Page 4 of Ridin' Solo
“Based on the smile on your face, Lieutenant, I asked if there was something funny you’d like to share,” I bellowed.
He snatched his face back and lost the grin entirely. I may have been small in stature, but I made up for it with my voice. Never, not once, had I ever been told to speak up. It was like I’d been born with a megaphone in front of my mouth, which I loved as it usually caught people off guard. As it had with Lieutenant Smith here.
Although my first question to himhadbeen on the breathy side. In my defense, it was only because I’d been caught off guard by the sight of the handsomest male I’d seen in a long time. Partners shouldn’t be handsome. They should be capable. Dependable. An extension of one’s self. Jesus Christ. This guy was the one they called up to be in a cop calendar twirling a pair of handcuffs on his…but I digress.
Smith shook his head. “Nothing funny at all. Just happy to be here and excited to be your partner, Captain.”
I nodded, begrudgingly accepting that he showed some respect. The sheriff was all of our bosses, but as of now, in this partnership, I was his boss. And I wouldn’t let him forget it.
“Hop in. We can go over protocol while we wait for the first call to roll in.” I stepped back, needing some distance from all that maleness that seemed to pulse out into the airwaves.
He leaned forward and his hand shot out like he meant to grab the handle of my car door. Like he meant to open it for me. Like he thought we were on some kind of freaking date.
I reared back in horror. “Hut!” The weird noise just burst out of my mouth, and we both froze.
He snatched his hand back and walked around to the other side of the car, shaking his head while he looked at the ground. I almost felt bad, because while I actually enjoyed those gentlemanly gestures on a date, we were working. He and I were partners now. He had to trust that I could handle myself just as much as I trusted him. We didn’t open doors for our partners.
I slid behind the wheel and ignored the heavy silence, waiting for him to buckle up before I pulled out of the parking lot and headed on my normal route through the major county roads.
The crackle of the radio eventually came to life, saving us from actual conversation.
“We have a ten-ninety-one on Butte Canyon Road behind the prison.”
I rolled my eyes. I’d heard this exact call before and could just about guess what we were dealing with and who. I radioed back, “Got a lock on the animal?”
The dispatcher snickered before answering. “Heard it’s a bull.”
Smith shifted beside me. “Our first call is wrangling a bull?”
I grinned and put the lights on, zooming back to the far side of Auburn Hill. “Welcome to the country, Lieutenant.”
“Go over there by the oak trees and wave your arms in the air and make a bunch of noise. That’ll scare him over here to me,” I barked out instructions to Smith, grabbing a coil of rope out of the trunk of my cruiser. My 4-H skills from childhood were about to be tested.
Smith eyed the bull, snorting and pawing the ground, before taking in the knots I was creating with the rope. For a city boy, he caught on pretty quick.
“Shouldn’t we wait for Animal Control to hit him with a dart?”
It was a fair question, but what was the fun in that? Seemed like a tranquilizer dart was an unfair advantage over a wild animal. The least we could do was take him down fair and square.
I pushed him away and warmed up my shoulder. “You’ll soon learn Animal Control is asleep at the wheel most of the time. They’ll take forever to get here, so we’ll just keep them as our Plan B. Plan A is to rope that bad boy ourselves. Bain will protect Lucy in case the bull heads that way.” I tossed my head in Bain and Lucy’s direction.
When we’d pulled up, the pink stain on Lucy’s cheeks was a dead giveaway as to what they’d been doing out here in this remote pasture behind where Bain worked. He was the prison warden and husband to Lucy. He’d muttered something about never losing an opportunity when there was a babysitter as he folded up the picnic blanket and dodged the irritated bull. Lucy was surprisingly fast on her feet, cackling as she danced around. Apparently, this was a fun day away from her two kiddos—which made sense, given her friendship with my wild and ridiculous younger sister Amelia. The two of them were a few cards shy of a full deck. If I didn’t know better, I’d have sworn Danger was their middle name.
Smith shook his gorgeous head and scraped a hand across his square jaw. “All right. I’m up to give it a try.”
I tilted my head to the oak trees and gave him a look that said to hurry it up. He headed that direction and I noticed how nicely he filled out the backside of the uniform. The bull also took notice of him, for different reasons, which worked right into our plan. Smith got in position and put his arms out, waving them overhead and taunting the poor bull. The beast snorted heavily and pawed at the ground. When Smith lunged forward, the bull turned tail and stormed off in the other direction, toward me.
I tossed the lasso in the air and spun it around above my head. The bull came by and I leaped back, tossing the rope in the nick of time. The rope slid right off his back and settled on the ground. My heart rate thumped in my throat, threatening to cut off my airways. Jesus, the whites of the bull’s eyes were imprinted in my brain. What the hell was I thinking trying to rope a damn bull?
“Come on, Oakley,” Smith hollered at me across the field.
“You try roping a wild bull!” I hollered back, incensed over his impatience. Hell, even professional ropers at a rodeo sometimes need a few tries to get it right.
The bull came charging back my way, and I didn’t have time to chew out Smith’s ass for snapping at me. I twirled the lasso and told myself I’d get it this time. The beast came close and I could have sworn the ground shook beneath my boots. It huffed, and I felt the air on my skin. Tossing the lasso, I squeezed my eyes shut and jumped back, feeling the whoosh of air from the bull’s hulking body narrowly missing me.
A yank on the rope had my eyes flying back open. The lasso was around his neck, and if my knots held, I’d roped a freaking bull! Elation soon turned to panic as that beast kept right on running, now even more freaked out to have a rope around its neck. My hands ached from gripping the length so tight, my shoulders burning from the tension. I crouched down low, trying to stop the bull from running, but it was no use. A short female human was no competition for a male bull. He started to drag me across the dry scrub brush field, my heels digging in and leaving two skid marks across the earth.
Shouts followed me, but I couldn’t hear them over the pounding of my blood. It was me and the bull in an awkward dance toward death. My own, most likely. Whose stupid idea was it to rope a damn bull?
