Page 5 of August’s Cowboy Braxton

Before she could answer, her phone buzzed. She glanced down, and her face went still.

“Addison.”

She didn’t move.

I reached her in two steps and took the phone from her hand. I should have asked. I should have kept the distance professional, but the look on her face killed every polite instinct I had.

The message was simple. The photo wasn’t. It showed the two of us. Addison stood behind the feed barrel. I was by the door. It had been taken from outside moments ago.

The text below read:

Cute bodyguard. He won’t always be there.

Heat moved through me, clean and cold. Not anger. Worse. Focus.

I scanned the doorway and the grounds beyond. There were too many people… families, volunteers, vendors, stock hands, tourists, and junior contestants running past with ribbons in their hands.

Any one of them could have taken that photo. Any one of them could have been close enough to watch her breathe.

My hand tightened around the phone before I made myself loosen it.

I handed it back. “Still think you don’t need a briefing?”

Addison stared at the screen. Then at me. “You’re not going to let me out of your sight, are you?”

“No.”

She let out a frustrated exhale. “Great.”

I stepped past her toward the door, already mapping the grounds in my head. Too many blind angles. Too much movement. Too many places for someone to hide and watch her from twenty feet away.

“Braxton.”

I stopped.

Addison stood in the center of the feed room, her crown slightly crooked, her smile finally gone. “This is really happening, isn’t it?”

“Yeah.”

“And you think I’m in actual danger.”

I looked at her. At the phone still clutched in her hand. At the fear she was trying so hard not to show.

“No,” I said. “I know you are.”

I walked out into the August heat and scanned the crowd again. Somewhere in that sea of families and volunteers and junior queens, someone was watching her. And now they knew I was watching back.

CHAPTER 2

ADDISON

I hated him a little for seeing that picture. Braxton had stood in the doorway of the feed room and looked at me like I was a problem he was already solving in his head. Exits. Angles. Blind spots. People who had access.

And me, standing in the middle of it all, trying not to let him see how much the photograph rattled me.

I'd spent years learning how to smile through fear. Sponsors who got too familiar. Drunk men at parade after-parties. Photographers who didn't understand the meaning of personal space. Evie taught me early that the worst thing a rodeo queen could do was look uncomfortable. The second you flinched, people stopped seeing you as polished and started seeing you as a target.

So I didn't flinch.