Something Wilder(12)

Footsteps crunched through the brush, and Bonnie whinnied softly at Nicole’s approach. “Is Bossy Bonnie ready to go?” she cooed, stroking the mare’s soft nose.

“Someone knows she gets a peppermint at the end of the day.”

Nicole had come to Utah from Montana, in search of a job and a life away from a mean family and a meaner boyfriend. Lily met her while bartending at Archie’s; Nicole was hired into the tiny kitchen to clean dishes and prep greasy bar food. She’d been sleeping in her truck at the time, and Lily dragged her home, gave her a place to stay. They were both broke and totally alone, and they quickly bonded in a way only two women can when they’ve had enough of their lives being turned upside down by the impulses and bad decisions of men.

When Archie suggested Lily as a guide for a crew scouting film sites in Moab, there was no one else she trusted to come along but Nicole. That first trip led to another, and when someone asked about the history and myths around the area, about Butch Cassidy and his gang using these trails to run from the law and hide their loot, and whether it might still be out there, it was like Duke’s ghost coming back to haunt her. Lily had immediately thought of his goddamn tally journal—filled with random notes and riddles and stories and maps. It was one of the few things of his with any value whatsoever, and she decided, hell, something good should come of growing up in the shadow of the Duke Wilder. Who knew so many people wanted to play cowboy?

But now she’d been at it for seven years, which was a long time to be at something she’d started out of necessity and barely liked to begin with. The money was enough to quit bartending from May to September, buy back some of the horses she’d had to sell, and pay Nicole, but she was still just treading water. Lily’s truck and horse trailer were ancient, and Bonnie wasn’t getting any younger. Frankly, neither was Lily. She loved this wild country, but she wanted a real house with kids and land for horses to run. She wanted to put down roots, but growing roots wasn’t easy in the desert.

“How’s the new group?” Lily asked.

Nicole picked up a bucket and filled it with weed-free pellets. At the sound, hooves pounded through the dirt as a black-and-white paint trotted happily toward them, head thrown back as he shook his mane. It would be cliché to say horses were like their owners, but look at either Snoopy or Nicole the wrong way and they would knock you on your ass with a convenient tree branch and not think twice about it.

“Nothing we haven’t seen before.” Nicole ignored Snoopy nibbling on her shirt before he ducked his head to help himself to the bucket. “There’s a loud one, a sweet potato, a creep, and a—”

Lily stopped, comb in hand. “Creep?” She and Nicole could handle themselves, but once they got out on the trail, they would be well and truly alone. “He wasn’t a problem, was he?”

“Nah.” Nic pulled out a handful of barley and offered it to Bonnie. “Just annoying. There’s also a quiet one, and he’s real cute.”

Lily lifted a brow, making Nicole bark out a laugh. “I like the occasional quiet one,” she said, “but he looked a little too tame for me. Spent most of the ride here gazing at the sky out the window.”

Before she could stop it, a memory filled Lily’s head: of a sweet, sweaty, lovesick city boy moving with purpose above her, a blanket-covered pile of hay beneath her back, the stars visible through a crack in the old barn roof. Leo whispered for her to be quiet, but he didn’t stop. If anything, he went harder, swallowing her sounds and biting back his own. “Quiet doesn’t necessarily mean tame.”

It was Nicole’s turn to look scandalized. “Story time? I haven’t heard this one before.”

“Yes, you have,” Lily said, and tossed Bonnie’s comb into her tack box.

“Which of them was quiet and not tame?” Nic tapped her lips with a finger, her hands already covered in dirt.

“None you’re thinking about.”

“The accountant from Quebec?” She held up a hand. “Wait. That architect from Oregon.”

Lily shook her head, shoving the images away. “Sun’s coming up, and we’ve got breakfast to make.”

Nicole paused as awareness landed. “Oh, you mean him.”

“Yeah.”

With conversation temporarily stalled, they both wordlessly moved to the cooking fire. The birds were still mostly silent, more cold than hungry in the breaking dawn, but the song of a canyon wren filled the air.

They poured themselves some coffee, got cleaned up again, and started on breakfast prep, knowing the smell of bacon would be enough to rouse the sleepy campers from their tents even if it wasn’t quite enough to lure the sun over the mountaintops.

“So, what’s the plan if we stop doing this?” Nicole asked, redirecting—but not necessarily in a direction Lily preferred. She knew money and the prospect of a future without any weighed heavily on Nicole’s mind; frankly, it was all Lily could think about, too.

“Don’t know yet. We can always work at Archie’s until we figure it out.”

A pat of butter hissed as it hit the hot griddle.

“What about the rodeo?” Nicole asked. “For the ranch. I used to make more barrel racing than a week working at Archie’s. I could enter, just to try?”

“I don’t know if Snoopy has it in him anymore,” Lily told her with a wince. “But I love you for thinking of it.”