Pete Wellington was a calculated risk. He was betting he could trick her out of the rodeo, somehow. She was betting he was no match for her. He might be gorgeous, wealthy and awfully good with a rope, but she was a Lawrence.
Flash looked doubtful, so Chloe went on, “Look—trust me. I know what I’m doing and I know what he’s trying to do—but I can handle him. Just don’t pick a fight with him, okay?”
“If you need someone to run interference, why not just ask me?”
The hell of it was, Flash meant that. He hadn’t seen the messes she’d had to clean up after all his other attempts to “help.” Flash would always be a big bull in a very tiny china shop.
“Because,” she explained, “you want to be a rider, not a Lawrence. You start meddling in the show management and no one will ever believe you’ve earned your ranking.”
Flash was hell-bent on being one of the best all-around riders in the world, which meant riding with the All-Stars. But the problem with riding the rodeo circuit your family owned was that no one believed he hadn’t just bought his way into the rankings. Everyone—even the competitors who watched him ride night after night—believed he was here only because he was a Lawrence.
“Fine,” he grumbled. “You’re right. But why does it have to be Pete?”
Chloe grit her teeth. “Because everyone else already respects him. They listen to him.” And not to her.
She pushed that thought aside and went on, “If I bring in someone new, it’ll take months—maybe years—before they’re willing to try something different and I have plans, Flash. I want them in place before the next season starts.” That was the one area where Pete had her up against a wall.
No, no—wrong mental image. Because Pete would never have her up against a wall.
But she needed his connections and goodwill now.
Flash scowled. “If Pete gives you any crap at all, I’ll beat the hell out of him.”
“Agreed,” she said and then pasted on her big smile as a family with two little girls spotted them. “Well, now—who are these two beautiful princesses?”
The girls squealed and hugged her and Chloe posed for pictures with the mom and her daughters and then, with surprisingly good humor, Flash posed with the dad.
By then, other people had noticed the Princess of the Rodeo and a crowd formed. As Chloe posed for another picture, she saw Pete Wellington in the distance, talking with a few of the riders. As if he could sense her gaze upon him, he turned. And tipped his hat in her direction.
Another thrill of pleasure went through her at the gentlemanly gesture. No, she didn’t trust him. Not a damned bit. But it looked like they were working together from here on out.
This was a bad idea.
After what had almost happened in the dressing room? It was a horrible idea, one that almost guaranteed failure.
But as long as she kept her fantasies to herself and Pete’s hands off her body, it’d be fine.
No problem, right?
Pete watched the opening procession from the top of the bull chutes. God, he’d missed being up here.
Chloe was, predictably, first in line. His gut tightened as he looked at the way she sat in the saddle and remembered the way she’d looked in nothing more than a pair of skin-tight jeans and a bra, for God’s sake, acting as if that were the most normal thing in the world. To say nothing of the way her nimble fingers had worked at the buckles of those ostentatious chaps as she strapped them on over her long, lean thighs...
He cleared his throat and shifted his legs, trying to take the pressure off his groin as Chloe stood in her stirrups, her ass cupped by those chaps.
When she’d first started this princess crap, Pete had been twenty-three. That he remembered clearly because his dad had stopped by for his birthday and...well, Pete wasn’t proud of what he’d done. But he’d been twenty-three and pissed as hell that the Lawrences were making a mockery of his rodeo. He couldn’t take out his anger on a cute teenager like Chloe and her dad would’ve pressed charges if Pete had punched him. Besides, it’d been Davey Wellington’s fault that Pete had lost his whole world in one drunken bet.
Even now, the betrayal still burned. The All-Stars had been the one thing he’d shared with his father and yet, Davey Wellington had just drunkenly gambled it away like the circuit hadn’t meant anything to him. Like...like all the time he and Pete had spent together at rodeos hadn’t meant anything.
When Pete had come into his oil money, Dad had been sick, with just a few months left. Pete had sucked up his pride and made Milt Lawrence an offer to buy back the All-Stars so that Pete and Davey could have a chance to relive those happier times. Pete had been determined to make things right. He’d even offered to let Chloe keep riding as the Princess of the Rodeo, if it would’ve made her happy.
Only to have the old man laugh in his face and have security escort Pete out of the building. Then he’d promptly kicked Pete off the All-Stars circuit.
After that, it was war.
Pete looked at the arena, at the families having a good time. His gaze traveled back behind the chutes, where riders and cowgirls were all humming with energy for the competition and he felt it again—that sense of homecoming. This was where he belonged. All of this should’ve been Pete’s. Now that Dad was gone, this should’ve been his family because rodeo was family.
Instead, it was Chloe’s.
But not for much longer.
Chloe was announced and she kicked her horse into a gallop, an enormous American flag billowing above her head. Pete followed her with his gaze. He wasn’t staring. Everyone was watching her circle around the arena at top speed, expertly guiding her borrowed mount through the curves.
Huh. He didn’t remember her riding quite so well. It’d been a while since he’d been able to bring himself to watch this farce. The last time he’d suffered through Chloe riding had been...a few years ago. Four, maybe?
She looked good up there.
She’d looked good in that closet, too, buttoning her shirt over her breasts, her breath coming hard and fast when he’d stepped in behind her and rested his hands on her waist. If Flash hadn’t interrupted them...
“Do you have any idea what I’m going to do to you if you screw with my sister?”
Speak of the devil. Pete refused to cede any space as Flash Lawrence squeezed in next to him at the top of the chute, his big black hat pulled low over his head. A nervous energy hummed off Flash, which made him a decent rider in the arena and a loose cannon out of it.
Pete gave it a second before he replied and he made damned sure to sound bored as he said, “I imagine you’ll talk a big game, throw a few wild punches, then get drunk and stumble off with the first buckle bunny who catches your eye. As usual.” He was speaking from personal experience with Flash. The kid had caught him by surprise one
