One Rodeo Season

Ian’s vision widened enough to see that Slim was now standing behind two riders Ian didn’t know real well. Ian could have easily taken them both. “What’s the matter?” he asked, shaking off Jack. “You’ll threaten a woman but you’re too much a coward to man up?”

“Boy,” Slim said, spitting the word out as if it was an insult. “You don’t know who you’re dealing with.” Then he turned on his heel and walked off.

Ian watched him go and then turned his attention to Evans. “There,” he said. “That should—”

“What the hell is your problem?” Evans demanded, cutting him off. “Are you trying to ruin my life or what? Because you’re doing a damn fine job.”

“I was trying to help,” Ian said through gritted teeth.

“Well, don’t. I don’t need any help, certainly not from you. I don’t know how I can make it any clearer, buddy— Leave. Me. Alone.”

And with that, she turned and stormed off for the second time in less than fifteen minutes.

Ian blinked, but this time she really was gone.

“What the hell happened?” he asked Jack.

“I think,” Jack replied, his Texas drawl stronger than normal, “you made her mad.”

“Yeah, thanks for that insight,” Ian shot back. He looked again, but he didn’t see Miss Evans from the Straight Arrow Ranch anywhere.

Ian started after where he’d last seen her, but the promoter began shouting that the short goes was starting and everyone needed to stop standing around and gawking like schoolboys.

Ian had to get back to work.

But he wasn’t done with Miss Evans.

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_a69df438-bdc6-55cb-8cd7-7dc1b27a0512)

HER HANDS SHAKING, Lacy Evans walked back to where Rattler was penned after his go. Please let the animal be okay, she prayed. Without Rattler...

The thought brought on a wave of nausea so strong it almost stopped her in her tracks. She didn’t stop, though. She couldn’t afford a single sign of weakness. No throwing up. No hysterics. And absolutely no crying allowed.

What would Slim Smalls do if he caught Lacy in a true moment of weakness? Bad enough he’d obviously seen the bullfighter take Rattler down—worse that he was hoping Rattler would never get up. Lacy had no doubt about that.

Rattler was the only thing keeping the Straight Arrow going. If she lost that bull, Slim would say something misogynistic about how a “pretty little thing” like Lacy had no business in stock contracting, no business running a ranch—no business existing. And when she broke—or he pushed her too far...

She tried to swallow down the rock in her throat that was pushing against her tongue, but it didn’t budge. So she kept walking.

She saw Rattler in the pen and for a moment, she thought he was holding a leg funny.

She tried to push the panic away as she hurried to the pen. Without getting in there with him, she looked over the bull as carefully as she could—especially his legs.

He shifted his weight onto the leg. Thank God.

In place of the panic, a new emotion took root—anger. The anger felt good. She was furious with that bullfighter. What the hell had he been thinking, twisting her best bull to the ground like that? For God’s sake, he could have killed Rattler! Snapped a leg—or several legs, given the force with which he’d dropped Rattler, as if the eighteen-hundred-pound bull was little more than a stuffed animal someone had thrown at him. Who the hell did that bullfighter think he was?

Chief. That’s what the other bullfighter had called him. The thorn in her side had a ridiculous name like Chief. Of course he did. Lacy didn’t know if that was his real name or another dig at him being an Indian. Because she was pretty sure he was an American Indian. There’d been his faint accent, a different way of clipping his vowels. But beyond that, it was Chief’s dark hair and dark eyes and bronzed skin and eagle nose and strong jaw and muscles moving beneath his shirt.

Not that she’d noticed all those muscles when she’d put her hands on his chest and held him back.

A very small part of her brain replayed the scene again. The whole thing hadn’t taken more than twenty seconds. The bull rider hadn’t made it past five, which was good for Rattler’s statistics. Then there’d been the few agonizingly long seconds where the bullfighter had thought about running. Lacy had seen it in his face. Anyone else would have dodged out of the way. Rattler was no pussy cat—he was a mean son of a bitch who’d broken her father’s arm once and launched Murph, one of her hired hands, fifteen feet into a fence.

But the bullfighter hadn’t run. He hadn’t abandoned the downed rider. He’d stood his ground, absorbed the impact and redirected the bull’s energy into the twist.

If it hadn’t been her bull, her livelihood—she would have been cheering with the rest of them.

But it was her bull, her livelihood. If something happened to Rattler...

She refused to think about that worst-case scenario as she shooed Rattler from one end of his narrow pen to the other, watching his gait the whole time. Rattler seemed okay. No pulling up lame, no favoring one foot.

She needed him to be okay. If that Chief so much as touched her bull again, he wouldn’t have to be worried about getting gored. Lacy would see to that herself.

Reluctantly, she left Rattler. Her other bull, Peachy Keen, was due up soon. Peachy wasn’t half the bull Rattler was, but that didn’t mean Peachy wasn’t a good bull. He was perfectly suited to the Total Championship Bulls Ranger circuit. The riders here were all trying to break into the big league, the Challenger circuit. If they couldn’t get past Peachy, then they didn’t have a hope of making it to the finals in Las Vegas this October, a mere six months away.

Rattler, however, was a different story. He was amassing points every time he was loaded into the chutes. If he had a good summer, he could be bumped up to the bigs. And the bigs paid better.

She needed that. The Straight Arrow was hanging on by what felt like the thinnest of threads. She’d cut every expense she could. If Rattler didn’t have a good year with a strong finish in Vegas, she’d have to start selling off the beef cattle that paid at least half of the ranch’s bills.

And if that happened...

She would do anything to keep the ranch. If she lost the Straight Arrow, she didn’t know what she’d do.

She didn’t know who she’d be, without that ranch.

It wouldn’t come to that. Rattler was going to have a strong summer. Peachy and Chicken Run would earn their keep. Then there was Wreckerator. Some rides, he was every bit as good as Rattler. But other rides were a total disaster. She couldn’t bet the ranch on Wreckerator. Not yet, anyway.

Everything was riding on Rattler.

She made her way to the chutes as Peachy went in. She didn’t recognize the rider’s name, but he tipped his hat and said, “Ma’am,” when she slung her leg over the railing to grab Peachy’s flank strap.

She nodded at him. Well, that was a nice change of pace. At least half of these cowboys treated her like a pariah at a family picnic, as if the mere fact that she had boobs meant she shouldn’t be contaminating the air they breathed. Never mind that she’d been a working rancher since she was old enough to sit in a saddle. Never mind that she did a man’s work all day, every day. It didn’t matter. She was not welcome here.

But every so often, one of the cowboys was a decent human being, as her father had been. Dale Evans never let anyone talk down to her or any other woman. It wasn’t the Straight Arrow Ranch for nothing.

She’d never understood what had started the feud with Slim Smalls. At this point, it didn’t matter. Not even Dale’s and Linda’s deaths were enough for Slim. He wanted more. He wanted Lacy’s ranch.

She pulled the flank strap as another rider pulled the bull rope. Peachy shifted nervously in the chute as the rider got his grip. Lacy realized he was praying under his breath. “Have a good one, Preacher,” the other rider said.

The Preacher? Fitting, she thought as the man nodded his head. The chute swung open.

Normally, Lacy watched the rides, making notes on how her bulls did, where they were stronger, where they were weaker. She and her father had always done that, breaking down each ride together until Lacy understood bulls better than her dad did.

But not this time. This time, she was watching a bullfighter named Chief.

Now that she knew Rattler was okay, she almost felt bad for tearing into the man. Of course he was doing his job. Of course he didn’t know about Rattler or Lacy Evans or the Straight Arrow or even Slim Smalls. He’d only known how to take down a charging bull with his bare hands. It had nothing to do with her.

And he had been trying to help her, hadn’t he? He’d cut Slim off before he could start cursing, and Lacy would be willing to bet that he’d have taken Slim down in much the same way he’d taken Rattler down. For her.