Page 11 of Rogue Cowboy
“Boys.”Riley pushed off the bench, fists balled and if she was bleeding more, so what?Someone had to have a cool head.“Stop acting like you’ve transported back to medieval times and I’m under your…your protection or whatever backward mind-set you’re rocking.”
“You are my sister,” Rohan insisted.“Of course I’m going to protect you.”
“Ugh,” Riley said.“Like Cole said, I’m not nineteen.”
“You’re mine to protect,” Cole said, making everything weird again.
She held up a finger—not sure that would shut everyone up.
“I’m sorry I hit you, Riley.I was aiming for Cole, even though I didn’t know it was Cole, but I do want to know what I walked into.”Rohan looked obstinate.“I served with Cole.Faced life or death with him, but then he disappears off the radar.No word.No nothing.And then he turns up out of the blue and is stroking my much younger, sweet, fragile, innocent sister like she’s fabric he’s thinking of purchasing to reupholster a couch.”
Fragile?Innocent?Riley felt like her brain was fizzing like those old-fashioned Zotz candies that the Scoop ice cream shop sometimes carried in the glass jars.
“Can I hit him now?”Cole looked at her, and she could hear the smile in his voice.
“Do you know my daughter?”her dad asked, once again sounding like he was reasonable and in charge.
“Hell, yes he does,” Rohan griped.“I asked him once to check on Riley when she had just moved to LA for the recording sessions, and my leave got canceled due to a deployment.”He glared at Cole.“You went.Said she was fine.I trusted you.”
Riley could practically see the alpha in Cole leap to get free.
“Stop being so medieval and dramatic,” Riley said.“Cole did come and play tourist.We had fun and he left.”
“How much fun?”Rohan glared at her.
“None of your business.”She rolled her eyes.It felt good to rile him up a little.At least she wasn’t prostrate panicking over nothing, forgetting how to do a basic body function.
“I want to know what your intentions are, Cole,” Rohan demanded.
OMG.Can this get worse?
“He’s recently retired from the army and works for Jameson Ranch stock contracting.He said the ranch is thinking about…” Her father paused, looked at her, then Cole, and his eyes narrowed in suspicion.“What are you really doing here, Cole Jameson from Texas?”
Riley felt her stomach swoop.Cole was here on business?Not for her?Before she could wrap her head around that fact and how she should feel about it, Cole—the man she thought of as being quiet, reserved—was talking.Again.
“I suppose the proper phrase would be courting your daughter.”
Is it stalking to notice that you haven’t posted up any new music?
Riley didn’t answer for eight hours as she worked in the barn, completed three after-school training sessions with young barrel racers and played sous chef to her father’s steak, potato and grilled vegetable dinner.Did it feel like stalking?Did Cole care?Even though she’d been lying for months to her family about everything being fine, she told Cole the truth.
I don’t have anything new to say.
Neither did he.For nearly three weeks.And Riley didn’t know if she was relieved or disappointed.
Chapter Three
“Courting?Courting?”Rileyfinally spit out the word that had been pinging around her brain like she was a live-action pinball machine.“Why would you say something so ridiculous like that?”
She stomped into her trailer, irritated that not only was Cole following, but he also had the audacity to nudge her aside as soon as she unlocked the door.He entered first and scanned.
“It was a red flag to a bull—a really stubborn, quick-trigger bull.”She’d had a heck of a time convincing Rohan and her father that yes, she and Cole needed to talk—privately.She had no doubt her brother was timing her and definitely watching the trailer.Heck, knowing Rohan he was stealthily approaching, intending to eavesdrop.
She’d spent nearly six years trying to keep off everyone’s radar and now she feared she’d have a starring role in the Copper Mountain Rodeo gossip circle.
“Bulls are partially color blind,” Cole said, like this was a normal conversation and that he hadn’t just arrived unexpectedly after over five years and dropped a bomb on her family.
And me.
