Whatever skijoring was, it was popular. The parking lot at the Jamison County Fairgrounds was packed. There were more cars than I’d ever seen here, including the busy nights I remembered from the county’s summer fair and carnival.
Though it had been akin to torture, I had done as Silas had asked and not looked up anything about skijoring this past week. I was assuming that the activity would be outdoors, so I had dressed in warm layers for the event even though the midmorning sun was shining brightly. Silas had warned me that the tournament would last through most of the day, so with my light gray beanie and matching mittens, I’d be prepared for the cooler temperatures of late afternoon.
Giving my hair one last primp in the rearview mirror, I swiped on another coat of lip gloss before making my way toward the arena. People were flowing toward the main entrance but I veered off to the left and into the lot designated for participants, where Silas had asked me to meet him.
Having no clue what to expect, I was shocked to see the staging lot full of large trucks and horse trailers. All of the men wandering around were bundled up in Western winter gear that consisted of canvas jackets, chaps and cowboy hats. Half of the men in the lot were leading around horses. The other half were carrying skis.
I’d never find Silas in the maze of trailers and trucks so I pulled out my phone. “Hi. I’m here. Where are you?”
“By my truck. I’ll come find you.”
“Okay. I’m by the entrance.”
I stood and people watched, enjoying the bustle and excitement of the crowd, until my eyes caught on a breathtaking sight. Silas came striding my way, dressed in the same fashion as everyone else, except that he looked nothing like the other men.
His black cowboy hat made the line of his jaw appear more pronounced and kissable. The emerald green silk scarf he’d wrapped around his throat made the color of his eyes more vibrant. His chaps hugged his powerful thighs while revealing his jeans underneath at the front and waist.
I swayed a little as I took him in until I realized—oh my god—I was staring at his penis like a drooling fool. But the way the denim creased as he walked hinted at the magnitude of what was beneath. I couldn’t tear my eyes away.
Stop staring at his penis, Felicity!
My eyes darted to his face just in time to see a sexy grin spread across his mouth. I waved and walked his way, hoping that my face wasn’t as red as it felt and that he hadn’t caught me ogling his package.
I’d never had a thing for cowboys before, and even though Silas was as cowboy as they came, he rarely dressed the part. But from now on, whenever I needed a happy thought, I was picturing him exactly like this.
Silas the Cowboy was off-the-charts sexy.
“Hi, there.” My words came out breathy and heated.
“Hi.” He bent to brush his lips against my cheek and my stomach fluttered. We hadn’t seen each other since Christmas Eve and the tingles from his kiss that night had just been starting to fade. Luckily, now I had them back.
“I’m just getting prepped. Nick should be here soon and then we can go in. Come hang out?”
I nodded and his gloved hand reached out and captured mine, pulling me by his side through the busy crowd. As we weaved between trailers and trucks, I saw a few familiar faces but mostly new ones. Silas, on the other hand, seemed to know everyone on the path to his truck.
“Is this a guy-only thing?” I hadn’t seen a single woman dressed like she was going to participate.
“No. There’s three or four female teams competing. Tina, the waitress from the café? Her team won the whole damn thing last year. She’s probably going to beat us all again and then never let us live it down.”
“Good for her.” I smiled and decided I was going to cheer for her to come in second place behind Silas and Nick.
“Do you want to meet my horse?” he asked.
A horse? “Um, okay.” Contrary to popular belief, not all Montanans had experience with horses. Having grown up in town, my exposure had been limited, and because of their size, I had always been a bit intimidated by the pretty animals. My admiration had been from afar.
“Stay here.” He opened the back door on the trailer and ducked inside. I shifted nervously from one foot to the other when the trailer shook and loud footsteps thundered from inside. Silas came out with a tall horse at his back. “Lis, meet Courage.”
Courage was as beautiful a horse as I’d ever seen. His buckskin coat was smooth and thick. His black mane sleeked down one side of his neck, while his matching tail swished up in the air.
“Hello, Courage.” I leaned back when he got close. His black eyes seemed to stare right through me and I was certain they could see my fear.
“Don’t be scared,” Silas said. “Come here.” He held out a hand and I hesitantly stepped to his side.
After pulling off one of my mittens, he took my hand in his and held it up to Courage’s nose. The horse sniffed my palm, then huffed out a hot breath on my skin, making me flinch and yank my hand back.
“Easy,” he said. “Just go easy. Try petting him right here.” Silas lifted my hand again and gently showed me how to stroke the soft hair on Courage’s round cheek. “Good?”
“You tell me. I don’t have much experience around horses.”
He smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ll fix that soon.”
I smiled back. The prospect of Silas teaching me about horses was something I was suddenly looking forward to, not that my excitement was really about the horses. As long as I got to be with him, he could teach me about the proper way to shovel shit and I’d love it.
When my petting was done, I eased away from the horse. Silas began saddling Courage and I took the opportunity to check him out again.
Those chaps? Damn. I wasn’t sure if the front view or the back view was better. They sat in just the right place to highlight the curves of his behind.
“Felicity!” I begrudgingly turned away from the view. Emmeline waved as she and Nick walked my way.
“This is going to be epic,” Nick said after we’d all exchanged hellos.
Emmeline rolled her eyes. “Epically ridiculous. You’re going to hurt yourself trying to compete against twenty-year-olds. Felicity, can you believe that they’re going to—”
“Don’t tell her!” Silas shouted from the side of the horse trailer. “She has no idea what skijoring is and I want to see her face when she figures it out.”
“Seriously?” Nick asked.
“Yep. It’s taken every ounce of my willpower not to Google it the minute I showed up and saw the horses.”
Emmeline and Nick shared a look, then both burst out laughing.
Twenty minutes later, Emmeline and I followed Silas, leading Courage, and Nick, carrying snow skis, toward the arena.
“How are you so calm?” Emmeline asked. “I hate surprises. I’d be freaking out right now.”
“Years of practice,” I said. “Jess and all his friends, including Silas, used to love nothing more than to torment me. One of their favorite things to do was tell me we were doing one thing and then surprise me with something completely different. I had no choice but to learn to just go with it. That’s what Silas always told me. ‘Just go with it.’ ”
She shook her head. “That sounds like my personal nightmare.”
As we approached the gate to the main entrance, Silas handed Courage’s lead rope to Nick. “Be right back.” Wrapping an arm around my shoulders, he steered me through the masses of people shuffling up the ramp and into the stands.
“When did all of this get added?” I pointed to the tower of bleachers that separated the entrance from the arena itself.
“A couple of years ago. Between this event and the rodeo, the fairgrounds have been drawing bigger and bigger crowds each year. The county commissioners finally decided that those old wooden benches weren’t going to cut it anymore. Now they even do concerts in the summer.”
“As long as the band isn’t death metal, they can count on me to come. I love outdoor concerts.”
“Me too. I’ll bring you to one.”
As a date? I smiled but didn’t ask.
We passed a concession stand filled with snacks and a beer garden packed with people before Silas stopped me in front of the chain-link fence that encompassed the arena.
“That’s skijoring,” he said, poking a finger through one of the holes.
“Oh my god!” I laughed. “That. Is. Awesome!”
The arena had been filled with snow, an oval track smoothed in the middle, while large jumps and bumps formed an outer ring.
“Watch, over there.” Silas pointed toward the shoots and corrals at the far end of the arena where a two-man team was setting up to practice the course. One man was riding his horse while towing a skier on a rope along behind him. The skier went bouncing and flying over the many jumps, trying to stay on his skis, while the horse and rider sped along the center circle.
When the skier stumbled on the corner and crashed into a stack of hay bales, I knew why Emmeline thought Nick could hurt himself. The poor guy that had just crashed had been going very fast and had fallen very hard.
“Cheer for me?” Silas asked.
“You got it. Though I wish I had brought my air horn.”
Smiling and laughing, we walked back to Nick and Emmeline so the men could get lined up for their own practice run.
“Shall we go in?” Emmeline asked.
“Let’s do this.”
We shuffled up the ramp and then turned to the nearly full stand of bleachers.
“Felicity! Emmeline!” Up several rows, Gigi and Maisy were waving wildly at us to join them.
“Hey! Where’s Jess and the kids?” I asked Gigi when I settled onto the cold metal bench next to her.
“Jess is down there checking in with Milo and Bryant.” Gigi pointed to the arena floor, where my brother was visiting with his uniformed deputies. “And the kids are all at the Holts’ house. Maisy’s mom volunteered to watch them all so we could have some fun.”
“Nice. I’m so excited. I cannot wait to see this.”
She smiled. “Me either.”
“Do you guys want drinks? I was thinking of braving the line at the beer gardens before the guys have their turn.”
“Water for me,” Emmeline said, rubbing her protruding belly.
“I want beer,” Maisy said, standing. “I’ll go with you to help carry drinks.”
“Gigi?” I winked, curious how she’d play this. As far as I knew, no one but me, Jess and Mom knew she was expecting.
“Water for me. I’m pregnant,” she blurted.
Maisy and Emmeline started screaming and giving her hugs while I stood back with a wide smile. Gigi and Jess deserved every minute of their happiness.
Thinking of my brother, I glanced over my shoulder to see him looking back up at us with a grin on his face. No doubt he’d heard the joyous shouts and knew that his wife had spilled their secret.
“How was Christmas?” I asked Maisy as we walked down the stairs to get our beers.
“So good. Coby was too little to understand it last year but he was all about it this time around. He got spoiled.”
“Wait for us!” I stopped on the bottom step and turned to see Gigi and Emmeline carefully descending. “We decided to come with you too. The pregnant women are hungry, go figure.”
Standing in line at the snack stand, we chatted and laughed. I was amazed at how much more at ease I felt today than I had during the party at Slater’s Station. I didn’t feel like an outsider with these women because I wasn’t married or didn’t have my own children. Instead, I felt lucky that I was getting to know them and they had pulled me into their tight circle without reserve.
Today was going to be—what had Nick said?—epic.
After we’d loaded up on food, we all meandered to the beer garden.
“Felicity!” Andrea was rushing toward our spot in line.
Now less epic.
“Hi.” I was suspicious of the smile on her face.
Behind me, Gigi muttered, “Eff.”
“I was hoping to run into you today.” Andrea wrapped me up in an awkward-for-me hug.
“Uh, okay.” I hadn’t seen her since the night she’d met Tyson, and at any moment, I was expecting her to slap me in the face because I’d set her up with a cheating bastard.
“I am just so grateful that you introduced me to Tyson,” she said. “I don’t know if you’ve heard or not, but we’re engaged!” She shoved her enormous diamond ring in my face.
“Congratulations?” I was so shocked that it came out as a question.
“Can you believe it?” She started bouncing up and down. “It’s all happening so fast but we both feel like we shouldn’t waste any time. I’m moving to Seattle in a couple of weeks so we can plan the wedding. We’re thinking of doing something exclusive in Mexico or Belize.”
“Well . . . great, I guess. I’m happy for you, Andrea.” If she and Tyson really loved one another, then I sincerely wished them all the best, though I did feel a smidgeon of guilt for not being up front with her about his womanizing ways.
Should I tell her about him?
“And I can’t wait to be in the city, where the women aren’t all bitches and sluts.” She aimed a vicious glare over my shoulder at Gigi, Maisy and Emmeline.
Nope. She can learn all about Tyson the hard way.
“Well, good luck to you both!” With a saccharine smile, I said good-bye.
The second she was gone, my ears filled with cheers and whistles. Behind me, the girls were whooping it up. “I can see you are all depressed that she’s leaving town.”
“I’m buying your beer,” Emmeline said. “And you’ve got free oil changes at Nick’s garage until the end of time.”
Maisy nodded. “Any and all future stays at the motel are on the house.”
“If we hadn’t already decided on names for this baby, I’d name this one after you,” Gigi said, patting her tummy.
I laughed. “No thanks needed. It’s payment enough that I’ll never have to hear from her or Tyson again.”
“This is going to be an awesome day,” Gigi said.
“Hell, yes,” I agreed.
Overloaded with beverages and snacks, we went back into the stands and again found our seats. When Jess joined us, he tucked Gigi into his side. “They’re up next for a practice run.”
I glued my eyes to the starting line, excited to see the guys attempt to do this. In the short time we’d been sitting, I’d watched three different skiers crash fantastically. Only one, and a woman at that, had made it through the whole course without a fall. But regardless of the track fails, all of the participants seemed to be enjoying the fun.
“There they are,” Emmeline gasped, reaching out to grip my arm. Her face paled and she was stroking her baby belly.
“Is everything okay?”
“I’m just nervous and worried that Nick is going to break a leg right before we have the baby.”
Her fingers on my forearm tightened until Nick and Silas finally came through the gates and set up at the starting line. At the sight of her husband, Emmeline’s entire frame relaxed.
Nick clicked on his skis and grabbed the rope that dragged behind Courage. He gave Silas a mischievous smirk before waving to Emmeline. When he flipped off his baseball cap and turned it backward on his head, Emmeline actually swooned.
Silas looked up to me and tipped the brim of his cowboy hat. One gesture and I practically melted. I might have swooned a little myself.
“Okay. What’s going on?” Gigi asked.
“Huh?” I tore my eyes away from Silas.
“You and Silas? What’s going on?”
I shrugged. If I had a better idea, I would have told her. But as it was, I was still a little confused so I stayed silent.
She narrowed her eyes. “Your brother does that too and I hate it.”
“Does what?” I asked.
“Answers a question without an actual verbal answer.”
I grinned. “Where do you think I learned it?”
We both laughed and turned back to the arena.
With Courage positioned in the center ring, Silas nodded at the official. My heart raced and I held my breath as we waited for the starting buzzer. At its loud beep, Silas spurred Courage’s side and off they raced, Nick’s rope snapping tight as he shot off behind them.
He bounced over three small bumps, then sailed over one of the large jumps before they whipped around a wide curve and raced back toward the finish line. Nick yelled out and Silas urged Courage on even faster as they hit the final stretch. They were flying by the time they vanished from the ring and through the finishing gate.
The red numbers on the electronic board flashed 21.3 seconds, the fastest time we’d seen in any of the practice rounds.
We all shot off the bench seat and cheered, hooting and hollering as Nick walked back through the arena gates with Silas following on Courage.
God, he was sexy.
He leaned forward in his saddle, confident and comfortable. The grin on his face was contagious and I smiled like a fool for the rest of the day, enjoying the time with my friends as we watched the competition. Silas and Nick ended up in second place overall, having lost to none other than Tina the waitress’s team.
“Nice work,” I told Silas when we all met him and Nick back at the horse trailer.
He smiled and draped his silver medal over my head. “Thanks. I won this just for you.”
I fanned my face, feigning dramatics. “I’ll wear it always.” With a yank on my arm, the girls literally pulled me into their huddle to discuss dinner plans.
“How about the café?” Gigi asked.
“I ate there yesterday,” Maisy said.
“Chinese?” Emmeline suggested.
“I could eat an egg roll or twelve.” The hot dog and popcorn I’d had for lunch had long since burned away and I was famished.
“Chinese,” Gigi said. “And break.”
Maisy and Gigi left to collect Jess while Emmeline waddled to Nick’s side. While we stood waiting for Silas to stow away Courage, I started people watching.
One group of men were fishing beers out of a cooler and settling into camp chairs for what appeared to be a long evening of drinking in the cold. At first, I didn’t recognize anyone in their group but then my eyes zeroed in on a familiar face.
Derrick Olson was sprawled out in a faded blue camp chair.
“Maisy? Isn’t that Derrick Olson?” I asked, pointing to Khloe’s husband.
She glanced over her shoulder and nodded. “Yeah. Why?”
“Oh, no reason,” I lied. “I knew him in high school but he’s changed so I wasn’t sure.”
That last part was true. Derrick had filled out his once-lanky frame with beefy muscle. His hair was much longer than it had been in high school and was styled heavily toward the front, likely to hide the beginnings of a receding hair line.
When a woman walked past their group, his eyes locked on her breasts. When she passed his chair, he reached out a hand and “accidentally” brushed her ass.
Pig.
Derrick hadn’t changed a bit since high school.
I scanned the crowd, looking for Khloe, but couldn’t find her. If Derrick had left her at home alone, could this be my chance to break through with her? Maybe with him away she’d be more willing to open up to me.
“Are you okay?” Silas stepped up to my side.
“Yeah!” I said a little too loudly. “Sounds like we’re all going to the Chinese restaurant. I just need to run a quick errand first. Meet you there?”
His eyes narrowed. He knew I was up to something but he didn’t push.
“Great job today,” I said. “I had fun.”
“Yeah, good times. Thanks for coming. Nick has convinced me to build a course out on the ranch so we can practice. Next year, that trophy will be mine.”
I winked good-bye and snuck away from the group, hustling to my car.
Speeding through town, I followed my GPS to the Olsons’, a newer home built in a small development next to the river.
I had no idea if Khloe would talk to me but there was only one way to find out. I parked and wasted no time marching up to the house and knocking. When Khloe’s eyes peeked through the door’s window, she paled and ducked away.
“Khloe, please. I just wanted to check on you,” I said to the closed door. “If you can honestly tell me you’re okay and that the reason you’ve been ignoring my calls is because you hate my guts, I promise to leave you alone forever. I’m only visiting because I’m worried.”
I held my breath and listened, hoping to hear the unlocking door and not her retreating footsteps. When the knob twisted, I sagged and blew out a loud breath.
Khloe kept her chin down and only showed me one side of her face as she cracked open the door. “I’m fine. Okay? I don’t hate your guts but I just don’t have time for friends right now.”
“All right. I’m sorry to have been bothering you.”
“It’s okay.”
“If your schedule opens up, please keep me in mind?”
She nodded and started to close the door.
“I, uh, saw Derrick at the fairgrounds,” I blurted. “He was just hanging out. Having a few beers. He reminded me a lot of the same guy I knew in high school. The one that got a little . . . rough.” I was pushing but I hoped that by hinting at my suspicions, she’d realize that she wasn’t fooling me.
My tactic worked. She stood straight and revealed her full face. The cheek that she’d been hiding was covered in a round, red welt and her bottom lip had a fresh split.
My first instinct was to call Jess, have him arrest Derrick for being the wife-beating piece of shit that he was, but I pulled back that urge. Khloe would have to be fully on board for Derrick to stay in jail. If she wasn’t ready for that yet, my meddling would only make things worse. So I did the only thing I could. I reminded my friend that I was here for her.
I clenched my fists to keep from fussing over her injury. “Do you need to go to the hospital?”
Her eyes filled with tears as she shook her head. “No.”
“Can I help?”
She shook her head again and dropped her eyes to the floor.
“Will you call me if I can?”
Her head bobbed.
“Happy New Year.” I touched her shoulder.
She looked up and gave me a half smile. “Same to you.”
I waved good-bye and walked briskly back to my car. Given how comfortable Derrick had looked at the fairgrounds, I wasn’t expecting to bump into him on my way out, but I also didn’t want to risk it. Who knew what he’d do to Khloe if he caught me visiting her?
As I drove to the Chinese restaurant, I was torn between savoring my victory at finally getting through with Khloe and worrying about her safety. There wasn’t much I could do if she didn’t want my help, but today I’d made progress.
I hadn’t gotten a full-fledged confession but I’d cracked her walls. Derrick was beating her. And she knew that I knew.
Now I just had to be patient and hope that soon she’d be ready to free herself from his abuse. Because when that time came, I’d prove to her that I was a friend she could count on.
I hadn’t seen the signs that Wes had been in trouble. I hadn’t done anything to save him from his demise.
I wouldn’t make that same mistake with Khloe.