The Wildest Ride--A Novel Read online

  The interviewer narrowed her eyes but retained her cheerful expression. “How old are you?”

  So much for not looking like a kid trying to sit at the grown-up table.

  Face carefully open, Lil said, “Twenty-seven.”

  As she spoke, however, a commotion erupted in the parking lot when a lifted white-and-chrome F450 pulled up and parked alongside the red curb blaring Hank Williams Jr. loud enough to drown out both the country coming from the stadium speakers and the tailgaters in the parking lot.

  The vanity plates read RDO PRO1 and the windows were tinted.

  Gran always said showing what you really thought on your face was inviting enemies, so Lil held back her disdain, but it was hard.

  Beside Lil, the intern whispered, “That’s got to be AJ.”

  Unimpressed as she was, Lil still leaned forward when the door cracked open, just like the girl next to her.

  Everyone else did too, a strange hush settling over the crowd that had only moments before been as restless as a yard filled with horny cats.

  The passenger-side door opened farther and a gleaming boot stepped down. It was chocolate-brown leather, supple, and obviously expensive. The door swung open and a sigh of disappointment rippled across the crowd.

  Hank’s volume lost some of its potency as people returned to what they had been doing before the truck pulled up. Lil used the intern’s lingering distraction as an opportunity to slide around and get back on her way.

  Hank DeRoy—the cowboy from the truck—might be a three-time second-place PBRA world champion and rodeo legend in his own right, but he was no AJ Garza.

  Lil arrived at the registration table without any further interruptions, but by the time she got there, the lines that waited for her looked like they were in a competition to rival the Great Wall.

  Brow creasing, Lil gauged the line’s progress. It had taken her about fifteen minutes just to make it through the crowd to get to the table. It’d take at least twice that to get through the line. The amount of contestants was almost as absurd as the whole scene.

  She closed her eyes, breathed deep, and focused instead on the old familiar sensations woven in among this first of its kind rodeo.

  The smell was the same. Dirt, leather, beer, hot dogs, metal, livestock.

  The cowboys were the same. Cowboys were always the same: Work hard. Play hard. Rise hard. Fall hard. Whatever you do, do it hard.

  The wildness in the air was a remembered friend, as well. It was as if the energy of the stock permeated the atmosphere, bringing out a little bit of the untamed in everyone.

  Even with her eyes closed, all around her, she knew that people laughed louder, drank too much, flirted, envied, dug in, grabbed on, and held on with more force and passion than they allowed themselves in their daily lives.

  A thread of that wild lived in her, too—it was the part that wanted to hoot and holler and dance with a raging bull.

  “Move!”

  Lil’s eyes shot open. The command belied the frustration of having said something more than once. She had been totally zoned out.

  Ahead of her, there was a foot-and-a-half gap in the line. She whipped around and dipped her head in apology toward the disgruntled voice behind her, then hurried to close the gap.

  Back in place, she laughed at herself for her beating heart. Getting spooked served her right for daydreaming on other people’s time.

  “You laughing at me?” The voice from behind was less commanding this time, but no less disgruntled.

  Lil turned around, this time getting a better look at the speaker. He was short, for a man, but still taller than her, and at least three times as wide, a solid brick wall of muscle.

  Lil held her palms up. “No, sir.”

  Beady black eyes glared at her from below a weathered and bushy brow, but, judging from the huff and shrug of his response, he seemed satisfied with the explanation.

  She got to the table without further incident and pulled out her ID. The curly-haired blond teenager had silver tinsel and green yarn braided into her pigtails and a bright green T-shirt on. She looked up at Lil, panicked, and blurted, “You have to be at least eighteen years old to take part in the Closed Circuit qualifier.”

  Lil shoved the grimace deep inside and smiled instead. “Yes, miss. I’ve got ID to verify my age.”

  The girl’s face transformed into a bright welcome. “Oh perfect. Thanks.”

  Lil handed over her driver’s license and stood back.

  The young woman glanced at the date and started to hand it back, but pulled it back to look again a second time.

  Lil took a deep breath, heart picking up. Here it comes...

  She and Gran had poured over the fine print. Nothing excluded women from entering, but she couldn’t shake the feeling that that was a far cry from it being allowed.

  Tickled surprise filled the girl’s voice when she finally spoke. “So crazy! That’s really your name. We thought it was some kind of stage name or something.” She handed the license back without another glance at it and twisted around in her seat to pull a stapled stack of paper out of a box behind her. She trailed her finger down the list of names and, after a few pages, found Lil’s name and put a checkmark by it.

  That done, the girl returned to rummaging through the box until she pulled out an envelope. On top of it was a crisp set of contestant numbers.

  A thrill ran up Lil’s spine.

  At sixteen it had been her greatest dream to be the first woman to win a PBRA championship buckle. She had given up on that dream, but the feeling that rose in her on seeing those large black numbers printed on the thick wax-coated paper made her realize it hadn’t really ever died.

  The registration girl leaned forward with a clipboard. “I need you to sign here, here, here, on this page, this page, and this one. Then please initial each of these statements before signing here.”

  Lil got to work with the pen, but stopped when someone slammed their palm against the table to her left.

  A few feet away, Hank DeRoy stood in front of a trembling teenager, his palm flat and white-knuckled against the table.

  “It’s ridiculous that I even have to put up with this like some kind of nobody. This place is more circus than circuit.” The arrogance in his tone was topped only by the angle of his nose in the air. Three shorter men made a ring around his back. They all laughed, which was the whole reason they were there.

  Lil ground her teeth. This kind of nonsense was all too familiar, as well.

  The rodeo veteran towered over the redheaded green-shirted teenager who huddled in her chair, her long ponytail shaking.

  The girl held her ground, though, saying, “I’m sorry, Mr. DeRoy, but you have to wait in line like everyone else. That mob would kill me if I let you cut.” Keeping her arms close to her body, she pointed to the line of scowling cowboys.

  Her braces caught the glint of the stadium lights. She had light green rubber bands.

  DeRoy smirked. “You think I’m afraid of a few no-name cowboys?”

  A low growl slipped out of Lil’s lips. It was too quiet for anyone else to hear, a private sign of her temper breaking its dam.

  When she spoke, her voice was as low and raspy as it always was. “The young lady said she was scared of them—the gentlemanly thing to do is respect that.”

  A hush took root in the space between Lil and Hank, quickly spreading to a ten-foot radius around them.

  Hank’s smile twisted into a sneer as he turned to fully face Lil. “Well, what have we here?”

  What Lil had was the complete focus of DeRoy, his three amigos, the girls at the registration table, and the cowboys behind them in line.

  So much for keeping a low profile, she thought.

  After a pretend pause for thought, one of his cronies lifted his knee to slap his thigh. “I got it, boss!”<
br />
  Here we go, Lil thought. Insults that needed physical punctuation tended to blow their load early...

  “We got ourselves an honest-to-God prairie n*****.”

  The hush around them became the quiet of the grave. Then it turned into a rippled murmur. Like a skipping stone, all around Lil whispers of the insult spread through the gathered crowd, hopping from one group to the next, travelling far and fast before sinking hard in the ears of a burly pair whose green Closed Circuit T-shirts had the word SECURITY emblazoned on them. Making their way to where the three of them stood, they stopped next to a kid and the bigger of the two crouched down beside them. After a quiet consultation, the child pointed to Hank’s lackey and then the guard rose to join their partner. Both of them walked with long calm strides toward the lackey, who, of course, attempted to run. The crowd didn’t let him, though, and after a brief struggle in which the lackey ridiculously tried to crawl between a security guard’s legs to escape, losing his hat in the process, they gathered him up and carried him away while the crowd watched.

  When they were out of sight, Hank laughed, shaking his head and tipping his hat in the direction of his fallen crony. “And that, my friends, is what I call affirmative action in action.”

  The blood drained from Lil’s face. A strange, foamy, roar filled her ears and the storm clouds of her eyes glinted like hard flint.

  Oddly, her granddad’s wisdom went strangely silent in the moment. Instead, it was Piper’s voice that filled her mind, an image of the redhead standing in her safari boots, hands on her hips, saying, Oh, it’s on now!

  Lil’s hand inched closer to the rope at her hip. DeRoy missed the motion. He was wiping tears of laughter from his eyes. He thought he was real funny...

  Her fingertips grazed rope and the corded smoothness of its surface brought with it a different voice, her granddad’s.

  Whatever it is, Lilian, save it for the ride.

  The caution wasn’t enough to stop her, not after he’d mocked the first time she’d seen that kind of justice served in an event like this, but it was enough to change her plans: instead of taking his feet out from under him like she wanted to, she merely knocked his hat off his head.

  The whole thing was done in an instant. It just took a wrist-flick rope trick with just enough force to punch the hat off a damn fool’s head, plus another flick for the recoil.

  Again, the crowd stopped breathing.

  And then everything happened at once.

  DeRoy yanked a beer can from one of his cronies and hurled it at Lil’s head. Lil ducked and the can crashed into the face of another baby-faced cowboy—this one wearing brand-new boots.

  The young man stumbled back then stepped forward, wiped the beer off his face, lowered his head, and charged.

  Lil leaped clear of his path while one of Hank’s cronies pushed Hank out of the way to take the hit for him. The two men crashed into Hank’s other two cronies, sending the whole bunch of them tumbling into a heap on the ground.

  The cowboy that Hank had knocked into came back swinging, but Hank ducked, so the man made contact with a different bystander, who responded by throwing his own punches.

  Cameras rushed toward the commotion from all directions, reminding Lil of the images she’d seen in high school of spermatozoa surrounding an egg.

  The thought would have made her laugh if she weren’t right in the middle of it with a brick fist barreling toward her face.

  She ducked, evading it, but decided it was time to break free from the fight.

  She slipped around two other brawlers unnoticed, weaving her way toward the edge of the crowd. She had nearly made it out when somebody got the bright idea to pick up somebody else and throw them at the registration tables.

  By dumb luck, he crashed into the one table that didn’t have high school volunteers sitting at it.

  The thrown man jumped up immediately and climbed back over the table to take his turn to hit while the registration girls scattered. They fled like a panicked deer, so, of course, one of them ran straight into the fray.

  Lil groaned and turned around, locking her eyes on the girl’s bright green shirt.

  Lil had heard that fools had special angels, and it must have been right because the girl wandered deeper and deeper into the melee without becoming a casualty to any of the wild swinging and kicking going on all around her.

  Until, as if the devil had heard Lil’s thoughts, the girl startled suddenly and swung right, placing herself in the path of an active fistfight.

  Lil sped up, skimming under swings and over bodies to get to the girl before she ended up taking one right in the kisser.

  About three feet away, Lil realized she wasn’t going to make it to the girl in time. So, leaping with a running start, she knocked the girl out of the way, bracing to take the hit herself.

  But it never came.

  Instead, a strong hand caught the fist zeroing in on her head and pushed it aside before catching her with the force of an iron bar in the gut, knocking the wind out of her, but stopping her from hitting the ground. The thought flashed across her mind that it might have been gentler to fall.

  She gasped a quick “thanks” as the stranger helped her back to her feet, where she pulled her vest straight, giving it a quick scan for torn ribbons before registering the absolute silence around her.

  In fact, nobody even moved.

  What had only moments before been an active brawl suddenly looked like a group of grown men caught playing dress-up freeze tag for an audience of reporters and interns in green T-shirts.

  And every single eye, camera, and mic was aimed at her.

  Or, not at her, but at whoever was behind her.

  Turning around slowly, she found herself staring at a broad expanse of white cotton. She took a step back.

  The man in front of her wore a plain white T-shirt. Crisp and clean, it stretched tight across a set of pecs that had seen the gym at least as much as the pasture. Thick arms framed his chest, obviously grown and honed from a similar combination of effort and vanity.

  His hands, though, his hands were all bull rider.

  Huge, rough, layered, and callused, they were the hands of a man who let go of something only when he was ready to.

  Her eyes trailed lower, taking in and lingering at the narrow tapering of his waist and the low sling of his jeans before she remembered her manners and shot her gaze back up toward his face.

  There, a cleft chin jutted out from a large sharply square jaw.

  His lips were wide and full and looked like they had been made for midnight in a dark room.

  And they were frowning. At her.

  An answering frown wrinkled her own brow.

  His eyebrows, drawn together, were thick, straight, and jet-black, standing out in strong contrast against the warm golden brown of his skin. His eyes, almost black, were narrowed down at her. He wore a backward baseball hat.

  A part of her mind broke off to wonder how it was possible for someone to pull off Stern Disapproval while wearing a backward baseball hat.

  He managed it.

  The lower half of his face was covered with something between a five-o’clock shadow and beard, which should have made him look lazy but instead accentuated the sculpted lines of his face.

  He was the word masculine brought to life, and she couldn’t take her eyes off him.

  He was the one who broke their stare, opening and closing his right hand. His other hand was hooked into the front pocket of his jeans, tugging them tantalizingly lower on one side.

  Lil’s eyes and brain fought over which hand to pay attention to. They compromised by darting away.

  To his left stood an older Black man with a neatly groomed salt-and-pepper beard, his face shadowed by a well-worn cowboy hat, the scent of former champion all over him.

  At his right was a man wit
h Photoshop-perfect deep black skin and equally thick black eyebrows. He’d come to the rodeo dressed in a three-piece suit and casually held back the other half of the fight Lil had crashed as if that other half weren’t two hundred and fifty pounds of angry cattleman. In fact, the man in the suit looked bored with his job, like her brawl had underperformed.

  Lil’s eyebrow and lip quirked up. She was so sorry to disappoint.

  Behind and around the trio, the sea of people had parted like Moses was in the vicinity.

  It wasn’t Moses, though.

  It was AJ Garza.

  Their gazes returned to each other like magnets, hers rolling like a dark storm coming in on the horizon. His deep, steady, and, upon closer inspection, rich brown rather than black, like a freshly turned field right after the rain.

  She wanted to dig in and plant.

  He broke the connection again, his eyes quickly darting to the rise and fall of her chest before jumping back to her face. His frown deepened to a scowl, carving deep grooves around his downturned mouth.

  “Glad to see I finally have your attention.” His drawl screamed Texas!—like just about everything did about Texas.

  “Now that I do,” he continued, “I would suggest that you refrain from starting fights outside rodeos. It’s not a good look.” He gestured to the cameras ringing them, as well as the security guards huffing in their direction. Then he nodded toward the suit that still held a brawler. “Not safe, either. Be a shame to get your head bashed in before you even get the opportunity to ride in your first rodeo...”

  Nobody said it out loud, but a collective “Oooooooooo...” swept across the crowd. As far as rodeo insults went, AJ’s was palpable.

  Heat darkened Lil’s cheeks. First rodeo, my ass. She gritted her teeth and held her tongue. It might be her first PBRA rodeo, but it wasn’t even her first professional rodeo, let alone her first rodeo.