Page 33 of Rogue Cowboy (Montana’s Rodeo Cowboys #3)

Don’t be an idiotic, paranoid, crazy cowgirl.

But what if… Stop. She shouldn’t assume the worst, but she couldn’t shake the sick feeling in her gut. She was no good with men. Or sex. Or relationships. She should have stuck to singing about it, but music and lyrics too had deserted her.

“Hey, Riley, good rodeo?” Tucker Wilder asked as Riley walked Spice out to the trailer to transport her horses home.

“The best.” She tried to dredge up enthusiasm.

“I bet,” Tucker says. “I hate to say it, but a man can put a pep in your step, so why are you dragging? Did Cole get home okay?”

“Huh? Home?” She felt like the world tilted on its axis. She stopped walking and leaned into Spice in the most pathetic example of a cowgirl not rolling with the punches life enjoyed throwing.

“Yeah. He had an emergency phone call and lit out in the middle of a conversation with Luke and Kane. Kane had to chase after him to let him know he could use his pilot and plane since there wasn’t anything out of Bozeman until tomorrow.”

Riley felt staggered. Cole was that eager to get out of here. Then she blasted herself. Tucker had said an emergency. It must be bad if he hadn’t wanted to wait until tomorrow.

Not like you encouraged him to stay.

“Did he say what the emergency was?”

Tucker shrugged. “Nah. Just lit out and said he’d be back in touch. But that’s what texts are for, girl.” Tucker winked. “Don’t be shy.”

Only Riley hadn’t received any texts.

*

Cole, still amped and nervous from the flight, raced into the lobby of Jameson Hospital.

He comically skidded to a halt at the door of his maw-maw’s suite.

She was sitting up, in the hospital bed, wearing a dressing gown embroidered with bluebonnets that Cole had seen many times during his visits home.

He’d had the dressing gown embroidered and specially made for her ten years ago by a tailor in Pakistan by showing her a picture of the hills in full bloom on the ranch in late March.

It had been an impulse born of homesickness and guilt for always being away and missing family events.

Her long, still-dark hair, threaded with gray shone in the light of the sunset filtering in through the window. His paw-paw sat on the side of the bed gently brushing her hair. She was in full makeup and the room smelled like a floral shop.

“Told you,” his cousin Elijah who’d picked him up at the private airfield said. “Indestructible.”

“Darling.” Her eyes snapped open, and her smile was warm. She held out one hand—the other was in a sling, and Cole crossed the room. He knelt and took her hands in his and kissed her cheek. Then gently hugged her, not sure where the bruises were.

“Elijah Bennet Boilyn Jameson, are you insinuating that I bounced off the dirt?”

He didn’t even flinch at his whole name. “No, ma’am.” Elijah leaned against the door, his tanned face as shuttered as his eyes. “I saw you take a tumble off Ricky, who was not approved for riding at this stage in his training, and there was no bouncing.”

“I do not need my oldest grandson’s permission to ride a horse on our ranch.”

“You do when he’s the foreman.” Elijah hadn’t backed down for as long as Cole could remember—probably a survival technique from being the oldest in a string of nine male brothers and cousins.

Cole searched his maw-maw for injuries. Her hands were cool and dry in his, and they trembled. She had a bandage on her forehead, and the hand poking out of the sling was bruised, but it had the IV in it.

WTF? He looked at his paw-paw, who lightly squeezed his shoulder.

“She insisted,” he said. “She wanted a free, functioning hand so she could do her makeup and play Wordle and the crosswords and drink her coffee.”

“When I can get it.” His maw-maw rolled her eyes. “Darling, you didn’t need to come home for such a minor incident.”

“Elijah said you’d broken your hip, wrist and three ribs and had a concussion from a fall.”

She grimaced and glared at Elijah who steadily looked back at her.

“Fractured,” she clarified.

“Tomato, tomahto,” Elijah droned, and Cole, who’d felt his stomach had lodged in his throat when he’d received Elijah’s text that his maw-maw had been thrown from a horse, began to settle.

Unfortunately, that gave him time to think about other things—Riley and how he’d left without talking to her.

And he’d been too unsettled during the flight to compose a text.

His feelings were too riotous to put in a pithy back and forth.

They’d texted for years. He wanted face-to-face. Skin to skin. Conversation.

His stomach soured. Still his maw-maw was awake and talking. That had to be good.

She winced, drawing his attention back.

“What can I do?” he asked quickly.

“Pain meds would be good,” Elijah said.

“You’re not too old for me to take you out behind the barn.” His paw-paw snapped gray eyebrows, scrunching like angry caterpillars.

“You’d have to catch me, old man,” Elijah said, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, mouth a thin line.

“Don’t think I can’t, young man.”

Elijah straightened out of his slouch, challenge in every line of his body and eyes.

“I know I scared you, Elijah, and I’m sorry for it,” his maw-maw said soothingly as her husband glowered at his oldest grandson.

“But I got a bionic hip now and—who knows—perhaps the fall knocked some sense into me.” She smiled triumphantly like a child getting a math problem correct, and Elijah spun around and strode out of the room, the heels of his boots clicking on the hard floor.

“He feels too much, that one,” his maw-maw said, her startling violet eyes, still vibrant and clear. “You and Elijah are so much alike, Cole. What’s bothering you?”

“Me?” Cole rocked back on the soles of his boots and stared at his maw-maw—maybe she did have some brain damage. “I get a text from Elijah that you were thrown off a horse and on the way to the hospital unconscious and bleeding, and you want to know what’s bothering me?”

She colored prettily and then stroked her fingers through the cowlick on the right side of his forehead, like she had when he’d been a little boy.

“I’m resilient,” she said softly. “Texas tough.”

“Not that tough,” his paw-paw rumbled. “Took ten years off my life seeing you loaded into that ambulance.”

“You were always prone to exaggerating, dear. Surely only two.” She smiled fondly at her husband of sixty years. “At least I hope no more than that.”

Cole’s heart lurched a little seeing their closeness. The love he’d seen in his grandparents growing up had always unnerved him a little. He’d felt like he’d been outside it even as they’d taken him in, comforted him, raised him surrounded by love, ranch and family.

I put myself on the outside.

Scared he’d lose them like he’d lost his parents and brother and sister? He hadn’t wanted to fully fold anyone else into his heart? Had he done that to Riley? Or was she keeping him on the outside? Or had he fallen for her because she was as emotionally unattainable as he was?

Damn. He was beginning to sound like a late-night AM radio show host musing. What had seemed so certain that morning in the trailer—heck even last night when he’d been holding Riley—now felt like it was slipping through his fingers. It filled him with a sense of personal failure and despair.

But did he give up or keep fighting?

He looked toward the doorway, surprised that Elijah hadn’t pulled himself together enough to return.

Elijah was the only one of his cousins who’d married.

But then there’d been a child. Cole had been away from the ranch, but from what he’d learned from his visits home and all the things no one said, the marriage had never been happy or on solid footing.

And from what he’d seen none of his cousins had ever brought a woman home to meet the family—meaning casual.

He’d hoped to be the first of this generation to break that drought.

It seemed ludicrous to him now that he thought it would be him. He was the least likely to find the real thing.

“Tell me about her,” his maw-maw interrupted his musings.

“What? Who?” he stammered like an idiot aware that both of his grandparents totally focused on him. “Why do you think I have a woman?” he demanded. He’d kept classified secrets as an integral part of his career.

“When we were discussing where you wanted to work on the ranch, you brought up Montana territory for stock contracting and offered to check on Uncle Bryce’s holding in the Big Sky State. Not me.” Elijah was back, and he sported a very un-Elijah smirk. “So who’s the cutie in Montana?”

Cole tried to formulate a dodge around three of the smartest, no-BS people he knew.

Damn.

Time to come clean.

Favorite road trip music?

“American Girl.” “Stubborn Love.” “Out of the Woods.” “Shake It Off.” “Style.” “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

I’m seeing a theme.

I’m just getting started. No way can I list just one or a few. So many Brandi Carlile, Lucinda Williams. How about you?

“Montana Miracle Cowboy.”

You have that on your play list?

Of course.

Riley had looked at the text. Pleased. Shocked. So many memories crowding in though they hadn’t seen each other in nearly six years, and she hadn’t performed anything for over four years. It was a small legacy. But something. Maybe a start?

Also have Jason Isbell’s “Last of my Kind” and Willie’s “On the Road Again.”

I can list more songs if you’re road tripping.

I’ll download.