Page 77

His hand slips. Falls to my chest, fingers splayed wide. Just to the left of my sternum. “Yeah, baby. Mine is right here.”

When I start to shiver, Finn drags me back to civilization.

“We have plans,” he informs me ominously, and my poor, battered nervous system weeps, it doesn’t want plans, it wants a dark room and silence. But as my wet clothes are peeled from my body, as any lingering snow is licked from my body, it decides it wants Finn more.

He makes a real big show out of promising me that wherever we’re going is not a date, and I guess he tells the truth.

It’s worse than a date.

It’s a double date.

Well, a double date, and Adam. Or depending on how you look at it, a double date and me, considering my boyfriend and his boyfriend are practically joined at the hip.

I swear, I feel like the third-wheel, but I’m kind of okay with it.

Finn splitting his attention between me and someone else means he doesn’t fully notice how much I like his little not date surprise—means he can’t gloat like an asshole.

Really, though, it’s not a win win for him.

Obviously, I was going to like the goddamn rodeo.

It’s cold and it’s loud and it’s busy, but there are horses. There are fried pickles. There’s a man wearing a red sweater and a matching red hat who keeps glancing over his shoulder to grin at my belt buckle, so really, I can’t find all that much to complain about.

That is, of course, until the conversation strays to places I wish it wouldn’t.

“You think it was random?” Yasmin muses around a mouthful of cotton candy, and my whole body tightens. “Or were we targeted?”

“If we were targeted,” Theo licks the back of his thumb and uses it to swipe away a sticky, sugary streak on his girlfriend’s cheek. “Wouldn’t they have targeted the main house? Or the barn, where the safe is?”

“Maybe we were the targets.” Adam pumps his brows, completely oblivious to how his joke has me paling. So unaware as to how right he is when he turns the joke on me. “You got any enemies, Lot?”

I laugh shakily, and I fucking pray that it doesn’t sound as damning to their ears as it does to mine. “Too many to count.”

Everyone chuckles. They think nothing of my response. They continue flippantly discussing the break-in as we wander between food stalls, and they don’t, for a single second, consider taking my words as anything more than the joke it unfortunately is not.

Everyone, of course, but the man who drops back to curl his fingers around mine. “You okay?”

“ Yup ,” comes out a little too quickly. A little too sharply. A little too suspiciously , earning me narrowed, attentive eyes that I suddenly, desperately need to escape lest they see right through me.

Muttering something not entirely coherent about needing the bathroom, I duck out of Finn’s grip and dart away, getting lost in the crowd before he can even think to follow. Head low, I throw elbows at the people who don’t immediately make way for me and my dire scowl.

It’s apt, I think, that my stomping feet bring me all the way to the bull pen. I fit right in amongst the huffing, severe creatures. Fingers curling around one of the horizontal metal bars separating me from the beasts, I glare at the one closest, an enormous roan who glares straight back.

“Woah.” A pair of bare, tanned forearms stack beside me, a tattooed elbow brushing mine. “You’re gonna scare my bulls, girl.”

Fuck your bulls, I start to tell whatever dumbass mistook me as approachable only for the words to dry up in my throat when I recognize the dumbass in question. A holy shit dies too, but only because I kill it at the last second.

“Everett James,” I say instead as I cock my head at the crown fucking jewel of Haven Ridge. God, the poster I used to have on my bedroom wall really did not do the champion bull rider justice—he’s even better-looking in person. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

One inked bicep flexing as he lifts the black Stetson off his head, the other follows suit as he rakes a hand through chin-length, chestnut-brown hair that looks a little ruddy where the sun catches it. Everett flashes a grin that could stop traffic. “Do we know each other?”

“I’m a Jackson,” is the only explanation I offer, figuring it’ll be enough, and it is.

Maybe we’ve never met, but it’s clear Everett knows all about the family that grew up on the ranch right next door to his own.

Just like we knew all about him—just like a whole lot of people know all about him, about the small town bull rider who made it real big.

Big enough to never have to hang around a little rodeo like this one, yet here he stands.

“Ah.” Shifting to prop his hip against the pen, he cocks his head right back, lips curling at the edges as eyes that honest to God sparkle drag down the length of me and back up again. “You look a little young to be the famous Lux.”

I snort— Lux is a little young to be the famous Lux . “I’m Lottie.”

“Lottie,” he repeats, rolling my name in a way that would be dangerously seductive to anyone not versed in the art of cocky cowboys. “You sure we haven’t met? You look familiar.”

I snort. “Does that line ever work for you?”

“Don’t usually need a line.”

Hm. Just blinks those pretty green eyes and the girls come running, I bet.

He does just that, and I don’t move. Nor do I when that olive gaze flicks elsewhere—not to the body that suddenly comes up behind mine, not to the face that presses to the top of my head, but to the hand that curls around my belt buckle.

The long, possessive fingers that hook around the cool metal and push until my hips settle in the cradle of another’s.

“ Ah ,” Everett says again, but my attention is no longer his.

Now, it belongs to the man looming over me, the man I can’t help but smirk at, the man with not one, but two claiming grips on my body—the other in the form of a forearm flat across my collarbones. “Something wrong, baby?”

Finn’s jaw ticks. “Show’s starting.”

“Right.” I drop my gaze again, quickly finding a wry Everett.

“That’s my cue.” Tipping his hat, he starts a lazy backwards retreat. “Nice to meet you, Lottie Jackson.”

Everett winks.

Finn grunts.

I grin and I snicker and I fall a little deeper into the warm pit I’ve yet to grow enough balls to put a name to. I try to wave goodbye to the bull rider, but Finn snatches my hand from the air, interlocking our fingers and holding them just a little to the left of my sternum.

Barking a laugh, Everett turns around. And just before he rounds the corner, just before all that tan, supple skin disappears from view, I frown at the oddly familiar birthmark on his shoulder.

“See something you like?”

I tilt my head back again, finding Finn’s glower, loving it. “God, yes.”

Finn grunts again. Something lands on my head, warm and soft—a hat, his hat. “Be good,” he murmurs against my ear, “and I’ll come and collect later.”

I shiver. Swallow. Take a long moment to compose myself before twisting to look up at him properly, my face the perfect picture of confused innocence. “Huh? I just heard come .”

Groaning, Finn digs his fingers into my waist, his other hand dragging down his face as he hastily glances around the fairground.

I’m half-convinced he’s about to whisk me away somewhere more private—or just take me right here and now—and God, am I hoping for either option, when someone calls our names.

Kissing my teeth in disappointment, I lift a hand to acknowledge the group waving at us from the bleacher seats they snagged. Fucking cockblocks.

A hand claps against my ass, urging me in their direction. “Let’s go, trouble.”

“ Trouble .” I scoff, backhanding a firm bicep. “You bring a kid to a candy store and then you get mad when she looks at the treats. How is that—”

Fair , I mean to finish.

Squeal is what I do instead.

Because hands clamp around my waist and hoist me into the air and carry me like a damn ragdoll, audience be damned, to the bleachers.

“ Finn ,” I shriek, I squeal some more, I cackle so hard, my stomach hurts.

My fucking ass hurts because he slaps it again before dropping me on it.

I land beside a laughing Yasmin. Everyone’s laughing.

I’m laughing, and I’m trying to remember if I’ve ever squealed before in my life, I’m trying to figure out how my mood shifted so damn quickly, I’m gazing at Finn with fucking hearts in my eyes as he laughs too, and I’m sobering a little as it suddenly dawns on me that like is not the emotion making me feel all warm and fuzzy.

I abruptly look away.

And then, I don’t feel warm and fuzzy at all.

When my gaze locks on something on the other side of the ring, warm is the last thing I feel.

Ricky is already looking at me. Staring so intently, so unnervingly, so unexpectedly, it takes me a while to register anything else beside him—to recognize who he’s with.

And when I do…

Well, fuck.