Page 37 of Love You
Lucky’s daughter, a cute tween with pigtails, joined them and followed Win around wherever he went, which wasn’t unusual. Kids liked him.
“Katie, you want to do a barrel racing demonstration for our friends, here?” Lucky ruffled her hair.
The girl trotted off and came back a short time later on the back of a horse. They followed her to a large ring where three barrels were already set up and took seats in the metal bleachers to watch. Win made sure to sit next to Darcy so he could give her a hard time about her cowboy fetish.
“You’re crazy,” she said as he poked at her. “I’m just trying to be friendly.”
He whistled the theme music toBonanza. “That make you hot?”
She shook her head. “I think you must’ve hit your head on our bike ride yesterday and got permanent brain damage.”
He squeezed her leg because he couldn’t resist razzing her. Win hitched his head at the others, who stood leaning on the rails of the arena, watching Katie take turns around the barrels at breakneck speed. “I think it’s going pretty well, how about you?”
“Now that you’re sticking with the program, I think it’s going great.” The corners of her mouth kicked up.
She gave as good as she got, he’d give her that. But not with everyone. Colt barely looked at her and she shrank ten inches. Josh’s voice gave her the fidgets. TJ didn’t intimidate her as much as he used to and a few times Win had even heard her talk back to his brother. But she was her bravest with him. Hell, she was downright feisty. And Win liked it. A lot. He liked their banter, even when she was sticking it to him.
“You ready to do some bull riding?” Lucky asked, and everyone hooted and hollered.
He called to a couple of ranch hands and told them something in Spanish. Win picked up enough to know that he wanted them to load the chutes with sometoros. “Mean as hell” might’ve been mentioned too but Win’s grasp of the language wasn’t good enough to know for sure.
“What size boots you wear?” Lucky asked Win, and sent Katie off to fetch a pair.
He had them follow him to one of the outbuildings, which turned out to be a small auditorium and did a slide presentation on safety and bull riding. An oxymoron if Win ever heard one. He suspected it wasn’t half as easy as the PowerPoint made it out to be but he assumed the bulls they’d be using were for beginners. Gentle giants.
There was a mechanical bull in the room and Lucky asked for a volunteer. Russell, God love him, jumped on it.
Lucky winked at Darcy. “You next.”
She turned beet red and Win had to keep from rolling his eyes.
Russell got on the bull and didn’t make it anywhere close to the eight-second bell, the time he needed to stay on to qualify for a score. Yep, harder than it looked and the thing wasn’t even real. Lucky gave him a second try and turned down the bucking settings. Russell lasted three seconds longer than his first time but was still short of the bell, which equaled disqualification.
“You ready?” Lucky asked Darcy. She responded by backing away.
“I’ll pass,” she said, and clung to Win.
“How about Remy or Sue?” Win said, and protectively wrapped his arm around Darcy. She didn’t have to do anything she didn’t feel comfortable doing. “One of you want to try it?”
“I do,” Sue said.
Lucky helped her get on the back of the bull and pulled the switch. Her time was better than Russell’s but only slightly. Remy was next to give it a try and didn’t even last three seconds. He laid on the rubber mat, laughing his ass off. At least everyone was having a good time.
Lucky nudged his head at Win. “You want to try this or go straight to the real thing?”
“Real thing.” He was pumped. “You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to do this.”
Lucky’s mouth twitched. “It’s pretty addictive.”
Katie had brought him a pair of boots to change into and Lucky had him buckle himself into a pair of chaps and a helmet with a hockey mask. He also gave Win a glove to put on his rope hand.
They went to the bucking chutes where Win climbed up and the ranch hands told him to straddle the bull.
“This isn’t Bushwacker, is it?” Win asked.
The men threw their heads back and laughed. Bushwacker was a three-time world champion PBR bull. He’d thrown off the greatest bull riders in the world.
“Just making sure,” Win said, trying to find his center balance and imitate the technique he’d seen in the presentation by slipping his hand under the rope handle and wrapping the tail once around his grip.
