The Sunstone Brooch : Time Travel Romance Katherine Logan (no david read aloud TXT) 📖

ride like that now. I had an accident that makes it impossible for me to ride broncs.”

“But you can jump,” the cowboy said.

Austin glanced down at his feet. “I’m wearing special boots that help me do that, but I’ve got nothing to protect me from falling on my ass.”

The cowboy slapped Austin on the shoulder and walked away, laughing. “Keep jumping.”

Now she felt guilty for yelling at him when he knew what he was talking about, but she was still annoyed that he didn’t trust her to know what she was doing.

Lighten up! He doesn’t know me. He doesn’t know what I can do.

“Are you coming, Mrs. Fraser?” TR trotted ahead of her with such exuberance she almost laughed. She was enjoying the hell out of this roundup, too. They both must be nuts.

Her horse managed a few more bunny hops—his last feeble attempts to toss her off his back—as she trotted off after TR. She had Lucky under control now, and he was coming to realize it as well.

“This is the best part of cowboy life,” he called out to her. “We have decent food. We sleep soundly, and the work is exciting…”

I wouldn’t go that far.

“It’s a competitive group,” he continued. “Cowpunchers are alone so much of the time that the roundup is like a long Fourth of July celebration. A man’s reputation is won or lost by the way he handles himself, and if you fail to respond to a challenge or insult, you’ll lose face.”

She glanced over her shoulder and was surprised to see Austin leaning against a tree, arms and ankles crossed, watching her, and when he grinned, a slight dimple popped out above his right cheek.

“Are you talking about anyone in particular?” she asked.

“Mr. O’Grady is an odd sort.”

“Because he’s so tall?”

“Out here, they say you can always spot an Easterner. But Mr. O’Grady’s differences, aside from his height, are more than geographical. He doesn’t act as if he belongs anywhere.”

“Why do you say that?”

“He grumbles about being here and wants to go home, but he doesn’t leave. He’s an accomplished and educated fellow, but his anger gets in his way.”

TR was right about Austin, and she found it prophetic. If TR had heard Austin grumbling, she needed to remind Austin to watch what he said because people listened to him. They would quickly become suspicious if he talked about home and the conveniences he missed.

They rode out toward their assigned section of the Badlands to search the high plateau plains and narrow, treed coulees for roaming cattle, and she couldn’t stop thinking about Austin and her dreams about him.

“Austin had an accident that ended the career he spent his life training for.” Explaining Austin’s situation reminded her that she lost her dream job, and she hadn’t had time to deal with the disappointment.

My career isn’t over, though. Only delayed until I find another job. But Austin can’t play for another team.

“I believe Austin is trying to figure out where he fits in now,” she said.

“What’d Mr. O’Grady train for?”

“To play sports.”

“Which one? Baseball? Golf? Rowing? Rugby football?”

She knew James Naismith invented basketball in the late eighteen hundreds but didn’t know when exactly. There was a framed newspaper about Naismith hanging on the women’s restroom wall in Wyatt’s favorite sports bar. She’d waited in line dozens of times, and reading notices on the wall was the only distraction from listening to women gush over sexy athletes.

“Basketball,” she said, more as a question than a statement.

“I haven’t heard of that. How’s it played?”

“Two teams of five players run up and down a court and try to throw a ball into a basket. At the end of the game, the team with the most baskets wins.”

“Like Mr. O’Grady stuffed the pillow into the tree.”

“Yes,” she said, “but I don’t know all the rules. You’ll have to ask him.”

“I will,” TR said. “He’s a complicated man.”

“You can say that again.”

She and TR rode out on their day’s assignment, and she set thoughts of Austin aside…for now.

46

The Badlands (1885)—Ensley

Ensley waited up, hoping Tavis would return. He was late, and she was worried, but Remy told her not to be, which of course didn’t help.

She’d only spent a short time with Tavis before they traded horses, and he rode off in the opposite direction, but she sensed he was much more than a Navy SEAL. He seemed like an old soul—older and wiser than other men his age—and fearless. She’d watched his face when he mounted Tesoro, and she saw nothing except absolute confidence.

Who was Tavis Stuart? The real Tavis. Not the one he allowed the world to see. He knew who he was, but she doubted any woman would ever get close enough to find out, and, Ensley chuckled, she pitied the woman who tried.

When she dozed off in her chair while watching Austin and TR play backgammon, Austin shook her shoulder to wake her up. “Why don’t you turn in?”

She rubbed her eyes, then set her elbow on the plank table and rested her chin in her palm. She didn’t have the strength to hold her head up without support. “I want to stay awake until Tavis gets back.”

“But you’re barely awake. And besides, Tavis might not make it here tonight. Go to bed. If you’re rested, you can handle whatever news he brings back.”

She sat straight up, fear spiking through her, and she shuddered. “That sounds ominous. Do you think something happened to JC?”

“Nothin’s happened,” Remy said, playing the plank as a drum with two sticks he’d lifted from the kindling pile. Ba-ba-boom!

“No, but JC might want us to come to Kentucky,” Austin said.

TR rolled the dice and moved his checkers. “Where’s your home? You never said.”

“Originally, New York,” Austin said, shaking the dice in his hands. “Now I just move around.”

Ensley tapped on one of the points in his home quadrant on the gameboard, but Austin brushed her hand away, then moved where she suggested. “JC and I had an