the pretty blond-haired woman with the bluest eyes he had ever seen walk toward him. He and Summer had been best friends for the past few years, and although any man would be lucky to call her his woman, Ryder had avoided thinking of her as anything but his friend. Anything more between them and he would feel obligated to tell her the reason he had finished growing up at the Last Chance Ranch. That was something he didn’t care to share with anyone and why he didn’t intend to enter into a serious relationship with any woman. Some things were just better left buried in the past. Besides, he didn’t want to take the chance of losing the easygoing friendship they had forged by becoming romantically involved with her. He suspected she felt the same way.
“Is something wrong?” she asked, her expression reflecting her concern.
Letting go of his anger, Ryder shook his head as he smiled at the petite woman standing next to him. “No, I just got tired of listening to my brothers’ bull.”
She smiled wistfully. “You’re lucky. At least you have brothers to irritate you. I’ve never had that problem.”
Ryder felt as guilty as hell. As aggravating as his foster brothers could be at times, there wasn’t a doubt in his mind they would all be there for him no matter what—the same as he would be for all of them. They meant the world to him and there wasn’t a day that went by he didn’t thank the good Lord above that he had them in his life.
But Summer had never had anything like that. Over the course of their friendship, he had learned she was the only child of an older couple who, during her senior year in college, had been killed in the small plane her father owned. With their deaths, she had been left with no family at all.
“Yeah, they sure can be a thorn in my side sometimes.” As the last traces of his anger dissipated, he grinned. “But I guess after all these years I don’t have any other choice but to keep them.”
She laughed. “Good idea, cowboy. But seriously, your family is great. I know some of your brothers from seeing them compete at the rodeos we’ve worked, but I’d never met Sam’s wife and her sister. They’re very nice and I think it’s wonderful that you all have stayed so close over the years.”
When Ryder noticed Nate eyeing Summer like a fox sizing up an unguarded henhouse, he shot his brother a warning glare, then asked, “Have you had a chance to dance yet?”
“Only the line dances,” she answered, glancing at the dance floor Sam had his hired hands construct in one of the barns for the celebration.
“I thought I saw Sam’s head wrangler ask you to dance a little earlier,” he said, frowning.
“I suppose he was nice enough,” she replied, shrugging one slender shoulder. “But I wasn’t in the mood to dance then.”
“Well, if you don’t mind a cowboy with two left feet and the worst sense of rhythm this side of the Mississippi, I’d be honored to stand in one spot with you and sway in time to the music,” he offered.
Her eyes filled with humor. “I thought all Texas cowboys took pride in sashaying around the dance floor doing the two-step or the stroll.”
“You know me better than that, darlin’.” As the band started playing a slow, dreamy country tune, he shook his head in mock disgust and placing his hand to her back, guided her out onto the dance floor. “This is one Texan who doesn’t sashay, prance or shimmy anywhere. Anytime. Ever.”
“I beg to differ with you,” she murmured, placing her hands on his biceps when he rested his at her trim waist. “I’ve seen you when you’re dancing with a two-thousand-pound bull. You have some pretty smooth moves, cowboy.”
“That’s because it’s my job.” He shrugged and tried to ignore the warmth of her soft palms burning his skin through the fabric of his chambray shirt. “If I don’t get those old bulls to dance with me, a bull rider gets run over.”
“Don’t you have a degree in ranch management?” she asked. “I would have thought you’d be content to stay home and run your ranch instead of traveling around the country playing chicken with a bulldozer on hooves.”
“Yup, I’m a proud graduate of Texas A&M.” He put himself between her and a couple enthusiastically two-stepping their way around the dance floor in an effort to keep them from bumping into her. “But I have a good, reliable foreman I pay quite well to check in with me several times a day. He gives me a full report on how things are going, I tell him what I want done and he sees that it’s taken care of. That frees me up to be out on the rodeo circuit saving knuckleheaded bull riders like Nate and Jaron.”
As Summer gazed up at him, she frowned. “I don’t think I’ve ever asked, but why did you choose to be a rodeo bullfighter instead of a rider?”
“One time when our foster dad, Hank, was teaching us all to rodeo, one of the training bulls got loose and tried to mow down Jaron. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but I jumped in the arena and put myself between the two of them to keep that from happening. It turned out that I was pretty good at distracting a bull and getting it to chase me.” He shrugged. “I’ve been doing it ever since.”
“In other words, you like being a hero,” she said, smiling.
Laughing, he shook his head. “Nah. I’m in it for the adrenaline rush, darlin’.” It was an easier explanation than admitting that he had always felt compelled to protect others from danger at the risk of his own safety.
When the song ended, Ryder led her off the dance floor and after finding an empty table for them, made sure she was comfortably seated before he went to get them a couple of drinks. He frowned as he made his way to the bar. His arms still tingled where she had rested her hands, and for the life of him, he couldn’t figure out why. That had never happened before. Had his brothers’ ribbing put ideas in his head about Summer?
As he continued to ponder the strange sensation, he looked up to see his brothers watching with no small amount of interest. They all wore the same sappy, know-it-all grin, making him want to plant his fist in all of their guts.
Ryder was extremely grateful that their foster father had instilled a strong sense of family among the boys he helped guide through their troubled teenage years. As Hank Calvert always told them, once they were grown they would appreciate having each other and a little bit of history together that they could look back on since none of them had any other family to speak of. And that’s the way Ryder felt…most of the time. But at other times—like right now—having brothers could be a real pain in the ass.
As Summer waited for Ryder to return with their drinks, she absently watched the dancers form a couple of parallel lines and begin to move in unison to a lively tune. She couldn’t get over how much she was enjoying herself. Normally she turned down all invitations from the men she worked with, no matter what the occasion or the circumstances. But Ryder was different. They had been best friends from the time she took the job as public relations director for the rodeo association southwestern circuit, and for reasons she couldn’t explain, she trusted him. He was honest, didn’t play the games that most men did, and despite his above average height and muscular build, she didn’t feel at all threatened by him.
Of course, that might have something to do with the way he had run interference with some of their more aggressive male coworkers when she first started working for the rodeo association. From the day they met, Ryder had made it a point to remind all of them that she was a lady and should be treated as such. He had shown her nothing but his utmost respect, and it hadn’t taken long before they had developed an easy,
