Chapter 21
Maggie
For the first time in my life, I have a problem hard work and smarts won’t solve. I tap away on my laptop in my room at home in the lodge, only to backspace the entire thing into nonexistence.
Groaning, I slam my eyes shut.
Specifically, my problem entails a handsome-as-hell cowboy who’s not only taken me by surprise... he’s taken up permanent residence in my brain. Despite my best efforts to concentrate on the article in front of me, the only topic my grey matter is interested in is Hadley damn Jones.
I mean, there are worse problems to have.
But it’s a problem when I can’t concentrate long enough to finish a sentence, let alone an article.
And it’s due today.
In an hour, to be precise.
I snap my eyes open.
To a blank screen and the mocking cursor with its little rhythmic dance.
Writing was never my favorite part of being a photojournalist. That’s why I went the imagery route in the firstplace. Right now, my lackluster skill in this area is biting me in the ass.
Big time.
No matter how much I try, I can’t focus, and I can’t piece together an article about Kade Knox. He gave me almost nothing to work with. What the hell was with the secrecy and limited answers? Something tells me there is much more to Kade than he lets others see. It has me intrigued, in a curious kind of way. There must be a story behind all that arrogance.
Brady and Spencer are practically open books and always going out of their way to help me. Why couldn’t my first article be on one of them? Or better still, the man my mind is hung up on ever since he protected me from my worst fear and then hauled me to the front seat like I weighed nothing.
Stupid, swoon-worthy, damn dark-haired, brown-eyed man.
Not to mention the little slip up on the bunk. I don’t know what on earth came over me, but I was more than ready to be all over Hadley.
I drop my head into my hands with a groan.
This is not happening.
No rodeo men.
No cowboys. Period.
I won’t live the trauma my mother lived. I won’t be stuck in some backwater small town and give up on my dreams. I saw firsthand how Mom’s life fell apart. I still remember, even though I was little.
So, as handsome as Hadley is, and as much as I feel a connection and one hell of an attraction... No. Nothing serious.
If anything.
I’ve worked too hard and been through too much to toss away my career for a cowboy and his ranch. I steel myself against the unease the thought brings.
It’s for the best.
Have some fun, don’t get attached.
I can do that, right?
Pushing away from the desk on the office chair, the wheels scoot over the hardwoods and I spin round, rising to my feet. Going through every speck of information Knox painstakingly doled out, I try to patch together an article the folks who follow the PBR circuit, the sport, and its riders in general will enjoy.
Knox certainly didn’t make it easy.
