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“Nashville Scott was accused of cheating in the arena three months ago and disappeared. Now he’s back like nothing happened. I want to get the real story.” Nora tried to keep her voice firm.
You are an amazing, professional reporter who knows exactly what you’re doing.
Her cameraman smirked.
Pete, the grizzled producer her network assigned to her, spat a stream of tobacco into the dirt. “You are aware that you work for a morning news show right? This is a three-minute puff piece for tomorrow before the news at five. We’re not doing investigative journalism.”
“No, I know. But I think it would be malpractice not to quiz him on his return.”
Pete spat again. “It’s your funeral.”
As she hurried across the fairgrounds, he added, “That’s not the only thing we’re filming, right?”
“Of course not. He’s in heat one starting, damn, right now. The only event women compete in are the barrel races which start at one so we want to get footage of that, and then there’s sheep riding for the little kids which will play great at three.”
Wyatt, a skinny kid toting the camera rig against his hip blinked twice. “You memorized the schedule?”
“Of course.” She cleared her throat. “We should get over to the arena.”
She waited for more pushback or protest, every producer’s and network executive’s response to every idea she’d pitched since she joined the tiny network in Cheyenne, Wyoming a week after graduation, but they didn’t say anything.
The yes’s are coming, she added to her internal chant to keep herself from panicking.
As she hurried toward the bleachers, she scanned the fairgrounds, taking in the powerful smell of hundreds of animals in far too close quarters.
“He’s not going to want to talk to you before he has to jump on the back of 2000 pounds of pissed-off cow,” Pete said.
She winked at him and tossed her microphone from hand to hand. “First, cows are female, and second, wanna bet?” She immediately sobered. “I mean, that’s completely unprofessional and maybe illegal.”
Pete crossed his arms over his gut. “Lunch.”
“You’re on.”
They both rounded on Wyatt who threw up a hand. “I’ll take free food.”
“From which side?” Nora demanded.
He looked at her like she was crazy and pointed to Pete.
She rolled her eyes and turned on a heel to stride toward the thicker crowds like she knew where she was going. The Cheyenne Rodeo was the capstone of the summer in professional rodeo, she’d learned in her research. She had expected something more impressive, honestly.
She’s gone to school down in Colorado, but none of the local stations in Denver were hiring. When she found one in Cheyenne, just north of the Colorado-Wyoming border, she jumped at the chance. She hadn’t realized how different life was up here from a city of 700,000 people.
Tall fences and bleachers circled a bare yard. The stands were half full, and most of the crowd were wearing cowboy hats and boots that she guessed had never been near an actual cow in their existence. The air stank of manure, livestock, and fried sugar.
As they circled the impromptu arena, she could see more fenced-in fields stretching into the prairie. In the nearest one, a bull stood placidly chewing its cud. It didn’t look like it was about to knock a cowboy off its back. As they drew closer, its size took her breath away. It was one thing to read a website about 1,500-pound animals or watch a video on her phone three inches wide. It was something else to see one in the flesh, especially when its eyes met hers and it stopped chewing.
Hastily, she dropped her gaze. Was that important to cows or only predators?
I’m going to find him, and he’s going to talk to me, she repeated, trying to put her attention back on the prize as she hurried past the bull to the back of the arena. She mentally added a question about how insane you had to be to ride on the back of one of those things to her list for Scott.
“I’m going to find him, and he’s going to talk to me,” she repeated aloud. She’d never admit to her colleagues, but she never went into an interview without an affirmation. It worked twice as well if she chanted them out loud, no matter how silly that felt.
She’d scoffed when she first heard of the concept of manifesting what you wanted by repeating it to yourself, but the more she did it, the more things seemed to go her way. She’d never stopped feeling ridiculous, but she also didn’t like the results when she neglected to do it. Sometimes, if she got the words just right, things fell into place so smoothly, it almost seemed like magic.
She jumped when she felt a hand on her elbow and tried to surreptitiously step away from Wyatt as he pointed to their left.
A bunch of people in serious cowboy gear including padded vests with numbers on the back meandered around a fenced-off area. This fence was only a couple of feet high and made of saw horses and caution tape.
A gaggle of women decked out in tight jeans and sequins lounged near the impromptu corral.
Nora ignored them to approach a guy with a clipboard at a gap in the fence.
“If I could just get through,” she said as she didn’t slow down.
He held out a hand. “Talent only.”
“Oh, so you call the riders talent? Like this is entertainment?” He wasn’t wrong. This was definitely entertaining.
“Talent only,” he repeated.
“Oh, I’m press,” she said, scrambling for the badge they issued her when she entered the fairgrounds. This was her third official press pass, and the thrill and responsibility had not grown stale.
“No press,” he said.
“Oh, I know, but I need your assistance. See, I’m doing an exposé on working conditions in rodeos. I wondered if I could pick your brain?”
The man blossomed like a flower she’d just showered with water.
“Man, they didn’t cancel even when the temps reached 102 last week. Can you believe it?”
“Sadly, it is all too hard to believe.” She dug a tiny notebook and pen out of the front pocket of her blazer and scribbled that down.
“And they say we get breaks. Then they don’t staff enough so when someone calls out, everybody else gets screwed. And someone’s always calling out.”
“It’s disgraceful. I see another interviewee but don’t go anywhere. I will be back for the entire story.” She slipped past him.
She wasn’t even lying. Poor working conditions would make an excellent story, but she caught sight of a head of curly hair. She had about twenty photos of Nashville Scott saved on her phone from his various victories.
“I really can’t let a camera in,” the man said behind her.
She whirled but kept walking backward. “I totally understand.”
She held up a finger to Pete and kept going. She could get one bull rider to the fence to talk. Easy.
She approached a gaggle of riders that included the curly-haired man. “Mr. Scott?”
The man didn’t turn.
“I’m going to find him and he’s going to talk to me,” she muttered. “Mr. Scott!”
A cheer went up from the crowd, and all eyes turned toward the arena. Through the slats and much more rigorous fencing, she could see a bucking bull and a man flying around his back like a ragdoll. She swallowed convulsively. Why did anyone do this?
She spun around in a circle. She didn’t have much time.
“Mr. Scott!”
She was about to tap the curly-haired man on the shoulder when a voice behind her said, “Yeah?”
She spun and gulped. Nashville Scott was standing a foot away from her. He already had a helmet on. He was a few inches taller than her and packed a lot of muscle on his lean frame. She felt a totally inappropriate flush of heat roll through her as her eyes flew back up to his hazel gaze.
“You shouted?” he asked. His mouth quirked up and one eye eyebrow raised, and she flushed.
She immediately noticed that, unlike hers, his eyes didn’t stray down her figure at all, which was pretty unusual. She kept in shape and liked to look put together. It was necessary for the career she was pursuing, but it was less fun when the men around her assumed it was for them.
She didn’t get those vibes at all from the bull rider, which immediately annoyed her. Then she felt annoyed that she was getting annoyed.
“Hi,” she said after far too long a pause.
“How can I help you?” he asked, and she noted a faint Southern accent in his vowels. His biography hadn’t noted his origins, only his accomplishments on the circuit, and she wondered where he was from.
Abruptly she stuck out her hand. “Nora Jenkins, KWTV Cheyenne. I’m wondering if I can interview you about the, well, competition?”
His head was shaking as his mouth said, “Sure.” He snapped his jaw shut, looking surprised. “I mean… I can’t…”
“Thank you so much, sir. If you could just step up to the fence for my cameraman—”
“Hell, no. No cameras.”
She frowned. “It will only take a minute.”
“No inter… I can’t…” He sputtered to a stop and took a heaving breath, confused at his inability to decline. “Nothing on camera.”
She gritted her teeth. She’d found him and he was talking to her. She hadn’t specified that it had to be on camera. She should have thought of that loophole. In the manifesting books she’d read, they recommended ending affirmations with something like: all this or something better. Unfortunately, hers never worked like that. She got exactly what she asked for, whether she wanted it or not.
“So that’s a no on the off-camera talk?” Scott asked hopefully.
Would you focus? “How do you feel about getting back in the saddle after your break?”
His eyebrows slammed together. “You know we don’t wear a saddle bull riding, right?”
“It’s a figure of speech.”
“Because that’s kind of the whole point. To stay on without one.”
“About your break?”
The crowd cheered again and he spun, peering through the slats. “Do you think we could do this later? This is actually kind of hard to do.”
“If we could just briefly discuss your last match in June.”
“Nothing to discuss. I’m lucky to be alive.”
“A bit too lucky, some say.”
His face shut down, and Nora took a step back at the transformation. He looked dangerous and far older than seconds ago.
“All of this is off the record. You had your interview.”
He walked right up to the arena fence, put his hands on the top of it a foot over his head, and leaped over it. The bull that had just unseated its rider was still bucking around, but he didn’t seem to care.
She looked around the milling crowds, feeling like she got blasted with a hair dryer. The man was gorgeous and alluring. He was also prickly, potentially a cheater with inhuman physical strength, and the subject of her first real investigation.
She was so screwed.
