Page 1 of Knox

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Oh goody, now Knox got to watch his troublemaking little brother break his ornery neck.

“Tate, this is a bad idea.” Knox said it in his big-brother voice, but Tate hadn’t a hope of hearing him over the cheers as he walked into the straw-padded arena under the hanging lights of the beer tent toward the mechanical bull.

His renegade brother nailed the rough-edged charm of a cowboy, complete with his faded jeans, a black Stetson over his dark brown hair, a scrape of off-duty dark whiskers, dusty boots, and a swagger that suggested he’d been born on a bull.

Tate always did know how to put on the game to charm the ladies.

The organizers of the after-hours entertainment of NBR-X, the professional bull-riding tour, knew their crowd—beer-gesturing, cowboy-hatted rowdies who spent the evening watching young men pit their lives against angry, thousand-pound animals hoping to crush their rider into the dirt or against the rodeo boards.

The scent of blood spilled today turned wannabe cowboys into daredevils.

The crowd knotted around the circle, shouting smack and laying bets for or against Tate’s success. The ruddy rodeo aroma—horsehide, dust, hay, and plenty of craft beer—only added to the trouble brewing in Knox’s gut.

Probably Tate would survive. Knox had seen Tate ride—had taught him how to stay on the back of a real bull, and frankly, a smart man would ante up a Ben Franklin to the bookmaker collecting cash in an oversized boot.

But Knox worked too hard for his cash, and to his knowledge, Tate hadn’t been on a bull in years.

“C’mon, Tate, let’s go,” Knox said, a last-ditch effort to put a halt to the crazy. But when Tate got something in his head, he practically turned into one of those bulls in the nearby barn. Red-eyed, focused, and lethal.

The crowd exploded with fervor when Tate handed his red Solo cup to a blonde wearing a hot-pinkBull Riders Know How to Hang On T-shirt. When she grabbed a fistful of his shirt and pulled him to herself for a quick good luck kiss, Knox just wanted to shake his head.

He should probably hightail it out of the Tent-o’-Trouble and back to his room at the Hyatt where he could take a shower and whisk off the grime that seemed to hover in the air.

Not that Knox didn’t savor a good rodeo, with bareback riding, bulldogging, tie-down roping, barrel racing, and maybe even good old-fashioned mutton bustin’. But NBR-X had taken the glitz of the sport and turned it into a rock show. National Bull Riding eXtreme, a traveling, rowdy weekend event that included a thrill-ride carnival, a craft beer tent, and a high-decibel concert to cap off every night.

And this was their yearly kickoff event. They were bringing their A game to the early March springtime weather in south Texas.

If it weren’t for Tate, Knox would have left right after Hot Pete’s performance, headed back to his hotel, and looked over the contract, ready for tomorrow’s negotiation.

The way Hot Pete bucked tonight, Knox might be able to raise the lease price with the contractor. And line up futures for the other four prime two-year-olds back in the barn in Montana at the Marshall Triple M.

Hot Pete, his prize bucking bull, was in rare form this year—poised to net even more than the $350K in prize money that he’d earned last year. The best bull to come out of Gordo the Bonebreaker’s line since Knox had pastured the champion. Gordo had his own pedigree from years in the ring, and his straws went for $1,000 a pop. Hot Pete’s stats boded well for the future of the Marshall Triple M.

Not that any of Knox’s siblings seemed to care. In the last three years since his oldest brother, Reuben, had come back home, made peace with the family, and decided to give Knox his blessing, the rest of the family—his other three brothers and two sisters—had drifted away. Honestly, Coco wasn’t a birth sister, but she felt like one, the way she’d merged into their family after her mother’s death, so she also counted. But she’d drifted, just like the rest of them.

Knox was losing them to places and futures unknown, and he hadn’t a clue how to knit them back together. Hold on to the legacy his father had mantled upon him.

Family first. Family strong.

So, of course, when he’d pulled into San Antonio, he’d texted his brother. Yes, Tate was still working security. Yes, he’d meet him after hours for a beer to catch up.

And yes, his next-youngest brother hadn’t changed a bit—trouble coursed through his veins and pulled everyone in his vortex with him.

Knox stepped up to the circle. The organizers of the crazy bull riding gimmick had added real longhorns, with blunted ends, and the hairy red hide of a Braford bull, hopefully engineered, although Knox doubted it. It looked dangerous enough, if Tate were to fly over the horns, get hooked.

The guy could just as easily dislocate his shoulder not to mention land on his head and get a concussion. Or even worse—break his neck.

For all the malarkey…

Tate slid onto the bull’s back, one hand gripped into the leather strap. If he’d been straddling a real bull, he’d wrap the bull rope around the chest and over the shoulders of the bull, slip his hand under the rope, and wrap the loose end of the rope once around his hand. Knox saw his own actions in his mind, breathing instructions to Tate.

Scooch your body up, until your hand is between your upper thighs. Position your feet forward, above the rope, and grip the bull’s body with your spurs. Except, Tate wore no spurs, and the body had no give. No breathing from the animal, no snorting, no shaking of his angry head.

Tate lifted his hand and stuck his chest out. Nodded.

The bull began to shift.

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