Taryn Ledell—Back Then
There wasn’t anything special about Billy King. He was just another cowboy.
At first, anyway.
“Admit it,” Holly was saying, nuzzling kisses onto my horse’s nose while I relaxed in Aston Magic’s saddle. “After winning this morning, you’ve completely run out of room on your trophy shelf and have taken to stuffing your barrel racing medals into your underwear drawer.”
“Come on! Just a couple in my nightstand.” I winked off the compliment, patting my mare’s neck. We were smack-dab in the middle of traffic between the warm-up pen and outdoor arena, people coming and going from one rodeo event after the other. But I hadn’t seen Holly since Fort Worth, and I’d really missed her.
It didn’t help that the annual Starry Nights rodeo—where, in true Kentucky tradition, they scheduled everything backward—was the last rodeo I was able to attend before starting the long back-and-forth of the international Superbike circuit.
Holly shook her head, widening her eyes at Aston. “I know, girl. I hate her, too.”
A genuine laugh from too many years of friendly competitive banter rang through my heart, Holly leaving another kiss on Aston’s nose before she stepped toward me, stretching up as far as she could to hug me as I carefully leaned down from the saddle, breathing in her curly hair tickling my nose. “I love you. Been way too long.”
“I know, and we all miss you so much. But we’re so proud of you.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, wondering if she’d still say that if she actually googled me.
It hadn’t always been this bad. In the beginning, racing was a dream after the nightmare of leaving sports medicine. But under my new publicist’s slimy hands, my racing image had become less about my placements and more about my photo shoots. Now, every fan in the sport knew my face, my bra size, and not a damn thing about where I stood, on or off the podium.
“Hon, I mean it,” Holly said. “You may be famous over there, but to me, you’ll always be the same lanky beauty queen who couldn’t rope if her life depended on it.”
Everything in my heart squeezed as I held Holly tighter, and I wished so much that what she said was true, that the people who knew me really were proud of me. At the very least, I was back home where the world smelled familiar: like fresh dirt, stiff hay, old ropes, and Old Spice.
Old Spice?
“Pardon me, ma’am.”
I lifted my head, finding a jean-clad knee next to my face and a cowboy smiling down from a golden horse like he was waiting his turn for a hug, tall and lean in a black competition shirt, a Stetson to match, and his voice just as dark and deep as both. He was also paying no mind to the fact that traffic was now even more blocked with two horses standing side by side, and people were starting to grumble as they passed by. Jackass.
I looked at Holly questioningly, but her bunched-up eyebrows said she had no clue who the guy was. He couldn’t possibly have recognized me from my racing photos. No one in America gave a flip about Superbike, seemed like.
I looked back to the cowboy, telling myself to be brave. Assertive. Fearless. “Can I help you?” I asked, bleeding Southern politeness through my tone.
“Oh, Gidget wanted to come say hi. He saw your mare when you were barrel racing and thought she was real agile. Pay me no mind.” He sat back in his saddle, his hands crossed on the saddle horn as he started whistling a tune that was far too relaxed to be believed while his stallion tried—and failed—to get the attention of Aston Magic, swishing his tail into hers and bumping her nose.
Okay, so definitely not a racing stalker or an immediate threat.
The knot in my stomach slowly unwound as Aston snickered, then nipped at his stallion. Served his horse right. I arched my eyebrow in the cowboy’s direction, a sugary smile curling around my double entendre. “Doesn’t seem like she’s interested.”
He kept grinning away under his black hat, the rim so wide it was almost as broad as his shoulders. “Well, Gidget’s real nice, but he gets excited when he finds something he likes, and that can take some getting used to.”
Holly let out a sharp laugh. “You sure we’re still talking about your horse?”
I looked away to hide my snicker. Damn, Holly.
“Yes, ma’am, certainly.” He sounded a little offended, but the slight touch of ire faded instantly from his voice. “And since I already interrupted y’all’s conversation, if you don’t mind me saying…”
“Go right on ahead, honey,” Holly told him. “I can’t wait to hear this.”
I looked back to Holly, but this guy apparently had guts of steel. He was staring straight at me. “Congratulations on winning, miss. Even though I think that other girl ran it a little cleaner.”
My eyes popped in disbelief, darting to Holly and back to him. “I’m sorry, what?”
He scratched at his jaw, rusty with dirty-blond stubble. “Tonya Ladle, I think her name was? You’re real fast and all, and your quarter horse sure seems to know what she’s doing. But I just thought that other girl’s turns were tighter.”
Holly’s face flushed and deepened in color, and I sat up straighter in my saddle, my feigned indifference churning into fast-growing irritation. “I’m Taryn Ledell. Not Tonya Ladle. Leh-dell.”
His hand shot out toward me across the space between our horses, his grin bigger than ever. “And I’m Billy King. Nice to meet you.”
“Oh wow.” Holly burst out in laughter. “Taryn, honey, since you’re fine”—she tried to contain her chuckle but couldn’t, making eyes at the cowboy and then at me—“I’ll, uh, head on out. It was good seeing you.”
She couldn’t be serious. “Holly, really—”
“Really.” She winked, already backing up into the crowd and disappearing within the camouflage of Wrangler jeans and pressed shirts, waving over her shoulder. “Congratulations again!”
I looked at the reason my friend just bailed on me, and Mr. Wearing Too Much Old Spice was still grinning from his saddle and reaching toward me over the lariat he had strapped to it. Heat flooded a bunch of parts of me that shouldn’t have been affected by just a damn smile, and I mentally refused to shake his hand.
Why in the hell were the most annoying cowboys always the cutest? Especially with lopsided smiles and teeth that were pearly white but just a little bit crooked because he wasn’t made to suffer the corrective braces I was.
My gaze drifted as far from his easy country grin as I could stand, landing on his horse’s golden mane. There was hardly anything there. And his muscles were all uphill and forward built. Not the level or even downward build of a quarter horse.
But a lariat was strapped to his saddle horn…
A whole lot of something wasn’t right.
“Where’d you get this horse?” I asked, inspecting his stallion more closely while my mind raced to put the pieces together.
His arm pulled back. “Huh?”
Aston Magic was beautiful, but this guy’s horse had no equal at the rodeo. And if I wasn’t mistaken, not only was it the precious gold of an Akhal-Teke, but with the guy’s telltale Memphis twang, it should have a brand in the shape of—
“Oh my God!” A couple walking by jumped and stared at me, but I couldn’t do more than gawk in utter astonishment. It was right there, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. “This is a Hargrove horse!”
A funny smile crept across Billy’s lips. Like he was impressed and still not the slightest bit guilty. “You from Memphis? What a small, funny world it is.”
“No, it’s not,” I snapped, way past seeing him as a potential distraction and closer to imagining what he looked like in handcuffs. The police kind. “And he’s for dressage, not for roping. Where’d you get him?”
Billy’s nose scrunched up like he couldn’t believe I was accusing him of doing anything wrong. Wonder how long that had been working for him? “I borrowed him.”
My eyes nearly flew out of my skull. “You borrowed him?”
There was no way Lynn Hargrove knew about this. I didn’t exactly know her, but I knew about her, and she didn’t just let farmhands take her prize stallions to rodeos in Kentucky because they wanted to have some fun on the weekends. He’d probably stolen a fifty-thousand-dollar horse.
“Yes, ma’am, I borrowed him,” he drawled, starting to sound a little indignant about the accusation. “And it’s been real nice talking to you, but Gidget and I gotta—”
“Oh, hell no. You’re not going anywhere. Give me that horse.” I went for his reins, but he’d already sidled them out of my reach, allowing a new flow of traffic to fill up between us.
“Now, hold on just a minute—”
“Come back here!”
More people turned to stare, and I would’ve too if our situations were reversed. But they didn’t realize the magnitude of what he had done. Especially when he was laughing at me about it. “Wish I could, honey, but I gotta go rope. I’d love if you’d come watch me, though. And it was nice meeting you.”
With one touch of his finger to his hat, he was gone, trotting his “borrowed” horse toward the arena, his lasso ropes thwacking against his jeans with the motion.
No sight had ever pissed me off more.
I gave two clicks to Aston Magic, urging her to go after them. But we never caught up.
Apparently, that was the moment when the whole freaking world needed to talk to me, and there were too many people crowding and blocking us, stopping me to say congratulations, welcome back, and asking where I was riding next.
By the time I got to the outdoor arena, I couldn’t find him. All I could hear was his damn name blaring through the speakers and echoing on the wind.
“All right, folks,” the announcer boomed. “Next up for calf roping, we have Billy King. If that last name sounds familiar to you, it’s ’cause his baby brother, Mason, took first in the bull riding showdown this morning. Them King boys are ones to watch, I tell you. Let’s hear it for Billy!”
The crowd cheered like they knew him, and despite my temper sparking, I couldn’t help sitting up a little higher in my saddle. Peering through teased high hair and black and tan Stetsons, I finally saw him: sitting atop that golden horse with his heels sunk in his stirrups, the sun shining off his belt buckle, and a fearless grin beaming from behind the rope he had clenched in his teeth.
I narrowed my eyes. He probably wasn’t any good. And the second he was done, I was reporting him. To…somebody.
God, what was it about this guy that had pushed all my freaking buttons?
At the harsh sound of the buzzer, a calf was loose and running. But Billy’s horse bolted faster and he was already there, his outstretched arm casting a lasso that found its target with ease, his stallion instantly pulling to a stop and backing up while Billy swung off his saddle.
Fine, so maybe he trained the horse for roping, too.
Faster than a wink, Billy ran up to the calf and grabbed it and flipped it—and those calves are freaking heavy. But it was already done, Billy whipping the rope from his mouth and twisting it around the calf’s ankles, then leaping up from the ground with his hands in the air.
Damn…
The fans shot to their feet, their cheers a blast of sound that reminded me again of the Superbike circuit. I took a steadying breath and promised myself I wasn’t going to worry about it. Not the coming press shoots, the pressure, or the insinuations about my greasy-handed teammate, Colton.
None of it.
“And that’s how it’s done, folks!” the announcer hollered. “That man is slicker than snot on a doorknob. Whoo!”
Billy flipped his hat into the air, and I slowly clapped along with everyone else. Under protest. And maybe I whistled a little, too. But only because he was…he was really something.
I should’ve known better than to draw attention to myself. The jackass saw me, smiling even wider as he pointed in my direction, then did one final wave, his hands blinking at the crowd instead of hitching at the wrist like he was Lane Frost reincarnate before he collected his hat and his horse.
The crowd got ready for the next calf roper, and I turned away from the arena, swearing to myself ten times over that temptation could fuck right off. I had a job, and it wasn’t at rodeos anymore. After tomorrow, I’d be leaving for Australia. For the Phillip Island Grand Prix Circuit and testing ahead of our first race of the season. I had things to focus on, and I’d never see this cowboy again.
Which is exactly why I never should’ve walked Aston over to the arena exit, where I knew Billy would be waiting. Right then, he was still no one. Just another stranger, a name I’d be able to forget if I tried. And I needed to get Aston brushed and back in her trailer.
But temptation also knows there’s a devilish part of me I can’t deny—the part that did it right and got her degree, then flipped it all off to race motorcycles for a living—and she loves breaking the rules.
Billy started scrambling the second he saw me coming, dusting off his shirt and tucking in the back, then showing his teeth to his horse like he was asking if something was stuck in them. His horse pulled back his lips and did the same, and I couldn’t help smirking a bit, they were so cute. It was also a relief: they clearly knew each other, borrowed or not.
Maybe reporting him wasn’t necessary. Lynn Hargrove must have known he was here with her horse. No one from Memphis would ever risk crossing her.
“Don’t embarrass me now,” Billy was whispering to Gidget when Aston and I walked up to the arena exit, my temper and tongue firmly in check. When he turned toward me, he took a long time tilting his eyes up to mine, like I was miles above him. But he skipped over the parts where other men usually lingered. “Well, hi there,” he drawled. His horse snorted and nosed him in the back, making Billy stumble, and it took all my experience training colts not to laugh and encourage the stallion’s bad behavior. “Damn it, Gidget,” Billy muttered before looking at me and resuming his smile. “Thanks for bringing me all that good luck.”
Okay, so he could keep his cool. Didn’t mean he was special. He was probably like the rest of the calf ropers—cocky and twitchy and only interested in listening to a woman for as long as it took to get her zipper down. “Didn’t seem like you needed much. Definitely not your first rodeo.”
Billy grinned, shaking his head. “No, ma’am. It’s my second.” He was doing just fine…until Gidget bit the back of his shirt and pulled it out from where it’d been tucked in, jerking it around before Billy got free. “Really?” he grumbled, but he never raised a hand to his stallion. He just started tucking his shirt back in. “I’m trying to talk to this lady. You can wait.” He turned to me, calm as anything. “Sorry. He may look like a horse, but he’s really a heifer when he’s hungry.”
Aston shifted beneath me like she wasn’t impressed, though I was having a harder time than ever keeping a straight face. “It’s all right.”
But it apparently wasn’t, because Gidget’s nose was right back in Billy’s face, blowing raspberries. I couldn’t help it anymore, clasping my hand over my mouth.
Billy took a deep breath, holding up a single finger. “If you’ll excuse us.”
I nodded, pulling my hand away and chewing the hell out of the inside of my cheek to keep from laughing. Which was so weird: cocky guys in my experience were typically grabby and pushy but hardly ever funny. At least, not as funny as they thought they were. “By all means.”
He took Gidget’s lead and walked them a few feet away. He kept his head close to his horse’s, talking and gesturing and looking like he was cutting a deal to get him to behave. It ended with Billy pulling a treat from his back pocket and pressing a kiss to Gidget’s nose while he ate it. Aww.
Aston huffed and shifted again as Billy led Gidget toward us, my quarter horse clearly over the advances of the Akhal-Teke and ready to be pampered after working her ass off in the arena. And as much as Billy was…intriguing, to say the least, Aston Magic came first.
“Sorry about that.” Billy made a supposed-to-be-stern face at his horse. “Gonna have a long talk about our manners when we get home.”
Oh, damn it, that was cute.
“It’s fine.” I kept my spine straight and chin high, voice kind but firm. “But I can’t stay, so you may as well get to telling me what your deal is.”
“Ma’am?”
I sighed—so much for sugarcoating it. I leaned down from the saddle, closer to where he was standing next to his horse. There were still plenty of people around, and I didn’t want to embarrass him any more than I was about to. “Drop the Mr. Innocent act, and be straight with me. What is your goal here? Because I’m telling you right now, I’m not sleeping with you. No matter what war you’re about to head off to.”
Not entirely true. I hadn’t decided yet whether to sleep with him. He was hot and seemed nice, and it’d been a long time since I’d had a man in my bed. And heading off to the circuit meant my chances were narrowing quickly.
Billy ducked his head so I could only see his hat as he looked away and shifted his feet. When he looked up, there was some pink in his cheeks, his hand fidgeting with his reins, and his thumb stroking the leather like a lover’s lips. “Don’t have an act or a goal. I was just wondering if you’d let me hang around you a bit, see if I can get you to like me some.”
I took another look at everything about his size, his build, the way he held a rope, and the adrenaline still clearly drugging his veins and shining in his blue eyes. “Are you a bull rider?”
A new kind of smile tugged at the edge of his lips—the guilty kind. “Maybe?”
Damn it.
Of course, there had to be a catch. I had sworn off his kind long ago, knowing too well the faces of bull riders’ wives, their girlfriends. The pain and worry the women go through. Because I used to be one of them.
Kind of hard not to date bull riders when you’re working the medic tents at rodeos. They’re the only men you meet, because they’re the ones always getting hurt. I should’ve known better, because before I knew it, I was setting bones for men I loved. Watching them get bucked and broken and praying they would wake up. In the ambulance, in the hospital. At all.
Bonnie Landry had been the last straw for me and that way of life. She’d loved Beau Blackwell and supported his bull riding career every step of the way. But Beau wasn’t as lucky as Eric, who broke his arm in two places. He wasn’t as lucky as Austin, with his busted ribs and concussion. He wasn’t even as lucky as Cash, who’d never walk again.
Beau Blackwell got bucked at twenty-six years old, two days before his wedding, snapped his neck and died, and Bonnie Landry wore a black dress that Sunday instead of a white one.
I stopped working rodeos after that. I broke up with Levi after that. And I promised myself that I would never forget how it felt to be so helpless over your future. Because those bull rider wives, those poor girlfriends, they watch their men volunteer for their deaths. And all so they could have eight seconds of glory when they could’ve had a lifetime with her.
I wasn’t doing it. I’m worth more than eight seconds.
What a waste.
“Bye, Billy. Congratulations on your win.” I gave two clicks to Aston Magic and turned her away, struggling to swallow my disappointment as I headed back the way I came—to the pens and my family’s travel trailer and my laptop with the turn sequence for Phillip Island I was supposed to be learning.
I’d be able to forget him. If I tried.
Maybe tried hard.
“Hey, Taryn, hold on!”
I never should’ve looked back.
Billy was already up in his saddle and trotting Gidget toward me, catching up. “I don’t ride bulls no more. I swear it.”
I scoffed, still walking Aston toward the pens. I didn’t even care to act gracious or charming or any of that fake stuff anymore. All I could think about was the scent of his cologne mixing with my fabric softener. I hadn’t been laid in months. “Bullshit. Bull riders don’t stop until they’re too old or too broken to keep going.” I gave him a quick once-over. “You’re neither of those things.”
“Well, that’s kind of you to say,” he said. “And I’ll grant you, that’s usually true. But in my case, I got a new job, and I can’t do both. I’m not allowed.”
I stopped Aston and looked over, my curiosity regrettably piqued. “You an elementary school teacher or something?”
He laughed, the sound pure and crystalline. No man should be allowed to laugh like that. Especially when he could throw calves like they were feather pillows. “No, ma’am. I’m a motorcycle racer.”
Oh shit.
I didn’t know what that meant. He wasn’t on the Superbike circuit with me, but the fact that he even mentioned a motorcycle…
The devil was whispering all my favorite words.
I urged Aston on, resolute to keep my cool. Just because he was also from Memphis, roped like a god, was sweet to his horse, and apparently rode a motorcycle for a living didn’t mean meeting him was destiny. Chances were I’d never see him again. “That right?”
“Yes, ma’am. Moto Grand Prix.”
Really? Damn—those bikes were fast.
He guided his horse around a group of people stopped in the middle of the aisle. When he came up beside me, he tipped his hat a little farther back so his face wasn’t as shadowed. God, he was cute, with one of those iron-sharp jaws that always felt really, really good in your hands.
“It’s kinda like Formula 1,” he said, “but with motorcycles instead of cars. And my contract with Yaalon, well, it says I can’t ride bulls anymore. My brother Mason can, but he’s with Blue Gator on a satellite team.”
My brow furrowed. As a Superbike racer, I knew plenty about Moto Grand Prix. But the last thing he said didn’t seem right to me. My contract with Munich Motor Works had all sorts of provisions, but MMW never said anything about me barrel racing when I was home. “How come?”
“How come Mason can ride bulls and I can’t?”
“Yeah.”
He shrugged, no stress in the movement or twitchiness to be found. “Don’t know. Probably because he’s better at it than I was.”
Another thing that didn’t sound right. Bull riders were famous for their egos. “You ever miss it?” I tested.
“Hmm, sometimes, I guess. It’s a hell of a rush. But I get that from racing now, so I don’t mind giving it up.” He sounded totally sincere as he smiled at me and said, “Besides, I got too much to lose.”
I cocked an eyebrow at him. “In all my life, I’ve never heard a bull rider say that.”
“Well, I told you: I’m not a bull rider no more.” He winked at me, and Lord, if he was telling the truth? I was in so much trouble. “And hey, since I’m not, you wanna be my date to the Mutton Bustin’ tonight?”
I burst into laughter, no idea why my heart was jumping to agree and even my overly critical brain was struggling to refuse. “No?”
“Why not?” He’d still never lost his grin, drifting his horse closer until his leg bumped mine, sending a zing through my veins that hit me straight between my thighs. “It’ll be fun, cheering on all those little kids climbing up there to ride their first sheep. And I hear after, they’re gonna have a dance for the big kids. And I’m a great dancer.”
“Oh, are you now?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I couldn’t make myself stop smiling as I walked Aston up to her designated pen, then got down from the saddle, tying her lead and endlessly debating.
I had hard and fast rules about dating bull riders. But Billy said he wasn’t a bull rider anymore. Plus, it was so sweet that instead of asking to take me out to a bar, he wanted to watch toddlers try to ride sheep. Where the families were.
I turned around, finding him down from his saddle and standing a comfortable distance back from me, absently petting the underside of his horse’s jaw. “I promise to get you home at a decent time. And I won’t try nothing. I just…want to dance with you. If that’s okay.”
His drawl was slaying all my defenses, husky and deep and rumbling beneath black cotton fabric doing its absolute very best to stretch across the broad expanse of his upper muscles. His arms were bigger than I’d realized, too. I bet with one solid flex of his biceps, the seams would be forced to rip apart.
How awful for that poor, innocent shirt.
Get a grip, Taryn.
“I don’t…know you,” I said, because I honestly couldn’t think of anything else to say.
The dancing part didn’t sound too bad, and it had been forever since I’d been on a real date with a guy and not just hooked up. Even longer since I’d been on a date with a nice guy. I wasn’t sure they existed anymore, truthfully. And I was tired of being disappointed when they all turned out to be after the same thing, which definitely wasn’t my brain. It wasn’t even my damn bike.
But Billy…
He was so disarmingly kind but still confident enough to ask for what he wanted—and in that Stetson blacker than any lingerie I’d ever dared to buy.
He nodded to himself, taking a small step closer and slipping his hat off his head. My eyes widened a bit at the shock of sunny blond hair, seeming to match so much better with the gentleness in his baby-blue eyes. “Well, I’m trying to fix that, Taryn. If you’ll let me.”
I don’t know why I said what I did. I don’t know what was wrong with me.
I knew better, and I never should’ve looked back.
Never.
“Pick me up at seven.”
Fearless
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