Her Rodeo Hero. Laura Marie Altom

no.” Damn it. She could do this. She would do this. She turned toward the gelding next to her. “At least your horse is low to the ground. I won’t have to look like a rock climber trying to scale Half Dome.”

      Humor. A defense mechanism. Before a big competition she’d always been the one to crack jokes. Laughter helped ground her. It reminded her that life shouldn’t be taken too seriously. Everyone was going to die. One should enjoy the moment.

      Just then one of the Galloping Girlz went by on her horse. The woman hung upside down off the side of her mount. Natalie gulped.

      “I’m not doing that.”

      Sam followed her gaze and smiled. “Not yet.”

       Not ever.

      “Here you go.”

      Natalie turned. Colt stood there with the helmet. An ugly white thing that resembled the top of a golf ball.

      “Thanks.”

      When she met his gaze, she tried unsuccessfully to shield her thoughts from him.

       You’ll be all right.

      The words were unspoken, but she heard them anyway. And suddenly she knew everything would be okay. He wouldn’t let her get hurt. That wasn’t his style. The man was a protector. A warrior. A good guy.

      She tipped her chin up. “Let’s do this.”

      She slipped on the helmet. It was a little too big, but it would do. Sam held the reins as she prepared to mount. She paused before getting on. Sam’s patient gelding cocked an ear in her direction.

      Nothing to be afraid of. The arena floor was soft. Even if she did fall off, chances were she wouldn’t strike her head on the ground hard enough to jolt her brain. Thereby causing a seizure. One that might lead to permanent damage or even the end of her life.

      “What’s his name?” She grabbed the saddle horn. Although the horse was small by her standards—she was used to animals at least a foot taller than this one—it still felt like climbing a mountain.

      “Roger.”

      “So this is the horse that refuses to jump?”

      “It is.”

      She swung aboard. The way her heart pounded against her ribcage one would have thought she’d saddled a wild tiger. Good heavens, what was with her? She’d never been afraid of a horse a day in her life.

      She caught Colt’s gaze. He knew what a struggle it’d been for her to climb on, and the realization humiliated her. It shouldn’t matter what he thought—she didn’t even think he liked her—but for some reason it did.

      “Too bad you can’t take him over some fences for me.” Sam met Natalie’s gaze. “Colt told me you were in a horse wreck. What happened?”

      “I don’t know.” Natalie fingered a strand of Roger’s black mane. “I was told my horse slipped before a jump, but I don’t remember anything.”

      “Wow. Was the horse okay?”

      “He was fine. Me? Not so much.” It still freaked her out that she couldn’t recall the accident. No matter how hard she tried—it just wasn’t there. “They have it on video, but the angle’s all wrong. He might have chipped a bit, might have slipped, might have spooked at something. All I know is he took off wrong and landed in the middle of a five foot fence.”

      “Five feet?”

      Talking was good. Talking meant she didn’t have to move. When she put a horse into motion she began to suffer dizzy spells. It wasn’t so bad if she walked, but anything faster and she might as well be riding the Tilt-O-Whirl at the fair.

      “Fortunately it wasn’t during a jump-off or it might have been higher.”

      “Why don’t you take Roger out to the rail?” Sam suggested.

      They both glanced toward Colt and Natalie could tell nothing escaped his notice. He knew she was stalling for time. Could he see the way her hands shook? Had he spotted her pulse beating at her neck? The way her hands clenched and unclenched on the reins? She would swear her heart could be heard outside her body.

      “Come on.” She clucked, but the moment the horse took a step forward she wanted to throw up, and not just because of the way moving made her feel. There was the fear she battled back. The sickness at realizing she wasn’t the same as before and might never be. The shame of knowing she hadn’t been honest with Colt and the admission that she owed him the truth.

      “Whoa.”

      The horse obeyed instantly, his head lifting a notch as she pulled back on the reins.

      “What’s the matter?” Colt asked from the rail.

      She’d had a traumatic brain injury, damn it. She’d damaged her inner ear.

      “I just need a moment.”

      “Time out.”

      Natalie’s head snapped up, causing her to clutch mane. “I don’t need a time out. I just need a moment to adjust to the sudden change in elevation.”

      Too late. Colt walked toward her. He eyed Sam. “Give us a second, would you, Sam?”

      The woman nodded, shooting Natalie a look of encouragement before taking Colt’s place on the rail.

      “When you said you had balancing issues, exactly what did you mean?” He asked.

      “I told you, I can’t ride English anymore. Lifting my body up and down makes me so dizzy I nearly came off the first time I rode.”

      “You also said you could ride Western.”

      “And I can.” She held Colt’s gaze, a part of her wanting to tell him the truth, the whole truth, but if she did that, she knew she’d lose her last best chance of ever riding again. “Like I said, I just need a moment.”

      “You haven’t even broken a walk and you’re already clutching mane.”

      She immediately released the strands of black horse hair. “All better.” She lifted her hands. “See?”

      He didn’t look as if he believed her, his golden eyes nearly as dark as the black felt of his cowboy hat. “Exactly what happened when you rode Playboy without a bridle?”

      “What do you mean?”

      “I want to know the details. Were you walking? Trotting? Galloping?”

      She didn’t want to answer because by doing so she would reveal more than she wanted him to know. “I was just walking.”

      He crossed his arms, tipping back to stare up at her in a way that had her wanting to break the connection of their gaze. “And had you ever trotted since your accident?”

      And there it was. The question she’d feared. “No.”

      He tipped back farther. “Cantered?”

      She took a deep breath. “No.”

      “So all you’ve done since your wreck is walk?”

      Another deep breath. “Yes.”

      “And you decided on that day to practice walking without a bridle?”

      “You make it sound like I’m crazy.”

      “What happened when you dropped the bit?”

      “At first, nothing.”

      “And then?”

      One of the girls in the arena galloped by again, this one hanging off the back of her mount so that her head rested near her horse’s tail. Dear Lord. Never mind how painful it must be to have the cantle of the saddle digging into your—

      “Natalie?”

      “Once