BUCKED Box Set: A Bull Rider Western Romance (20 page)

“Good to
know I’m not just crazy,” she laughed.

“Oh, no,
you still are. It’s just that I am, too.”

If I was
honest with myself, I’d definitely miss the moments like this when we had to go
in separate directions: the little moments when we could laugh and poke fun at
each other and see the other’s reaction. I didn’t exactly know what would
happen when we were apart, but I did know that I wanted to try as hard as I
possibly could to make things work, assuming she wanted the same thing, of
course. I had no reason to believe that she wouldn’t, so I crossed my fingers
that we were on the same page. Truth be told, I really wasn’t ready to talk
about it because what if I was wrong? What if she thought this was a wonderful
summer romance where she fell in
love,
but didn’t want to put in the effort of maintaining a long distance
relationship for possibly months at a time? I knew I might still have Jaime if
Laci decided to move on without me, but after experiencing how alive I felt
with Laci, I knew I wouldn’t ever want something so meaningless and crass
again.

I was in
love, and it felt so damn good to be able to admit that to myself.

So what
did I want to happen? I guess I had my answer.

Chapter Seventeen - Laci

It seems
that nothing goes quite as expected, and one thing is for certain: I didn’t
expect to go skinny dipping with Noah and come away with my virginity intact.
The thing is, though, I didn’t have the slightest problem with it after he told
me why he didn’t think we should have sex just yet. If you think about it, he
didn’t even want to have sex; he wanted to make love to me, and I think that’s
actually incredibly beautiful and romantic.

I thought
that things like making love only happened in movies—with the rose petals and
candles and music in the
background like
he described—but he was a living testament that sometimes, art actually can
imitate life. The things that happen in
movies
can be a
reality
. As he drove home from
the lake, I couldn’t help but hope that’s what would happen later on when we
climbed into Noah’s bed to
“cuddle” as
he’d mentioned. I also wanted to talk about what would happen when I went back
up north, but since he wanted to hold off on that for now, I wasn’t going to
push the subject. It had been a nearly perfect night and he wanted it to stay
that way. We would talk about it when he was ready to talk about it. That
didn’t mean that I didn’t think about it, though.

I wanted
to find a way to make everything work out, whether it was easy or not. After
the night we’d just shared, I thought it was safe to assume that he wanted the
same thing, but there was still the matter of how we’d make things work. There
were so many questions we didn’t have the answers to and all of the unknowns
made me a little uneasy.

As I lay
down in bed beside him, what I did know was that I loved him. What I didn’t
know was how exhausted I was. I did manage to pull out my phone, send a text to
Sara telling her that I was spending the night with Noah and not to worry, then
kiss Noah.

The next
thing I knew, I was waking up in a dimly lit room alone. I padded barefoot out
of Noah’s room and toward the sound of cooking in the kitchen. I found him
standing in front of the stove wearing a ridiculous flowery apron and whistling
the tune to the alphabet. I walked up behind him and wrapped my arms around his
middle, stroking his all-too-wonderful abs.

“Good
morning, beautiful,” he said, touching my hand before he flipped a pancake.
“Sleep well?”

“Like a
rock,” I replied. “What are you doing?”

“Isn’t it
obvious? I’m making breakfast! I’ve already got the bacon made, and pancakes
will be ready soon; do you want any eggs?”

“I could
go for a sunny side up,” I answered, kissing him between the shoulder blades
and going over to the coffee pot filled to the brim with the beautiful,
aromatic liquid of the gods. I poured myself a cup, then poked around in the
fridge until I found the cream and added it to my coffee. A good, long sip
later, I sighed. “You know, it’s okay that we didn’t do anything last night
because I’m pretty sure this is better than sex, anyway.”

“You’re
lucky my parents aren’t here because if they were and heard you say that,
they’d lose their minds,” he laughed. “And, you only say that because you
haven’t done it with me.”

“Or at
all,” I corrected.

He stopped
what he was doing and cocked an
eyebrow
as he glanced over his shoulder at me, a smile I didn’t quite know how to
describe slinking over his lips. “When the moment’s right, we’ll fix that,” he
assured me. He tipped the pancake he was making onto a plate and carried it
over to set down on the table in front of me. He handed me the butter and syrup
and dished out a few pieces of bacon on the side before cracking two eggs into
the very same pan that he’d cooked the bacon in. “This is my secret,” he
mentioned. “I cook the eggs in the bacon grease. Gives them more flavor that
way.”

“If that’s
the secret to your washboard abs, I should eat eggs cooked in bacon grease more
often.”

“Have you
seen yourself naked? You’re perfect. Trust me.” He made my stomach do flips
again; even though he said words like that almost daily, I never got tired of
hearing them. When the eggs were finished, he put one on my plate and one on
his own before he took a seat next to me and started to dig in. “So,” he said,
his mouth full of a mixture of pancake and bacon, “about that conversation you
wanted to have last night.”

“What
about it?”

“Well,
let’s have it.”

“Okay.” I
decided to do what Emily always told me to do: cut right to the chase. “I don’t
want things to end. I want to make this work even when the summer is over and
we’ve both gone back to our jobs. But I’ve seen that little green monster of
yours, and one thing you have to be aware of is that, as an actress, I might
have to kiss other guys sometimes. It
is
part of the job.”

“I can
handle that, as long as you’re aware that as a devilishly handsome bull rider
who scores in the nineties, the ladies will be fawning all over me.”

“As long
as you’re still all mine, I’ve got no problem with that.”

“We’ll
have to work out the details, you know. Like who’s gonna visit who and when and
how,
” he said as he put another pancake
on my plate and two on his. Then, he drowned the whole plate, egg included,
with syrup and dug in.

“It’s not
like a relationship can’t last without conjugal visits,” I said, winking at
him.

“True, but
they certainly might make things easier. I mean, we don’t know just how hard
long-distance relationships are yet. And, it’ll be made even harder by the fact
that we’re always together now. I mean,” he said, leaning forward to kiss me
with his syrupy lips. “Aren’t you going to miss this?”

“I’d be
lying if I said I wouldn’t. But from what I can tell, my filming schedule runs
seven days a week. You know how it is with show business; time is money, and
they’re not going to give up a single minute they have to film, especially
since it’s already been delayed by three months for my sake. So, it looks like
if we’re going to see each other for the first few months, it’ll have to be
because you flew in to see me.”

“That’ll
be hard, but I think we can work something out. Almost any day that I’m not
competing, I’m training. If I want to stay in the Ninety Point Club, I’ll have
to work harder than ever, so I probably won’t be able to take more than a day
off at a time.”

I
shrugged. “It’s better than nothing.”

“And, I’ll
have to make things painfully obvious to Jamie. She’s not the brightest bulb in
the chandelier, so if I don’t spell it out explicitly, she might not get the
message.”

Suddenly,
a flare of jealousy stung me. “Who the hell is Jamie?”

“Oh, I
never told you about her?” he said, his mouth full of pancake. “She’s our manager
slash gate man, and the blondie I’ve been, well, semi involved with off and on
for the last couple of years. She wanted to come back to Alabama with me.”

“I guess
it’s a good thing she
didn’t
because then
we probably wouldn’t be together, would we? And, you have a thing for blondes,
don’t you?”

“Always
have, toots. Take me or leave me. And, no, we probably wouldn’t. She’s far more
territorial than you are. We’ve never actually been a couple, but she’s made
sure to do her best to keep all other females away from me.”

“Just tape
a picture of me to the front of your hat. That way, every time she tries to do
anything, you can point to the picture of me and be like ‘She’s watching!’
It’ll totally freak her out!”

“You’re
twisted.”

“Hey,
you’re the one who fell for me, bub. Take me or leave me,” I mocked.

“I have no
doubt we’ll figure out the details. The important thing is that we both agree
to try and make things work.”

I put on
my best Yoda voice and said, “Do or do not; there is no try.”

“Okay,
fine, geek girl. We
will
make things
work,” he agreed, shaking his head. “This relationship is going to make it,
Lace. We’ll be okay. I promise.”

After
that, there was nothing more to say. I crushed my lips against his and kissed
him as deeply as I could.

***

I wasn’t
so sure things would be the same after our conversation about the summer
ending. For some reason, I halfway expected that we would be distant and less
affectionate, but in reality, it was the exact opposite. I chalked it up to the
fact that we knew we were going to have something to look forward to when the
summer was over, but from that moment on, we were close as close could be.

The peak
of the summer came two days before I was set to leave. Having spent the last
two months teaching Jack all kinds of lessons that only made sense to Noah,
Noah finally decided that it was high time to get Jack on the back of a
mechanical bull. Aunt Sara was a little wary of it, but Noah assured her that
it was a million times safer than riding a real bull, especially since there
were cushions all around the mechanical kind. That was more than could be said
for the real kind. Besides, he reminded her that Jack would need to ride a bull
eventually, otherwise, what were all of the lessons for? Plus, most of the
injuries that happened from bull riding were apparently not from getting thrown
off, but rather from getting trampled, which obviously couldn’t happen with a
bull that didn’t even have legs.

Naturally,
Aunt Sara wanted to go along so she could “supervise,” which was actually code
for “freak the hell out and scream every second of the ride,” but you know, it
is what it is. We drove to the complex where one of Noah’s buddies had the
mechanical bull set up amidst a huge sea of thick, fluffy pads to fall on,
clearly ideal for someone just starting out. Aunt Sara insisted Jack put on a
helmet, which Noah had already intended, and she even tried to get Noah to wear
one, too. He pointed out that he was twenty-two years old and happened to be a
professional, to which Aunt Sara tried to argue, but lost.

Before
Noah let Jack get on, he gave him his own “starter kit.” Jack was ecstatic to
unwrap a package and find a jacket with a chest pad, a glove, and a water
bottle that displayed the words “Bull rider in training.”

He put on
the jacket and zipped it up, donned the glove, and strapped his bike helmet
under his chin, then attempted to go toward the center of the arena where the
mechanical beast was waiting. Noah clapped a hand down on Jack’s shoulder and
said, “Not yet, bucko. Watch the pro
do
it first. Really pay attention to my form; watch all of the little things we
learned about. This is a big deal, and you’re about to become a man, so make
sure you do it right.” He winked at Jack, and then strutted to the bull.

My
endearingly arrogant boyfriend hopped onto the
bull
and pointed at me. “Well, Lace, I already programmed the settings, so hit the
button!” he commanded. I complied, stepping forward and pressing the large
green button obediently. I looked at all of the switches and knobs on the
control panel and was instantly intimidated, but as he so adamantly pointed
out, he was the professional. The machine roared to
life
, starting out slowly and simply. At first, it looked like it
was no more difficult than riding a horse. It had a gentle rocking motion that
almost looked comforting—that
is
until it
started to spin. The rocking grew a little jerkier as the bull turned to one
side, then abruptly to the other. Noah made it look easy, sitting there with
one hand in the air and the other one fitted inside his glove as the metal
beast did its thing. Then, seemingly out of nowhere, things kicked into high
gear. The bucking was suddenly violent, faster, and more like what I pictured a
real
bull would do.

Noah’s
focus became laser sharp, and he let out a shout of glee as he stared at the
place where the head would be on a real bull. He lasted nineteen seconds, which
I thought was pretty impressive, before dismounting and rolling out away from
the
still-bucking
bull. I had never seen
anyone ride a bull in person, and while this wasn’t quite the same, it gave me
a new appreciation for what he did. There was no way in hell it was easy to
hang on like that with only one hand as a bull did everything in its power to
throw you to the ground. Bull riders weren’t just
hicks,
after all, it seemed. A little out of breath, he jumped up
and jogged over to the control panel on which he hit a few buttons and watched
the mechanics grind to a halt. He turned and raised his arms above his head in
a “V” shape as the three of us onlookers erupted into applause. “And that,
ladies and gents, is how it’s done.”

“You
lasted nineteen seconds,” I told him with a smile.

“That’s
because the first seven seconds or so were the warm-up. A qualifying ride is-”
he said, pausing and pointing to Jack to finish his sentence.

“Eight
seconds!” Jack chimed in.

“Right!”
Noah told him, slapping his hand in an enthusiastic high-five. “So, from the
time the thing goes nuts until you dismount, it’s got to be at least eight
seconds. If you can’t last that long, though, it’s okay. Rest assured, I didn’t
make it eight seconds on my first ride. It was months before I could. So do the
best you can,” he said with a smile before suddenly turning very stern.
“However, if
anything
starts to hurt,
and I mean
anything at all,
you
dismount right away, alright? I have seen far too many riders try to take on
too much too quickly and end up dislocating a shoulder or breaking an ankle
because they tried to hold on more than they should. Got it?”