Page 65 of The Wildest Ride

Her raging hormones were a strong reason to rush.

On that thought, she clicked her tongue and guided her horse to take position at the back left flank of the herd. She would act as their swing rider, flank rider, drag rider, and wrangler all wrapped up in one. There was no time for having wild thoughts in all of that.

She and her horse kept pace with the cows while she turned on her own GPS.

To her right, the cows mooed and walked, sometimes breaking out into mini trots to stay together. Everywhere else was blue sky and golden pasture. Behind them, the camera van followed at a respectable distance.

Ignoring the van, she scanned the horizon.

Ahead of her, AJ looked as good from the back as he did from the front, utterly commanding in position at the head of the herd. The distance between them was finally enough to give her some breathing room—space for her mind to be full of something other than every detail about him.

She sucked in a breath of cow-rank air and felt grounded for the first time in days. Maybe she could handle this for twenty-four hours.

For the first two, the cows cheerfully moved at a steady clip on a relatively straight route.

AJ rode point, a Western silhouette against the horizon line, his form as timeless as their activity, and she kept an eye on the herd from behind when she wasn’t keeping an eye on him. Watching him from a distance, she could let her heart roll over as much as it wanted to. The landscape was large enough to take on anything she might have rolling around inside, childish and impossible as it might be.

A different voice inside, an older one, more concerned with anatomy and heat than rodeos and ranches, argued that there was nothingmorepossible. He wanted her, she wanted him. Simple.

Only the cows could see her blush, and their thinking was more in line with the second voice. Of course, they didn’t know the mother she had—or that her own face in the mirror was a daily reminder that the road to ruin started with risky dalliances with rodeo cowboys.

Especially when those cowboys stood between her and saving the only home she’d ever known.

Heart and loins girded, Lil scanned for AJ’s familiar form. He led with the same ease he’d shown since they’d begun the drive. She could appreciate the competency without turning it into something else.

And if she slipped up again, all she had to do was think about her mother.

The GPS said they had to turn south in another two miles, so Lil slowly circled around the back of the herd to come in close on the right flank. She’d push out far to right when it came time to turn, but eased into her new position close in.

Hints of purple hid amongst the pasture grasses, and Lil felt some of the lightness that always came with being on a drive. She’d been twelve the first time her granddad had taken her along. They never drove their own cattle—they didn’t need to, and didn’t have anywhere to take them to, besides. Her granddad wasn’t interested in public grazing, didn’t trust the government not to be out there sabotaging unwary ranchers, planting fescue and the like, as if there were a mighty conspiracy—never mind the fact that there wasn’t much land in Oklahoma for public grazing to begin with.

No, she and Granddad did it for extra cash. His regular ranch hands could handle their place and look out for Gran for the two to three weeks they were gone, hired out by neighboring ranchers with larger spreads and more cattle than they’d ever have. Usually they drove herds south from Oklahoma, into Texas, where everything was meant to be bigger.

The drives gave them the money for extras, including Lil’s rodeo dreams. Travel, entrance fees, gear—none of it came cheap. More hopefuls dropped out for that reason than any other. Rodeo was a money pit until you started bringing home prizes, and for youth riders, available prizes tended to be more about scholarships and acknowledgment than liquid compensation.

So when she’d gotten old enough, Granddad had started to take her along to make her work for it. With seven other men, they led herds from Muskogee to North Texas. Apart from competing in the rodeo and sitting in her gran’s kitchen, there wasn’t a time in Lil’s childhood that she’d been happier than on those drives.

Lil had always been small, but the men didn’t go easy on her because of it—her granddad wouldn’t have it. There was too much work to be done. She rode drag first, the traditional dusty and smelly job set aside for greenhorns. As she got more experience, she took flank—even as new cowboys, sometimes twice her age, replaced her on drag. Back then, she floated from flank to flank, much like she did today, keeping an eye on the cows, especially looking out for signs of distress, injury, and stragglers. The country they had crossed through back then was vast and dry, a beige ocean meant for pounding hooves, flat-toothed grazers, and long sunsets. Today, tendrils of late spring clung to the landscape, the remaining flowers like little bits of purple lace left where they were thrown during that season’s explosive bursts of love.

Lil snorted to herself.Lovewas a pretty strong word to use for the wild rutting most creatures got up to in the springtime, but wide-open spaces tended to have the effect of dragging her mind to poetry.

Their turn was coming up, though, so the time for poetry was done.

AJ had already begun to shift left, the lead cows following his steady direction.

Lil consulted her GPS one last time before pulling wide from the herd for the turn. The cows responded with a chorus of disgruntled moos but turned left, and she grinned. They were good cows.

AJ was good, too—cool, calm, collected, and all cowboy—like he’d done this a million times. A jolt of electricity that was becoming all too familiar traveled up Lil’s spine and she blew a breath out of her mouth. She didn’t have time for that. She needed to make sure the turn went off without a hitch.

The herd spread as they moved, loosening their formation as they made the wide turn.

Gray eyes narrowed, Lil scanned them. If one of them were going to bolt, this would be the time. She rode up and down each flank alongside the herd, noting that a few cows in the rear were slowing. She could speed them up when they straightened out again. For now she’d pulled in closer, gently pressuring the whole group to retighten their bunch.

A yearling calf chose that as its moment to break away at the front. The creature’s panic took it an arc away from the rest of the herd at full speed to the sound of Lil cursing.

Taking off after the escapee, Lil startled the cows she’d been near into a trot.

There’s that, at least, she thought, racing after the calf.

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