Once a Champion

Trena had moved to Dillon at the beginning of their senior year, a California transplant. Blonde. Beautiful. Not a rural bone in her body. She’d arrived with the kind of splash that would have sent shy Liv running for cover, instantly making the girls jealous and the guys pant. It’d taken her almost a nanosecond to hook up with the king of the football team, Russell Marshall.

Matt had been doing his damnedest to pass his classes and stay on the rodeo team, thus the tutoring sessions with Liv, and hadn’t made a play for her back then. He’d been more focused on his own kind—rodeo girls such as Liv’s stepsister, Shae—and that had remained his focus until his early twenties when he and Trena had run into each other again when he’d come back to Dillon during the hiatus after the NFR. They’d clicked in a big way, and the next thing he knew, they were married. Happily. For a while.

Trena had sworn that she wouldn’t mind going on the road with him, but the reality, even with a state-of-the-art live-in trailer, had been too much for her. She’d wanted to rent motel rooms, eat out, fly everywhere. Spend money as fast as he made it. He made good money, too, but not enough to spend like that.

The next year she didn’t go on the road with him. That had spelled the beginning of the end, although Matt hadn’t known it at the time.

The gate banged shut behind them and a few seconds later a cowboy Matt didn’t know rode by. He nodded at Wes, who nodded back.

“There’s a get-together later tonight at the Lion’s Den,” Wes said. “We’re making some plans for the Fourth of July rodeo.”

“I have to get home,” Matt said. “I’m, uh, babysitting.”

Wes coughed. “You?”

“Me. For Willa’s kid.”

“Does he rope?”

“He loads the dishwasher.”

“That’s a handy talent,” Wes said.

“Even if I wasn’t taking care of the kid,” Matt said, “I’m not feeling all that social right now.” He set the bottle on the edge of the truck bed. “I thought I was, but...I shouldn’t have come down here yet.”

“So what are your plans?” Wes asked quietly. “Now that you’re back in the area.”

“My plans are to heal my knee in time for the Bitterroot Challenge.”

Wes sent him a dubious look. “Is that possible?”

A twist of the knife. “I won’t know unless I try.”

“That’s right,” Wes said. “You gotta try.”

“I’ve seen guys come back from worse injuries than this,” Matt said, not liking how defensive he sounded.

“Me, too.”

Matt swallowed the last of his beer and tossed the bottle into the trash can near the fence. “I’ve seen guys come back from broken backs and climb back up on a bull again.”

“You kinda gotta wonder if they got kicked in the head one too many times.”

“You’re missing the point,” Matt said.

Wes smiled from beneath his mustache and took another drink of his beer. “Other than healing, what are your plans?”

To rodeo for another five years. He was thirty, single and not ready to settle down. When he did settle down, it might not even be in Dillon. His mother would hate that, but sometimes he thought it would be best if he didn’t settle too close to his dad.

“And I mean other than rodeo.”

“I don’t know.”

“You could start a babysitting business.”

“I could punch you in the face,” Matt said conversationally and Wes smiled. “I don’t have any set plans,” he admitted. “Other than the one I just told you.”

“You might want to come up with one. Just a bit of advice from one injured rodeo man to another.”

Coming up with a backup plan felt like admitting defeat before he’d even started to fight the battle.

“You could go back to college. Here at Western.”

Matt made a dismissive gesture. He didn’t want to go back to college. Not at his age. He had no idea what he wanted to do with his future.

“I’ll come up with some kind of plan.” It’d probably involve raising hay and roping horses, which sounded pretty damned boring. He wasn’t ready to go that route yet.

“And the horse?”

“I’m getting the horse back,” Matt said. It was a matter of changing tactics.

He’d shown up on Liv’s ranch without warning and indicated he wanted Beckett back. Of course she’d felt threatened. But under normal circumstances, when she wasn’t pressed into defensive mode by a surprise attack, she was a nice person. A good person. Not a person who kept a guy’s horse.

He’d wait a couple days, then drop by and they’d talk again, under less stressful conditions.

* * *

NOT AGAIN.

Liv pressed a hand to her forehead as Matt Montoya’s distinctive two-tone silver-and-black Dodge pulled up under the elm tree and parked. Thank goodness Beckett was behind the barn where he couldn’t see him.

She moved back from the window as Matt got out of the truck and stood studying the house for a moment, as if gauging his best means of attack.

Plan all you want, Montoya. You aren’t getting my horse.

Finally he started toward the house, his gait uneven due to the brace he wore, and Liv quickly crossed the living room and opened the front door to step out onto the porch. This time, though, it wasn’t to keep Matt from waking her father. Tim was out on the baler, trying to salvage the hay. He looked like hell, but still insisted he felt better. Liv didn’t believe him, but was at a loss as to what to do. She was frustrated and more than willing to take it out on Matt. In fact, she was kind of looking forward to taking it out on him.

She closed the screen door behind her and drew herself up as Matt approached, looking like a cowgirl’s wet dream. Her seventeen-year-old self would have never believed that the guy could have looked hotter than he had back then, but she would have been wrong. Matt was taller, his shoulders broader, and he had a sensuality about him that he hadn’t had back then.

Looks fade. Integrity lasts.

As far as she was concerned, Matt had no integrity. He’d shown that when he’d used her to get his grades up and then never spoken to her again, and he’d shown it when he’d misused Beckett.

Her eyebrows rose slightly as he stopped on the bottom step.

She very much wanted to say, “No,” before he started speaking, but figured that wouldn’t get her what she wanted—his carcass off her property.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” he said with rather convincing sincerity.