LITMIR.BIZ

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win. Sadly, this would be her last competition before she gave it up to devote herself full time to her career. Dr. Rafferty needed a partner who wasn’t off every few days barrel racing in another rodeo to stack up wins.

      Her seven-year-old quarter horse had been a runner from the beginning and was well proportioned. Liz had trained half a dozen horses, but felt she couldn’t have found a better horse for the sport than this one.

      Polly, the other quarter horse Liz trained and took with her to every rodeo, wasn’t as reliable as Sunflower. But if something happened to Sunflower during competition, Liz needed a backup.

      Her third horse, Maisy, she left behind. She wasn’t as teachable and hadn’t learned to body rate or lower her head when Liz pulled on the reins. The ability for a horse to slow its speed at the first barrel in response to light rein pressure was crucial. Only then could you position it for a precise first turn and properly align it to change leads for the other two turns, thus shaving off time.

      When Liz’s body relaxed, Maisy should have related that to the movement. She tried to teach Maisy, but the horse was slow to respond. Nevertheless, she was a great horse for riding in the mountains.

      Since Liz used dressage in her training regimen, snaffles were the best bit to use. This morning she was using training reins and had picked the square mouthpiece O-ring to teach control and collection. This bit kept her horse’s mouth moist without damaging it.

      Liz had about ten different bits, but didn’t have a favorite competition bit. No matter which one she used, she rarely rode Sunflower in the same bit she was running and changed it frequently to keep the horse’s mouth soft.

      Liz trained with four barrels, arranged in what was called the cloverleaf pattern, even though there were only three for competition. Her dad had taught her that if you went for the diamond pattern, the horse wouldn’t know which barrel was first, thereby reducing the excitement so her horse would stay controlled. A clever trick that worked.

      Once inside the arena, Liz spent time making perfect circles with Sunflower, starting at fifty feet and diminishing to twelve, so the horse would get used to going in circles using a little inside leg. Her horse’s back feet needed to go in the same track as her front feet. Liz worked Sunflower in one direction, then the other, making as many circles as necessary to get that control, sometimes walking, sometimes jogging, sometimes loping and trotting where Liz could stand in the stirrups to strengthen her legs.

      Barrel racing was all about speed transitions, stops and then backing up. But Liz had learned that “all go and no whoa” wasn’t fun. An effective warm-up was everything. She walked Sunflower over to the fence, stopped, backed up, then went in the other direction, using the “whoa” to alert her horse to stop. This exercise built up her horse’s hindquarters. Practicing at the fence caused Sunflower to use her back hocks and stifles to turn around, building vital control.

      When the moment came, Liz walked her horse along the wall, using her right hand to tip the horse’s nose slightly toward the wall. She kept her left hand low and moved it out in the direction she wanted to move the shoulders.

      Then she pressed the horse up by the girth with her right leg to push its shoulders away from the wall. When she felt Sunflower take two steps off her leg, she released the pressure and let the horse walk out straight.

      “Good girl, Sunflower.”

      Liz repeated this process in the other direction, and eventually Sunflower progressed to the trot and canter stages.

      The sound of clapping caused her head to jerk around.

      “You’re looking on top of your game, Liz.”

      To her surprise, it was Connor Bannock from the neighboring ranch. Coming from him there couldn’t be a greater compliment. At her first junior rodeo competition years earlier, she’d blown it so badly she’d wanted to die. But Connor, who was a year older and already on his way to a world championship, had sought her out. In front of a lot of people he’d told her she had real talent and shouldn’t let one loss be a reason to give up. His encouragement, plus the way he’d smiled and tipped his hat, had lit a fire in her that had never gone out.

      “I’m working on it.” She walked Sunflower toward him. “As usual, your fame precedes you. I just heard about your latest win. Congratulations.”

      “Thanks.”

      He and his hazer, Wade Torney, had already returned from the rodeo in Kalispell. Wade, who rode parallel to the steer as it left the chute to keep it traveling in a straight line, had been Connor’s partner for years. They must have driven hard through the snow to make it back this fast.

      Now the twenty-seven-year-old world steer-wrestling champion sat astride one of his stallions, wearing a shearling sheepskin jacket and his trademark cream-colored Stetson. The man was a legend.

      In his teen years, Connor had been Montana’s high school all-around steer wrestling and team roping champion two years in a row. Early in his career he’d stacked up dozens of awards, among them the PRCA Overall and the Steer Wrestling Resistol Rookie of the Year.

      To the envy of the other competitors, last year he won his fifth world title, placing in seven out of ten rounds at the Wrangler NFR, winning the fourth round in 3.3 seconds. The list of his achievements over ten years went on and on. She knew all of them.

      Beneath his cowboy hat, a pair of piercing brown eyes studied her with a thoroughness that puzzled her. Without his hat, his overly long dark-blond hair was gilded at the tips by the sun.

      What was the divorced, hard-muscled rancher doing over here? Nature had played all sorts of surprises this morning. First the snow, and now the powerfully built man who’d made the cover of a dozen Western magazines naming him the sexiest cowboy of the year.

      No doubt about it. The six-foot-three, two-hundred-pound bulldogger attracted a huge share of buckle bunnies who followed him around the circuit. When she was a young and impressionable teenager, the sight of him used to make Liz’s heart bounce like a Ping-Pong ball.

      But Liz was a twenty-six-year-old woman now, who’d had relationships with several great guys. At the moment she was dating Kyle James, a pilot with an air charter service out of Bozeman. He’d flown in some supplies for Dr. Rafferty on an emergency. Liz had met his plane at the airfield outside White Lodge.

      His good looks and friendly nature appealed to Liz. He ended up flying to White Lodge several times to take her to dinner. She’d driven to Bozeman twice to spend time with him. He was growing on her, but when he’d offered to drive with her to Las Vegas, she’d turned him down, explaining that she’d made other arrangements.

      Not to be discouraged, he’d told her he planned to fly down for the last event on the fourteenth. Though she hadn’t told him not to come, she wasn’t sure she wanted him there. Her hesitation to let him into her life to that degree proved she wasn’t ready for a full-blown relationship yet.

      As Connor continued to study her, she started to grow anxious. Over the past eight years he’d only stepped on Corkin property twice that she knew of. The first time was the day of Daniel Corkin’s funeral in May, when all the Bannocks showed up, except for Connor’s father, Ralph, who’d been too weak to come.

      The second time was the night, a month later, when Connor and his brother Jarod had rescued Sadie from their mentally unbalanced cousin, Ned Bannock. He’d trespassed on Corkin property and attacked Sadie in the barn. For the present, Ned was being treated in a special mental health facility in Billings.

      Her body tautened. Connor would never have come to the ranch, especially this early, if something weren’t wrong that could affect her on a personal level. “You must have bad news, otherwise you wouldn’t be here. Has something happened to my father?” Her dad was the Corkin foreman and had left the house early to talk business with Zane Lawson, Sadie’s stepuncle. He was the new owner of the Corkin ranch.

      “If it had, do you think we’d still be here talking?”

      She blinked. “But—”

      “It’s

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