“So we’re at an impasse. I love you, and I want you in my life. But according to you, I need you too much. Before you say it, I know you’re right. I do need you, all the time. I want you all the time too.” Ben tilted her chin. “Is that so bad?”
“Ben, listen to me. You need more than I know how to give. It’s not that I can’t, or don’t want to, I don’t know how to.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means that I’m willing to learn. Why do you think I came to Crested Butte?”
“To ski?”
“No, Ben. I came to Crested Butte because I love you, and I need you in my life. It isn’t just barrel racing, it’s you too. You’re part of the dream, Ben. You.”
“You love me?”
“You know I do, Ben. Like I’ve never loved anyone before.”
“Then why is this so hard?”
“I’ve been telling you we need to talk. We haven’t yet.”
“Okay, let’s talk. What do you—”
“I can’t talk until you stop, cowboy.”
Ben made a motion that he was zipping his lips and held his hands out for her to continue.
“I have a plan.”
Ben nodded.
“When you leave for Europe, you’ll fly out of Denver, right?”
He nodded again.
“We’ll fly to Denver together, that way I’ll be with you as long as possible before you leave for Europe.”
When Ben didn’t say anything, she continued.
“While you’re on tour, I’ll be training. But, Ben, if I don’t believe it’s working, I’ll quit.”
Liv felt Ben’s body tense.
“I have to try, but if something isn’t right, I’ll know. If it is right, and I believe Micah and I can compete, that’s what we’ll do. By the time you get back from Europe in March, I’ll know.”
Liv stopped talking and turned to him.
“Can I talk now?”
“Mmm hmm.”
He let out a huge sigh. “Wow. That was hard.”
“I bet. Imagine how hard it was for me? I actually had to make plans from now until March.”
“What about going to Monument, and leaving from there?”
“What about your boys?”
“Yeah, that would be hard. If you’re sure—”
“Shh.” Liv put her fingers on his lips again. “Since I’m staying, do you mind if I start the laundry? I need to wash a few clothes.”
“No, not at all, go ahead,” Ben answered, as though he was in a Twilight Zone episode.
When Liv left the room, he leaned forward, put his elbows on his knees, and his head in his hands.
Liv came back in and sat down next to him. She tucked her legs under her and leaned into him. “Ben?”
“Yeah?” He kept his elbows on his knees.
“I’ve never done this. I barely remember the few months I lived with Scott. I was a kid. A nineteen-year-old kid. Renie is two years older than I was when Scott was killed. Work with me, okay?”
He leaned back, put his arm around her, and pulled her closer to him. “I was either on the road or drunk the whole time I was married to Christine. I didn’t know what I was doing then, any more than I do now.”
“We’re gonna be okay, Ben.”
“You really love me?”
“More than anything.”
“Tell me.”
“I love you, Ben. More than I’ve ever loved anyone.”
“Say it again.”
25
“These have been the best two weeks of my life.”
“Mine, too.”
“Is Paige picking you up?”
“Or Mark. I should see if they’re here.”
“Not yet.”
Ben got a text from Jimmy saying he needed to get through customs or he’d miss the flight.
“I gotta go, baby. I’m gonna miss you so much.” Ben pulled Liv in close. “I hate saying goodbye to you.” He put his hands on either side of her face. “Thank you for coming back to me, thank you for giving us a chance. I love you so much.”
Liv reached up and pulled him closer, her lips brushed across his and she kissed her way across his cheek, to the spot below his ear. “I love you too, Ben. So much,” she whispered.
“He did it to you,” said Paige on the ride home.
“He came to visit. This is different.”
Paige shrugged her shoulders. “Not that different. By the time you get back from Texas and put everything in motion, he’ll be on his way home. Just do it, Liv.”
“Okay. I’ll talk to Billy tomorrow.”
“You can do this,” said Jolene, in a comforting tone Liv hadn’t realized the woman possessed.
Liv and Micah had been working hard for three weeks—riding hard, riding fast, but the one thing Liv couldn’t bring herself to do was take him around the barrels.
“Start slow. Ride around the barrel, don’t try to hug it, just ride around it.”
In took three more days before Liv completed the entire cloverleaf pattern, and even then it was barely at a trot.
A few days later, Liv was starting to pick up speed. She knew Micah was itching to do it right, but each time she pulled him back.
“Let him go this time, all out,” Jolene yelled from the fence.
“How’s she doin’?” asked Mary Beth, standing near her.
Jolene showed her Liv’s last time. Thirty-four seconds.
“This ain’t a race timer, but it’s close enough. She’s ready, but she’s sure not gonna be happy with these times.”
“Does she know you’re timin’ her yet?”
“Nope.”
“Keep at her. Get mean.”
“What’re you talkin’ about?”
“She likes it when you’re mean, you remind her of her father.”
“I am never mean.”
“Jolene, I love you dearly, but you are always mean. You’re coddling her. Stop it. Push her, make her do it. You’ve eased her in enough. I’ve been watchin’ Micah. He’s fine. He’s ready, and waitin’ for her.”
“I don’t know.”
“Do it, Jolene. She’ll be okay. Stop protecting her.”
“That’s it for today,” Jolene shouted to Liv, who waved and rode Micah in the direction of the barn.
Jolene walked away in the opposite direction, but Mary Beth knew she’d been listening. She couldn’t wait to see what was going to happen tomorrow.
She made a couple of calls on her way home that night. “Yep, you might wanna try to get down here tomorrow morning,” she told each person she called.
“We’re running the timer today,” Jolene said when Liv walked into the barn.
“Good morning to you, too. What did you say?”
“You heard me. I’ve had enough sittin’ around watchin’ you stroll around the barrels. We’re either gonna start runnin’ times or you might as well go back to Monument.”
“But—”
“Those are the only two options I’m willin’ to put out there, Olivia. Which is it gonna be?”
Liv turned and stomped out of the barn.
A few minutes later Liv stomped back in. “Are we gonna do this or not?”
“Sure, um, you wanna get Micah saddled up?”
“Yep.” She stomped to Micah’s stall and led him out.
“Can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“Where’d you go?”
“To change my shirt.” If she and Micah were doing this today she wanted Ben wrapped around her, so she went back to the hotel and put on one of the shirts he left on the door knob of her closet, but that was none of Jolene’s business.
Over and over Jolene made her do it. Her first times were in the high twenties.
“Get the lead out, girl.”
Sixth time out, she came in at twenty seconds.
“What’re you doin’ out there? Is that Micah or Pooh you’re ridin’?”
Mary Beth was sitting on the f
ence at the opposite end of the arena and wasn’t certain, but she swore Liv flipped Jolene off.
She turned around and waved at Renie, Paige and Mark, who were sitting in a truck taping Liv’s practice, and Mark gave her a thumbs up.
The next day when Liv came in just above seventeen seconds, Liv jumped off Micah, threw her arms around Jolene, and kissed her. Mary Beth hoped Mark had a zoom lens strong enough to pick up the tears on Jolene’s cheeks.
Mark uploaded the video, and hit send on the email.
“Ready?” Renie said, and the three of them got out of the truck.
Liv heard yelling and turned to see her daughter and her two best friends jumping up and down, waving their hands and running toward her.
“What the—”
“Mary Beth,” said Jolene. “They’ve been here since yesterday.” Jolene doubted Liv even heard her, she was halfway to them already.
“Did you see me?” Liv kept repeating.
“We did,” answered Paige. “Mark even recorded it.”
“How was it, Mom?”
“So amazing…even better than skiing,” she laughed.
Ben had been sitting by the computer waiting for Mark’s email. The last couple weeks, he’d only gotten what Jolene sent him, which were bits and pieces of Liv’s day.
He hit the play button and watched her fly around the barrels, as if she’d been born to do it. In the video, Mark panned over to the timer Renie held in her hand. Seventeen point three.
Ben was alone in his hotel room, but he jumped up and down and danced around anyway. One more week, he’d be home, and he and Liv would celebrate together.
Epilogue
Ben was in the stands in the second week of December, when Olivia Rice came in fourth place in Barrel Racing at the National Finals Rodeo. He knew next year his wife would win, he felt it in his bones.
The CB Rice concert, taking place later that night at the Mandalay Bay complex, was sold out, as every other show on their tour had been.
They met backstage right before he went on. “I can’t wait to get you home, baby.”
“We’re not getting out of bed until Christmas,” Liv answered.
“The only thing is…”
“What? What could there possibly be, Ben?”
“I miss your kitchen.”
“Then we’ll remodel ours.”
“I doubt Billy Patterson appreciates what he got when he bought your place. Do you think he even knows how to cook?”
“Doubt it, but I’m sure he’ll find a pretty little cowgirl to do it for him.”
About the Author
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Also by Heather Slade
COWBOYS OF CRESTED BUTTE
Available Now!
Book Two
Dance with Me
Available for Pre-Order Now!
Coming November, 2017
Book Three
Kiss Me Cowboy
BUTLER RANCH
Available Now!
Book One
The Promise
Book Two
The Truce
Coming Soon!
Available for Pre-Order Now!
Coming October, 2017
Book Three
The Secret
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next
heart-poundingly sexy novel in
Heather Slade’s
Cowboys of Crested Butte Series,
available now,
Dance with Me
Want more from Heather Slade?
Keep reading for a short excerpt from
The Promise,
the first book in
the Butler Ranch series.
Dance with Me
Chapter One
Previous January
“Damn that Liv Fairchild,” he muttered. Billy slammed the barn door shut behind him, and stomped to the house. She wasn’t Liv Fairchild anymore, now she was Liv Rice, but that didn’t change how mad he was at her.
When she came to him and asked whether he wanted to buy her ranch, the answer was obvious. Of course he did. His family’s ranch bordered hers, and they’d wanted to buy this land since he was a boy. His family didn’t begrudge Liv’s—the Pattersons had been leasing grazing rights since they bought the place. And her house, well, it was one of the nicest houses he’d ever seen.
She named a fair price, and he certainly could afford it. It was the side deal she made with him that was the problem. Liv had been boarding horses for years, and she didn’t want to let the families down who counted on her, so she made Billy promise to keep the boarding stables open.
How he’d do that, was beyond him. He traveled as a saddle bronc rider on the rodeo circuit, and sometimes he was away for two or three weeks at a time.
He told Liv’s daughter, Renie, she could keep her horse there for as long as she wanted. She had four years of school to finish before she got her degree and became a large animal vet. He wouldn’t have asked her to move Pooh, the fourteen-year-old mare she’d had since she was ten. But taking care of her horse, along with all the others, wasn’t something he signed up for.
Liv told him to hire somebody. Plenty of ranch hands worked Patterson Ranch, his parents’ place, but he doubted a job this small would entice anyone.
He was almost years old, and this was the first time he had a place of his own. It wasn’t that he hadn’t wanted to before, he just hadn’t had any good reason. He was on the road so much, and when he was home, his parents’ place was big enough. His room was on the lowest floor of their tri-level house, and he had plenty of privacy, not that he’d ever taken advantage of it.
“You need to move out Billy,” Renie said to him. “You kinda seem like a loser, still living with your parents.”
He knocked her into the water trough when she’d said it. He thought that might teach her, pain in the ass that she was.
“You should hire Blythe,” she said, trying to help him come up with a solution for the stables.
“Blythe who?”
“Blythe Cochran.” Paige and Mark Cochran were her mother’s best friends. She and Blythe had been friends since they were five years old.
“Why would I hire her?”
“Because she’s home. She quit school and doesn’t have anything to do.”
That didn’t sound like the best reason he’d ever heard to hire somebody. The fact that she quit school didn’t fill him with confidence, either. The last thing he needed was to get a phone call while he was out on the road, telling him she was quitting. What the hell would he do then?
“Why’d she quit?”
“She decided she didn’t want to be a nurse. You shouldn’t look down your nose at her Billy. I quit school too.”
“You did? Since when?”
“I quit Dartmouth.”
“You transferred, you didn’t quit.”
“I quit the medical program.”
“You changed your major to vet medicine, because you decided you’d make a crappy people doc. That isn’t quitting, Renie.”
“Since when are you such an expert on college?”
Billy shook his head. He might not know a lot about college, but he did know a lot about her.
Renie switched fields from biomedical to veterinary medicine last year, in her junior year, and had transferred to Colorado State University in Fort Collins, a two-hour drive from the ranch. He told her she could stay at the house as much as she wanted. It was the house she grew up in, and with him away so often, they’d almost never see each other.
“What about when you bring girls home?” she asked.
“What girls?”
That elicited another “
loser” comment out of her. He supposed she was right. Plenty of girls would be happy to come home with him, even if only for a night. He wasn’t bragging, it was the nature of being a bronc rider, saddle, or otherwise. Having a one-night stand on the road was one thing—it was different at home.
“You’re a hot guy, Billy.”
“What? God, Renie, you can’t say that to me.”
“What? It’s not like I’m interested.”
“Jeez, what’s wrong with you?”
“I don’t see what the issue is, but let’s get back to the original subject—you should hire Blythe.”
“She know how to take care of horses?”
“No, but…”
Renie was at least five times as infuriating as any woman Billy’d ever met. “Why would I hire somebody who doesn’t have experience with horses?”
“Because she needs the job Billy, and she’ll learn. In fact, I’ll teach her.”
“No.”
Renie grabbed his arm.
Whoa, what the hell? It was as though a bolt of lightning hit him, and the current surged through his veins. It almost knocked him on his ass.
“Please,” she said, in that soft tone she used sometimes when she tried to get her way. It used to make him laugh, and he’d tell her he saw right through her. Today, he had a different reaction. Today, he’d be willing to do anything Renie Fairchild wanted him to.
“What?” she asked.
“Nothing.” Billy didn’t know what in God’s name was going on, but he knew he needed to get away from Renie, right now. “Listen, I gotta go into town.”
“Where are you headed? I’m not doing anything. I’ll go with you.”
“No. Not tonight. I’ve…um…got a date.”
“You do? With one of these girls you don’t plan to bring home?”
She was killing him. She didn’t appear as affected by the touch as he had been.
“Whatever, Renie. Mind your own damn business.”
Fall for Me (Cowboys of Crested Butte Book 1) Page 24