His gaze snagged Juliette’s. “If I’m completely honest, the Redbird is my second stop.”
Mrs. Wilde turned her smile on Juliette. “Well, silly me. Of course you’d go see your girl first. It just warms my heart to see you kids together again. Just like old times. Makes me feel young again.”
He looked at Juliette, who wasn’t looking at him. She had politely smiled at Dottie and then had taken a keen interest in the menu, reminding him that even though they were talking and she had agreed to have coffee with him, even though that undeniable chemistry still pulsed between them, a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon still separated them.
He looked back at Dottie, who was making a show of brushing away happy tears, but she shook off her reverie and beamed at them.
“Look at me,” she said. “Aren’t I a sight? I’m a bundle of emotions today. What’ll you have? It’s all on the house. Anything you want. It’s not every day we have a professional bull riding celebrity wander in here. You’re our very own hometown hero and that calls for a celebration.”
They ordered coffee and a piece of blueberry pie to share. The Redbird Diner had always had good pie.
After Dottie left to round up the food, Juliette said, “Well, Cowboy, aren’t you something. I guess it pays to be a hometown hero. In all the years I’ve been coming here, I’ve never gotten free food from Dottie Wilde.”
He shrugged. “Her offer is nice. But totally unexpected. I’ll leave her a big tip.”
All this hometown hero talk made him uncomfortable.
He’d won the PBR world championship last year. But this current season, he’d done nothing but struggle and battle one injury after another. Last year, before he’d won the big prize, all his hard work had paid off and his plans had come to fruition. Everything had snapped into place. Since then, it seemed as if every force was working against him. At twenty-eight, he was one of the senior members of the circuit. He’d worked damn hard to get there, but this year, it seemed like his reflexes weren’t as quick to respond; sometimes his instincts seemed to lag behind. Talk had been that his head just wasn’t in the game. The truth was his body just didn’t seem to bounce back the way it had leading up to his win.
Because of all the setbacks, he was out of the running for the big money this season. He’d come back to Celebration to sort it all out. To figure out if he was up for one more good run or if he should quit before he suffered permanent damage like the doctors had warned.
His agent insisted that the doctors had to be overly cautious to avoid liability. He kept reminding Jude that a lot of guys got right back on the bulls after getting hurt. When Jude had hesitated, he reminded him that because of his age and injuries the clock on his career was ticking and he needed to make hay while the sun was shining. The subtext to that, of course, was that the sun hadn’t been smiling down on him much this year.
The chime on the door sounded and three girls who looked like they were high school age entered the diner and settled in the booth next to the one he and Juliette occupied. One of them was in Jude’s line of sight and she smiled at him. He smiled back, just being polite.
“You’re not really going to sell your property, are you?” Juliette asked, a frown knitting her brows.
When their parents had died, he, Ethan and their sister, Lucy, had each inherited equally valued parcels of land. Ethan’s was smaller, but had the stables from which he ran his horse-breeding business. Several decades ago, his family’s ranch had been one of the most successful in the area, but they’d run into financial hardship when alcoholism had gotten the best of Donovan Campbell. For a while it appeared that Ethan might fall down the same slippery slope after his parents’ deaths and the end of his first marriage, but after some soul searching and sheer determination, he’d pulled himself up from rock bottom and had set the Triple C Ranch back on the road to profitability.
Lucy had the parcel where their grandparents’ old house and barn stood. She’d spent a lot of time there as a child, so it seemed only right that that portion of the property would be hers. She’d moved into the house and had worked hard to turn her dream into a reality when she’d transformed the old abandoned barn into the Campbell Wedding Barn, one of the South’s premier boutique venues.
The land Jude had inherited was on the outer edge of the property. It was mostly wide-open pasture, but it did contain two structures, an old cabin near a lake and a bungalow, that the late mother of Lucy’s fiancé, Zane Phillips, had rented for decades before her passing. The rent Dorothy Phillips had paid had helped cut the cost of maintaining the property and lifted the burden of property taxes. Now the place was sitting vacant, and without the rental income, Jude was concerned about the place becoming a financial drain—especially since this year’s earnings paled in comparison to last year’s.
Sure, he was all about family legacy—in theory—but the bottom line of his budget and slowly shrinking bank account made the opportunity to unload the property seem attractive.
“I don’t know if I’m going to sell,” he said. “That’s what I came home to figure out.”
“Excuse me?” The girl who had smiled at him a moment ago was standing next to their table. “Are you Jude Campbell?”
He sent a look to Juliette that he hoped said, Sorry about this.
“That would be me,” he said.
“I’m a huge fan. In fact, I bought this shirt because it’s a Copenhagen On-Off Shirt.”
Copenhagen was the sportswear manufacturer who sponsored him. The On-Off Shirt had materialized after a particularly rough ride his championship year. After going ten seconds on a mean bull, the beast not only bucked him off, but charged after him. Jude narrowly sidestepped the animal, but not before one of the bull’s horns caught the edge of his shirt, ripping it off and leaving him to run for his life bare-chested.
The best ride of Jude’s life had been overshadowed by a bull stripping off his shirt. A video clip had gone viral and the graphic of him, naked from the waist up, had turned into a sensation that inspired his own line of shirts, the On-Off Shirt.
As far as he was concerned, they were just plain old shirts. They weren’t breakaway style, they didn’t go on and off any easier than a regular run-of-the-mill T-shirt, but fans—old and new—had scooped them up like they were gold. At least for a little while. As of late, thanks to a combination of the public’s fickle attention span and his lackluster performance this season, sales were on the downturn. His agent, Bob Bornfield, was desperately trying to renegotiate the terms of the endorsement contract.
One element on which Jude wouldn’t budge was the part that obligated Copenhagen to donate 10 percent of net sales to a charity that benefited at-risk teens.
Then again, 10 percent of nothing equaled nothing.
“Would you sign it for me? My name is Shari.” She brandished a black permanent marker. Her blond hair was slicked back into a tight, high ponytail, and she wore hoop earrings the size of doughnuts and a ton of makeup. It looked like she’d used the marker to line her eyes.
“Sure,” Jude said.
“Right here.” Shari touched the top of her left breast and leaned in, giving Jude all access. “S-H-A-R-I,” she spelled as she tapped her breast.
Jude
