BUCKED Box Set: A Bull Rider Western Romance (10 page)

Chapter Ten - Noah

For the
most part, my first week as a bull riding coach was pretty uneventful—until
Thursday, that is. As if I wasn’t already confused enough about what I wanted
out of life, Jackson and Princess Laci only made it worse. I’ve always thought
I was the kind of guy who never wanted to settle down and have kids, or even be
in a real relationship, but on Thursday afternoon, I realized that it might be
nice to have my own family one day.

Jackson
and I were doing pushups together in my front yard, and I couldn’t stop myself
from thinking that it would be a pretty gratifying experience to do this with a
son of my own one day. Then Laci came up, huffing and puffing like the Big Bad
Wolf, pressing that Jackson
come
to watch
a mare give birth. When we arrived at the stables, the foal had already been
born, but Laci got down on her knees and actually
talked to the horse.
I’d been under the impression that I was the
only person in the world who ever did that. I have to admit, it was a major
shocker to see the Princess chatting up the new mother like they mutually
understood each other. She seemed comfortable around the animal—almost, dare I
say, a natural.

I hoped
she didn’t see me staring, but I was
magnetized
in
that moment, drawn to her. I never imagined another person could
actually share my passion for horses in that way. But it sure seemed that
way at
the moment. After that, she managed to
shut up two guys in the middle of a full-blown teenage girl-like squabble. Owen
(the moronic ranch hand) and I were going on about the best way to hang a tire
swing—which, for the record, is from three points, not one—when Laci strutted
up and tied the rope into a loop swing and completely disregarded the tire. I
couldn’t tell if I wanted to throttle her or kiss her.

To top it
all off, she made a damn good Arnold Palmer and winked at me in a way that
filled my stomach with a ton of bricks. Suddenly, I was thinking back to the
minute’s worth of time when it felt like she and I were Jackson’s oddly young
parents. I felt like a total loon. Just a week before, I had been feeling like
an ass for kissing Jaime and not wanting anything serious in my life. Now,
there I was, envisioning myself doing just that with Laci. Not that I’d ever
let on that I was thinking such things. The worst part was, this was a city
girl, and the last thing I needed was her laughing in my face, then having to
deal with her the rest of the summer. Still, my head was in a strange daze, and
I couldn’t seem to shake it.

That night
as I sat in the stable telling Ella all about it, I told myself over and over
that I needed to snap out of it. When my phone rang, I was pulled out of my
thoughts by “Flight of the Valkyries”—told you I love space—and I put the phone
to my ear, not even looking at the caller ID.

“Hello?”

“Hey,
Noah,” Sara’s filtered, but
familiar,
voice
rang through the phone.

“Hey,
Sara. What’s up?”

“Well,”
she started, “I know you’ve been helping Jackson learn how to ride, but I have
another job for you. If you’re up to it, that is.”

“And, that
is?”

“Well, I
had the pleasure of coming home to my go box missing.”

“What’s a
go box?” I had to ask.

“Basically,
it’s a little box that I keep, well, kept important things in just in case I
needed to get up and go in a hurry. There were a few little trinkets that have
personal meaning, but also a stack of cash I’ve been saving for about five
years. It totaled up to several thousand dollars. If I didn’t need it for some
emergency before the time came, I was going to use it toward Jackson’s
college.”

I felt
really bad for her, but a small part of me wondered who the hell kept that much
money sitting in a box in their house as opposed to a bank. Then again, who am
I to say she didn’t have a reason for it. “Well, damn, I’m sorry about that.
Any idea what happened to it?”

“I think
Owen stole it.”
I knew the guy was bad
news.
“Jack said he saw him leaving just before I got back from the store,
and he’s the only person not in the family that’s been here unsupervised. I
went over to his house to check
on
him,
and the door was unlocked, so I checked inside. His house is gutted. He’s
gone.”

“What can
I do to help?”

“Well, now
we’re in a bit of a pickle. We need someone to help take care of the foal and
break the stallion we got last month. If memory serves me correctly, you spent
a lot of time doing that with your dad when you were younger, didn’t you?”

“Yeah, I
did. I’d be happy to help. And, none of that secret payment where you slip
money in my pocket while you hug me. I don’t need your money; I’m happy to do
it for you guys,” I said with finality.

“Bless
you, Noah. You’re an angel. I already talked to Jackson and told him that if
you’re up to it, your bull riding lessons will need to be cut down to half a
day so you can have time to help with the horses. But I can pay you and I will.
No ifs,
ands
, or buts about it.”

“We’ll see
about that,” I replied, “I’ll work with Jack in the morning, then I can help
with the horses in the afternoon.”

“Thanks,
honey. I really appreciate it. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

We said
our goodbyes and she hung up.

I leaned
against the door to Ella’s stall. “That means I’ll have to be around their
ranch more often,” I said.

Ella
blinked at me, and I took it to mean, “I think that’s a good thing.”

The next
morning, I woke up and had a breakfast of eggs and grits with Jackson, then we
went outside and spent the morning training grip strength by draping a towel
over dumbbells and picking them up with one hand. Mine was a twenty-pound
weight, Jackson’s weighed five pounds. The towel makes the dumbbell more
slippery, which makes you have to grip harder. It’s one of the oldest grip
strength tests in the book. We worked on that until lunch.

After
grilled cheese and tomato soup, I headed out to Sara’s stables to start getting
to know the horses a little bit better. Naturally, when I got there, Princess
Laci was leaning against a wall, talking to Rosie.

“So,
Rosie, what’s it like being a mommy?” I heard her say.

“Expecting
her to answer you?” I asked, propped in the doorframe with my arms crossed over
my chest. “I’d reckon she can’t speak human.”

Apparently,
she wasn’t expecting anyone to be
around
because she jumped and whipped around in fright before realizing it was me.
“Oh. You scared the crap out of me. And just so ya know, no, I wasn’t expecting
her to say anything, not verbally, anyway. I just think there’s no better
listener than a horse. What are you doing out here?”

“I wanted
to get to know the horses a little better before I start trying to work with
them. Since Owen’s an ass and disappeared, I’m taking over.”

“I hope
you’re not actually going to break them.”

“Why not?
What’s wrong with training a horse?”

“There’s a
very distinct difference between training and breaking,” she said in a very
matter-of-fact tone.

“And, that
is?”

“Well,
training a horse is just that—teaching them to do certain things.” The way she
was speaking sounded like she was explaining it to a stupid child. “Breaking,
on the other hand, not so much. The way I see it, training is a mutual give and
take. You work with each other to achieve a common goal. Breaking is when you
become a dictator and force them to do what you want. Like if you’re
potty-training a kid, you wouldn’t scream at them every time they peed
themselves until they stopped just for the sake of not getting yelled at
anymore. You’d teach them the potty is for peeing in, and show them it’s a good
thing to use it so they don’t need to have their clothes changed every five
seconds.”

“I can’t
believe you just compared training a horse to a two-year-old crappin’ his
pants.”

She
scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Well, how else was I supposed to say it?”

“You
could’ve stopped after the dictator line, and I would’ve understood it just
fine.”

“Fine. So,
are you going to be a Hitler, or are you going to be a Dalai Lama?”

“The
Buddhist one,” I answered. Just being around her was making my heart beat a
little faster than I would’ve liked, let alone hearing her talk that way about
horses and the way they should be respected. I pushed the feeling down and kept
a steely composure. “Now, if ya don’t mind?”

“Not at
all,” she said, turning to leave the barn. “By the way, you might wanna look
into this new-fangled thing the kids are using these days—it’s called
antiperspirant.”

I looked
at my armpits and, sure enough…sweat marks. Guess I didn’t play it as cool as I
thought. “It
is
the middle of June in
Alabama!” I called after her.

“And,
there’s a breeze!” she called back, not looking over her shoulder.

She
disappeared inside as I looked at Rose and Lisa.

“Do you
like her as much as I do?” I hated myself for asking the question, but I needed
to get it off my chest. Lisa turned her head, and I continued. “There’s just
something about her. Sass, class, and a great ass.” I laughed. “I mean, that’s
definitely true, but when it comes down to it, I can see that she’s got a good
head on her shoulders, you know? On the surface, she’s all the things I don’t
want—a city girl, an actress, a little too stubborn for her own good, and she’s
not stickin’ around. But deeper than that, she’s funny, she’s smart, and she
feels things a lot more deeply than she lets on; I can tell.”

I couldn’t
quite put my finger on what it was that drove me crazy about her. Or why it
started all of a sudden, like a
switch
was flipped. I’d been involved with Jaime for over two years and never felt
this knot in my stomach as I found myself feeling around Laci. Like I said,
though, I’d never tell her that. I planned on pushing it down until August when
I would leave for the PBR circuit again. Then I’d throw myself into that and
get a laser beam focus going until I forgot about her. Easy as taking candy
from a baby.

“Hey
there,” Sara called out as she walked into the stables. “Something told me you
were out here, trying to get to know my babies a little bit.”

“Yep,
that’s exactly it,” I replied.

“And how
do you plan to go about that?”

“Well,
talking to them.”

“Expecting
them to respond?” She grinned.

“I’m
getting the sneakin’ suspicion you talked to Laci.”

“Whatever
gave you that idea?” she asked sweetly.

“Lucky
guess. So,
 
to what do I owe the
pleasure, dear Sara?”

“Oh, I’m
just coming around to pick your brain,” she said with a sly smile.

“About
what?” I questioned suspiciously.

She stared
at me for a few moments. There were a couple of times she started to speak, but
stopped during the first word like she was changing her mind. This went on for
about a minute when she seemed to decide what she wanted to say, and that was,
“What do you want?”

“Hmm. A
cheeseburger and a ninety-five ride would do.”

“Good to
know,” she said. “But, I meant what do you want out of life?”

That was
an unexpected question. “Why the sudden existential crisis?”

“I’m just
thinking about Lisa and Brad and how they were so happy and alive one day, and
gone the next.” I could tell this was about to get really heavy really fast,
and weirdly enough, that didn’t bother me. “I can’t talk to Laci about it
because I don’t want to upset her. She seems to finally be starting to get over
the hump, and if I start talking about this with her, it might pull her
straight back down. So, what do you want out of life?”

I was
still confused about that earlier feeling concerning whether or not I wanted to
settle down and have a family, but I knew one thing was for sure. Everything I
wanted in life boiled down to one simple statement, so I cleared my throat and
said it: “I want to be happy.”

“Aren’t
you happy now, sweetheart?” It must be a mom thing to instantly assume you’re
unhappy when you say something like what I’d just
said
because her response is exactly what my mom probably would’ve
said. A chuckle bubbled up in my chest and I let it out.

Sara,
however, frowned. “That doesn’t answer my question.”

“Yes. I
am. But I mean, who doesn’t want more out of life? I’ve always been an
adrenaline junkie, for one. My bucket list’s got at least a hundred things on
it that are all geared towards me getting an adrenaline rush. The top thing’s
to go
skydiving
. But beyond that, I’m
starting to realize that I want what my parents have. I want to fall in love.
You know, just like in those awful romance novels with those half clothed
couples on the cover. I want a woman to be crazy about me and allow me to spoil
her, and I want a white picket fence to keep my kids and golden retriever safe.”