The Ranger's Rodeo Rebel

by Pamela Britton

  She couldn’t take her eyes off his chest, and the sight of her blushing, embarrassed and so clearly uncomfortable, gave him an odd sort of pleasure. It shouldn’t. He wasn’t back in the States to get involved with anyone. In a short time, he’d be back over there—the Middle East again—as a private contractor. Besides, relationships with cowgirls weren’t his thing. He’d gone that route before, during his high school rodeoing days, but they were too independent for their own good. Drove him nuts.

  “I’ll meet you downstairs.” She backed away, spun and exited the door like a horse bolting for the barn, which he supposed in a way she was.

  Carolina Cruthers.

  He tasted the name on his lips. She wasn’t what he’d expected at all. The Carolina from the website had looked pretty enough, but he’d figured she’d be loud and crass and obnoxious. A cowgirl in overalls, a cowboy hat and with a piece of straw hanging out of her mouth. This Carolina was shy and innocent and, yes, pretty.

  And as he listened to her feet fly down the steps, he couldn’t decide if that was a good thing...or bad.

  Chapter Two

  Please let him find a shirt. Please let him find a shirt. Pleasepleasepleaseplease.

  “You ready?”

  She jumped.

  He stared at her with concern. “Easy there, sparky.” He smiled, his big strong jaw with its ridge of muscle along the bottom jutting out. “You’ll give yourself a heart attack.”

  He wore a shirt. Thank God he wore a shirt. But for some reason, the sight of him with clothes on wasn’t any better than the sight of him half-naked. Damn that Colt Reynolds. Why hadn’t he told her he’d come home? Then again, maybe he had. Maybe she’d been so distracted by James’s latest text she’d missed that tiny tidbit of information. It wouldn’t surprise her. Not that it mattered. Nothing could have prepared her for the sight of Chance Reynolds in the flesh. Something about the man made her want to melt into the ground. Maybe it was his eyes. Or maybe it was his height and the way his bearing and short hair had the stamp of a military man. He was taller than Colt. His face was shaped differently, too. Chance was one of those guys who could easily be in films, with his sweeping brows and thick lower lip. He had scruff on his chin, too, and along the ridge of his jaw, a stain of color that turned his tan skin a darker brown. She’d taken one look at him and turned as stupidly speechless as a starstruck teen.

  “Sorry.” She forced a smile. “I’m a little jumpy today.”

  He gave her a look that she didn’t quite understand, maybe because she had turned away too quickly. It had almost seemed like sympathy, although he had no reason to feel sorry for her...unless. Goodness, he didn’t know about James, did he?

  “Here.” He headed toward her truck, holding what looked like a butter knife in his right hand. “Let’s get you squared away.”

  He did know. Of course Colt had told him. Why wouldn’t he? One of his employees had come to him battered, bruised and scared. The cops had been called. James had been arrested. Any responsible employer would share that news with a new employee.

  Not an employee. His brother.

  Whatever. But Colt didn’t know about the threats that had been coming more and more steadily in recent weeks. She’d told no one about those except for law enforcement and her social worker. Having a boyfriend beat her within an inch of her life was enough. No wonder Chance looked at her so sadly.

  She was sad.

  Click.

  The sound startled her. Chance had opened her truck door, and she had no clue how he’d done it.

  “That’s incredible,” she said.

  Movie-star man simply smiled. “You should see what I can do with a spoon.” He grinned, tossed the knife into the air and caught it by the handle like a ninja warrior. That’s what he looked like, his arms huge, muscled and toned. His chest had been pretty spectacular, too. He had a deep ridge between his two pectoral muscles, and beneath that, square-shaped mounds, each one smaller than the other. His skin had looked as soft as lambskin, and so toned and hard she’d flushed like a piece of fruit in the summer sun when she’d spotted him standing at the top of those stairs. She’d never had a reaction like that to a man before. Never.

  Movie-star man stared at her oddly.

  “Th-thank you so much,” she stammered. And now she couldn’t even talk right.

  “You’re welcome.”

  She hated that she found him attractive. She would be working with him. That should have made her feel depressed, not...titillated.

  “I should call the tow company,” she said, shuffling past him, pulling her truck door open and reaching for her purse. Sad that she had the tow company’s phone number memorized. She grabbed her phone...and saw it.

  Twenty missed calls. Thirty text messages.

  Oh, dear Lord.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  She couldn’t tell him what was wrong. This man was her new boss. The last thing she needed was to give him a bad impression by admitting how messed-up her life was.

  “Is he stalking you?”

  So he did know about James.

  His eyes said it all. I know enough.

  “Is he?”

  She wanted to crumble. It made her so angry she fought back tears. She was not that woman, the one from some reality TV show who allowed a man to beat her and terrorize her and then crumbled at another man’s feet. She was strong. She could handle this. She could.

  She was not her mom.

  “Let me see your phone.”

  She didn’t want him to look, and that killed her all over again, so much so when he reached for the phone she didn’t try to keep it away from him. It fell limply into his grasp.

  “Wow.” He looked up from the screen. “Have you read these?”

  She shook her head. What could she say? That she’d been too scared, and that had upset her all over again. How had it happened? How had she turned into such a complete loser? How had she followed in her mother’s footsteps?

  James, she admitted. He’d beaten the confidence out of her.

  “We’re calling the cops.”

  “I called them already. Yesterday.” At least she’d found her voice again.

  “And what did they say?”

  “That they’d done everything they could. They talked to him. Warned him. I’ve filed for an emergency restraining order, but it’s not doing any good. He...” She swallowed. Why was this so hard to admit? “Follows me.”

  He might even be outside the gates of Misfit Farms right now. He had been before.

  “I’m taking you home.”

  She straightened. “No. I can handle my ex.”

  His expression was firm and implacable. “You don’t have a choice.”

  “And you don’t have a vehicle.” She hadn’t seen one other than Colt’s big pickup truck.

  “Colt said I could use his.”

  “But then I’d have to leave my truck here.”

  “I’ll take you wherever you need to go from here on out.”

  “That’s too much.” She took a deep breath and repeated, “I can handle this.”

  She could handle a fifteen-hundred-pound horse. Do tricks on them nobody in their right mind wanted to try. James was a scrawny human who liked to terrorize little women. She would deal.

  “Look,” he said. “I wanted Colt to tell you this, but he was afraid you’d think he’d overstepped his bounds. Plus, I think he wanted to spare you the embarrassment.”

  She tensed.

  “The truth is, I’m not just your boss.”

  She couldn’t move. She had a feeling she wouldn’t like what came next.

  “I’m your bodyguard.”

  She blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “You’re
the reason why Colt put me in charge of his specialty act. Well, that and the fact my sister-in-law is pregnant and Colt plans to stay home with her soon. But while I learn the ropes, he’s asked me to keep an eye on you, and if you don’t mind, I’m going to do exactly that. Stay here. I’ll be right back with my brother’s truck.”

  She shook her head, attempted to catch his sleeve, but he was already gone.

  I’m your bodyguard.

  Dear Lord in heaven.

  Her humiliation was now complete.

  * * *

  “YOU REALLY DON’T have to do this,” Carolina said, smoothing down her blond pigtails.

  “Actually, I do.”

  His brother had filled him in on the situation last night. Told him about his idea, too, to put him in charge. It’d seemed stupid at first. He hadn’t ridden a horse in years, but Colt had insisted. The act didn’t involve riding, at least not on his part. It was all tricks from the ground, done by sleight of hand and verbal commands. The Galloping Girlz did the actual riding. All he’d have to do was learn the routine and keep an eye on the woman standing in front of him. A little woman. Someone easy to terrorize, by the looks of things.

  “Where to?” he asked.

  She didn’t seem happy, but when he opened the passenger-side door, she climbed in. “Do you know where the rodeo grounds are?”

  “I think I do.” It’d been eight years, but he was pretty sure he could still find his way around.

  “I live about a mile from them.”

  Clear across town. Well, so be it. Those hadn’t been mild threats on her phone. They’d been a stream of vitriol so nasty he didn’t blame her for being distressed. If he’d had someone threatening to do those things, he’d be a little distracted, too.

  “How long did you date this guy?”

  She’d settled into her seat. “About a year.”

  “Long time,” he observed, backing out of Colt’s parking spot next to a massive six-horse trailer with the name Rodeo Misfits on the side.

  “Too long,” she added.

  He cocked an eyebrow at her in question.

  “I wanted to break up months ago, but I was...” She licked her lips.

  “Scared,” he finished for her.

  She nodded. “Turns out, I’m not the only woman he’s done this to. I felt like such an idiot when I heard that.”

  He was about to put the truck in Drive, but something in her eyes stopped him. She had the air of a woman who’d seen something terrible, something she didn’t want to see again but that still haunted her soul.

  He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “You know, maybe you should move into the apartment above the barn. Just temporarily. Colt said I could have it, but I can bunk down with Colt or at my sister’s place down the road.”

  She sat up in her seat. “No. I can’t do that.”

  But the more he thought about it, the more he liked the idea. He didn’t know the woman next to him, not really. His brother had told him a lot. City girl who’d grown up with a love for horses. She’d found trick riding relatively late in life: sixteen. She was twenty-six now, and his brother said she was good, doing tricks he’d never seen before.

  Brave.

  But not at this moment. He felt a keen sense of protectiveness. The same kind of urge he’d felt when he’d stumbled into a village of Afghans, scared, dragged into a war they didn’t want, kids crying, women terrified. Tore him apart. The urge to shield them and keep them from harm was one he had never ignored.

  “Ready?” She met his gaze, peering up at him with an unblinking stare. “You can take me home. Nothing will happen, I promise. I can handle this on my own. Don’t make this a bigger deal than it already is.”

  Because then you’ll give my ex the power. He read the words in her eyes. He understood that look, too. When he’d been fighting over there, he’d seen the same expression of resolve. They didn’t want the US military’s help. They wanted to be left alone to deal with things on their own. They wanted independence.

  He couldn’t blame her for that.

  “As long as you think you have it handled,” he said.

  “I do.”

  He nodded, and she faced forward again, so clearly relieved he couldn’t help but feel a twinge of admiration for her as he put his brother’s truck in gear and drove toward her home.

  “Colt told me you’ll only be Stateside for a short time?”

  He appreciated her attempt at conversation. For some reason, sitting next to her made him antsy. “Going to work for DTS—Darkhorse Tactical Solutions. Just taking a sabbatical while my sister-in-law finishes cooking her baby.”

  She smiled. That was better. He liked that smile. It tipped the end of her nose up and made the corners of her eyes wrinkle. Pretty eyes. Blue as the desert sky on a winter morning.

  “What will you be doing for them?” she asked.

  “Typical contract work.” He glanced at her as he passed between the white fencing his sister-in-law insisted was de rigueur for the ranch. He had to admit, the place looked spectacular. When he’d first driven up, he’d been blown away by the changes made since his brother’s wedding. Huge barn. Covered arena. Irrigated pasture. Turned out, they’d been sitting on a gold mine and never known it—a natural aquifer supplied water to the ranch, as well as a few neighbors, for a price.

  “I’ve always wondered what a military contractor does.” She smiled again. “I assume you’re not building houses.”

  He shook his head. “We’re a security service. Mostly corporate executives, although we do escort the occasional civvy. Our job is to keep someone safe while they do business in war-torn towns.”

  A blond brow arched. “Business? When there’s a war going on?”

  “Yup. Sometimes it’s military business, sometimes it’s civilian business. The need for oil never stops, and billion-dollar corporations need protection for the people who work to bring the product to market. Plus there’s road reconstruction companies and real estate investors—”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “Nope. War or no, life goes on.”

  She lapsed into silence, and he let her contemplate his words. A lot of people had no idea what it was really like in the Middle East. All they saw were the bits on TV. Five minutes of chaos followed by days, sometimes weeks, of normalcy. Well, as normal as life in a war-torn country could be. In those moments, people tried to get on with their lives, businesses tried to regroup and recoup. It wasn’t as if life stopped. The corporate machine kept moving.

  “This is it,” she said, interrupting his thoughts. “Turn here.”

  He followed her directions, turning down a street with two-story apartment complexes on both sides.

  “Thank you,” she said as he pulled up in front of her building.

  “Not so fast.” He shut off the engine. “I’m walking you to your door.”

  She shook her head, the twin braids sliding behind her shoulders. “There’s no need. He’s not there. If he was, we’d see his truck parked down the road.”

  “Has he done that before?”

  He saw her eyes flicker. “Not lately.”

  He had a feeling that “not lately” meant not within the last few days. She might be putting on a brave face, but her eyes conveyed the pictures in her mind.

  “I’m still walking you to your door,” he said, slipping out of the truck. “And I’ll be by tomorrow to pick you up around ten.”

  Her forehead wrinkled as though she wanted to argue, but she nodded just the same and then slid out of the vehicle. She walked ahead of him as she crossed the tiny grass hill separating the road from the apartment complex.

  “I’m the second one on the left,” she explained. “Bottom floor.”

  Which was why they didn’t see it at first.


  BITCH.

  She stopped in her tracks. He did, too. Her front door had been shielded from their view by her neighbor’s tiny porch, the word that’d been spray painted in red only visible from a certain angle.

  “Son of a—” She didn’t finish what she wanted to say, but there was no need. She froze, eyes wide, hands clenching and unclenching in...what emotion did he see on her face? Dismay? Disgust? Rage? Maybe a combination of it all.

  “You’re staying with me,” he said firmly.

  “Yes.” She turned to face him, and to his surprise, tears glinted in her eyes. The sight kicked him in the gut. “And I’ll stay at the ranch, too, if you don’t mind.”

  Chapter Three

  There was something completely mortifying about having to accept the help of a near stranger. Worse, she’d had to call her boss and tell him what had happened. Colt Reynolds had been completely kind, but then again, he always was. She’d never met someone with such a huge capacity to help people in need. In hindsight, it should be no surprise that his little brother was the same way.

  Well, there was nothing little about him.

  “You really don’t have to move in with your brother, though,” Carolina said, glancing behind them to make sure no silver 4x4 followed. So far, so good. No sign of James. “I can stay in my horse trailer. I do it all the time.”

  “Does it have living quarters?”

  “Well, no.” Not technically. She’d never been able to afford one of those big fancy trailers. Her own humble stock trailer was all she had in the world. That and her truck. “I converted the tack room into a space where I could sleep. It has a bed over the hitch and electricity for a portable stove. It works fine.”

  “Does it have a bathroom?”

  “Well, no—”

  “A heater or air-conditioning?”

  “No, but maybe I could live in the Galloping Girlz trailer? It has living quarters.” She paused. “Or maybe I can stay in Colt’s trailer?” Her boss had her dream trailer. Shower. Kitchen. Living area.

  One day.

  “Maybe, but we’ll need to use it on the weekends for rodeos.” He stared at her. “What are you doing to do? Move in and out every weekend? And before you suggest it, the trick-riding rig is out, too. There’s a perfectly good apartment at the ranch. You’re going to stay there and I’ll move in with my sister or brother. Capisce?”