“If you ride like that in the semifinals on Saturday, you’re sure to zip straight through to the finals.”
If.
The word hung in the air because as much as Billy’s pride told him he was a shoo-in, he knew better. While he knew he had the talent, other factors came into play when it came to a successful ride. With all the publicity from the Famous Texas Outlaws episode, Billy had been tense. Sleep deprived. Anxious. Even if he was damn good at hiding it.
Still, his numbers had been down in the preliminaries and while he’d had a good ride, good wasn’t enough.
To make it to the Lost Gun finals, he had to be great.
And to make it all the way to the finals in Vegas in November?
He had to be flawless.
“That was damn near perfect,” Eli said as he clapped Billy on the back and followed him out of the corral. Die-hard fans packed the training facility and cameras flashed left and right.
“Way to go, Billy!”
“Awesome ride!”
“You’re the best!”
The comments came at him from all angles and fed the excitement already pumping through his veins.
Not that Billy was letting the praise go to his head. He knew that the past eight seconds meant nothing if he couldn’t pull it off again on Saturday in front of the judges. That meant the next week of practice had to be this good. Or better.
Fat chance.
The doubt trotted into his head before he could close the gate, and unease settled low in his belly. Not because his success just now had anything to do with a certain brunette. Sure, the sex had relieved his tense muscles and given him the best sleep he’d had in a helluva long time, but she could have been anyone.
“Whatever you did last night, you better make damn sure you do it again.” Eli retrieved a bottled water from a nearby cooler and handed it to Billy. “Rinse and repeat, buddy. Rinse and repeat.”
If only.
He ignored the crazy thought and made his way around the chutes toward the cowboy who waited on the other side of the railing.
His brother Jesse wore a serious expression that said major badass.
But Billy wasn’t the least bit intimidated. At six foot three, Jesse had only an inch and a half on him. And when it came to attitude? Billy put the b in badass.
“Not too shabby,” Jesse remarked when Billy reached him. “I might have taught you something, after all.” He grinned and his violet eyes twinkled.
The same eyes that stared back at Billy in the bathroom mirror every morning. But while they had the same eyes and a similar build, that’s where the likeness ended. Billy had sun-kissed blond hair, an easy smile and a shitload of Southern charm.
Jesse, not so much.
He’d always been the serious one, sick of his past and eager to leave it behind for something bigger and better. Which was why it had surprised everyone when Jesse had announced last week that he was not only staying in Lost Gun permanently but rebuilding on the old property that had once housed the one-room shack where they’d grown up.
The reason for his sudden change of heart?
The petite blonde standing on the opposite side of the corral, snapping pictures of the various bulls and riders as they exited the chute.
Jesse and Gracie Stone had had a thing for each other back in high school. A fire that had burned so fierce and bright that neither time nor a blanket of stubbornness had managed to smother. They’d kept their distance up until a few weeks ago when Gracie had warned Jesse about the renewed interest in Silas and the “Where Are They Now?” episode that had been about to air. One face-to-face and bam, the flames had reignited and blazed that much hotter. They were inseparable now. They’d moved into Gracie’s house over on Main Street while they built their very own place on the ruins of Silas Chisholm’s old house.
The news couldn’t have come a moment too soon for Billy. While Jesse had been eager to forget the past, Billy had always been more inclined to remember.
To keep in mind the unreliable man his father had once been, and even more, to keep a tight hold on the man he knew lurked deep inside himself.
“You’re my blood,” he’d heard Silas say too many times to count. “Just ’cause you think you’re so high and mighty, don’t make it true. You’ll see. I ain’t cut out for the nine-to-five life, and neither are you. There are too many options out there. Too many ways to make it really big to waste your time with some penny-ass job.”
The words had been spoken to Jesse, who’d been thirteen at the time and the caretaker to his two younger brothers, but Billy had been the one to take the statement to heart.
Silas Chisholm had never been able to settle down and straighten up his life. There’d been no finding a steady job and building a home for his boys and meeting a nice woman to share his life with. He’d been a lowlife who’d floated from one two-bit crime to the next, always looking for the next big thing. A better opportunity. A bigger payoff.
Ditto for Billy.
Not the crime, part. Hell, no. He was one hundred percent legit and damn proud of it.
It was his inability to commit in his personal life that made him a chip off the old block. It had started back in kindergarten when he hadn’t been able to choose between the monkey bars and the slide, and continued through middle school—baseball or football?—and high school, where he’d accepted not one, but four invitations to his senior prom.
Even now, he couldn’t seem to pick a shade of blue for the tile in his new bathroom, or figure out whether to add an extra bedroom to the cabin or a man cave. He could see the value in both, the payoff, and that was the problem. Billy hated to narrow his options. To miss out on something better. To commit.
Now, bulls were different.
They were the only thing he managed to focus on, to follow through with, to go balls to the wall without a second thought. A championship was the one thing he wanted with a dead certainty that he’d never felt for anyone or anything.
Until last night.
He nixed the crazy thought and ignored Eli’s voice echoing in his ear. “Rinse and repeat.”
Like hell.
He’d made it out of the motel room this morning without a confrontation or the dreaded “Call me, okay?”
Uh, no.
Last night had been just that—last night. One night. End of story.
“If you ride like that in the semifinals,” Jesse went on, drawing his full attention, “you just might land yourself a spot in the final round.”
“There’s no if, bro,” Billy said with his usual bravado. “I will ride like that. That purse is mine, and so is your title.”
“I hope so, but all the positive affirmation can’t change the past few days and the fact that you sucked big-time in the first go-round.” Jesse shook his head. “What the hell happened?”
“I was running on fumes. Tired. Stressed. You know how it is.”
“And now?”
Billy shrugged. “I finally got a decent night’s sleep is all.”
Jesse arched an eyebrow. “Jack Daniels or a double dose of Sleepy Time?”
“Don’t I wish.” Jesse arched an eyebrow and Billy shrugged. “You don’t want to know. Listen, are you really serious about tonight?” He shifted the subject to the voice mail Jesse had left for him earlier that day. “You want me out at Big Earl Jessup’s place?”
Jesse nodded. “At sundown. And if you see Cole, make sure you remind him. I left a voice mail, but he’s got semifinals today in bucking broncs, so he probably hasn’t checked his messages.”
Billy eyed him. “You going to tell me what this is all about?”
“Tonight.” Jesse motioned to the bull being loaded into a nearby chute. “You’d better get back to work.” He winked. “You need all the practice you can get.�
��
But it wasn’t practice that Billy desperately needed.
He realized that as he spent the rest of the day busting his ass atop the meanest bulls in the county. His skill, his technique, his drive—it was all there. In spades. He’d just been too tired to shine.
No, what he really needed was another six hours of uninterrupted sleep courtesy of a certain brunette with a vibrant pink-and-white Hello Kitty tattoo on the slope of her left breast.
Not that he was admitting as much.
Any woman, he reminded himself. He’d been so hard up that any woman would have had the same effect.
And he knew just how to prove it.
* * *
“AND I WANT A MAN with dark hair and blue eyes. And he has to be at least six feet. And have all his own teeth. And no bunions. And I need him by next Saturday night, 7:00 p.m., sharp,” announced the elderly woman who’d hobbled up to Sabrina’s table at the Fat Cow Diner.
The woman wore her silver-white hair in a short bob, her round body stuffed into an aqua tracksuit and white tennis shoes. “The rodeo committee is hosting their Senior Sweetheart dance and I need a date,” she went on. “They do it simultaneous with the bull-riding semifinals on account of no one down at the senior center can watch the event on account of all the pacemakers and stents and they need every available EMS worker focused on the riders in case they get hurt. The name’s Melba Rose Cummins, like the diesel engine but no relation. I’m a shoo-in for queen.” She indicated the silver pin attached to the collar of her jacket. “I was princess last year and princess always wins queen second time around.”
“Unless you’re Shirley Hart,” chimed in the woman standing next to her. She had the same silver-haired bob—a testimony to the weekly special over at the Hair Saloon—but she wore a hot-pink tracksuit that hung loosely on her thin frame. “Poor Shirley won princess six years in a row on account of she had bad eyesight and refused to wear her glasses onstage. Kept walking into the podium during evening wear and knocking over the mic stand, which totally killed her score. But she finally saved up her social security checks and got herself some of that fancy LASIK surgery.” She shook her head. “Poor thing was so sure that seven would be her lucky number. But then she up and had a heart attack. Keeled over two weeks before the competition and that was that.”
“Nobody wants to hear about poor Shirley,” Melba said. “This is about me.”
The pink track suit shrugged. “All’s I’m sayin’ is if that had been me and I woulda spent that kind of money, I would have made sure they had my eyes open when they laid me to rest. My name’s Louise Talley, by the way.”
“Here’s the address where I need him to pick me up,” Melba handed over a slip of paper that smelled like a mixture of mothballs and dry-cleaning fluid.
“I’m sorry,” Livi started, “but we’re not an escort service. We run a website for women looking to meet cowboys.”
“I don’t care if he’s a cowboy as long as he’s in good shape,” Louise said.
“That’s nice, but we can’t guarantee someone to pick you up next Saturday night—”
“He can meet me there,” Melba cut in. “Just make sure he wears a tie. He’ll have to walk me across the stage.” She reached for her white patent-leather purse. “Cash or credit?”
“We can’t—” Sabrina started, but Livi held up a hand.
“Cash.”
Melba unearthed a coin purse and stared at the two dollar bills inside. “I’m afraid I’ll have to go to the ATM.”
“We’ll be here waiting.”
“What are you doing?” Sabrina asked when the two old women had disappeared.
“Getting rid of them.”
“But they’ll come back.”
“And we won’t be here.” She motioned to the waitress. “Check, please. This place is a dead end,” she told Sabrina. “Let’s head over to the rodeo grounds. Maybe we’ll have better luck there.”
“That seems kind of rude.”
“You know what’s rude? The fact that we’ve explained our business over a zillion times and we keep getting these ridiculous requests. It says right on the pamphlet—meet the cowboy of your dreams. Meet. Not date. Or marry. Or molest. All we do is set up a meet.”
“Maybe we can at least find her a prospect before next week. The actual date would be up to him at that point.”
“Are you kidding me? We’ve got bigger fish to fry. I only managed to snag three profiles this morning. That coupled with the two I picked up last night leaves one hundred and forty-seven more. At this rate, we’ll be over a hundred shy by our deadline. We have to speed up, not slow down and play escort service for the Lost Gun seniors.”
“You’re right.” But that didn’t mean Sabrina wasn’t going to at least keep her eyes open for a prospect. She told Melba Rose as much when she caught her coming out of the feed store next door, cash in hand. “I can’t make any promises, but I’ll try.”
“That’s good enough for me.” Melba made to hand her the cash, but Sabrina waved it away. “If I come up with someone, you can pay the usual posting fee after the fact.”
“Next Saturday at seven,” Melba reminded her. “And I’m negotiable on the teeth.”
“That’s good to know.”
7
“WHAT EXACTLY ARE we doing out here?” The question came from Cole, Billy’s older brother, as they stood in the middle of a huge pasture located behind Big Earl Jessup’s worn-looking house.
Big Earl was a throwback to the good old days when moonshine was just as much a commodity as the cattle grazing in the nearby pastureland. He’d gained notoriety for his white lightning moonshine and his eccentric method of cooking—namely in his deer blind.
Those days were long gone, however, and his great-granddaughter was now cooking up the family recipe in the nearby garage. At least that was the rumor circulating around town, along with several jars of premium, grade A liquor.
At ninety-three, Big Earl spent his days in front of the TV with a tube of Bengay to soothe his severely arthritic joints. He lived just outside of town on several acres guarded by the pair of pit bulls currently tied up on the front porch. The sun had just set and darkness blanketed the area. The only light came from the windows of Big Earl’s house and the lantern in Jesse’s hand.
“The money’s here,” Jesse announced.
Billy’s curiosity piqued and he spoke up. “Silas buried it here?”
“Actually, Big Earl buried it out here. He was Dad’s partner. A silent partner. It turns out that Big Earl was on the construction crew that built the savings and loan some fifty-five years ago. He knew the place like the back of his hand, but he was too old to actually pull off a heist. Instead, he planned the robbery and Dad executed it. The plan was to hide the money and lay low for a while before spending any of it. But then Dad died and they featured him in Famous Texas Outlaws and the time never seemed right, so Big Earl was afraid to dig up the money. And then his old-timer’s set in and now he can’t actually remember where he buried it. He knows it’s somewhere out here, in the middle of a tall stretch of grass.”
Billy glanced from side to side. “This pasture’s a good twenty acres each way.”
“I know. That’s why I need you two to help. I can’t cover all this ground by myself.”
“Can I ask a dumb question?” Cole held up a hand. “Why don’t we tell the sheriff and let them get out here and dig the money up? It’s not like we had anything to do with it.”
“No, but we might as well have. If we hand over the info to the sheriff, the entire town will think we knew all along. But if we give it back ourselves, maybe we can prove once and for all that we aren’t anything like Silas Chisholm. He took from this town, and now we’re going to give back.” He tossed a shovel at Billy. “We’re going to dig every night up
and down this pasture until we hit pay dirt. It might take a few days. It might take a few months.”
Billy shrugged. “I guess hauling an excavator up here would attract too much attention.”
Jesse nodded. “If anyone gets wind that the money might be here, there will be gold diggers from here to Houston looking for that money. We have to keep this between us and do it ourselves.”
“How long are we supposed to dig tonight?” Cole asked. “Not that I don’t want to dig. I’m totally on board with the plan, I just didn’t figure on being up here all night.”
“Don’t worry. You’ll be out in time for a booty call. Which Barbie is it this time?”
“None.” Cole shook his head. “Jimmy and Jake hooked up with Crystal and April and they’re now officially off the market.”
Jimmy and Jake Barber were the last two members of the Lost Boys. They were twins who competed on the team roping circuit. They’d always been players when it came to the ladies, but it looked as if they’re carousing days were fast coming to a close.
“Jimmy and Jake are getting serious?” Billy arched an eyebrow.
“Last I heard,” Cole replied.
“And what about Barbie sister number three?” Jesse asked. “You thinking about making an honest woman of her?”
“Hardly. Nikki Barbie may look as good as her sisters, but she’s not nearly as much fun.” Cole shrugged. “Besides, I met someone today.” He grinned. “A lot of someones. There are girls coming out of the woodwork at this rodeo and I aim to make the most of it.”
Jesse eyed Cole. “Love at first sight?”
Billy grinned. “Safe to say it’s lust at first sight.”
Cole shrugged. “Lust is good.”
Jesse motioned to Cole. “Don’t worry, you won’t miss your booty call.” He turned to Billy. “What about you? You got a midnight rendezvous planned?”
If only.
Billy stifled the thought and gripped the shovel. “Let’s just get this done.” And then he started to dig.
Texas Outlaws: Billy Page 5