Chapter 7
The job is a risk, but it’s one I’m ready to take.
Cassidy didn’t understand why her heart was beating like that.
It was just that when West looked at her with that stern, uncompromising gaze, it made her …
It did something to her. She had been happy to call it an anomaly yesterday, when it had been tangled up with her falling, and the adrenaline rush that came from trying to learn the new horse riding tricks. But that was …
I want you.
Pretty ass.
That lingering look by the fire.
Him giving her his number.
She kept getting hung up on words. He wasn’t saying those things to compliment her or flirt with her or anything like that, she told herself. But still sometimes …
It was her inexperience. That was the problem. Dalton had always been there, the one unobtainable man she wanted more than anything, and because of him she had never pursued casual sex.
Actually, she never did anything casually.
She had thrown herself into her life and Rustler Mountain with absolute abandon because it had been so important to her to make this her home. She never wanted to pull up stakes again.
Ever.
She knew what she wanted. It was just that she wished she had been proactive in getting it before now. She had been waiting so long for Dalton to make a move and … Well, maybe he was now?
Maybe.
The looming specter of their trip together hit her uncomfortably. Maybe it was because of Perry’s comment last night. Knowing it was a topic of conversation in her family.
That she wasn’t the only one considering the implications.
Maybe because her nerves were already slightly frazzled.
It was hard to say.
She jerked open the passenger side door of West’s truck and climbed inside. “You’re going to need a costume,” he said. Casually. As if nothing had happened between them. Maybe it hadn’t? Or at least, maybe it wasn’t rattling him.
“A costume?”
“I don’t think Jessie Jane’s will fit you.”
She almost laughed at that. Jessie Jane was athletic and curvy.
Cassidy was … Well, she was not curvy. Muscular from all the work she did outside, and from riding, but that was about all she had to recommend her figure.
So no, she would never fit into a costume of Jessie’s and she felt a little offended that he had said so.
“No,” she said flatly.
“That’s okay. My mom loves to glue rhinestones onto shit.”
“I thought Jessie wore a prairie dress for this act.”
“That’s the summer event. The routine is similar, but this is a Christmas show. So there’s a lot more sparkle.”
“Are you going to be sparkly?”
He turned to her, the corner of his mouth lifted, his blue eyes sharp.
Something about the expression on his face was like a rush of caffeine.
Hanging out with West was a lot like being around a dangerous animal.
He was an unknown entity. She had thought of him as a horse initially.
One that she could sweet-talk or soothe.
It was becoming clear that wasn’t the case.
In fact, anytime she earned the ghost of a smile, it was like winning a weird prize she didn’t know she was even competing for.
“Obviously,” he said. “I love a rhinestone.”
She scrunched her nose. “I didn’t take you for a rhinestone cowboy.”
“Well, I prefer not to be known.”
She had a feeling he wasn’t joking. That he was actually being completely serious.
He didn’t want to be known at all. She wondered if anyone really knew him.
He seemed to have a decent relationship with his sister, but she wasn’t sure she could say her brothers really knew her, no matter how close they were.
There were so many things she kept to herself. Maybe it was the same for him.
“Known by reputation only?”
“A blessing and a curse.”
He drove the truck along a dirt road that circled the outside of the arena.
They went behind a painted fence, done up in the same style as the exterior of the show, with sensationalized images of the old West. Then she saw a line of trailers, RVs, and single-wides.
“This is where a lot of the staff lives,” he said.
“Lodging comes with employment at the show.”
“Really?”
He shrugged. “It’s not fancy, but as long as people are working for our family, they’re taken care of.”
“That’s really … really nice.”
She didn’t know what kinds of job opportunities were available for people who had skills in stock performance.
But it seemed like the chances of making not quite enough was more likely than the chances of being comfortable.
The fact that the Hancocks provided housing for the people who worked for them—even if it was modest—was really generous.
And didn’t exactly line up with the Hancock reputation. Not that she was one to buy into that sort of thing, not entirely. Assumptions were dangerous. And incorrect most of the time.
West was different from Jessie Jane, though. He was unknowable. He had a dark edge to him. A hint of danger. She sensed it every time he got near her. Anytime she thought about him, there was a spark of something that skittered down her spine.
It was a warning. Her body telling her that there was a predator in the grass. Not that he would ever do anything to her. It was difficult for her to untangle whether she was relieved or disappointed at that knowledge.
They kept on driving. “I didn’t realize the property was so big,” she said.
“Yep. Until recently, Jessie Jane had her trailer here. Now she’s had it moved over to Flynn’s property.”
“I’ve seen it.”
“My place is over the rise. Another trailer belonging to my family. I moved into it when I was sixteen.”
“Sixteen?” That shocked her, for some reason. She’d been abandoned by her mom and had never met her dad, but for some reason the idea of West’s parents letting him move into a trailer when he was so young struck her as odd.
Maybe because in her mind, there wasn’t any middle ground. It was her situation, or the nuclear family. No contact, or totally traditional.
But West’s family wasn’t either one.
He chuckled. “My parents are unconventional. My mom and dad have their own spaces, their own trailers that are separate from each other’s. They sleep in the same one at night, but they keep all of their belongings in their own spaces. My mom can’t stand to have anybody move her things.”
“Oh?”
“She’s not a hoarder. But she is a collector. She’s very particular about her things. She’s got stacks and stacks of historical documents relating to the family. She’s got a lot of crystals. You know, a rock collection but … mystical.”
Cassidy tilted her head to the side. “Really?”
She had only seen Jessie’s parents from afar. Lucinda Hancock was pretty withdrawn, and didn’t engage with people. William was boisterous but was always running in a crowd rather than engaging in individual conversations.
“Yes. They … they run the show because God knows they could never do anything else, right? They just don’t have the capacity for it.
Or maybe it’s that they don’t want to. They’re both smart enough people.
But they don’t like the way the system works, and they don’t want to contribute to it, or participate in it. ”
“I see.”
“Yes.”
She had a sick feeling in her stomach. Because West’s parents reminded her too much of her own mother. When she had seen them before she hadn’t made the comparison. But she knew what it was like to have parents who didn’t want to do what they were supposed to do. What was expected of them.
She knew what it was like to be that child.
“What?” He was staring at the side of her head.
“Nothing. I just … I have a hard time with that. Because maybe your mom doesn’t want to have a traditional family, or your dad thinks it’s silly, but what about you? What about Jessie Jane?”
“We’re fine. We help them. Because we love them. My parents really are doing their best.”
“Oh,” she said.
She didn’t know if her mom had been doing her best. She didn’t think she would ever know.
She could look her mother up, she supposed. She could try to get in touch again. But what if her mom was dead? Or what if she didn’t want to talk to Cassidy? What if she said something that could never be unsaid or unknown? Cassidy would rather keep her mother’s motives a mystery, honestly.
“I don’t think my mom liked doing things by the book either,” she said.
“She brought you here to live when you were a kid, right?”
“Yes. I was abandoned on Christmas. Remember, I told you that.”
“And what was your life like before that?”
No one had ever asked that. Nobody. Not even her brothers. And that was fine, because she couldn’t say she especially wanted to talk about it. She never had. But he was asking and …
I don’t want to be known.
Well, right now he was giving her a chance to be known a little bit more.
She would have said that she didn’t want to be known either.
Mainly, she would’ve said that she didn’t like to dwell on the past. Not when her present was so good.
What was the point? She had a family. Why dwell on things she couldn’t change?
Why worry about circumstances she couldn’t control that didn’t affect her anymore?
She rolled the window down, just a crack, and the sharp winter air hit her square in the face. It was like an arctic blast of Christmas chill. The scent of pine on the air, wrapping her up in nostalgia, and the sharper parts of those memories. A strand of barbed wire wrapped in tinsel.
“I spent the first nine years of my life in Florida. Florida gets cold in winter, but it’s not …
this. I love the smell of Christmas in the air.
Anyway, my mom didn’t really do holidays.
Time didn’t mean much. I went to six different elementary schools, I think.
I’ve lost track. But she was always dodging landlords, and debts of all kinds, really.
Moving in with different men, moving out.
I remember … she took me to the strip club where she worked sometimes. But she had me stay in the back.”