His Sexy Smile
The Montgomery Boys 5
Jessica Mills
BrixBaxter Publishing
Contents
Find Jessica Mills
Description
Dedication
Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Epilogue
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Copyright
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Description
Rodeo runs in my blood.
The ranch my family owns can stay with my brothers.
I don’t belong in a laidback life. I’m interested in the thrill of the win.
Somewhere along the way, I ran into a beautiful girl with a dark past.
Love wasn’t something I’d ever been interested in, but she’s changing that fast.
I can’t get enough of her, and when things get a little too deep, I’m ready to hit the road and find another rodeo to take my mind off of her.
But she ain’t having it. Me or my shit.
Good thing I woke up to what matters most—her.
I’m willing to go the extra lap to get back into her good graces.
Between that and my sexy smile, this girl doesn’t stand a chance.
Dedication
To my family. Thanks for letting me follow an old dream that has become something exciting and new again.
Jessica
Introduction
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Chapter 1
Colt
The crunch of the gravel under the wheels of my tried and true truck meant it was time to park. I liked to think my truck, Bernita as I called her, would be relieved. I had been driving a whole damn lot recently and rarely stopped. When I did, it was for situations just like this, and it usually meant a couple of hours for a break. I thought Bernita might be appreciative of the time off.
Still, stopping off in Bevelbrook, Wyoming seemed almost criminal. There were podunk towns all over the country that I wouldn’t mind stopping off at. Ones where the bars were the center of town and you could learn everything about the place in one night and it would only cost you a couple of beers. Ones where the locals didn’t gather at the bars at all, but if you spent an hour at the diner, you’d get invited to someone’s backyard after dark, where the beer flowed and there was no last call.
Towns like Bevelbrook, though, were the worst. Big enough to have a whole shopping district, a small civic center, and an industry that propped it all up like dairy farms or a factory. It usually meant that people were spread out just enough that there was no sense of community like in big cities, but they were too close together to have that sense of freedom and lawlessness that made real backwoods towns so much fun.
Bevelbrook didn’t have a civic center, but they did have a fairground, and that meant they had a space to host a rodeo. So, despite my dislike of the area in general, when I saw the signs coming down the highway that said they had a rodeo, I sighed and made the decision to stop. At worst, it would be boring and a waste of time. At best, I could find a good competitor and act like a mentor for them. After all, I had been doing this for a long time now.
I got out of my truck, not bothering to lock it, and grabbed my hat. Places like this barely had any crime, and frankly, there wasn’t much in the truck worth any value. I traveled light on this trip, and my money was in my wallet. Frankly, I’d rather someone open the door and scavenge for what they might find in there than break a window. The window would cost me more.
Walking up to the entrance, a break in a temporary pop-up fence, I could feel the eyes on me. My old mentor used to say I didn’t walk, I sauntered. I had never really thought about it before then, but after that, I was well aware of the confidence I tended to walk around with. It was a little cocky, sure, but I could back it up. Six-foot-three and two hundred and twenty pounds of well-oiled bronco-busting body meant that when I got into a scrap, which wasn’t unusual, I held my own. Add to that the sheer volume of belt buckles I collected from competitions over the years, and I felt like I deserved to saunter. No one had given me a reason not to.
The makeshift entrance had a little wooden table set up and an older lady manning it along with a fellow who looked older than Methuselah holding the cash box in his lap and making change. I made my way to the small line, waited for my chance to get up to the table, and flashed her a smile. Little old ladies were fun to give that smile too. It always seemed to make their day, and while I might not have been the guy to win a bunch of awards for my humbleness, I knew my manners.
Twenty bucks later, I was ushered beyond the trees and into the fairground itself. What I saw surprised me, considering it was Bevelbrook, but I should have seen it coming. The word on the street about this particular traveling rodeo was that they brought the house down wherever they went, even if it was amateurish and chaotic. It was apparently part of their appeal.
It could be best described as a full-on carnival. Rides filled up various areas of the park. There seemed to be a slightly organized division that included a circle that rides surrounded, food booths and trucks that were inside the circle, and a straight line going down the middle that had information tables and carnival games. The line led all the way to the far end, where a rodeo arena was set up, two stages on either side where drumkits were set up for music. One stage was rocking at the moment, and a large crowd of people were standing in front of it, enjoying the music.
Families roamed the grounds, and the chaos of the place swallowed me up immediately. I couldn’t help but smile at the fun everyone seemed to be having as I made my way slowly down the main line toward the rodeo arena.
I passed a dog show off to one side and stopped to marvel at a mastiff that was the size of some of the first horses I learned how to ride. After that, I found a beer garden and had to stop for a solo cup of some local brew that was surprisingly good. I didn’t want to get to drinking since I figured I’d be on the road soon enough, but by the time I finished the first beer, still standing near the station, I opted for one more. Hanging out in this place an extra hour wouldn’t be the worst, I supposed.
I took the second beer with me as I worked my way up to the rodeo arena and saw the dry-erase board with the list of competitions and competitors. No one familiar jumped off the board, which was a bad s
ign. Usually, these kinds of low-pressure rodeos were where you could see the true potential of someone who I might have run into at a bigger competition but didn’t place. Raw talent could be honed, but it usually needed wins in small ponds like this one first.
Thinking I might have spent twenty bucks to gain the privilege of buying a couple of six-dollar beers, I was prepared to chalk up my losses but went in anyway. I sat down on a green-painted wooden bench that looked like it had been moved from a high-school football field and hadn’t had a coat put on in twenty years. It was only a couple of rows from ground level, so I had a good view of the preliminary exhibitions.
Young teens lassoing calves and earning ribbons for it were playing out in front of me at that moment and it struck up some wistful memories. I remembered when my dad used to take me to compete in small rodeos in Green Valley. Of course, those rodeos were primarily just the event and maybe a concert by a country band, not a whole damn fair. But I remembered the competitions vividly.
Competing was an interest I only shared with my father. My other brothers had less need for the show aspect, though my youngest brother, Sawyer, would find his later on. Mostly they just wanted to work on the ranch, or they wanted to get the hell out of Dodge. Rodeos were something that Dad and I shared alone. When Cassidy was busy taking girls into town to go dancing and the rest of the boys were tucking in to their nightly chores or homework before bed, Dad and I would head out at least once a month to a rodeo competition.
By the time I got good at it and was training with older riders to compete in the big events, Dad’s mind started to deteriorate. The rift began then, and it got harder and harder to come home at all. When I was old enough and was through with school, I told Cassidy that I would make sure I came home for holidays and he could call me if there was an emergency, but otherwise, I was leaving. It wasn’t like Garrett, who bailed and went to live a hedonistic life of booze and women, or Jesse who joined the fighting forces and spent time in the desert. I still came home. I still worked on the ranch. I just didn’t do it all the time. Or even most of the time.
I just couldn’t be around Dad anymore.
Then he died.
I sighed and shook the memories off. I didn’t want to think about all that right then. I had to push those thoughts away and focus on what was right in front of me. Hell, I wanted to concentrate on what was in front of me. My first and only love was the rodeo, and the time I spent with my father at them paled in volume and meaning to the time I spent at them on my own. My hands were rough and my knees ached during the rain from years of wear and tear and being bucked off and run over. Yet it was a life I was glad to have, and I enjoyed watching others get their taste of it too.
The real riders were making their way to their starting positions and being introduced. The first contest was a simple bull-riding competition, and the enthusiasm of the crowd was infectious. I grinned wide as the gathering crowd buzzed in anticipation and people who were usually starved for something exciting to happen were finally getting it.
I got to thinking about how I just left the rodeo, taking a break from the life, and for the last five years, I was living on the road. It was a tough life, both just traveling and being in the rodeos, but it was absolutely worth it for the moments like this, especially when they used to happen a couple of times a week. I had scheduled this trip to hit as many rodeos as I could on the way back to the ranch, and every one of them had been worth the time and the miles and the sleepless nights before I got back on the road.
Nothing in the world beat that energy. It was wild and untamed and it snaked through the audience and bit every single person with a pulse. It always got me too, and my early days of the rodeo were littered with poor showings because I was too excited. It was brilliant and awe-inspiring and overwhelming and I loved the hell out of it.
I knew I should get back to the truck and get a couple of hundred more miles on the odometer before I fell asleep in some motel, but the energy was just too much. I was going to be buzzing for hours after this, and it had nothing to do with the beer. Not that the beer was hurting anything. The crowd was like injecting excitement and possibilities and energy directly into my veins. This was why it was so hard to leave the rodeo life in the first place.
The competitors began their work and I sat back on the bench. I took a deep pull of the beer and tried to calm the hard pounding of my pulse. Memories of the smell of my chaps and the feeling of my gloves wrapped around the rope. The blood in my mouth when I smashed my face at some point, or the shine of the spurs and the roar of the crowd when you held on. It was life, it was love, it was the damned rodeo, and it was everything I always wanted.
I had almost a thousand miles left to get back to the Montgomery Ranch and my brothers who I hadn’t seen in a long time now. But they could wait a little bit longer. Just a little bit longer.
Chapter 2
Leah
“I hope you brought a mason jar with you, Leah,” said Kyle Farnsworth, king of the stupid cutdowns. “You’re gonna need one to collect your tears!”
“Kyle, the only thing I’ll be collecting is the prize money, and you know it,” I said, brushing my horse down and keeping him calm. “Unless, of course, you want to put up that buckle you got in Feathered Nest.”
A general ooh sound rippled through the competitors around us and I grinned. Kyle was one of the few boys who still did barrel racing at his age, and I loved to give him a hard time about it. It didn’t hurt that he was an absolute dick, too. He only competed in barrel races because he thought that since mostly only girls competed in them past amateur level, he wouldn’t have much competition.
But he wasn’t counting on running into me and Renegade.
“I would,” he said, his voice lower and with a hint of cowardice in it, “but you’d just cheat somehow and then brag forever about it.”
“That has to be it,” I said. “I would have to cheat because we all know there’s no way I could beat you fair and square. Is that right? Like back in Laredo, or Tulsa, or Birmingham?”
“Shut up, Leah,” he grumbled. “Just try not to fall off your horse.”
“You should try to place more than once every ten races,” I shot back and turned away from him.
I could feel him staring a hole into my back but I didn’t care. He was a jerk, and I had no interest in coddling him for the sake of his own ego. Besides, he was leaving the tour after next week, so I wouldn’t have to see him for a while presumably. When I heard him stomp away, I looked back over my shoulder and saw my best friend, Macy, come up. She wasn’t a rider, but she was as essential to the rodeo as riders or animals.
“Everything okay, hon?” she asked, looking back over her shoulder to where Kyle had stomped off.
“Yeah, everything’s fine,” I said. “Just don’t plan on seeing that jackass again after next week.”
“I hear you,” she said, pulling her ringing phone out of her back pocket. “Oops, have to take this. I’ll see you in a bit.”
I nodded, resisting the urge to tip my hat at her. It usually made her burst out into laughter when I did that because of its formality, but since she was on the phone, I’d give her a break. Instead, I went back to brushing down Renegade and getting him ready. His fine black mane glistened in the lights and I knew he was as excited as I was. No matter how many times we did this, it was a thrill every time.
“Hey, Leah,” Georgia Masters said as she came up beside me.
Georgia, or as the audience would know her, Georgia Peach, was a fine rider. She had competed against me in multiple other competitions too. Usually we were in the top together, though I tended to win more than she did. Even still, there were no hard feelings between us, and we were friendly enough to room together if the place we landed didn’t have enough rooms.
“Have you seen the crowd out there?” she asked.
“I haven’t,” I said. “Big draw?”
“Biggest we’ve ever had in Bevelbrook,” she said. “I don’
t know about you, but I’ve been here a dozen times, and I’ve never seen it this packed.”
“Really,” I said, making my way to the large black curtain that separated what constituted the backstage area from the arena proper. I peered out into the stands, noting that pretty much the whole place was full.
There were only one or two empty rows, and those were on the far right side of the arena, near where the curtains ended. That was where the people who really knew the rodeo would sit but other people passed up. It was always less crowded, and you could see everything clearly from there, since rarely did anyone end up directly in the center of the ring.
“Prize money should be up tonight,” Georgia said, staring at her nails. I envied her nails. I wasn’t the manicure and pedicure type usually, but the fact that Georgia could be so good at what she did and then take off her gloves and have perfect nails made me irrationally upset.
“It damn well should,” I agreed. “Better than last week at least.”
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