Once a Champion

“He wants Beckett back.”

Andie set down her cup with a thunk. “You’re kidding. After what he did? What are you going to do?”

Liv shrugged as casually as she could. “Nothing. Beckett was community property, so Trena had a right to sell, and I’m not letting him go.”

“How’d he take it?”

“I don’t know, and that’s what’s bothering me. I have a hard time believing that he took no for an answer so easily.”

“Doesn’t sound like Matt,” Andie agreed.

“He’s tenacious.” And confident, which had ended up biting him in the butt in high school, when he’d been overly confident in his ability to miss a huge amount of school due to rodeo and stay current in his studies. After being placed on academic probation, he’d asked Liv for help catching up on his studies.

She was smart. She lived close by. She had a wild crush on him. Three things that made the situation perfect for Matt. She would have done anything for him. Liv didn’t know if Matt had been aware of the crush, but looking back, she didn’t know how he couldn’t have been. She could barely finish a sentence when he was around, unless that sentence involved derivatives or vectors.

When he’d asked her for help, she’d thought she’d died and gone to heaven. Spending her evenings with Matt Montoya! Maybe he’d come to see her as a person. Maybe they’d become friends...and more.

“More” had been a big part of her plan, but it hadn’t worked out. Once he was caught up and his grades were back where they belonged, he’d smiled and thanked her with a kiss on the cheek, followed by a bouquet of thank-you flowers delivered to the school. Liv had waited breathlessly for him to ask her out, now that they were no longer “professionally” involved.

Less than a week later, he’d asked Shae to go to Rodeo Prom.

Even now it made her cringe. Shae had known about Liv’s wild crush on Matt and she’d said yes to him anyway. To Shae it had been a matter of being realistic. If Matt had been interested in Liv, he would have asked her out. He didn’t and therefore he was fair game.

They’d dated for all of two months and then Shae had dumped him and moved on. Shae was hell on men. Liv kind of wished she could be the same way.

“Well, you know,” Andie said, “if you have any problems all you have to do is call.”

Which was another reason she hadn’t said anything. Andie was wildly protective. Liv didn’t need protecting. Not anymore.

“I won’t have any problems,” she said.

“Are you sure?” Andie asked with a slight frown.

“Yes.” Liv tilted her chin up. “I’ll handle this on my own.” She’d handle everything on her own—her dad, Matt, anyone else who might want to tangle with her—and not by using her old strategy of trying to negotiate peace and keep everyone happy, except for maybe herself.

* * *

WHEN LIV ARRIVED at the drill team practice that evening, there was a variety of horse trailers parked in the lot—fancy trailers with living quarters, small two-horse trailers and a long aluminum stock trailer that looked as if something had tried to fight its way out from the inside.

She parked her truck in the last space, next to the stock trailer, and pocketed the keys as she walked over to where Andie was saddling her horse, Mike. Liv felt awkward and out of place, and was nervous, even though she wouldn’t be riding tonight—all in all, she was feeling way too much like the old Liv.

Those first months after she’d walked out on Greg had been sheer hell as she fought to let herself be less than perfect. She was better, much better, but still had her moments...like when she was faced with the unknown.

“Glad you came,” Andie said as she set the saddle on the bay quarter horse’s back. “Gretchen isn’t going to make it and we need someone to shoot video. Linda’s husband does a terrible job.”

“I can do that.” Liv had never filmed anything in her life other than a few minutes of phone video here and there, but, realistically, how hard could it be? And how perfect did she need to be? Not perfect at all.

She needed to remember that.

Andie finished cinching up, then slipped the halter around the horse’s neck and eased the bridle onto his head. “I’ll introduce you to the group.”

The group consisted of ten women besides Andie. Liv knew some of them—Susie Barnes, who’d graduated the same year as she and Andie; Ronnie and Melody Churchwell, twins who’d been a few years behind her—and others she didn’t. At least four of the women were well into their fifties and Liv instantly lost track of names. She took note of what each one looked like so that she could quiz Andie later.

“Well, ladies,” a smallish woman on a big buckskin horse said in a commanding voice, “it’s time to ride!” She moved her horse forward, saying to Liv as she passed, “You’re going to film for us, right?”

“Yes,” Liv replied.

A bald man instantly held out a video camera with an expression of relief. “I never do this to Linda’s liking,” he confided as the group rode in the arena.

“I probably won’t, either,” Liv said, again ignoring a twinge of performance anxiety. She reached out and took the camera, turning it over in her hands. “How does it work?”

The man gave Liv a brief rundown of the camera operation, then said, “You need to go up to the announcer’s booth and when the music starts, you film. Don’t forget to turn the camera on.” Then with a quick, tight smile, he headed for a truck parked next to the stands, walking quickly as if afraid that Liv was going to relinquish her responsibilities to him if he didn’t get away.

Liv climbed the rickety steps up into the arena announcer’s stand and for the next hour watched as the women rode, stopped, argued, discussed, rode again, turning the camera on and off. On and off. She only forgot to turn it on once, and she was fairly certain that with the miles of film she’d recorded, no one would notice.

By the end of the practice, she had a good idea of the dynamics of the drills. Whether she and Beckett could do them was another matter. At one point she’d caught her breath when it appeared as though the riders were going to run smack into each other, only to have the horses weave together in a long serpentine pattern. There was a lot of splitting and joining, rollbacks and spins—all at high speed.

“So what do you think?” Andie asked after Liv had joined her at her trailer. She pulled the saddle off her horse and lugged it to the tack compartment. Liv automatically picked up a brush and started working on the bay’s sweaty back while Andie unbridled the horse.

“I think it looks challenging.”

“We all screw up out there, you know.”

“Yes. I know. I have it on film,” Liv said.

“Did you get the flaming argument between Linda and Margo?”

“I tried for close-ups,” Liv said with a straight face.

Andie laughed and leaned against the trailer. “So?”

“I can’t wait to get started,” Liv lied. She was intimidated as hell, but determined to try new things, face new challenges. And give her poor father an evening or two to himself.

* * *

MATT HAD NOT in any way, shape or form, ever expected to become a babysitter—which was exactly what he was, even if the kid was fourteen.

Craig seemed a lot more comfortable being in a strange place than Matt was having him there, which made him wonder how many times the kid had been dumped into someone else’s care...and why none of those someones were available this time.

“I’m kind of curious as to why your mom is having you stay here,” Matt finally said after setting a grilled cheese sandwich in front of the kid at dinnertime. “Surely she has other friends in the area?”

“She tried a bunch of them, but there were problems. Vacations, visitations. One of her friends, Gloria, had just gotten back from rehab—”

“I get it.”

Craig peeled back the edge of the sandwich to inspect the cheese. “This is a good opportunity for my mom. It’s hard to get horse jobs, which is probably why she has to cut hair on the side.” He spoke so earnestly that Matt hoped Craig didn’t think he was trying to get rid of him.

“Do you like horses?” Matt asked as he sat at the table. They’d spent a long, silent afternoon together as he’d worked on his quarterly tax report and Craig had played games on his phone. Matt had needed that time to get his bearings, get used to the idea of sharing his house with a teenager, but the silence was getting old. And uncomfortable.