one
. . .
SIENNA
I’d been hired to manage a guy who made a living trying to get himself killed.
On my laptop screen, Brock Wilder clung one-handed to a bucking horse, his body snapping forward with every hard landing. His other arm hung loose like he didn’t give a damn. Under the brim of his hat, he looked bored out of his mind.
Four seconds. Five. Six. The horse spun and kicked, but he didn’t budge.
Seven. Eight. The buzzer went off, yet Brock stayed on. Two men rode in to help him dismount, and he ignored them. Eight seconds was all he needed for a score, and anything after that was pure showing off. He lifted his free hand high, playing to the crowd. Those extra moments of cockiness cost him, because the next buck launched him off.
He hit the ground rolling, his shirt ripping open at the shoulder as he slid through the dirt. When he pushed himself up, the fabric hung torn, exposing a strip of tanned muscle.
He stood there, sweat running down his throat. For a man who'd nearly broken his neck, he looked far too pleased with himself.
This was who they were sending me to fix.
I snapped the laptop shut, face burning. The woman in the aisle seat, who’d been knitting since Denver, elbowed me in the shoulder.
“Oh, sorry, hon,” she said. “I get real into it when I’m working.”
“It’s fine,” I muttered.
She held up the pink bundle in her lap and smiled. “Making a baby blanket for my granddaughter.”
“That’s really sweet.”
I tried to shift toward the window from my cramped middle seat, but the guy in the cowboy hat was sprawled against it, dead asleep since takeoff. Between the yarn and those sharp elbows, there wasn’t much room left for me.
I opened the laptop again anyway. This time I went straight for the video, the one that had started all of this.
It was ten seconds long, muted, and had already racked up two million views in seventy-two hours. There was Brock in a crowded bar, half a second before his fist connected with another man’s jaw. The clip cut off right as the other guy swung back at him hard.
The woman’s elbow caught me again. Her yarn slid off her lap and pooled against my knee.
“Oh, shoot—I’m so sorry, honey!”
I bent to scoop it up, winding the loose yarn back into a ball before handing it to her. “Here you go.”
“Thank you, sweetheart. You’re a doll. Where are you from? You don’t sound like you’re from around here.”
I smiled. “Chicago.”
“Oh, Chicago! That’s a long way from Wyoming. What brings you all the way out to Sheridan?”
I hesitated, forcing a light tone. “I’m here to clean up after a man who can’t seem to behave himself.”
She let out a soft laugh. “Lord, there’s plenty of those. Is he family?”
“No. A client.”
“Good luck, honey. Men out here don’t make it easy.” She held the yarn out toward me. “Would you mind holding this while I cast off? It keeps tangling on me.”
“Sure,” I said, taking it from her.
She kept knitting, then spoke again. “My granddaughter’s turning three soon. My daughter married a rancher’s boy. Nice family, but those winters are no joke. I keep telling her to move closer to Cheyenne so I can spoil that baby properly. Somewhere with a Target nearby, at least.”
