Aidan: Loyal Cowboy. Cathy McDavid

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      Chapter Two

      “Last up, folks, is the horse you’ve all been waiting for, The Midnight Express.” Loud speakers mounted from poles on either side of the ring gave the auctioneer’s voice a tinny and abrasive quality. “This here stud’s lineage goes all the way back to the great hall-of-fame bucking horse Five Minutes to Midnight. He’s won Bucking Horse of the Year twice, competed at the National Finals Rodeo a total of five times and has sired over sixty offspring, seven of which are actively competing on the rodeo circuit and doing well for their owners.”

      Flynn sat with her father in the aluminum bleachers, listening to the auctioneer recite Midnight’s selling points. The horse himself, however, had yet to make an appearance in the ring.

      She fingered the flyer in her hand as they waited. Murmurings as to the reason for the holdup traveled through the crowd like a signal zipping along a cable. Her father’s boot beat an agitated tattoo on the bleacher floor. He’d shown some interest in a few of the other bucking horses up for sale but let them all go to other bidders.

      Ace was the new owner of ten, mostly mares. He and his family sat not far from Flynn, down a couple of rows and one section over. She’d noticed him glancing in her direction now and again, had noticed because her glance was constantly straying to him.

      Enough already, she chided herself. He’s not worth it.

      And yet, her insides insisted on fluttering.

      “What’s taking so dang long?” her father complained to no one in particular.

      “Are you going to bid on him?”

      “Yep.”

      “A stud horse, Dad? What happened to retiring?”

      “I wouldn’t retire if I owned that horse.”

      He’d been going back and forth for months now. Flynn had, too.

      If her father got out of the business and moved to Billings to be near her sister, what would she do?

      She regularly helped with his bulls and string of bucking stock and had since she was a young girl. After earning her associate’s degree in business administration, she also assisted him with the office work during evenings and weekends. Monday through Friday, she worked as an administrator at the Roundup Emergency Care Clinic. Pushing papers was her forte, if not her passion.

      Once, she’d aspired to work in management for a large corporation. Except she hadn’t been able to get her foot in the door. Not like her ex-husband, whose career had soared while hers stagnated.

      They’d originally planned to wait a few years before starting a family. With her career stuck in neutral, Flynn saw no reason to postpone having the children she’d always wanted. Her ex-husband adamantly refused, and Flynn was forced to let another dream go unfulfilled.

      Her discontent increased when her older sister, Nora, a pharmacist, married a great guy and promptly bore the first of Flynn’s two nephews. How was it her sister seemed to effortlessly attain everything Flynn wanted?

      If her father retired, there’d be opportunities. She’d been considering them for weeks with great deliberation. More since she lost her head and slept with Ace.

      His abrupt departure had hurt, but it also drove home the point that the time had come and gone for her to let the past go and move forward.

      The idea of returning to school appealed to her the most, but it would be next to impossible without moving from Roundup.

      A rumbling from the crowd caused Flynn’s head to snap up. Midnight was being led into the ring. No, dragged into the ring, by two wranglers. With all four hooves digging into the muddy dirt, the horse lowered his hindquarters almost to the ground and resisted the tug from the two lead ropes connected to his halter. A third man, the livestock foreman hired by Wally Dunlap’s heirs, followed behind. He held a buggy whip and flicked it in the air behind Midnight, the snapping sound intended to encourage the horse.

      It didn’t. Midnight bore down harder.

      Flynn wanted to shout a protest. She wasn’t alone. Ace sprang to his feet, an angry scowl on his face, his flyer crushed between his fingers.

      Just when she thought he might leap across six bleacher rows and over the ring fence, the horse went suddenly still and straightened. The wranglers must have decided to quit while they were ahead because they abandoned their efforts and stood, the lead ropes stretched taut.

      Midnight ignored them. Raising his head, he stared proudly and defiantly at the audience. His mane and forelock fluttered in the same chilly breeze that snuck up the back of Flynn’s neck and caused her to shiver.

      Or was the horse himself responsible for her reaction?

      Up until this moment, she hadn’t understood the fuss. Sure, Midnight was good-looking, with quality bloodlines and a proven history as a champion bucking horse and sire. But there were lots of stallions like him for sale these days.

      Seeing Midnight in the ring, however, she glimpsed the greatness in him that had excited her father and Ace and everyone else at the auction.

      “Isn’t he something?”

      “Are you sure about this, Dad?”

      “I don’t want Ace and Sarah to have him.”

      “Please don’t turn this into a competition with them.”

      Her words fell on deaf ears. The auctioneer’s singsong litany had started.

      “What do you say? Let’s start the bidding at twenty thousand dollars. Do I have twenty thousand?”

      As if on cue, people inched forward in their seats, Flynn and her father included.

      “Fifteen, do I hear fifteen?”

      When the auctioneer dropped to five thousand dollars, the bidding took off. Her father didn’t join in until the going price reached ten thousand dollars. Ace refrained, Flynn noticed, his attention riveted on the horse.

      Her father’s hand continually went up as he outbid everyone. When the price reached twenty-seven thousand dollars, only her father and one other man remained.

      Flynn began to worry in earnest. Did her father have that kind of money?

      “Twenty-seven, twenty-seven, someone give me twenty-eight thousand?” the auctioneer intoned.

      “Twenty-seven, five.”

      Every head in the stands turned toward the sound of a new voice. It belonged to Ace.

      “Dammit,” Flynn’s father groused beneath his breath and raised his hand again. “Twenty-eight.”