Chapter Three #2
He liked to talk country when he wanted to annoy his annoying ex-wife, and annoying women were fresh on his mind.
Peggy had called again, demanding to know when he intended to get off his lazy ass and go visit her parents, who couldn’t understand why he’d cut them out of his life.
Hadn’t they always treated him like a son?
Didn’t they deserve his respect? She had a way of making him feel he was wrong even when he knew he was right.
Dan asking him to spend the afternoon with Too Good and Trouble added an extra layer of irritation to his already fracked mood.
Too Good had set up camp in his head and he didn’t have enough room for another woman in there.
Thinking about her and how she’d look naked meant he had needs, but no way was he shopping local to fill them.
His next evening off, he might head to a rodeo town to see how lucky a drifter cowboy could get.
For a fifty-buck entry fee he’d at least get a ride.
Dan rubbed his forehead with his shirt sleeve. His sleeve came away streaked with dirt. The morning was hot for September and the earth had dried out, coating everything the wind touched in a layer of dust.
“Believe me, I understand your reservations,” he said.
“I don’t want this any more than you do.
All I ask is that you give them a demonstration of what to expect if Taryn decides to go through with the clinic.
So far, she’s the only girl to sign up. Shauna swears she’ll change her mind when none of the guys want her on their team. ”
Nix had his doubts. He wondered if he should mention that Remi had his eye on Taryn, then decided to mind his own business. Chasing a girl was better than stealing, and this was one girl who could take care of herself.
The men leaned against the fence surrounding the pen where they kept the young bulls separate from the cows, because not surprisingly, males of all species lost their minds around females—especially females in heat.
Most of the Endeavour’s cowboys, along with the kids from the group home, were spending the day moving cattle to ungrazed land closer to the winter pastures in a final attempt to fatten them up before cold weather hit.
Nix and Dan weren’t alone, however. Levi Harrington, Miles Decker, and Ford Shannahan were with them. Levi was the genetics expert who ran the ranch’s bull breeding program. His job—along with Nix’s—was to select the bulls they’d use for the clinic.
Miles was a former world bull riding champion. He’d been the face of professional bull riding until his very famous face was permanently scarred by a bull with a cracked horn. Now he ran the ranch’s annual PRCA-sanctioned rodeo.
Ford was here at Miles’s request. He was Levi Harrington’s business partner in a separate horse-breeding venture, and Miles’s brother-in-law.
He had firsthand experience with rodeos, bull riders, and how dangerous the sport could be.
His younger brother had been killed in a bull riding accident, and this was his way of dealing with it—helping to weed out the kids who didn’t have the aptitude for it.
Together, the four men would oversee six teams of five boys—and possibly, one girl.
Nix and Miles would each take on two teams because they had the actual riding experience.
Unofficially, their two teams would consist of one A- and one B-lister.
The goal of all six teams was to qualify for the Endeavour rodeo’s junior bull riding division in February.
PRCA rules for money earnings wouldn’t apply in this case.
This was for fun—although Nix and Miles already had money riding on it, because yes, they were that competitive.
Plus, the boys who made it to February would have earned themselves name recognition by then, which was a big deal in the sport. They’d be the ones to watch out for.
And as much as Nix would like to have an up-and-comer girl on one of his teams earning name recognition for herself and her sport, that girl wasn’t Taryn Morris.
He’d been surprised when Dan said that Too Good had agreed to let her sister sign up, maybe even a little disappointed in her, but he was in no position to judge the inner fortitude of somebody else. A cute little teenaged blonde had once worn him down too.
She continued to do so. He was a shovelful of dirt away from burying bodies for Peg. And he wasn’t even sleeping with her anymore, so there was nothing in it for him, other than it being the easiest way to stop what experience warned would be an unrelenting harangue. She exhausted him.
“Here they come now,” Dan said, looking past Nix’s shoulder.
Nix turned. Yep. There they were, strolling down the access road that led from the main house to the barns. Trouble and Too Good, living up to their names.
Trouble wore a flirty little dress with a skirt that barely covered her ass.
God, he hoped she wore shorts underneath.
Too Good, on the other hand… She looked real good.
She wore jeans and a frilly top made from the same sort of gauzy material he wrapped swollen joints in.
The bottom frill of the top lopped off at her belly.
The waistband of her jeans couldn’t hold a conversation with the bottom frill without shouting.
It lost interest somewhere south of her hips.
And those long legs… Ripped denim squeezed them like a scared toddler hanging on to his mother on the first day of preschool.
The knot of chestnut hair, trailing curls every which way around a pale throat made for licking, had his own jeans too tight.
He was a sucker for women who were too good for him. Might as well get him a shovel, because if he kept this up, he’d be burying bodies for women for the rest of his life, and didn’t his stupidity piss him off.
Too Good and Trouble descended on them. Levi and Miles, both married men, registered their approach the way most happily married men did—no concept of danger, because they had wedding bands to protect them.
Ford didn’t have one of those magic rings, so he showed more interest, which only served to piss Nix off more.
One of those girls was a teenager. The other one…
Wasn’t. Not by any stretch of the imagination. And it seemed Ford, too, had noticed.
“Hey, Shauna,” Levi called out, a huge, welcoming grin on his face. Nix wanted to punch him. “Fancy meeting you here. This must be Taryn. Mom said your sister is staying with you. You serious about riding?”
That last question was directed at Trouble, who nodded. “I am.”
It might be easiest for Nix to focus on Trouble and ignore Too Good as much as he could, considering all the tanned skin showing through the tears in her jeans. She’d likely paid a fortune for them, whereas if they’d been his, he would have thrown them away.
“Okay, then,” Nix said. “Let’s show you what you’ll need to pick up for gear. The saddle shop in town can help you out if you give them a list.”
Too Good hadn’t taken her eyes off the bulls. “They aren’t as big as I’d expected.”
“They’re full grown but they haven’t bulked out yet,” he said. “They’ll put on muscle mass as they age.”
“We don’t put kids on our star athletes,” Miles added.
He tipped his hat away from his face with his thumb.
The ridge of silvery scar tissue on his cheek caught the light.
He saw Taryn trying hard not to stare and swept the blunt of his thumb over the damaged skin.
“I didn’t get this from riding. It happened during a photo op.
The star standing beside me didn’t like sharing the limelight and decided I wasn’t paying enough attention to him. ”
“That’s your first lesson for working with large animals,” Nix said to Taryn. “Learn to read your ride and figure out what sort of mood he’s in.”
Suddenly, she looked a whole lot less sure of herself.
Despite that being the whole purpose of this demonstration—to convince her to change her mind—he felt a stab of remorse.
Did he believe she was cut out for bull riding?
Not for a hot second. Did he believe she deserved a fighting chance to prove him wrong?
Absolutely.
“Follow me, Trouble,” he said to her.
She tipped her cute little blonde head. Her hands went to her hips. She bristled with teenaged indignation. “Did you just call me trouble?”
Too Good couldn’t keep her smile to herself. Miles, Ford, Dan, and Levi all found somewhere else to focus their eyes.
“What—you don’t want a stage name?” Nix asked. “You don’t want to be known as Trouble for your competition?”
She narrowed her eyes at him in a way that spelled trouble, alright. “Is that really a thing?” she demanded of Dan, who shrugged.
“Rodeo announcers like to wind up the crowd. ‘Look out Catalina, here comes Taryn Morris. She’s Trouble with a capital T,’” Dan intoned.
Now Nix felt mean, because her expression said while she might be trouble, she wasn’t stupid, and no one her age enjoyed being the butt of a joke.
“You’ll be the only girl in the clinic, Taryn,” he said, careful to use her real name, which he’d do from now on. No more stupid slips of the tongue. “Which makes you trouble for me, but that’s not your problem. Come on.”
He escorted her into the shed where the equipment was stored. It killed him that it killed him to leave her older sister with Ford, who had the blond, blue-eyed looks, the size, and the temperament of his marauding Norse ancestors going for him. Women went nuts for that type.
But the shed was only twenty feet away and there was no need for everyone to crowd into the small space.
Taryn listened with genuine interest as he showed her the things she’d need—a bull rope with a braided-leather handle, spurs, a padded vest, a leather riding glove, chaps, and a helmet. She asked the usual questions.
“No, the strap doesn’t hurt the bull,” he said.
“It’s no different than you wearing a belt.
It might irritate them a bit, but if you don’t have something to hold onto, it’s gonna be a pretty short ride.
Fifty percent of your score comes from your bull.
If the one you draw is too quiet, a rider will use the spurs to get a little more action out of him.
They make him mad—they don’t hurt him. You don’t have to buy them if you don’t want to wear them. ”
“Does it hurt if you fall off?”
“When, not if,” he said. She sounded more curious than anxious, so he was honest. “Yes, it hurts. But we’ll teach you some tricks to keep it from hurting too much.
Knees take a fall hard. You want to avoid landing on them.
And your first concern is always getting out of the bull’s way. Worry about what hurts after that.”
He could smell her shampoo. Some sort of perfumy stuff that she’d overdone. The kind a teenager would use. He wondered uneasily how they’d come to be standing so close. He’d been thinking a little too much about her sister, and how she and Ford might be getting along.
And then he worried that someone might walk in and misunderstand what was happening here.
He resisted the urge to back up only because he’d hurt Taryn’s feelings once already today and there was no need to make a big deal out of nothing.
She was seventeen and likely not thinking about how inappropriate this looked.
“Thank you,” Taryn said. She brushed the back of his hand with the tips of her fingers. Her smile lingered on him. Boldly.
“For what?”
His throat was too dry, and he’d croaked the words out.
The air in the shed had turned hot and oppressive.
The kind of air that signaled an approaching tornado.
Maybe the end of the world. Her cousin the sheriff, and her sister the lawyer, were on the other side of that door.
He could hear the muffled sound of their voices, if not their words.
“For being so sweet to me.”
He wasn’t trying to be sweet. He was explaining equipment to a potential student. That was it. Nothing more.
“I can sign up for private lessons if you’d rather,” she added. “If having a woman in the same class with boys is a problem for you, I mean.”
Oh, it was a problem. A really big problem.
In a way he hadn’t foreseen.