Relentless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  I should’ve known better than to draw attention to myself. The jackass saw me, smiling even wider as he pointed in my direction, then did one final wave, his hands blinking at the crowd instead of hitching at the wrist like he was Lane Frost reincarnate before he collected his hat and his horse.

  The crowd got ready for the next calf roper, and I turned away from the arena, swearing to myself ten times over that temptation could fuck right off. I had a job, and it wasn’t at rodeos anymore. After tomorrow, I’d be leaving for Australia. For the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit and testing ahead of our first race of the season. I had things to focus on, and I’d never see this cowboy again.

  Which is exactly why I never should’ve walked Aston over to the arena exit, where I knew Billy would be waiting. Right then, he was still no one. Just another stranger, a name I’d be able to forget if I tried. And I needed to get Aston brushed and back in her trailer.

  But temptation also knows there’s a devilish part of me I can’t deny—the part that did it right and got her degree, then flipped it all off to race motorcycles for a living—and she loves breaking the rules.

  Billy started scrambling the second he saw me coming, dusting off his shirt and tucking in the back, then showing his teeth to his horse like he was asking if something was stuck in them. His horse pulled back his lips and did the same, and I couldn’t help smirking a bit, they were so cute. It was also a relief: they clearly knew each other, borrowed or not.

  Maybe reporting him wasn’t necessary. Lynn Hargrove must have known he was here with her horse. No one from Memphis would ever risk crossing her.

  “Don’t embarrass me now,” Billy was whispering to Gidget when Aston and I walked up to the arena exit, my temper and tongue firmly in check. When he turned toward me, he took a long time tilting his eyes up to mine, like I was miles above him. But he skipped over the parts where other men usually lingered. “Well, hi there,” he drawled. His horse snorted and nosed him in the back, making Billy stumble, and it took all my experience training colts not to laugh and encourage the stallion’s bad behavior. “Damn it, Gidget,” Billy muttered before looking at me and resuming his smile. “Thanks for bringing me all that good luck.”

  Okay, so he could keep his cool. Didn’t mean he was special. He was probably like the rest of the calf ropers—cocky and twitchy and only interested in listening to a woman for as long as it took to get her zipper down. “Didn’t seem like you needed much. Definitely not your first rodeo.”

  Billy grinned, shaking his head. “No, ma’am. It’s my second.” He was doing just fine…until Gidget bit the back of his shirt and pulled it out from where it’d been tucked in, jerking it around before Billy got free. “Really?” he grumbled, but he never raised a hand to his stallion. He just started tucking his shirt back in. “I’m trying to talk to this lady. You can wait.” He turned to me, calm as anything. “Sorry. He may look like a horse, but he’s really a heifer when he’s hungry.”

  Aston shifted beneath me like she wasn’t impressed, though I was having a harder time than ever keeping a straight face. “It’s all right.”

  But it apparently wasn’t, because Gidget’s nose was right back in Billy’s face, blowing raspberries. I couldn’t help it anymore, clasping my hand over my mouth.

  Billy took a deep breath, holding up a single finger. “If you’ll excuse us.”

  I nodded, pulling my hand away and chewing the hell out of the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Which was so weird: cocky guys in my experience were typically grabby and pushy but hardly ever funny. At least, not as funny as they thought they were. “By all means.”

  He took Gidget’s lead and walked them a few feet away. He kept his head close to his horse’s, talking and gesturing and looking like he was cutting a deal to get him to behave. It ended with Billy pulling a treat from his back pocket and pressing a kiss to Gidget’s nose while he ate it. Aww.

  Aston huffed and shifted again as Billy led Gidget toward us, my quarter horse clearly over the advances of the Akhal-Teke and ready to be pampered after working her ass off in the arena. And as much as Billy was…intriguing, to say the least, Aston Magic came first.

  “Sorry about that.” Billy made a supposed-to-be-stern face at his horse. “Gonna have a long talk about our manners when we get home.”

  Oh, damn it, that was cute.

  “It’s fine.” I kept my spine straight and chin high, voice kind but firm. “But I can’t stay, so you may as well get to telling me what your deal is.”

  “Ma’am?”

  I sighed—so much for sugarcoating it. I leaned down from the saddle, closer to where he was standing next to his horse. There were still plenty of people around, and I didn’t want to embarrass him any more than I was about to. “Drop the Mr. Innocent act, and be straight with me. What is your goal here? Because I’m telling you right now, I’m not sleeping with you. No matter what war you’re about to head off to.”

  Not entirely true. I hadn’t decided yet whether to sleep with him. He was hot and seemed nice, and it’d been a long time since I’d had a man in my bed. And heading off to the circuit meant my chances were narrowing quickly.

  Billy ducked his head so I could only see his hat as he looked away and shifted his feet. When he looked up, there was some pink in his cheeks, his hand fidgeting with his reins, and his thumb stroking the leather like a lover’s lips. “Don’t have an act or a goal. I was just wondering if you’d let me hang around you a bit, see if I can get you to like me some.”

  I took another look at everything about his size, his build, the way he held a rope, and the adrenaline still clearly drugging his veins and shining in his blue eyes. “Are you a bull rider?”

  A new kind of smile tugged at the edge of his lips—the guilty kind. “Maybe?”

  Damn it.

  Of course, there had to be a catch. I had sworn off his kind long ago, knowing too well the faces of bull riders’ wives, their girlfriends. The pain and worry the women go through. Because I used to be one of them.

  Kind of hard not to date bull riders when you’re working the medic tents at rodeos. They’re the only men you meet, because they’re the ones always getting hurt. I should’ve known better, because before I knew it, I was setting bones for men I loved. Watching them get bucked and broken and praying they would wake up. In the ambulance, in the hospital. At all.

  Bonnie Landry had been the last straw for me and that way of life. She’d loved Beau Blackwell and supported his bull riding career every step of the way. But Beau wasn’t as lucky as Eric, who broke his arm in two places. He wasn’t as lucky as Austin, with his busted ribs and concussion. He wasn’t even as lucky as Cash, who’d never walk again.

  Beau Blackwell got bucked at twenty-six years old, two days before his wedding, snapped his neck and died, and Bonnie Landry wore a black dress that Sunday instead of a white one.

  I stopped working rodeos after that. I broke up with Levi after that. And I promised myself that I would never forget how it felt to be so helpless over your future. Because those bull rider wives, those poor girlfriends, they watch their men volunteer for their deaths. And all so they could have eight seconds of glory when they could’ve had a lifetime with her.

  I wasn’t doing it. I’m worth more than eight seconds.

  What a waste.

  “Bye, Billy. Congratulations on your win.” I gave two clicks to Aston Magic and turned her away, struggling to swallow my disappointment as I headed back the way I came—to the pens and my family’s travel trailer and my laptop with the turn sequence for Phillip Island I was supposed to be learning.

  I’d be able to forget him. If I tried.

  Maybe tried hard.

  “Hey, Taryn, hold on!”

  I never should’ve looked back.

  Billy was already up in his saddle and trotting Gidget toward me, catching up. “I don’t ride
bulls no more. I swear it.”

  I scoffed, still walking Aston toward the pens. I didn’t even care to act gracious or charming or any of that fake stuff anymore. All I could think about was the scent of his cologne mixing with my fabric softener. I hadn’t been laid in months. “Bullshit. Bull riders don’t stop until they’re too old or too broken to keep going.” I gave him a quick once-over. “You’re neither of those things.”

  “Well, that’s kind of you to say,” he said. “And I’ll grant you, that’s usually true. But in my case, I got a new job, and I can’t do both. I’m not allowed.”

  I stopped Aston and looked over, my curiosity regrettably piqued. “You an elementary school teacher or something?”

  He laughed, the sound pure and crystalline. No man should be allowed to laugh like that. Especially when he could throw calves like they were feather pillows. “No, ma’am. I’m a motorcycle racer.”

  Oh shit.

  I didn’t know what that meant. He wasn’t on the Superbike circuit with me, but the fact that he even mentioned a motorcycle…

  The devil was whispering all my favorite words.

  I urged Aston on, resolute to keep my cool. Just because he was also from Memphis, roped like a god, was sweet to his horse, and apparently rode a motorcycle for a living didn’t mean meeting him was destiny. Chances were I’d never see him again. “That right?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Moto Grand Prix.”

  Really? Damn—those bikes were fast.

  He guided his horse around a group of people stopped in the middle of the aisle. When he came up beside me, he tipped his hat a little farther back so his face wasn’t as shadowed. God, he was cute, with one of those iron-sharp jaws that always felt really, really good in your hands.

  “It’s kinda like Formula 1,” he said, “but with motorcycles instead of cars. And my contract with Yaalon, well, it says I can’t ride bulls anymore. My brother Mason can, but he’s with Blue Gator on a satellite team.”

  My brow furrowed. As a Superbike racer, I knew plenty about Moto Grand Prix. But the last thing he said didn’t seem right to me. My contract with Munich Motor Works had all sorts of provisions, but MMW never said anything about me barrel racing when I was home. “How come?”

  “How come Mason can ride bulls and I can’t?”

  “Yeah.”

  He shrugged, no stress in the movement or twitchiness to be found. “Don’t know. Probably because he’s better at it than I was.”

  Another thing that didn’t sound right. Bull riders were famous for their egos. “You ever miss it?” I tested.

  “Hmm, sometimes, I guess. It’s a hell of a rush. But I get that from racing now, so I don’t mind giving it up.” He sounded totally sincere as he smiled at me and said, “Besides, I got too much to lose.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at him. “In all my life, I’ve never heard a bull rider say that.”

  “Well, I told you: I’m not a bull rider no more.” He winked at me, and Lord, if he was telling the truth? I was in so much trouble. “And hey, since I’m not, you wanna be my date to the Mutton Bustin’ tonight?”

  I burst into laughter, no idea why my heart was jumping to agree and even my overly critical brain was struggling to refuse. “No?”

  “Why not?” He’d still never lost his grin, drifting his horse closer until his leg bumped mine, sending a zing through my veins that hit me straight between my thighs. “It’ll be fun, cheering on all those little kids climbing up there to ride their first sheep. And I hear after, they’re gonna have a dance for the big kids. And I’m a great dancer.”

  “Oh, are you now?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I couldn’t make myself stop smiling as I walked Aston up to her designated pen, then got down from the saddle, tying her lead and endlessly debating.

  I had hard and fast rules about dating bull riders. But Billy said he wasn’t a bull rider anymore. Plus, it was so sweet that instead of asking to take me out to a bar, he wanted to watch toddlers try to ride sheep. Where the families were.

  I turned around, finding him down from his saddle and standing a comfortable distance back from me, absently petting the underside of his horse’s jaw. “I promise to get you home at a decent time. And I won’t try nothing. I just…want to dance with you. If that’s okay.”

  His drawl was slaying all my defenses, husky and deep and rumbling beneath black cotton fabric doing its absolute very best to stretch across the broad expanse of his upper muscles. His arms were bigger than I’d realized, too. I bet with one solid flex of his biceps, the seams would be forced to rip apart.

  How awful for that poor, innocent shirt.

  Get a grip, Taryn.

  “I don’t…know you,” I said, because I honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  The dancing part didn’t sound too bad, and it had been forever since I’d been on a real date with a guy and not just hooked up. Even longer since I’d been on a date with a nice guy. I wasn’t sure they existed anymore, truthfully. And I was tired of being disappointed when they all turned out to be after the same thing, which definitely wasn’t my brain. It wasn’t even my damn bike.

  But Billy…

  He was so disarmingly kind but still confident enough to ask for what he wanted—and in that Stetson blacker than any lingerie I’d ever dared to buy.

  He nodded to himself, taking a small step closer and slipping his hat off his head. My eyes widened a bit at the shock of sunny blond hair, seeming to match so much better with the gentleness in his baby-blue eyes. “Well, I’m trying to fix that, Taryn. If you’ll let me.”

  I don’t know why I said what I did. I don’t know what was wrong with me.

  I knew better, and I never should’ve looked back.

  Never.

  “Pick me up at seven.”

  Fearless

  On sale July 2020!

  Acknowledgments

  It took what felt like a million and one days to write this book and there are an equal number of people who helped me along the way, even if they didn’t realize it at the time (I’m looking at you, purveyors of iced, blended coffee beverages with extra whipped cream). I thanked most of the usual suspects in the dedication, and I’m throwing out mass gratitude to the rest of you now. But in particular…

  Writer and friend Megan Coakley, for being brutally open and honest about the never-ending battles of a long time recovered addict.

  Writer and friend Steve Ulfelder, for sharing the challenges of making a new romantic relationship co-exist with the unique, intense bond between long time sponsors and sponsees.

  My younger sister, Gina, who has dedicated much of her career to learning firsthand about the cultural and practical realities of being Native in this country, and who was my go-to resource when I didn’t even know what to ask. If I didn’t get it right, it’s her fault. (Just kidding, sis. I quit blaming you for my goofs once you got taller than me.)

  To our guide Duffy in Monument Valley, who responded to my probably insensitive questions by opening up about his personal beliefs, practices, and experiences along with invaluable information about the land, the lifestyle, and the Diné in general.

  To the Lunak family, who served as a very loose model for Carmelita and her parents. And our mutual aunt Lorraine, who hosts all those Christmas parties where I listen to Dutch tell stories about bartering for a horse with Chris Hemsworth and cussing Harrison Ford’s helicopter for spooking his herd. Yes, I have been taking notes.

  My mother’s cousin Carmelita. I have always loved your name. I hope you’re proud of the person I gave it to.

  #NativeTwitter. Wow, have you schooled me. And in particular @DeadDogLake, whose posts saved me from at least one really embarrassing misstep.

  To Hank, my number one rope horse, who did not actually speed up the writing process at all when he elevated his
game last summer and dragged me along for the ride, giving me the chance to live a few of my own moth-balled rodeo dreams. But we’ll give him credit for inspiration, okay?

  And most of all David, Sharnai, Andrea, Amanda, Gigi, Paula, Maureen, Mary Jo, Kathleen, Suzanne, Sarah, Courtney, Leah, Stephanie, Rebecca, Dr. Harrer, Dr. Kaae, and all the awesome people in radiology, lab, and pharmacy—some of you have been there for me at the best and worst of times from clear back before my first book was published, and without you I literally wouldn’t be where I am today.

  Also, please note: this story and these characters represent the experiences and opinions of these specific individuals, not any one tribe. I strived to be as accurate as possible concerning real life facts and events. If I failed, please know it wasn’t for lack of effort.

  About the Author

  Kari Lynn Dell is a ranch-raised Montana cowgirl who attended her first rodeo at two weeks old and has existed in a state of horse-induced poverty ever since. She lives on the Blackfeet Reservation in her parents’ bunkhouse along with her husband, her son, and Max the Cowdog. There’s a tepee on her lawn, Glacier National Park on her doorstep, and Canada within spitting distance. Visit her at karilynndell.com.

  Fearless

  These highly competitive racers are torn between the glitz of the international stage and the ranches they call home.

  Billy King may be smiling under his black Stetson, but the plain truth is this cowboy-turned-racer is hurting. The moment he’s free from the press circuit, Billy bolts home—resolved to heal, and ready to win Taryn’s heart a second time. Hopefully, before the love of his life is gone for good.

  Taryn Ledell never wanted to fall for sweet blue eyes and a deep southern drawl. As a World Superbike racer, she had plans, and none of them involved playing second fiddle to any man. But now he’s back, and she’s forced to make some hard choices. But broken bones and broken hearts don’t heal overnight, and the cost of forgiveness can be sky high: unless Billy can prove that his heart never left the ranch…or her.