Texas Outlaws: Billy by Kimberly Raye Read Free Book Online Page B

final round.”
    “There’s no if, bro,” Billy said with his usual bravado. “I will ride like that. That purse is mine, and so is your title.”
    “I hope so, but all the positive affirmation can’t change the past few days and the fact that you sucked big-time in the first go-round.” Jesse shook his head. “What the hell happened?”
    “I was running on fumes. Tired. Stressed. You know how it is.”
    “And now?”
    Billy shrugged. “I finally got a decent night’s sleep is all.”
    Jesse arched an eyebrow. “Jack Daniels or a double dose of Sleepy Time?”
    “Don’t I wish.” Jesse arched an eyebrow and Billy shrugged. “You don’t want to know. Listen, are you really serious about tonight?” He shifted the subject to the voice mail Jesse had left for him earlier that day. “You want me out at Big Earl Jessup’s place?”
    Jesse nodded. “At sundown. And if you see Cole, make sure you remind him. I left a voice mail, but he’s got semifinals today in bucking broncs, so he probably hasn’t checked his messages.”
    Billy eyed him. “You going to tell me what this is all about?”
    “Tonight.” Jesse motioned to the bull being loaded into a nearby chute. “You’d better get back to work.” He winked. “You need all the practice you can get.”
    But it wasn’t practice that Billy desperately needed.
    He realized that as he spent the rest of the day busting his ass atop the meanest bulls in the county. His skill, his technique, his drive—it was all there. In spades. He’d just been too tired to shine.
    No, what he really needed was another six hours of uninterrupted sleep courtesy of a certain brunette with a vibrant pink-and-white Hello Kitty tattoo on the slope of her left breast.
    Not that he was admitting as much.
    Any woman, he reminded himself. He’d been so hard up that any woman would have had the same effect.
    And he knew just how to prove it.
    * * *
    “A ND I WANT A MAN with dark hair and blue eyes. And he has to be at least six feet. And have all his own teeth. And no bunions. And I need him by next Saturday night, 7:00 p.m., sharp,” announced the elderly woman who’d hobbled up to Sabrina’s table at the Fat Cow Diner.
    The woman wore her silver-white hair in a short bob, her round body stuffed into an aqua tracksuit and white tennis shoes. “The rodeo committee is hosting their Senior Sweetheart dance and I need a date,” she went on. “They do it simultaneous with the bull-riding semifinals on account of no one down at the senior center can watch the event on account of all the pacemakers and stents and they need every available EMS worker focused on the riders in case they get hurt. The name’s Melba Rose Cummins, like the diesel engine but no relation. I’m a shoo-in for queen.” She indicated the silver pin attached to the collar of her jacket. “I was princess last year and princess always wins queen second time around.”
    “Unless you’re Shirley Hart,” chimed in the woman standing next to her. She had the same silver-haired bob—a testimony to the weekly special over at the Hair Saloon—but she wore a hot-pink tracksuit that hung loosely on her thin frame. “Poor Shirley won princess six years in a row on account of she had bad eyesight and refused to wear her glasses onstage. Kept walking into the podium during evening wear and knocking over the mic stand, which totally killed her score. But she finally saved up her social security checks and got herself some of that fancy LASIK surgery.” She shook her head. “Poor thing was so sure that seven would be her lucky number. But then she up and had a heart attack. Keeled over two weeks before the competition and that was that.”
    “Nobody wants to hear about poor Shirley,” Melba said. “This is about me.”
    The pink track suit shrugged. “All’s I’m sayin’ is if that had been me and I woulda spent that kind of money, I would have made sure they had my eyes open when they laid me to rest. My