Chapter 1
First Rodeo
RYDER
PRESENT DAY
September
Cowgirls.
They’re everywhere I look. In the stands. On horseback in the arena.
A particularly cute one with dark hair approaches down the wide walkway that wraps around the stadium. My body perks up, warm with interest.
I always enjoy the rodeo, mostly because it’s the perfect place to pick up cute girls I don’t know for hookups I may or may not remember.
I like brunettes. Especially ones in cowboy hats and chaps.
There’s a pervy little saying that cowboys ride harder and stay on longer. I’ve found the same is true about cowgirls too.
But when I see that this cowgirl is Billie Wallace, I immediately hit the brakes on whatever, er, interest I was feeling. Before I can duck into a nearby restroom, however, she spots me. She throws up her arms, her face lighting up.
“Ry! Hey!” She jogs toward me, the tassels on her fancy rodeo chaps flying. “You came!”
She barrels into me and wraps me in a fierce hug. She’s…Christ, soft in all the right places. She also smells real fucking good. More sultry than sweet, like juicy, just-picked peaches.
I close my eyes and take a silent, steadying breath. It’s like she’s trying even harder than usual to push my fucking buttons tonight, and I am not here for it.
I’m not dead. Of course I know how gorgeous my best friend’s baby sister is.
She may be the girl next door, but she’s also pretty in a movie star kind of way, with a wide, white smile, dark hair, and hazel eyes that are the color of the Colorado River at sunset.
More green than brown, except when she’s pissed.
Then her irises are straight whiskey—they burn right through you.
Duke was just warning me to keep my distance when we drove over to the Wallace’s to pick up a horse we bought from them recently. And I do. Usually, anyway. But she and I are both flirts, and in the past, I’ve let myself slip up a few times. What can I say? I like the attention.
Tonight, though, I’m not in the mood. I also promised myself I wasn’t gonna give anyone mixed signals. I’m good at keeping people at arm’s length. Billie Wallace is no exception.
I give her a quick pat on the back before untangling myself from her grasp. “I always come to the rodeo.”
Billie’s eyes shine with a mischievous glint. “But this time you came to see me, right? Because you wanna watch me dominate my very first race, and then you’ll take me out afterward for celebratory drinks and dancing and se—”
“Billie.” I roll my eyes.
I also know Billie’s had a crush on me for about as long as I can remember. Girl makes no secret of it, clearly. But I try not to rise to the occasion for obvious reasons.
More than that, though, I know Billie well enough to recognize that she’d be interested in a hell of a lot more than a one-night stand. Her free-spiritedness doesn’t fool me; behind all her bravado, Billie is a romantic at heart.
I’m a one-night stand kinda guy. Always have been. I like to keep things simple. Safe.
“Seven-card stud.” Billie’s lips twitch. “That’s what I was going to say. Wyatt’s always down for a round of poker. Bet I could convince you to play.”
My older brother Wyatt runs a not-exactly-legal poker ring out of the basement of our local honky-tonk, the Rattler. Billie’s not wrong about him putting together a game of seven-card stud.
She is wrong to think I’d ever play it with her. Or dance with her, for that matter, even if she wins her very first official barrel race.
But we both know that. She’s just busting my chops, as usual.
I slip my hands in my front pockets, running the fingers of my right hand over the familiar shape of my dad’s pocketknife. Every pair of jeans I own bears a visible outline of the knife on the right front pocket—I never leave home without it.
I always feel a little better—more centered—whenever I reach for it.
I glance inside the stadium and see most of my family has already taken their seats.
“You should probably get going, yeah?” I glance at Billie. “Good luck out there.”
She rocks her hips. “You could be my good luck charm, you know.”
It’s all I can do not to groan. This woman is a piece of fucking work.
“You don’t need a good luck charm.”
“But what if I want one?”
“You’re gonna do great.”
“You sound so excited about my prospects.” She’s wearing a shit-eating grin now.
I take another deep breath and look away. “You really should get going.”
“Fine.” I can picture her pouting, sticking out her bottom lip the same way she did when she was a kid. “But if I lose, it’s because you refused to sprinkle me with your special sauce—”
“Bye, Billie.” I manage a tight smile as I turn and head for the concession stand.
“Bye, Ryder. Love you!”
Like a brother. Same as I love her like a sister.
I grab a beer and some popcorn, and then I head down several flights of stairs toward our seats, which are so close to the arena they’re practically on the dirt.
I take my seat beside two miniature cowgirls, their pink and purple boots and matching hats catching my eye.
There’s lots to see at the rodeo tonight, but these two stand out.
The cowgirl closest to me turns her head and smiles. My heart squeezes. She’s a fucking cutie, no two ways about it.
“Whatcha lookin’ at, Uncle Ry?” Junie swings her little legs. She’s the daughter of my older brother Sawyer’s girlfriend, Ava. “Is it my beautiful cowgirl boots? I’m sorry, but you can’t have them. Also, can I have some of that popcorn?”
Now I’m the one smiling as I set the bucket in her lap. “I got my own boots.”
I drop my beer in a nearby cupholder. Lifting my leg, I pull back my jeans just enough to show off the pair of Bellamy Brooks boots I’ve been wearing nonstop since Duke gave them to me for our birthday back in July. “Not as sparkly as yours, granted—”
“Because ours are better.” That’s Ella, my four-year-old niece, who sits next to Junie. “It’s just a fact.”
Sawyer, Ella’s dad, holds up his hands. “Whoa whoa whoa. Them’s fightin’ words, you know. Auntie Mollie and Auntie Wheeler made Uncle Ry’s boots.”
Mollie, the wife of my older brother Cash, and her college roommate Wheeler—my twin brother Duke’s girlfriend and soon-to-be mother of their twins, whom they’ll welcome over the holidays—started a fashion boot company, Bellamy Brooks, in their college dorm room years ago.
Now their boots are featured in big-time magazines. They’ve made so much money they even hired Duke to help them design and manufacture a men’s collection.
“Hey.” Duke narrows his eyes at Sawyer. “You’re forgetting one very important member of the Bellamy Brooks operation.”
Cash rolls his eyes. He’s got his infant daughter, Daisy, strapped to his chest in a carrier. She’s conked out, a pair of baby headphones in pink covering her little ears.
He absently moves the knuckle of his first finger across her chubby cheek. “Dude, the entire population of Texas knows you got the job. You’ve told everyone and their mother about it.”
“Nothing wrong with that.” Wheeler brushes Duke’s hair out of his face as she peers into his eyes. “Shout it from the rooftops, baby. I’m proud of you.”
He puts a hand on her pregnant belly. “Blue, I’m proud of us.”
There’s a tiny spasm inside my breastbone. An electric shock. Digging my first two fingers into the spot, I rub it until the unpleasant feeling is gone.
I’m happy for Duke. Honestly. Even if he and Wheeler are the kind of cute together that borders on sickening. He’s always had a serious case of wanderlust, and it was pure kismet that he fell for a girl who dreams as big as he does.
He and Wheeler have been together for all of six months, but they’ve already visited a dozen new places.
Maybe more. All this while she’s been pregnant too.
They had a little too much fun on their very first road trip back in the spring, and three weeks later, Wheeler got a positive result on a pregnancy test.
If the past year has taught me anything, it’s that my brothers move fast. All four of them have paired off with excellent women over the span of a little more than twelve months. We’ve had lots to celebrate: engagements, new jobs, new opportunities, weddings, babies.
But time in Hartsville moves slowly, which is more my speed. I’m not jealous of my brothers. I’ve made my choices, same as Cash and Wyatt and Sawyer and Duke made theirs. I’m okay with how the chips have fallen.
Yeah, I may have shut off parts of myself when my parents died. I was only fourteen, and I had to figure out a way to keep going somehow without falling apart.
Out here in cattle country, you do what you have to in order to survive.
Case in point: I was able to survive another big blow when our mentor, Garrett Luck—Mollie’s dad—passed suddenly last year. It was a shitty time, but my brothers and I were able to make some lemonade out of those lemons by working our fingers to the bone.
Work is what keeps me sane. I consider it an offshoot of the therapy I had when I was little. Being around animals helped me then. Definitely helps now.
Ava, Sawyer’s girlfriend and Junie’s mom, gently nudges me with her elbow as she nods at the arena. “Billie is gonna be so thrilled you came, Ryder. She’s been working hard. I think she has a real shot to win this thing.”
Dipping my hand into the popcorn perched on Junie’s lap, I wink at her. She winks back.
“I actually just saw Billie.”
Ava chuckles. “She asked you to be her good luck charm, didn’t she?”
I turn to her, leaning in so I can hear her above the growing noise of the crowd. “She sure did. Didn’t she just pick it up? Racing? I’m kinda surprised she’d want to be back in the saddle like this after working in her daddy’s office for so long.”
Billie is the Wallace Ranch’s in-house accountant. Her old man began her education in the ranch’s finances early, so it was no surprise that she ended up with a degree in accounting after she graduated high school.