That’s why every holiday from boarding school, he and Web came home to extravagant gifts from their grandmother, even if she had to spend the holiday elsewhere. She said what she needed to say with cash, not hugs. “I thought you liked your sister.”
Hadley shot him a no-duh look. “I love her.”
“So shouldn’t you be spending more on her wedding gift than a piece of old random stuff from a high school friend’s garage?” How else was she going to know?
“Number one, who in the world bases how much people love you on how much they spend on gifts?” She must have seen the truth on his face because she wrinkled her nose in disbelief and then shook her head with a pitying sigh. “And that works for you? Does expensive stuff make you feel loved?”
What the hell? Why was she making him feel so weird about how the world worked? “It’s just the way things are.”
She scoffed. “Not everyone judges things by the price tag.”
“You’re saying you’d work for free?” Not likely. Who in the hell would take that kind of sucker’s bet?
“If I could, yes. I love what I do. I get to help great causes that really do make a difference for people. If I hit the lottery, I’d start my own foundation so I could fund those things. Well, that and I’d make sure my family was taken care of. Ranching has been good to them, but you never know when an early ice storm or a hundred-year flood is going to change everything.”
Yeah, that was a likely story. If it were true, she was the one in a million who’d actually go through with it. He’d spent too much time in his life rubbing elbows at fundraisers to believe that for the vast majority of people, their donations were anything but a tax write-off. It all came down to the bottom line. Everything had a price tag. Even the dark-brown wooden hope chest she was trying to pick up.
“Can I help?” He waited for her to agree and then lifted the dark wood box the size of an office moving box. That’s when he saw it. It had horns, was plugged into the wall, and stood surrounded by old gym mats. “What is that?”
Hadley followed his gaze and then let out an evil chuckle that would have done the Grinch proud. “The perfect way for you to earn some of the cowboy cred you bet me you’d earn by the end of this trip.”
By riding one of those bucking bronco machines? “You’re not serious.”
She smiled up at him, more of a dare than any form of encouragement. It was like pouring gas on a fire. He just about went up in flames.
Hadley winked at him. “Time to cowboy up.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Doing the thing that may be a little uncomfortable, but it’s the right thing to do, and you’ll be glad as hell afterward that you did.”
He didn’t believe that definition for a second—more than likely it was all about making a fool of him, but he let himself be suckered in anyway. “Fine.” He strolled over, as if there was nothing weird about riding what was basically a metal tube covered in fake cowhide that was hooked up to a motor. “Let’s do this.”
Really, how was this even hard?
“You sure you know what to do?” She had that look on her face, the one that said he was going to land on his ass.
There was no way in hell he was backing down now. “I hold on to the sticky-up part of the saddle with one hand and don’t fall off. Is there more to it than that?”
She let out a sudden cough that sounded a lot like a strangled laugh. “Nope. That’s pretty much it.”
Shoving the unease down with an extra dose of forced confidence, he strutted over to the bull. He put one foot in the stirrup and pulled himself up, then threw one leg over to the other side. Fucking A, he’d lost the plot. He was supposed to be destroying Hadley’s plan to fleece his brother, not riding a motorized cow. Before he could change his mind, though, Hadley started counting down.
“Three.”
His heart rate jumped to oh-my-God-what-are-you-doing-Holt levels of speed.
“Two.”
He grasped the standup part of the saddle with a suddenly clammy hand.
“One.”
He had about two seconds of rocking back and forth like a teacup ride run by a drunk carny before it sped up and the laws of physics