Free Last of the Red-Hot Cowboys by Tina Leonard

now.
    â€œAnd Harper.” Judy was adamant, and Hattie nodded in agreement.
    â€œAnd Trace,” Hattie said.
    â€œSo it won’t be a date,” Ava said. “It’ll be chaperonage.”
    â€œThat’s the idea,” Judy said. “I don’t know what you see in Jake the snake, although I will admit that he has that dark-haired, god-bodied charm that’s irresistible to women.” She sighed. “False advertising, if you ask me.”
    Cameron raised a hand in surrender. “I won’t go, if you really think I shouldn’t.”
    â€œMaybe you shouldn’t,” Ava said. She had more than passing acquaintance with snakes, and if Hattie and the sheriff seemed unwilling to endorse Jake, there was no reason for Cameron to take a chance on getting bit.
    Trace may be a snake, too, but I’d be too blinded to see it
.
    â€œAnyway,” Judy said, “back to the problem at hand.”
    â€œGive Trace’s idea a go,” Hattie advised. “What can it hurt? A team is a fluid thing. It changes and grows as everyone on the team learns to trust and rely on each other.”
    â€œI think Hattie’s right, Judy. What can it hurt to let Trace guide us for a bit?” Ava said. Especially now that they’d learned that the mayor couldn’t ride herself. She’d come all the way from Virginia to train under a woman with no plan. But when she’d checkedJudy out, every single person she’d talked to said that Mayor Judy was the backbone of Hell.
    Even her parents had thought it was a great chance for her to start over.
    However, putting herself in Trace’s hands seemed like a bad idea—because she knew how much she was attracted to him.
    I’ll give this gig another week. If Judy can’t pull this team together by then, I’m going back to Virginia and my job at the paper factory
.
    She looked at Cameron, thinking her teammate was probably making a huge mistake going out with Jake. Still, it was Cameron’s business.
    But I can’t afford those kinds of mistakes. Dark-haired, god-bodied types of mistakes
.
    Like Trace
.
    * * *
    Cameron settled in between Harper and Ava in the front seat of Ava’s truck as she drove them back to the Hell’s Outlaws Training Center. “Fair warning, I
am
going out with Jake. And I guess you’re the sacrificial lamb.”
    Ava shrugged. “It’s your business.”
    Harper fixed her blonde hair in the tiny truck mirror, trying to tame it under her straw hat. Ava continued, “One date can’t hurt. And maybe you could gain some insight as to why the Outlaws and the Horsemen don’t get along.”
    â€œI couldn’t care less about that,” Cameron said.
    Ava heard the note of rebellion in her team member’s voice.
    â€œJake’s
hot
. I’ve trained since I was in junior high, hard, to get to this level. While other girls were out going to proms and finding themselves in trucks with the class president or the class pothead, I was training. Competing and showing.” Cameron took a deep breath. “I’m not saying it wasn’t worth it. That hard work got me a scholarship to college. But I want a chance to walk on the wild side now. And Jake looks pretty wild to me.”
    â€œI understand how you feel,” Harper said. “I fell in love with my high schoolsweetheart. Now I have a son but no husband. What I always had going for me was my riding. I love my little boy, but sometimes I wish I’d played my cards differently. Marriage, for example.”
    Besides training and competing, Ava had worked at the paper factory to help out her folks with the expense of her horse and her training. Her mom and father worked at a towel plant, making beach towels, bath towels, and dish towels—money had been tight. Judy’s team had seemed like a golden ticket to a life doing what she loved, which was rodeo. If Judy’s plan