by Claire Adams
“Do riders ever get hurt?” I asked, cutting into his description of what an electric eye was. Lacey’d already told me about all of that, too.
Pete shrugged in my peripheral vision, but I kept my eyes pinned on the cloverleaf pattern below us, imagining Max and Lacey running through them, leaning dangerously to one side and then the other.
“Nah, not really,” he said. “Accidents can happen, but if you came to do this, you know what you’re doing.”
That wasn’t very comforting.
The announcer broadcast the start of the barrel racing event over the loudspeaker. My gut twisted harder, and I squeezed my hands together to keep from squirming in my seat. Lacey was the first rider. The announcer called her and Max by name. The crowd roared, then a hush fell over it as the official walked from the side of the arena, a large flag in one hand.
“Here we go,” Pete whispered, nearly under his breath.
Lacey walked Max through the entrance of the arena. She went to line him up and, without warning, took off at a dead run. She raced past the man at the start line, and he dropped his flag, starting the timer.
“Go, Lacey!” Pete hollered. “You got this!”
My hands tightened in my lap as she grabbed hold of the horn of the saddle with one hand and controlled the reins with the other, looping Max tightly around the first barrel. They rode hard for the second barrel, slowing just a little to make the second of three tight turns. My heart leaped into my throat and stayed there, racing hard.
“Come on, Lace! Finish strong!” Pete screamed, beating his feet on the stands.
Lacey and Max turned tight around the final barrel, her legs pressing against his sides to keep herself deep in the saddle. After clearing the last barrel, she took the reins in both hands and leaned forward, kicking both legs to get Max down the straight shot back to the finish line. As soon as she crossed, the official waved the flag, but she and Max kept going, slowing a bit as they shot out of the arena the same way they’d come in, Lacey grinning and rubbing the horse’s neck as they ran out of sight.
The crowd roared their approval.
Pete let out a triumphant whoop when the announcer reported her score. Eighteen seconds flat.
I grinned as all those nerves left my body and turned my face up to receive Pete’s kiss when he leaned in for one.
“She just beat her best time!” he said, his eyes sparkling with pride for his friend.
Looking at how excited he was, I had to remind myself that Lacey and Pete were just good friends. Not that it guaranteed that was how things would stay between them.
How many sappy movies had I watched with Kasey over the years where best friends ended up getting together after realizing, finally, how much they loved each other? I could tell myself I was being silly all I wanted, but maybe I wasn’t. Maybe something was growing between them that they didn’t even know about. It bothered me to think that way. But there it was.
We went down to congratulate Lacey, who was all smiles after such a great run.
“We’re going out tonight,” Pete told her. “Care to join us?”
She shook her head. “I’m going out with the gals.” She’d made lots of friends in the rodeo circuit after all her years of competition. “I’ll see y’all tomorrow morning at the hotel for breakfast.”
By the time we made it out to Pete’s pickup, it was only a little past five o’clock.
“Kasey’s working at Murdock’s tonight,” I said. “We should head by there first to say hello.”
“Sounds good to me.” He started up the truck. “As long as we’re getting food and few beers, I’m not too concerned with where we go.”
After a quick stop by the hotel, I directed him to the bar. We parked the truck and walked a few blocks to Murdock’s. Pete held the door to let me go in first. It wasn’t too busy yet. I knew from Kasey that things really got going after ten on Saturdays, but I didn’t plan to be here that late. We’d rolled out of the ranch just after seven in the morning, meaning I’d gotten up just after four thirty to help Pete and Lacey prepare the horses for the trip. After the excitement from the rodeo wore all the way off, I expected to be pretty beat.
Kasey was next to the bar, dressed in her little black shorts and red t-shirt, chatting with a customer, her eyes wide and mouth spread into a sunny grin. She made great tips at Murdock’s, partly because of how cute she was, but her real moneymaker was how well she could make a man think he was the funniest, most interesting and attractive person she’d ever met. She just had that open, charming way about her. I’d seen her come home after a late Friday or Saturday shift with her purse stuffed full of ten and twenty dollar bills from her adoring fans.
She saw us and came running over, her short hair bobbing over her shoulders. She’d lightened it since I’d seen her last. Now it was a deep honey color. I’d never try such a thing, but it looked good on her.
“Emma!” she cried, pulling me into a hug. She smelled like candy. It was another thing her male customers liked. She grinned at me. She had on so much makeup, I barely recognized her. She watched tutorials online, learning all kinds of tricks. Today, she’d made her eyes look pointy at the ends with shadow and liner. Her lips were cherry red, and her cheeks looked powdery soft. She’d even added a fake beauty mark just above her mouth.
“This is Pete,” I told her, hooking a thumb at the solid shape of him standing beside me.
She turned the sharp point of her attention to him, looking him up and down in that shameless manner she had, her grin getting even wider to show off the crooked eyeteeth we had in common. “I’ve heard so much about you.” She held out a small hand, and Pete shook it. “I’m Kasey.”
“Howdy, Kasey,” he said. “Nice to finally meet you. I’ve heard a lot, too.”
“All good things, I hope!” I could see by the way she was grinning that she at least approved of Pete’s looks, not that I’d doubted she would.
He laughed that low chuckle he had, the one that drove me a little crazy. When he reached for my hand, I laced my fingers with his, just glad to have that contact.
Kasey’s eyes lit on our interlaced fingers for a few seconds before jumping up to meet my eyes, her smile blazing. I smiled, too. I couldn’t help it. She looked at Pete again.
“You must be something special to have caught my sister’s eye. She doesn’t date just anybody.”
Now all three of us laughed, my cheeks getting a little red.
“Emma Flowers?”
I turned at the sound of my name, gasping at who I saw.
It was Jack Terrance.
I’d recognize him anywhere, even though we hadn’t seen each other since high school and he’d changed plenty.
“Jack!” I let go of Pete’s hand to give my old friend a hug. He squeezed me hard, lifting me off the ground as I giggled into his ear. When he set me down again, I stared up at him, a little dizzy from the ride.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“I work in Austin. I’m a firefighter.” His voice hadn’t changed a bit. He was wearing his fluffy blond hair clipped close to his head, and his brown eyes were just as kind and full of gentle humor as I remembered them. He was much bigger, I assumed from lifting weights regularly, the muscles bulging in his arms and neck. Back in school, he’d been tall, but gangly, more basketball star than football player.
“Oh my God, Jack!” Kasey squealed. She moved in for a hug as he laughed at her characteristic overreaction. The girl had been a Hollywood actress since infancy, always going over the top if she got the chance.
“Look at you all grown up, Kase!”
“I haven’t seen you in ages,” she replied, shooting that sunny grin up at him. She’d had the worst crush on him back in the day, but he’d considered her his adopted little sister by virtue of our friendship, so she never got even so much as a peck on the lips from him. “I thought you’d dropped off the face of the Earth.”
“We all did,” I said. It dawned on me suddenly
how rude I was being. I turned to put my hand on Pete’s rock hard shoulder. He’d been watching the show with an amused look on his tanned face. “Jack, this is Pete. He’s my…” I didn’t know what to say. My boss? My boyfriend? The guy I ate dinner with a few times a week and occasionally sleep with after my work on the farm was done?
Pete stepped in, not the least bit bothered by my sudden inability to define whatever was between us. “I’m Emma’s friend.” The men shook hands.
“Nice to meet you, Pete.”
“Likewise,” he said.
Jack turned his warm brown eyes my way again, his grin getting wider. “You still in Round Rock?”
I nodded. “I moved back after college.”
“I’ll be out visiting my mama and daddy next week. We need to catch up. It’s been way too long.”
We exchanged numbers — neither of us had owned cell phones in high school — as we chatted a bit more. He hadn’t been back to Round Rock in months. I shared some news with him, but there wasn’t much to tell. It was a quiet town that didn’t change much, which was just how I liked it.
“Listen, I have to meet up with a few friends,” Jack said, running a hand over his close-cropped hair. “But I’ll definitely give you a call next week so we can get together.”
“Sounds good,” I said, and lifted up onto my tiptoes to give him another hug. He said goodbye to Pete and Kasey before crossing over to join a table of guys already drinking and getting loud.
“Do you want a drink, Emma?” Pete asked me.
“Yeah, a beer sounds great,” I said.
“You got it.” He moved through the crowd towards the bar.
Kasey took my hands, jumping up and down on the balls of her feet the way she did whenever she was excited about something. “Oh. My. God. Pete is gorgeous, Em!” She squeezed my fingers, and I couldn’t help but smile, too.
“He is pretty to look at, isn’t he?” I laughed, and so did she. “But he’s so nice, too. I’ve never met a sweeter man.”
“I thought for sure he’d be dull,” she said. “What with running a farm and spending all day around animals? But he’s really funny! You got yourself a good one.”
Not that I’d thought she wouldn’t take to him immediately — Pete just had one of those sunny personalities, same as Kasey did — but hearing how much my sister already liked the man I’d been spending most of my time with over the last several weeks calmed the nerves I hadn’t even noticed were churning in my stomach. That was at least one down. The last hurdle was Daddy, but I wasn’t quite ready to introduce him to Pete just yet.
“I’m so happy for you, Em,” she said. “I have to get back to my tables or my boss will throw a fit.”
She smiled because we both knew she could pretty much do whatever she wanted around here and get away with it. Her boss loved her. Literally. Daddy had threatened more than once to come down here and show the man the rough end of his fist. Kasey only rolled her eyes and laughed, telling us how harmless the man was, even if he was most of the way through his fifties with grown children older than I was. I didn’t doubt that she could take care of herself. Neither did Daddy, which was why he’d only threatened to tan the man’s hide and hadn’t actually done it.
I gave her another hug and watched her walk off, getting stuck in a conversation with another male customer before she could even get to the other side of the room. I turned to watch Pete at the bar, waiting on our drinks. Kasey was right. I’d found a good one.
Chapter Twenty-One
Pete
Saturday
I handed a glass of beer to Emma and led her over to the bar where two stools had just opened up. We sat down and clinked our glasses together.
“Here’s to a damned fine rodeo,” I said, and we drank to that. I was riding a serious high. We’d sold both Tucker and Max today, which had earned me several thousand dollars more than I’d paid for them. And, Lacey’d won her division in the barrel races, earning herself a tidy sum. Not to mention I was out on Saturday night with the most beautiful woman in this town, or any other.
“Tell me about Jack?” I asked.
She looked at me, searching my face, maybe to see if I was jealous. I wasn’t. The way he’d come up and hugged both Emma and her sister made it pretty clear to me they were old friends. But I wanted to know as much as I could about this girl, who was still mostly a mystery to me, even with the door of that safe opening a little more every day.
She set her beer down, flipping her thick ponytail over her shoulder as she answered me. We’d run by the hotel for showers and a change of clothes before heading out for the evening. She’d traded her jeans and button up shirt for a pair of sandals and a dark blue dress made of some silky fabric I couldn’t stop running my fingers over. She’d had to slap my hands off her leg three or four times on the drive over.
“Jack and I went to school together. We’ve been friends about as long as you and Lacey. Anytime you saw me, you saw him right after. Daddy used to call Jack my shadow.” She laughed, her eyes taking on that faraway shine the way they did whenever she was remembering something nice.
“But we went off to different colleges after graduation. He was all the way in Dallas, and I was here in Austin. We were never home on the same weekends, and we just lost touch.” She shrugged. “I can’t believe we ran into each other here, in Kasey’s bar of all places.”
I took another drink of my beer. I’d have to let Lacey know all about this. I could just picture the flat, furious look she’d give me when I rubbed this into her face. Emma had her own childhood friend, the same way I did, which meant she probably wasn’t suspicious at all of my relationship with Lacey. The girl was right about a lot of things, but not this.
My shoulders relaxed as that constant tension building for days relaxed. I felt a lot better now. I hadn’t realized how much the thought had been bothering me since she’d brought it up the other day. I didn’t want to choose between Emma and my best friend. I loved them both.
Oh shit.
I took another long sip of beer as Emma continued on about Jack. Yeah, I loved this girl. I was ready to admit that to myself. But as skittish as Emma’d been so far, I’d do well to keep that safely under my hat for the time being. My feelings tended to come on quick. Hers seemed the type to take a while, which was just fine. I could wait for as long as it took.
We finished our beers and ordered another round, this time with a basket of wings and French fries to go with it.
“How’d you like the rodeo?” I asked.
“It was great!” Emma said, her green eyes getting wide and sparkling with excitement. “I haven’t seen a rodeo since I was a kid. And, it was nowhere near as big as that one. It didn’t have barrel racing at all. Lacey was amazing.”
I nodded as I took a bite of chicken wing. “Yeah, she’s something else. She’s been doing that since she was seven or so. Her daddy was big into the rodeo circuit. She can do plenty of shit that I’d get killed trying out. And, the stuff she can do with a lasso will knock you flat. Ask her to show you one day.”
Emma giggled. She’d finished half of her second glass of beer, the alcohol bringing a healthy flush to her cheeks. “I was a little sad to see Max and Tucker go. But I guess I have to get used to that.”
“Lacey has her favorite on the farm, and I have mine. All the others get sold eventually.” I didn’t tell her how reluctant I’d been to sell Max. He was a damn fine quarter horse, definitely one of the best I’d ever had on the farm behind Lacey’s favorite, Elsa. But the guy I’d been dickering with must’ve sensed my hesitation because he offered five hundred over asking price. I’d have been a fool to say no.
“Do you have new horses coming?”
I nodded. “I’ve been talking with a rancher just south of Dallas. I might send Lacey out there. She’s got a better eye than I do, and she’s a helluva lot better at bargaining.”
Emma tilted her head back, showing off her slender neck, and gulped down the rest of her b
eer.
“No more ranch talk,” I said, grinning at her. “Tonight’s about us.” I dropped my hand on her leg, loving the feel of that silky damned dress, and she let me keep it there this time. I lifted my chin in the direction of the dance floor where a few couples were clasped together and swinging their hips to the country music pumping from the jukebox.
“Want to dance?”
She laughed, her shiny eyes squinted nearly closed. “You’ll have to buy me another drink before I’ll go out there with you.”
I ordered two more beers. I finished mine quickly, just wanting to get on that dance floor with her body pressed up against mine while I rubbed my hands up and down her silky back. She must’ve felt the same because she finished her drink right after I finished mine, putting her empty glass down next to our basket of chicken bones.
I stood and took her by the hand. She was a little tipsy, so I slid and arm around her shoulder as we got out onto the floor. She turned, pressing the front of her lean little body against me, her arms lifting to loop around my neck as I slid my arms around her waist. We rocked to a slow song, never breaking eye contact, her pretty face the only thing I cared to look at in Murdock’s.
After a few more songs, we decided to try another bar on Sixth Street. We said goodbye to Kasey — who hugged Emma first and then turned to hug me, as well — and walked a few doors down to the next place that looked like a good time, the twangy music pulsing from the open doors.
We spent the next few hours hopping from bar to bar, drinking a little and dancing a whole lot, both of us jumping around and laughing during the fast songs and clinging to each other during the slow ones. We dragged ourselves off of the dance floor of the fifth bar, breathing heavily, both of us tipsy as hell, and collapsed onto some empty barstools.
“You want another drink?” I asked, shouting to make my voice heard.
She shook her head. Sweat was glistening on her face. We’d been dancing up a storm for a few solid hours. She leaned to speak directly into my ear, her lips so close I could feel them.
