Chapter 2

As far as Shawnee Pickett was concerned, when most women went out to get a Brazilian, they were doing it all wrong.

Yawning, she stretched, then rolled over to admire the long, lean body sprawled beside hers. She trailed her finger down the dark bronze arm slung over the pillow, and paused to wrap her hand around his biceps on the off chance she might be able to absorb some of the brilliance humming under his skin. That arm was property of the hottest young team roper to explode onto the pro rodeo scene in years. Maybe decades.

Some people might not be thrilled about the Brazilian invasion of a sport they liked to think belonged to North America, but Shawnee sure wasn’t complaining.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, then began to dance to the tune of Garth’s “Friends in Low Places.” Tori. Shawnee let it play a few bars, then peeled herself away from all that tempting bare skin and picked up. “Yes, Mother?”

“I slept in, had breakfast, and drank two cups of coffee. Then I read the Sunday Dallas Morning News front to back, so thanks to you I’ve lost what little faith I had left in humanity.” Damn. Tori always made sarcasm sound so classy. “You’ve been holed up in that room for almost twelve hours. Don’t you think you’ve had enough?”

“Says the woman who was just whinin’ about not gettin’ to wrap her hands around Delon’s hot little ass for another week.”

At the sound of Shawnee’s voice, Joao Pedro Azeveda—alias J.P. because most people were too lazy to learn to pronounce his name—stirred. Without opening his eyes, he reached out and hauled Shawnee over to where he could nestle his face in her bare cleavage. She sighed.

“I heard that,” Tori said. “I’m loading the horses right now. If you’re not standing out in the parking lot when I swing by the motel, I will keep going and let you hitchhike home.”

Now J.P.’s hands were getting in on the action, despite the fact that he’d only slept for four hours. Lord. Twenty-two was a beautiful thing. Shawnee stifled a moan. Maybe a quickie…

“Don’t even,” Tori warned. In the background, Shawnee heard the sound of hooves thudding on the floor of the trailer as the horses hopped in. “If that boy is too weak to swing a rope at Bandera tonight, his partner will wring your neck.”

Aw, hell. Shawnee caught J.P.’s wrist before either of them could get too heated up. He lifted his head and cocked it, questioning. Shawnee shook her head, pointing to the phone, then the door. He flashed her a coaxing grin as he slid his palm down her side and along her hip, pulling her against him so she could feel what she was missing. Her body responded in kind. She breathed a silent curse and shook her head again. He did one of those shrugs that was worth a thousand words, rolled over, and buried his face in the pillow.

“Ten minutes,” Tori said.

“You know you suck, right?”

Tori gave an evil laugh and hung up. She didn’t judge, bless her heart, but she also didn’t make idle threats.

Nine minutes later, Shawnee hopped around muttering curses while she tried to tug jeans on over shower-damp skin. Might help if she had slightly less butt to stuff into them. As she dragged a comb through her wet mop of brown curls, she gave J.P.’s gangly body one last, lingering glance. Asleep, he looked even younger. Suddenly she felt every one of the eleven years between them, and for an instant she wished…

She shook off the weird little ache, grabbed her wallet, and headed for the door. This was how she rolled—keeping it loose and easy with guys who didn’t expect her to be there when they woke up.

And yeah, she was aware that loose and easy were the most polite of the words tossed around behind her back. Well, fuck those sanctimonious assholes and the donkeys they rode in on. This was the life that had chosen her, and she was bound and determined to live it to the hilt. She didn’t hear J.P. or any of his predecessors complaining.

She spared a glance in the mirror and winced. Without makeup, her face was a doughy blob with a couple of finger holes poked in it for eyes. Oh well. She could slap on a little something in the pickup.

J.P. didn’t twitch when she opened the door. She didn’t wake him to say goodbye. Spanish she could handle. So far, Portuguese had eluded her and J.P. had only mastered the bare bones of English, which wasn’t all bad. When their paths did cross, they never wasted time on chitchat, though she wouldn’t have minded hearing him explain how he’d learned to snatch up both hind feet on wild, ass-slinging steers.

As she stepped outside, a pickup and horse trailer rolled around the corner, right on schedule. After the cool dimness of the motel room, the midmorning sunlight slapped Shawnee in the face like a hot, damp towel. Still, her heart did a little happy dance at the sight of the rig. All hers. Turn ’Em and Burn ’Em Champion Heeler, the bold letters scrawled across the double-cab declared. Three years, and she still got a thrill every time she looked at it. Or its twin, which was parked in Tori’s driveway.

The icing on the cake had been the monster prize money that came along with the pickups. Enough for Shawnee to finally get rid of her granddad’s rickety old stock trailer and buy herself a decent used gooseneck with a small but adequate living quarters in the front section. Sure as hell beat camping in the back of her old rust-bucket pickup.

The rig barely rolled to a stop to let Shawnee hop in before Tori swung back out on the street and hit the gas. Shawnee dug her sunglasses out of the center console, jammed them on her face, then squinted through the blessedly dark lenses. Tori Patterson Hancock Sanchez didn’t look like the daughter of Texas’s version of royalty. Her caramel-brown hair was yanked through the loop of her baseball cap and she wasn’t wearing a scrap of makeup. Her jeans were smudged with dirt from the previous evening’s roping, though her sky-blue tank top was clean. She filled it out better than when they’d first met. Either Delon’s chocolate habit was contagious or being disgustingly well loved gave her an appetite.

Speaking of which…

“Can we swing past a hamburger stand? I’m starving.” At Tori’s impatient grunt, Shawnee scowled. “What, you’re in such a rush to get out of town you can’t spare three minutes to feed me? You got something against this place?”

Tori threw her a dark look. “My memories aren’t quite as pleasant as yours.”

In other words, she’d spent the last eight hours brooding because she’d missed their last steer and a shot at winning third place and a couple thousand dollars. Tori was good at many, many things, but failure was not one of them, which made her an excellent partner and an occasional pain in the ass. She took pity, though, and pulled over at the Dairy Queen on the edge of town. Shawnee had just dug into her one fast food fix of the week when her phone rang again, this time to the tune of Joe Diffie’s “Pickup Man.”

Shawnee’s pulse kicked up its heels. “Hey, Violet. Fancy hearing from you on a Sunday morning. Does this mean what I think it does?”

Violet made a growling noise. “Can you be in Cuero by Wednesday at noon?”

Shawnee’s pulse did another jig. She’d been both anticipating and dreading this call since Violet had asked her to be on standby. On the downside, keeping her promise meant no serious team roping for two months. Shawnee hadn’t gone more than a few days without roping since back when…

She flicked that thought aside and concentrated on the here and now, something she’d been doing so long it was second nature.

She’d agreed to Violet’s proposal because she was ready for a change. Her life had settled into a groove the last couple of years—rope with Tori, work at the cattle auction, train some horses, hang out at the Jacobs ranch when they weren’t on the road—but a comfortable rut was still a rut. Time to shake things up. Or in this case, someone.

“I’ll be there,” she said, grinning as she hung up.

“Sounds like I’m losing a partner for the rest of the summer.”

“Yep.” Shawnee tipped back her seat and got comfortable, munching fries and mentally making lists of everything that needed doing before she could pack up and leave. “You’ll have your weekends free to chase your pretty husband around the country.”

After ten years on the rodeo trail, Delon finally had his gold buckle—World Champion Bareback Rider—and was well on his way to defending the title. Tori certainly wouldn’t mind missing a few ropings to spend more time with him. Delon was a sight to see even when he wasn’t spurring a bronc, and given how long it’d taken the two of them to get their shit together, they were bound and determined not to let it get scattered again.

Shawnee jabbed a french fry into the ketchup so hard it broke in half. All of her cronies were pairing off, turning into husbands and wives, daddies and mommies. She had accepted that it would happen eventually. She wouldn’t pretend it didn’t bother her at all, but she’d learned to accept it—most of the time. It was like being born knowing you were allergic to ice cream. Just looking at it might be enough to make your mouth water, but as long as you’d never tasted it you didn’t really know what you were missing.

“You should take my trailer,” Tori said. “I won’t be using it while you’re gone, and yours is too small to live in for that long.”

Shawnee debated for all of ten seconds. The living quarters in Tori’s trailer were like a top of the line RV—four times the size of Shawnee’s, with actual appliances and satellite TV. “That’d be great. Thanks.”

Tori shot her a curious look. “Are you nervous?”

“Nah. Violet and her dad put me through the wringer at all those practices, and dragged me along to a couple of high school rodeos.” Her grin widened. “Besides, it’s a dream job. After all these years of just doing it for fun, I’m gonna get paid to irritate Cole Jacobs.”