Last of the Red-Hot Cowboys (32 page)

“That easy?”

Trace hesitated. “What?”

“Is it that easy? You're just going to give me her trailer and her horse, then send me off?”

“If that's what Ava wants.” What else could he do? Ava knew her own mind; she was a strong girl. If she wasn't coming back to Hell, he couldn't blame her.

He was going to miss her like crazy. Felt like he was going to die, a strange pain
in his chest he'd never experienced before.

“You're kind of a pussy,” Callum said, sighing. “I see why Ava cut you loose.” He stood, grabbed his receipt. “I'll meet you out front. Pay my cab, will you? Pretty sure you owe it to me since I came all this way just to hear a bunch of nonsense.”

Callum went to the register, and Judy slid into his booth. Trace glared at her.

“You let me take a sucker punch.”

“You needed something to wake you up out of the fog you've been walking around in!” Judy glanced at Callum. “Now look, you've run off my princess and one of my team. I'm going to have to replace her, and I'm not happy about it. You get out there and you tell her overly large brother that he's not taking her horse, her trailer, her truck, her saddle, anything out of Hell!”

“If she wants to go, Judy, she's going to go.”

She stared at him, her eyes huge. “You big baby.”

“It's a free country, Judy. You can't make people do what they don't want to.”

“The hell I can't! I've been doing it since you were playing cowboy on a saddle your daddy put on the ground for you. You go get my best girl back.”

“I can't hold her things hostage, Judy.”

“No, but you can sweet-talk Giant Jim out there into thinking maybe his sister's acting hasty.”

Hattie slid into the booth next to Judy. “Trace, that man is hitting the road for Virginia today.”

“Why would he hang around here?”

“Trace is so dense,” Judy said to Hattie as Steel crowded his big frame into the booth.

“Trace, this is the time for action,” Steel said. “I'm going to have a really unhappy female on my hands if you keep screwing this up the way you have. It's the biggest mess since, well, since the night you boys decided to—”

Trace held up a hand to stop Steel from taking them all down memory lane. This crew had a laundry list of his sins, starting from a time he was too young to remember. Sometimes he was pretty sure they made things up just to keep him in line. “So you want me to convince him that maybe Ava is acting rashly, that she should reconsider coming
back here?”

They all nodded.

Trace shook his head, stood. “Ava's not coming back here because of
me
. Not the team, not Hell—me. I'm the problem.”

“Yes!” they all exclaimed.

“For the first time in your life,” Judy said, “you have hit the nail square on the head. You
are
the problem!”

“Of your own making,” Steel said.

Trace handed some money to Hattie for his coffee. Picked up his hat. “What you three don't understand is that Ava's made the right decision.”

He walked out to find Callum.

* * *

“That's it,” Judy said. “We've lost. She won't be coming back. I underestimated Trace's aversion to love.”

“To be fair,” Steel said, “I think he would have carried on the way they were, if Ava had wanted to. It was Ava who chose to end it, babe.”

Hattie nodded. “I'm afraid I have to agree with Steel. You said you were hiring three spirited, determined, independent women, and that's exactly what you got.”

Rory slid into the booth opposite them. “I heard Trace's jaw crack from the other side of the Rolling Thunder. Did it help?”

“Rattle his brains? Shake up some common sense?” Steel shook his head. “Nope. Because he was right in the first place. Ava wanted to move on.”

Rory made room for Ann Chandler to push in next to him. “You all look so glum I can tell the plan's died a tearful death.”

“Well, I've got two girls,” Judy said. “I'll just have to bring on a third. Luckily, I have some alternates, but I swear, this has taken me by surprise. I may have to sit down and do some better planning, or my rodeo is never going to get off the ground.”

“Sure it will,” Ann said. “You know the best plans are flexible.”

“Not if those Outlaws keeping running off my princesses.” Judy felt like she
might cry, which she never, ever did. “Damn it, I really liked Ava. She was like the daughter I'll never have.”

They all stared at her. Steel hugged her, parked her up against him. She let him comfort her for a moment, then took a deep breath. “It's not the first time I've been knocked off my horse, and it damn sure won't be the last. I just backed the wrong couple, that's all.” She brightened, considering her options. “There's always Saint. He's ripe for a fall. And little Michael is here now with Harper. I haven't met Michael yet, but I just know there's father material inside Declan.”

Then again, the score was Judy 0, Outlaws 1.

* * *

Trace sent Callum on his way and trudged down to the pond with Prince, feeling low. Lower than low. It was quiet down here among the pines, and the soft breeze should have been comforting. Floating and staring at the sky thinking about nothing should have been tempting.

He sat on the pier with a beer and stared at the water glistening in the hot sun.

The whole thing sucked. Somehow his life had changed entirely when he wasn't looking. His brothers were gone. Ava was gone. It was all wrong. “All I've got is you, dog.”

Prince dove into the water, paddling, unconcerned about human problems. All that mattered was the cool pond and the lacy skirt he'd grabbed off one of the chairs. Trace sat up. “Come here, boy. Let me see what you've got there.”

It was the white skirt Ava had been wearing—and inside that was the purple lace thong he'd kissed off her body. She must have left them down here when she'd changed—it had been dark that night. He hadn't seen her the next morning when she and the girls had left, but it had been early. She'd probably put her swimsuit back on, maybe wrapped a towel around her. Come to think of it, he'd come up short a bath towel, figured it was in the dryer.

Ava had planned to come back to retrieve her clothes at some point. She either hadn't been too worried about them, knowing she'd see him again, or she truly hadn't
remembered after the girls' night out party.

After he'd made love to her until the early hours of the morning.

“Good boy, Prince.” He stared at the short skirt and the purple lace, missing her like hell. The dog jumped back into the water, pleased at the praise.

Trace sat on the pier thinking until he felt a sunburn coming on. Then he whistled for his dog to get out of the pond, and headed to the barn.

She didn't want to see him or talk to him, or she wouldn't have sent Callum. Something had changed between that late night at the pond and now.

The Postal Service could return her clothes to her.

* * *

A month later, Saint and Declan returned, roaring into the training center on brand-new motorcycles. Trace came out of the barn, annoyed by all the racket.

“What the hell are those?” he demanded. “You're going to spook the horses.”

“What the hell is that scrub on your face?” Saint asked, getting off his bike with pride. “Isn't she a beauty?” he asked, grinning at his new ride.

“These are our midlife crises,” Declan said. “We're the kings of the road. And what is that scruffy hair hanging from your chin? Has everything gone to hell since we've been gone?”

Trace rubbed at his beard. “You got bikes, I got a beard. Deal with it and get to work.”

He went back into the barn, feeling crusty, glad as heck his brothers had finally returned. But their exuberant homecoming shined a light on the funk he'd fallen into since Ava'd left.

Saint came into the barn. “What's up, brother? You look like you've died and gone to hell.”

He felt like it sometimes. Trace grunted. “As you can see, this place is in fine shape.”

“But you're not.” Declan threw himself into the chair across from Trace's desk, and the three of them lounged the way they always had in this office. “You look as if
you've been working too hard.” Declan eyed him carefully. “Maybe we shouldn't have dumped everything on you, dude.”

“Yeah,” Saint said. “Take my bike and hit the road for a week. Or longer. Jesus. I can't stand to see you like this.”

Trace leaned back in his chair. “I'm fine.” He wasn't. He couldn't get Ava out of his mind, and every day it seemed as if he missed her more. He'd washed her clothes and mailed them on, defeated by losing even that souvenir of the happiest times he'd had in … ever.

But a man had to respect her decision when a woman wanted a friendship to end.

Oh, hell, who was he kidding. They hadn't been friends.

She'd given him a lot of sweetness, and she hadn't wanted a casual relationship. Truthfully, he hadn't, either.

But he hadn't known what he wanted. Hadn't been prepared for Ava to blow into his life, changing him and forcing him to see things a new way.

Absentmindedly, he opened an envelope on his desk that was addressed to him—not the training center. A check fell out, and a note.

He stared at the note, and the check. Paid in full, so there would be no debt.

She was never coming back.

“I may take you up on that offer,” Trace said slowly. “You two can run this show for a while. I'll leave Prince with Steel. That'll ensure that Steel gets plenty of time with Judy—she adores my hound, and she and Steel can play house.” He smiled to himself, thinking that he owed Judy a little payback for the sexy bomb named Ava she'd tossed into his life. The more intimate arrangement with Steel would definitely put her into a bit of a tailspin.

“Where will you go?” Declan asked.

“Think I'll drive the coast of California. I've never seen it from the back of a bike.”

It was just what he needed. Maybe he could finally find some peace.

* * *

“Steel was right, Trace is feeling lower than a snake's belly.” Saint watched his brother hit the road on his bike, headed to “no place special,” in Trace's words. California, Oregon, maybe even Canada. It had been a long time since he'd been free, Trace had said, and he'd stuck his helmet on, the scruffy beard scruffier than ever, and waved goodbye.

“Good thing we came home when we did,” Declan said. “He might have turned into Grizzly Adams.”

“You think he'll ever pull his head out of his butt?”

Declan shook his head, worried. “Trace isn't the kind of man who dislodges his head easily.”

“Agreed.”

“Want to go mess up the Horsemen?” Saint asked. “I'm feeling like a rumble.”

Declan nodded. “Might as well. Trace can't be the only one of us who never pulls his head out.”

* * *

Judy stared at the plans for the onetime cotton barn she planned to retrofit into an arena for the rodeo she dreamed of. Prince sat at her side, adoring her as she petted him, something he was much better at than his owner, Judy thought. Prince knew how to suck up to ladies.

Trace did not.

Hence his dumb-ass problem.

“Steel,” she said, going to find her sheriff as he cooked on the new grill she'd bought him for his birthday. It was a big-ass grill, she'd told him, an outdoor kitchen, for
a big, strong man who needed a space of his own. “I'm going to have to bring on more girls, in spite of my misfire.”

Steel nodded. “I figured you'd come to that conclusion. Cameron and Harper are coming along fine, now that they're out at Rory's. You might as well move to the second phase.”

“It's such a shame.” She sighed. “Trace was happier with Ava. I believe he was crazier about that girl than he realized.”

“Can lead a horse to water. Can't make him drink, no matter how sweet the water, babe. You did your best to get those boys on the road to happiness. If you can't do it, no one can.”

She wrapped her arms around him from behind. “I'm crazy about you. Did I ever tell you that?”

“Nope.”

“I do on Saturday nights.”

He turned around and kissed her, and Judy moved into her sheriff's arms, glad he was always there for her.

* * *

It was the moment she'd waited so long for, and Ava could hardly contain her excitement. This was it: her chance to prove herself, to realize her dream, and put away the ghosts of her past.

Thanks to Trace.

She put on her gear, the butterflies in her stomach hitting a fluttery fever pitch. She'd arrived early as instructed, didn't mingle much with the cowboys. When Shorty waved her into the arena to go to work, she went without hesitation.

The first rider came out, was bucked off, scrambled away while she and the other bullfighters guided the bull from the arena.

Eight riders later, exhilaration flooded Ava. She could do this. No one took notice that she was a female; the audience couldn't tell the difference under the ball cap that covered her slicked-back hair, and she worked just as hard as the men.

It was going to be fine.

Just like Trace had told her: She could do it.

And she did.

Better than that, she'd learned things she needed to know about herself, about how much it had destroyed her when her brother had gotten injured. Most bullfighters were excellent, absolutely dedicated to protecting cowboys.

Liam had moved on after his injury. Now she could, too.

She also understood why she and Trace could never have worked out. Maybe he'd been right: She needed something Hell couldn't offer.