Her Rodeo Hero

Internationally famous. Ranked first in the world. Everyone had said 2016 would have been her year, the year she’d represent the United States in the games. And then the accident.

“I did okay.”

There were times when disappointment and sorrow came out of nowhere and smacked her in the face. This was one of those moments, though she tried to hide it. When she met Colt’s gaze, his amusement faded.

“We were hoping you could help.” He gave her a small smile, one meant to tell her without words that he understood.

She took a deep breath, got hold of her emotions, and pulled her shoulders back. “Well it’s a good thing I showed up here then, isn’t it?”

“So you’ll do it?” Sam asked.

“Of course.”

“Wait, wait.” Colt held up his hands. “I told Sam she had to give you something in return.”

Sam’s whole face lit up with excitement. “I’m going to teach you to trick ride.”

Chapter Four

He thought she’d be thrilled. Working with the Galloping Girlz would be an excellent way for Natalie to build upper body strength, not to mention recover her center of gravity.

Natalie didn’t seem thrilled. She seemed terrified.

“Oh, wow.”

But the subtext of her words clearly indicated she’d rather jump out of an airplane—without a parachute.

“We can talk about it later.” He motioned to the Galloping Girlz. “I think Sam would appreciate some help with Roger today.

“I would. He keeps stopping and I don’t know why.”

“Why don’t you unload your horses?” Colt eyed the girls. “I can talk to Natalie about my idea alone.”

“Sure,” Sam said, corralling her teammates, but not before shooting Colt one last smile, a grin that slid off the edge of her face when her eyes fell on Natalie. Colt made a mental note to set the record straight with Sam even though he’d told her half a dozen times already—he wasn’t interested in dating anybody.

“I didn’t mean to interrupt your plans for the day,” Natalie ventured.

For some reason Colt had a hard time meeting Natalie’s eyes. Now that he thought about it, he’d had trouble with that since the moment he’d first met her. Something about her pretty blue gaze made him uncomfortable.

“No. It’s okay. I should have called you before now anyway.”

“But you weren’t going to, were you?”

He prided himself on being honest in most situations, but he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t get a little hot under the collar thanks to the guilt her words evoked. “Tell you the truth, I wasn’t. Well, I was. I was going to call to tell you to find someone else.”

She seemed surprised by his frankness, her long lashes parting a bit before swooping down to shield those amazing blue eyes from his stare. “But now you want me to work with Sam. What changed your mind?”

“You showed up at my front gate.” He shook his head. “And that tells me you’re stubborn, and that you probably wouldn’t take no for an answer.”

“I wouldn’t have.”

“But you’re scared.”

That caught her off guard. “What makes you say that?”

“The look on your face when Sam volunteered to teach you trick riding.”

“I told you my equilibrium is all messed up.”

It wasn’t just that. He could tell that she was holding something back. “Are you afraid of falling off?”

Her blue eyes suddenly grew two inches wide.

“You are, aren’t you?”

She pulled her gaze away once again, as if sensing he could read the thoughts in them. “Well, I should be a little cautious, don’t you think? I mean, I’m basically learning how to ride all over again.”

Cautious, yes. Terrified, no.

But he had some experience with how she felt. He’d taken a nasty tumble off a bronc once. Took him nearly a year to get back into the groove of things. And then even more recently, when he’d been caught in a fire fight near the border of Benghazi, it’d taken months before he could head out to patrol without getting the shakes. The thing with the military, though, was that you didn’t have a choice. He might never have gotten over his fear if he’d been allowed to slink away.

“They say the best thing is to get back on the horse, and in my experience, that’s proven to be true.”

“I didn’t fall off the last time I rode,” she protested.

“No. Playboy took off with you. In some ways that can be worse.”

She didn’t deny it, but he could tell she still didn’t want to try trick riding.

“Look, when I was younger I started riding broncs. I don’t know if you know or not, but there’s no steering a bucking horse. Took me a while to get used to having no control. It’s going to take a while for you, too.”

“But that’s just it.” She splayed her hands. “Bridleless reining is all about control.”

He shook his head. “When it comes to horses, control is an illusion. They can always do what they want if they decide to. They’re bigger, faster and, in some cases, smarter than a lot of humans. But all that doesn’t matter because first you have to learn how to trust them or none of your goals will be possible.” He crossed his arms in front of him. “Riding with the Galloping Girlz will be the best thing for you.”

“What will I be doing?”

“That’s up to Sam. She’s the pro.”

She didn’t want to do it. Not at all.

“This is a deal breaker for me, Natalie. Either you let the girls help you out or I’m done.”

He could see that she didn’t take kindly to his ultimatum, but he was doing it for her own good. Just like in the military, sometimes it was better for people if they weren’t given a choice. Tough love, so to speak.

Those eyes of hers had gone from big and uncertain to narrowed and annoyed. His words seemed to serve as a challenge. “Fine.”

“You’ll do it?”

“It seems I have no choice.”

Good for her. He had to squelch the unexpected surge of admiration he felt. “Are you sure?”

“Of course I am.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know. I can see the fear in your eyes. It makes me wonder if you’re ready. Maybe you should take some time off. Learn how to knit or something. When you’re ready to get back on a horse you’ll know.”

“I’m not afraid to get back on a horse.”

Tell it to the judge.

But he didn’t say the words aloud. “Good,” he said instead. “Because I think you should start working with Sam today.”

“Today?” Her lips went slack.

“No time like the present.”

He left her standing there because damned if he didn’t want to tell her everything would be okay. That he’d been in her shoes. That it would all work out. And even crazier, he had to fight the urge to pull her into his arms and reassure her with a hug.

I must be going soft in my old age.

* * *

IT’LL BE ALL RIGHT. You’ll be okay. Colt won’t let you fall on your head.

And die.

“You really don’t need a helmet,” Sam said, the bay gelding she held standing by her side patiently. “I promise not to let you fall on your head and die.”

The words so closely echoed Natalie’s thoughts that she almost let out a burst of laughter. Of course, it might sound a little hysterical right now, but at this point she really didn’t care.

“Where I come from if you don’t wear a helmet, you’re considered insane.” She saw Sam’s eyes flash. “Not that I’m calling you insane, it’s just a mind-set kind of thing.”

Sam glanced at Colt, and Natalie could perfectly interpret the look she gave him. It was one of shared amusement. Only Colt didn’t seem amused. He peered at them from his position alongside the rail of the arena. They stood in the sand, the other girls already on their horses and riding around. The first time she’d seen one of the pretty blondes stand on top of a saddle she’d felt physically nauseous.

There was no way they’d ask her to do that. Not yet, at least.

“Go on. Climb aboard.”

It was at that moment that Natalie admitted to herself that Colt was right. She’d lost her nerve.

“I’d still feel better if I had something on my head.” She pointed toward her hair. “I just had a traumatic brain injury.”

Her chest felt tight. Anxiety. No denying it.

Sam had begun to study her closely, perhaps a little too closely. Did she know how near Natalie was to panic? “Colt, don’t you have a helmet in the barn? I thought I saw one hanging there.”

“I do.” Without another word he turned to go get it.

It was a way to stall, the helmet issue, Natalie acknowledged inwardly. Well, not really. She truly didn’t want to ride without the proper safety equipment, but the temporary delay gave her time to gather the reins of her nerve and analyze why she felt the way she did. Yes, she’d fallen off. Ironically, she’d been critically injured but the horse she’d been riding had been just fine, so she wasn’t afraid of hurting another horse. Besides, she’d ridden Playboy recently and she hadn’t been half as afraid as she was now.

“You don’t have to do this, you know.”

When Natalie looked up, Sam’s eyes had lost their edge. She peered at her with something close to pity on her face. “We can do something else to get you back into shape, something that doesn’t involve a horse.”

Was her fear that obvious?

“No, no.” Damn it. She could do this. She would do this. She turned toward the gelding next to her. “At least your horse is low to the ground. I won’t have to look like a rock climber trying to scale Half Dome.”

Humor. A defense mechanism. Before a big competition she’d always been the one to crack jokes. Laughter helped ground her. It reminded her that life shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Everyone was going to die. One should enjoy the moment.

Just then one of the Galloping Girlz went by on her horse. The woman hung upside down off the side of her mount. Natalie gulped.

“I’m not doing that.”

Sam followed her gaze and smiled. “Not yet.”

Not ever.

“Here you go.”

Natalie turned. Colt stood there with the helmet. An ugly white thing that resembled the top of a golf ball.

“Thanks.”

When she met his gaze, she tried unsuccessfully to shield her thoughts from him.

You’ll be all right.

The words were unspoken, but she heard them anyway. And suddenly she knew everything would be okay. He wouldn’t let her get hurt. That wasn’t his style. The man was a protector. A warrior. A good guy.

She tipped her chin up. “Let’s do this.”

She slipped on the helmet. It was a little too big, but it would do. Sam held the reins as she prepared to mount. She paused before getting on. Sam’s patient gelding cocked an ear in her direction.

Nothing to be afraid of. The arena floor was soft. Even if she did fall off, chances were she wouldn’t strike her head on the ground hard enough to jolt her brain. Thereby causing a seizure. One that might lead to permanent damage or even the end of her life.

“What’s his name?” She grabbed the saddle horn. Although the horse was small by her standards—she was used to animals at least a foot taller than this one—it still felt like climbing a mountain.

“Roger.”

“So this is the horse that refuses to jump?”

“It is.”

She swung aboard. The way her heart pounded against her ribcage one would have thought she’d saddled a wild tiger. Good heavens, what was with her? She’d never been afraid of a horse a day in her life.

She caught Colt’s gaze. He knew what a struggle it’d been for her to climb on, and the realization humiliated her. It shouldn’t matter what he thought—she didn’t even think he liked her—but for some reason it did.

“Too bad you can’t take him over some fences for me.” Sam met Natalie’s gaze. “Colt told me you were in a horse wreck. What happened?”

“I don’t know.” Natalie fingered a strand of Roger’s black mane. “I was told my horse slipped before a jump, but I don’t remember anything.”

“Wow. Was the horse okay?”

“He was fine. Me? Not so much.” It still freaked her out that she couldn’t recall the accident. No matter how hard she tried—it just wasn’t there. “They have it on video, but the angle’s all wrong. He might have chipped a bit, might have slipped, might have spooked at something. All I know is he took off wrong and landed in the middle of a five foot fence.”

“Five feet?”

Talking was good. Talking meant she didn’t have to move. When she put a horse into motion she began to suffer dizzy spells. It wasn’t so bad if she walked, but anything faster and she might as well be riding the Tilt-O-Whirl at the fair.

“Fortunately it wasn’t during a jump-off or it might have been higher.”

“Why don’t you take Roger out to the rail?” Sam suggested.

They both glanced toward Colt and Natalie could tell nothing escaped his notice. He knew she was stalling for time. Could he see the way her hands shook? Had he spotted her pulse beating at her neck? The way her hands clenched and unclenched on the reins? She would swear her heart could be heard outside her body.

“Come on.” She clucked, but the moment the horse took a step forward she wanted to throw up, and not just because of the way moving made her feel. There was the fear she battled back. The sickness at realizing she wasn’t the same as before and might never be. The shame of knowing she hadn’t been honest with Colt and the admission that she owed him the truth.

“Whoa.”

The horse obeyed instantly, his head lifting a notch as she pulled back on the reins.

“What’s the matter?” Colt asked from the rail.

She’d had a traumatic brain injury, damn it. She’d damaged her inner ear.

“I just need a moment.”

“Time out.”

Natalie’s head snapped up, causing her to clutch mane. “I don’t need a time out. I just need a moment to adjust to the sudden change in elevation.”

Too late. Colt walked toward her. He eyed Sam. “Give us a second, would you, Sam?”

The woman nodded, shooting Natalie a look of encouragement before taking Colt’s place on the rail.

“When you said you had balancing issues, exactly what did you mean?” He asked.

“I told you, I can’t ride English anymore. Lifting my body up and down makes me so dizzy I nearly came off the first time I rode.”

“You also said you could ride Western.”

“And I can.” She held Colt’s gaze, a part of her wanting to tell him the truth, the whole truth, but if she did that, she knew she’d lose her last best chance of ever riding again. “Like I said, I just need a moment.”

“You haven’t even broken a walk and you’re already clutching mane.”

She immediately released the strands of black horse hair. “All better.” She lifted her hands. “See?”

He didn’t look as if he believed her, his golden eyes nearly as dark as the black felt of his cowboy hat. “Exactly what happened when you rode Playboy without a bridle?”

“What do you mean?”

“I want to know the details. Were you walking? Trotting? Galloping?”

She didn’t want to answer because by doing so she would reveal more than she wanted him to know. “I was just walking.”

He crossed his arms, tipping back to stare up at her in a way that had her wanting to break the connection of their gaze. “And had you ever trotted since your accident?”

And there it was. The question she’d feared. “No.”

He tipped back farther. “Cantered?”

She took a deep breath. “No.”

“So all you’ve done since your wreck is walk?”

Another deep breath. “Yes.”

“And you decided on that day to practice walking without a bridle?”

“You make it sound like I’m crazy.”

“What happened when you dropped the bit?”

“At first, nothing.”

“And then?”

One of the girls in the arena galloped by again, this one hanging off the back of her mount so that her head rested near her horse’s tail. Dear Lord. Never mind how painful it must be to have the cantle of the saddle digging into your—

“Natalie?”

“Once he realized he had no bridle Playboy started to trot.”

“Were you able to hang on?”

“At first.” Her fingers found mane again and she dug her hands into the silky strands. “But then he started to canter, and the up-and-down motion, well, let’s just say it made things more difficult.”

“Exactly how difficult.”

“I nearly blacked out.”

“Son of a—” If he’d been the demonstrative type she had a feeling he would have thrown his hat at her.

“But I hung on.” Somehow she had, although to this day she didn’t know how. She couldn’t recall Jillian running into the arena, or her friend stepping in front of Playboy and somehow managing to get him stopped. She half-suspected she’d had her eyes closed the whole time. All she knew was that one moment the horse had been running full-tilt and the next she was being helped down to the ground.

“I vomited afterward.”

If Colt had been a character in a sitcom he would have stormed off set. Instead he just stood there, mouth partly open, and though she sat above him by a good two feet, she somehow felt about three feet smaller.

“Why is it every time I talk to you I discover something new? Something I’m not happy to discover. Something that smacks of dishonesty?”

Because she had been dishonest. About one thing at least.

“Because if I told you the whole story, you’d never have agreed to help me, would you?”

She had him there. The brim of his cowboy hat lowered so that she couldn’t see his face. He appeared to be watching one of the Galloping Girlz, this one on a sorrel. Natalie watched, too, because the woman had hooked her foot into a loop near the skirt of the saddle. She anticipated what would happen next and sure enough, the pretty blonde stood up, hooking her other foot through a matching loop on the other side. She stood. No reins. No control. No fear. It took Natalie’s breath away because it was both awe-inspiring and death defying, the woman’s blond ponytail streaming out behind her.

“I won’t be doing that anytime soon.”

Colt’s gaze shot to her own. She saw a flicker of amusement, but only for a moment.

“Probably not.”

His shoulders lifted and then relaxed, as if he’d taken a deep breath, one filled with resignation. Her own breathing slowed.

“All right, look, we’re going to work on some simple balancing techniques today. I’m going to put you out on a lunge line, have you close your eyes, keep you focused on staying aboard, not what your head is telling you might happen.”

She used to do that to the kids she taught. The five-year-olds.

Now, now. You have to start somewhere.

“And tomorrow?”

“More balancing exercises.”

She nodded. “Whatever we have to do.”

“But I can’t work with you every day. Maybe Sam can, but I have performances most weekends.”

“I know.”

“But I’ll do what I can. And we can talk to Sam and see if she can help you when I’m not around.”

Natalie wanted to cry, except she couldn’t because if she did she’d seem like a sissy and she had a feeling Colt didn’t deal well with sissies.

“You’re going to feel like a kid learning to ride all over again, and when you’re not working with Sam or me, I think you should sign up for a rehabilitation program, one that specializes in hippotherapy.”

Hippotherapy. Translation: equine therapy. She’d resisted doing that, hadn’t thought it was necessary. Clearly, she’d been kidding herself. She trusted Colt, and if he said she needed outside help, well maybe it was time to put her pride aside.

“In the meantime bring Playboy over here and I’ll start working with him for you. It’ll be easier for me to prep him for reining competitions.”

Her eyes burned. She realized that she was fighting back sudden tears. She had to blink a few times. “Thanks, Colt.”

“Don’t thank me yet.” He slapped Roger’s neck. “Let’s see how you do today before you start getting excited.”

Chapter Five

He’d tortured her for an hour.

Natalie had been a saint through it all. Colt had known his ultimatum would leave her with little choice but to do as he asked, and truthfully, he’d half-hoped she’d say no so he’d be off the hook with very little guilt. She’d agreed, though, and then worked hard, despite having to stop from time to time to settle her stomach. Afterward, she’d spent a good hour working with Sam and Roger over a few pieces of wood. She called it ground work, but it wasn’t the kind he was used to. Natalie had said that using the wooden obstacles was the first step to teaching Roger how to jump.

“You look lost in thought.”

Colt glanced up at his sister, Claire. They were sitting in her kitchen, him about to embark on babysitting duties, her heading off to town to run errands. Claire lived on the property, in what had been called the cowboy bunkhouse back when their dad had run a few hundred head of cattle. She’d converted the place into a home, and the siblings now lived a good mile away from each other, Colt at one end of the two-hundred-acre parcel and Claire at the other. He’d always liked the spot where she lived—at the base of a small hill, surrounded by a grove of oak trees with a year-round creek within walking distance—better than the site where his grandfather had built the main homestead, out in the middle of nowhere so he could keep an eye on things, or so Colt had been told.

“I was thinking about that woman I’m helping,” he answered.

“Natalie, right?” Claire swept her long, black hair over one shoulder, the strands twisting in a way that somehow made it look thicker. “Wes and Jillian’s friend.”

He fingered the tab top of a soda can, twanging it as he recalled his first lesson with Natalie. “She popped in on me today.”

Wide, sweeping black brows lifted. “Oh, yeah?”

Adam, Colt’s five-year-old nephew, sat in the small living area near the front of the cozy but comfortable open-concept house. He was busy snapping together some kind of Lego war craft, probably from the latest superhero movie, Hawkman. The boy loved comic books. When Adam glanced up, Colt found himself smiling, once again surprised at how much he looked like Claire. That was a good thing. Not just because she was good-looking, but because he couldn’t imagine Claire having to stare at Marcus’s face day in and day out.

“We ended up tormenting her in the arena.”

Claire took a pull from her own soda, clearly not in any hurry to set off on her trip to town.

“We being you and your new harem,” she said, a teasing glint coming into her bright green eyes.

“Claire!”

Her smile could light up a room and right then, it did. “What? You know it’s true. Sam has had the hots for you since you came back from the Middle East.”

“Not interested.”

“Why not? She’s pretty, that’s for sure.”

“You know why.” He peered at Claire in a way she couldn’t fail to recognize.

Her smile faded. “You’re still convinced you’re damaged goods.”

“It’s proven to be a little more than a theory by now.” But he didn’t like to think about his failed romances, nor the scars that fire fight near Benghazi had left behind. “Anyway, we worked Natalie pretty hard.”

He could tell Claire wanted to continue the conversation about his love life, but she wisely changed her mind. “What do you mean? I thought you were helping her with her horse?”

He really wished his soda was a beer. He could have used a long swig of something stronger right then. “Turns out she needs as much work as her horse.”

“I thought she was some kind of famous English rider.”

“She was. She had an accident.” He tapped his head. “It’s messed up her balance pretty good.”

As he thought back to earlier in the day, and how hard Natalie had fought not only to stay atop Roger, but to keep herself from getting sick, something damn near like admiration made one side of his mouth curl.