Page 32 of Reckless Skye

Tia laughed. She shifted her horse with a subtle leg cue, but before she rode off to wrap up the lesson, TJ quietly called her back. ‘Hey, Tia? Could you tell her – that she could do it? If I say it, she’ll think it’s a line. But it’s important for her to hear it.’

‘Sure, TJ.’

He watched in silence for another fifteen minutes, and it was only when Tia said, ‘Good, Skye. That was perfect. Let’s stop her there,’ that he climbed down into the arena.

As he walked across the freshly graded sand, he heard the end of Tia’s, ‘If you keep at it, I’ll be running against you soon enough.’

He watched Skye’s face as first surprise and then pleasure bloomed.

Skye saw him approaching and turned to give him those big blue eyes, but when he raised a hand to stroke down Smokey’s face and asked, ‘So?’, her smile inched free. And it was bright, if a little embarrassed.

‘It was good,’ she said. ‘Overwhelming. There’s so much we don’t know still. If I could just be better at—’

‘How about we focus on the fact that it was good for now?’ he asked. ‘Take a deep breath and just fucking enjoy it.’

He’d meant it metaphorically, but she inhaled deeply, slumped in her saddle, and said, ‘You’re right. I’m ruining the moment.’ This time, when she smiled, he realized that he’d lost count of them.

‘You hungry?’

Skye placed a hand low on her stomach. ‘I don’t know. I was so nervous; I think I still feel a little sick actually.’

‘Well, why don’t we untack Smokey while you think about it? We can take the food home.’ He waited for her to nod before turning to Tia. ‘Thank you – especially given the short notice.’

‘Anytime, TJ. Good luck this weekend. We’ll be cheering you on!’ she shouted as she walked away, her horse’s tail swishing.

Chapter 10

Back at the farm, they unloaded and fed the horses. When they were done, they sat on the tailgate of TJ’s truck beneath the dim glow of the barn’s single outdoor light and ate sweaty hamburgers.

Skye had never been happier. ‘Tia’s amazing,’ she gushed. ‘I’m going to have to YouTube some of her races. Maybe even go and watch a few if she’s ever in California.’

‘I’m sure she’d like that. She travels with George now that Beau, their son, can handle the farm, but it still gets lonely on the road. Sometimes, even when you’re surrounded by people, it can feel like you’re the only person in the world.’

Skye pushed the takeout bags into a small pile so that she could lie back in the bed of the truck, her legs dangling. ‘How did you get into it – bull riding?’

TJ’s eyes flickered down her body, igniting that hot, slow burn deep within her. But he didn’t so much as move an inch in her direction. Instead, he mimicked her position: he lay down and folded his hands over his stomach as he looked up at the night sky. ‘I grew up a rodeo kid, so I used to watch the bull riders all the time. I thought they were the coolest guys on the planet.’

‘And you wanted to be like them when you grew up?’

‘Maybe in a detached kinda way. But it wasn’t until I started chasing girls that I began to seriously consider making the switch from team roping to bull riding.’

Skye laughed, remembering that she’d teasingly told Janey just that. ‘I totally called it.’

TJ’s grin flashed in the dark night. ‘I was a teenage boy. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done to look cool to the girls.’

Skye just shook her head condescendingly.

‘Anyway, I was about sixteen, and I figured, I’m gonna try it. Just once. See if I have the balls for it.’

Skye looked up at the blanket of stars as he talked, too rapt by his deep voice to ask all the questions she wanted to. Like, What was it like to be a regular sixteen-year-old?

‘So, I look around, and I realize: hey, you idiot, you literally live on a farm packed full of cows.’

Skye levered onto her elbows at that. ‘Please tell me you did not ride a dairy cow?’

He inhaled through his teeth. ‘I wish I could. The funny thing was, we even had a couple of bulls. I was just too shit-scared to try it out on one of them the first time.’

She could picture him, sixteen years old, sitting on a poor dairy cow. ‘What happened?’