Tougher in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  Shawnee’s pulse kicked up its heels. “Hey, Violet. Fancy hearing from you on a Sunday morning. Does this mean what I think it does?”

  Violet made a growling noise. “Can you be in Cuero by Wednesday at noon?”

  Shawnee’s pulse did another jig. She’d been both anticipating and dreading this call since Violet had asked her to be on standby. On the downside, keeping her promise meant no serious team roping for two months. Shawnee hadn’t gone more than a few days without roping since back when…

  She flicked that thought aside and concentrated on the here and now, something she’d been doing so long it was second nature.

  She’d agreed to Violet’s proposal because she was ready for a change. Her life had settled into a groove the last couple of years—rope with Tori, work at the cattle auction, train some horses, hang out at the Jacobs ranch when they weren’t on the road—but a comfortable rut was still a rut. Time to shake things up. Or in this case, someone.

  “I’ll be there,” she said, grinning as she hung up.

  “Sounds like I’m losing a partner for the rest of the summer.”

  “Yep.” Shawnee tipped back her seat and got comfortable, munching fries and mentally making lists of everything that needed doing before she could pack up and leave. “You’ll have your weekends free to chase your pretty husband around the country.”

  After ten years on the rodeo trail, Delon finally had his gold buckle—World Champion Bareback Rider—and was well on his way to defending the title. Tori certainly wouldn’t mind missing a few ropings to spend more time with him. Delon was a sight to see even when he wasn’t spurring a bronc, and given how long it’d taken the two of them to get their shit together, they were bound and determined not to let it get scattered again.

  Shawnee jabbed a french fry into the ketchup so hard it broke in half. All of her cronies were pairing off, turning into husbands and wives, daddies and mommies. She had accepted that it would happen eventually. She wouldn’t pretend it didn’t bother her at all, but she’d learned to accept it—most of the time. It was like being born knowing you were allergic to ice cream. Just looking at it might be enough to make your mouth water, but as long as you’d never tasted it you didn’t really know what you were missing.

  “You should take my trailer,” Tori said. “I won’t be using it while you’re gone, and yours is too small to live in for that long.”

  Shawnee debated for all of ten seconds. The living quarters in Tori’s trailer were like a top of the line RV—four times the size of Shawnee’s, with actual appliances and satellite TV. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

  Tori shot her a curious look. “Are you nervous?”

  “Nah. Violet and her dad put me through the wringer at all those practices, and dragged me along to a couple of high school rodeos.” Her grin widened. “Besides, it’s a dream job. After all these years of just doing it for fun, I’m gonna get paid to irritate Cole Jacobs.”

  Chapter 3

  The parking Nazis attacked before Shawnee turned off her pickup. Red-faced and dripping sweat under their neon-yellow plastic vests, they waved their orange-painted sticks so frantically you’d think she’d landed a 747 in the contestant lot instead of her pickup and Tori’s trailer.

  She rolled down her window. “Is there a problem?”

  “You can’t park here,” the taller one declared, jamming his thumbs in his pockets and thrusting his beer gut at her.

  Shawnee ran a deliberate glance around the clipped grass field, dotted with live oaks like the one she’d parked beneath. Four hours before the first rodeo performance, only seven other rigs had arrived, all lined up with military precision along the back fence. “Looks like there’s plenty of room.”

  “There is now.” Beer Gut attempted to radiate pompous authority in a dime-store cowboy hat. “But it’ll get crowded once the rest of the contestants arrive. We have to keep it organized so no one gets blocked in.”

  Shawnee gave him the closest thing she had to a polite smile. “Well, then, there’s no problem. I’m with the stock contractor. I’ll be here for the duration.”

  “Oh. Then you belong over there.” The skinnier of the pair gave a dramatic wave of his stick, toward where the two Jacobs Livestock semis, an elderly travel trailer, and Cole’s rig were lined up near the stock pens. They’d stretched a tarp between Cole’s horse trailer and the nearest semi to shade the cluster of lawn chairs set up on a big chunk of outdoor carpet, exactly the same as they did at every rodeo. Cole probably had a diagram. There wasn’t a tree within fifty yards.

  “I don’t think so.” Shawnee turned off the pickup and opened her door, nearly clipping the big guy’s chin with the side-view mirror.

  They both jumped back, then blustered along behind her as she strolled to the rear of the trailer to unload her horses. “You can’t just pull in and take the best parking spot!”

  “Why not? My horses and I will be here all week. The contestants will come and go in half a day, at most.” She flipped the latch on the back door and swung it open. The flea-bitten gray in the rear stall cranked his head around to show her the whites of his eyes. Shawnee stepped aside and waited, holding the door wide.

  “But…” Skinny began, then faltered, as if he wasn’t sure where to go with it.

  “We got rules,” Beer Gut announced. “Contestants park where we tell them to park.”

  “I repeat, I’m not a contestant.” A few tentative thuds sounded inside the trailer as the gray attempted to find reverse gear in the confined space. “And if I were you, I’d take a step back.”

  The big guy stepped closer. “Listen, missy—”

  Whatever wisdom he intended to impart was cut short by a clatter and a bang that rocked the entire trailer, then a huge thud as the gray took one big leap and missed the back edge of the trailer floor with both hind feet. His rear legs buckled from the twelve-inch drop that took him by surprise every single time. He plopped onto his ass, nearly squashing Beer Gut. The gray teetered on his haunches, looking shocked and perplexed, then flopped over onto his side. Shawnee caught the halter rope as the horse scrambled up and stood, legs splayed, quivering as if he wasn’t sure the ground would hold him.

  “He has issues,” she told the goggle-eyed parking attendants. Among them, she suspected, a total lack of long-term memory. Or short-term common sense. The horse snorted and Beer Gut stuck out a hand to ward him off.

  Shawnee slapped the halter rope into his palm. “Hold that, would you?”

  He blanched like she’d tossed him a live cottonmouth.

  She didn’t wait for an answer, just stepped up into the trailer to trip the latch on the stall divider and release the second horse, a sorrel who eyed her doubtfully, then began feeling his way backward. At the edge, he extended one foot and waved it around, searching for solid ground. When he found it, he eased on down.

  “Here.” She tossed that halter rope to the skinny guy.

  He fumbled to grab it, dropping his pretty orange stick. “Now, wait just a minute—”

  Shawnee went to the front of the trailer and tripped the last latch. Her good buckskin, Roy, paused long enough to let her scratch his forelock, then ambled out of the trailer and calmly surveyed the latest of the innumerable stops they’d made together. Shawnee tied him on the shady side of the trailer and went to retrieve the other two.

  Beer Gut practically threw the halter rope at her. “Look, lady. We already said you can’t park here.”

  “And I asked why.” Shawnee persuaded the gray that the grass wasn’t actually quicksand laced with alligators and dragged him around to tie him next to Roy. “You haven’t given me a reason, other than that rules are rules bullshit.”

  Beer Gut puffed up like an angry toad. “We were given our orders by the committee president. We have full authority to tow any vehicle in violation.”

  “Is that right?” Sha
wnee did a quick scan and located the rodeo office, a small white building to the left of the bucking chutes. “Let’s just go have a chat with him, shall we?”

  She strode away without looking back, ignoring both the outraged squawking and, “Wait! What am I supposed to do with this horse?”

  * * *

  Cole hunched over the long table that functioned as the rodeo secretary’s desk and jabbed his fat fingers at the laptop keys, entering the draw numbers for the team roping steers. Not his job, but easier than forcing his secretary to do it. He growled when he realized he’d transposed the digits, typing 198 instead of 918.

  “Hey, I’m sorry,” Analise said, looking anything but as she lounged in a lawn chair and fanned herself with one of the souvenir rodeo programs. “That guy who brings the steers needs to change the numbers. Make them start with eight, like the calves. Eight is rain on a tin roof. Nine sounds like a dying kitten.”

  She shuddered as if she could hear it now. According to Analise, the color blue also tasted like antifreeze. Cole had refrained from asking if she’d ever sipped antifreeze. Her answer might be more than he wanted permanently imprinted on his gray matter. He tried to keep an open mind, but today she’d edged into Creepyland, with a lip ring that looked like a skeletal hand clamped around her bottom lip and matching skeletal feet dangling from her earlobes. Her hair was the standard goth black pulled up into a schoolgirl ponytail, which made her look at least five years younger than her already infantile nineteen.

  Violet had found her at a medical clinic, of all places. Analise was deeply unhappy with her employer’s dress code, which oppressed her individuality. She was also the only person who’d been able to force Violet’s insurance to pay a disputed claim. Violet had offered her a job on the spot and worked out the wardrobe guidelines later: nothing profane, excessively revealing, or portraying graphic violence. Anything else was fair game. Analise’s single concession to rodeo life was a pair of tall black cowboy boots stitched with delicate pink flowers and a grinning skull.

  But she was almost as much of a nitpicking, compulsive perfectionist as Cole, and despite her age, the cowboys never tried to mess with her. Cole figured it was the piercings. Took some guts, getting a hole poked in some of those places. And Analise’s screaming nines—formally known as synesthesia—were as real as whatever screwed-up wiring made Cole unable to grasp irony unless it was laid on with a cement trowel.

  “The numbers can’t be changed,” Hank chimed in, slumped bonelessly with one leg hitched over the arm of the other lawn chair. “It’s a rule. They have to have a permanent hip brand. You’ll just have to deal, freak show.”

  Analise tossed him a scathing look. “From the idiot who throws himself in front of bulls.”

  He just shrugged. “It’s my job to keep the cowboys from getting stomped. And I’m good at it.”

  Arrogant, but not wrong. In terms of pure physical ability and instincts, Hank was as good a bullfighter as they’d ever had. The problem, Aunt Iris liked to say, was that he’d been tended by everyone and raised by no one, the rodeo version of a latchkey kid. Which might account for why he’d never grown up.

  Over in the corner, one of the truck drivers threw his cards down in disgust.

  “You are such a sucker. You fall for that bluff every time.” His mirror image scooped up chips from the oversized cooler they were using as a table.

  Lester and Leslie weren’t allowed to play for money due to the inevitable fistfights. Lester nearly always won, his poker face being the twins’ only distinguishing feature. Their similarity and their fondness for playing switcheroo had led to most people just referring to them both as Les. Perversely, they seemed to like it.

  At the other end of the table, their rodeo announcer, Tyrell Swift, made notes of the contestants’ name pronunciations, past championships, and current rankings to add to his running commentary. “Have we heard anything from the new pickup…person?”

  Before Cole could answer, he heard the sound of agitated voices, closing in fast. Katie scrambled to attention as the office door burst open, framing the female version of a Tasmanian devil—glittering eyes, wild hair, and a wide, malicious grin. One of the parking attendants huffed up behind her. Over their shoulders Cole spotted a second, skinnier guy holding a lead rope and standing well back from a sorrel horse that regarded him with equal distrust.

  The parking attendant shoved into the office, his face frighteningly flushed, and zeroed in on Cole. “You’re the contractor, right? Jacobs?”

  “Yes,” Cole admitted reluctantly.

  “Well, this one—” The attendant jabbed a thumb at Shawnee, who gave a cheesy finger wave. “She claims she works for you, but she won’t park in your area.”

  “I’m happier with the contestants. And shade. But if you insist—” She flashed Cole a smile so loaded with sugar it made his teeth ache. “I noticed there’s an open spot right next to you. I suppose I can move if I have to.”

  He’d rather do CPR on the entire parking staff. Cole drew in a deep, supposedly calming breath. “Leave her be.”

  Shawnee made a triumphant so there noise.

  The parking attendant humphed. “But the president said—”

  “I’ll explain it to him,” Tyrell cut in. “I’m sure he’ll understand.”

  People always understood when Tyrell explained, with his deep, mesmerizing voice and Denzel Washington smile. Life was easier for all of them if he ran interference for Cole whenever possible.

  The parking attendant muttered and growled, but turned on his heel and marched off, leaving his bug-eyed partner to deal with the horse, which Cole assumed must belong to the natural disaster now surveying the office like she couldn’t decide what to destroy next.

  Cole heaved a beleaguered sigh and—ignoring Hank and the Leses, who already had the dubious pleasure—gestured toward the other two. “Tyrell and Analise, meet Shawnee Pickett.”

  Chapter 4

  If a mad scientist had set out to design the most intolerable woman on the face of the earth, he would’ve created Shawnee Pickett. Everything about her grated on Cole’s nerves. Her voice, her language, her way of barreling in and assuming the world would get out of her way. Even her hair was outrageous, a mess of curls halfway down her back, waging war on whatever barrette or rubber thing she’d wadded them into. Cole never could fathom how she and Violet had become such good friends. Maybe all that attitude had seemed cool in college.

  Not that Cole knew much about college. He’d barely scraped through high school. Even his ever-supportive aunt and uncle hadn’t argued when he’d opted out of a higher level of torture.

  He glared at Shawnee across the space between them in the arena—him stationed by one end of the bucking chutes, her at the other, waiting for the first bareback rider of the rodeo to nod his head. Shawnee was on Salty, a stocky white gelding and the most solid of Cole’s string. The horse’s strengths would help offset a rookie’s weaknesses. Shawnee caught his eye and gave him a mocking salute. Cole ground his teeth and glued his attention on chute number one.

  She was just too…everything. Everything except careful. And he was supposed to trust her with the safety of the cowboys and his stock?

  At the ranch, he’d avoided her at the practice sessions by staying back in the stock pens, assuming she was just there for kicks. Shawnee lived for kicks. He should’ve known there was a plot afoot when he saw how much effort Violet and his uncle Steve were putting into coaching her, but as usual he’d been focused on his stock to the exclusion of all else. He should have been paying attention. Instead, he was paying the price.

  And yeah, it stung, knowing his family had been so sure he’d fail without Violet that they’d spent months creating a backup plan.

  He’d called around trying to find an alternative. That had been a waste of a full half hour of his life. His list of contacts was almost nonexistent. He’d neve
r bothered to build one, because that was Violet’s domain. Now, like most everything else, it was biting him in the ass. All he could do was put his faith in his uncle. Surely they wouldn’t have sent Shawnee if she wasn’t up to the job. Not knowing had anxiety nibbling at the ends of his nerves.

  Cole wasn’t good at assuming. And most of all, he hated having to fly by the seat of his jeans with only Shawnee Pickett as a safety net.

  * * *

  Shawnee caught Cole’s glare and fired back a grin. From clear over there, he wouldn’t be able to tell she was gritting her teeth to keep them from chattering—on a South Texas night that felt like being suspended over a boiling kettle. The nerves had slammed into her as the final strains of the national anthem faded away and she followed Cole into the arena. Saw the crowd. Heard the music. Her name. Suddenly, it all hit her.

  Holy. Shit. This was the real deal. And it was nothing like the dusty practice arena in Violet’s backyard.

  Sponsor banners lined every square inch of the fences, representing the thousands of dollars that were up for grabs. The grandstand was packed, and so were the smaller bleachers that ringed the rest of the arena. Hank and the second bullfighter, Cruz, moved along the chutes, helping set flank straps on the horses as cowboys made final adjustments to their riggings. And not just any cowboys. Two of these guys were in the top ten in the pro standings. Another was a former world champion. And everyone expected her to know what she was doing.

  What the hell was she doing?

  She forced herself to breathe, slow and steady, but her heart screamed along with AC/DC, drowning out half of Tyrell’s introduction. Lord, that voice, so rich and delicious that Miz Iris said it must have calories, because it made a woman’s jeans feel a little snug. “. . . riding a National Finals bucking horse, Thunderstruck!”