Hunt, Sofia - Riding the Circuit [Rodeo Riders 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Everlasting) Read Free Page A

man in her life. She let him in, and he’d proven to her exactly why she shouldn’t be so trusting.
    The next morning she’d woken to find him gone. Not just gone from her bed but gone from the rodeo grounds. No note. Nothing. Just flat-out gone.
    She’d run into him countless times since, and never once did he mention their night together, almost as if it hadn’t happened. Perhaps, it’d been so unmemorable to him he’d filed the memories away with all the other insignificant women in his life. The possibility grated on her.
    Men didn’t just walk away from her. They pleaded with her, begged her, dogged her, but they didn’t walk off. Especially not after a night like that.
    She hadn’t been done with Riley, yet he’d been done with her.

Chapter 2

    Mitzi rubbed her temples, but the motion did little to ease the dull ache in her head mainly caused by the cowboys camped out a few feet from her trailer door in their piece-of-crap horse trailer. She chastised herself for her snobby attitude. What they travelled in had nothing to do with her feelings toward them. If they towed a hundred-thousand-dollar living quarters trailer, she still wouldn’t want them parked next to her.
    She offered her BFF, Tanya, another cup of coffee, as the two sat across from each other in her trailer’s small dinette. Mitzi didn’t have many female friends, and Tanya ranked at the top of a very short list.
    “Okay, the truth. What are they doing parked next to you? I know how you feel about both of them.” Tanya pointed out the small window at the rusted trailer no more than ten feet from Mitzi’s mansion on wheels.
    “My father hired them to protect me all summer long.” Mitzi glared out the window at the trailer dominating her view.
    “Oh, crap. Because of that stalker?”
    “There is no stalker. I don’t believe it for a second. It’s a scheme my father’s concocted to keep me under his thumb and prove to me I’m just a helpless female.”
    “What if you’re wrong? What if he’s real?”
    “Real? Are you kidding? You know my father. Would he hire those two clowns to guard me if he honestly thought I was in danger? He’d hire a former FBI or CIA agent, a real professional.”
    “They’re Special Forces. That’s professional.”
    “Professional screwups . That’s all I’ve ever seen from them.”
    Tanya pursed her lips, obviously not agreeing with Mitzi’s assessment. “What makes you think this stalker isn’t for real?”
    “First of all, the timing. He started stalking me after I approached my father and demanded to be equal partners in the ranch, just like my brother.”
    “I bet that went over like a three-legged bull in the extreme bull riding.”
    “Then he told me I needed to settle down and raise a family like a normal woman. You can’t imagine how pleased he was I did a feminine thing like run for rodeo queen.”
    “Why did you run for queen?”
    “I love the outfits.”
    “Yeah, what else?”
    “It’s something I’ve wanted to do since was a little girl. I enjoy it. The clothes, the grand entry parades—”
    “The attention.” Tanya winked at her.
    “You know me too well.”
    “But you being queen seems to have attracted a stalker.”
    “An alleged stalker.” Mitzi sat at the dinette and sipped her coffee.
    “Other than your suspicions, what other things make you think he’s not real?” Tanya picked up the mirror sitting on the table and checked her makeup.
    “Lots of little things, but this guy knows intimate details about my life, stuff he’d have to get from a close family member or friend.”
    “Hello! He’s a stalker. That’s what they do—stalk and gather information.”
    “This guy didn’t gather anything. It was fed to him by my father. I’m not playing his game. I’m losing these lowlifes and giving them a run for his money. I’m not a baby anymore. Dad needs to see that. As far as he’s concerned, I’m a decoration to be hung on the wall and admired but not