Kicking Up Dust (Whittaker Ranch #2)

ONE

COLT

“Damn, baby, if you wanted my hands on you, all you had to do was ask. No fake run-ins necessary.”

My knees buckle as the biggest, greenest eyes I’ve ever seen in my life look up at me.

“I’m so sorry! I wasn’t watching where I was going.”

God, her voice. Have I ever found a voice attractive outside of the bedroom before? I don’t think so. But hers is so… pretty. Musical, maybe? Feminine, definitely. If someone came up to us and reminded her she had to leave for her job as a Disney princess, I’d believe it.

“That’s okay,” I tell her, clearing my throat to try and get rid of the raspiness. I force myself to pry my hands away from her hips where I’d instinctively caught her when she’d stumbled .

“Blair?” a voice says behind her, and for the first time I realize we’re not the only two people on the planet, and she has two women with her who are also trying to leave the restroom.

“Sorry,” she mumbles, sidestepping to let them out. I follow her.

“Whittaker, you’re up soon.” I’m considering firing my coach for interrupting us because it causes Blair’s eyes to leave mine, instead flickering over me as she takes in my vest and chaps.

I’m working at a disadvantage here. The long-sleeve button-down and jeans I have to wear for rides hide most of my tattoos, and besides my dimples, they’re my best assets.

She tucks her hair behind her ears, opening her pretty lips with their perfect cupid’s bow, but I stop her before she can apologize again or say her goodbyes.

“What’re you doing after this?” I ask her, planning to pencil her in as tonight’s distraction from my brain’s chaos.

Her brows furrow as her eyes find mine again. “Sorry?”

I grin, happy I successfully derailed her line of thinking. At least for a moment.

“I’ve got a ride in a few, but would you want to hang out after this? Get dinner? It might be a while, but?—”

One of her friends lets out an odd sort of squeal, gripping Blair’s arm and shaking her slightly. “She’d love to,” the over-excited blonde says.

“Chelsey,” the other friend warns.

I blink at their odd behavior before looking back at Blair. It only then occurs to me that I know her name, but she doesn’t know mine.

“I’m Colton. Colt,” I stutter nervously. I don’t know the last time I was ever nervous around someone like this. “You don’t have to decide right now. You can think about it and text me,” I offer her.

“Whittaker,” McAllister barks again. I ignore him just the same as I did the first time. Cade McAllister reminds me a lot of my incredibly responsible oldest brother, which is why I hired him, but it also means he grates on my nerves just like Maddie does.

Chelsey pulls Blair’s phone out of her back pocket and passes it my way, but I don’t grab it straight away, raising a brow at Blair instead.

She’s a quiet one, and if it weren’t for how pink her cheeks have become or the way her teeth are indenting her bottom lip, I might think she wasn’t interested in me.

Finally, she nods and I take the phone from Chelsey, typing my number into an empty text message. I don’t send myself anything, leaving her with the choice to text me and share her number or not.

I reach up to thumb her plush bottom lip, pulling it from the prison of her teeth, and grin down at her so hard I can practically feel my dimples popping. I know I’m coming on too strong, but the dimples make up for it. They’re my secret weapon.

“Hope to hear from you soon, darlin’.”

I turn away, finally following my grumbling coach toward the chutes while Blair’s friends squeal. I have to force myself not to look back to see if Blair is as enthused as they are.

Darlin’ isn’t a word I’d be caught dead using back home in Montana, but I’d picked up the habit from some of the other riders I toured with, and dammit if it didn’t do the job 99% of the time. Some of my best lays were thanks to that word.

The ride itself might only take eight seconds, but all the shit afterward takes much longer than I was expecting. By the time I check my phone—which doesn’t have any texts from unknown numbers that may be my pretty little siren, much to my dismay—it’s nearing midnight.

I expect Blair and her friends to be long gone by now, so when I walk out the back door of the arena with my bag slung over my shoulder and a cigarette between my lips—picturing another sleepless night at the motel they’ve got me in this time—I’m shocked shitless to see the doe-eyed beauty standing by my truck.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” I tell her, grinning as I eat up the rest of the space between us. Or, most of it, anyway. The way her shoulders are curved in and her hands are twisted together tell me to at least keep some of the distance. “How’d you know this was my truck?”

I should probably be a bit more worried about that, but she’s biting her bottom lip again and she looks too fucking cute to be a stalker. I stub out my practically new cigarette on the tire of my truck and slip it back in the pack for later.

“Stephanie,” she says, as though that’s all the explanation that’s needed. That must be her other friend’s name. “She’s an Insta-sleuth.”

Her smile looks apologetic, but I’m just standing here wondering when the last time I posted a picture of my truck on Instagram was. It had to have been a couple years ago when I first bought the damn thing. Someone on my team does most of the posting for me now.

“There was a lot of scrolling,” Blair says, like she can read my mind.

“Look, it’s late, and I’m sure you probably weren’t expecting me to just hang out by your truck like some sort of psycho killer, but I didn’t realize you didn’t just save your number in my phone, so when I closed my apps, I lost your number, and you probably think I’m weird as hell, especially because this is like, the first time you’ve even heard me talk.

I just stared at you earlier and I swear, I’m not usually such a creeper and oh my god, Blair, shut uuuup. ”

She covers her face with her hands as I chuckle at her.

“Don’t shut up. I’m enjoying myself,” I tell her. I want to reach out and take her hands away from her face, but if I touch her, I think I’ll do something weird and overly intimate like pull her in for a hug or something.

Blair huffs, finally letting me see her pretty face again and pouting up at me. I don’t think she even means to jut her bottom lip out like that, but maybe she uses it like I use my dimples. Regardless, it’s doing a good job.

“Can we just go back to your motel? ”

I raise my brows at her forwardness. Not that I’m judging her, I’m just surprised. “I promised you dinner and you’re trying to steal my virtue?”

“I’d imagine that ship sailed a long time ago,” she retorts, crossing her arms. Her eyes track over me quickly, but not so quickly I don’t notice. My tattoos are, mostly, on full display now. She rolls her eyes when she sees me grin like a smug bastard.

“What gave it away? My devilish good looks or how I rode the bull?”

“Your ridiculous hat, actually.”

I pull the cap off my head and flip it around so I can read what it says. I’ve got so many I go between that I can’t even remember which one I grabbed out of my truck today.

If you’ve got a boat, I’ve got a throat.

I chuckle at it, same as I do with every cap that winds up on my head. They’re a bit cringey and nonsensical, but they make me laugh, and that’s all I really care about.

“Well, do you have a boat, or…?”

She scrunches her nose and twists her lips, like it’s taking everything in her to hide that I’ve amused her. All it succeeds in doing is making her look like a bunny rabbit.

“No, unfortunately, a boat wouldn’t fit in my dorm.”

“It’s a shame how small they make those nowadays.”

“Quite,” she says with a grin. “Perhaps we could make some other sort of arrangement.”

“I’m all ears, baby,” I quip back with a smile to match hers. This back-and-forth is fun. I don’t usually spend this much time just… talking with the people I take to bed.

“How about this: If you’ve got a motel where we can get out of here before it starts raining, I’ve got time to kill before the girls and I have to head back to school tomorrow morning.”

I bark out a laugh and shake my head, walking her around to the passenger side of the truck .

“We’ll have to work on your rhyming skills,” I tell her, pulling open the door for her.