Page 68 of Dusty Spur Ranch Cowboys

Red glances over. “What?”

I almost let it go.

Standing here in a crowded bar with music playing and Willy arguing that livestock are capable of revenge, the whole thing feels ridiculous.

Maybe Annie was right. Maybe I spent too much time staring at a stranger and built an entire mystery around a guy sitting in the bleachers.

But the feeling hasn’t gone away. “Did you know somebody at the rodeo today?”

Red’s expression doesn’t change. “Such as?”

“There was a guy there.”

That gets his attention. “What guy?”

My stomach tightens.

I do my best to describe him. The baseball cap and the beard. Where he’d been sitting.

Then I explain the part that actually bothered me, the fact that while everyone else was watching the rodeo, he spent most of the afternoon watching Red.

Red sets his beer down.

The casual ease he’s been carrying all evening disappears. The smile is gone. His shoulders square slightly. Every bit of attention he has settles on me.

When I finish describing the man, Red rubs a hand across his jaw and lets out a breath. “Oh.”

The single word lands harder than it should.

Across the table, Willy’s expression changes too. Five minutes ago he was arguing that goats are capable of holding lifelong grudges.

Now he looks like somebody hit pause in the middle of a sentence and forgot to start him again. Which, frankly, is alarming.

Willy never stops talking voluntarily.

My pulse starts picking up. Because this reaction tells me I wasn’t imagining things in the stands. I wasn’t inventing a story because my brain got bored and decided to entertain itself.

The man was real, and whatever connection he has to Red is serious enough to suck every ounce of fun out of this table in under thirty seconds.

“Red.”

His eyes meet mine. I don’t miss the tension in his face.

Around us, the bar carries on as if nothing’s happened. Somebody feeds another song into the jukebox. A group near the front door erupts into laughter. Glasses hit tabletops.

At our table, though, the mood has shifted completely.

I keep waiting for somebody to explain what’s going on.

Nobody does.

“Arizona,” Red finally says, his gaze never leaving mine, “did he notice you watching him?”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Red

The second Arizona finishes describing the man, I know exactly who she’s talking about.