was a no-talent hack to observing he’d “tap that,” as one rider put it.
In other words, Chloe was on the losing end of the world’s worst game of telephone and it was a hell of a mess. She’d say things couldn’t get worse, but she wasn’t about to tempt fate right now.
The All-Stars had lost Tex McGraw, most likely permanently. At the very least, he was out for the rest of the season and no force on this earth could stop him from taking swipes at Flash on social media. At least half of which Flash deserved, as far as Chloe was concerned. But worse, Tex was making plenty of noise about how he’d never ride for the All-Stars again as long as a Lawrence was in charge and maybe he’d take his skills where they’d be appreciated in the Total Bull Challenge.
Flash was booked for assault and sued accordingly and Chloe refused to overturn his indefinite suspension, which meant two of the All-Stars’ top ten riders were out. No one wanted Flash back, that much was clear. His hot temper had caught fire too many times and all his bridges had burned to ash.
Chloe looked weak as a leader because she couldn’t manage her brother or the bad press. Even announcing that Flash had been suspended, pending trial dates, didn’t help much. Somehow, she was responsible for Flash’s behavior, which infuriated her all over again. Flash was a twenty-four-year-old adult. He was responsible for his own screw-ups. Not her. She wasn’t her brother’s keeper, dammit.
And what had she been doing when this whole thing had gone down? Getting to third base with Pete.
Chloe was comfortable with her decision to leave Flash locked up, but that didn’t mean she still didn’t have to clean up after his messes. Everywhere the rodeo landed, it felt like she gave the exact same interview. Yes, the All-Stars were hopeful that Tex McGraw would make a full and complete recovery. Yes, the All-Stars were doing everything they could to assist Tex in achieving that goal. Yes, Flash was suspended pending his trial for assault. No, Chloe had not personally been there when the fight broke out. No, she didn’t know what had started it all. No, she hadn’t heard any rumors swirling that somehow linked the brawl back to Brooke Bonner.
She’d love to talk about the changes coming to the All-Stars—but no one wanted to ask about those. They all wanted to prop up the click-bait headlines that seemed to follow the Lawrence family no matter where they went. Unfortunately, Flash’s trouble with the law was the perfect opportunity to resurface all those terrible facts about the Preston Pyramid scheme and how the former Renee Preston, current Renee Lawrence, was related to the very criminals who’d ruined everyone’s life.
There might not be such a thing as bad PR, but Chloe could do with a lot less of it.
The good news—because she was still clinging to whatever silver lining she could—was that not only did Pete Wellington do a damned fine job running the All-Stars while Chloe handled the media and the lawyers and, worst of all, her family, but he announced the changes she’d told him about when they had been sitting in the back of a pickup truck what felt like years ago.
Next season, women would be allowed to compete in both the team events and the individual events. Yes, it was infuriating that, for the most part, everyone nodded and smiled and said something along the lines of, well, maybe it was about time. Chloe knew damned well that if she’d announced the changes, she would’ve gotten nothing but heartbreak and heartburn. But those same ideas coming out of Wellington’s mouth? Everyone signed on with remarkably little dissent.
Which was good for the rodeo. Not so much for her ego.
She rarely got the chance to talk to Pete, and when she did, they kept the conversations short and focused on the tasks at hand. He kept her up-to-date on what the riders were talking about and she apprised him of the media chatter. He didn’t barge in to her dressing room anymore and she didn’t ask him to get something to eat. They were both too busy keeping the All-Stars from collapsing under its own weight. And besides, they’d agreed—they couldn’t be anything more than coworkers. It was better this way.
Except...except when she mounted up and waited to make her entrance into the arena, she looked for him. And she usually found him, on top of one of the chutes, watching her with what felt like far more than friendly interest. Every single time their gazes met, heat flashed down her back and she wished he’d barge into her dressing room, just one more time.
For those few moments, separated by fences and horses and cowboys, she wasn’t the Lawrence in charge and he wasn’t the de facto rodeo manager. When her gaze met his and he gave her that wink, she could still feel his hands on her body, still taste him on her tongue. And given the way he stared at her, she couldn’t help but wonder if he felt the same.
But she wasn’t going to ask. Yeah, for that brief moment in time against the side of his truck, she’d just been Chloe and he’d been Pete and there hadn’t been any past betrayals or family dramas. They’d only been a man and a woman outside a honky-tonk bar on a Friday night and it’d been good.
Too bad she might never get another moment like that.
Eight
The woman’s voice cut through the hotel lobby. “What do you mean, I don’t have a reservation?”
Chloe?
Pete’s head whipped up so fast that he almost tripped over his own boots. Desire slammed into his gut. It was Chloe. There was no mistaking that backside in those stretch pants. She normally got to the rodeo a day before he did, but the way the flights to Pendleton, Oregon, had worked out, he was here early.
Good thing, too. As he got closer, he could see she was physically shaking.
The clerk behind the desk looked mortified as he apologized profusely, saying, “I’m so sorry but there’s no record of a reservation under that name and we’re booked solid—there’s a convention in town and then the rodeo. There isn’t a room in town.” He cleared his throat, looking as hopeful as possible. “Did someone else make the reservation?”
“No, I did. I thought...” Her voice broke as she dropped her head onto her forearms.
The clerk shot Pete a pleading look, one that begged for patience.
This should have been Pete’s moment of victory and he hadn’t even done anything to earn it. Chloe was about to crack under the pressure of running the rodeo, just like he’d known she would. She was going to fall apart and Pete would be right here to pick up the pieces and show the world that Chloe Lawrence didn’t have what it took�
�while he did.
Except... Her back rose and fell with a shuddering breath.
This wasn’t right. He wanted her out of the All-Stars, but did he really want her broken?
Dammit all, he didn’t.
“Problem?” he asked.
Chloe spun around. She looked terrible—pale, with dark circles under her eyes and so obviously upset. What the hell? His Chloe wouldn’t buckle just because of a wayward reservation.
He moved without thinking, dropping his bag and pulling her into his arms. “What’s wrong, hon?”
She took a ragged breath as her arms wrapped around his waist and she all but crumpled into him. Chloe Lawrence clung to him as if he were a rock in the middle of the stormy sea. “I don’t have a room and there are no rooms and it’s been a terrible week and...” She took another shuddering breath and Pete knew she was trying not to cry.
He hugged her harder, his heart pounding. He had seen Chloe angry, defensive, seductive, flirty and happy. She always looked so danged happy sitting at the head of the procession in her princess finery, ready to ride and wearing the hell out of her chaps.
He’d wanted her back in his arms, wanted her vulnerable and open like she’d been against the side of his truck. But this? He didn’t want her destroyed. The urge to fix this mess was almost overwhelming.
He wanted to help her.
The realization left him feeling dazed. The burr under his saddle that was Chloe Lawrence? The thorn in his backside that he’d give anything to be rid of? He was being gifted with a golden opportunity to finish the job he’d started.
Her body was pressed against his and he realized he was stroking her hair. He couldn’t do it, dammit. Fool that he was, he was going to protect her. Didn’t matter from what. What mattered was that she needed someone on her side right now and by God, Pete was going to be that man.
She stiffened in his arms and pulled away, blinking hard. “Sorry, sorry,” she said, trying to smile—or maybe look confident and in control? Either way, she failed miserably. “Just a little tired.”
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