The Bull Rider's Plan

She started to slide out from behind the table, but he shook his head. “Stay put.”

Emma shrugged and scooted back, where she leaned against the upholstered foam cushion behind her. Darion would have stepped back and happily allowed her to make coffee. Darion probably wouldn’t have minded being in that tight space with her. Jess, on the other hand, had never liked being too close to her—little sister cooties or something.

She let out a low sigh. Why couldn’t things have been...better...with Darion?

“You okay?” Jess frowned as he filled the small coffeepot. He must have heard her sigh. Well, there were sighs and then there were sighs. This was a sigh of frustration, not a sigh of unhappiness, but she saw no sense in trying to explain that to him.

“I’m fine.” She spoke lightly. “Just going over some things in my head.” He scooped coffee into the basket, then set the pot on the burner. “What’s the schedule tomorrow?” she asked.

“I ride. We leave.”

“That’s what I thought.” So much for making conversation, but as awkward as this felt, it was nine hundred times better than dodging her mother and brothers. Not that her brothers were that much of a problem, but they were being nagged by Selma, too. And things would start to feel less uncomfortable between her and Jess as they put more miles behind them.

She tapped the tips of her fingers together as she tried to remember a time that things had been good between them. Couldn’t come up with one, which made her wonder why she trusted him so implicitly.

Maybe because he was the one guy she’d never been able to pull one over on?

Or maybe because he was such a Dudley Do-Right, as opposed to his twin, Tyler, who looked for and found trouble on an almost daily basis?

Did it matter?

Silence hung until the coffee started perking and Jess filled a ceramic mug up to the brim.

“Thanks.” She wasn’t about to ask for cream, but she’d be buying some tomorrow.

He nodded, then seemed to be at a loss as to where to perch himself in the confines of the camper.

“Do you want me to take my coffee to the truck and drink it there?”

“Why?”

“You look uncomfortable.”

“I’m not uncomfortable. Just...cramped.”

“If I went to the truck—”

He let out a pained breath, which seemed to be his favored way of communicating with her, and then sat down on the short L of the bench around the table so that they were perpendicular to one another. She smiled at him over the top of the coffee cup.

“You make a decent cup of joe.”

“Thanks.”

She sipped, reminding herself again not to do what came naturally and trigger him. She owed him for this opportunity to escape, and since he’d said they would evaluate the situation rodeo by rodeo, she didn’t want to screw things up too early.

“I brought cards,” she said. “I assume that strip poker is out, but maybe cribbage?”

“Did you bring a board?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. Selma was an amazing cribbage player—something to do with her utterly controlling personality, no doubt—and she’d taught all of her children to play and play well. There had been no allowing the kids to win in order to build their confidence in the Sullivan house. Definitely a dog-eat-dog card-playing world that Jess had been introduced to when he’d become Len’s friend.

“Stupid question,” he muttered.

She reached for her giant Western purse with the silver and the fringe and the bling and pulled out a folding cribbage board made of bird’s-eye maple. Jess reached out to run a finger over it.

“Len made it for me.”

“I remember.” A shadow crossed his features, but Emma pretended not to notice. Grief had been her partner for too long and, while she acknowledged it, she no longer let it take over her life—for the most part, that is. There were always weak moments, but she wasn’t going to let this be one of them.

She pulled the cards out of her purse, shuffled once and set the cards between them. Jess cut a deuce, she cut an ace and picked up the deck. “I think we should play for money.”

“You don’t have any money.”

“Exactly. I need some.” She picked up her cards, quickly choosing two for her crib. Jess debated, chose his cards, then cut the deck. She turned up a jack and pegged two points. “A dollar a point?”

“No.” He played his first card and Emma paired it, pegging two more points. And so it went. They played two games, with Emma continuing to have crazy luck. After pegging her last point and skunking him, she drained the last of her coffee.

“This is good,” she said as she gathered the cards and put them back in the box. “You used up all your bad luck tonight, so you’ll have a good ride tomorrow.”

He didn’t look convinced.

Emma reached out to lightly pat his face, as she would have done with Darion or one of her brothers, only realizing as her palm made contact that this was Jess, not Darion or one of her brothers. Dear heavens. What was she doing?

And why was her stomach free-falling at the feel of rough stubble beneath her hand?

This was embarrassing.

She forced a smile and casually dropped her hand before reaching for her coffee cup. It was halfway to her lips before she realized that it was empty.

Did she fake a drink or get a grip?

She chose to get a grip and set down the cup. She’d touched Jess’s face. Big deal. He’d been like a brother to her for years.

And that was probably why he was scowling at her so deeply right now.

“Sorry,” she said. “I do that to my brothers.”

“No worries,” he said gruffly, but she’d felt him go still beneath her touch, knew that it had startled him as much as it had startled her. “I need to turn in early tonight.”

“Yeah. I know.” She slid out from the bench. “I want to catch a shower anyway over at the public facilities.” It’d been a while since she’d traveled the circuit, and she’d never traveled it as intensely as Jess planned to travel this one, but she knew the drill. On the nights you weren’t celebrating or driving, you got to bed early. A worn-out body wasn’t capable of peak performance, and with the schedule Jess had ahead of him, he needed to get all the rest he could while he could.

“What time will it be safe?” He frowned at her instead of asking her what she meant. “At what time can I enter the camper and find you decent?”

“Seven?”

“Seven is good. And if you can have the coffee on, that will be even better.”

* * *