Roping Her Christmas Cowboy. Rebecca Winters

      For the next half hour, he kept signing pictures as more fans continued to pour into the dealership. The ladies offered their phone numbers. Toly just kept smiling while they took pictures of the three of them with their phones. Soon they’d be able to call it a night. He wanted to get to bed early. Starting in the morning, they had a thousand-mile drive ahead of them with the horses.

      But he never lost track of Nikki who was still being mobbed by guys snapping pictures of her. He imagined she’d had to ward them off since her teens.

      “Let’s get out of here,” Mills suddenly muttered.

      Toly jerked his head around. He’d been concentrating so hard on Nikki, he hadn’t realized his friend had walked over to him. Since a month ago when the girl Mills had been dating had broken up with him, he’d grown dark and morose. You couldn’t even talk to him.

      “We’ll have to say goodbye to Jeb Riker first and thank the manager of the dealership.”

      “Yep.”

      The two of them walked over to talk to the radio announcer broadcasting from the back of a new truck. Toly thanked Riker for the great promotion and send-off. They were joined by the manager whom they thanked and chatted with for a few minutes.

      Out of the corner of his eye he could see that Nikki was still involved with her fans. Since she’d come in a separate vehicle from him and Mills, there was no reason to wait for her.

      They pulled on their sheepskin jackets and ate another hot dog before working their way through the throng of supporters to the entrance. Once outside, they walked through the brittle snow left by several storms and climbed into Mills’s Dodge Power Wagon truck.

      The temperature registered twenty degrees and would probably drop to fourteen overnight. Las Vegas sounded pretty good right now with a temperature hovering near sixty degrees.

      Mills gunned the motor and they took off, passing Nikki’s Silverado truck parked half a block down the street. The silence lengthened on their way to Dobson’s small Sweet Clover Ranch on the outskirts of town.

      “Want to talk about it yet?”

      “Nope.”

      Toly pushed his cowboy hat back on his head. “If you change your mind, I’m your man.”

      “Thanks, but I won’t.”

      Until a month ago Mills had been dating Denise Robbins, a girl from Great Falls, for about four months. When she’d unexpectedly called things off, she’d knocked the heart right out of him. Until their breakup he’d never seen Mills so happy. Her action couldn’t have been worse for him. At their last two rodeos, his timing had been a little off. Toly had tried to get him to talk about it with no success.

      Somehow Toly had hoped Denise would show up at the Ford dealership this evening to make up with him. Toly could have sworn half the town had turned out. She was a former barrel racer and couldn’t have helped but hear about it being advertised. With Finals only a few days away, for her to pick this particular time to part ways couldn’t have been more cruel.

      En route to the Dobson ranch house, Toly received an email notification on his phone from their agent, Lyle. When he checked it, he saw that Lyle had forwarded him an email from Amanda Fleming. She must have gotten his email address off the website that his agent ran for them.

      Toly figured she must have sent it from her office at the hotel in Omaha, Nebraska, where they’d met three weeks ago. He and Mills had stayed there while his rig was getting serviced. She had invited Toly to have a meal with her in the hotel after their event and he thought why not. The next day he and Mills left for their next rodeo.

      Her email explained that she would be in the stands during the competition in Las Vegas. She hoped they’d be able to spend at least one of the evenings together.

      He frowned. She hadn’t been on his mind since he’d left Omaha and knew what that meant. Only one woman had the power to remain in his thoughts and not go away no matter what else was going on. That woman was back at the Ford dealership.

      Toly was sorry he’d eaten dinner with her. In a few days he would send her an email via Lyle. At that time he would tell her that every night was uncertain because of the gold buckle ceremony and parties after each rodeo. Perhaps there might be a night he was free, but he wouldn’t know until he’d ridden in his event. He would have to see. Hopefully she would read between the lines. Toly had no desire to be rude to her, but knew their relationship couldn’t go anyplace.

      After Mills drove them up to the ranch house entrance, they both went inside and grabbed a snack in the kitchen while they made final plans for the next day.

      Toly kept listening for Nikki to come in, but it wasn’t meant to be. Furthering his disappointment, Mills informed him that their crew, Andy and Santos, would be driving her horses in their rig. His sister would fly down on the sixth, negating any hope Toly would be able to talk to her at rest spots along their route to Nevada.

      Earlier in the day, Toly had made the 190-mile drive from Stevensville to Great Falls in his rig with the horses and he was tired. After staying at the Dobsons’ tonight, they would load all four of their horses in the morning and take off on I-15 for their three-day trip all the way to Las Vegas.

      The crew would be staying at a hotel near the Thomas & Mack Center and meet up with them on the sixth at the equestrian RV park. It was the place he reserved every year so he could sleep in his rig rather than at a hotel.

      This year Mills would be living in the Dobson rig parked next to Toly’s rig. Nikki would be staying at a hotel, but during the day she’d drive out to the RV park to exercise her horses. Toly felt a heightened sense of excitement, knowing that she’d be around for those ten days. He would have a legitimate reason to talk to her, coming and going.

      After texting his mom that he’d be heading out in the morning with Mills, he said good-night and clicked off. He wouldn’t be seeing his family again until everyone flew down for the final night of competition on the seventeenth to celebrate en masse.

      Turning to Mills he said, “I’m going to go on up and hit the hay.”

      “Before you do, come in the den with me for a minute.”

      Wondering what this was about, he followed him through the cedar-plank-and-brick ranch house to the room where all the Dobson family pictures, awards and trophies were on display.

      “Sit down for a minute.”

      “Sure.”

      Toly perched on the end of the couch and waited for his friend to speak. Though Mills had darker gray eyes than his twin, their black hair and basic features were so alike it was positively uncanny. They took after their mother he could see in the photographs, but got their height from their father. Every time Toly looked at him, he saw Nikki.

      “I’ve been an ass for the last month. Sorry.”

      “Forget it, Mills.”

      “I wish I could.” He started pacing, then stopped. “I thought I knew Denise. Geez—how wrong could I have been! I could have taken it if she just plain didn’t like me anymore, but her timing after we’d made plans to celebrate when it was all over... I had big plans,” he murmured.

      Toly had an idea what they were and was heartsick for his friend. “I know, dude. It surprised the heck out of me. I thought you two were tight.”

      “Join the club. It makes me wonder something. I keep asking myself, did she shut me down right before Finals because she didn’t qualify and that’s why she dropped out?”

      “Whoa. I don’t believe that, and neither should you.”

      “I have a reason for saying what I did. As you know, I met her through Nikki. They’d been contestants at the same time for the Miss Rodeo Montana Pageant the year before and became friends. Five months ago she invited Denise to the ranch while I happened to be home that weekend.”

      “I