Jeannie Watt - Once a Champion

“How are you?” Matt asked, taking a couple more steps forward.

Liv folded her arms over her midsection in a defensive motion, causing her breasts to swell against the blue chambray shirt and making Matt suddenly aware that she’d changed a bit since high school. She pointedly glanced down at her chest, where his eyes had briefly held, then back up at him, making him feel like a middle-school kid who’d been caught looking at a girly magazine.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” he said with an easy smile. In a strange way, he’d enjoyed their tutoring sessions back in the day. She’d worked hard to pound the knowledge into him, but since she was so shy, he could easily fluster her with a smile or joke—which was exactly what he’d done whenever he’d wanted a break.

“Why not?” she asked in a reasonable voice. “It’s where I grew up.”

“Last I heard, you were in college.”

“I’ve been out for a while.” There was a definite edge of sarcasm in her voice.

“I know. I was just saying...” Nothing important. “Are you living here now?”

She nodded, but did not elaborate, choosing instead to stare at him as if he’d crawled out from under the proverbial rock. This was not the Liv he remembered.

“Why are you here?” she asked.

“I’m here about a horse,” he said, figuring it was time to focus on the matter at hand, since he and Liv were obviously not going to have a touching reunion.

The color faded from her already pale cheeks. “A horse?”

“Yes. It’s a long story, but to shorten it up, I left a roping horse with my now ex-wife. He disappeared. I’m looking for him.”

“Disappeared?” She reached up to touch her earlobe in the same self-conscious gesture he recalled from their tutoring sessions.

“Without a trace.”

“Before you were divorced?”

“Yeah. But we were separated. The divorce was in the works.” And should have happened a lot sooner than it had. It would have happened a lot sooner, had he known that Trena was not spending her nights alone.

For a moment Liv pressed her lips together and stared down at the weathered porch boards. There didn’t seem to be anything on this ranch that wasn’t weathered. Except for Liv. Liv looked...good.

She also looked threatened.

“Do you have my horse?” he asked.

She met his eyes then, hers as blue as the winter sky on a sunny day and just as cold. “I have my horse.”

Her horse.

Matt hooked a thumb into his pocket. “Can I see your horse?”

Liv drew in a breath that made her chest rise—not that he was looking—and changed the subject. “What are your plans for the future?”

“Excuse me?” he asked.

“Simple question. What are your plans for the future?” She used the same voice she’d used while trying to help him learn calculus. A voice geared to hide her innate shyness.

“I injured my knee a month ago in Austin. I’m here to finish healing up, train a little and then I’ll go back onto the circuit.” He figured another week of ground work and then he’d get back on his horse and start some serious training. Hopefully his doctor would agree when he saw him in a few days.

Liv didn’t so much as blink when he’d said he had to heal, maybe because he’d been plagued by so many injuries the past two years that hearing he had another meant nothing. Not that he thought Liv was following his rodeo career; it was just that when a hometown boy made good, the locals kept track.

“How long will it take your knee to heal?”

Matt shifted impatiently, wanting very much to put an end to the questions by saying, “Why do you want to know and where’s my horse?” but instead responded with the more congenial, “Time will tell.”

There was another long pause, and for a moment she stared past him out into the pastures behind the barn. He almost turned to see what she was staring at before realizing she was making a decision.

Which told him that Beckett was definitely on this ranch.

“I have a horse,” she finally said. “With a brand inspection and a bill of sale to go with it.”

“Is it my horse?” Matt asked quietly.

“I bought him from Trena.”

Relief surged through him, even though he knew he had some work ahead of him.

“Trena had no business selling him.”

“Maybe she did, maybe she didn’t.” And from the expression Liv now wore, she apparently believed Trena did have a reason to sell. “That doesn’t matter. If the horse was sold before the divorce, he was community property and the sale is legal. Trena’s name was on the papers.”

Well, shit. Matt took a moment. One thing he’d learned over the years was that expressing anger solved nothing. There were other ways to get what one wanted.

“She had no right to sell, Liv.” He spoke in his most reasonable voice, no easy feat under the circumstances. Trena had skewered him every way she could prior to their divorce, but selling his horse had been her vengeful coup de grâce. “Beckett was home recuperating from an injury.”

“I’m aware,” Liv said stonily.

“And you would keep him, my horse, even though you know that he shouldn’t have been sold.”

“Legally—”

“I’m not talking legally, Liv. I’m talking about a vindictive person trying to hurt another by selling what was dear to him.”

If he’d expected the speech to make a difference in her demeanor, he was disappointed. She continued to stare at him as if he were a nasty slug or something.

Matt rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, feeling like he’d stepped into the twilight zone. Who was this woman? Where was the Liv he’d once known? That nice kid who’d saved his academic life?

Probably scared to death that he was going to take Beckett away from her—which he was, once he figured out how.

“Can I at least see him?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s my horse, Matt. I’m keeping him.” Once again anger started to rise, and once again Matt tamped it down. He needed to be careful, not burn bridges.

“What did Trena tell you?” Because it was pretty damned obvious that Trena had told her something that wasn’t true.

Liv shrugged carelessly, but her expression was taut as she said, “It doesn’t matter. I bought the horse. I’m keeping the horse.”

“Liv...”

“It’s time for you to leave.”

“Liv—”

“Now.”

Matt exhaled, told himself to calm down. Not blow this. “I’ll buy him back,” he said. “For ten percent more than you paid.”

She smiled a little at that, the first smile since he’d arrived and it was more of a smirk—an expression he’d never seen on Liv’s face before. “I’m not selling.”

There was a noise from inside the house and Liv glanced over her shoulder then back at Matt. “My dad is not well,” she said, finally explaining why she was guarding the door, “but I think he’d take a good shot at kicking your ass if you don’t get out of here. So unless you want to fight an ailing older man, I’d get into that fancy truck of yours and get the hell out of here.”

And with that, Liv turned and walked back into the house. For a moment Matt stood, staring at the door she pulled shut behind her.

Realizing that standing on the front walk wasn’t doing him any good, Matt started back to his truck, striding down the cracked sidewalk and across the weed-choked gravel, his knee throbbing with each step. Anger solved nothing, but he was pissed as hell when he climbed into the cab of his truck. Yeah, he could hammer on the front door and maybe Tim would try to kick his ass, or he could go home, regroup. Think this through. Figure out a way to get his horse back.

He was going with plan B. It’d be easier on both him and Tim in the long run.