Bad News Cowboy (8 page)

Still, she was a little bit unnerved that Liss seemed to read her so well. It made her wonder if Connor and Eli could read her just as plainly.

She immediately dismissed that. Unless it was printed on the back of a cereal box, neither of her brothers were going to read too deeply into anything.

Anyway, there was nothing deep to read.

It was just a case of a little harmless desire. And if given the chance, she imagined she could burn it out nicely.

A slow smile crossed her lips. Yes, that was what she wanted.

And with her decision made, Kate went happily back to work.

* * *

J
ACK
DID
HIS
absolute damnedest not to reflect on anything that had passed between Kate and himself in the past twenty-four hours. Because he was sitting in his living room with her two older brothers, his very best friends, men who were like brothers to him. Men who would snap him in half like a matchstick if they had any idea of the thoughts that had run through his mind earlier this morning.

No matter how fleeting said thoughts were.

They had been brief, but they had been way, way outside the boundaries of Safe Kate Thoughts.

For a moment there, when she'd curled her fingers through his hair, those serious dark eyes on his... Yeah, for a moment there he'd thought about cupping the back of her head and closing the distance between them...

And he was going to stop thinking now.

He heard a sudden and violent outburst of profanity and realized he'd missed something on the game.

“Pass interference my ass!” Connor shouted.

“Must be nice to have the refs in your pocket,” Eli grumbled, leaning back on the couch.

“Yeah,” Jack said, only pretending to have any clue what was happening.

Connor snorted. “I just got a profane text from Liss.”

“Is she watching the game in between female bonding moments?” Eli asked.

“You don't think Sadie is watching the game?” Connor asked.

“She pays just enough attention to football to irritate all of us. Though I imagine that if Kate is around, she and Liss will have banded together to commandeer the remote.”

“Had we opted to watch the game as a group, I imagine she would have showed up wearing orange and black and rooting for the Beavers. Even though they aren't playing.”

“You chose a real winner there, Eli,” Jack said, happy to be on any topic other than the one his brain seemed intent on focusing on.

“Our love transcends football,” Eli said, lifting a bottle of beer to his lips.

“And my love for Liss doesn't have to,” Connor said.

“And I'm single, assholes,” Jack added, grinning broadly.

“I don't envy you,” Eli said.

“Because you've forgotten.”

“Forgotten celibacy? Feeling lonely, depressed.” Connor shook his head. “No, I have not forgotten that.”

“Some of us are not celibate,” Jack said. Though, come to think of it, it had been a lot longer than usual since he'd picked someone up.

Which could explain some of the weirdness between him and Kate.

And now he was back to Kate.

“So you and Kate are working on a charity thing?” Eli asked.

A sharp sensation twinged in his chest. It was almost as though Eli could read his mind. Which was a dangerous thing right now. “Yeah. Has she mentioned much about it?”

“No, not really. I was curious.”

“Well, it isn't just me and Kate,” he said, feeling unaccountably guilty. “We've got the whole amateur association involved. And I'm working toward reconnecting with some contacts in the pro association to get them to help, as well. So it's a whole group effort.”

“To help Alison?” Connor asked.

His question had a tone to it. A suspicious tone. “Yes. Her and other women in her situation. I'm impressed with what she's doing, improving not only her situation but the situations of others.” Which didn't sound defensive at all. Not that he had any reason to feel defensive about Alison. It was the entire situation.

“Is there something going on with her?” This question came from Eli. “You and her, I mean.”

Jack was almost grateful they were so far offtrack. “No. I'm sure she's lovely but hooking up with vulnerable women is not exactly my thing.” Which was a nice reminder. “They want what I'm not going to give.”

“You seem to be giving things,” Eli said.

Well, this was the story of his life. He couldn't possibly be doing something nice just to do something nice. He must have ulterior motives. Probably extremely dishonorable ones.

“Because I'm a nice person, jackass.”

Eli held his hands up, palms out. “Of course you are.”

“I do selfless things.”

“Uh-huh,” Connor said.

“I have.” Maybe not very many.

“Fine. I believe you,” Eli said.

Jack snorted and stood up, making his way into the kitchen to grab another beer. Of course, he couldn't be too mad, since Connor and Eli were his oldest friends and they had a lot more context for his behavior than most people did. Still, the citizens of Copper Ridge tended to sell him short. And yeah, some of that he'd earned. But not all of it.

He liked to make people laugh; he liked to provide a good time. He liked to have a good time. And somehow people tended to mistake that to mean he didn't take anything seriously. As though his ranch ran on charm rather than labor. As though he had lucked into his position on the circuit.

Maybe if he did a good job organizing this charity thing, the town would have to realize that he had the ability to see something through. To do something right, to do something noble, even.

Yeah,
noble
wasn't a word typically used to describe him.

Maybe, though...maybe he could get noticed for doing something good. Maybe he could change some things.

Everyone liked him well enough, but no one took him all that seriously. He wondered if that would change if the townspeople had any idea that he carried the same genes as the venerable West family.

No doubt it would, since the oldest of the West children had a fairly large scandal in his past, and yet the town never seemed to talk much about it. As though the influence of Nathan West was mixed into the mist, settling over everything. All-seeing, all-knowing.

But he had no claim to that name; he'd sold it when he was eighteen years old. A little bit of hush money to get his life going, to permanently separate himself from a man who had never given a damn about them anyway. It had seemed like a no-brainer at the time.

Now sometimes he felt a bit as if he'd sold himself. Pretty damn cheap, too.

And the Wests were part of the town—the mortar in half the brick buildings on Main Street. Jack felt somewhat obligated to slide under the radar. Oh, sure, he'd been a pro bull rider; he was a ladies' man; he lived in the same town he was born in. The people paid him no mind, because they thought he was harmless. Thought he was laid-back. Thought he was haphazard, that he came by his successes accidentally.

They underestimated him, and he allowed it.

And he was pretty tired of it.

He jerked open the fridge and pulled out another bottle of beer before slamming the door shut again. Yeah, he was pretty damn tired of it. So he was going to put an end to it.

This charity rodeo was going to be a success. One of the biggest things Copper Ridge had ever been a part of. Maybe it would even be something that caught on. Something that was annual, at least here, if not in other counties.

It would be work. Hard work. And people would have to acknowledge that.

Hell, that was the entire point of his horse breeding operation. No one knew it. No one but him. But he was amassing a reputation for having some of the finer stock around, and he was most definitely gunning for Nathan West. To overthrow him. To diminish the man's empire.

To meet the man at the top of his own game and beat him at it.

Maybe it was petty. To want something just so he could prove to the man who would never lower himself to call himself Jack's father that he wasn't just a little bastard brat who could be swept under the rug. That if he was given money, he wouldn't just go drink himself into a stupor with it because he was poor and unworthy and didn't know what to do with cash. Oh no, he was making himself legitimate competition.

And the old man had provided the seed money that allowed Jack to do it.

It was poetic justice, albeit private poetic justice, that he had been enjoying greatly for the past couple of years.

This would be just a slightly more public showing. The middle finger to his dad, a bid for legitimacy. A way to flaunt himself without violating their agreement. His dad's dirty secret shining in the light, and even if no one else knew it, the old man would.

Yeah, he was all in. No question.

He turned and walked back into the living room, offering Eli and Connor a smile they didn't see, since they were glued to the game.

“Since I've been a pretty awesome friend to you lousy pieces of flotsam and jetsam for the past twenty-some-odd years, I was thinking you could help out with the charity.”

“How?” Connor asked. “I feel invested in helping, if for no other reason than Eli and I saw the way that husband of Alison's treated her.”

“Time donation, monetary donation, spreading the word. Whatever you feel like you can give.”

“You've got it,” Eli said.

“It will be good for your reputation anyway, Sheriff,” Jack said.

“Well, now you're acting like I need to have ulterior motives to contribute to charity.”

“I'm just adding incentive.”

“Your pretty face is enough incentive, Jack. It always is,” Connor said.

“I'm flattered, Connor but you're a married man, and I'm not a homewrecker.”

“That's too bad. Liss is pretty open-minded.”

“If I took you up on what you're pretending to offer, you would scamper into the wilderness and never return,” Jack said drily.

“Damn straight.”

“And I'd run in the opposite direction,” Jack added.

“Okay, that call was balls. There is no way this game isn't fixed,” Eli groaned.

And after that, they didn't talk about charity, and Jack didn't think much about it. He didn't think about Kate, either. Well, not much.

Sure, there had been some tension between them recently. But ultimately, she would always be the little mud-stained girl he'd helped distract while Connor and Eli had dealt with their drunken mess of a father.

It had given him a place to be, something to focus on besides his unhappy home.

The simple fact was the Garretts were more than friends to him. They were family. Connor and Eli were his brothers, a dream an only child like himself had never imagined could be realized.

Then he'd grown up and found out he had siblings. Half siblings, but other people who shared his DNA. At that point he had another realization about just how little blood mattered.

Colton West was his brother by blood, but he doubted the man would ever cross the street to shake his hand. He doubted the other man had any idea.

Connor and Eli had always been there for him. And they always would be.

Nothing on earth was worth compromising that over. Nothing.

* * *

T
HE
LIST
OF
PARTICIPANTS
for each event had grown. And thanks to Jack's hard work it included several people from the pro circuit. Kate felt downright intimidated, she couldn't lie. She was signed up to compete against some of the best barrel racers around, and even though it was just a charity competition, she felt as if it would be some kind of moment of truth.

About her skills. About whether or not she had an excuse to hold back from turning pro. About a whole lot of things.

She looked down and kicked a stone, watched it skim across the top of the fine gray dust in the driveway. She'd come out to get a ride in before the meeting tonight. Before Jack was due to pick her up and take her over to the Grange again. But she sort of felt numb, sluggish, frozen. Not in the best space to do a run around the barrel she had set up in the arena.

But she supposed she had to. She kicked another stone.

She hadn't seen Jack since that day at the Farm and Garden. They had only shared one phone call, where he had rattled off a list of names that had made her stomach heave with anxiety. All the while, her heart had been pounding faster because of the deep timbre of his voice. She didn't need professional psychiatric help at all.

She let out an exasperated breath and shoved her hands in her jacket pockets as the wind whipped across her path. She upped her pace as she headed toward the barn.

Her fingers were still numb as she tacked Roo up. She pulled the girth tight and checked everything over once. Then she leaned in and kissed Roo right over the star on her forehead. She inhaled her horsey scent, shavings and the sweet smell of the hay. It was like slipping into a hot bath, a moment of instant relaxation.

“Okay,” she said. “We can do this.”

She led Roo outside before mounting and taking it slow over to the arena. Roo was a soft touch, and it took only a little gentle encouragement to urge her horse to speed up. Then she let out a breath and spurred Roo to go even faster, leaning into her horse's gait, making the turn around the first barrel easily.

She wondered what her time was. She should have grabbed the stopwatch that was hanging on the fence. She leaned back slightly and Roo sensed the change, shaking her head and knocking against the second barrel as they went around.

“Shit.” She looked over her shoulder and watched it topple. So that was it. That was her run.

She slowed considerably when she approached the third barrel, then made an easy loop around it before stopping Roo inside the arena. She cursed again, the foul word echoing in the covered space.