Page 41 of His Cowboy Heart

Until I’d told him why I was there.

I did my best to hold on to Flynn as we began up the trail that, similar to the one we’d been on earlier in the day, had roots and rocks all over the place. Worse, though, the trail had low-hanging branches and prickly bushes that grabbed at anything they could hang on to. I was so focused on the pitch-black surroundings and maintaining my position on BJ’s back that I didn’t hear much of what the men were saying back and forth to each other.

Then BJ came to a full stop.

And Flynn dismounted.

Curtis and Brooks did the same.

“Stay here,” Flynn said to me. He handed me BJ’s reins, but I doubted it would have mattered whether I held on to them or not. Truth was, I was probably in the safest spot considering where we were.

“We’re fine, we’re fine,” I repeated until my throat felt sore. BJ actually turned his neck so he could look in my direction, but I figured it was probably because the horse thought I’d lost my mind.

After several minutes, the men returned. Looks of worry and disappointment covered their faces every time their flashlights flickered over their expressions. Brooks appeared to be inconsolable as he returned to his horse. I wanted so badly to tell my friend that everything was being okay, but even if I’d been able to figure out how to get off BJ on my own, I wasn’t so sure there was anything I could say that would make things better.

“What did you find?” I softly asked Flynn when he reached BJ’s side.

I fully expected him to do his fancy footwork and climb on the horse in front of me, but to my surprise, he grabbed me by the waist and physically lifted me so he could settle me right behind the horn of the saddle. A split second later, Flynn was mounted behind me. He shifted my body until I was doing what I hadn’t wanted to do earlier that day when we’d been riding to see the wolves.

Straddling him.

“Flynn,” I began, but he didn’t let me finish.

“Get over yourself, Jules,” the man said curtly. “I’m only putting you in front of me because it’s going to get steep as hell soon. We’re going to spend the next couple of hoursactuallyclimbing a mountain, and you falling on your ass because you couldn’t be bothered to hold on to me the right way means it would take us that much longer to find Xavier.”

Flynn’s words stung.

He wasn’t pissed about being woken in the middle of the night to go in search of a man he barely knew; he was pissed atmespecifically. With everything that had happened in the last twenty-four hours, I was too tired to make sense of who had the right to be mad at who.

Besides, the shit between me and Flynn could keep… or go away altogether. What mattered was finding the man Brooks was meant to be with, and that took precedence over everything else.

ChapterThirteen

FLYNN

Once we knewwhere we were going, the ride was a little easier, but still dangerous. As badly as Brooks wanted to get to Xavier, he had the sense to understand the danger he’d be putting himself, his mount, and all of us in if he tried to climb the trail any faster.

Since Curtis seemed to know where we were headed, he and his horse were at the beginning of the line. With it being too narrow for the horses to walk alongside one another, that meant Brooks was riding in the middle and Jules and I were last.

While the night air wasn’t overly cold, the dampness made it uncomfortable. I hadn’t even considered that fact as I’d moved Jules to the front of the saddle. In addition to being slapped by tree limbs if he didn’t duck in time, the younger man was shivering. He hadn’t complained even once, though. He also hadn’t tried to keep his body separate from mine after he realized how much more dangerous that made the ride not only for him, but for me and even BJ as well.

“Hold the reins,” I said to Jules, keeping my voice low. He automatically did what I said. I quickly removed my jacket and began to drape it over Jules’s shoulders, but he glanced at the jacket and shook his head.

God, the man was so damn stubborn. I wondered if he even understood the concept of trust.

“Jules, let me put it on you. It?—”

“Just hold me tighter, Flynn,” Jules murmured.

Caught off guard by the request and Jules subsequently pressing his back against my chest so that he was relying on my grip to keep him upright, I quickly put the jacket back on and then wrapped my arms around him, cocooning him in warmth as best I could. Jules’s willingness to cooperate meant I could protect his head from the sharp branches that had been scraping his skin.

He had finally stopped shivering in my hold when BJ stumbled over something. Jules gasped and grabbed the saddle horn.

“I’ve got you, Jules,” I reminded him. “BJ’s got both of us, okay?” I whispered into his ear. “Just think about that ‘just okay-looking’ guy in that movie and how sure-footed his horse was. That’s us.”

Jules nodded and then, surprisingly, released his death grip on the saddle horn and tucked his bare hands into the folds of the sheepskin lining of my jacket.

“He was gorgeous, but he’s got nothing on you,” he said. My stomach flip-flopped. Was Jules actually saying?—

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