“YOU ARE A horse girl?” he asked, incredulous.
Diablo incredulous was as attractive as Diablo arrogant—and Diablo confident, and Diablo laughing. One of his straight black eyebrows lifted slightly higher than the other, his full lips drawing together and pressing tight into each other as if he was holding back just exactly what he thought of that.
He wore street clothes, the cowboy boots peeking out from beneath his jeans the only hint of the fact that he was in town with the rodeo.
There was nothing ambassadorial about Diablo. Nothing about his presence invited a passerby to ask him why he was dressed the way he was, or why he had come to town. Someone might even think he was a local.
Diablo’s aura was one that gave the nonverbal suggestion to take him as he was or to leave him alone. It also assured that he didn’t care which you chose.
Though she didn’t begrudge the attention she garnered everywhere she went, the idea of being so loudly unapproachable was its own kind of thrilling.
He seemed to come by it naturally—not caring—when what little of the quality she herself possessed had been hard-won, like all of the other skills and abilities she had gained through queening. She’d worked hard for each and every one of them, all of which she had hungered for as the horse-loving middle child in a family of three princesses.
“All rodeo queens are horse girls,” she finally said to him in response. “It’s part of the job description.”
And it was true.
Unlike the pageants in which her sisters had participated, which allowed for and encouraged a wide variety of talents, for rodeo queens, talent was synonymous with horsemanship.
“My mom and sisters have been pageant women since childhood, but I was an athlete. If I hadn’t discovered horseback riding, I never would have given pageants a second thought.”
“Why not just compete, then?” he asked.
“I do, thank you very much,” she said, lifting her nose in the air. “Queening is as much rodeo competition as riding rough stock is, and I can barrel race with the best of them,” she added, “but before I started queening, it was only my dad who took me to the rodeo. Just me and him. Away from my sisters and the need to show how different I was, I found the space to admit something that had always been true but I had repressed up until then.” She was warming up to the part of the story she’d told many times now.
“Which was?” he asked, the warmth of humor and curiosity in his tone.
Grinning, she gestured to her ensemble with a sweep of her hand. “I love shiny things.”
He laughed, smiling. “Who doesn’t?” he said, meeting her eyes and holding them as his laughter died down. “Attraction to beauty is a natural human impulse.”
There was no reason her throat should tighten, nor her breath hitch, stuck fast, as if her body was trying to hold on to something while her stomach did a flip.
He’d said nothing inappropriate and there’d been not even a hint of innuendo in his delivery.
And yet, the words felt bold and heated all the same.
Or maybe it was just that the way he met her eyes as he said them, his gaze direct and almost aggressively open to her, made them a bald admission that he found her attractive.
He left her no room to doubt.
He still wanted her and he wanted her to know it, even after they’d made their choice.
A part of her, the part that was still stinging over his rejection, wondered at his nerve, to flirt and tease and make her want him more when he knew very well he wasn’t willing to take things any further.
He was torturing them with what they’d missed, acknowledging that the thing that strummed between them was still alive and powerful as ever.
But she didn’t want him to stop.
Thank God there was the distraction of rodeo.
Swallowing, she looked away, casting her gaze to the side, sweeping over the picturesque architecture of the French Quarter and the thriving hum of life all around her—anything but him—before she said, “Rodeo queens were the first ones to show me that you could be an athlete and be pretty at the same time. Growing up watching my sisters, seeing up close and personal all the effort and preparation and resources that went into being ‘pretty,’ or my concept of it at the time, at least... Knowing the sacrifices that it called for...not playing soccer, not running around, not going outside, not riding horses... While I knew that it was technically possible to be sporty and pretty, I didn’t think you could do it at the same time until I saw rodeo queens. At best you could switch back and forth, but you would always have to choose, and when forced to choose, which happened early for me because of my mom and sisters, I had committed to sporty. But then rodeo queens showed me that I didn’t have to choose sides. I could be my whole shiny, athletic, horse-girl self and express it for the world to see. I could be pretty and powerful.”
For a moment, Diablo didn’t say anything, and in that space, the edges of Sierra’s stomach began to curl inward, tightening around the certainty that she had said too much and that her rambling, heartfelt truth would seem naive and simple to a man as sophisticated as Diablo.
But when he spoke, his words lacked any hint of sarcasm or derision. “Some people make it through their entire lives without learning that lesson.”
His words had a soothing effect on her knotting gut, slipping in to loosen and untangle the unease like warm liquid.
Suddenly bashful—though she thought she had long ago forgotten the meaning of the word—she looked away to say, “So that’s why queening.”
“Sound like good reasons to me,” he said, eyeing her with what looked like respect.
She shrugged. “Not really. At least, not reasons that judges like. For them, I say it’s because I fell in love with the sport, each and every one of the events. I say I learned everything I could, stayed up past my bedtime at night to read about rodeo’s history and present, and did everything I could to dedicate myself to Western living, despite the fact that I grew up in the suburbs of Pensacola. I tell them that I was determined that nothing stand in the way of me and my rodeo dreams and that story, they love. And it has the added bonus of also being the truth, just a different portion of it,” she said, oddly sad for the side of the story that never got its chance.
Diablo laughed, saying, “It being true does tend to make it easier to persuade people to your argument.”
Smiling with a decisive nod, she agreed before asking, “So what about you, lawman?”
Looking at her, he lifted an eyebrow. “Lawman? I kind of like that. Calls to mind Bass Reeves.”
Rolling her eyes, she said, “I’ll keep that in mind for the show tonight.” Her voice was as dry as a drought-ridden plain, and he loved it. She continued with, “But don’t evade. Why do you rodeo?”
“Do I rodeo?” he challenged her, “or do I lawman?”
Flatly, she said, “I have questions about both.”
Pulling away from her as if he needed the extra space to get a good look at all of that audacity, he said, “Oh, do you, now?”
Ignoring him, she pressed, “Rodeo first.”
“I’m not surprised you would say that.”
“You’re stalling,” she pointed out.
“You would have made a fantastic lawyer,” he observed.
“You’re not the first person to say so, but that’s irrelevant. Why do you rodeo?” she said again, pleased and stubborn at the same time.
“You sure you want the spoiler? I’m sure it’ll come up in the profiles,” he said, referring to the in-depth video profiles and interviews that The Closed Circuit produced about its contestants midseason so that viewers could “get to know” their favorites.
Sierra merely lifted an eyebrow, her expression a mirror of her mother’s when she had had about enough nonsense from her three daughters.
“Well, like I told you the other night, I rodeo because a judge ordered me to,” Diablo said, a thread of a dare coming to his voice.
He dared her to ask more questions, and he dared her not to.
But if he thought that the cat he’d let out of the bag was a tiger, she wondered if she should let him know that it was really more of a kitten—at best.
“That’s right, you’re riding for CityBoyz, like AJ,” she said.
At the mention of his friend’s name on her lips, a frown dashed across Diablo’s face.
He said, “Joining CityBoyz was my alternative to a relocation to a boys’ correction facility.”
“How old were you?” she asked, unsure why that was the first thing she wanted to know.
“Almost thirteen.”
“Twelve years old...” she said, shaking her head. She couldn’t imagine the successful and powerful man in front of her facing a judge as anything other than an attorney, let alone as a child. “What happened?”
He paused, staring at her as if assessing, before he said, “I assaulted a pimp.” The truth abrupt and unembellished.
“You beat up a pimp when you were twelve years old and a judge sent you to learn how to ride bulls because of it?” she asked, earnest and serious in her synopsis despite hearing how outlandish it all sounded to her own ears.
When she had been almost thirteen, she had spent her time riding horses with her hair blowing in the breeze—either that, or practicing in front of the mirror to be the world’s greatest rodeo queen while avoiding homework.
The audience-savvy part of her knew that with a backstory like that, he was destined to be a fan favorite this season for sure. The part of her that had remained acutely aware of him since the night in the hotel, though, wanted to comfort him.
“It sounds like a ridiculous soap opera when you put it that way,” he said.
“I’m not sure ridiculous is the word I’d choose,” she said.
“What word would you choose?” he challenged her, his voice even and serious as he eyed her with a gaze that was somehow nonthreatening and confronting at the same time. He was testing her and making no bones about it.
In response, she chose her words with honesty and care. “Brave,” she said, after thinking about it for a moment.
His eyes narrowed and he looked at her for the span of a long breath before looking away again. “How do you know I didn’t kick his ass because I didn’t want to pay?”
Stopping in her tracks, Sierra growled. “If that’s true, Diablo Sosa, then I’m not walking another step with you. It’s not my place to judge what a person does for work, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to keep company with a thief.”
Stopping when she did, Diablo shoved his hands into his front pockets, still not looking at her, and said, “It’s not, so you can release the pearls. The guy was a jerk and had roughed up someone I thought of as a friend. I don’t know what I set out to do when I approached him. I only know that it escalated.”
“Oh, Diablo.” She sighed his name.
Again, she came back to the fact that it would have been a lot for a grown man to experience, and he’d only been a child.
Shrugging, he said, “The judge was ready to send me away and throw away the key, but my nana was very persuasive in her request for another solution. The old codger who happened to be a fan of the rodeo had recently heard about a new program that supposedly reformed street punks like me through exposure to the hard knocks of the arena.”
“I didn’t realize that CityBoyz was a reform program,” Sierra mused.
Diablo snorted. “It’s sure as hell not. That judge had got word of it through the grapevine, and somewhere along the journey, the true story got picked up by its bootstraps. The old man never wanted to reform any of his boys. He just wanted to give them something to do after school and a taste of the Western lifestyle and work. He gave us an opportunity to connect to something that he still believes to this day is the right of anyone with the heart for it.”
Letting out a little laugh to cover how much the sentiment spoke to her own heart, Sierra agreed. “He was right about that. Sounds like a smart man.”
“One of the best there’s ever been,” Diablo said with a nod.
“It sounds like maybe you know a bit about your father after all,” she observed gently.
His smile turned easy, easier than she might have ever seen it, and because of it, a little boyish. “The old man is certainly the greatest stand-in for a father anyone could have.”
And like any good son, she thought, he was proud of his dad—had probably even set out to be just like him by the looks of it.
Diablo was proving to be more complicated and interesting than any other cowboy she’d ever encountered. And that was after the fact he was already the sexiest one she’d ever met.
Unwilling to let that thought go any further, however, she said tartly, “So that explains why rodeo, then. Your daddy was a cowboy, so you’re a cowboy.”
Whip fast, his finger darted out to tip her hat up—just a fraction, enough to dislodge its perfect placement, but not enough to knock it off her head.
“Excuse you,” he said, infusing his voice with all of the I’m a cowboy from Texas he had in him, and she wished she could say that her body didn’t light up in response. “I rodeo because I’m good at it. Not every CityBoyz participant rodeos, mind you. Most don’t. One in every sixteen, maybe.”
“Oh,” she said, taken aback. “What do most of them do, then?”
Diablo gave a small shrug. “Ride in local parades, give lessons to kids, practice large animal husbandry, go on camping trips, develop interview skills, belong.” He said the last as if belonging was a revolutionary idea, and she recognized that it was.
She’d wanted to belong so much that she’d become the evergreen rodeo queen. In fact, hadn’t rodeo always been about belonging—in her family and in the world at large?
Pulling herself out of her thoughts enough to reply with some sass, she said, “It sounds kind of like 4H for city kids.”
Snorting, Diablo shook his head. “Yeah, I guess you could call it that. I mean, none of us did—but I guess you could.”
“What did you call it?” she teased, echoing his earlier challenge.
“Cowboying.”
She recalled that she had been guilty of thinking of Diablo as not being a real cowboy on more than one occasion now with a strange twist in her gut that might have been shame.
“Well, seeing you in the arena,” she said, acknowledging what had always been obvious, “I don’t see how it could be called anything else. You’re a cowboy, through and through.”
His eyes darted back to her and he said, “So now I’ve finally earned the rodeo queen’s stamp of approval, then, have I?”
If she gave him an inch, he’d take a mile, so rather than apologize, she tilted her chin at a haughty angle and said, “There’s more than one rodeo queen, but yes, you’ve earned this one’s. Don’t make me regret my decisions with a poor showing tonight, though.”
The laugh he let out rang back at them as it bounced off the tightly packed buildings all around, the sound of it rounded and warm and strong enough to survive even passing the throngs of bodies all around them.
Watching him, she let the sound spill over her, filling her with a kind of warmth that felt softer and more enduring and deeper than anything else she’d encountered before.
Still chuckling, he shook his head, disagreeing with an appreciative light in his eye. “One queen reigns above them all, and you’re her,” he said.
Regally inclining her head to mask how his words momentarily broke down her shields, drawing the sweet shock she felt to the surface of her face, she channeled the thickness of her voice into humor and deflection. “The one and only. But enough about me. You were good at rodeo and had the know-how and support of your family to take it all the way, so why did you walk away for law, then?”
At seemingly greater ease around her, he didn’t lose his smile this time, or pull back as he replied, “That judge changed my life with the strike of his gavel. At the time I couldn’t fathom the injustice of it all. All of these adults just standing in a room while a strange man wearing a black muumuu dictated my life, and all of them just went along with it... The guards were ready to control me, if need be, my lawyer and my nana steadily pleading and begging on my behalf...to my angry child mind, they were all complicit in what was an obviously rigged and morally defunct game. It was painful, but that experience showed me the lay of the land in a way that nothing else had before then. Some people have more power than others. I also learned, though, that there were specific pathways to that kind of power, and one of them involved wearing a muumuu.”
She didn’t mean to laugh out loud right after he’d revealed such a sharp and stark moment, but she did, and she suspected he had wanted her to. He wanted her to laugh and hop away from the subject quickly, distracted enough by the absurd image that she didn’t pity or question him.
She was only willing to meet him halfway, though. She would laugh with him, and she wouldn’t pity him, but she definitely had more questions. “And what about now?” she asked as the laughter died down. “Do you still think they were all complicit?”
Eyeing her, his answer was measured. “I do, though I know better now that the only thing they were complicit in was the same social contract to which we’re all expected to cosign, and none more so than the one in the muumuu. And I know that each one of them, particularly on that day, thought they were doing the right thing when they sent a boy to sit on top of bulls rather than behind bars. And I agree that they were.”
“But you still want to be the one in the muumuu a little more than the one sitting on the bull,” Sierra finished.
His eyes widened in surprise, but he nodded. “But I still want to be the one in the muumuu. I don’t resent him for putting me on top of bulls anymore, though, or for sending me to the old man. In fact, I sent him a handwritten thank-you card for what turned out to be the greatest favor of my life.”
Shaking her head, Sierra commented, “And people call me extra.”
“Someday he’ll be a reference for my judicial appointment,” he said, grinning slyly.
“If he’s still alive,” Sierra shot back to keep him humble. The man was outrageous. “It’s been a long time since you were a twelve-year-old boy,” she said.
“We’re here,” he chuckled, ignoring her sass without shame.
Stopping alongside him, thoughts of small talk fleeing as she looked around, she was confused. She hadn’t realized they were heading anywhere in particular, and from where they stood, it wasn’t immediately obvious that they had arrived anywhere, either.
People walked around them on the sidewalk, where they stood in front of a green-painted two-story whose shaded rows of windows and lack of any obvious signage gave it an impression of abandonment.
Across the street other multicolored two-stories mirrored the building they stood in front of, but with bright and clear signage marking their lower floors as retail spaces.
“We are?” she asked, dubiously.
He opened the door for her with full confidence there would be something inside, and it turned out that his self-assurance was justified.
Inside was a tiny little market that reminded her of the corner store down the street from her childhood home in Pensacola.
Individually wrapped, perpetually fresh treats and snacks abounded, lining rows of white metal shelves tucked away in tidy boxes that spoke to her inner child in the language of its heart: candy.
There were people in the store but after looking up to smile in greeting when she and Diablo had walked in, they all returned to the conversations they had already been engaged in.
Diablo led her to the counter, which boasted one of the largest sandwich boards she’d ever encountered.
“I couldn’t possibly eat again now. Not after all of those beignets,” she protested.
Clucking his tongue, Diablo said, “Whoa, there. Settle down, queenie. Even I couldn’t handle another one of these babies right now. They’re for later. After the show. I promise. They keep well.”
Unable to fight the belly laugh, she let it out, even if it was muted. It was a really small store, after all, and she was still an ambassador. “You walked me all around the French Quarter to get a sandwich?”
He side-eyed her. “I walked you all around the French Quarter for the enjoyment of your company and the scenery. We’re not actually that far off from where I ran into you. I brought you here for an experience.”
A darted look around the store confirmed that though the space was small, only an older woman, who smiled at them, seemed to be taking note of their exchange. Otherwise, no one paid them any mind.
She was losing her touch, though, forgetting, even for a moment, that her conduct reflected on The Closed Circuit Rodeo. Reality TV rodeo or not, regular old rodeo folk remained the primary audience for the show, and they had strong opinions about the way a queen should act.
“This must be some sandwich, then,” she said, choosing her public voice rather than the private one while feigning ignorance to his baiting.
His eyes narrowed, a look of disappointment streaking across them, before he said quietly, “Only the best. I make a point to eat here every time I come here. It’s my favorite place.”
She hadn’t done anything wrong, and yet she felt as if she’d somehow let him down.
Clearing her throat, she asked, “Really? What do you recommend, then?”
“Are you a vegetarian?” he asked.
“I don’t think a rodeo queen is allowed to be a vegetarian,” she said drily.
Still looking at the menu, he said, “I didn’t say a rodeo queen. I said you.”
She didn’t say anything for a moment, pretending to read the board overhead when really she saw nothing.
Not for the first time had he suggested that the two were not one and the same.
“They’re the same things,” she said quietly, before adding quickly, “I’ll have what you have. Best way to test your claim.”
“What if you don’t like what I like?” he asked, eyeing her in a way that said he was very aware of her evasion.
“Then I’ll tell you you have dumb opinions and stupid tastes,” she said matter-of-factly.
“I recall you mentioning siblings now...” he said, laughing.
“And what about it?” she asked, pushing the bad behavior, the tone and language that was inappropriate for a rodeo queen, because she couldn’t seem to help wanting to get him to open up, and he only seemed to do so for her rawest self.
“It shows,” he said, smiling at her again before turning to order. “Two Damn That’s Goods, please,” he said, declining the beverages but taking the rest of the combination meal components for both of them. He paid and carried the bag as they left the store, and she followed after him.
“There’s no way I’ll be able to eat all of that,” she said, referring to the small mountains of side dishes that the market staff had heaped into pint-size to-go containers for them.
“After opening night? We’re going to be ravenous,” he argued. “You asked two questions earlier, which gives me the right to ask a second one.”
“What?” Sierra asked, her mind still on the thought of late-night gorging.
“Earlier. Why rodeo, and why law. My second why is why a museum?”
As had occurred so many times in her conversations with the man, she found herself at a fork in the road with Diablo.
She could tell him the truth, reveal herself, to which he very well might poke and prod with cutting observations and sharp questions, or she could give him the easy, rodeo-queen response, and risk—and risk what, exactly?
Risk that he would energetically pull back from her once more, lessening the intensity of their connection enough so that maybe she wouldn’t keep forgetting herself around him?
Wasn’t that what she wanted to happen?
Wasn’t that the most responsible course of action?
Opening her mouth, intending to give the canned reply, she surprised herself by telling him the truth. “Someday I want to start a rodeo museum, but one that—” She paused, uncharacteristically at a loss for words, searching for the ones she wanted without luck. The situation hardly ever happened to her anymore, as she had long ago mastered the art of extemporaneous speaking, but it felt important that she not use the wrong words with Diablo “—is muted and artistic, and not too serious, but takes it all seriously,” she said, mentally cringing all the while. She had not found the right words.
He lifted a single, thick, dark eyebrow, his eyes casting down and back up. “Muted and artistic?”
Of course he would run into her on a day in which, in preparing to be out and about in a city known for its color and flair, she had gone with one of her loudest ensembles.
Her outfit was an homage to Georgia O’Keeffe, and the West—and the ladies of the red-and-purple hat society—and she was nearly impossible to miss. A far cry from muted, though dead on target as far as artistic went.
“I adore the shine and glamour of rodeo—probably more than anyone,” she explained, “but I know that the general public doesn’t see what I see.” Her mother and sisters didn’t. They understood her pageanting but had only just given up trying to convince her that she was good enough to get into “real pageants.” “Most people look at rodeo, and everything associated with it, and all they see is a two-dimensional collection of stereotypes. They think they know and understand what rodeo is all about and who loves it, but it’s clear they don’t because they laugh at us like we’re idiots. It’s not possible to understand something and mock it like that at the same time—in my opinion.”
Diablo stared at her, his eyes narrowed for a beat too long before giving a small nod. “Mine as well.”
Buoyed more than she probably should be, she continued, “I would want my museum to show the juxtapositions at the heart and beneath the surface of rodeo. All of the things that are so obvious to me, but that so many people can’t seem to see.”
“And what are those things?” he prodded.
“That there is beauty in the commitment to making a good show, even when it’s some of the hardest, meanest and most dangerous work out there. I’ve been mocked so often for my makeup and clothing, called fake and worse, so many times over my career. I’ve never been asked how I managed to hold a ten-pound flagpole straight while racing around an arena on horseback, the wind whipping the yards of material this way and that. Cowboys get a little more respect, of course, but so often for the wrong reasons. Not because they practice and work hard like athletes, but because they’re ballsy and cocksure like any teenager out there with a leather jacket. That’s not even a real picture and it’s really about as much as most people know outside of the rodeo world. I want to show people how stoic the clowns and pickup men are, how determined buckle bunnies are, the insanity of pageanting with live animals, the intelligence it takes to take on a bull. Rodeo is campy and over-the-top, but it’s one of those grown-from-the-hard-ground-of-life things that churns with the promise that it can all still be a grand and exciting drama if you’re willing to grab it by the horns and glue on some rhinestones. That’s what I want to show.”
He laughed softly at her joke, and the sound of it was a warm sensation in her chest.
After mulling over her words for a moment longer, he said, “And you went to the Presbyter because by showcasing Mardi Gras and Hurricane Katrina, it puts camp and grit together, too.”
Startled, she stopped in her tracks to stare at him. “Exactly. Exactly! You completely get it!”
“And where do you want this museum to be?”
Her heart’s happy leaps and bounds skidded to a halt, her eyes darting downward and away from him as she said, “It’s more of a daydream than anything. I’m too busy with the CC.”
Eyeing her, he asked casually, “So you’re in it with The Closed Circuit for the long haul, then?”
Shrugging, she said, “I worked damn hard for the opportunity to rodeo queen forever. Everybody said it couldn’t be done.”
“Everybody, indeed,” he said, eyes no less intent in their appraisal of her.
“And I’m not qualified to open a museum anyway. You need to go to school for that, to be taken seriously, at least, which is the way I would want.”
“So go to school,” he said as if it was as easy a thing to do as going to the store.
She laughed, though in reality she didn’t find it funny. She’d made real sacrifices to get where she was. “I’m way too old for that now. No. The CC is a guaranteed win, and after a lifetime of being at the whim of capricious judges, that sounds about heavenly to me.”
“So you’re going to be the Vanna White of The Closed Circuit?”
“If I could be half the icon she is, it’d be an accomplishment. Wouldn’t you say?” she retorted, eyebrow lifting.
Looking away, he shrugged. “If it’s what you want.”
“You and my mother should get together and exchange passive-aggressive techniques,” she said, her tone flat.
“I’m open to the idea. You just let me know when she has the time,” he said blithely.
Laughing, she shook her head. “I like a world in which you have never met.”
“Well, I’m sorry about that, queenie, because she and I are destined to become two peas in a pod. You said it yourself.”
“God save us all.”
“God’s not who you’re dealing with today,” he said.
Cocking her head to the side, she said, “When it’s your own name, it’s kind of like laughing at a joke you told.”
Letting out another bark of laughter, he said, “Only you, queenie.”
“This again?” she asked, bored, and he laughed again, though this time it was more restrained.
Looking at his watch, he let out a breath that would have sounded like a sigh if it had come from anyone other than the man at her side. “I hate to cut us short, but our time’s just about up out here.”
After pulling out her phone to look at the clock, she was startled by how much time had passed. It was later than she’d planned to stay in the city, in fact, which meant she wasn’t going to have time to curl her hair before the show.
“I’ll call a ride for us,” he said, pulling up the number in his phone, but she held up a hand.
“No, thanks, but that’s alright.”
He stopped, looking up at her from his phone, eyes turning a strange mixture of flat and distant. “That’s right. Rodeo queens can’t be seen associating with cowboys.”
Swallowing the strange knot of what felt suspiciously like shame that caught in her throat, she nodded. “Exactly.”
For another beat, he didn’t say anything, just stared at her with an inscrutable expression on his face. Then he looked back down to his phone and resumed dialing. “I’ll order two.”
Forcing a smile, she said, “Thanks,” brightly, but inside she felt like she had let him down.