Whiskey Skies

I was having the best night of my life, and my shoulder was trying to ruin it.

The Blackwood Ranch was lit up like a county fair — string lights crisscrossing the yard between the Lodge and the barn, with music pouring out of the speakers Hunter had wired up that afternoon. Half of Copper Creek was spread across the property with drinks in their hands and grins on their faces, and I was in the middle of it like the sun everything was orbiting.

Which sounded arrogant. I knew it sounded arrogant. But when you've just won the PBR World Championship — when you've stood on that platform in Fort Worth with the buckle in your hand and the roar of twenty thousand people in your bones — you're allowed one night of being the center of the universe.

I was milking it. Obviously.

"Clay! Speech!"

I chuckled, shaking my head. "Not a chance, Dottie."

"Clay Blackwood, I watched you ride your first sheep at the junior rodeo, and I will get a speech out of you if it kills me."

"It might kill both of us, ma'am."

She swatted my arm and handed me a beer, and I grinned at her because grinning was what I did. It was my whole thing. The grin, the wink, the easy charm that made women lean in and my brothers roll their eyes so hard you could hear it.

I'd been Clay Blackwood, Professional Charmer, since I was old enough to figure out that a smile got you further than a fist, and I'd been Clay Blackwood, Bull Rider, since I was nineteen and too stupid to know that climbing on the back of two thousand pounds of rage was a bad life plan.

Now I was Clay Blackwood, World Champion. It had a ring to it. It had a belt buckle to match.

But underneath the noise — underneath the music and the laughter and the hands slapping my back and the women practically throwing themselves at me — my shoulder was grinding. The left one that the bull had clipped in round two at the finals, when I'd come off at a bad angle and hit the dirt with my arm pinned under me. I'd popped it back, taped it up, and rode the next round on adrenaline and stubbornness.

That was three days ago. The adrenaline was gone. The stubbornness was holding, but barely.

My knee hadn't been right since Tulsa. My ribs were bruised from the finals — deep, dull aches that flared every time I laughed, which meant they'd been flaring all night. I rolled my neck and felt something grind in a way that thirty-one-year-old necks shouldn't grind, and for one second — just one, quick, before I shoved it down — a thought slid through:

What comes after this?

I took a pull of my beer and let the crowd swallow me back up. Tonight wasn't for that.

Wyatt was leaning against the paddock fence with a beer he was nursing slow and Ivy tucked under his arm like she'd been built to fit there. My oldest brother had always been the steady one — the first to show up, the last to leave, the one who made sure everyone else was okay before he sat down. Ivy had made him lighter, happier, more likely to laugh at himself, but he'd always been warm underneath.

He looked at me. Held my gaze for a beat. Then he grinned — wide, proud, the big-brother grin that still made me feel ten years old in the best possible way. "There he is," he said. "World champ. You're gonna be insufferable now," he added with a teasing groan.

"We both know I was insufferable before." I hit him with the eyebrows — the full double-raise, the one that made women laugh and Wyatt want to hit me. "Now I've got a shiny new buckle to back it up."

He laughed and pulled me into a hug — solid, real, the kind Wyatt gave where he clapped your back hard enough to mean it.

Ivy squeezed my arm when he let go. "He's been bragging about you to everyone all day. He told the gas station attendant."

"I did not tell the gas station attendant."

Ivy peered up at my brother, brown eyes glinting in that knowing way. "You told the gas station attendant, Wyatt."

He shrugged. Didn't deny it again. That was Wyatt — he'd never say he was proud in some big speech, but he'd tell a stranger at a gas pump.

Liam appeared next. My brother — technically adopted, fully Blackwood, built like a man who spent his days working both the ranch and the Ranger station — pulled me into a hug that lifted me off the ground by an inch. Close to my ear, so only I heard: "Proud of you, bud. Real proud."

Something hit me that I wasn't going to examine at a party. I slapped his back and pulled away. "Don't go soft on me, Ranger."

He grinned. Liam grinned a lot these days — Stephanie had done that to him, moved into the ranch, and cracked him open until smiling was his default setting instead of his exception.

I looked toward the barn. Hunter was there — half in shadow, crouched by the barn door, doing something to the gate latch with a wrench and a headlamp. Nobody had asked him to fix it. Nobody ever asked Hunter to fix anything — he just saw what was broken and showed up with the right tool.

"Hunt!" I called across the yard.

He looked up. Gave me a chin lift and a half-smile that was sixty percent shy, forty percent pleased to be noticed. Held up the wrench. Busy.

That was Hunter. The quiet one. Somebody needed to start paying attention to that guy. Not tonight — he'd hate the spotlight. But someday.

I made a mental note to call Luke tomorrow. My youngest brother was off at college studying business management — which was a polite way of saying he was getting a degree while figuring out how to avoid coming home. He'd texted a single line: Knew you'd win. Now retire before you break something important. Little shit.

Momma found me near the dessert table, which was a strategic error on my part because Momma near a dessert table was a woman with leverage. "There's my champion," she said, and her hands were on my face before I could dodge — warm palms against my jaw, the scent of vanilla and butter that lived in her skin, those brown eyes reading the fine print on my soul.

"Hey, Momma."

"Let me look at you."

"You've been looking at me for thirty-one years."

"And I'll look for thirty-one more, so hold still."

I held still. You didn't argue with Louisa Blackwood.

She studied me. Then, simple and true: "I'm proud of you."

But there was something else in her eyes. She'd noticed the quiet second at the arena after the win — when the crowd was on its feet, and I should've been whooping, but instead I'd gone still for a beat too long. Of course, she'd noticed. Momma noticed everything.

She didn't push. That wasn't her style. She planted.

"Maggie and Jack's breeding program is really coming along," she said, like she was commenting on the weather. "Those quarter horses Jack brought in last spring — beautiful animals. They could use someone with your eye for livestock. You've always had that gift, Clay. Seeing what an animal could become before it became it." She sipped her wine. "Whenever you have time, of course."

The sentence sat in the air like a door she'd cracked open and was pretending she hadn't.

Then, casual as breathing: "That young woman with the little girl seemed lovely. At the rodeo. The one you couldn't stop staring at."

I almost choked on my beer. "I wasn't staring."

"Honey, you were staring so hard I thought you'd strain something." She patted my cheek. "Don't worry. It's a good look on you."

She drifted off toward Ivy, leaving me with the distinct feeling that I'd just been managed by a professional.

That's when I saw her.

Savannah Tate came through the ranch gate first — Weston's wife, all blonde hair and lawyer energy. Weston was behind her, my best friend since the junior circuit, and then my mentor, laughing at something she'd said. But behind them, slightly apart —

Her.

Time didn't slow down. That's a lie people tell. What happened was worse — time kept moving at exactly the same speed, and everything else stopped mattering.

There was just a woman walking into the Blackwood Ranch with one hand on her daughter's shoulder and the other swinging loose at her side, and every thought in my head went white.

She was blonde and petite and built like God had taken his sweet time and enjoyed every minute of it. The jeans she was wearing were doing something to me that should've required a permission slip. Her hips, the curve of her waist, the way that shirt fell just right — my brain went from world champion to village idiot in about half a second.

I'd seen beautiful women. I'd seen a lot of beautiful women. But I'd never gone physically stupid looking at one.

Guess there was a first time for everything.

Then the little one spotted me. Green eyes wide, mouth open with a gasp. "Clay! Clay! Clay!"

Maisie Monroe. Five years old, blonde ringlets exploding in every direction, pink cowboy boots I'd have recognized from space. She broke free from her mother's hand and launched herself across the yard like a heat-seeking missile in a tutu, and I had about two seconds to set my beer on the fence post before she collided with my legs at full velocity.

"You said you'd teach me to ride! You promised! A pinky promise is a real promise!"

Her mother's face — Callie, her name was Callie, I'd learned it at the Fort Worth rodeo three days ago and hadn't stopped turning it over in my head since — was pure amusement. She was shaking her head, arms crossed, one hip cocked, watching her daughter assault my kneecaps with the resigned affection of a woman who'd long ago stopped being surprised by anything this child did.

I crouched down to Maisie's level. "Hey, sweetheart. You made it."

"I made it! Mommy said we were coming to a party and I said is Clay going to be there and she said maybe and I said he better be because he owes me a riding lesson."

I held out my pinky. "A deal's a deal. Riding lessons. Soon as your mom says it's okay."

Maisie hooked her tiny pinky around mine with the solemnity of a Supreme Court justice. Her hand was impossibly small and warm…and a little sticky. She gripped my finger with everything she had.

Then she leaned in and whispered, loudly enough for half the party to hear: "I told all my friends you're my cowboy."

Something cracked in my chest. The real kind — the kind that happens when a five-year-old claims you and you realize you'd fight God for her.

I straightened up and made my approach. Full confidence. The grin. The lean. "We meet again," I said, and tipped my hat because I was Clay Blackwood, and I tipped my hat. It was a whole thing.

Callie Monroe looked at me, and the corner of her mouth twitched. "Mr. Blackwood."

"Clay. Nobody calls me Mr. Blackwood except the IRS and my mom when I'm in trouble."

Her brows raised a fraction. "And are you in trouble?"

I shrugged once, noncommittal. "Depends on who you ask."

She laughed — short, easy, not the careful kind. "Thank you again for helping Maisie at the arena. She hasn't stopped talking about you. I believe she's already drafted a contract for those riding lessons. Terms and conditions. She's very thorough."

"Smart kid. She gets that from you, I'm guessing."

"She gets the audacity from her mother, yes."

I laughed. The delivery was so dry and so fast that it hit me before I had my charm shield up. She was funny. And she wasn't guarded like I'd expected — she was composed. Settled. A woman who knew exactly where her feet were and didn't need anyone to help her find the ground.

"Cornhole!" Weston appeared with Savannah in tow, two fresh beers in his hands, grinning the grin of a man about to start trouble. "Teams. Me and Clay versus Callie and Sav. Let's go, ladies. Prepare to be humiliated."

Savannah rolled her eyes. "You say that every time, and you lose every time."

"Tonight's different. I've got a world champion on my team." Sometimes I was convinced he had forgotten he was a world champion in his own right.

Callie looked at Savannah. Savannah looked at Callie. Something passed between them — a silent, female communication that should have terrified us.

"You're on," Callie said. And smiled.

That smile. I needed a minute.

We set up near the barn. The boards were beat-up plywood Hunter had painted with the Blackwood brand, and the bags were filled with dried corn from last season. Weston and I had played a thousand games on this setup — on porches, in parking lots, at every rodeo afterparty from here to Montana.

Callie picked up a bag, tested the weight, and tossed a warm-up shot that arced clean through the air and landed dead center on the board with a satisfying thwack.

"Beginner's luck," Weston said.

"That wasn't luck, sweetheart," Savannah said. "That was a warning."

It was.

Over the next twenty minutes, Callie and Savannah systematically dismantled us. Callie threw with her whole body — a smooth step, a fluid release, her hips turning into the follow-through in a way that made my brain go somewhere unhelpful. The jeans she was wearing shouldn't have been legal. Every time she stepped into a throw, every time she planted her front foot and let her body follow through, I got a full, unobstructed view of curves that made my mouth go dry, and my blood go south.

I had to take a breath. A deliberate, controlled, get-yourself-together breath, because my body was reacting like I was nineteen and not thirty-one, and this was a family party. Not to mention, I was standing next to one of my closest friends.

She trash-talked with a grin that should've come with a warning label. "That was your best shot?" she called after Weston's bag slid off the board. "I've seen better aim from Maisie. She's five."

"She's lying," Weston muttered to me. "She's a ringer. Savannah brought a ringer."

"Focus," I told him, but I was one to talk.

Callie laughed at something Savannah said with her head tipped back and her throat exposed and the string lights catching the line of her jaw.

Holy shit.

I missed my next throw by a foot because I was watching her instead of the board.

"Oh, that was tragic," Callie said, hand on her hip, shaking her head at me with mock sympathy. "The PBR World Champion, taken down by a bag of corn."

"I'm going easy on you."

"Sure you are, cowboy."

She sank another shot — dead center, nothing but hole. Savannah whooped. Callie dusted her hands off and gave me a look so smug it should've been illegal. "Remind me what the score is?"

She bumped my shoulder with hers as she passed to retrieve the bags, and the contact lasted maybe half a second, and I felt it for ten minutes. She smelled like something clean and warm — vanilla, maybe, or just soap, something simple that hit harder than any perfume.

"You're staring," she said on the next pass.

There was something in her eyes that told me she didn't mind all that much, so I went with honesty. "Can't help it."

"Try harder. It's affecting your game." She nodded at the board. "Which was already pretty sad."

Weston threw his hands up when the final score came in. "Rematch. Immediate rematch."

"You want to get your asses kicked twice in one night?" Savannah asked sweetly.

"There's no coming back from this," I told him. "Accept it with dignity."

Callie shook Weston's hand with mock formality. "Good game. Really. You both tried real hard."

Then she turned to me, flushed and grinning, and for a second she was just a woman at a party having fun, and I forgot to be charming and just stood there like an idiot.

She caught it. Her grin softened into something knowing. "Easy, cowboy."

So I pushed my luck. It was basically my job description. "Have dinner with me."

The grin didn't die. It shifted into something warm and sure. "Clay." She said my name the way you'd set something fragile on a table. "You seem like a genuinely good guy. And Maisie clearly thinks you hung the moon. So I'm going to be straight with you."

"Uh oh."

She gestured at the party — at the cluster of women near the drink table who'd been watching me all night, at the blonde who'd twice found a reason to walk past us, at the general gravitational pull I pretended not to notice. "You see that? Every single one of them would love to have dinner with the PBR's most eligible bachelor. I'm sure you're wonderful company."

She turned back to me. "But here's the thing. My shop is closed. Permanently. Locked up, lights off, key thrown in the creek." She said it lightly, almost cheerfully. "It's Maisie and me. Our new home. My new job. That's the whole list. There's no room on it for a cowboy, however devastating the smile."

"You think I have a devastating smile?"

She tilted her head, a gentle smile playing at her lips. "I think you know exactly what your smile does, which is part of the problem."

I deserved that. I respected it, too. She wasn't shutting me down — she was drawing a line with a steady hand and a sense of humor about it.

"Fair enough," I said. And meant it.

"Go enjoy your party, Clay." She nodded toward the crowd. "You just won a world championship. There are about fifteen women over there who'd like to help you celebrate. I'll be right here, content with not being one of them."

She clinked her beer against mine — the one she still wasn't drinking — and gave me a smile so genuinely kind it almost hurt worse than a flat rejection.

Weston found me at the drink table five minutes later. "That was hard to watch," he said.

I laughed once, but there was no humor in it. "Try experiencing it." I squeezed the bottle cap in my hand. "She turned me down."

"Good." He leveled a look at me — the look of a man who'd been exactly where I was standing and came out the other side married. "She's Savannah's friend. She's got a kid and she's coming off a bad divorce. She's rebuilding from the ground up. She's not a buckle bunny at a hotel bar, Clay. She's the real thing. And the real thing takes time."

"I asked her to dinner, not to elope."

"Same thing, coming from you." He clapped my shoulder — the bad one, the bastard. "Just be her friend. That's what she needs. Show up as the guy, not the show."

I watched Callie across the yard. She'd found the fence line at the edge of the party, her eyes tracking Maisie through the pack of kids. She looked easy out there. Content. A mother watching her daughter play in a safe place and letting herself breathe.

She'd destroyed me at cornhole. She'd called me out with a timing that could've gone on stage. And then she'd told me no with a smile and a joke and pointed me toward the women who wanted what she didn't.

I'd been turned down before.

Wait — no, I hadn't. This was new territory.

And the real kicker was, I think I liked it.

I walked over. Not with the grin this time. Not with the lean or the tip of the hat or any of my normal moves. I just stood at the fence beside her — not too close, enough space for a whole other person between us — and watched the kids run.

"You again," she said. But there was no edge in it. Just the easy tone of a woman who'd had a good time at a party and wasn't braced for anything.

"Me again. Last time, I promise." I looked at the sky, not at her. "You were straight with me. I'm going to be straight back. I heard you. No dinner. No dating. Shop's closed."

"Glad we're clear."

She smiled. "Crystal. But here's the thing — I just moved back too. Been on the road twelve years, and I don't know how to be still yet. And you're new in town with a kid and no backup."

I turned to look at her. "So what I'm offering isn't a date. I'm offering a friend. Someone who makes a decent grilled cheese and can carry heavy things and keeps a pinky promise. That's it. No angle." I paused. "And I can happily present a reference from Savannah, if that helps. She's known me forever. She'll vouch for me. Probably."

That got a smile out of her — a small one, but real. Like she couldn't quite help it.

She looked at me, those sharp eyes moving across my face like she was reading a contract, searching for the clause that would cost her. Slow. Careful. Taking her time because she'd learned the hard way that kindness sometimes came with conditions.

I held still. Didn't smile, didn't charm. Just stood at a fence in the dark and meant what I said.

"Friends," Callie repeated. Testing the word.

"Friends."

She studied me for another long moment. Then something shifted — not a wall coming down, but a door being considered.

She nodded once, decided. "Okay, Clay. Friends."

Then Maisie came sprinting back — ringlets flying, pink boots kicking up dust — and grabbed mine and Callie's hand and announced to every human being within a thirty-foot radius: "Clay is going to teach me to ride and we're going to be best friends and he's coming to our house for dinner, right, Clay?"

I looked at Callie over Maisie's head. She closed her eyes. The look on her face said, This child will be the death of me.

I grinned. Couldn't help it. "Right, sweetheart," I said.

And Callie Monroe — the woman who'd just told me with a laugh and a steady hand and the kindest rejection of my life that her shop was permanently closed — looked at her daughter and then at me and shook her head. Then she tipped her head back and laughed.

Not a guarded laugh. Not a polite one. A free, full, helpless laugh that came from somewhere real — the sound of a woman standing in the middle of a good night and letting herself feel it. A mother watching her daughter be fearless. A woman lit up from the inside in a way that made me want to stand exactly this close to her for as long as she'd let me.

It was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.

That was the moment I knew I was done.

I just didn't know yet how completely.

— End of Chapter One · Clay —