June's Cowboy Jace

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From Chapter 1

Jace keeps Mustang Mountain's rodeo on schedule. Then a photographer kneels in exactly the wrong spot.

The photographer had moved.

I tracked her on instinct with the same scan I ran on every body within forty feet of an active gate or pen. She'd worked her way along the trailer line and now crouched behind trailer eight. It was the two-horse bumper-pull with the roan mare and the paint gelding needed for the barrel warm-ups. It was also the next rig I had to open. The rig whose rear gate, when released, swung in a hundred-and-twenty-degree arc that needed to clear the patch of ground she was kneeling on.

I settled the gelding fast. Latched the pen. Started walking.

She was still crouched down when I got there with her camera pressed to her face. Both knees rested in the dirt and her boots were angled wrong for a quick rise. Her whole body had committed to the shot.

“Hey.”

She didn't hear me. Or registered the sound and filed it under not-relevant. Her finger pressed the shutter. Click. Click. Click.

I reached for the latch with one hand and caught the gate with my forearm before it could swing. Three hundred pounds of steel jarred up through my shoulder and stopped six inches above her head.

“You need to move.”

She startled. Jerked the camera down and twisted, her eyes wide — hazel, gold-green in the early light — and found me holding the gate with one arm and my body angled between her and the metal.

“What—”

“You're in my swing zone.” I kept my voice level. The mare inside the trailer stamped at the noise. “If I open this gate, it hits you. You need to move. Now.”

She scrambled up. Caught her boot on something and stumbled sideways. She steadied herself against the trailer fender and straightened fast. Color climbed her cheeks.

“I didn't see—” She stopped. Reset. Squared her shoulders instead of shrinking. “Okay. That was my fault. I wasn't paying attention.”

I let the gate swing the rest of the way. Guided it with both hands now that she was clear. The mare inside shifted, eager to move.

“You can't kneel behind active rigs,” I said. “Stay clear of anywhere on the grounds where a gate or a panel can swing. Same rule applies to the catch pens, the bucking chutes, the loading ramps. You stand or you stay out.”

“I said it was my fault.”

I glanced over. She had the camera cradled against her chest now, her chin lifted.

“I know what I did wrong. I won't do it again. You don't have to walk me through it.”

I held her gaze for a beat, then two. She didn't look away.

Find out what happens next tonight.