Lost & Found

I lifted a shoulder. “I just met you. Not liking you would assume I’ve actually spent time thinking about you. Which I haven’t.” I wondered if that ever present curl to Garth’s mouth could be ironed out.

  “You’re about as good a liar as you are pretending you’re not attracted to me.”

  My mouth almost dropped. He wasn’t just a cocky bastard. He was the cockiest bastard to have ever sauntered the earth.

  “Are you always this full of yourself or just today?”

  Garth’s smile curled higher. “Always.”

  Of course he was. “And where does this full-of-one-self attitude come from?” I asked, crossing my arms tighter.

  “Experience.”

  Garth infuriated me, but a thrill of excitement rushed through me at the same time. I didn’t know what it was about that kind of guy, who thought they were next in line to rule the world, that appealed to me, but the desire ran deep. So deep I doubted I could root it out even if I wanted to. Which, while Garth held me with his stare and smile, I didn’t want to.

  But I had enough experience with that kind of guy to know one didn’t keep their attention by falling into their traps on the first day. They craved the chase, the anticipation of the kill. Guys like Garth were the ultimate predator.

  “You know, I don’t live all that far from here if you’re ever bored and looking for something to do,” he said, resting his hands on his belt buckle.

  I huffed. “You mean if I’m ever looking for someone to do?”

  “That depends on your answer to that.”

  I really regretted my decision to explore the grounds, especially with the way Garth’s thumb made those slow circles over that belt buckle of his. I wasn’t sure if he did it to draw my attention to his junk, or he just liked having a hand as close to it as was acceptable in public, but it definitely had something to do with the junk.

  “My answer is no,” I said. “Any day. Every day. It will be no.”

  Garth’s twisted smile didn’t falter. “It’s always no until it’s yes. And I’ve never met a no I couldn’t turn into a yes.”

  “Well, you’re looking at your first no that’s going to stay a no.” Oh, and by the way, that ego of yours is sucking the air right out of the room.

  He slid his hat off and lowered it at his side. His hair was as dark as his eyes, maybe a shade darker, but still not as dark as his smile. I’d never met a person who so exactly fit their last name. His eyes flashed, and at that moment, I was fairly certain if he sauntered up to me, grabbed me in his arms and kissed me deep and hard, I would have kissed him back. And he knew it.

  “We’ll see,” he said with a wink.

  I gave myself an imaginary slap to the face and waited to reply until I was sure I wouldn’t come off sounding like a befuddled schoolgirl. It took longer than I thought.

  “I’m going to leave you to your cow shit,” I curled my nose at the wheelbarrow, “and ego. Not enough room for anything else with that head of yours in here.” I was halfway down the barn when Garth spoke up.

  “Going after Jesse?”

  I bristled and stopped in my tracks. “No. I’m planning on staying as far away from Jesse as Willow Springs will allow.”

  “Glad to hear it. I know the outcome to a girl like you chasing after a guy like Jesse Walker. And it isn’t a pretty one.”

  I closed my eyes. I knew that. Even with a girlfriend he’d lied to me about, Jesse was still ten levels above me on the dating scale. Nothing I’d done or would do could ever be worthy of the likes of Jesse, even on his worst day, which, after today, may have been it.

  I was heading for the entrance when Garth spoke up again. “What are you doing Saturday night?”

  I paused. I knew better than to answer, but I couldn’t stop myself. “Nothing.”

  “Ever been to a rodeo?”

  I almost snapped back Does it look like I have? when I remembered I wasn’t in my usual attire. As far as I knew, Garth didn’t know anything about me except what he’d seen after he arrived that morning.

  When I didn’t reply, I heard him move closer. “You want to come watch me at one?” There wasn’t one note of doubt in his question.

  Twisting around, I narrowed my eyes. “Does it look like I do?” The question was rhetorical, but Garth didn’t take it that way.

  “Yeah,” he answered. “It sure does.”

  I hated it like I couldn’t have hated anything more, but he was right.

  I never knew being surrounded by a couple of hot guys would be such a chore. After that week, I knew better.

  The day in and day out chores at Willow Springs kept me busy from dawn to dusk, but it didn’t seem to matter how busy I was or looked. Almost every time I turned around, I ran into Garth. Or Jesse. I literally couldn’t escape them.

  With Garth, I rolled my eyes, threw something snarky at him, and was back on my merry chore way. He still looked at me like he was just waiting for me to trip his trap, but I knew guys like him. I’d dated legions of them. His mysterious aura combined with his troubled vibe might have scared off other girls, but not me. Troubled and mysterious was my Kryptonite. My Achilles’ heel. My weak spot. My specialty.

  With Jesse, it was harder. Infinitely so. Bumping into him around the ranch wasn’t so easy to shrug off because whenever I came within a foot of Jesse, my body went on high alert. Every molecule zinged to life. I tried to brush it off, like being around him didn’t undo me, but I doubted I did a very good job.

  He’d tried to corner me that same day, to explain the whole Josie thing, but I basically told him enough had been explained and to leave me alone. He did.

  And he didn’t.

  Just when I was sure Jesse had forgotten my name, I’d find him watching me in the middle of lunch. As soon as I’d look his way, his gaze would shift.

  After a few days, though, I didn’t catch Jesse staring at me once. He’d taken my advice after all.

  It was Saturday night, and the ranch was quiet. Other than the cattle mooing, the crickets chirping, the noise coming from the ranch hand bunkhouse, and the washing machines whirring a floor below me. So, yeah. Quiet wasn’t the right word for it, but it was as quiet as Willow Springs ever could be.

  It was rodeo night, and I guessed around those parts, that was a big deal. Like Texas football big deal. Most everyone had already headed out. Rose had stopped by my room to see if I wanted to go and needed a ride. I told her I wasn’t sure if I was going yet and that I was sure I could find a ride if I decided to go. I didn’t like telling Rose a white lie, two of them at that, but I didn’t want to take the chance of finding myself crammed next to Jesse in the family Suburban.

  From the sounds of it, the rodeo fairgrounds weren’t far away. I’d hoofed it plenty of times in my life.

  I watched the Walkers’ Suburban head down the driveway before grabbing my purse and heading downstairs. I checked my phone and found the same missed calls I’d been missing all week. Not that I was missing much.

  Mom had blown up my phone ever since I got to Willow Springs. I’d never answered one of her calls. She’d even left a few voicemails. I didn’t listen to them. She called Rose and left messages with her asking I give her a call back. I never did.

  Mom was the reason I was at Willow Springs. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it there. I just felt as if she’d written me off and went with the easiest way to deal with me as she could. When it came to me, Mom was a pro at identifying the avenues that required minimal time and effort on her part. Basically, I’d been a houseplant for the past eighteen years. I was given just enough water and sun to keep me alive, but nothing more. Willow Springs was a classic example. Instead of trying to get to the bottom of why her daughter was floundering through life, she sent me off to ranch boot camp to “prove” myself worthy of art school.

  There was so much messed up about that it made my head spin.

  It made my head spin so much, I walked as fast as my legs could move. The weather had been cool the past week, and that nigh
t was no exception. Thankfully I’d pulled on my hoodie before leaving. Even at my power walk of a pace, my mostly bare legs were on the threshold of goosebumps.

  About an hour later, the fairgrounds were in view. From the sounds of it, I guessed the rodeo happenings had started. The noise was as impressive as any concert I’d ever been to, but the sounds were different. Instead of screams and wails, there were a lot of hee-haws and whistling.

  After weaving through a caravan of shiny, big trucks, I made my way up to the entrance.

  “Hey, hun,” the middle-aged ticket lady said, trying to make her inspection of me casual. “Just one?” She reached for the ticket roll to tear one off.

  “Um, Garth Black was supposed to leave a ticket up here for me,” I said. “One ticket for Rowen Sterling.” Garth told me a couple of days ago he got a few free tickets as a perk to competing, and he’d leave one for me at the ticket counter.

  From the frown on the lady’s face as she shuffled through a few envelopes in a drawer, I guessed that ticket wasn’t waiting for me.

  “Hmm,” she said, pulling one of those envelopes free. “I don’t have one here from Garth Black, but I do have one with your name on it.” She flipped the envelope over so I could see my name scribbled down on it.

  My eyebrows came together. “Are you sure that isn’t from Garth?”

  “Honey, trust me, I’m sure.” She pulled the ticket out of the envelope and slid it across the counter toward me.

  “Because he pretty much looks like the rest of the guys here. Big hat, big belt buckle, big ego . . . that sort of thing.”

  “Garth Black may look like the rest of the cowboys out there, but the boy who left you this ticket is something else altogether.” My throat was already going dry when she said, “Jesse Walker left you this ticket.”

  “Are you sure?” I tried not to look too flustered.

  She chuckled a few notes. “Yeah, I’m sure. When Jesse Walker comes smiling up to your booth, that’s not the kind of thing a girl forgets.”

  I knew the feeling.

  “Okay.” I took the ticket. “Thanks.”

  As I headed into the grandstand area, I tried not to over think the ticket issue. Garth said he’d leave me one and he didn’t. Jesse never said he’d leave me one and he did. I had one big Why? to both of those statements and no answers.

  In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted the Whys answered.

  The grandstand was even bigger than it’d looked from outside. Row upon row of metal bleachers crept up and around the dirt arena, and they were packed to capacity with bodies. A sea of cowboy and cowgirl hats swayed and bobbed in waves. It was an impressive sight. And it was noisy. So much so, I almost wished I had a pair of earplugs handy. A nose-plug would have been useful, too, because the place had that familiar barn smell that leaned more toward the offensive side. That might have been because I walked right past one of the big corrals where a bunch of frothing at the mouth and pawing at the ground bulls were stored. Damn. Someone had to have a death wish to attempt riding one of those things.

  I hurried by the bulls and glanced at my ticket. It looked like most of the grandstand area was general seating, but my ticket had a seat number listed. So it wasn’t a cheap seat. Jesse had forked out a little dough to get a good seat at an event that seemed a notch above barbaric for the girl who’d barely known the front of a horse from the back of a horse a week ago.

  I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the whole idea.

  When I saw where my seat was, an aisle seat without any familiar faces close by, I decided to be grateful for it.

  Until I settled into my seat and did a quick scan of the surrounding seats. Jesse was, in fact, close by, although not close enough he’d noticed me. He was about ten rows back and over and surrounded by a mini-harem of peaches-and-cream girls.

  They ranged from cute to pretty. One could even be classified as drop dead gorgeous. Dark hair, light hair, red hair, tall, short, brown eyes, blue eyes . . . They were as different as one girl to the next could be, but they shared one similarity: their clear eyes and sweet smiles. Every single last one of the half dozen of them had it, and it wasn’t the contrived kind of sweet either. It was the real deal.

  I only knew that because I’d seen every kind of impostor, fabricated kind of sweet out there, so when the real deal came around, it was as clear as the sky was blue.

  I couldn’t dislike them, even if I wanted to, which I did because they had Jesse’s attention and I didn’t. They were sitting next to him, and I wasn’t. As much as I wanted to deny the way I felt about Jesse, I couldn’t ignore it. My feelings for him were instinctual, as automatic as blinking my eyes.

  Jesse Walker had worked his way inside of my impenetrable walls, and I didn’t know how to shove him out. I wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there in the first place. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted him out.

  So much confusion over some guy. I’d officially become my worst nightmare.

  If I was being honest with myself, since that seemed to be a new pattern for me, I was confused about more than one guy. As mysterious as Garth liked to come across, he was less of a mystery to me than Jesse was. A guy like Garth had easy to decipher motivations, especially since I was so experienced with his type. They liked to keep people at arm’s length, although they preferred the term “mysterious.” They liked the chase, the immediate reward post-chase, and then they were out. Clean, permanent breaks. Basically, I was the female version.

  However, the Jesses of the world were impossible to understand. A good guy was foreign territory to me. I didn’t understand his motives, or his goals, or anything really. I needed to know what to expect so I could maintain control of my world. Getting what I expected from Garth was better than not having a clue what I’d get from Jesse. I’d take a broken heart I knew was coming over one I didn’t see coming from a mile away any day of the week.

  I had control over so little in my life that I had to make calculated decisions to keep what control I did have.

  Jesse was a big, fat question mark I couldn’t risk.

  I’d gotten so lost in my thoughts, I forgot what I’d been staring at the entire time.

  Or who I’d been staring at.

  As soon as I pulled myself out of my head, I noticed Jesse’s eyes were locked onto mine. Those sky blue eyes of his that made my stomach about drop to the ground when they looked at me that way.

  He waved and smiled.

  Oh, God. Please say he didn’t notice me the whole five minutes I was think-staring at him.

  Since I didn’t get a divine answer, I decided to wave and try to smile back. The girls around Jesse stopped their chatter and took notice of who he was waving at. Then, surprising the hell out of me, every last one of them smiled and waved. Some took a little longer, I guess they were trying to move past my clothing or piercings, but they all waved. The drop-dead gorgeous one was the last, but after her gaze moved from Jesse to me a couple of times, she joined in.

  The way people did things around there was so different. Almost entirely different. Back in Portland, when a stranger made eye contact with you, you dug your mace out of your purse. Here though, you smiled, waved, and invited said stranger over for steak and potatoes. Even a cynic like myself had to admit it was kind of refreshing.

  Jesse said something to the girls, stood, and side-stepped his way down the row. His eyes stayed on mine, but I couldn’t help but notice every single set of female eyes shifting as he passed by them. I suppose if that ass was half a foot in front of my face, my gaze would have dropped for a while, too.

  He wore what he wore everyday: tight jeans, snug tee, belt, boots, and hat. Everyone else seemed to be a bit more dressed up. Like watching a bunch of dudes and livestock stomp around in the dirt was worth getting decked out for. I liked that Jesse was who he was every day. He didn’t have the need to be somebody else, rodeo or not. He was just Jesse.

  Well, he was all Jesse.

  He bounded down the aisle, his smile get
ting a little bigger with each step. I reminded myself I was upset with him. He had a girlfriend, probably one of those six still pining after him with Bambi eyes. Even though he hadn’t told an outright lie, he’d lied by omission.

  Thou shalt not ask a girl out if thou hast a girlfriend.

  That was the eleventh commandment.

  “You made it.” Jesse stopped at the end of my seat and kneeled beside me in the center of the aisle. I’d forgotten how nice those eyes were to look into. It’d been so long since I’d let myself. My heart was already racing, and he’d said three words.

  “Thanks for the ticket.” After ignoring him for almost a whole week, those words felt like something of a defeat.

  They also felt like a victory.

  “I wasn’t sure you’d show up, but I wanted to make sure you had a good seat if you did.”

  “Why wouldn’t I show up?” I asked, like I hadn’t been hmmhaw’ing over it all week.

  “Because I was here.” Jesse shifted closer to let someone pass him. He didn’t move his arm sharing my armrest once the couple passed.

  He has a girlfriend. One named Josie. It was sad how I had to remind myself every two seconds.

  “So is Garth,” I said. “He’s competing in something tonight. Something that has to do with one of those devil creatures over there.” I pointed toward the far end of the arena where the bulls paced around in their corral.

  “Garth Black,” he said with a sigh. His expression shadowed for a moment before it cleared. “Have you been seeing a lot of each other?”

  “About five seconds more than I’ve seen you this week. You know how it is. If you’re not working, you’re sleeping. This is the first R and R”—I made air quotes—“I’ve had in a week.”

  “There’s a reason we’re kept so busy, you know?” Jesse said, his smile recovered.

  “What’s that?”

  He leaned in closer. So close I smelled the soap on his skin. “To keep us out of trouble.” He laughed a few low notes, and I couldn’t not join in.

  “It’s working.” Even if I’d wanted to get into trouble, which was my M.O., I didn’t have enough time or energy. I wondered why they didn’t parole criminals at ranches.