“I can just drop Kyle off if you want,” Lauren told Bren.
He shook his head. “No, don’t do that.”
She’d planned to leave, but something about the look in George’s eyes made her want to stay, even though a part of her, like, really super-duper wanted to escape.
“The boys are all around back, if you want to join them.”
“Thanks.” She smiled at the men. “Nice meeting you.”
Not you, she telegraphed to George, but he was too busy making faces at Bren. Old fool.
She walked off with her head held high, turning her attention to the boys surrounding her son. They stood in front of a barn that matched the house and they were like cloned images of each other. They all wore jeans and Western shirts—some solid, some stripped—and cowboy hats that were either black or tan. They all wore leather belts, too, some with sparkling new buckles, others without, and dusty old cowboy boots. Most were older than her son, but they seemed welcoming even as they stared at her curiously.
Yes, I’m the overprotective mom, she silently told them.
“Sorry about that,” Brennan said, coming to stand beside her.
“It’s okay,” she said over the sound of trucks starting up out front. “How’s the campaign going, by the way?”
“Pretty good,” he said. “Of course, you never know.” He set off toward the barn. She hung back. “Gather around, boys.” Bren motioned with a hand for the kids to join him inside the barn. “Last week we were working on finding our center. Anyone want to tell Kyle what that is?”
From town sheriff to bull-riding instructor. He handled the transition well.
One of the kids, a young teenager clearly going through puberty judging by the acne on his face, stepped forward. “It’s when you’re the middle and the bull spins around you.” The kid made bucking movements with his hand. “Or beneath you while you stay perfectly center.”
Bren smiled at the boy and Lauren noticed that he had a great smile. The kind that lit up his eyes and made the corners of them wrinkle and sparked the gold.
“That’s right.” That smile landed on her son and she found herself leaning against the back of the house. “Kyle, you need to work on that a little more. I noticed at the rodeo the other day that you came out of the chutes leaning forward. Anyone want to tell Kyle why you don’t do that?”
Another kid raised his hand. “Because once the bull starts moving, it’s hard to get back to center.”
“Exactly.”
Suddenly she was staring into those gorgeous eyes, the smile on his face slipping away as their gazes connected, making her wonder what was wrong. She hated the way he made her feel as if she should check her appearance in a mirror, so much so that she self-consciously scanned the fancy jeans she’d donned for the occasion, the kind with rhinestones on the pockets. She wore a blousy shirt. It concealed her figure and hid her curves. She’d even put her hair into pigtails, for some reason feeling the need to play down her looks around Bren, and yet the way his smile faded made her skin catch fire and wonder what she’d done wrong.
“Today we’re going to work on helping Kyle find his center, if that’s okay with you, Mom.”
A dozen eyes turned in her direction and her face grew even more red. “Of course.”
What was with her? The man just asked a question. So what if he didn’t act all friendly-like while he was teaching. No need to feel as if she’d been put on the witness stand and he was judge and jury.
“Who wants to work the controls today?”
A chorus of “Me! Me!” erupted from the kids. She looked around for these so-called controls, but there weren’t any that she could see. She understood in a second when four of the boys broke apart from the group and headed toward the ropes that suspended a barrel off the ground. It was some sort of...ride. One of them even went into an empty stall and pulled out a mat of some sort, a fabric-covered piece of foam her son would land upon.
Oh, dear goodness.
She took half a step forward before stopping herself. This was her problem, she admitted. This right here. This overwhelming need to protect Kyle all the time. Of course, that was a mother’s job—to keep her child safe from harm. But even she recognized she was a little out of control in that department. She freaked about him wearing a seat belt. She hated when he rode rides at carnivals. She refused to let him play in the ocean. And she wanted to vomit every time they went to the water park and she was forced to watch him slide into one of those little plastic tubes that spat him out on the other end. For some insane reason, she always worried he’d drop into some sort of water-ride black hole and never come out again.
Stupid. But it was because of him.
She didn’t want to think about him. About the man who’d stolen her heart and then broken it into a million pieces.
It’s in the past.
Because Kyle was her future and damned if she’d let Paul ruin her life all over again.
“Climb on aboard here, son.”
Her chin tipped up. She forced herself to lean back again, even crossed her arms and made herself watch, one of her pigtails sliding over a shoulder.
You should leave.
No. She wasn’t ready to do that yet. So she watched as Kyle raced up to the dark green barrel and Bren’s smile slid back on his face. She could tell the man loved her son’s enthusiasm and that he approved of his eagerness to learn. She wondered why he didn’t have any kids of his own. What had stopped a good-looking man—as in a seriously hot older man—from settling down and having children? What was his story? Then again, maybe there was a Mrs. Bren Connelly inside the house. Crap. She hadn’t even thought to ask.
“The first thing I want to see is how you take a wrap,” she heard him say to her son.
And so what if there was a Mrs. Connelly? It wasn’t as if she would ever consider dating the man. Yeah, he was handsome in an older-sexy-ranch-hand kind of way, but that wasn’t her type. She preferred the more bookish type of men, like the men she went to school with—the kind that didn’t like to deal with loaded guns. Besides, it was clear Bren didn’t like her. Every time their gazes connected, his smile faded. Not a big fan of hers, clearly.
“Where’d you learn how to do that?” he asked Kyle.
Kyle sat on the barrel even though she didn’t recall him climbing aboard. He smiled up at Bren in a way that flipped her stomach for another reason.
“I watched a video on YouTube,” he announced.
She forced herself to pay attention. He had, indeed, watched videos. Tons of them. That’s how she’d known he was serious about this whole steer-riding thing. It’d taken her weeks to admit to herself that nothing she said to dissuade him from the idea would work. It was her brother who’d stepped in and made her admit the truth. If she couldn’t keep the Bubble Wrap on him his whole life, she might as well embrace his enthusiasm. She needed to let him go. If she kept him off steers, he’d find something else to do, Jax had warned, and he might not ask her permission the next time. That more than anything had scared her. Jax was right. Too tight a rein might push him to bolt, and so here they were.
“In for a penny, in for a pound,” she muttered as Bren looked up and caught her eyes again. Something about the way he kept doing that prompted her to move forward, despite telling herself to stay back and give them both some space.
He didn’t like her, or he didn’t like something about her, and darned if she would let that keep her away.
And so she didn’t.
* * *
DON’T COME OVER. Don’t come over. Do not come over.
She pushed away from the back of the house.
Bren tried not to groan. And stare. And gawk.
Damn that George.
He’d been doing just fine at ignoring how gorgeous Lauren was right up until Geo
rge made a fuss about her looks. Now he couldn’t get her looks off his mind, either. He even had to blink a few times to get her out of his head. What was he saying...?
“The only thing I’d like to see you change is maybe how tight you wrap the rope around your hand.” He glanced up and against his better judgment stared in her direction again. She was, indeed, headed this way.
Focus.
The bull rope—a prickly hemp tool that served as a bull rider’s lifeline—came back into focus. “YouTube can’t teach you the feel for how much pressure to use when you pull tight. It’s like this. Here.” Two of the boys stepped back as he went to work. “Do this.”
He pulled, getting the thing tight around Kyle’s hand. The boy’s eager eyes watched his every move and for a moment he forgot about the kid’s mother and how sexy she looked in her tight jeans and pigtails. Pigtails! They made her seem about twenty years younger than him—and served as a reminder of the age gap between them.
“I get it,” Kyle said. “Not so tight that my hand tingles.”
“Exactly.”
He caught a whiff of her, and she smelled as good as fresh waffles on a Sunday morning. Sweet and with just a hint of vanilla.
“So if you’re ready, I’m going to have the boys here start pulling on the ropes real good. It’s going to get kind of hard to stay on, but that’s okay, right, boys?”
The kids nodded, their faces eager, too. There was nothing they liked better than trying to knock each other off the barrel. He just hoped Lauren didn’t freak out. Once glance at her face told him all he needed to know about how much she liked the idea of her son riding that barrel.
She should find her son another hobby, he thought. That would make both their lives easier.
“Ready?”
Hazel eyes looked up at him with complete determination. The kid had more freckles than a spotted trout, but the resolve in his gaze made him seem older. For the first time Bren wondered if Kyle was the real deal, something he’d only ever seen rarely, a kid who really wanted it. He didn’t do it for the bulls or the glory but because he was drawn to it.
Like he himself had been once upon a time.
“Go!” he told his students.
One tugged down, another sideways, and one pulled a rope toward him. Poor Kyle didn’t know what hit him. One moment he sat in the middle of the barrel; the next he was flat on the safety mat.
“Kyle!” Lauren called.
“I’m fine, Mom.” Kyle sat up so quick Bren could tell he did so for his mother’s sake. It was his grin that told him that he wasn’t hurt. Not in the least. His eyes had lit up like an ocean sunrise. “Can I do it again?”
Bren pulled his gaze away from Lauren. At least she’d stopped short of bending down by her son’s side. She must have spotted the brief warning in Kyle’s eyes, the one that had clearly said, Don’t humiliate me, Mom.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea.” Lauren glanced at Bren as if seeking his help to convince her son, but he shook his head.
“He needs to do it again. Had this been a real steer, he would have hurt himself coming off like that, especially since he’d be landing on hard ground.” He glanced down at Kyle, who already stood up. “You can’t put your arms out like that. Don’t try and land on your feet. Don’t stick a limb out in front of you. And most importantly, never land on your head.” He nodded toward the barrel. “Do it again.”
Lauren didn’t exactly gulp, but she did something close. Worried eyes caught his own and even though he told himself to keep things cool between them, he smiled. He just wanted to reassure her. To let her know nothing would happen, not on his watch, but seeing the way she relaxed, watching her take a deep breath and then ever so slightly smile back... It was his turn to gulp.
“Don’t forget to wrap it tighter.”
Kyle nodded absently as he climbed back on board.
“Look where you want to fall,” one of the other kids told him. Michael was his name. Good kid without a lick of talent, but he sure tried hard, and Bren appreciated the way he wanted to help.
“Curl into a ball if you come off headfirst,” said another one. Perry, his neighbor’s kid, who rode steers more because of the girls it attracted than any real love of the sport.
“But don’t stop trying,” Rhett advised.
It filled him with pride. This was why he did what he did. He might not ride bulls anymore. He might be all washed up. But he still knew things that he could pass on to kids who wanted to learn.
“Ready?” he asked Kyle when he was all settled. The boy nodded again, throwing his hand up in the air this time as if he rode a real bull, and Bren tried not to smile. He glanced at Rhett and nodded, and the chaos began all over again. Kyle tipped left, but darned if he didn’t correct himself this time. Same thing happened the other way, but he hung on, for a little while at least, because one of the kids jerked the rope so hard it looked like Kyle rode a trampoline. He heard Lauren gasp as her son flew right, hand hanging up on the rope for a moment, arms flailing as he landed on the right side of the mat with a whoosh. He’d listened, too, because he’d curled his arms up tight. Bren smiled because a lot of kids couldn’t think that fast. The adrenaline, the fear, it all got to them. Clearly Kyle could slow down his mind. He could think. And he loved it, because he smiled the whole time.
Lauren, not so much.
She sat there staring at her son, leaning forward, perched on the tips of her toes, as if she were about to launch herself at him.
“You need to work on your balance more.”
“Ride horses,” Rhett said, helping Kyle up. “If you have any.”
Kyle turned toward his mom. “My uncle Jax has a ton of horses.”
“I bet your uncle would have some great horses for you to ride,” Bren said.
“Riding will help a lot,” said another of his students.
“He doesn’t know how to ride,” said Lauren, and he could tell she didn’t like the idea of Kyle riding a horse any more than she liked the thought of him on a steer.
“Bren can teach him,” said Rhett. “Bren used to ride broncs and bulls.”
“He’s been to the NFR,” Perry added.
“A long time ago,” Bren told her. “Right after I got out of the army.”
“I know,” Kyle said, hopping off the mat and standing next to his mother. “My uncle said you got some kind of special accommodation in the army. Is that true?”
“A Distinguished Service Cross,” he admitted.
“That’s cool,” Kyle said.
Something in Lauren’s eyes flickered, and it wasn’t approval. It was more like...disappointment, and that was so completely opposite to the usual reaction that the realization kind of threw him to the point he found himself saying, “I’d be happy to teach Kyle to ride,” before he could think better of it.
“That’s okay.” She shook her head, pigtails waving behind her. “My brother has a qualified instructor coming to teach at his ranch.”
“Mom, that’s not for weeks. Uncle Jax told you that just yesterday.”
“Then you’ll have to wait.”
Kyle caught his eyes. “I can teach myself, can’t I?”
“No, you can’t,” his mom immediately replied hotly.
“It’s really no problem.” Although why Bren argued, he had no idea. He should let her have her way. Take her side. He found her pigtails entirely too adorable, not to mention his curiosity was now peaked. What was her deal with former military personnel? Because it was clear she had an issue with them.
Or maybe it was just him?
“Kyle would learn how to ride a lot faster if I helped out,” he added. “I can teach principles that will cross over into bull riding.”
“He can,” echoed Perry.
“Come on, Mom. I’m ente
red in that rodeo next month. I don’t have time to wait for Uncle Jax’s riding person to arrive.”
Bren crossed his arms and gave her the same stare he’d given some of his subordinates when they were thinking of doing something they shouldn’t. “Of course, if you want to risk his safety...”
She knew he manipulated her. The disapproval in her gaze deepened and he told himself that was good. He didn’t want her approval. He wanted her to keep her distance.
At least, that’s what he told himself, because when she straightened and her chin flicked up and her pretty hazel eyes sparked and she said, “All right, fine,” there was a part of him that did the same thing Kyle did.
“Yessss!” the kid yelled.
Chapter Four
She should have said no.
You’re just nervous about Kyle learning how to ride.
But she knew it wasn’t just that. It was him. Bren Connelly. The former Green Beret. Gosh darn it all, another testosterone-filled male in her life. Just what she needed. He reminded her of Paul. And why not? They had both been manufactured at the same war-machine factory.
Too bad.
She would never go down that road again. Never, never, never. Which was really a shame because she’d found him kind of attractive.
Kind of?
Okay, very.
She heard his truck before she spotted it. For a moment she wished Kyle were with her, but he’d gone down to the stables ahead of her with Jax. The two were saddling up the horse they would use today, and so it was just her.
Don’t be afraid.
Bren was not Paul.
Besides, Bren was so aloof. He had no romantic interest in her. He wouldn’t wine and dine and woo her and then...change. Bren hardly glanced her way. That was good. She needed to keep it that way. She forced a wide smile on her face and pulled open her front door. At least he’d followed her instructions. She told him to drive around to the side of the house, to where the guest’s quarters of her brother’s multimillion-dollar home were located.
Her Cowboy Lawman Page 3
