Chapter 4 #2
She might not understand a whole lot about life, functional relationships, any of that. But she understood that she wanted him. And he was such a good man, it could never be a bad thing.
The next morning, Cassidy was up bright and early with loins girded to face West. She was also buoyed by the plans she was making with Dalton. Who had texted her three times since the night before. Almost unheard of. Nearly a record.
Maybe they would get used to texting each other. Maybe it would become a habit.
She pulled up to the Wild West Show and sat for a moment, staring at the painting of the woman tied to the railroad tracks.
It was such a weird old trope.
The rest of town had been modernizing. Had been moving forward, even while holding onto their history. But the Hancock family didn’t seem concerned with modern day reality. Their Wild West Show was about sensationalism.
Even though they had updated their act to more accurately portray the sheriff who had shot Austin Wilder, depicting him as just as much of an outlaw as Austin ever had been.
The real story was actually even more dramatic than the one they used to enact. It was filled with betrayal, cloak and dagger, people pretending to be something they weren’t.
Cassidy had never been into history the way her brother Austin was, but she had to admit that it was a compelling tale.
She had even read the novel he’d written about the historic events.
She wasn’t a big reader as he was. But it had been a great story.
She had cried until her nose ran at the end of the book, when their ancestor Austin had been shot to death in the street, leaving behind his widow and children.
The novel had made her feel even more connected to Rustler Mountain. To their story. To their roots.
She didn’t like to remember life before she had come here. She didn’t like that there was a whole part of her history that she didn’t share with Flynn, Austin, and Carson. They were her family. They were the people who mattered. Not the mother who had abandoned her.
Not … any of that.
She opened the truck door and got out, exhaling as she put her phone in her pocket and walked toward the arena. She stopped right in the entryway, beneath the arcing sign that read: BUTCH HANCOCK’S WILD WEST SHOW.
West was standing there at the center of the arena, arms crossed over his broad chest, already looking disapproving. She looked up at the sign, then back at him. “Can I ask you something?”
He shrugged his shoulders, his features coming into sharper focus as she moved closer. “You could just ask, instead of wasting a question asking about asking.”
“I was trying to be polite.”
“Why? I’m not.”
Touché.
“Is it weird that your family runs a Wild West show and your name is West?”
“In what way?”
“You hear your name all the time. Thrown around with the name of the show. It’s kind of weird. I mean, not as weird as Danielle LaFevre dating a guy who has the same name as her brother.”
West blanched. “No. It’s not that weird. But also, it’s not the same word as my name.”
“Yes, it is,” she said.
“It’s not. Sounds totally different when I hear it.”
“Why? How?”
“You were the one who asked the question. You have to accept the answer.”
“I don’t have to accept the answer,” she said. “That isn’t in the rules of asking questions.”
“Even if it was, I’m a rule breaker. So I don’t care.”
“You’re maddening,” she said.
“I’ve heard. So, are you ready to learn today?”
The subject change was abrupt, but she allowed it, because she wasn’t sure that she wanted to keep spinning out in the weird conversation she had started.
“Yes,” she said.
“Great. I’m going to do my best to demonstrate all of this to you, but it looks stupid when I do it.”
“I’m sure it doesn’t.”
She hadn’t realized that he could do the same tricks Jessie did. She had seen him ride in the show before, but his moves were different. Not as acrobatic.
“I can do the tricks,” he said, “but I’m too tall to do them as quickly as Jessie does. You’re little. You ought to be able to do it.”
She wrinkled her nose. “I’m not that little.”
“Pretty little,” he said, holding his hand up about the height of her head, then drawing it back toward the center of his chest. Still, she didn’t find herself to be little in comparison to him, because she was used to being much shorter than the men around her.
Her mother was a tiny woman, and Cassidy could only assume that her dad had been tall.
She had never met him. He had died before she got a chance to.
But her brothers were tall.
West was even a little bit taller.
“Maybe you’re just tall,” she said.
“I’m not insulting you. I’m just telling you that you’re the right height for this act. And I’m not.”
West moved with long strides over to the first chute, and opened the gate, leading his horse out and mounting with ease.
He was surprisingly graceful for a man his size.
But she didn’t have time to marinate on that, because he kicked his horse into a lope and stood up quickly on its back, before sliding down the way she had done yesterday, hanging off the side, then pulling himself back up into the saddle, and back onto the horse’s rear, where he lifted himself up on his hands and sat suspended like that, balanced on the back of the horse.
Her jaw dropped.
He moved into a handstand and flipped over into the saddle.
“I can’t do that,” she said. But he didn’t hear her. He finished the routine, which was far more acrobatic than anything she had ever tried, and rode the horse back over to her. He was barely breathing hard.
“There you go,” he said.
“I don’t even think I can do a handstand on solid ground, much less on a horse’s ass.”
“Well, you don’t have to do all that. We’ll figure out something that works for you. The main point is to look like you’re on a runaway horse.”
“Right. The woman getting saved.” She remembered the routine she’d seen him do with Jessie Jane not long ago. “Do I have to also get tied to the railroad tracks?”
“How did I know you would notice that?”
“Maybe because you recognized that I would identify it as appalling, old-fashioned, and misogynistic?”
“How is it misogynistic? Women got tied to railroad tracks, Cassidy. It’s history.”
“It is not,” she said.
“How do you know?”
“Because. I do. Anyway, I can ask my brother—he’s an expert.”
“Oh, yes. Austin Wilder. The resident history buff.”
“Are you mad at him for proving that Butch Hancock betrayed everybody?”
“No. I don’t give a shit. It doesn’t change the way I feel about anything. But I’m not hung up about that stuff.”
“The history of the Wild West is literally your entire family business.”
“My family business is rooted in entertainment. It’s rooted in my dad needing to find a way to make money that wasn’t …
an office job or anything that required an education.
The Wild West Show is just supposed to be fun.
It’s not supposed to teach anybody anything.
It’s about the spirit of the West. Not the truth of it.
And people like to imagine that there were heroes and villains, and fair maidens who got tied to the railroad tracks only to get rescued. ”
“Doesn’t anybody care about the truth?”
“Sure. But you don’t go to a superhero movie to learn the truth. There are documentaries for that. This is a superhero movie. I’m not here to educate. I’m here to entertain.”
“I thought you were starting a ranch?”
“I am. But until I get that going, and until my dad has a replacement for me in the show, I’m doing both.”
“So the show isn’t really your thing,” she said, pushing. She wasn’t sure why at this point.
“No. It’s not my thing. Now I’m going to teach you how to move from standing straight back into the saddle. Without hurting yourself.”
She had slid to the side for that very reason. Dropping back down into the saddle seemed risky.
“I’ll coach you,” he said.
He dismounted from his horse, then went over to the other chute. He brought up the horse she had ridden yesterday, Stardust. She took a deep breath and got on the back of the horse.
“She’s going to stand still. Don’t worry. She knows the command for that. And I’m going to have you practice lowering yourself slowly straight back into the saddle. It’s not that hard.”
For some reason it felt hard. The move felt like it required more precision than she had practiced before, but he was asking her to do it, so she needed to try.
He guided her through the movements, until she had done it successfully three different times at a standstill.
“Good,” he said.
That hard, uncompromising compliment warmed her up from the inside out, and she couldn’t say why.
Maybe because it was difficult to wring a smile out of West. She had only ever seen one, and it was not directed at her. Maybe because until now, he hadn’t really given her a compliment.
Either way, she let it make her bold. “I’m going to do it while I’m moving.”
“Not yet,” he said.
“I’ve got it.”
From her position in the saddle, she urged the horse forward, and then with her legs shaking slightly, she pushed herself up into a standing position.
Now she just needed to get herself down without doing the splits in the saddle.
She began just the way he had shown her, maintaining control as she lowered herself.
But as she got halfway down, into a squat position, the horse had the wrong footing, sending Cassidy flying off the side of the animal and down into the arena dirt.
She cursed a blue streak, sending a spray of obscenities and mud out into the air.
She lay sprawled on her back, more angry than hurt.
She felt it. That shift. The way she had felt it when he’d come into the bar only two days ago. Like he himself was a thunderstorm. Over her. She saw those blue eyes staring down into hers, outraged.
“What the fuck?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
“I didn’t ask. Get your ass up and get back up on the horse.”
“I wasn’t ready,” she said.
“Now you have to be,” he said.
“That doesn’t make any sense!”