Stops in the dirt and turns and looks at me.
She holds the look.
Long. Longer than she has to. Long enough that I have to decide—do I stand up, do I tip my hat, or do I do nothing?
I do nothing and she smiles.
Small. Crooked. Like she expected exactly that.
She walks the rest of the way to the main house and doesn't look back.
It’s getting so fucking hard to restrain myself. I doubt she realizes it, but I'm not going to last much longer.
CHAPTER SIX
Dakota
It's two weeks after the bet, and I haven't slept more than four hours in a row since.
That's the math of it.
Two weeks of dawn at the round pen with Spur, of afternoons on Jaeger drilling for Stephenville, of Spur staying six feet away from me every morning while a wild horse closes the gap he won't.
Two weeks of the brush at the gate that I have replayed in my head until the memory is so worn the edges don't match the original anymore.
I'm working second-barrel drills at three in the afternoon when Buckley shows up at the rail.
Presley's tumbler is on the fence post next to my water jug.
Initials etched on the side in something she clearly fought a Cricut machine to produce.
The gas station coffee inside it has been cold for an hour.
I haven't dumped it because the tumbler is the third thing I refuse to put down today, after my reins and Earl's knife in my boot.
Buckley leans on the rail with one boot up on the bottom rung and his elbows hooked over the top. "Lookin' good out there, Lyle."
I bring Jaeger around, walk him to the rail, and sit there in the saddle.
I look down at Buckley with my hand loose on the horn. "You watching me ride or you watchingme, Buckley?"
He grins. The wrong kind of grin.
The grin a man does when he thinks he's about to land something.
"Both, if I'm being honest."
I let him sit there for a second. I think about how he timed this.
Spur isn't in the practice pen, isn't at the round pen.
Spur drove out an hour ago to look at a new rescue prospect in Kerrville and won't be back until five.
Buckley knows that, which means he was waiting.
I look at the patch on his cut, or the absence of one.
Prospect rocker on the back. Nothing else.
