From the sounds of it, the rodeo fairgrounds weren’t far away. I’d hoofed it plenty of times in my life.

I watched the Walkers’ Suburban head down the driveway before grabbing my purse and heading downstairs. I checked my phone and found the same missed calls I’d been missing all week. Not that I was missing much.

Mom had blown up my phone ever since I got to Willow Springs. I’d never answered one of her calls. She’d even left a few voicemails. I didn’t listen to them. She called Rose and left messages with her asking I give her a call back. I never did.

Mom was the reason I was at Willow Springs. It wasn’t that I didn’t like it there. I just felt as if she’d written me off and went with the easiest way to deal with me as she could. When it came to me, Mom was a pro at identifying the avenues that required minimal time and effort on her part. Basically, I’d been a houseplant for the past eighteen years. I was given just enough water and sun to keep me alive, but nothing more. Willow Springs was a classic example. Instead of trying to get to the bottom of why her daughter was floundering through life, she sent me off to ranch boot camp to “prove” myself worthy of art school.

There was so much messed up about that it made my head spin.

It made my head spin so much, I walked as fast as my legs could move. The weather had been cool the past week, and that night was no exception. Thankfully I’d pulled on my hoodie before leaving. Even at my power walk of a pace, my mostly bare legs were on the threshold of goosebumps.

About an hour later, the fairgrounds were in view. From the sounds of it, I guessed the rodeo happenings had started. The noise was as impressive as any concert I’d ever been to, but the sounds were different. Instead of screams and wails, there were a lot of hee-haws and whistling.

After weaving through a caravan of shiny, big trucks, I made my way up to the entrance.

“Hey, hun,” the middle-aged ticket lady said, trying to make her inspection of me casual. “Just one?” She reached for the ticket roll to tear one off.

“Um, Garth Black was supposed to leave a ticket up here for me,” I said. “One ticket for Rowen Sterling.” Garth told me a couple of days ago he got a few free tickets as a perk to competing, and he’d leave one for me at the ticket counter.

From the frown on the lady’s face as she shuffled through a few envelopes in a drawer, I guessed that ticket wasn’t waiting for me.

“Hmm,” she said, pulling one of those envelopes free. “I don’t have one here from Garth Black, but I do have one with your name on it.” She flipped the envelope over so I could see my name scribbled down on it.

My eyebrows came together. “Are you sure that isn’t from Garth?”

“Honey, trust me, I’m sure.” She pulled the ticket out of the envelope and slid it across the counter toward me.

“Because he pretty much looks like the rest of the guys here. Big hat, big belt buckle, big ego . . . that sort of thing.”

“Garth Black may look like the rest of the cowboys out there, but the boy who left you this ticket is something else altogether.” My throat was already going dry when she said, “Jesse Walker left you this ticket.”

“Are you sure?” I tried not to look too flustered.

She chuckled a few notes. “Yeah, I’m sure. When Jesse Walker comes smiling up to your booth, that’s not the kind of thing a girl forgets.”

I knew the feeling.

“Okay.” I took the ticket. “Thanks.”

As I headed into the grandstand area, I tried not to over think the ticket issue. Garth said he’d leave me one and he didn’t. Jesse never said he’d leave me one and he did. I had one big Why? to both of those statements and no answers.

In fact, I wasn’t sure I wanted the Whys answered.

The grandstand was even bigger than it’d looked from outside. Row upon row of metal bleachers crept up and around the dirt arena, and they were packed to capacity with bodies. A sea of cowboy and cowgirl hats swayed and bobbed in waves. It was an impressive sight. And it was noisy. So much so, I almost wished I had a pair of earplugs handy. A nose-plug would have been useful, too, because the place had that familiar barn smell that leaned more toward the offensive side. That might have been because I walked right past one of the big corrals where a bunch of frothing at the mouth and pawing at the ground bulls were stored. Damn. Someone had to have a death wish to attempt riding one of those things.

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.