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After spending long summers riding outdoors, where the dirt got dry and hard in August, and spending plenty of time in the red soil of eastern Montana, the dark, thick indoor soil had been as foreign as the bright lights and giant crowds. After a few months, I’d gotten used to it. The bright lights and giant crowds at least. The soil still felt wrong, but I couldn’t let rituals die just because the dirt felt strange.
I was sifting the last of it through my fingers when I heard someone come up behind me. I knew who it was without looking. Before I knew it, I was smiling . . . and I wasn’t supposed to be the goddamned smiling idiot.
“There’s a rumor going around that Garth Black is signing women’s bras at the end of the rider’s hallway.”
The last of the soil slipped through my fingers. “You know what a rumor is, right?”
“A half truth.”
I lifted myself up, fighting every instinct to whirl around and wrestle her into my arms. The other thing I hadn’t known about “realizing” my dreams in the arena was that it meant spending plenty of nights in roadside hotels and waking up to a cold bed. Being away from Joze so much was the worst part of it, but a bull rider’s career only lasted a few years. My plan was to win as many competitions and cash as many checks as I could before I was either forced or broken enough to retire. Then I’d spend the rest of my life crawling into bed beside the woman I loved. If I made the same kind of money for the next couple years that I had this past year, we’d be all set to remodel the old farmhouse we’d purchased last summer and purchase the thousand acres around the house to raise cattle on. That was our goal. The guy who’d wanted nothing better than riding bulls and winning buckles wanted to retire as a cattle rancher. Go figure.
“Are you asking me or accusing me?” I tilted my head back just enough to see her silhouette behind me.
Josie’s hand flew to her hip, making my smile stretch. She was about as jealous a girlfriend as she was a prim and proper one, but she was up to something.
“Neither,” she answered, moving closer. “I came to get my own Garth Black autograph . . . right here.”
The coy act was over. Whipping around, I found Josie unbuttoning the top couple buttons of her shirt and pulling it down to reveal the top of her bra.
“Joze,” I warned, looking around and ready to prod any wandering, gaping, or otherwise inappropriate-looking eyes.
“Come on. I want an autograph.” She fingered the top ridge of her bra, playing with it. My throat went dry. “With the way he’s been riding this past year, an official Garth Black autographed bra should fetch me at least a few hundred bucks on eBay.”
I feigned a look of insult. “A few hundred? Try a few thousand.”
She smiled, continuing to play with the cup of her bra. “That’s nice . . . but sign my bra already. Before I’m forced to get physical with you.” She wet her lips, slowly and deliberately, as she moved closer.
Shit. I was supposed to be focusing on my ride and doing the whole visualization thing, but the only thing I was visualizing was Josie’s bra and the rest of her clothing winding up in a pile at her feet.
“Now why would I give you your autograph with that threat on the table?” My boots couldn’t stay where they were any longer. I found myself moving toward her without making a conscious decision.
When my arms were about to ring around her waist, she pulled a pen from her pocket and lifted it in front of my face. “My autograph,” she said in a firm voice, tapping the lace of her bra with her finger. “Now.”
I took the pen and pulled the cap off with my teeth. “I can’t say no to my biggest fan, now can I?”
Josie’s eyes held mine as she raised an eyebrow. “Saying no isn’t exactly your strong suit when it comes to me.”
A crooked smile slid into place as I dropped the tip of the pen to her chest. “No, it isn’t.”
Signing a girl’s bra was harder than a guy might like to believe. The unevenness of the lace matched with the knowledge of what that material is covering or, depending on the style, just barely covering, made focusing on signing one’s name legibly and correctly next to impossible.
“Oops,” I said as I finished signing my last name on her skin. It may or may not have been done intentionally.
Josie gave me a look, knowing every bit how intentional it had been. “So? How did it compare?”
I capped the pen and handed it back to her, admiring my autograph . . . or admiring the spot where it was. My handwriting was sloppy as hell and looked more like a middle schooler’s graffiti than a grown man’s signature. “How did what compare?”
“Signing your girlfriend’s bra next to signing the rest of those”—Josie cleared her throat to substitute the word, or string of words, she’d been considering—“bras?”
My brows were nearly hidden beneath the brim of my hat, so she couldn’t see them pull together. “There is no comparison.”
Sh
e smiled at where I’d signed my name, tracing the letters of my last name with her finger. I realized just how perfect this moment was for pulling out the ring in my back pocket. I had planned on waiting until after the competition, when I’d had a shower and was in fresh clothes, and doing it over a fancy dinner with a fancy bottle of champagne, but this was the moment. I knew it. She was with me for the first time in three weeks, and she was smiling at my last name scribbled on her body—the same last name I was hoping with everything I had left to hope with that she’d want to make her own one day.
I might have had a plan for how I’d wanted to propose, but life was meant to be spontaneous. The same went for engagements.
“Have you been working on that ‘there is no comparison’ answer for a while, Black?” She finished tracing the K before lifting her eyes to mine. “Because it was a good one. I guess since I’ve hardly seen you for a solid twenty-four hours this past month, you’ve had plenty of time to work on it.”
