I hurried by the bulls and glanced at my ticket. It looked like most of the grandstand area was general seating, but my ticket had a seat number listed. So it wasn’t a cheap seat. Jesse had forked out a little dough to get a good seat at an event that seemed a notch above barbaric for the girl who’d barely known the front of a horse from the back of a horse a week ago.
I still wasn’t sure how I felt about the whole idea.
When I saw where my seat was, an aisle seat without any familiar faces close by, I decided to be grateful for it.
Until I settled into my seat and did a quick scan of the surrounding seats. Jesse was, in fact, close by, although not close enough he’d noticed me. He was about ten rows back and over and surrounded by a mini-harem of peaches-and-cream girls.
They ranged from cute to pretty. One could even be classified as drop dead gorgeous. Dark hair, light hair, red hair, tall, short, brown eyes, blue eyes . . . They were as different as one girl to the next could be, but they shared one similarity: their clear eyes and sweet smiles. Every single last one of the half dozen of them had it, and it wasn’t the contrived kind of sweet either. It was the real deal.
I only knew that because I’d seen every kind of impostor, fabricated kind of sweet out there, so when the real deal came around, it was as clear as the sky was blue.
I couldn’t dislike them, even if I wanted to, which I did because they had Jesse’s attention and I didn’t. They were sitting next to him, and I wasn’t. As much as I wanted to deny the way I felt about Jesse, I couldn’t ignore it. My feelings for him were instinctual, as automatic as blinking my eyes.
Jesse Walker had worked his way inside of my impenetrable walls, and I didn’t know how to shove him out. I wasn’t sure how he’d gotten there in the first place. I wasn’t even sure if I wanted him out.
So much confusion over some guy. I’d officially become my worst nightmare.
If I was being honest with myself, since that seemed to be a new pattern for me, I was confused about more than one guy. As mysterious as Garth liked to come across, he was less of a mystery to me than Jesse was. A guy like Garth had easy to decipher motivations, especially since I was so experienced with his type. They liked to keep people at arm’s length, although they preferred the term “mysterious.” They liked the chase, the immediate reward post-chase, and then they were out. Clean, permanent breaks. Basically, I was the female version.
However, the Jesses of the world were impossible to understand. A good guy was foreign territory to me. I didn’t understand his motives, or his goals, or anything really. I needed to know what to expect so I could maintain control of my world. Getting what I expected from Garth was better than not having a clue what I’d get from Jesse. I’d take a broken heart I knew was coming over one I didn’t see coming from a mile away any day of the week.
I had control over so little in my life that I had to make calculated decisions to keep what control I did have.
Jesse was a big, fat question mark I couldn’t risk.
I’d gotten so lost in my thoughts, I forgot what I’d been staring at the entire time.
Or who I’d been staring at.
As soon as I pulled myself out of my head, I noticed Jesse’s eyes were locked onto mine. Those sky blue eyes of his that made my stomach about drop to the ground when they looked at me that way.
He waved and smiled.
Oh, God. Please say he didn’t notice me the whole five minutes I was think-staring at him.
Since I didn’t get a divine answer, I decided to wave and try to smile back. The girls around Jesse stopped their chatter and took notice of who he was waving at. Then, surprising the hell out of me, every last one of them smiled and waved. Some took a little longer, I guess they were trying to move past my clothing or piercings, but they all waved. The drop-dead gorgeous one was the last, but after her gaze moved from Jesse to me a couple of times, she joined in.
The way people did things around there was so different. Almost entirely different. Back in Portland, when a stranger made eye contact with you, you dug your mace out of your purse. Here though, you smiled, waved, and invited said stranger over for steak and potatoes. Even a cynic like myself had to admit it was kind of refreshing.
Jesse said something to the girls, stood, and side-stepped his way down the row. His eyes stayed on mine, but I couldn’t help but notice every single set of female eyes shifting as he passed by them. I suppose if that ass was half a foot in front of my face, my gaze would have dropped for a while, too.
He wore what he wore everyday: tight jeans, snug tee, belt, boots, and hat. Everyone else seemed to be a bit more dressed up. Like watching a bunch of dudes and livestock stomp around in the dirt was worth getting decked out for. I liked that Jesse was who he was every day. He didn’t have the need to be somebody else, rodeo or not. He was just Jesse.
Well, he was all Jesse.
He bounded down the aisle, his smile getting a little bigger with each step. I reminded myself I was upset with him. He had a girlfriend, probably one of those six still pining after him with Bambi eyes. Even though he hadn’t told an outright lie, he’d lied by omission.
Thou shalt not ask a girl out if thou hast a girlfriend.
That was the eleventh commandment.
“You made it.” Jesse stopped at the end of my seat and kneeled beside me in the center of the aisle. I’d forgotten how nice those eyes were to look into. It’d been so long since I’d let myself. My heart was already racing, and he’d said three words.