CHAPTER 80

jackson

N ot hearing from West was fucking killing me. Not only had he ignored my texts but he also sent all my calls to voicemail. I spent the night worrying. Was he okay? Has he relapsed? Was he just done with me? Fuck, I even contemplated texting Mickey, but that was a desperate move. I wasn’t a desperate man. Yet anyway.

I pushed thoughts of West out of my head as I approached the restaurant where I planned to meet my girls. It wasn’t my first time in Reno, and we had a brunch place. They had a pre-game plan, I just had a plan to sit back and make sure none of them did anything too fucking stupid.

Were the buckle bunnies my first choice of tour partners? No. But most of the girls were young—practically babies enjoying the country spirit of things. They were also gullible as shit, and while most of the riders were good men, they were still men. I hated watching the girls get taken advantage of, used and discarded, or treated like shit.

It was a hell of a lot harder to come at a six-foot-two cowboy with that alpha male bullshit than it was a buckle bunny. They were good girls who deserved respect. I was just there to make sure they got it .

“Jackson!” My name was about all the warning I got before a five-foot-one tank barreled into me, throwing her arms around my waist. For something so fucking tiny, Darla Wilson had a hell of a tight grip. And a hell of a right hook but that was a story for a different time.

“Woman!” I exclaimed. “I can’t fucking breathe when you squeeze me like that.”

She stepped back, beaming up at me for all of two seconds before punching me in the shoulder.

“Ow!” I snapped. I didn’t have to pretend as I rubbed my shoulder. “That fucking hurt. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“Why the hell didn’t you swing on by last night to say hi?” Her accent was as heavy as the judgment on her pretty face. I did my best to glare at her—make her uncomfortable—but after almost five years of friendship, I had little effect on her.

“I was seeing you today! Right now!” I said, gesturing to all of me as if she needed the reminder.

“We got a few new girls, cowboy.” She crossed her arms as I scowled. While her presumption was that it was my response to her statement, I was frowning at the nickname. It suddenly didn’t sound right unless West was saying it.

“All right, pretty girl.” I matched her stance. “Tell me who we got.”

This was routine for Darla and I. Darla had made being a buckle bunny her thing—God bless her. She’d shown up when she was eighteen years old and just kept showing up every year. Where a lot of other girls came and went, she stayed.

But Darla wasn’t just a buckle bunny. She was also a barrel racer and a damn good one. She just never talked about it. Why was beyond me.

“So, Opie, Sutton, Willa, and Wren are back this year.” That didn’t surprise me. The four of them were consistent faces around the rodeo—college girls on summer vacation. While they didn’t go to every event, they went to as many as they could. “But they also brought a friend of theirs with them this year. Birdie .”

“Oh?” I cocked a brow. The way Darla said her name piqued my interest. “Do we not like Birdie?”

Would I raise a little hell because my favorite girl didn’t like someone? Absolutely.

“Birdie uses more hair product in one day than I use in a whole damn year,” she retorted, making me laugh. “It don’t move! Tell me why her hair don’t move, Jackson! Who in their right mind wants that?”

But all I could think about was the fact that West used the same bar of soap on his hair as he did his body.

Fuck. I had to focus.

“I don’t know, pretty girl,” I said. I draped an arm around her shoulders and turned her toward the door. “Why don’t you and me go on in there, get something to eat, and judge the hell out of her hair?”

“Are we bad people, cowboy?”

“Damn straight we are.”

Birdie’s hair didn’t fucking move. Not a single fucking strand. It had to be the eighth wonder of the world considering her hair went down to her ass. How the fuck was that comfortable?

“I wonder what would happen if someone lit a candle next to her head,” Darla whispered next to me, hiding behind the guise of biting into a biscuit.

“I don’t have the money to bail your dumbass out of jail, pretty girl,” I muttered under my breath. Why was this a common theme among the people I spent my time with? Between her and West, I needed a goddamn bail fund.

And there was West again, nudging his way from the back of my mind. Jesus fuck, I couldn’t not think about him. Every little thing sent me reeling back to West. It drove me a little crazy. Usually, I enjoyed hanging out with my girls, but right now, all I wanted was to talk to him.

“So, how does this work?” Birdie’s voice broke through my thoughts. Yeah, I was going to blame my lack of enjoyment on Birdie. Unfair? Probably. Was I still going to fucking do it? Fuck yes. “Cowboys are hot, and you’re—”

“Very fucking gay,” I interrupted. “It ain’t an act, honey.”

“Willa said you help us pick guys—”

“No.” I shook my head. “Not a fucking chance. ”

“Jackson just makes sure we don’t get treated like crap,” Wren chimed in. Much like Birdie, she was all prim and proper but at least her hair moved.

“Rule number one of the rodeo,” I began, “don’t trust the fucking cowboys.”

“But you’re a cowboy,” Birdie said.

“Jackson is the exception,” Darla told her. “Trust me, when some two-bit nobody is gettin’ too handsy for his own damn good, you want Jackson there to put ‘im in his place.”

“Sounds hot.” Birdie’s gaze swept me head to toe, and I recognized that damn look on her face. There was always one of them—one fucking woman who thought maybe she could make me less gay. Why? Who fucking knew? Maybe it was a challenge thing.

“Still gay, honey,” I reminded her. “And there ain’t a damn thing you’ve got that I want.”

“Are the live auction guys on the table?” Birdie asked, changing the conversation. “Because I was over there earlier—”

“Why were you over there?” Sutton demanded.

“I went shopping,” she smiled wide, “and there was this one guy… a real tall, dark, and toss me around daddy type.”

I snorted into my drink. Yeah, this was exactly why I hung around. This girl was going to find herself a goddamn serial killer if she kept using that criteria to find men.

“The auction guys don’t stick around,” I said. “The first event is always the biggest turnout—short of the finals. It’s a whole ordeal. The animal sales and the live auction are included as a part of the whole fair.”

The first rodeo was always a big event. People brought animals to be sold as well as auctioned off. Hell, my dad and Harrison used to sell bulls at the first rodeo auction. There was barrel riding, calf wrangling, bull riding, and more.

“That’s a bummer.” She pouted—actually pouted. This girl was so goddamn surreal. “I’m going to go for it. The day’s still early.”

“You do you, honey,” I told her. The conversation moved on without me. My heart wasn’t in it. No, my heart was a few hundred miles away with a man who wasn’t answering the damn phone .

What the hell was he doing to me? How had I let myself become so wrapped up in him that I couldn’t fucking stand the idea of being ignored for a whole day?

“You okay, grumpy boy?” Darla nudged me in the side with her elbow. I gave her a well-practiced smile—one she saw right through. “Don’t you go lyin’ to me now.”

“Just got someone on my mind,” I told her, keeping my voice down. I rarely shared my dating life with anyone. Darla knew a handful of things, but that was it. I was always cautious about what I shared. I didn’t want to clean up a fucking mess publicly.

“Jackson Ford Myles!” She gasped, slapping a hand to her chest playfully. “Are you tellin’ me you have a special—”

“Oh!” Birdie exclaimed, lighting up. “Well, Mr. Tall, Dark, and Toss Me Around Daddy just made this easy.”

While they chattered about her conversation strategy, I decided to take a look at Mr. Tall, Dark, and Toss Me Around Daddy—ready to take notes in case I had to kick someone’s ass. But I never got that far. My heart lurched into my throat as I watched West wander up to the bar. He looked ready to fall asleep on his feet. His clothes were dusty, and his hair was shoved under a backwards hat.

What the hell was he doing here?

He drummed his fingers on the bar as he waited for the bartender, and I leaned forward, silently hoping he didn’t order a drink.

He did, but it was water. Thank fuck.

After exchanging a handful of words with the bartender and tossing down some cash, West wandered to a corner booth and damn near collapsed in the seat. He dragged his hat over his face as he leaned back.

What the hell had happened to him?

“Sorry, honey, that one’s taken,” I interjected over their planning. Not saying anything else, I left the table to join West. When I dropped onto the bench across from him, he pulled the hat off his face. I asked, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“I told you I’d be there for your first ride. I just never said at what rodeo,” West said. The corner of his mouth tipped up in a crooked, tired smile. Something inexplicable and overwhelming weaseled its way around my heart. When I didn’t reply, he continued, “I took a job for Rich Matteson hauling horses to the live auction. He’s too old to drive or some shit—took a plane. That’s why I didn’t answer you. Got in at like fucking midnight last night and had to stay with the horses. I figured I’d sleep in the truck, but one of the horses was too damn restless. I stayed up to keep him calm, so I haven’t slept yet. And then Rich’s plane was fucking delayed, which left me being a goddamn salesman.”

I just stared at him. There was no fucking way the man in front of me was qualified to sell anything. He was more likely to scare them all away.

“Don’t give me that goddamn look, cowboy,” he retorted as if reading my mind. “I sold all seven of his horses before his plane fucking landed this morning.”

Shifting uncomfortably, he pulled his wallet out of his front pocket and tossed a check on the table.

“That’s for you,” he told me. I frowned as I took the check and unfolded it. The number stopped me in my tracks. So did my name on it.

“What the hell is this?” I demanded.

“Well, I am an employee of Double Arrow, which makes you my boss,” West explained. “I contracted with him as a service offered by the ranch, and I put his quote together by the horse for the whole thing, not by mileage. Figured you could use it for the ranch.”

“West,” I faltered. The gesture was unexpected. “I can’t take this. You earned this.”

“Nope.” He lazily popped the ‘p’ as he said it. “Mickey drew up a contract for overtime hours, so you still have to pay me my normal rate for yesterday and today. And I need somewhere to sleep.”

“I think I can arrange that.” There was no way in hell he was sleeping anywhere that wasn’t with me. Folding the check again, I lifted it a slight bit as I said, “Thank you for this.”

“Anytime, cowboy.” West dropped his hat over his face again and slouched down in the seat. “Wake me when my food shows up.”