Once a Champion. Jeannie Watt
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used to hit the roping every time he was in town, but when Trena had turned his life upside down, he’d stopped going. Then, when he’d failed to qualify for the finals for the first time in seven years...well, he just hadn’t felt like socializing after that. He’d stayed home and trained, then headed to Texas to start what had been a golden season right up until his foot had hung up in the stirrup in Austin.
He parked and felt a stir of anticipation as he watched a steer leave the chute at a dead run and the horses and riders charge after it a few seconds later. The pickups and trailers parked next to the fence blocked his view, but he could see the cowboys’ loops swinging.
Okay, maybe this had been a mistake. All it did was remind him of what he couldn’t yet do. Maybe in a week, two at the most, he’d be roping from horseback, but for right now he was stuck on the ground roping the dummy for hours on end.
He needed to get out of here. He’d meet up with his friends at another time, another place. Just before he turned the key in the ignition, he was startled by a knock on the passenger window. Wes Warner waved at him through the glass and Matt put the window down.
“Should you be here?” Wes asked with a smile that barely showed under his thick mustache.
“I was just discussing that with myself,” Matt said. Wes, a former bronc rider whose career had been cut short by a car accident, was no stranger to injury or the disappointment of losing a promising career.
“Want a beer while you carry on your conversation?”
“Sure.” Craig had assured him that all was well when he’d called the house half an hour ago so one beer wouldn’t hurt.
Wes gestured with his head and Matt got out of the pickup and followed him to the tailgate of his truck, which faced away from the arena.
“Did you find your horse?” Wes asked as he pulled a longneck out of the cooler and handed it to Matt. “I heard he was on the Bailey Ranch.”
“He is,” Matt said, twisting off the top.
“Why does Tim have a horse?” Wes opened his own bottle, which foamed over the top and onto his pants before he took a long pull.
“Not Tim. Liv.”
“Liv has your horse?” Wes wiped the back of his hand across his mustache, clearing it of foam. “Quiet Liv Bailey? I didn’t even know she rode.”
“She rides,” Matt muttered. Shae had once told him that Liv was actually an accomplished rider, but lacked the drive to be a real competitor. Funny words from a girl who was mainly interested in competing in the queen contests and not in the events.
Wes leaned back against the side of the truck. “How’d she end up with your animal? Isn’t she living in Billings?”
“She’s on the ranch right now, and I have no idea how she ended up with him.”
Wes scratched the side of his head. “She and Trena weren’t friends or anything, were they?”
Matt snorted. “As far as I know they weren’t.” Trena and Liv had traveled in different circles. Way different circles. Almost to the point of being on different planets.
Trena had moved to Dillon at the beginning of their senior year, a California transplant. Blonde. Beautiful. Not a rural bone in her body. She’d arrived with the kind of splash that would have sent shy Liv running for cover, instantly making the girls jealous and the guys pant. It’d taken her almost a nanosecond to hook up with the king of the football team, Russell Marshall.
Matt had been doing his damnedest to pass his classes and stay on the rodeo team, thus the tutoring sessions with Liv, and hadn’t made a play for her back then. He’d been more focused on his own kind—rodeo girls such as Liv’s stepsister, Shae—and that had remained his focus until his early twenties when he and Trena had run into each other again when he’d come back to Dillon during the hiatus after the NFR. They’d clicked in a big way, and the next thing he knew, they were married. Happily. For a while.
Trena had sworn that she wouldn’t mind going on the road with him, but the reality, even with a state-of-the-art live-in trailer, had been too much for her. She’d wanted to rent motel rooms, eat out, fly everywhere. Spend money as fast as he made it. He made good money, too, but not enough to spend like that.
The next year she didn’t go on the road with him. That had spelled the beginning of the end, although Matt hadn’t known it at the time.
The gate banged shut behind them and a few seconds later a cowboy Matt didn’t know rode by. He nodded at Wes, who nodded back.
“There’s a get-together later tonight at the Lion’s Den,” Wes said. “We’re making some plans for the Fourth of July rodeo.”
“I have to get home,” Matt said. “I’m, uh, babysitting.”
Wes coughed. “You?”
“Me. For Willa’s kid.”
“Does he rope?”
“He loads the dishwasher.”
“That’s a handy talent,” Wes said.
“Even if I wasn’t taking care of the kid,” Matt said, “I’m not feeling all that social right now.” He set the bottle on the edge of the truck bed. “I thought I was, but...I shouldn’t have come down here yet.”
“So what are your plans?” Wes asked quietly. “Now that you’re back in the area.”
“My plans are to heal my knee in time for the Bitterroot Challenge.”
Wes sent him a dubious look. “Is that possible?”
A twist of the knife. “I won’t know unless I try.”
“That’s right,” Wes said. “You gotta try.”
“I’ve seen guys come back from worse injuries than this,” Matt said, not liking how defensive he sounded.
“Me, too.”
Matt swallowed the last of his beer and tossed the bottle into the trash can near the fence. “I’ve seen guys come back from broken backs and climb back up on a bull again.”
“You kinda gotta wonder if they got kicked in the head one too many times.”
“You’re missing the point,” Matt said.
Wes smiled from beneath his mustache and took another drink of his beer. “Other than healing, what are your plans?”
To rodeo for another five years. He was thirty, single and not ready to settle down. When he did settle down, it might not even be in Dillon. His mother would hate that, but sometimes he thought it would be best if he didn’t settle too close to his dad.
“And I mean other than rodeo.”
“I don’t know.”
“You could start a babysitting business.”
“I could punch you in the face,” Matt said conversationally and Wes smiled. “I don’t have any set plans,” he admitted. “Other than the one I just told you.”
“You might want to come up with one. Just a bit of advice from one injured rodeo man to another.”
Coming up with a backup plan felt like admitting defeat before he’d even started to fight the battle.
“You could go back to college. Here at Western.”
Matt made a dismissive gesture. He didn’t want to go back to college. Not at his age. He had no idea what he wanted to do with his future.
“I’ll come up with some kind of plan.” It’d probably involve raising hay and roping horses, which sounded pretty damned boring. He wasn’t ready to go that route yet.
“And the horse?”
“I’m getting