by Elle Thorpe
Dom sat back, eyeing me. “Not you, though, is it?”
I huffed. “No. Why can’t I be a petty bitch just for once, though? Why do I always have to be the bigger person? Ugh, how did we start talking about him again?”
“Okay, so let’s talk about the reason I wanted to come here then. I Googled it after you mentioned it.”
“Great, excellent. Shoot. Why?”
“That.” He pointed to the corner of the room.
It took me a moment to look through all the bodies and see the mechanical bull on the other side. “You don’t get enough bull riding at work? Or are you just showing off for the ladies?”
He finished his beer and held a hand out for me. “Only one lady I’m interested in impressing tonight.”
I grinned and put my hand in his, letting him pull me up. I spotted an older woman, with a silver perm fluffed up around her face and enough makeup to give Dolly Parton a run for her money. “It’s that one over there, isn’t it?” I asked quietly. “I think you’re in luck, she’s definitely checking you out.”
He sniggered and tugged me toward the fenced-off area. They had the whole thing decked out like a real bull riding ring, though the floor was covered in padded mats. Dom’s fingers threaded through mine as we found the entry gate. His hand was rough and warm, calloused from a life of physical work.
Sexy.
Shit. I needed to get my mind out of the gutter. It had obviously been too long since I’d had sex. Or maybe that one beer had gone to my head? I leaned on the fence. “Go on then, cowboy. Go show the room what you got.”
But a band had started up across the other side of the room, and nobody seemed particularly interested in watching Dom ride a mechanical bull.
Nobody but me, anyway. I was very interested.
Dom took a few coins from his pocket and crossed the mats, his weight forcing his boots to sink down into the foam.
“Dominic West with his first ride of the night,” I called in my best announcer’s voice, trying not to giggle. “He’s had some pretty piss-poor form over the last few weeks of competition, but let’s see what he’s got in the bag tonight.”
He shot me a dirty look.
I dissolved into laughter. “What? You have!”
“I’ve been teaching more than riding, get outta here.” He grinned at me.
“Come on then, hot shot. Let’s see what you got.”
He swung a leg over the back of the fake bull and got himself settled, twisting his right hand around the rope and frowning at it like it wasn’t quite up to his standards. “Rope is loose,” he complained.
I snorted. “This isn’t the WBRA, Dom. Stick your money in the slot and get on with it.”
The band started a cover of Brantley Gilbert’s “Bottoms Up” and I couldn’t help but sway my hips a little. I loved this song.
Dom put his money in the slot, and the bull jerked to life, starting a slow spin and rock that even a three-year-old could have ridden. Dom raised an eyebrow. “How’s my form?”
I snickered. But I wasn’t going to pass up the opportunity to check him out either. His form was pretty damn fine, with his T-shirt clinging to his biceps and jeans tight against his muscled thighs. “Don’t know if you’re going to make it to the WBRA with that sort of posture. Sit up straighter.”
The bull did a few more slow rounds of spins and jerks, all of which Dom handled without a problem. But then it sped up, each round getting faster and faster, the machine doing its best to actually knock him off. To my surprise, he went sailing over the top of the bull’s head, landing harmlessly on the mats.
I burst into laughter. “Nice ride.”
“At least I made the eight seconds?”
“Wasn’t pretty, though. I give you a sixty-two at best.”
His mouth dropped open in mock outrage. “A sixty-two! I demand a recount. The judge is biased.”
“I’m your friend. The judge is biased in your favor. Anyone else would have given you a fifty.”
He pressed some coins into my palm. “Your turn then. Let’s see you beat me.” He was joking and laughing, but I didn’t miss the tiny flicker of worry that shone through.
I shook my head, smile falling off my face. “No.”
But he wrapped his hand around mine, closing the money in my palm. “Come on, Summer. I know you’ve been cleared by your doctor. Just get on and have a go. It’s a bit of fun.”
I swallowed hard. “Everyone is watching.”
Dom cast an eye around. “Everyone is watching the band or dancing. We’re barely drawing a glance. But who cares anyway? Nobody knows who you are here. You’re just some wasted girl, having a good time on a Saturday night.”
“I’ve got a dress on!”
“All the more reason not to fall off, huh?”
There was a challenge in his eye that made him devilishly cute. He was right about no one watching. The main attraction really was the band, who were amazing, the lead singer belting out popular country songs in a gravelly voice that probably had every woman’s toes curling.
Meanwhile, mine were curling in fear. But I also didn’t want to back down from a challenge. It was a mechanical bull in a bar. I was a better rider than Dom. I had this. We were here for fun, and that was all this had to be. It wasn’t an audition for the WBRA.
My boots had a heel, so I toed them off and padded across the mats, ignoring the slightly sticky feel of them beneath my bare feet. I hoisted one leg over the back of the bull, hoping it was dark enough that I wasn’t flashing the entire bar in the process. I wriggled, trying to get comfortable. It wasn’t warm beneath me, like when you rode a real bull. And there was no jostling of the restless animal in the chute, ready to burst out and do his job. It was completely still, giving me all the time in the world to get myself into position.
So I took it. Dom didn’t rush me. He just watched on silently from the sidelines.
“You’re right, the rope is loose.”
“Not the WBRA, Summer,” he mimicked.
Fine, I deserved that.
I sucked in a deep breath and dug my knees in. I still remembered what had happened the last time I’d ridden. How I couldn’t do it, no matter how hard I tried.
I raised my bad arm experimentally and felt that same familiar flash of blinding fear mixed with a shot of pain.
I shook my head frantically. “I can’t. I can’t get my arm up. This is a bad idea.” I scrambled to get off.
Dom jumped the hip-height fence and in two strides was swinging his leg over the back of the bull and sliding in behind me. He wrapped his right arm around me, reaching low to grab the rope with me. His chest molded to my back, strong and warm.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
He plucked the coins from my hand and slammed them into the slot. The bull immediately lurched to life, and years of training and muscle memory kicked in. We both went with it, Dom’s body pressed hard against mine. “Getting you back on the horse. Or the bull, as the case may be.”
“I can’t. I can’t get my hand up.”
He grabbed my free hand as the bull rolled into a deep low, both of us easily countering by leaning back. He crossed my bad arm over my body, holding me tight. “You don’t need this hand. You’re good, Summer. Amazing. You’re one of the best natural talents I’ve ever seen and I know you want this. I know you want to ride. It’s only your head stopping you.”
Deep in my heart, I knew he was right. “I don’t want to fall.”
“You will fall. You know that. But you’ll get up.”
“What if I don’t?”
That was at the heart of my problem. I was scared of being hurt again, just as much as I was scared of never making the pros. One I wanted so bad, but the ache in my shoulder, and the movement I knew I’d never regain were constant reminders I wasn’t the same girl.
I’d lost my confidence so thoroughly I barely recognized myself.
“Close your eyes. Shut off your brain. Your body knows what to do,
Summer. I know it does. You just have to give it a chance.” His voice was a low, deep murmur in my ear.
I wanted it. So bad I was willing to close my eyes, in the middle of a honky-tonk bar, and try to ride this fake bull in a way I never had before.
I shut out the world.
All my other sense heightened, and I breathed in Dom’s scent, and the feel of him at my back, steady and reassuring. For a few seconds, my left arm fought to go up in the air, a force of habit that helped keep my balance, even if it did cause me pain.
But Dom only held me tighter, refusing to let my arm move, and forcing me to rely on the rest of my body.
The strength in my good arm, stronger now after a year of physical therapy and weight training than it ever had been.
My core muscles contracting, compensating to keep me balanced, my thighs holding tight.
Every time my brain tried to yell a reason why I couldn’t do this without my arm, I focused on the man at my back. On the roll of his hips and the strength of his embrace. The way he made me feel like I could do anything, even ride again, because that’s how strong his belief in me was.
I wanted that belief in myself. I’d had it once, and I’d lost it. But here was Dom, trying to give it back to me.
The bull came to a stop, and I opened my eyes. “What happened?”
Dom got off, a huge beaming smile across his face. “What happened? You, Summer. You happened. You just beat the bull. Without using your arm for balance.”
I blinked. It was as if I was waking up from some sort of fog, or an out-of-body experience. I smiled, and when he grabbed me by the hips and lifted me, I threw my arms around him, squeezing him tight. “I beat the bull,” I said, still kind of in awe.
His stubble brushed my chin, and he leaned back, grinning at me. “I give you a perfect score. That was a hell of a ride.”
I shoved at his chest. “Nobody has ever ridden a perfect score.”
He only pulled me closer, his gaze dipping to my lips. “I’m the judge. And I say you’re perfect.”
I swallowed hard. “Are we still talking about how I ride?”
His head bobbed lower. “No.”
I sucked in a breath. “Dom…we’re friends.”
“We’re more than that and you know it.”
The breath rushed out of me in a whoosh.
Dom’s eyes lit up, determined and honest, a fire burning behind them that roared of mind-numbing kisses and long nights between the sheets. “I want to kiss you, Summer. I’m just waiting for you to say I can.”
My knees wobbled. “I—”
“Excuse me? Sorry to interrupt, but are you Dominic West?”
Dom and I jumped apart like we’d been electrocuted. Both of us spun to find a guy about the same age as us, staring at us curiously.
Dom’s fingers found mine and entangled around them. He muffled a groan of frustration. “Yeah, that’s me.”
The other man broke out into a wide grin and put his hand out. “I’m Felix Kaur. I’m your brother.”
15
DOMINIC
I stared at the man through the smoke haze, taking in each of his features. I stared so long the smile fell from his face, and his outstretched hand fell back to his side. “Shit. I’m sorry. This was a really bad idea, but when I saw your Instagram and it said you were coming here…”
“You follow my Instagram?”
The guy shoved his hands in his pockets and studied his feet awkwardly. “Sounds kinda stalkerish now that you say it like that.”
Yeah, it did. But that didn’t stop me from taking in the man’s dark eyes, and his olive skin, and our near identical builds.
He screwed up his face. “I’ve really sprung this on you, haven’t I? Can I buy you both a drink? Maybe my behavior will be more easily understood if we’re all a little buzzed.”
He chuckled awkwardly, but I had to be in some sort of shock because I couldn’t move.
It took Summer squeezing my hand for me to jerk to attention. I looked down at her, her fingers entwined between mine, and she nodded at me encouragingly.
“This is my friend, Summer,” I said to Felix.
He held his hand out to her with an easygoing smile. “Good to meet you.”
She shook his hand. “You, too. I think Dom could really use that drink.”
She was right. My mouth felt like it was stuffed full of cotton balls. I nodded, and Felix grinned, heading for the bar.
“Beer?” he called back over his shoulder.
I let Summer answer for us. Then she guided us back to the table we’d been sitting at earlier and eyed me cautiously. “You okay?”
“No.” I suddenly realized this was exactly what I’d done to my birth mother. I’d jumped out of the damn woodwork and accosted her completely out of the blue.
It wasn’t a good feeling.
I groaned, keeping one eye on Felix at the bar. “Is he for real?”
She shrugged. “He seems pretty real to me. And I don’t know if you want to hear this, but you two look alike. At least a bit.”
I took my hat off and ran my hand through my hair before putting it back on. Felix came back with beers for all of us, and I took a long swallow of mine.
He didn’t say anything. Just watched for a moment, giving me time.
“I’m sorry,” I said eventually, after I’d downed half my drink. “It’s just, this was the last thing I’d expected to be doing tonight.”
“I tried to call you, a while back. I wasn’t sure if you got my message.”
“I got it. I just wasn’t sure what to do with it.”
Felix grimaced. “Ouch.”
“He was going to call,” Summer jumped in. “He just got burned by your mother so…”
Felix tapped his beer on the table, rolling the bottom of it from side to side. “Yeah, our dear old mother.”
I swallowed hard. “You know her? Did you live with her?”
His eyes widened. “Maria? God, no. My grandmother is the only parent I know. You’re what, twenty-four?”
I nodded.
“I’m a year older. Maria got knocked up with me when she was too young to look after herself, let alone a baby. My grandmother, her mom, took me in and raised me.”
“But they gave me up for adoption.” I swallowed hard. The words shouldn’t have gotten stuck in my throat. I had an amazing family. But this was still a hard pill to swallow. I’d not only been rejected by my birth mother, but by my extended family as well.
Felix nodded. “I’ve always known about you. Not that I could remember when you were born or nothing. But Grandma tried to keep you, or so she says. But it was too much, two young babies. Maria just dumped us both and then went right back to her deadbeat boyfriend. Grandma was already in her fifties when I was born, and her husband had left years before.”
“That’s understandable,” Summer said, squeezing my hand. “That would be a lot for anyone to take on.”
I gripped her fingers tighter and tried to get myself under control. “So how is it that you’re here right now?” I asked Felix.
He relaxed back in his chair. “I work on a ranch in Masonville.”
“No shit?”
He chuckled. “My grandmother—our grandmother? Shit, sorry, man. I don’t know how to phrase it. She grew up out here. I was a bit of an unruly teenager, so she sent me out here to work on her brother’s property after I dropped out of school. Was supposed to just be a few months of hard work to set me on the straight and narrow.”
“Did it work?”
Felix put his beer bottle down on the table. “Maybe a little too well. I never went back. Liked it so much out here they offered me a full-time job and I took it. Nothing fancy. I just do whatever needs doing around the place. But I like it.”
I could relate to that. Country living and working on the land every day had a way of getting inside you. Something settled at the thought that Felix had found a love of the land, just like I had. I’d thought maybe it wasn’t
in my blood, but if he loved it, too, then maybe it was?
“Maria called me after you went to see her. Gave me the details on your card. She won’t tell her kids about you. They don’t even know about me, I don’t think. She’s estranged from her mother. She keeps her new life completely separate. Can’t blame her really. She royally fucked up. Still breaks my grandmother’s heart, though. But at least she thought I might want to know you. I called the ranch you were working at, but they said you’d moved out here.” He grinned and held his hands up. “I swear, I only got social media stalkerish after I realized how close you were.”
I blew out a long breath. There was so much rejection in everything he was saying, and yet, Felix was right here in front of me, actively seeking me out, calling me, checking my social media, then driving all the way here from Masonville so he could meet me.
I didn’t think anyone had ever gone so out of their way for me. With his friendly smile it was impossible not to like the guy.
I was leaving him hanging. I could see the worry in his eyes, that I was going to tell him to leave. I could see him waiting for it, another rejection in a long line of them.
I wouldn’t do it to him. “Another beer?”
He looked at me, the fear leaving his eyes. “Hell yes. I got all night.”
I glanced over at Summer, questions and an apology in my gaze, but she shooed me toward the bar. “Go! Get more drinks while I grill your brother.”
There was nothing but pure excitement in her eyes. On impulse, I leaned in, took her chin between my fingers, and brushed my lips over hers.
It was barely more than a peck, not even long enough for either of us to close our eyes. Summer’s went wide.
I just grinned and went to get a drink, knowing I’d caught her off guard, and feeling her gaze on me as I walked away. It had been a thank-you kiss. A thank-you for her understanding. For her excitement. For caring enough about me to happily turn our date into a family reunion.
But the next kiss I gave her would not be in front of my long-lost brother.
It wouldn’t just be a peck on the mouth.
