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“Common sense?” Dylan drawled.
She smiled, but it seemed forced. “Must have been. Or divine intervention. I don’t know. Then it didn’t seem to matter anymore. I wanted to hurt Mick. I wanted to have a revenge fling.” She looked up at him with sorrow in her eyes. “So I used you.”
“That’s all right,” he said, feeling a little hurt even though he didn’t know why.
“Do you want a girlfriend?”
Did he? What could he offer a girlfriend? He didn’t even book a motel room tonight and had planned on warming something up in his hotpot that plugged into his truck’s twelve-volt power outlet.
She laughed. “You should see the look on your face.”
“I’m sorry, you just caught me off guard.”
“I was messing with you.” LeAnn relaxed more and her smile was more natural. “I had fun that night.”
“I did too.”
“I don’t want to pretend it never happened,” she said. “But I’m not the type of girl who will ever be into casual sex.”
“It’s okay,” Dylan said.
“No matter how tempted I am.”
Pleasure flared through him. “Are you tempted?”
She nodded, but held out a hand to stop him from moving closer. “I’m not making ultimatums here. I’m just telling it like it is. The next time I have sex, it’s going to be with a man I’m in a committed relationship with. If that can’t be you, then move along.”
“I hear you,” he said. He could be monogamous. That was easy. It was the other expectations that came with being in a relationship that made him wary of commitment. He called his truck his home. He was never in one place for more than a week because he followed the rodeos all over the United States, and when he could afford it, he went down to Mexico and South America in the off-season to compete down there.
“Is it going to be difficult to work with me as your trainer?” he asked, wanting to hold her against him. She looked like she needed a hug after saying all of that to him. Or maybe he needed one. Which was ridiculous because he had never needed a hug in his whole damned life.
“It might get weird, but I can handle it if you can.” She lifted her chin defiantly up at him.
Challenge accepted.
“All right then,” he said. “Let’s get started. We’ve got a couple of choices. There’s a bull-riding machine set up by the games of chance. The ride operator is a buddy of mine and he’ll let me run the controls. Or we can go to a park that I know of that has some oil drums set up and I can pull the lever and see what you’ve got.”
“What about a real bull?” LeAnn asked, putting her hands on her hips. “I can ride a real bull.”
“Not without a crew you can’t. I need to arrange a gate man and some bullfighters. You’re also going to have to practice with the men. There’s no keeping this a secret once you start doing that. Cowboys gossip like little old ladies. It’ll get back to your parents.”
LeAnn nibbled on her lower lip while she thought about it. He hoped she wouldn’t insist on the bulls. Some of them were regular sons of bitches. He’d have to snoop around and see if there was a milder bull in the bunch that one of the owners would let them use for practice so it could get experience along with LeAnn.
“Set it up,” she finally said. “I’ll do the mechanical tonight. But I want to get practice in on a live animal from now on. Once the WPRC makes their announcement, anyway, there won’t be any need to keep this a secret.”
“Okay,” he said. Dylan didn’t like it, but she was the boss.
Stretching, LeAnn grimaced and rubbed the center of her back.
“Are you all right?” Dylan asked.
“Yeah, just a little stiff from the long drive and from sitting in my horse stall for about an hour.”
Dylan’s eyes narrowed on her horse. “Is something wrong with him?”
“No, he’s fine. I was hunkered down there to avoid people I didn’t want to talk to. It was a little cramped.”
“Who were you avoiding?”
