He couldn’t wait for Turn Around Ranch to show up ready to take names and show the townsfolk what the teens could accomplish when they put their minds to something. In fact, he supposed it was time for a bit of trash talking.
Brady pulled out his phone and tapped out a text.
Brady: Two minutes into our training, and I’m actually starting to feel bad about the whooping my team’s gonna give yours.
Tanya: Liar.
He was about to send a not-so-innocent “Who, me?” reply, but his phone buzzed with another message.
Tanya: You forget that I’ve been around you when you go into competitive mode, and feeling bad about winning is hardly your MO. Since I haven’t even formed my team yet, sounds like I’m gonna have to play a little dirty.
Brady’s heart thumped harder in his chest, and for reasons he couldn’t explain, the phrase play a little dirty flashed through his mind like a neon light. He hovered his thumbs over the keypad and searched his brain for a witty comeback. Once again, Tanya was faster.
Tanya: Speaking of whipping, I think I have a nice braided whip in the tack room. Sounds like I’m going to have to dig it out and teach you a lesson.
Holy shit. Brady’s throat went dry, and his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. Like her tit-for-tat comment about showing each other theirs, he was sure she hadn’t meant for it to come out sounding so…dirty.
Then again, she did say she was gonna play dirty. His mind hovered over the gutter, one wrong stray thought from diving in. Was this a tactic? Using her feminine wiles on him to throw him off his game?
Nah. That wasn’t her style. In fact, he’d be in danger of bodily harm if he so much as implied she’d stoop that low. This was his dry spell messing with his head again. Brady exhaled a shallow breath and reminded himself that when it came to his best friend, inappropriate thoughts crossed a serious line. Picturing her in a leather dominatrix outfit was also off-limits, and he slammed that mental door shut as fast as he could.
But that blip of the image he’d unintentionally conjured was liable to haunt him for days.
With his brain tiptoeing into dangerous territory, he needed to get his head straight. No letting the heat of competition trick him into contemplating things about Tanya that he hadn’t pondered for years. First during that reckless dance at prom, and another stretch of time last year, when they’d been road-tripping along the rodeo circuit and he’d let himself wonder what if too many times.
Before promptly shutting the thought down, the same way he was doing now.
Brady pocketed his phone and continued pacing the line of training drills. After some time to cool down, he’d think up a clever comeback. One that didn’t have a big ol’ undercurrent of perviness to it.
Chapter 4
The first few trail rides with a new group were often the longest. Not in terms of distance but in how long it took the people visiting the dude ranch to ride less than a mile. For a lot of their clients, it was one of their first times on a horse—if not the first—so Tanya did her best to keep her patience.
Diesel, however, didn’t even try. As a result of their rodeo glory days, her stocky paint horse was used to charging through gates at ridiculously fast speeds. The tight turning skills that’d been honed from years of barrel racing also meant that he’d bolted for Loretta Wilson’s apple tree the instant Tanya had loosened her grip on the reins and twisted to check on the dude-ranch crew.
The leather of the saddle creaked as Tanya leaned over the horn to whisper soothing words in his flickering ears. “I know you like to go fast, buddy, but we have to wait for the rest of the group.”
Diesel nickered and stomped a foot, heavy on the attitude. If Tanya could get away with that move without looking like a crazy person, she’d do the same. She could hardly lecture Diesel on patience when hers was stretching thinner with every minute that passed without a response from Brady.
About ten minutes ago, she’d been texting away, alternating currents of glee and anxiety making a mess of her internal organs. She was being bold and flirty, and in response, she’d gotten nada. What fun was trash-talk if the other person didn’t respond in kind?
Had she been too bold? Sent too many texts too fast? One of the tips in her dating book suggested walking away after delivering a great line. Theory being, the guy’s head would keep spinning on it, leaving him wanting.
Either wanting to explore more, which left the ball in his court, or he wouldn’t take the bait and that probably meant… A lump formed in her throat.
What am I gonna do if he’s completely uninterested? Tanya had tried so hard to shut off any romantic feelings for Brady, to no avail. Now she was thinking she should’ve never sent that retort involving a whip. She’d giggled as she’d typed it, quickly hitting Send before she could chicken out. That was the nice thing about texting. If she’d had to look Brady in the face while saying it, her mouth never would’ve followed through.
Tanya lifted her phone and growled at it for not having a message. Man, this dating thing was frustrating and complicated, especially when she factored in the friendship aspect.
But the same as the most formidable competitions at the biggest rodeos, it was better to try than to always wonder what could’ve been, right?
At the sound of approaching horses, Tanya slid her phone in her pocket. One at a time, the stragglers crested the hill, her coworker Miguel bringing up the back.
Eric sat astride Taffy, one of their older, milder horses. The guy rode super bumpy, bouncing instead of syncing his movements along with the horse, but that took time. Riding also took a toll on the inner thighs if you weren’t used to it, and the way he fidgeted suggested he was feeling it.
“How’s it going?” Tanya asked as he sidled up beside her and Diesel.
“Fine.” Eric relaxed his stiff arms, and Taffy interpreted that as being time for a grazing break. “Ahhh, wait, no!”
Eric teetered forward, the saddle horn digging into his gut and saving him from sliding down the horse’s neck. Tanya snagged the reins, tugging Taffy’s head back up and giving Eric a chance to regain his bearings.
“I have ridden before,” he said. “It’s just been a while.”
“That explains why you ride like popcorn kernels in boiling oil,” she teased. Judging from the scrunch of his blond eyebrows, her joke had gone over his head. “You know. Bouncing and popping.”
“Oh, I definitely heard some popping. I’m afraid to climb off the horse and see which part of me it was.”
Tanya laughed, and a smile spread across Eric’s face. Admittedly, it was a handsome face—something Mom unsubtly pointed out this morning. The polished, clean-shaven, suit-wearing men had never been Tanya’s type. Not that it mattered to Mom. Regardless of how long or short their guests planned to stay, if one of them was even semi-near Tanya’s age, Mom attempted to play matchmaker. Once with a guy who had a girlfriend, and it’d been super awkward to explain that she understood his need to clarify, but she wasn’t the one who’d left the flirty note with her number on the nightstand.