Savage in a Stetson (Crossroads #4) - Em Petrova Page 0,48

trailer with a certain rodeo star’s face on the side, he understood why his manager said all the females were over there.

“Son of a bitch,” Dom drawled under his breath. When did she do this? How had he missed the fact that Jada had a huge autograph and photo op going on at her barbecue restaurant today—with Dom’s biggest competition on the rodeo tour?

His manager clapped him on the shoulder in sympathy. “Gonna be a slow day. I’ll tell the dishwasher to go early.”

Dom gave an absentminded nod. “Yeah, do that. Shit.”

He stood there staring at the setup at Jada’s. Ty Perry and Dom were like a gas line and a flaming torch—they didn’t mix. Probably why she’d chosen him as her celebrity guest of the day.

Just seeing the bull painted on the side of Ty Perry’s trailer along with his big headshot sent a pang of pain through him for Jackson. Dammit, why did he have to go doing what he loved? He should be out there now, riding bulls and living the high life.

“Hell,” he grated out.

Then there was Jada inviting his biggest competitor here. She had him all knotted up on a normal day. She also had him ticked off—as well as impressed—with her choice.

He went back inside to finish his original task of fixing the table leg. While he worked, he’d think up a way to draw some of her business across the street to his place. She might have a radio crew and an autograph and photo with a big celeb, but that didn’t mean she’d have a big line for food.

After digging out the tools he’d need to fix the table, he grabbed the furniture by two legs and flipped it over.

“Oh. Oh my!” The exclamation was followed by a breathless giggle.

He looked over to see two women standing in his dining room, trays in hand, staring at him.

One waved at him. “Keep working. Don’t let us interrupt.” She dropped him a wink and a matching smile.

Amused, he tugged his hat brim and shot her a grin before he got to work on the leg. The metal couldn’t get a tight fit, so he used a fatter screw as well as a slip of cardboard to snug it up, a trick Grandpa had showed him long ago on an old wobbly coffee table.

He heard another laugh and saw the ladies had settled at a table near him to watch him work as they ate their lunch.

He gave them another smile of appreciation that they were eating here and not over at Mortimer’s with Ty Freakin’ Perry.

After he flipped the table back over, he tested it by flattening his hand on the surface. It didn’t wobble a bit.

“You’d better check that one too,” the lady called out to him, pointing at the table beside theirs.

“Suppose I should while I’m at it.” He sauntered over to the table and tested it. One woman had a sudden coughing fit, and the other pounded her on the back without looking away from Dom.

When he found this leg could be a little sturdier too, he set to work on removing the screws.

“You’re a rodeo man too, aren’t ya, Savage?” one woman asked him, toying with her straw.

“That’s right. Retired.”

“Too bad. Maybe you’ll enter the amateur level at the next Crossroads rodeo.”

“Might do that.” Just to show off his skills and win the girl again, that was. Jada had told him she couldn’t resist how he looked in his chaps.

“We’re heading over to see Ty Perry after this. Cammie wants to get his autograph, but I say twenty bucks is too expensive for a little scribble on a photograph.”

He looked up sharply. “Twenty bucks? That what he’s chargin’?”

The women nodded.

He grunted, more irritated than before. That was highway robbery, pure and simple. Twenty bucks to sign his name on his own picture? What did Ty Perry have that Dom didn’t? Hell, the guy was a sight uglier. He was missing more teeth than most people he knew too, and some weren’t even knocked out by bulls—he wasn’t the most popular man on the tour.

“Well, you ladies enjoy yourselves,” he said with another tip of his hat that had them tittering on their way to the trash can to throw away their garbage.

He watched them go for a moment and then threw his tools into the box again and snapped the lid closed. He stowed the box in the closet and decided he’d take a walk.

As he crossed the parking lot