Page 17 of Rogue Cowboy (Montana’s Rodeo Cowboys #3)

Laughter rippled through the five or six cowboys gathered. Tucker Wilder poked her head out of the stable, grinning widely and giving Riley two thumbs-up. “Tell ’em, cowgirl,” Tucker called out.

Riley felt like her body was firing on all cylinders. Her energy hummed, but more people were arriving, curiosity stamped on their faces. Great. Her parents were definitely going to hear about her telling her brothers off.

“Show’s over,” she said firmly. “Get back to work.” She shooed her hands at them like they were flies buzzing.

“Ahhh, Riley, don’t be like that.” Parker Wilder, a teen who had just started competing on the junior circuit smiled at her and tipped his hat. “It’s not a rodeo until there’s at least one fistfight and some blood. I can be your champion.”

She was charmed in a weird way. “I have three too many as it is, cowboy.” She tipped Parker’s cowboy hat and caught Tucker’s vivid green gaze and warm smile.

Tucker had always been her role model and a mentor as they’d grown up.

Maybe Cole was right. She had been hiding.

Tucker was always out loud and proud, and maybe some of the cowgirl attitude could brush back on her.

“So to sum up,” she said to Rohan, Boone and Cole, “if I want to take a date to the steak dinner I will. If I want to go alone—” she turned her glare on Cole, who wasn’t earning any points toward being the calm, sweet, protective man of reason she’d thought he was “—I will.”

“I can take you, Miss Riley,” Parker said cheerfully, “if that Texas guy’s too lame for your taste.”

That elicited a lot of laughter and some playful verbal pushback of the young, sweet cowboy, who was Tucker’s nephew.

“Thank you, Parker, maybe in a few years I’ll take you up on it when I won’t be arrested.”

Cole’s dark gaze shifted to Parker, and she had the urge to stick out her tongue at him. Yup, men were idiots. And cowboys could be worse. She wasn’t some piece of land to plant a flag on.

More laughter and ribbing of Parker and calls of ‘swing and a miss’ and ‘don’t let your boots get over your horse.’

“Men,” Riley muttered one more time and spun on her heel and then marched back into the stable and straight to Cinnamon. “Horses have so much more sense.” She scratched Cinnamon’s face and ears, fed her an apple slice and then finger-combed her mane, wondering who would follow her in.

Cinnamon nuzzled her hair, and she felt the pull of teeth. “Nope,” she said and quickly braided her hair. She knew better and trying to hide the bruise was dumb as everyone had probably already heard all about Rohan’s bad aim.

“I wasn’t really going to fight your brother,” Cole said softly. She hadn’t even heard him enter. “He’s worried about you. He rightly suspects something happened in LA, and he’s looking for a place to stuff all that fear.”

And just like that, the guilt was back.

“Well-aimed kick though.” Cole almost smiled.

“I can do better.”

“I hope so. One of the many charms of a cowgirl.”

“I’m not trying to be charming. I’m trying to get my work done, so if you’re here, you work.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Ma’am my patootie.” Riley fought the urge to stick her tongue out. Now look who was being immature.

She indicated the wheelbarrow and shovel.

“Assume you know what to do with that.”

“Story of my life in one way or another.”

She smiled at him, and watched the way something happened in his eyes that made her tummy heat and limbs feel spongy.

Cole took the wheelbarrow and moved toward the first stall just as Rohan and Boone walked back in.

“Hope you brought a leash this time,” she said to Boone who shoved his hands in his front pockets and shrugged.

“It’s okay, Riley.” Cole’s voice was gentle, and she felt herself softening toward him, which only pissed her off more. “He’s your big brother. He should be protecting you. Both of your brothers should have been protecting you.”

She hoped only she could hear his tone harden and the shift in verb tense.

“The only thing I need protecting from now is being late with my chores,” she said pointedly.

Rohan nodded, but when Cole reached to unlatch Cinnamon’s stall, Rohan’s hand was there, blocking him.

“Walk with me,” Rohan said. “Talk. Boone will help Riley.”

Cole released the wheelbarrow.

Riley opened her mouth to object.

“I’ll be fine, Riley. And you can do what you need to do, Boone,” Cole said, his manner easy, reasonable. “I’ll be back soon to help Riley finish her chores.”

He looked at her, and she felt his perusal to her toes. He reached out and touched the end of her messy braid that fell over her shoulder.

“I’m just going to forget this morning’s drama happened,” she said.

“Done, except the part about the barbecue, dance tonight and the steak dinner tomorrow. I am hoping you’ll be my date for that.”

And then he was gone before she could agree or protest.

“You like him?” Boone asked.

He sounded curious. Not hostile, and she sighed, really thinking about it for the first time.

“I barely know him. We…met—” she left it at that, marveling at how one word could sum up what felt like a life history “—years ago. Rohan served with him, and we spent a few days in LA together acting like tourists. He was—” she wasn’t sure how to sum up Cole “—like no one I’d met before.

Quiet. Serious. But game for anything. He was a gentleman,” she stressed.

“But he was heading home for a few days before deploying again, and we kept in touch by text…a little,” she downplayed.

“That’s why he says he’s here. He wanted to see if there could be more. ”

It felt weird to tell Boone so much, and yet so little.

“Can there be?”

If Boone had sounded astonished or dismissive, she would have shut him down, but he was so Boone—curious. Nonjudgmental.

“I… He lives in Texas.”

“You like him.” Boone answered his own question and then with his thumb he tipped her mouth that she didn’t realize was hanging open closed.

“I like him too,” Boone said, sunshine-smiling brother again. “I’ll make sure he survives Rohan’s interrogation.”

“Not funny.”

“Kinda is, little sis.” Boone tugged her braid like he had when she’d been a kid. He made a kissing sound and then walked away whistling a song that teased her, but she was sure the title would likely make her blush.

“Men,” she said again to Cinnamon, whose tail swished with irritation at being ignored and having her breakfast delayed.

*

Cole followed Rohan out of the horse livestock barn.

The air was sharp with chill, the sky a crystalline swimming-pool blue, the air fragrant with pine, grasses, dirt, animal and camping cookstove griddles cooking up breakfast. The rodeo rigs and rodeo riders had more than quadrupled, filling up the large field and adding a sense of community.

There was a friendly, organized reunion feel to it all.

Rohan walked quickly, a rolling, fluid walk that had more of a hint of cowboy swagger than it had when they’d first served together and had become friends.

People greeted him, and while Rohan did call out, tip his hat or wave, he kept moving, and rodeo folks knew when a cowboy was intent on something more important than catching up. Still Cole felt a lot of gazes pinned to him.

“We walking to the next county?” Cole asked after Rohan had led him away from the parking lot, through the expansive fairgrounds and across a field liberally dotted with stands of ponderosa pines.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you.” Rohan stopped and swung around.

“But you don’t trust me.”

Rohan’s diamond-hard scrutiny cut into him, hotter than a forge fire.

“It’s just Riley came home from LA changed,” Rohan said.

“I wasn’t home yet. Couldn’t get there and had my own…

” He waved his hand around like he was aggressively swatting away a swarm of flies.

“God, I hate that word ‘issues,’ but hell, I did. But my folks were worried. Are worried. She was subdued. Nervous and spending half her energy pretending she’s not. ”

Cole wasn’t going to lie to his friend, but Riley’s story was hers to tell, though he was going all in to ensure she came clean with herself and her family because she was stuck.

And that confident, glowing free spirit snapping with fun, energy and daring was going to sparkle again.

She needed to drag her confidence out of her duffel bag and stuff the guilt she was packing away where no one would ever find it.

“She does seem more subdued from the girl who showed me around LA,” Cole admitted. “She had a fire and energy and enthusiasm that was… contagious.” Cole chose the word with care. And he’d drunk her warmth and energy in like a wilting plant.

Rohan stared at him, wanting more. Cole had learned long ago to keep his mouth shut unless answering a direct question and even then, to be spare with his words.

“And?” Rohan demanded, open-ended as if wanting him to choose his own rope to swing by.

“Told you. I kept it G. Friends,” he said firmly. “We stayed in touch. Texted.” Wasn’t going to lie. “She…contacted me a few months later.” He paused, choosing his spare words more carefully than even he usually did. “Asked me if I could drop her off home before deploying.”

Sort of true.

Rohan stared at him like he was crazy. So Riley hadn’t even mentioned how she’d arrived at the ranch—and he was supposedly tight-lipped. Admiration stirred.

Rohan blew out a breath, ran his hand through his hair.

“Damn, I know Riley’s a grown woman. Even then she was an adult. Her own agency and none of my business and all that PC BS.” He blew out a hard breath. “I know all that but damn it’s hard.” He hit his sternum. “I feel like there’s something. There has to be something. And it’s growing, consuming.”

Cole’s heart tripped in alarm, but he schooled his features.

“I no longer have a sister,” he admitted, something he rarely did, and the deep sympathy on Rohan’s face reminded him why. “But if I did, she’d definitely feel like my business.”

“So, you never saw her again?”

He understood why Rohan couldn’t let it go. He wanted answers, someone or something to blame, and yet he felt guilty because he hadn’t been there for his sister.

Join the club.

“Rohan, Riley can speak for herself.” Cole chose his words with care.

“I’m in Marietta for the Jameson stock-contracting business.

I’m out of the service and will need a new career.

I’ll help my family whatever they need. But Marietta was my first stop because I wanted to see Riley.

I felt a strong connection in LA though she was too young and full of dreams that would take her far from home. ”

“Then,” Rohan said sourly, but he looked at Cole with a new respect. “So you really are courting her? This isn’t about trying to corner the Montana stock-contracting market?”

Cole was offended. Jamesons didn’t operate like that, but he let it go for now. “If she’ll have me.”

One beat. Two. Then the familiar smile that crinkled Rohan’s cheeks, and that Cole hadn’t seen in way too long, cut the tension.

“Good luck. Hope you got some mean lasso skills. Riley dodges men like shoppers dodge raindrops in a parking lot.”

Cole knew what he was in for. Easy had never been his path.

“But no one will find your body if you try to take her to Texas,” Rohan said as if commenting on the weather. “Her and my mama are close. But as far as that shiny new career you’re talking about, there’s someone I want you to meet.”

Cole tracked a tall, dark and dangerous-looking man walking toward them with purpose. The two girls he’d met yesterday practicing trick riding with Riley—Arlo and Flower, no, Petal—jogged alongside him.

“Remington Cross,” Rohan said watching the man’s approach. “We served together and some of my Coyote Cowboy unit have set up a survival skills and adventure retreat out in the woods and the mountains on land we’ve bought and some we’re leasing from my family.”

Cole turned toward Rohan, taking his eye off the biggest threat he’d seen since he’d hit town, walking with teen girls or not.

“It’s our first year,” Rohan said, and Cole heard the barely disguised pride. “We’ve already got a waiting list and are in the black and need some new blood and investors to expand.”

Cole was rarely surprised. He was now. First Rohan had sounded like he wanted to yank off his head, dropkick it into the bushes then bury his bloody remains deep; now he sounded like an internet pitch man.

“Play nice, Texas,” Rohan advised, “and think about how you don’t want to break my mama’s heart by seducing her baby girl away from her roots with your rusty dancing skills and rustic Lone Star charm.”

Rohan might be laughing at him. Then he stepped forward, did some elaborate handshake that nearly had Cole rolling his eyes before both men leaned back and howled at the sky.

“You get used to it,” Arlo said and rolled her own eyes.

“Or not.” Petal shook her head with superior teenage pity. “Let’s go saddle up Cinnamon and Spice.”

“I still think we should have named the horse Banana Cream,” Arlo said.

“You want to name a horse after a pie?” Cole turned his back on the men’s reunion. It only reminded him of how cut off he was from any of his army colleagues, and his cousins.

“Not opposed,” Arlo drawled giving him a skeptical once-over. “You got a horse to sell?”

“Not yet.”

“To buy?” Petal perked up. “We train barrel racers and cutting horses. Breed too. I’ve started racing. I could give you a demo.”

“I might be interested,” Cole said, wanting to follow the girls, because Riley was a bigger draw than a mountain of a soldier who’d more than likely want to swap war stories.

Potential business or not, Cole wouldn’t go that route.

There was a reason he didn’t get medical care at the VA hospital in San Antonio or Austin, but had instead had his health checkups at the Last Stand clinic.

And though his maw-maw had repeatedly urged him to, he’d never attended Last Stand’s very active veterans’ group.

“I think you’re more interested in the horse trainer than the horse,” Arlo stated, voice flat.

“Good one,” Petal said, high-fiving her friend. “The cowboy and the cowgirl. Original,” Petal deadpanned. “So we have our hero and our heroine. What trope do you think?”

“Enemies to lovers.” Arlo made claws with her hands and then laughed.

“Hilarious.” Petal held out her palm so Cole could slap it. “You’re safe. Riley couldn’t be mean if she tried.”

“I’m counting on it,” Cole said, not sure what a trope was, but happy to play hero in their game.

I have some time coming. I could fly into Bozeman before heading to Last Stand.

Sorry. It’s been twenty-one hours and sixteen minutes. Totally unfair. Your text threw me off. I couldn’t think what I should say.

Say what you mean.

Not so easy. Time doesn’t always provide clarity.

Depends on how you’re using the time.

Ouch. Direct hit.

Friendly fire.

Still fire. And well deserved. I’ll take the friend part, hold it close.