Page 17 of His First Baby Rodeo

Of course he had. She wasn’t stupid enough to think it actually had anything to do with his arm. She hadn’t been leaning on him that hard. No, he’d reacted that way because he didn’t expect his ranch hand to be touching him like that, which was perfectly normal and ordinary of him. She was the one who had been out of line.

She had wondered for a moment whether he might cancel their ride after the way she’d acted, but he hadn’t, and she was grateful. A man who was more feelings-oriented might have pulled away from her, but Mac seemed to have decided that the right move was to pretend as if nothing had happened. El was more than willing to go along with that, if that was what he wanted.

The ridge had turned out to be a well-beaten trail. It looked as if someone — maybe Mac — came riding here all the time. Now they’d come to a little bluff at the end of the trail, and Mac dismounted and looped his horse’s reins around the branch of a nearby tree. He seemed to have no trouble with it in spite of his injury, so El didn’t offer to help or to do it for him. She’d gotten a sense for how little he liked to accept help with things if he didn’t absolutely have to.

Mac walked over to a flat rock and sat down, glancing back at El as if to let her know that she was invited to join him. She went over and took a seat on the rock beside him. It was spacious enough to allow the two of them to spread out without encroaching on each other’s territory — she had to assume that she wouldn’t have been asked to join him here if that hadn’t been the case.

“Did you enjoy the ride?” he asked.

“Not as much as I’m enjoying the view.” They were looking out over the valley in which the town of Boldsprings was situated. “I didn’t realize how small the town really was. Only a few streets.”

“Oh, yeah,” he said. “I think it’s one of the smallest towns in this part of Texas. Everyone who lives here has known each other’s families for generations.”

“Except you?”

“Well, I just bought my property a few years ago. I’m not a native like the rest of them.”

“Right,” she agreed. “Is that ever weird for you?”

“I like my solitude.”

“And that’s what made you buy a place in Texas when everyone you know is from Oklahoma?”

“Noteveryone,” he said. “I’ve met people from all over the country thanks to the rodeo circuit.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yeah, that’s why,” he said. “I like the wild life — I like being in the spotlight — but I need to have the other side of the coin too. I need a place where I can just go and be… Mac. Not Mac Palmer, the great rodeo star, but just me.”

“I get that,” El said, bracing her hands on the sunbaked rock and leaning backward, tipping her face up toward the sky.

“Do you? Is that why you took off for Seattle? I always wondered.”

“I’ll never know why everyone acts like it was so strange that I went to Seattle,” she said. “I went for school.”

“I just don’t know anyone else who went that far,” Mac said. “Everyone we were friends with—”

“We didn’t have the same friends,” she pointed out. “Plenty of the peopleIknew in school went far away for college. You’re just think of your little clique. You and Jeff and all your friends. You all stayed close to home, but that doesn’t mean everyone did.”

“Okay, fair enough,” he said. “But if you wanted to live in Washington, what brought you back? It wasn’t living up to your expectations?”

She sighed. “Not exactly.”

“What, then?”

A part of her didn’t want to tell him, wanted to keep her business to herself. But she could see how hard he was working to make himself emotionally available to her. It wasn’t natural for him to have conversations about things like this, and he was trying because he genuinely wanted them to be friends. She had to give him credit for that.

Besides, maybe talking about Dean would help her put this whole crush she was fighting against back in its proper perspective. She definitely hadn’t come to Texas to get involved with yet another guy.

“I moved for my boyfriend,” she said.

He was quiet for a moment. “Ah.”

“Yeah.”

“And he doesn’t mind you coming down here to work for me?”

“Oh — no, it’s not like that,” she said. “We broke up. Almost right after I’d moved, actually. He had been dropping hints that he was going to want to get married, but when I got to Oklahoma, it turned out he was just saying that stuff so I’d move closer to him, because he was tired of long-distance.”

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