by Tina Leonard
“If you learned to ride,” Hattie said, “Trace might take your idea more seriously.”
“He doesn’t think a man will let a woman bullfight for him. He says a man wants another man helping him out when he’s facing injury. I should have known better than to pin my hopes on the Outlaws,” Judy said. “But there’s just nobody better, and I want this team first-rate.”
“If we give Trace’s way a shot first,” Ava pointed out, “maybe he’ll change his mind later. When he realizes we’re all very determined about this.”
“Why?” Hattie asked. “Why bullfight?”
“I’ve grown up around bullfighters,” Ava answered, “had brothers who rodeod. I heard the stories at night about the bullfighters, and how not every bullfighter is a good one. There are those who make the riders feel real good knowing he’s out there in the arena, and then there’s others they wish weren’t. If you ever had a brother who couldn’t get loose of his bull when his bull was dragging him around like a puppet, trying to kick the life out of him, you’d know how critical it is to have a brave, talented bullfighter in there staying fearless for you.”
They all gawked at her.
Ava shrugged. “I’m just saying, maybe some folks don’t think that’s a real job. Maybe they don’t realize that bullfighters aren’t entertainment. The men on the back of those bulls have families they love, families they’re trying to feed, and they deserve committed protection just as much as anyone else does.”
“That’s probably the reason Trace’s sweet on her,” Judy told Hattie in a confiding tone. “She wears her heart in her eyes like that when she talks, and you just kind of melt listening to her.”
Ava shook her head. “Ladies, matchmaking will get you nowhere, I promise.”
“I wouldn’t mind Saint Markham being sweet on me,” Cameron said. “But I’m pretty sure he didn’t notice I was alive.”
Hattie and Judy shared a glance, laughing.
“You don’t have to worry about any of the Outlaws. They know every woman’s alive,” Hattie said. “Anyway, Judy, I think I agree with Ava on this one. Trace is so stubborn you have to get at him another way. Let him work with the girls the way he wants to. At least they’ll be riding, getting their horses worked out. You don’t want to have anything to do with the Horsemen; you know you were just using them to get on Trace’s last nerve.”
“I think she succeeded,” Cameron said. “I have a date tomorrow night with a Horseman.”
The surprised women turned to Cameron.
“Well, we were training there,” Cameron said, “and he’s cute—”
“Who’s cute?” Ava demanded. The Horsemen were good-looking enough, if you liked them rough around the edges.
Trace was rough around the edges, yet somehow sexy.
And arrogant—a definite drawback.
“Jake Masters,” Cameron said.
Judy gasped. “Not Jake the snake!”
“Oh, honey, no,” Hattie said. “You don’t want to do that.”
“It’d be like going over to the dark side,” Judy said, her doe eyes wide. “I feel like a proud mama to you girls. You can’t go out with Horsemen!”
Steel slid into the booth next to Judy. “What are you ladies plotting about now?”
Judy gave him an aggrieved look. “ ‘Plotting’? Why is it that women plot, but men strategize?”
The sheriff laughed. “Whatever you do, darling, you do it beautifully.”
Judy shook her head at her beau. “Tell Cameron why she doesn’t want to go out with Jake the snake.”
The sheriff seemed pained. “Jake used to date Ivy Peters, for one thing.”
“What’s so bad about that?” Ava wondered.
Steel looked up at the ceiling, and Judy glared at him. “You don’t want anything to do with getting Ivy riled,” Judy said. “The reason Ivy dated Jake the snake is because Ivy is truly Poison Ivy. They deserve each other.”
The sheriff was still trying to look innocent, and Judy was having none of it. “I don’t allow my man to go near Ivy’s place. If Steel has to go out there, he has to take an Outlaw with him. Either Trace, Saint, or Declan, I do not care which—even if Declan is Fallon’s twin brother, I can trust Declan to guard Steel. Just someone strong to keep Ivy’s arms from wrapping around my man. Bad things go on at Ivy’s place.”
“Aw, Judy,” Steel said.
“What’s wrong with it?” Harper asked.
“It’s not a classy joint,” Hattie said. “Ivy Peters’ Honky-tonk and Dive Bar. You can imagine that they attract a different clientele than the Rolling Thunder.” She shrugged. “Ivy’s on the outskirts of town, where she belongs, in my opinion.”
“But in spite of that,” the sheriff said, knowing he was taking a chance, “they pay their taxes and they do charity work. They’re not all bad.”
Judy’s glare could have frozen summer rain into icicles.
“Jake seems so nice,” Cameron said.
“It can’t hurt for one night, can it?” Ava asked. Cameron looked so dismayed that everyone was raining on her date that she felt sorry for her. Cameron shot her a grateful glance.
“You don’t know them,” Judy said, “so if you go, you take Ava.”
“Me?” Ava said, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut now.
“And Harper.” Judy was adamant, and Hattie nodded in agreement.
“And Trace,” Hattie said.
“So it won’t be a date,” Ava said. “It’ll be chaperonage.”
“That’s the idea,” Judy said. “I don’t know what you see in Jake the snake, although I will admit that he has that dark-haired, god-bodied charm that’s irresistible to women.” She sighed. “False advertising, if you ask me.”
Cameron raised a hand in surrender. “I won’t go, if you really think I shouldn’t.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Ava said. She had more than passing acquaintance with snakes, and if Hattie and the sheriff seemed unwilling to endorse Jake, there was no reason for Cameron to take a chance on getting bit.
Trace may be a snake, too, but I’d be too blinded to see it.
“Anyway,” Judy said, “back to the problem at hand.”
“Give Trace’s idea a go,” Hattie advised. “What can it hurt? A team is a fluid thing. It changes and grows as everyone on the team learns to trust and rely on each other.”
“I think Hattie’s right, Judy. What can it hurt to let Trace guide us for a bit?” Ava said. Especially now that they’d learned that the mayor couldn’t ride herself. She’d come all the way from Virginia to train under a woman with no plan. But when she’d checked Judy out, every single person she’d talked to said that Mayor Judy was the backbone of Hell.
Even her parents had thought it was a great chance for her to start over.
However, putting herself in Trace’s hands seemed like a bad idea—because she knew how much she was attracted to him.
I’ll give this gig another week. If Judy can’t pull this team together by then, I’m going back to Virginia and my job at the paper factory.
She looked at Cameron, thinking her teammate was probably making a huge mistake going out with Jake. Still, it was Cameron’s business.
But I can’t afford those kinds of mistakes. Dark-haired, god-bodied types of mistakes.
Like Trace.
* * *
Cameron settled in between Harper and Ava in the front seat of Ava’s truck as she drove them back to the Hell’s Outlaws Training Center. “Fair warning, I am going out with Jake. And I guess you’re the sacrificial lamb.”
Ava shrugged. “It’s your business.”
Harper fixed her blonde hair in the tiny truck mirror, trying to tame it under her straw hat. Ava continued, “One date can’t hurt. And maybe you could gain some insight as to why the Outlaws and the Horsemen don’t get along.”
“I couldn’t care less about that,” Cameron said.
Ava heard the note of rebellion in her team member’s voice.
&n
bsp; “Jake’s hot. I’ve trained since I was in junior high, hard, to get to this level. While other girls were out going to proms and finding themselves in trucks with the class president or the class pothead, I was training. Competing and showing.” Cameron took a deep breath. “I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it. That hard work got me a scholarship to college. But I want a chance to walk on the wild side now. And Jake looks pretty wild to me.”
“I understand how you feel,” Harper said. “I fell in love with my high school sweetheart. Now I have a son but no husband. What I always had going for me was my riding. I love my little boy, but sometimes I wish I’d played my cards differently. Marriage, for example.”
Besides training and competing, Ava had worked at the paper factory to help out her folks with the expense of her horse and her training. Her mom and father worked at a towel plant, making beach towels, bath towels, and dish towels—money had been tight. Judy’s team had seemed like a golden ticket to a life doing what she loved, which was rodeo. If Judy’s plan fizzled, she understood why Cameron might want something to show for it.
“We’ll all go,” Ava said. “It’s no big deal. One night out of our schedule.” Besides, it would give her a chance to see Trace—not that that should matter a bit.
“Thanks,” Cameron said gratefully. “If this adventure doesn’t pan out, I really don’t want to go back home to six siblings and babysitting duties without finding out what a guy who pretty much reminds me of James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause kisses like. I get shivers just thinking about it.”
Ava wished she didn’t understand exactly what Cameron was talking about. She’d had her fair share of shivers from the moment Trace had turned their team down.
Once he’d kissed her, the shivers had turned to desire. Longing.
It was hard to go back once that first kiss changed your life.
* * *
“You’re late!” Trace bawled at the team when they finally flounced into his training center five minutes past the agreed-upon time. “If you can’t get saddled up and in the ring when I say, I don’t have time to train you.” He glared at the three women.
“Judy called a meeting,” Ava said.
“That’s Judy’s problem, not mine.” Trace glared at Ava for good measure. He couldn’t get soft around her just because he wanted to get into bed with her. That was a dishonorable thought, but it was true. The night he’d rescued his truck keys from her, landing himself on her to teach her about messing with a man and his truck had been a dumb idea.
Really dumb. He’d had a hard-on for the past week that wouldn’t quit.
“We’re here now.”
“All right then,” he said gruffly. “Warm up. Around the ring, nice and gentle. You know the drill. The horses need time to get used to working out here. No fancy stuff.”
He really did sound like a drill sergeant. Ava shook her head, but she was used to tough instructors and went through the paces. She could feel him watching her, testing her, picking at her form with a testy eye.
“You ladies have had some decent training, but not enough,” Trace said as they went by. “I can’t imagine what makes you three think you want to be bullfighters. A decent seat on a pony doesn’t make you tough enough or strong enough to be a bullfighter—even if you were males, which you clearly aren’t.”
Ava let that pass for the moment, gritting her teeth as she cantered. Trace getting under her skin wasn’t a recipe for success. He was every bit as cantankerous as Miss Judy was airy-fairy, and of the two, only Trace could get them where they wanted to go.
“So what was this all-important meeting about?” Trace demanded after he’d waved them to the middle of the ring.
“Cameron has a date with Jake the—Jake Masters,” Ava said.
Trace glanced at the beautiful redhead with the big eyes and the mysterious expression. Sexy, but not his type—he had to go for the spunky, dark-haired one with the sassy, loud mouth. “How the hell is that my problem? Dumb idea, by the way,” he said to Cameron.
“It’s not your problem, Trace. We won’t be late again,” Ava said.
“It is your problem,” Harper said, “because you’re going with us.”
Ava’s gaze met Trace’s, and he felt sparks run all over him, snapping and hot.
“Why in holy hell would I give up two seconds of my time to babysit a dumb redhead doing a dumb thing?”
“Trace,” Ava said, “Judy thinks it’s a good idea if you go.”
“I’m not a nursemaid.” Recognizing the mayor trump card being played on him, Trace glared at all of them. “If you ladies are just in Hell to find men, then there’s not a chance that you’re serious about being a team.”
“Get a grip, Trace,” Ava said. “It’s a night of beer drinking and maybe some pool playing at Redfeathers. That’s all you’re going to have to do, which is what you do on most of your evenings anyway, isn’t it?”
He moved his dark brown cowboy hat back on his head, eying Harper. “Why are you so quiet? Don’t you want to pipe in?”
“No, thank you,” Harper said stiffly. “I’m not walking the plank on this excursion.”
Trace’s gaze landed on Ava again. “Why are you involved? Are you Judy’s head busybody?”
Ava shrugged. “I guess I am.”
He scoffed. “I’ve met three-year-olds more serious about riding than you ladies.”
“Are you going to get on with the lesson or gripe all day?” Ava demanded. “I haven’t seen any indication you even know how to teach riding, much less seen an outline of your plan of how you think our team can achieve Mayor Judy’s goals.”
He stared at her. “Fair enough. Let’s get these horses around some barrels.”
They did exactly as he asked without further blowback. Trace sighed, watching Ava’s fanny move up and down as she worked her horse out. She had a sweet, sweet motion; a lot of long hours had gone into her training, and it showed in her movements and the way she treated her horse—not to mention the hot, tight curves of her ass.
Trace had a bad feeling that the hard-on he’d been wearing for the past week wasn’t going away anytime soon.
Chapter Six
Ava heard a knock on her bungalow door that night as she was getting ready to meet the team for dinner, and somehow she knew who it was. She put down her hairbrush, put a light pink gloss on her lips, and went to the door.
Trace stood outside, just as she’d hoped. “Hi.”
He looked at the powder-blue dress, which floated above her knees, and the tan-and-brown cowboy boots she wore with it. His gaze met hers. “Going out?”
“Is it any of your business?” Ava asked.
“Actually, no. Got a second?”
She wasn’t about to let him in. He was her wildest temptation, and she planned to treat him like Eve’s apple—no biting. “Not really. I’ve got to meet the team for dinner.” He perked up. “Redfeathers?”
“Not tonight, no. Judy’s cooking for us around her pool.”
He grunted. “You’re in for a treat.”
“I hope so.”
“Have you taken a good look at Steel? Does he look like he isn’t being taken care of?” He looked wistful. “I wish Judy had invited me to that meal, instead of the one tomorrow night.”
“The date-night dinner.”
“The dumbest-thing-I-ever-heard-of dinner. Why does Cameron want to go out with Jake?”
“I didn’t ask. It’s not my problem.”
He shook his head. “It’s our problem, all of us. It makes things complicated, and I hate complications. Let’s ditch them and go fishing.”
She looked at Trace. “Is that your answer for everything? Going fishing?”
“Is there a better answer?”
He looked long and sexy hovering in her doorway, and Ava was so tempted to take up fishing. Anything to be alone with him. “I wouldn’t know. I didn’t have a lot of time for fishing.” Or anything except training, and working part-time through high schoo
l, then community college, then working full-time.
“Anyway,” Trace said, “what I came to tell you is that I wasn’t in the best mood today.”
“So?” She frowned. “I’m not paying you to be in a good mood or a bad mood. I simply want your expertise. What your mood is doesn’t concern me.”
He took that in. “Good.”
“If you had to apologize to me every time you’re a bit of a toad, wouldn’t you be on my porch every night?”
A reluctant smile tugged at his lips. “Not necessarily.”
“But probably.”
“Possibly.” He laughed. “Where’d you get all your spark?”
“You stick to coaching, and whatever else you do. I promise to be a hardworking student. That’s the sum of the information we need from each other.”
He sighed. “You’re still mad about the day by the pond.”
“I’m not mad, I’m forewarned. At least you knocked on my door today, instead of pulling a prank on me just to see if you could make me scream.”
“Yeah. You didn’t.”
“Cameron and Harper are in the other rooms. They would have come running if I had. I make no promises for the future. So you’re going to have to be more of a gentleman.”
He didn’t look too pleased about that. “I am a gentleman.”
“We’ll see.”
He shook his head. “So anyway, I’ve got tickets to the rodeo tonight in Austin. It starts at eight. How late are you going to be at Judy’s place?”
“Later than that.”
He looked disappointed. “You don’t make it easy to make amends.”
“Last-minute plans are rarely a good idea. Besides,” she said, softening, “you know Judy’s not going to let us have too much time on our hands. She’s really unhappy that one of the Horsemen managed to chat up one of her team when she took her eye off the ball for all of three seconds.”
“It’s really dumb. But I guess it’s true: They say women really go for the bad boys, and Jake sure fits that description.”
She thought Trace had “bad boy” written all over him. And he was right: She did go for it. “I have to go. Judy insists that we be punctual.”
