Once a Champion

by Jeannie Watt

  “She’s four days old,” Jed’s son, Tyler, announced. “And I’m four years old.”

  Matt made an impressed “whoa” noise at Tyler, who beamed with pride, then Matt glanced up at Corrie. “Should she be out at this age?”

  Corrie laughed. “We want to start her rodeo career off as soon as possible, and Mama wanted to get out of the house.”

  “So did Papa,” Jed said, dragging Tyler up onto his lap.

  “We saw your horse!” Tyler announced just before Jed put his fingers over his son’s mouth.

  The boy rolled his laughing eyes up at his father who whispered, “Shhh.”

  “So did I,” Matt said to Tyler. “He did pretty good, didn’t he?”

  “I guess,” the boy said. “Dad says you got a boy, too. Where is he?”

  Matt smiled. “My boy isn’t a rodeo fan like you.”

  “I’m a big fan,” Tyler agreed.

  “And he’ll talk your ear off,” Jed said. “So...everything okay?”

  “With?”

  “Tim. I heard you took him to the hospital.”

  “A little touch-and-go, but I think he’s going to be fine. Liv is keeping me posted.”

  “So I saw,” Corrie said. Jed frowned at her, but she merely smiled and turned her attention back to the action in the arena. Matt wondered just what she was talking about—until he turned to go and saw that the family had a clear view of Liv’s trailer from where they sat.

  Well, so be it. Maybe he and Liv had simply been inside discussing business—in a room the size of a small closet.

  * * *

  MATT KNEW TIM would be coming home anytime, but he took a chance and drove over to Liv’s house while Craig played some interactive game with a kid in some faraway city. He figured the kid had better get his fill of that kind of stuff because the internet at the dude ranch was not very fast.

  Liv came out onto the porch as he parked, wearing a long silky red robe and carrying a towel that she’d obviously just taken off her head since her hair hung in damp waves around her face.

  “Hmm,” he said as he came up the walk. “I should have gotten here earlier.”

  Liv clutched the towel in both hands and tried to smile, but instead got the same look she’d worn when he’d teased her while she tried to tutor him.

  Ah. The roosters had come home to roost. But that didn’t stop her from checking him out, which made him think an interesting conversation lay ahead.

  “Matt.”

  “Olivia.” Now that they’d identified each other, he was curious what came next.

  Her lips twitched, but she made no reply. Matt waited for a second or two, then decided to do the gentlemanly thing and help her out. “I can see that you’re itching to lay out some ground rules.”

  “How can you tell?”

  He leaned his shoulder against the newel post, for some reason finding her barriers less intimidating than usual. Maybe because he now knew that those walls could come down. In fact, he couldn’t wait to see them come down again. So if she needed ground rules to feel safe, so be it.

  “You’re...different...than you were in the trailer.”

  She smiled a little, but she didn’t relax. Not one bit.

  “Yeah. No doubt.” She cocked her head and met his eyes directly. “The other night, with you, was my first...casual encounter.” Her eyebrows went up slightly as if she were unsure she was getting her point across. Oh, he got it.

  Matt couldn’t exactly say the same, but he hadn’t considered last night all that casual. Liv needed to, though, and he was curious as to why.

  “So what are the ground rules, Liv?” He found himself focusing on her more intently than he wanted to, waiting for her answer with a touch of unexpected impatience. He might be impatient in the professional areas of his life, but in his relationships, he was happy to take things slowly after the train wreck that had occurred after his hasty marriage to Trena.

  Her eyebrows drew together slightly. “I’m not making rules,” she finally said. “But I will tell you my limitations.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I think we’re developing a decent friendship here, but I won’t let it go past friendship. We will live our own lives.”

  Limitation number one. “And what we did the other night?”

  “I can see it happening again.”

  “So we’d basically become screw buddies?” He avoided the cruder term, but just barely.

  “That sounds so crass,” she said.

  “Probably because it is.” When had he developed these high standards?

  “I don’t believe this is an uncommon occurrence.”

  “So what you’re saying,” he said, “is that we’ll do our own thing, go our own way and if we happen to find ourselves in a similar situation to last night, we might screw again.”

  She blinked. A cool blink that relayed a wealth of repressed emotion. She did not appear happy with the way the laying down of the rules was progressing or with hearing them translated into plain English.

  “I guess so,” she finally said.

  He considered for a moment before saying, “Good for now, but I can’t guarantee that I won’t ever need more than that.”

  Alarm flashed in her blue eyes. “I can’t offer more.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “I’m pretty sure of it.”

  “Why?”

  Liv swallowed. He didn’t think she was going to answer, but she surprised him. She swung the towel up over her shoulder, still hanging on to one end as she said, “I’ve had two serious relationships since high school. The first was not good and I was too subservient to do anything about it. He finally dumped me for someone else and I was devastated. And stupid for being devastated. The second guy...I almost married. I thought we were partners, until it finally struck me that yeah, he pretended we were partners, until push came to shove. After that it was his way or the highway. I finally took the highway.” She leveled a serious look at him. “I am never going through that again.”

  “Noted.”

  “I’m serious, Matt. I just want to live my life.”

  “I wouldn’t stop you from doing that.”

  “Yes, I know.”

  “Because I won’t have a chance. Right?”

  “This isn’t working,” she said softly.

  “But it might, given a chance.”

  She shook her head. “Not unless we understand each other.”

  “Play it your way, in other words.”

  He was more than willing to play it her way. Liv had some scars he hadn’t known about. He didn’t quite understand why she was so militant, but she was and there was no getting around it, so he had to work with it.

  And right now he wasn’t going to sign on as a screw buddy. Maybe it was ego, maybe just stubbornness, but he didn’t think that what they were developing between them was simply a friends-with-benefits deal. Liv was skittish, but that didn’t mean that she wouldn’t eventually see that the two of them did pretty damned well together.

  “That’s all I can offer,” she said.

  Matt let out a breath—he was a little pissed, a little intrigued. A lot uncertain.

  At least he knew more than he’d known before. Liv wasn’t up for another bad relationship.

  Matt wasn’t, either, so they had that in common, and if they ever did get to a point, slowly, that they wanted to embark on something...more...then the last thing he would try to do would be to co
ntrol her life and her decisions. As long as she understood that, then there shouldn’t be a problem and he’d been clear enough on the matter.

  Clearer than he and Trena had been with each other.

  He looked up at the starry sky for a moment, thinking about the asshole guys who’d had a hand in shaping Liv’s outlook on relationships, even causal ones, and felt a deep need to beat the crap out of someone. Then he shook his head and started back for the porch, where Liv stood, rolling the towel into a ball. He’d never felt like this about a woman before and had no idea how things were going to go. This was new territory for him. Territory he wanted to explore.

  He started up the steps, taking them slowly. Liv’s lips parted when he reached the one just below her, as did her robe when she dropped her hands to her sides, giving him a very good look at why he wasn’t in his truck right now, driving away. But it was more than that, and he didn’t want to blow this. He stopped a good two feet away from her, resisting the urge to touch her. “Liv, couldn’t we just...be...for a while? Keep an open mind? Not be so quick to define things?”

  She didn’t answer immediately, and the conflicting emotions—fear, desire, curiosity, caution—played openly across her features. “And if I try, but can’t?” she finally asked.

  “We pull the plug.”

  Her eyes were wide. Wary. “And until then?”

  He moved a step closer. “I think you know what happens until then.” What she obviously wanted to happen until then.

  He saw her swallow, felt again like reaching out to her, but didn’t. “I want to be fair,” she said. “Tell you the truth...about me.”

  “You’ve done that. Now what else do you want?”

  She sucked a breath in through her teeth and then slowly planted both hands, one still holding the damp towel, on his chest. “I guess I’d really like to make the most of the last night my father isn’t going to be home.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  HAVING LIV IN his life—even on her rather strict terms—was a distraction that Matt probably didn’t need, but one that he enjoyed all the same. During the two weeks that they’d been together, she both drove him crazy and helped him stay sane. An odd situation, but when he was around her, he didn’t think only of roping, of beating his brother to start his comeback, of how long his knee would hold out. He thought of all those things and Liv, too.

  Hard to believe this woman who was all but eating him alive was the same girl too shy to talk to him about anything except for the area under curves when she’d tutored him.

  He had no idea where this relationship was going, but he had no doubt at all that they did have a relationship, no matter what spin Liv wanted to put on it. They were not simply screw buddies, because if they were, he wouldn’t be wondering what he could do to make her happy. He would be satisfied with an evening of hot sex here and again. She wouldn’t be on his mind when he wasn’t with her.

  Craig wouldn’t be giving him that people-in-love-are-disgusting look every time she came over to the place—which she did fairly frequently.

  So was he in love?

  This wasn’t what he’d felt for Trena. He’d cared about her, been blown away by her beauty and sensuality, but the protectiveness he felt toward Liv hadn’t been part of the deal. That didn’t mean he hadn’t loved Trena, because he had. An immature love, but love all the same. This was different. Liv was different.

  One thing was certain—he didn’t need to be in any hurry to answer that question, because the instant he said anything at all that smacked of being a couple, Liv backed off. Sometimes she practically left skid marks. But she was not indifferent. Of that he was sure.

  Patience.

  And since he was practicing such patience with Liv, perhaps his impatience was spilling out in his professional life. Now that he had Snigs, he could practice more. Snigs one night, one of the practice horses the next, so he didn’t overdo it with her. But although Snigs was a fine horse, she wasn’t the horse Beckett was. He’d come to a place where he could live with that. Beckett was never a subject of conversation, and the few times that Liv had mentioned him, the moment had felt awkward and she’d quickly changed the subject.

  The fact that he was leaving the matter alone was another reason he knew he had it bad for Liv. Anyone else and he would have probably kept pushing. He would have been subtle, but push he would have. A testimony to his feelings, although he didn’t know if Liv knew, or would acknowledge it if she did.

  Patience.

  “Hey, Matt!” Craig’s voice came through his closed door loud and clear.

  Patience.

  “Yeah?”

  “Don’t you think you should start practice?”

  Matt threw back the covers. Of course. It was almost 7:00 a.m. Of course he should start practice. Craig just loved opening the chute and giving him pointers he picked up off of YouTube training videos.

  “Be right out.”

  Craig had the toaster waffles on a plate by the time Matt came down the hall, tucking in his shirt.

  “You’re walking better,” Craig said offhandedly.

  “Feeling better,” Matt replied.

  “Maybe you won’t have to get fake knees after all.”

  “Maybe,” Matt said, truly hoping he didn’t. All he wanted was one more season, one more win. One more year to figure out what he was going to do with his life that didn’t involve ranching with his father.

  For the first time ever he wished he’d finished a college degree and had something to fall back on as Wes had mentioned.

  So maybe he might go back...but not if he didn’t have to.

  One more year and maybe he could become a knee-replacement spokesperson. All he knew was that while he had his knees he was going to use them. If he had to get a replacement, he would, but life would change then and he wasn’t ready.

  Matt Montoya was going down fighting.

  “Hey, don’t take all the syrup.” Craig held his hand out and Matt handed over the bottle. He was going to miss Craig when he left.

  * * *

  “CRAIG SAYS YOU’RE practicing too hard.” Liv’s hand paused on Matt’s battle-worn knee. The right was worse than the left, crisscrossed with scars from where he’d had the cartilage cut away. The left was not that scarred, but Liv recognized needle marks that shouldn’t have been there.

  “Still seeing him, aren’t you?”

  “It’s not illegal.”

  “It should be.”

  Matt reached down to tilt her chin up so she had to meet his eyes. “I’m not overdoing things.”

  “Then why do you need to inject painkillers?”

  “So I can do my job.”

  Liv sat up and hugged her knees to her chest. Matt placed the flat of his hand on her back, but it didn’t comfort her. It only intensified the sadness she felt that he was doing this to himself and she had no right to ask him to stop.

  His life. You want to live your life, you have to allow him to live his.

  But what he was doing to his body was so wrong.

  “Why is roping so important?”

  The hand on her back stilled for a moment, then started moving again. “It’s what I do.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  He brought his lips down to lightly kiss her shoulder blade, sending tingles shooting through her body. “Maybe it’s more like it’s who I am.”

  She turned on him. “No. It’s not who you are. Something is driving
you. I mean, it’s not logical to risk destroying your knees for a sport.”

  “Football players do it all the time.”

  She dropped her head back down to her knees. Useless.

  “Roping...” he began, then fell silent again. She squeezed her eyes shut, hoping he would continue, afraid he would not.

  “Roping is the way I express things.”

  “Like what?”

  “When I first started, back in junior rodeo days, it was the competition that I loved. Competing against myself almost more than competing against other people.” He paused to clear his throat. “Pleasing my dad when I won.”

  “Did that change?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Liv waited for a moment, then rolled her head so that she could see him. “How?”

  “When I was fifteen years old, I took a trip with my dad to a roping clinic in Butte. I got done with my section and headed to the trailer to meet up with him. When I got there, I could hear him talking to some woman on the other side. I was about to walk around and tell him I was done when I heard her say, ‘Ryan needs braces.’ And there was something about the way she said it...”

  Liv had no idea where this was going, but wherever, it was serious. Matt wasn’t looking at her and his hand had once again stopped.

  “So I’m wondering to myself why my dad would care if Ryan needed braces.”

  “Did you know Ryan?”

  He gave a soft snort. “Oh, yeah. Ryan was the kid who was my toughest competition. A year younger than me, but we were in the same divisions.”

  “So why would your father care if Ryan needed braces?”

  “Because, come to find out, Ryan is my half brother.”

  Liv tossed her hair back as she sat up straight. “No.”

  “Oh, yeah. Not the best thing for a kid to find out about the dad he worshipped.”

  “My gosh, Matt.”

  He smiled tightly and she could see what this cost him to tell her this...this secret. More than that, she wondered what this was costing her. “Who knows about this?”