That was what destroyed him the most, because it shone a light on the way that he had fallen apart most profoundly.

The worst, cruelest way he’d failed her.

When something like that happened, you had to take a good look at yourself. Even though there hadn’t been a baby in the end, it had been a come-to-Jesus moment. A look-hard-at-the-man-he’d-become moment.

He didn’t like that man.

It was one reason he’d changed everything. One reason he’d started...working. Really working. Not just on his father’s land, not just on being rodeo champion yet again. But building something that was entirely his.

And he couldn’t let that song into his head. Not now. Because it was the only thing that could get beneath his skin, just like she was the only thing that ever could.

He was pretty good at staying stoic in the face of difficult things.

It wasn’t the fans yelling at him. That was actually fine. That made him mad. Anger, he had found, was fantastic fuel.

It was the pain.

The pain he wasn’t supposed to be able to feel anymore. The pain that ambushed him when he didn’t expect it. When he was alone. The pain that took him right back to the place that he’d been when he was a boy, a place he couldn’t even think about, much less fully remember or relive.

And so he pushed the song to the back of his mind, and he stood up. But then he froze. The predator spotting prey. That was what it felt like. Like everything in him went quiet. And the edges of the empty lobby blurred.

Her.

There she was. Standing there at the center of the room, strawberry blond hair curling and cascading past her shoulders.

She looked like he remembered her.

Not the way that she dressed up for the public. All fake eyelashes and red lipstick.

This was just her.

The way that he had seen her that first day. Coming in from barrel racing, her cheeks bright red, her smile exuberant. Though she wasn’t smiling now. She looked storm tossed, her hair full of snowflakes, and a couple of twigs. Her face was wet, likely from melting snow, and it forced him to remember how hot her skin could be when he put his hands on it.

She looked just like she had the first time...

Before

She wasn’t his type.

Flint Carson had interacted with more than his fair share of the sort of women you met at a rodeo. From rodeo queens to buckle bunnies, and everything in between. He tended toward the queens and the bunnies. Soft, pretty rhinestones. The sort of glamour that wasn’t necessarily subtle or classy, but he liked it. He was a man, dusty, hard and full of grit. He liked a woman who was the opposite of all that.

That was the point of women, as far as he was concerned.

Bring on the glitter, the lip gloss, the long fingernails. Flashy, maybe even bordering on what some would call trashy. He didn’t think it was trashy.

He liked it.

Now, some of the barrel racers had a little bit of flair to them, but they still weren’t his thing. Felt too much like coworkers, really. He didn’t like it.

He was also very careful to choose women close to his age and level of experience. He didn’t have forever in him. Hell, he didn’t even have more than a couple of nights in him, so it didn’t do any good to go after a woman who was expecting something more. To go after the kind of woman who wanted something more. He needed the women that he hooked up with to want exactly what he wanted.

Which was why, when the pint-size, barefaced barrel racer tripped on unsteady legs on her way out of the gate after a ride, and landed right in his arms, the first thing he told himself was, she wasn’t his type.

She had freckles all over her face. Her eyes were green. Her hair was strawberry blond, curly, he could tell; even though it was in a braid, there were wispy tendrils that had escaped. She was thin but athletic, wearing a plain white tank top and a pair of torn blue jeans. She was young.

And something in him burned.

He set her back on her heels.

“Careful there.”

“Thanks, Ace,” she said, brushing some dust off of her jeans. “I’ll do my best to be more careful.”

“Darlin’, I just saved you from doing a face-plant, and you’re going to get sassy with me?”

“A face-plant never hurt anybody.”

“Neither has spending a few minutes in my arms. You can ask around.”

She laughed. But it wasn’t a particularly kind or warm laugh. “Of course. Somehow that doesn’t surprise me.”

“What’s your name?”

“Tansey,” she said. “Tansey Martin. You’re Flint Carson.”

She knew who he was. He supposed he shouldn’t be surprised. She was...young. He was sort of an elder statesman of the bull-riding circuit, and in addition to that, his dad was the rodeo commissioner. Practically everybody around these parts knew the Carsons.

“Guilty,” he said.

“Of quite a lot of things if the gossip is anything to go by.”

She could walk away. That was the thing. She could walk away, but she was antagonizing him instead. He could also walk away.

Neither of them were doing that.

It would almost be interesting except she wasn’t his type.

She wasn’t his type, and wasn’t charmed by his whole facade. Which made him wonder if there was any point to the facade at all. Made him tempted to drop it. And he never dropped it, not ever.

“Now,” he asked, “did your parents ever teach you not to listen to gossip?”

“My mom taught me that gossip could be useful. If something is said often enough, there’s probably some truth to it. And maybe a person should listen to it. All my daddy taught me was the way 1999 Ford pickup taillights look going out of the driveway.”

“Sounds like a country song,” he said.

She smiled, and it was unreadable. Not flirtatious. Not friendly. He wanted to know what the hell it meant. “Yeah. It kind of does.”

She was standing with her horse. He had kind of only just noticed. The big animal that was right next to her. Funny.