Page 35 of Risking it for the Cowboy

“Hey! Yeah, you!” Jack called, and T.R. glanced to see his bassist recognizing her. “Hot damn, we’ve been wantin’ to hear from you! Get up here!”

Yeah, Hunter had called in. Wasn’t coming. The banjo sat in its case on stage, unused. Except Charlie shifted uncomfortably beneath their attention, backing up another step, shaking her head.

“You want my momma to play?” Daisy asked now, face scrunched in confusion.

“It is Flower Girl!” the people kept shouting.

Cell phones were snapping. And Charlie was shielding her face harder now, her chest rising and falling as if a panic attack might set in.

“Thank you for helping Daisy,” she bit out, not meeting his gaze.

“Charlie.” He chewed his cheek and reached out, tucked a blond whisp over her ear.

Gorgeous eyes. Bee-stung lips, while the crowd around them vied for more music.

“What do you mean you cal—”

She flinched back and walked away, daughter’s hand and dog’s leash in tow. He winked at Daisy instead, who craned over her shoulder to wave.

He backed up. Returned to his set. Hopped back onto the stage as the random chick reached out to him. Flicked his finger at Bo, mouthing a title, who rapped his drumsticks together to launch into something else as Charlie’s eyes flashed to him again from the distorting carnival lights.

He cocked up his grin and winked again just to crawl under her skin and hold her attention. But she turned her back on him. Once more, his grin faltered. He cleared his throat. Didn’t look at blond chick in the eye as he ushered her, confused, off stage, because he couldn’t forget how Charlie had taken his hand, how it had felt encased in his grip in that shitty honkytonk while he’d coaxed her to the mic and out of her shell and had encouraged a reluctant melody from her lips that had knocked him flat and been blown away…

So much for working her out of his system.

Instead, he sang and tracked that glorious gold spun hair like a hunter on a deer, all knotted up atop her head in the prettiest messy bun a woman could have. As she swayed among the blinking lights. As her daughter darted off the ride exits and raced around to the lines again.

She vanished behind attractions or within shadows, emerged between bodies, lithe and lean and graceful, even in those worn jeans hugging her gorgeous ass that looked nothing like her pageant getups, her Birkenstocks, her army-green fieldwork shirt with the sleeves rolled up hanging unbuttoned over a baggy T-shirt hiding her perfect breasts.

Only former Miss Lone Star could look like she’d just rolled out of bed, having thrown on the nearest bits, and still look so perfect. And why did he still care?

Let her go.

Yeah, he was letting her go so hard he was crafting tears-in-your-beers songs about her like old George Jones, wondering how the hell he was going to enter the Homegrown Awards without a complete band. The entry cutoff was Saturday. If he entered and Hunter stayed MIA, it would be a waste of a few hundred bucks.

He watched Daisy try and fail at the claw machine, watched Daisy win a tiny chick from bottle bowling, when Charlie glanced back at him. His blood rushed in his ears, drowning out the amplifiers, to feel her attention, to know she was as aware of him as he was of her.

He watched them share a funnel cake and Charlie smudged her daughter’s nose with powdered sugar, that face of hers splitting into one of those rare grins. A glimmer of the fun Charlie he’d spent the night with before that phone call had crashed a gate between them.

Yet as he drove into the back roads hours later, the carnival closed and his wallet a hundred bucks thicker, blinking hazards flashed in the distance.

Someone broken down? He slowed. Best make sure they had a cell on them so they could call help if they needed it…

Except familiar taillights of a Land Rover, littered in bumper stickers, became clear.

Charlie?

The hood was up. A flashlight bobbed beneath it. Steam rising?

He hit his brakes.

Hit his blinker.

Cruised past the girl leaning over her engine, a Birkenstock kicked up behind her, like some pinup who wasn’t even trying as she reached down between the hoses and hot metal, and crunched to a stop on the gavel shoulder in front of her.

She shot upright, brushing back her wisps, and turned to watch him as he threw his ’79 Ford manual into neutral and clenched the foot brake. On guard. The girl who’d blown him off as if he wasn’t good enough after convincing him he might actually be worth it.

He threw open the door, climbing down, and turned to face her. “Well as I live and breathe, it’s Dr. Bradford.” He palmed his chest like a Sunday church biddy.