Page 48 of Worth the Trouble

“You’re launching a business. The minute I sit down next to your family, every eye in that arena starts doing arithmetic. Your name. My name. What they add up to.”

“Then let them add,” he said. “I’m not any good at hiding, Cece. Nobody in my family is, and every bad thing that’s happened around here lately started with somebody trying. You hid those notices and it nearly buried you. My brother hid behind a photograph once and it nearly cost him his wife. I’m not building the rest of my life out of that material.”

“Why are you doing this?” It came out cracked down the middle. “I cost you the Baileys. I cost you a town’s worth of goodwill before your name was even on a flyer. Any sensible man would let things cool off before being seen with me at the biggest gathering of the season.”

“Cece.” He took his hat off and held it against his chest, old-fashioned as a photograph. “I don’t say things I don’t mean. And I would never ask for anything I didn’t want.”

The fight went out of her shoulders by degrees, as a horse decides to trust a hand.

“What does a person even wear to a rodeo?” she whispered.

“Boots,” he said. “You’ve already got the right ones.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Cecelia had survived charity galas, hostile boardrooms, and one memorable product launch with indoor fireworks. The rodeo scared her more than all of them put together.

The parking field was full when they arrived, trucks nosed into rows. Music rolled out of the arena speakers and broke against the grandstand. Behind the chutes a horse called out, high and bright, and Cecelia’s nerves called back.

She had one moment of pure cowardice at the gate. Then Rylee took her left arm while Wendy took her right, and Faith walked ahead of them, with Lydia and Wren sweeping behind. Cecelia and her posse walked into the Rocky Ridge rodeo grounds together.

The town noticed. There was no version of this where the town didn’t notice.

A few of the looks slid away fast. Others held on longer than manners allowed. The girl from the boutique stared, then lifted her chin in a gesture that wasn’t quite a greeting and wasn’t quite a cut. An older rancher tipped his hat to Rylee and let his eyes go through Cecelia as through window glass. Wendy kept up a running commentary on everybody they passed, pitched exactly loud enough to leave no silence for anyone else to fill.

They found their seats as the first event opened. Brent rode in it, to a wall of noise from their whole row, and stayed on longer than Faith’s composure did. Cecelia was on her feet yelling with the rest of them before she remembered she was supposed to be invisible.

It got easier after that. Not easy. Easier.

Jason had been gone since they arrived, off among the pens and chutes where the competitors’ horses came and went. Every so often she’d find his hat among all the other hats, as you find one particular star, and the knot behind her ribs would loosen a turn.

The trouble started between events.

A gate clanged behind the chutes, and then a horse was screaming. Not calling. Screaming. The crowd noise sagged and turned as a young sorrel gelding fought its way around the holding pen, a torn banner off the fence tangled at his hindquarters and snapping with every stride, alive.

Handlers scattered back from the panels. Somebody’s rope missed. The animal went up, came down crooked, and went up again, and the pen boomed every time he struck it. Along the rail, men shouted advice at each other, which as far as Cecelia could tell is what men do when nobody knows what to do.

“He’s going to break a leg,” Wendy breathed. “Or somebody’s skull.”

The announcer asked folks to please stay clear of the pens. The horse screamed again. And then a hat was moving through the crowd the wrong way, against the grain, unhurried.

“Jason,” she whispered.

He didn’t climb the panel. He came around by the gate, spoke to the man frozen beside it, and let himself in. He latched it behind him, which sent a murmur down the rail.

Then he stopped. And did nothing.

The gelding tore around the pen with the banner snapping behind him. Jason stood a little off center with his hands at his sides and his shoulders turned just so, and he was, as far as Cecelia could tell, the only thing on the grounds not looking at the horse.

The circles shortened.

The grandstand quiet spread section by section, until the banner popping and the animal’s blowing breath carried.

“Tell me he’s not,” said the man standing next to the rail.

“Hush up,” said another man near the ring.

She never heard what Jason said. His mouth moved, low and steady, and the near ear swiveled toward him and stayed. The horse stopped. He stood with his sides heaving, and Jason turned his shoulder and looked away down the pen. The gelding took one step toward him. Then another.