The Cowboy Next Door & Jenna's Cowboy Hero: The Cowboy Next Door / Jenna's Cowboy Hero

“I didn’t expect to see you here.” Bailey held her hands out and took the baby, her own belly growing rounder every day.

“Long story.” Lacey searched the crowd of men behind the pens. She sought a tall cowboy wearing a white hat, his shirt plaid. She found him, standing next to the buckskin and talking to one of the other guys.

“Make it a short story and fill me in.” Bailey leaned a shoulder against Lacey’s. “You okay?”

“Hmmm?” Lacey nodded. She didn’t want to talk, not here, with hundreds of people surrounding them, eating popcorn or cotton candy and drinking soda from paper cups.

“Are you okay?” Louder voice now, a little impatient.

“I’m great.” Lacey leaned back on the bleacher seat. “My sister wrecked my house and she’s passed out in my bed. The cowboy that lives down the lane treats me like an interloper. I’m living in his grandparents’ house, and he doesn’t want me there.”

“He brought you tonight.”

“He did. I’m a charity case. He felt bad because Corry broke my dogs.”

Bailey nodded. “He’s about to ride a bull. But since you’ve sworn off men, I guess that doesn’t matter to you?”

“I have a reason for swearing off men. I’m never going to be the type of woman a man takes home to meet his family.”

“Lance has problems, Lacey. That isn’t about you, it’s about him.”

“It is about me. It takes a lot for anyone to understand where I’ve been and what I’ve done. I’m ashamed of the life I lived, so why should I expect a man to blindly accept my past?”

“You’re forgetting what God has done in your life. You’re forgetting what He can still do. You’re not a finished product. None of us are. Our stories are still being written.”

“No, I’m not forgetting.” Lacey looked away, because she couldn’t admit that sometimes she wondered how God could forgive. How could He take someone as dirty as she felt and turn them into someone people respected?

She worked really hard trying to be that person that others respected.

The bulls ran through the chutes. Lacey leaned back, watching as cowboy after cowboy got tossed. Each time one of them hit the dirt, she cringed. She didn’t really want to ride a bull.

“Jay’s up.” Bailey pointed. Taller than the other bull riders, he stood on the outside of the chute. The bull moved in the chute, a truck-sized animal, pawing the ground.

“I really don’t want to watch.”

“It isn’t easy.” Bailey shifted Rachel, now sleeping, on her shoulder. “It doesn’t get easier. Every time I watch Cody ride, I pray, close my eyes, peek, pray some more.”

“Yes, but you love Cody.”

“True. The cowboy in question is just your neighbor.”

“Exactly.” Lacey laughed and glanced at Bailey, willing to give her friend what she wanted to hear. “He’s cute, Bailey, I’m not denying that. But I’m not looking for cute.”

“Of course not.”

“I’m not looking—period.”

“But it is okay to look.” Bailey smiled a happy smile and elbowed Lacey. “There he goes.”

The gate opened and the bull spun out of the opening, coming up off the ground like a ballet dancer. Amazing that an animal so huge could move like that. The thud when the beast came down jarred the man on his back and Jay fell back, moving his free arm forward.

The buzzer sounded and Jay jumped, landing clear of the animal, but hitting the ground hard. The bull didn’t want to let it go. The animal turned on Jay, charging the cowboy, who was slow getting up.

A bullfighter jumped between the beast and the man, giving Jay just enough time to escape, to jump on the fence and wait for the distracted animal to make up his mind that he’d rather not take a piece out of a cowboy.

Jay looked up, his hat gone. His dark gaze met Lacey’s and stayed there, connected, for just a few seconds. Warm brown eyes in a face that was lean and handsome. And then he hopped down from the fence and limped away.

“Breathe,” Bailey whispered.

Lacey breathed. It wasn’t easy. She inhaled a gulp of air and her heart raced.

* * *

The rodeo ended with steer wrestling. Jay watched from behind the pens at the back of the arena, still smarting from the bull, and still thinking about Lacey Gould’s dark brown eyes. He shook his head and walked away, back to his trailer and his horse.

“That was quite a ride.” Cody slapped Jay on the back as he untied his horse.

“Thanks. I’m glad it made you happy.”

“Oh, come on, you enjoyed it.” Cody leaned against the side of the trailer, his hat pushed back on his head. “You’ll do it again next week.”

“I’m thinking no.” Jay tightened his grip on Buck’s reins because the horse was tossing his head, whinnying to a nearby mare. “I think I’ll stick to roping.”

“Yeah, I think I’m done with bull riding, too. I’ve got a baby on the way.”

“Right, that does sound like a good reason to stop.”

“Yeah, it does.” Cody smiled like a guy who had it all. And he did. He had the wife, a child, the farm and a baby on the way. Jay had a diamond ring in a drawer and a room in his parents’ house. He had a box of memories that he kept hidden in a closet.

“Speaking of wives and babies, I’m going to find my wife.” Cody slapped him on the back again and walked away.

Jay pulled the saddle off the horse and limped to the back of his truck, his knee stiff and his back even stiffer. He tossed the saddle in the back of the truck and then leaned for a minute, wishing again that he hadn’t ridden that bull. Bull riding wasn’t a sport a guy jumped into.

He tried not to think about Lacey’s face in the crowd, pale and wide-eyed as she watched him scramble to the fence, escaping big hooves and an animal that wanted to hurt him.

The horse whinnied, reminding him of work that still needed to be done. He walked back to the animal, rubbing Buck’s sleek neck and then pulling off the bridle, leaving just the halter and lead rope. The horse nodded his head as if he approved.

“I’m getting too old for crazy stunts, Buck.”

“You stayed on.” The feminine voice from behind him was a little soft, a little teasing.

“Yep.”

He turned and smiled at Lacey. She wasn’t a friend, just someone his mom had picked up and brought home. He had friends, people he’d grown up with, gone to church with, known all his life. He didn’t know where to put her, because she didn’t fit those categories. Someone that he knew? A person that needed help? Someone passing through?

He would have preferred she stayed in Jolynn’s apartment, not the house his grandparents had built. Jamie’s house. But she was there now, and he’d deal with it. He moved away from his horse and straightened, raising his hands over his head to stretch the kinks out of his back.

She was here tonight, in his life, because he’d brought her. He had been trying not to think about that, or why he’d extended the offer. Maybe because of the pain in her eyes when she’d looked at those silly dogs her sister had broken.