Cody (American Extreme Bull Riders Tour Book 4)

  Evident even to her and that battered, frozen heart of hers that seemed less and less either one of those things with every passing moment.

  “I thought you were bringing your new man,” Jesse said when she found herself next to him, because he was always irritating. Even the night before his wedding.

  “I would think you have a whole lot more to worry about than my love life,” Skylar said mildly. “Like how tomorrow you’re going to have Mom and Dad in the same room for the first time since the divorce. How’s that going to happen? Without blood, I mean.”

  Jesse shot her a look that told her he wasn’t the least bit fooled by the change in subject.

  “Funny you should ask, because I’ve had to set that shit up like I’m personally storming the beaches of Normandy.” He started counting off on his fingers. “Different entrances. Different tables. A major conversation with Dad about how no amount of drinks should lead him to believe that it’s time to make nice with Mom because she hates him and thinks he’s literally the devil. You know, the usual.”

  “He’s going to do it anyway,” Skylar said, with a little laugh, more because it was inevitable than funny. “You must know that. He’s going to get all liquored up and roll right up to Mom and she’s going to lose her mind. She’s going to start flipping tables in the middle of your wedding reception.”

  “She better not touch the tables. You have no idea how much work went into those tables.”

  “Jesse. Please.” Skylar realized that she was enjoying herself, and ran with it. She grinned at her brother. “Mom has been waiting years for the opportunity to play the victim in front of such a large audience. You need to expect the drama. It’s the only way to contain it.”

  “Congratulations, Skylar. I’m recruiting you to make sure that nothing happens. I told Mom that if she came, she had to leave the voodoo dolls at home.”

  Skylar shrugged. Expansively. “I don’t know what you think I can do to prevent the inevitable carnage. Mom and Dad are going to be Mom and Dad, no matter where they are. No matter what else is going on. No matter how much you beg them not to be, or appeal to their better angels, or threaten them. It’s like you’ve blocked out our entire childhood.”

  “I just try to repress it,” Jesse said. “Actively. But think about Michaela. And poor Damon. We can’t let them see behind the curtain to the realities of the Grey Curse, or how will we ever break it? They’ll run screaming.” He grinned that grin of his that Skylar had long suspected ruined the lives of most of the poor Seattle women who’d been on the receiving end of it all these years. “Don’t do it for me, Skylar. Do it for the cousins. Do it to break the curse and prove Grandma wrong.”

  “I also wouldn’t want Michaela to realize that she really is too good for you,” Skylar said thoughtfully, biting back her own grin. “She hasn’t made any vows yet. She could still make a break for it.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know it,” Jesse agreed, though he didn’t seem particularly concerned. Then his gaze got entirely too knowing. “Back to the far more interesting topic of your rodeo situation, which believe me, is all anyone wants to talk about when you’re not in the room.”

  “That’s obviously just what I wanted to hear. Thank you.”

  “Naturally, I tell everyone to grow up and leave you alone, even in your absence, because that’s the kind of excellent older brother I am.” He did no such thing. Skylar didn’t have to see that gleam in his eyes to know that full well. “So, adult to adult and not behind your back like everyone else, where’s your man?”

  “I had no idea you were this interested in my social life,” Skylar said coolly, wishing she’d thought to get another drink or ten. “You never have been before.”

  “You’ve never had a social life before.” Jesse snorted. “As far as I can tell this is the only time you’ve ever done anything with anyone.”

  He didn’t say, except for Thayer. That part was implied.

  “You don’t actually know whether or not that’s true,” Skylar pointed out. “Maybe I’m just a little bit better about keeping my private life private than you are. Maybe I don’t really want every single member of my extended family commenting on all my stuff all the time. Maybe I’m not an exhibitionist.”

  “Then you picked the wrong summer to play tempt me, cowboy, with a bull rider,” Jesse said with a laugh. “For future reference, get your crazy on when there’s not a family wedding in the middle of it all. It makes it much harder for everybody to compare notes.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “And if you like this guy, Skylar?” Jesse’s gaze met hers unflinchingly then. “Then like him. What does it matter what anyone else thinks? You were not put on this earth to make anybody happy but you.”

  But his words hit her hard, right in the heart that wasn’t nearly as frozen as it should have been. As it had been three weeks ago.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s that exact attitude that led Dad to every single terrible decision he’s ever made,” Skylar said, her voice a little rougher than planned.

  “You need to stop comparing yourself to Dad, because you’re nothing like him,” Jesse said, with a tremendous confidence that Skylar wanted to cling to. That she wanted, more than anything, to share. “You don’t have a wife. You don’t have kids. You don’t answer to anybody but yourself. Sure, your entire family is comprised of nosy, gossiping bastards, but you don’t owe anybody anything, Skylar. You’ve been through enough. If this guy makes you happy, then Jesus Christ. Be happy.”

  Skylar shook her head, blinking back the sudden onslaught of emotion she didn’t know quite how to deal with. “I don’t know if I remember how.”

  Jesse slung an arm around her shoulder and held her tight for a moment.

  “Then it’s about time you figured it out,” he said gruffly. “Don’t you think?”

  But she didn’t get a chance to answer him, because he was swept up in an excited little scrum of his friends, all of them shouting out something that sounded like a chant. Skylar let him go. Because maybe she was reeling a little bit.

  Or a lot.

  She stood on the outskirts of the party, soaking it all in, trying to get her bearings again. There was something about these walls, she thought. Something about Grey’s Saloon. The fact that it had stood just shy of forever right here on this very spot. She thought about all the stories the walls could tell, all the tales that had bled into the floorboards across the years. Prospectors and cowboys, loose women and rough miners. Railway barons and ranchers, stretching back generations. The history of Montana was soaked straight into the foundations, and she thought that if she curled her toes, she could channel a little bit of that fortitude herself.

  Because this was Montana. This had been the frontier and in many ways still was. And people died out here all the time. Good deaths, bad deaths. Hangings and robberies, childbirth and murder. The entire world was a story of death, one way or another, and that was only as sad as she chose to make it.

  Because life went on.

  The Marietta settlers had forged their lives out here in the unforgiving terrain. They’d fought off predators, rustlers, outlaws, and most unforgiving of all, the endless Montana winters. They’d raised families and buried them, too. Some much, much earlier than planned.

  And above all, they’d persevered.

  Skylar had always admired the history here. She’d always loved that her family was so steeped in it.

  But it had never really crossed her mind to think about how much history had to teach her.

  Most of all, that everybody died, sooner or later. And she didn’t want the rest of her life to be disfigured by Thayer’s death. She didn’t want to live in that kind of fear, that made every day she drew breath a half-life of survivor’s guilt and what ifs. She didn’t want to be that kind of zombie, shuffling through what was left of her time, never really living. Never hoping. Never challenging herself to move on.

  Never letting her heart do what it did bes
t. Beat. Skip. Love.

  Cody was right. She’d been hiding herself in plain sight ever since Thayer had died. She’d been frozen so long that she couldn’t even identify it herself. Cody had thawed her out. He’d reminded her what it was like to be alive, alight, filled with heat and fire and life and love instead of tears.

  She didn’t know if she had a future with him. But wasn’t that the point of these last, hard years? No one ever knew. Nothing was ever certain. You could make all the plans in the world and it wouldn’t matter on a random, otherwise unremarkable Tuesday.

  Skylar didn’t know what was in store for her and Cody, if anything, but she didn’t need to know.

  What she did know was that she needed to stop lying to herself and to him. They both deserved better.

  She’d walked away from him as if she never meant to return, and she’d seen the look on his face, both in the Airstream and when he’d dropped her off at the airport in all that simmering, painful silence. But that was the good thing about getting in over her head with a man who was booked into arenas every single weekend for the foreseeable future. It wasn’t as if he could hide on the back of the bull.

  She would get through this wedding. She would continue to smile and laugh and do everything in her power to convince her family that she was fine. Because she thought that after all this, the simple truth was that she really, truly was.

  Perfectly fine. At last.

  And maybe that was what she’d really been hiding from these last three weeks.

  Because some part of her thought that if she was fine, she was betraying Thayer’s memory. That her friends and his family down in Atlanta were right and she was supposed to be that shrine to him, forever.

  Even if she’d outgrown it.

  The door slammed open down at the other end of the saloon, and Skylar didn’t know what made her look up at the sound. People had been coming and going all night, boisterous and happy and filled with the usual giddy wedding fever, in little groups of family and friends and guests.

  But she knew in a single glance that the man who stood there—dressed like a cowboy, black hat, granite jaw, and a thousand-yard stare like a gunslinger of old—was different.

  Mine, a little voice inside her whispered, as if it knew.

  As if it had always known.

  Because it was Cody.

  Of course, at last, it was Cody.

  And just in case Skylar still had the smallest doubt about the things she was afraid to feel for this man, they all boiled up in her then. She felt her heart slam at her. Her stomach knotted up and between her legs, she melted.

  She was too hot. Too cold. Some kind of fever, and she’d felt it before. She knew it was him.

  It had always been him.

  She stayed where she was and waited for him to see her. It didn’t take him more than a second or two. His hard gaze swept the room, taking in assorted Greys in the midst of their celebrations, and then finding her unerringly. As if he’d known where she was all along.

  As if all of this was inevitable.

  Marietta wasn’t her home, not really. But it had always felt as if it should have been. And yet nothing felt more like home than the instant burst of heat and flame in Cody’s gaze when it met hers. Or the way he started toward her, with that swagger that announced who and what he was in no uncertain terms, loud enough to be heard all over Marietta and up to the very peak of Copper Mountain high above it.

  He was the kind of man who walked where he wanted and let the crowd rearrange themselves around him, and that was exactly what they did. It was as if they cleared a path. Skylar knew, on some level, that her cousins were picking up on the way this strange man locked on to her and stalked toward her. She was even more sure that most of them knew exactly who he was, and not only because these were Montana people and bull-riding fans.

  But she couldn’t seem to make herself care about any of that, because he was here. Cody was right here in Marietta when she’d left him early yesterday morning in California.

  And it was time to put her money where her mouth was.

  Chapter Thirteen

  “What are you doing here?” Skylar asked him when he finally drew close, because she couldn’t think of what else to say.

  But he clearly didn’t like that. His dark green eyes glittered, and that jaw of his was set at a stubborn tilt. There was something about a man in a cowboy hat, especially when it wasn’t a prop. She suddenly felt sorry for all those bulls he’d conquered over the years. They’d never had a chance.

  “Nice to see you too, Skylar,” he drawled, and it was the same as it always was. Fire and need, rushing through her and pooling there, low in her belly. “This is called a grand gesture.”

  She wasn’t sure she could process this. She’d been thinking about him and now here he was. It was like magic. Or possibly it was the nervous breakdown everyone seemed to think she had coming. Maybe he wasn’t here at all—but no. She saw her sister standing a ways behind him, and Scottie was grinning entirely too wide for Cody to be a hallucination.

  Then she made it clear he was real by shooting Skylar a thumbs-up.

  “I didn’t think you made grand gestures,” she managed to say, returning her attention to the cowboy who was still simmering in front of her, all hard expression and that body made of steel and determination.

  “I ride bulls,” Cody growled. “My life is a grand gesture.”

  She conceded the point with a faint nod of her head.

  “Let me break this down for you,” he continued when she didn’t speak. Because she couldn’t. “About five seconds after you got out of my truck, I decided this was all bullshit. By the time I parked, you were through security—and, Skylar, you still haven’t given me your goddamned phone number.”

  “I told you my number in Billings.”

  “It isn’t in my phone.”

  Because they hadn’t been apart. Because there had been no reason to call when she was always right there.

  But she assumed he didn’t care about any of that, if the way he was looking at her then was any guide. All dark and grim and somehow beautiful.

  “You didn’t tell me where you were going, so I had to figure it out,” Cody said in the same pissed-off growl that probably shouldn’t have made every part of her hum in a deep delight. “I put together all the pieces of the stories you told me about your family in Marietta and your brother in order to figure out where he might be getting married. I had to do a little detective work to make sure that I was right. Then I had to drive all night and all day to get my ass to Montana from California. Don’t ask me what I’m doing here. You know.”

  “Cody…”

  Skylar didn’t know where to start. She wanted to tell him about the history of Marietta and the history of her. She wanted to make him understand all the different contours of her heart, how it beat and what it needed, and how somehow, she felt safe for the first time in years when he was the one cradling it between his hands.

  But she didn’t know how to put that into words.

  “Let’s focus on the big picture,” Cody said. He was moving again and it took Skylar a minute to realize that he was backing her up against the nearest wall. Because he didn’t seem to care that the entirety of her family was watching him do this. He didn’t appear to notice that there was anyone else in the room.

  It was the hottest thing she’d ever seen.

  Because he was giving her that focus of his, intense and intent. She’d seen that look on his face before. She saw it every time he dropped down onto the back of the bull. She saw it every time he lowered himself over her and thrust deep into her, as well.

  She couldn’t seem to help the shudder that overtook her at that.

  “I’m in love with you,” he told her gruffly. “And I get that you don’t want to hear that. That doesn’t change it. Nothing’s going to change it. I had some twenty hours of driving, over mountains, to talk myself out of it and it didn’t take.” He shook his head when she open
ed her mouth. “I know it’s fast. It’s straight-up crazy. But it is what it is. And you can take all the time in the world you need to get your head around it, I don’t care.”

  Skylar cleared her throat, amazed he couldn’t hear the way her pulse was kicking through her veins.

  “That’s very romantic,” she managed to say after a moment. “It’s amazing to me that some lucky woman hasn’t already snapped you up.”

  “That’s pretty funny, Skylar. Hilarious.” His jaw seemed even harder. “That’s what you do, isn’t it? Deflect. Lie if you have to. But here’s the thing: I think you love me too. And I get why that terrifies you.”

  “It doesn’t terrify me.”

  “Bullshit.” He fired that out like a bullet. Relentless, his aim true. “It scares you so badly you’d do anything to run away from it. And I sympathize, I do. The last time you fell in love it ended badly and this time you sure weren’t looking for anything. But the thing is, darlin’, you don’t get to choose.”

  She felt as if her skin was too small, stretched across her bones until she was practically see-through. She felt vulnerable. Exposed.

  It should have been unbearable.

  She waited for the shame to kick in, but it didn’t. She waited for the grief to come claim her, but there was nothing there. Just that same old sadness, more sweet than bitter these days, she imagined she would always carry with her. Somewhere deep inside.

  “I think you’re wrong,” she said, almost solemnly. “I think you do get to choose.”

  Something ignited inside of him then. She saw it. She felt it. His eyes kindled with a bright flame and his hard mouth went tight.

  “You were right about me,” he told her, fiercely. “I’m a martyr and I’m a dick. And I’ve been proud of both for so long that I don’t know any different. Until you. Don’t you understand? I didn’t see you coming either.”