Page 218 of Wild Mustang Security Firm

Thom

WILD MUSTANG SECURITY FIRM

DELTA JAMES

Chapter

One

Avery shook herself, every muscle tense and ready to move. In less than a minute, the gate would be thrown open and nearly a ton of raging bull would come barreling out of the chute, a cowboy in the middle of its back just trying to stay on long enough to score points for an eight-second ride. As soon as that ride was over, it was Avery who would keep the bull distracted, taunting the beast until it charged her instead of the rider. Avery was one of only a handful of female bullfighters, or rodeo clowns, as they were called. As far as this rodeo was concerned, however, no one knew her character, Casey the Clown, was a girl.

Her entire world closed down to the space between the gate and her. The noise from the crowd, the smell of the animals, and the taste of dirt all receded so that only she, the cowboy, and the bull existed. There were other bullfighters in the arena, but none of them mattered. Her heart pounded. Excitement sang through her veins as she readied herself to distract more than seventeen hundred pounds of thundering hooves and goring horns long enough for that idiot on his back to scramble for safety.

But first, they had to get through the ride.

The gate swung open and Cowboy Crusher exploded from the chute. He jumped, landing on his front feet, twisting his enormous black body as he kicked his heels almost over his head; poor Dempsey never had a chance. Less than two seconds into his ride, he went flying.

Show time.

Sounding her clown horn, Avery whipped off her large, droopy hat and waved it over her head. She wore large jeans held up by red suspenders tucked into specially made red boots with running soles on them, and God knows she put those boots to good use. Her red-striped shirt was five sizes too big. Between the oversized clothes, binding her breasts, and Casey the Clown’s well-known shtick of never speaking, she’d managed to keep the fact that she was a female a secret from everyone here. It was her knowledge of bulls, her fast reflexes, and her acrobatics in the ring that made her a hell of a clown.

Normally, the noisy horn was enough to attract the angry bull’s attention. Combined with the flapping of her floppy hat and her almost gymnastic jumps and gyrations, most of the animals she dealt with became far more interested in chasing her. From the moment Dempsey went flying, however, Crusher became fixed on destroying the irritant that had been on his back. Winded, Dempsey was just rolling from his back to his knees, but Crusher was faster and the bull meant to get him.

Bolting left, Avery ran, flapping her hat and honking her horn in an attempt to catch the periphery of the bull’s attention just as it was turning for a charge. Dempsey was scrambling for the nearest fence, but Crusher was too close. He’d never make it.

“Hey, big boy!” she hollered. “Come to Mama!”

She would never be sure if the bull registered the fact that she was a female, but she realized the other bullfighters and everyone within hearing distance sure as hell had.

Swinging his heavy head to lock her in his angry sights, Cowboy Crusher lowered his horns and pawed the ground.

“Come on, you overgrown mutant piece of steak, why not take on someone with more brains than a rodeo rider!”

She vaguely heard the crowd’s laughter, but Avery was far too focused on the enraged creature as it promptly bellowed back and charged. There was no feeling quite like this one, the cold tremble—part fear, part excitement—that slithered in through her gut as she held her ground, watching as that massive animal bored down on her. It could kill her easily, and yet she didn’t run. She waited instead, her body locking into readiness until the very last second when she charged the bull in turn. Grabbing the poll of Crusher’s head, her hand smacked flat between his horns as she vaulted up and over him in the signature flip that had made Casey the Clown so well known. Leaping over the beast, she smacked him on the rump with her hat and sprinted for the relative safety of the arena walls.

The bull charged after her. He rammed the fence, shaking it, seconds after she had climbed out of the way. She leaned down and released the bucking rig as the mounted rodeo cowboys moved in to get Crusher back to the pens.

The audience cheered and Avery hopped down from the fence to take a bow. She waved to those watching and skipped out of the arena, heading for her rented SUV. One dangerous situation taken care of; one more left to go.

She needed to get away from the rodeo and pronto. No one at the Wild Mustang Security Firm knew that in Avery’s spare time she worked as a bullfighter—she’d been doing it for years now. It was one of the few places she could go to decompress after a stressful mission. The problem was that there was a very real possibility that her secret was about to be exposed. All it took was someone from her job recognizing her voice, and herextracurricular activities would be in real jeopardy. Any other security firm probably wouldn’t care, but at Wild Mustang…

The men she worked with were the best in their field and often they depended on her to get them out of bad situations. Those same men could be more than a little overprotective of the women in their lives. Sadly, that included her. Only in her case, they didn’t express those protective feelings in the same dominantly sexual manner that their female partners had to put up with. Instead, she got an office full of overbearing older brothers, not one of whom was shy about lecturing her as if they had the right, or who would be likely to approve of her penchant for playing tag or keep-away with massive, enraged bovines.

She was also willing to bet a whole lot of money that none of them knew that their IT genius, mad hacker Thom Lyndon, was considered to be one of the best bareback bronc riders in the world. It sure surprised the hell out of her the first time she’d spotted him on their local circuit. He rode under the name of Tom Stiles, which she knew was his mother’s maiden name. Avery supposed he did that so if any of the guys followed the Pro Rodeo Cowboys Association’s standings, they wouldn’t know it was him—probably for the same reasons she didn’t want any of them to know she was Casey the Clown.

The last thing Avery needed was Thom being able to confirm it had been her in the arena this afternoon. Like every other person in the stadium, there was no helping that he now knew her bullfighting character was a woman. Her only hope was that there might have been too much ambient noise for him to recognize her voice. Fortunately, she reached her car without anyone stopping to talk to her. All she had to do now was return the SUV to the rental agency and fly her personal plane back to her home outside of Sedona.

As she scooted into the vehicle and headed for home, she was halfway to convincing herself that she might just get away with this.

Avery! What the hell was Avery doing here?

Thom had been waiting close to the arena when Cowboy Crusher shot from his chute. That animal was one of the top-ranked bucking bulls in the world, which meant he was dangerous and damn near impossible to ride. Jimmy Dempsey had been badly outmatched from the start, and Thom liked Jimmy. If things went horribly wrong, he’d wanted to be close enough to lend a hand. He hadn’t been at all surprised when Dempsey was thrown on Crusher’s first jump and buck. He was just turning back to his rig when he heard the gasp and shout of the crowd, reacting to a dangerous situation. Despite the rodeo clowns rushing in to help, Crusher had turned on Dempsey.

Thom sprang to get into the ring, along with a lot of other cowboys. He’d been swinging his leg over the top of the fence when he spotted Casey the Clown blowing his horn and waving his floppy hat. Casey was an excellent bullfighter and Thom had seen his work before. Although the clown’s antics failed at first to distract the bull, Thom figured all would be well, and it was. Casey was able to change the bull’s focus, and brought it charging straight at the experienced clown. The problem was that Casey was only able to divert the beast from goring Dempsey by yelling at it. What caught the fascination of the crowd was the realization that Casey wasn’t a ‘he’ at all… Casey was a woman. Had he not recognized the very feminine, teasing voice that brought Crusher charging in so that the clown coulddeliver her by now infamous over-the-back flip, Thom might have been fascinated too. But he did recognize it. That voice belonged to Avery Jackson, the Wild Mustang Security Firm’s very own intrepid pilot and resident little sister… to everyone else, maybe. Not him.

Thom’s feelings for Avery were not of the big brotherly variety, and they hadn’t been for quite some time. For months, he had been innately aware of everything she had to offer a man, and with every week that passed that awareness only intensified. She was smart, beautiful, had a wicked sense of humor, and was decidedly off limits. Thom’s best friend was Noah Taylor, the only one who knew he spent his spare time as a bareback bronc rider. Noah was also the only person who knew the feelings that Thom harbored for Avery; feelings he steadfastly encouraged Thom to pursue.

None of that really mattered. What mattered was that Avery had put herself in danger and had been doing it for quite some time. Thom had accepted the fact that there were often times when, during the course of working for the firm, she did put herself at risk. But in those situations, he was always there to influence just how hazardous the situation was and he, working behind the scenes, could usually help manipulate the outcome.

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