Rough Stock (Lost Creek Rodeo #3) - Heather B. Moore Page 0,3
and three meals a day.
Ford: Ryan’s on it.
Lars sent a series of GIFs of various forms of celebrating dogs, cats, and even a chimpanzee wearing a party hat as he blew into a striped party horn.
Westin laughed to himself, then set the phone aside as he pulled away from the truck stop. The phone continued to chime, but he turned up the volume on the radio station, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the country music. It would be good to see the guys again. Good for his soul.
And he couldn’t wait to compete with Knox Prosper head on. Knox was Ryan and Kellie’s cousin. The guy had gone off the grid for a while. Messed up his marriage, began to party, got kicked out of a few rodeo events. But the past few months, he’d been tearing up the circuit. Posting top scores and winning big purses.
No matter. Westin could take him. He turned the music up a notch, completely drowning out the sounds of his phone. The Texas sky was a bright blue today, and he was expecting hot temperatures even though it was only May. One thing Westin learned from being born and raised in Oklahoma was to appreciate every state he visited. To find something he loved.
Hands down, in Texas, it was the Tex-Mex food and the wide open sky that seemed to go on forever.
The drive ahead was several hours, but he didn’t mind.
Westin wasn’t a guy who had to be entertained. Give him a truck, a wide open road, and some good music, and he considered that as good as it got.
When the music changed on the radio station, Westin realized his phone was ringing. He never answered when he was driving since he didn’t have one of those fancy Bluetooth things, and his truck was way too ancient to have any sort of synced up system.
But if it was his mom calling, he’d pull over and call her back. He didn’t like her living alone, but she insisted, even after an invitation from his younger sister to move in with her. It wasn’t that his mom couldn’t take care of herself—she could do that, definitely. But the ranch was way too much for her.
Yes, they had ranch hands, and the like, but the house itself was hard to keep up for one person. Westin’s one and only sibling lived about one hundred miles away from their childhood home. She’d married a hotshot lawyer, and they’d moved to the city. They had a little boy, Jeppsen, who was three now, and another kid on the way.
Sure, Cheryl was good about checking up on their mom, but she was still one hundred miles away.
But the caller ID on his phone didn’t flash “Mom” across the screen. Instead, it had illuminated with a name he should have deleted from his phone months ago. Amy. His ex-girlfriend, and for a good reason, too.
It wasn’t every guy, or any guy, in the world who’d put up with her antics and stay together. He hoped she was getting help, but he doubted it. Amy didn’t see anything wrong with her obsessive ways—about him—and the fact that she acted erratically sometimes. Which led him to believe she was abusing substances.
But when he’d confronted her, she’d denied it. Just told him she had a cigarette once in a while. The weeks and months had passed, and he’d seen the pills when she’d dropped her purse and some things spilled out. They weren’t prescribed to her. Again, she covered up with lies.
Lies that Westin was no longer interested in putting up with.
The phone stopped ringing, and Westin wondered if she’d leave a message.
Nothing came.
He was just starting to relax into the tunes from the radio again when his phone rang again. Amy.
Westin’s gut clenched, and he knew if he didn’t talk to Amy, she’d stay on his mind. And it would be torture.
She’d been fun and easygoing when they’d first met at a rodeo near his hometown. Amy had said she was from Oklahoma, too—something he discovered was a lie later. He’d asked her out—because frankly, she was beautiful and sweet and charming. It was on their third date that he noticed something off. She drilled him with questions that were intrusive. Acted jealous and possessive, to the extreme. Then she waited at his mom’s house for him to come home when he was on his way back from out of town.