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“Glad to see you made it, Mr. Boudeau. I’m Adele Donnelly.”
“Glad to be here.”
“Did you get your horse situated?”
“Stick’s taken fine care of us.”
At the compliment, Stick puffed up his skinny excuse for a chest. “Ty still needs to get checked in.”
“I’ll be up to the main lodge in a bit.”
She walked over to her horse, calmly collecting her rope and winding it into a coil. With the ease and confidence of a practiced athlete, she swung up into the saddle and rode out of the arena.
Ty stared after her. Despite hearing of her skill, he’d half expected—make that half hoped—the stories about her to be hype.
They weren’t.
Adele Donnelly could not only show him a thing or two about a sport in which he’d been a top World contender mere months ago, she could quite possibly beat the pants off him.
“HEY, DELLIE.” Adele’s grandfather joined her behind the registration counter. “What are you doing?”
“Hi, Pop.” She straightened from her hunched position and rolled her cramped shoulders. “I’m just going over these schedules.”
“I heard Tyler Boudeau arrived.”
“About an hour ago.”
“You meet him yet?”
“Briefly, at the arena.”
“Which cabin did you assign him?”
“Number twenty-two.”
Pop grunted. “The honeymoon cabin is bigger.”
“It’s booked. Number twenty-two is our next largest cabin, and the view from the back balcony’s the best on the ranch.”
“It’s kind of far from the barn.”
She studied him curiously, wondering what was up.
He rarely concerned himself with a guest’s accommodations, preferring to leave the administrative functions of the ranch and roping school to Adele. On most days, when his acute arthritis didn’t confine him to bed or the couch, he could be found at the barns and arena, teaching classes, overseeing the livestock and supervising the ranch hands. He still put in a full day’s work when he could, but the last few years he’d come to depend more and more on their barn manager to pick up the slack.
“So, what do you think of him?”
Adele paused before answering the question, unsure of her response. Having a professional roper stay at the ranch, particularly one of Ty Boudeau’s caliber, was certainly a boon for business. But the explanation he’d given for his month-long stay, that of training his new horse, hadn’t rung true.
“We exchanged only a few words, and those were pleasant enough.”
“Humph.” Pop seemed disappointed.
“He should be here any minute.”
His eyebrows shot up, momentarily erasing the deep wrinkles creasing his brow. “You don’t say?”
Adele almost laughed, with surprise, not humor. Her grandfather was starstruck and couldn’t wait to meet their semifamous guest.
“In that case, guess I’ll get me a cup of coffee in the kitchen and wait for him.”
“Decaffeinated,” Adele called after his retreating back, and resisted adding, “You know what your doctor said.”
A few minutes later, she looked up from her work to see Ty stride through the lobby door. She had to admit he wasn’t hard to look at. And taller than she’d expected. Picking up the house phone, she paged the kitchen and said, “Tell Pop he’s here,” when Cook answered.
Reaching the counter, Ty removed his cowboy hat, and an unruly lock of sandy-blond hair promptly fell across his tanned forehead. His attempts to push it off his face were wasted…and also charming.
“Welcome again, Mr. Boudeau.” She gave him her best professional yet friendly smile.
“Please, call me Ty.”
“And I’m Adele.”
The registration process didn’t take long. When she finished, she put together a stack of papers, including a brochure, maps of the ranch and the nearby town of Markton, the current week’s schedule of classes and events and a list of rules and regulations.
“Please read through this the first chance you have.” She pointed to the papers stapled together on top. “You can’t begin using the facilities until we have a signed copy on file.”
“Tell me, am I signing away all my rights?”
Adele thought she detected a twinkle of amusement in his dark brown eyes. Perhaps he wasn’t all-business, as she’d first suspected.
“No. You’re just agreeing to abide by the rules and regulations. Very standard stuff. We already have the liability waiver and insurance certificate you faxed last week.”
Ty signed the form without reading it and slid the papers across the counter.
“Let me make you a copy.” She went into the office, where she kept a desktop copier, and returned shortly. “Here you go.”
“Thanks.” Ty folded the sheets in thirds and slipped them in his shirt pocket, again without reading them.
Oh, well, she’d done all she could.
Her grandfather appeared from the entryway leading to the kitchen, his chronic limp barely noticeable for once.
“Hey there, young fellow.” He extended his right hand. “I’m mighty glad to make your acquaintance.”
“Mr. Donnelly.” Ty’s glance fell for the briefest of seconds on Pop’s hand before clasping it in a firm shake. “It’s a real honor to meet you, sir.”
Adele liked that Ty didn’t appear put off by her grandfather’s missing right thumb, a casualty of a roping accident that had happened long before she was born.
“The honor’s mine,” Pop said. “I’ve been watching your career since you were competing in junior rodeo.”
“And I’ve studied yours.”
“You have to go back a lot of years for that.” Pop laughed, but it was filled with warmth.
“I’m counting on you teaching me a thing or two while I’m here. It’s one of the reasons I came.”
Pop stood a little taller. Most of their guests were recreationists and wannabe cowboys. Some were high-school students hoping to eventually compete on the professional rodeo circuit. Almost none of them knew about her grandfather’s once impressive and long-ago rodeo career. Not until they got here and saw the photos and framed buckles on the lobby wall.
“I doubt there’s anything I can teach you.” Pop chortled. “Now Adele here, she’s likely to have a trick or two up her sleeve you can use.”
“I saw her earlier at the arena,” Ty said. “She’s good.”
“She’s the best in the state, man or woman.” Pop’s voice rang with pride.
Adele loved her grandfather, but at the moment she wanted to cringe. “Mr. Boudeau is one of the best in the world, Pop.”
“Doesn’t mean he can’t learn a thing or two from you.”
“I agree.” Ty answered good-naturedly. “Getting help, from both of you, is the reason I’m here.”
Adele wondered if he’d added the “from both of you” for her grandfather’s sake, considering how hesitantly the words had rolled off his tongue.
“Pop, why don’t you show Mr. Boudeau to his cabin? You two can swap stories on the ride.”
“Nothing I’d like better. Except I’m due to meet the boys in thirty minutes.”
His regular Thursday-night poker game. She’d forgotten about that. “I’ll call Stick.”
“Adele, maybe you can take me?” One corner of Ty’s mouth lifted in a grin. A very potent grin. “I’d be much obliged.”
“Certainly.”
“Good,” Pop said, with more satisfaction than the situation called for. “That’s settled, then.”
As Adele left the lodge with Ty, she couldn’t shake the feeling that her grandfather had set her up. She should be mad at him, but when she hopped onto the truck seat next to Ty, being mad was the furthest thing from her mind.
TY SLANTED A GLANCE AT Adele, wondering what she was thinking. They’d both been relatively quiet during the five-minute drive through the main part of the ranch, except for the occasional item of interest she pointed out.
“Is this my home away from home?” he asked when she directed him to an attractive cabin atop a rise.
“Yes.” She removed an old-fashioned hotel key from her pocket. No key cards for Cowboy College. “You’ll love the view from the back patio.”
They climbed out of the truck, and Adele led him along a split-fence-lined walkway to the front porch. Unlocking the cabin door, she swung it wide, and went ahead only when he indicated for her to precede him inside.
Ty took in the cabin’s spacious and charmingly appointed interior, which appeared to have every amenity he could possibly want. “Very nice.”
“If you aren’t happy here, we can always move you to a different cabin.”
“Are you kidding? This is great.”
“It’s a little far from the barn and arena.” Adele walked over to the drapes on the other side of the living room and opened them, revealing a sliding glass door that looked out onto a calendar-perfect view of the nearby pond and distant mountains.
He joined her at the door and scanned the horizon. A glorious red sun was starting to dip behind one of the mountain peaks.
“It’s worth the extra distance just for this.”
Adele eased away from him, piquing his interest. Women generally acted the opposite, hanging all over him if possible. It was either a hazard or a perk of his profession, depending on a guy’s perspective. Ty mostly found it wearisome. Except in Adele’s case. Sharing the same air space with her had definitely been enjoyable.
Apparently not so much for her.
“There are two bedrooms,” she said, walking past the fully equipped kitchenette. “The master and a small guest room. The couch also folds out into a bed. Your rental agreement allows for overnight guests up to three consecutive nights, but you have to report them.”
“Dana will be glad to hear that.” Was it his imagination or did a glint of curiosity flash in Adele’s eyes? “My little sister’s been bugging me to come here and take lessons from you.”
“Oh, really? We’d love to have her,” Adele said, so smoothly that Ty figured he’d been mistaken.
Perhaps because she was so different from the women he usually met, or that she was a roper like himself, he found himself trusting her. Enough to reveal the real reason he’d come to Cowboy College.
He hadn’t expected he would, the idea of enrolling in a roping school for amateurs being hard to swallow. Taking instructions from a woman made it worse. But she’d impressed him in the arena, demonstrating a core of steel.
Like the one he had lost.
“It’s not just my horse,” he said abruptly. “It’s me.”
“What?” She turned to face him, her expression puzzled.
He cleared his throat, freeing the words stuck in it. “The horse I’d been riding the past four years suffered a fractured metacarpal last December in a fall. Right before the National Finals Rodeo. I was ranked second at the time.”
“I know, I read about it in Roper Sports News.”
“I lost more than a gold buckle and a title that day. Iron Grip Ropes had signed me for a sponsorship deal. A very lucrative sponsorship deal.”
“Which was contingent on you winning,” she correctly guessed.
“I competed on a friend’s horse, but lost the championship by one-point-eight seconds.” Ty swallowed. Six months later, the bitter defeat still stung. “I bought Hamm in February after an extensive search. He’s an incredible horse. Big, athletic, strong, fast and smart as a whip. Everything I could want.” Ty paused.
“What’s wrong, then?”
“That one-point-eight seconds. No matter what I do, no matter how hard I train, whatever trick I try, I can’t seem to perform any better on Hamm than I did on my friend’s horse. And I don’t know why.”
“Sometimes the partnership between a rider and horse is off.”
“I’m hoping that’s all it is. Because the alternative, that I’ve somehow lost my competitive edge…well, let’s just say it’s not acceptable.”
He went to Adele and took her hand in his. The calluses on her palm from years of roping were in stark contrast to the silky smooth skin on the back of her hand. Like her, he thought—tough on one side, soft on the other.
“This isn’t easy for me to ask, Adele. But I need your help.”
