Page 33 of The Wildest Ride

“Hmmmmm.” Sierra’s lips pressed together, and the sound was filled with meaning. It was unspoken there was no stiffer competition than at the INFR, but it didn’t offer the opportunity for stardom and riches that the PBRA did. Smaller pots, lack of press, and a history of outright racism and discrimination had kept many world-class INFR cowboys from getting their due in the PBRA—and both the groups knew it.

Her granddad had been one of them.

But her granddad would have said moaning about the loss did less toward avenging it than getting out there and getting on a bronc, which she had done tonight.

The truth of it sank in right there, in Sierra’s kingdom, with a strange start.

She’d spent so much time bemoaning Gran’s scheming that she hadn’t noticed that, in the process, the nagging voice inside that insisted she show the world what its ignorance had robbed it of all these years had gone quiet for the first time in decades.

“My granddad, a ten-time INFR champion with more buckles than you can count on your fingers and toes, taught me everything I know—starting when I was five years old.”

Making a noise of approval in her throat, Sierra smiled at the camera. “Well, there’s our answer, folks! A child prodigy with lineage! Did I hear right? You’re a rancher, as well? It seems our unconventional star of the evening is traditional, through and through.”

Lil smiled, always happy to talk about the ranch, even if the rodeo queen’s words carried a familiar edge of derision to them. She didn’t mind if her peers saw her as old-fashioned. She looked at time on a longer scale than a single lifespan, no matter that modernity offered more shortcuts than ever. In other words, it didn’t matter which direction you swiped if you didn’t have solid ground to stand on when you met in real life. Doing things the tried-and-true way, without shortcuts, might take longer, but the results were stronger. That was true in everything, from rodeo to family.

“I am,” she said, a smile warming the whiskey scratch in her voice. “Everything I learned about rodeo I learned the old-fashioned way—doing it on the ranch. My granddad said, and I believe him, that there isn’t an artificial training environment in the world that can replicate the experience of doing it where the stakes are high and the consequences real.”

Sierra chuckled, the sound cultured and light, as charming and sparkling as a Disney princess. “Your granddad sounds like someone we all need in our life!” Pausing with a mischievous smile and sideways glance, letting the previous subject naturally die down, Sierra leaned in, her entire demeanor turning conspiratorial. “We’re just minutes away from making PBRA history, crowning the first-ever female rough stock buckle winner, but I can’t let you get away without addressing everyone’s biggest question. What’s the story with you and PBRA’s golden boy, AJ Garza?”

Lil’s mind went blank.

She should have expected the question, of course—or something like it. But she had forgotten, lulled by the other woman’s smooth warmth, that Sierra wasn’t simply a regular cast member in the drama that was rodeo. She was a monstrous Chimera, part rodeo queen, part reality TV show hostess. Her job went beyond inspiring the future boys and girls of rodeo. No, like the packs of reporters Lil had been encountering all night long, it was Sierra’s job to ferret out the juiciest drama and amplify it for the delight of the audience.

Inside, Lil vowed not to make the mistake again.

Outside, grinning as if the question hadn’t sent her stomach plummeting to the floor at the same time as it set her cheeks to boiling, Lil leaned back, posture full of casual ease, and said with a wicked sideways glance, “If by that you mean, ‘how did a nobody come out of the shadows to beat the PBRA’s greatest champion?’ I think that’s just your classic tale of girlbeatsboy.”

A spark of respect sharpened the glint in the hostess’s eye, though her expression didn’t change. “Now you know that’s not what I meant!” she teased. “We want to know about that whopper of a kiss, don’t we, folks?”

The response was a thunderous affirmative. It seemed there was nothing anybody wanted to know about more, in fact.

Lil continued to grin, looking for all the world as if she was unbothered, when, in fact, she was mortified that the truth would be obvious: she had no more knowledge about why it had happened than anyone else.

She had no idea why she’d let him kiss her like that.

She had never let anyone kiss her like that in the whole of her existence.

She wasn’t the kind of girl who kissed people. Hell, she’d made her college boyfriend—the only one she’d ever had—wait months before she would even let him think of kissing her.

And here she’d kissed not just a stranger, butthe enemy, as his companion had so kindly pointed out.

But the crowd was waiting, and if Lil took any longer, they’d start taking her silence for talking.

“Oh, that? Just taking care of a little bet. I’m as honest a loser as I am a winner,” Lil added with a wink, the lie rolling off her tongue as smoothly as the TV-cowboy personality. “And if I’m not mistaken, they’re calling us back to the stage, now—both of us, I’d think. Shall we make like girls and go together?”

The audience laughed on their cue while a flicker of irritation darted across Sierra’s face, but she let out a giggle as if she thought it was funny, too.

“Why, certainly! And on that note, isn’t it a wonder what a little makeup and hair will do to a woman? Why you practically transformed before our eyes without even changing clothes!”

Lil held her temper, blaming her raised hackles on AJ and the bronco and the fact that she was up past her usual bedtime without dinner—anything besides the fact that she was finding it awfully hard not to hear insults hidden in Sierra’s chatter.

And why the hell was the woman talking to her about hair and makeup as they walked up for Lil to claim her qualifier’s champion buckle? If this was what it meant to be the PBRA’s first female champion, she wasn’t sure she was better off with the world knowing she was a woman after all.

Voice as light as gravel could be, Lil replied with a false chuckle, “Family always said I cleaned up well—but we all know family is the first to lie.”

Again, the audience laughed at her joke, warming away some of her stiff and cranky as the two women walked up the stairs, fully mic’d, with what looked like friendship blossoming between them for all the world to see.

Reality TV was wild.

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