Page 2 of The Cowboy's Downfall
Lordy.Nix should have known those years as a bull riding instructor would come back to bite him one day. The same way he should’ve known Peggy was sleeping around.
He could see no way out, but he gave it a shot. “I’ve never trained kids.”
“We aren’t going to put them on our top performers,” Ryan said. “Levi’s got a few young bulls that aren’t fit for the pro circuit.”
Which wasn’t quite true. Levi Harrington was the genetics expert who ran the ranch’s breeding program, and he and Ryan didn’t see eye to eye on what turned a bull into a crowd pleaser. Levi liked to see one that tossed its rider and called it a day. Ryan had a greater affinity for violence. If a bull wasn’t chasing someone around the arena with blood in its eyes, then it wasn’t doing its job.
“Sign-ups are next Friday,” Ryan continued. “You’ll meet Remi at the school. The two of you can collect names and hand out permission slips for parents to sign.”
“Remi?” The tight band around Nix’s chest ratcheted a notch tighter. “Not questioning your judgment, but I don’t see him as a bull rider.”
Remi Forrest was one of the two boys the ranch had unloaded on the public school system. He was quiet and sullen, a petty thief with a fascination for break-and-enters, who’d someday, no doubt, graduate to bigger things. Jewelry stores. Museum heists, maybe. Dress Remi in black and he’d blend into the shadows where he normally skulked. He wasn’t a boy who liked being the center of attention, and bull riders were showmen at heart.
“That’s precisely why this will be good for him,” Ryan said, once Nix aired his reservations. “He’s no coward. He can sit an indifferent bull if he puts his mind to it.”Puts his mind to itwas the part that concerned Nix the most. That boy was harder to read than a bull with a 96 percent buck-off rate. “I’ll sweeten the deal,” Ryan added. “You take this on, and I’ll lend you one of my cars for that trip to Abilene.”
Ryan loved luxury cars—the faster, the better. He had five or six in his garage, and he didn’t mind lending them out to people he trusted, so this was kind of a big deal.
“The Spider?” Nix asked, pushing his luck. The Spider was a Ferrari488, custom-painted a British racing-car green, guaranteed to attract the highway patrol’s extra-special attention. He’d love to take it out to the racetrack and open it up.
“Anything but the AMG.”
That was the car Ryan normally drove. He loved it almost as much as he loved his wife—and it was no secret how much value he placed on Elizabeth O’Connell.
“I’m not driving it to Abilene, though,” Nix said, remembering why he might need a car. No way was he doing his ex-wife any favors. Those days were done.
“Sure, you’re not,” Ryan said. “Let me know when you want the keys.”
*
Shauna
“Are you serious?She was kicked out of another schoolalready? This was her first week!”
It had to be some sort of record.
Heads turned in the reception area outside of Shauna Walsh’s open office door. She was a real estate lawyer, and new to the Grand Cooper and Nash law firm, so her office, reserved for interns, wasn’t private. She took her mother off her cell’s speakerphone while skirting her desk to close the door.
“I didn’t send either of you to the best private schools for them to crush your spirits,” Natalie McKillop Morris replied, her words gently defensive. “Remember when you set the chemistry lab on fire?”
“That was an accident. Someone mislabeled the chemicals we used.”
Whether the mislabeling was accidental or deliberate remained up for debate. Either way, Shauna and her lab partner had been innocent. They’d never even been considered suspects. To this day, she was secretly insulted by that.
Her seventeen-year-old sister, on the other hand, wasn’t known as Taryn the Terror for nothing. She sported rebellion like a neon tattoo. This was the third private school to expel her. When was their mother going to admit that the problem was Taryn?
Right now, as it turned out.
“Private school’s not right for her,” Natalie said. She sounded tired. Taryn had that effect on most people. She tired Shauna out, too. “I’m sending her to Grand to stay with you. Let’s see what a year in a rural public school does for her. Besides, she listens to you way better than she does me.”
Wait. What?Blood pulsed in Shauna’s ears, applying an alarming amount of pressure to the top of her head, because Taryn didn’t listen to her. She listened to no one. “You can’t send her here.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Taryn was their mother’s daughter, too, after all. Through and through.
“I can and I will. If you won’t take her in, then I’ll speak to your grandfather. He has plenty of room. Taryn would be good company for him,” Natalie said.
Shauna pressed a palm to her forehead. The spoiled youngest child of late-in-life parents, Natalie had gotten pregnant with her eldest at seventeen. Shauna’s father, a year younger than Natalie, had been working on one of the local ranches that summer, and he’d been in no position to take on a baby. He’d high-tailed it for home as soon as he’d been given the news. His parents had paid child support on his behalf, asking only for visitation rights in return, and as a result, Shauna was much closer to them. They lived in Oklahoma. Her father and his young family lived somewhere in New Mexico. From what Shauna understood, his wife and sons knew nothing about her. The spineless coward.
Exactly the type of man Natalie enjoyed. Taryn’s father was ten years her junior, and between the two of them, they had enough trust fund money to do nothing but play. Meaning Shauna had grown up with children.
