Page 21 of Rogue Cowboy
He’d never googled himself.He had no social media and other than teen athletic achievements, his career had been in the shadows and darker, so he doubted there was much about him online.
“Your home is in Texas,” she reiterated.
It was.Cole had never imagined living anywhere else.He’d come to see Riley.Get to know her now instead of the fantasy and then tragedy of then.Convince her to come home with him.Build a life together.Make a family together—not that it would replace what he’d lost, but maybe the black hole would get smaller.
He didn’t know jack about love.Only one of his cousins had reached the altar, but that had been a cautionary tale—short-lived, blessedly, but Cole didn’t think Elijah would come within spitting distance of marriage again.
He held out the elastic.She took it, eyeing him suspiciously.
“Riley!There you are!”A coltish girl with her hair skinned back in a high ponytail ran across the dirt and grass toward them.She wore a tank top and leggings tucked into brown cowboy boots and had a sweatshirt tied around her waist.Another girl, similarly dressed but with Goth-looking hair streaked with several colors ran with her.
“Do you still have time?”
“I always have time for my favorite people and horses.”Riley smiled and tugged on the teenager’s ponytail.“Mr.Cole Jameson, this is my cousin and my niece Petal Telford and her bestie Arlo Cross.Cole is visiting from Texas and is a friend of Rohan’s and has some business in Marietta—nothing personal.”
That put him in his place.
“Yes.”Both girls made fists and pumped them in the air before bumping them together, spreading their fingers and making an exploding sound.
“Succotash,” Arlo added, lingering on the last sound.
“Why succotash?”Riley wondered.“I’m not sure what that is.Food?”
“I thought it sounded cool.”
Riley smiled, and Cole caught his breath.She looked young, free, confident—what he wanted for her.So horses would be a must for her.Not a problem on the Jameson Ranch.
“Girls, I booked the small arena farthest away from the grandstands for an hour this morning,” Riley continued breezily, “and we also have short exhibition times—twenty minutes Friday afternoon and Saturday and Sunday morning in the same arena so you and Cinnamon will have a feel for the spacing.”
“Yes,” the girls chorused again and did the same fist pump, bump and explosion.
“What are you exhibiting?”Cole asked, curious.He’d known she’d been a barrel racer as a kid and teen, but she’d said music had pushed most everything else aside when she’d been seventeen.
“Trick riding,” Petal said.“Riley’s been teaching me for a couple years, and now Arlo’s starting too.”
Cole’s stomach bottomed out, but he kept his instinctive reaction under wraps.He’d seen trick riding during his years on the teen rodeo circuit, and while breathtaking and fascinating in the abstract, thinking of Riley standing on a horse, somersaulting off and running beside or flipping herself back up again or hanging off the horse while it galloped made him feel ill.
He could just imagine how his cousin Elijah, foreman of the Jameson Ranch, would laugh at him now considering his headshaking and suppressed laughter last summer when their paw-paw had cooked up a scheme to introduce some traveling docs to the sights and pleasures of Texas cowboys—meaning his grandsons.
Cole was off the market and still deployed, but Elijah had been mad, whereas their other cousins had been different colors of amused and resigned.Luckily for Elijah their paw-paw’s knee replacement surgery had put a kibosh on the scheme this past summer, but Cole had no doubt his paw-paw would be back up on a horse ready to matchmake and manipulate the next gen of Jamesons by next June.
At least he was out of that silly game.
Arlo and Petal’s gazes glued to him curiously.
“My dad was in Special Forces.Remington Cross.Thank you for your service, sir.”
“I’ve met Cross,” Cole murmured, a little stunned, trying to figure out how a man who was considered a ghost and one of the best hunters and prisoner extraction team members anyone could pray for had not only mustered out but had a teenage daughter.
Maybe that’s why he was considered a ghost.No one had really known him.
“Did you serve with my dad?”she asked curiously.
“Never had the pleasure,” Cole murmured.“I knew him more by reputation.It was solid.”
He didn’t know what else to say and was highly aware of Riley watching.A tendril of hair had escaped her pony, and it took a lot of willpower for him to not tuck it behind her ear.
Petal faced him, expression serious.She shook his hand as firmly as Arlo had.“Welcome to Marietta and thank you for your service.Want to watch us do tricks?”An impish smile teased.“I bet Riley will want to show off for her brother’s friend.”
