She had to. If this didn’t work...no. There was no if here. It would absolutely work. When the rodeo took off, she’d be the one holding the reins.
She braced herself. Now he would come up firing. Now he would try to destroy her with a witty comeback. She could see the cords on his neck straining as he ground his teeth. No matter what he said, she wouldn’t let him get to her.
Now. Surely now.
“Pete, maybe you can make the little lady see sense,” Mort said.
“About what?” Pete replied, but he didn’t look away from her.
“About women,” Dustin said. He whipped his hat off his head and slapped it against his leg. “She doesn’t know what she’s talking about.”
Pete stepped back and looked Chloe up and down, his gaze traveling the path over her blinged-out cowgirl shirt and customized jeans—both from her Princess of the Rodeo clothing line—way too slowly for her taste. “I don’t know, guys. She looks pretty qualified in the woman department, if you ask me.”
Chloe blushed. She didn’t want to, didn’t want Pete to know that his words could affect her at all—but she couldn’t help it. Was he...protecting her? Or just ogling her?
What was going on?
“She wants to let women compete!” Dustin all but roared.
“Don’t get us wrong,” Dale went on in his pleasantly condescending voice, “women can ride the hell out of barrels.”
“And they’re good-looking,” Mort unhelpfully added.
Chloe managed not to lose her ever-loving mind. But she couldn’t stop herself from gritting her teeth and closing her eyes. Their words shouldn’t hurt. They wouldn’t.
“But you put a pretty little thing out there in the arena with a man and he’s gonna get distracted,” Dustin said, disgust in his voice. “And a distracted cowboy is a hurt cowboy. You know that, Pete.”
Pete cleared his throat, making Chloe open her eyes again. He had to be loving this open rebellion. Hell, she wouldn’t be surprised if he’d orchestrated this whole scene. She glanced around—yep. They’d amassed a crowd of about twenty people. Lovely. There would be plenty of witnesses to her humiliation.
At least Flash wasn’t here. There wasn’t a single bad situation her brother couldn’t make worse.
Then the weirdest thing happened. Pete Wellington—a man who had never bothered to hide his hatred of her—lowered his chin and, from under the brim of his hat where no one else could see it, winked at her. Before she could figure what the hell that was supposed to mean, he stepped back.
“You’re right,” he said to Dustin in particular and the crowd of cowboys in general. “I happen to know firsthand that, because we don’t have mixed competitions, no one has ever been injured in the All-Stars rodeo.”
Chloe blinked. Was that...sarcasm?
In her defense?
What the hell was going on?
There was a three-second pause while Pete’s words settled over the crowd before the first chuckle started. Another joined it and soon, all the guys who’d ridden in rodeos, past or present, began to laugh.
“Face it, boys,” Pete went on, “we’ve all been stepped on by a bull or thrown by a bronco.” Heads nodded in agreement. It was practically a sea of bobbing cowboy hats. “Women have nothing to do with the bones I’ve broken or the bruises I’ve suffered—no offense to my momma, who tried to keep me out of the arena. I say, if women want to compete on our teams and they can help a team win, why wouldn’t we want that to happen?”
The bobbing stopped and Dustin pounced. “Are you serious, Wellington?”
“Have you ever seen my sister rope a steer?” Pete shot back. “She could give any man in this arena a run for his money.”
Chloe stared almost helplessly up at Pete. He hadn’t gone in for the kill. He really was defending her.
When he looked down at her, an electric shock skated over her skin. Then he completely blew her mind by saying, “If Chloe says it’s a good idea to open up the team competitions to women, then it’s a good idea.”
“You can’t seriously think she’s had a good idea.” Dustin spat into the dirt.
“Do I look like I’m joking?” Pete shot back.
Chloe gaped at the man.
Who the hell was this Pete damned Wellington?
Pete couldn’t remember the last time he’d had this much fun. Chloe Lawrence looked exactly like a fish stunned to find itself in the bottom of a boat instead of the bottom of a lake. By God, it was good to get the upper hand on the woman, for once. Everything was going according to plan.
Pete cut a glance back at Chloe. If he weren’t enjoying himself quite so much, he’d be tempted to feel sorry for her. She was normally so high and mighty, the kind of smugly self-assured woman who thought she was better than everyone else, especially him. She never missed the opportunity to rub his face in the fact that the All-Stars wasn’t his rodeo anymore.
Now he’d turned the tables and he was going to enjoy rubbing her face in it. These men didn’t owe her any particular allegiance and they all knew it.
But that fleeting moment when Dustin took a swipe at her, where pain etched her delicate features, didn’t make him feel like he was winning. It made him feel like an ass. He felt like he’d seen that look before, a long time ago. Probably when he’d said something cruel. He couldn’t remember what and besides, Chloe always gave as good as she got, so he wouldn’t bother to feel bad about past insults.
He pushed back against that wisp of guilt because it was small and easily ignored. Hey, he was not the bad guy here, never had been. All he wanted was what was rightfully his. It had nothing to do with Chloe personally. It had everything to do with her lying, cheating family.
But even as he repeated that familiar truth, his gaze was drawn to her again. The fact that she was the most gorgeous woman he’d ever had the displeasure of butting heads with only made it worse. In another lifetime, the one where his family still owned the All-Stars, he and Chloe wouldn’t be on opposite sides of a never-ending war. She would’ve been just another gorgeous face and Pete would’ve been free to...
Well, he would’ve had his rodeo back.
The rodeo was his, dammit. The Lawrence Oil All-Around All-Stars Pro Rodeo circuit was comprised of individual rodeos that were hosted from small towns to big cities. Most of the rodeos, like the Bootheel Rodeo in Missouri, predated the All-Stars by decades.
When Pete’s father Davey had started the All-Stars back in the eighties with a group of his friends, he’d had big plans. More than just a bunch of individual rodeos—with individual winners—Davey Wellington had seen a way to crown the world’s best All-Around Cowboy. It’d
