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“If you don’t get killed, you’ll have a career-ending injury.”
They came around to that. They’d come around to this.
Eventually.
She hoped.
Bull riding was the next big event that the Women’s Professional Rodeo Circuit of America was going to introduce—at least according to the rumors. And LeAnn was determined to dominate, right from the start.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Trent Campbell wandering over to her. She hid a grimace. He hadn’t wanted to train her against her parents’ wishes, but as she had told him, she was twenty-two and it didn’t matter what they thought. LeAnn got the impression that he hadn’t really wanted to train her because she was a woman, but he never came outright and said that. And to be fair, once she started training with him during the rodeo circuit’s off-season, he hadn’t treated her any differently than his other students.
The other men, on the other hand, had plenty to say about it. Some of them were just concerned that a “pretty little girl like her was going to get seriously hurt.” Some of them thought she should go make them a sandwich, because women didn’t belong in the rodeo. And a few didn’t care one way or another, as long as she didn’t get special treatment. She liked the last type better, but it hadn’t made the past three months a whole lot of fun.
“What did you do wrong?” Trent asked as he came up alongside her.
Squinting at the bull rider in the arena, staying on a full eight seconds, LeAnn compared his ride to hers. “My knees weren’t secure around the bull.”
“And?”
LeAnn blew out a breath. “My upper body was too tight.” She twisted back and forth to relieve her taut muscles. She was going to be sore and bruised tomorrow.
“It didn’t help that Minotaur was in one hell of a mood today.” Trent clapped her on the shoulder.
She did her best not to wince.
“Shit. Sorry. Do you need to see a doctor?”
“No,” LeAnn said. “I didn’t dislocate it or anything. I just landed on it wrong.”
“Are you done for the day?”
LeAnn thought about it. She really wanted to be. But if the rumors were true, the WPRC was going to announce their new event soon. And LeAnn needed all the practice she could get if she was going to win the grand prize for being the first female bull-rider champion in WPRC history. The grand prize was a gold belt buckle and fat purse of one hundred thousand dollars.
The win would give LeAnn enough notoriety that she could attract some big-name sponsors. Even after the winning season she had just come off of, the sponsors were still a little gun-shy about hiring her to represent their brands. The problem was that they still thought of her as a disgraced rodeo princess instead of the damned fine athlete she was. LeAnn hated the uphill climb of getting her reputation back, but she was willing to put in the hours.
“I’ve got a few more in me,” she told Trent as she dusted herself off.
“Just don’t push it. I don’t want you headed out to the first rodeo of the season hurt.”
“Don’t worry about me,” LeAnn said. “I got this.”
“If you’re sure you can go another round, you’re going to be on Apis,” Trent said.
LeAnn scowled. “Apis is a muley and hardly even kicks.”
“That’s right, because you need to concentrate on your form. Give me any more lip and you can ride the mechanicals for the rest of the day.”
LeAnn bit back her retort and resigned herself to getting on the hornless bull with a disposition that was almost sweet—comparably speaking.
Trent was a good riding instructor. He had built his bull-riding school on the Three Sisters Ranch in Last Stand, Texas. Over the years, he had expanded into teaching all rodeo events, bringing on June Grayson—the other Wild Grayson Sister—to teach barrel racing. It had been four years since LeAnn had had to compete against a Grayson sister, and she couldn’t say she missed the experience. She liked them well enough outside of the arena, but inside they had been tough competitors and very hard to beat.
In the months following her loss to Merry all those years ago, she had partied hard to avoid thinking about what that loss had meant to her. She’d stayed out late, learned how to drink, and got involved with a crowd that was more about partying after the rodeo than the rodeo itself. But she had wrested back control of her life after breaking up with Mick last season.
And after that, it seemed like the rodeo gods had smiled on her. Or maybe it had been Dylan encouraging her to take back control of her career. LeAnn had won the women’s bronc-busting championship for the first time. Before that, the best she had gotten was second place. It had taken all her effort in the last few months of the rodeo to pull it off.
She had been proud of her second-place showings as well, but as her ex-boyfriend liked to say to her, “Second place is first loser.” She hated that she still allowed Mick to rent space in her head. She was working on evicting the sad son of a bitch, but for the moment, every nasty thing that she said or thought about herself sounded like it came straight from his mouth.
“It’s just eight seconds,” LeAnn muttered to herself as she settled on the bull in the bucking chute. She could do it on the smaller bulls like Apis and Minotaur. But she was having a harder time with the larger ones. Still, she assured herself that she just needed more practice.
