Rodeo Nights: A Cowboy Romance

I came to Mesquite, Texas because I was running away from a life that wasn't working. The veterinary practice I'd built in Austin was successful but soulless, my ex had moved on with someone younger, and I was forty-three years old with nothing to show for it except a bank account and an ulcer.

When I saw the listing for a rural vet clinic for sale, I didn't think. I just bought it.

My name is Jake Morrison. I specialize in large animals now, horses and cattle, mostly, and I spend my days driving dirt roads to ranches that haven't changed much since the 1950s. It's not glamorous, but it's real in a way my city life never was.

The first time I met Cody Black was my third week in town. Emergency call, midnight, a horse with colic at the Morrison Ranch. I drove twenty miles in the dark, half-lost on unmarked roads, and found him waiting by the barn with a flashlight and a worried expression.

"You the new vet?"

"That's me."

"You look like you're from the city."

"I am from the city. But I know horses."

He didn't look convinced, but he led me to the stall anyway. The horse, a beautiful quarter horse named Dusty, was in rough shape, pawing and sweating. I worked on him for three hours, Cody assisting with a competence that surprised me. By dawn, the crisis had passed, and we were sitting on hay bales drinking the coffee he'd made, exhausted and filthy.

"You're not bad. For a city vet."

"High praise."

He smiled, and I noticed for the first time how handsome he was. Late thirties, weathered in the way of men who work outside, with blue eyes that seemed to hold back more than they showed. His hands were rough and scarred, working hands, capable hands.

"You been working here long?"

"Five years. Before that, I was on the circuit."

"Rodeo?"

"Saddle bronc. Retired after a bad throw. Back's never been the same."

There was something in the way he said it, carefully, like the story had more to it than he was telling. But I didn't push. You didn't push in small-town Texas. You waited for people to open up on their own timeline.

Over the following months, I saw Cody regularly. The Morrison Ranch became one of my best clients, and he was always the one who called, always the one waiting when I arrived. We developed an easy rhythm, the work first, then the coffee and conversation, then the drive home under Texas stars that still amazed me every time.

I started looking forward to those calls in ways I didn't examine too closely.

The thing was, Cody was a hard man to read. He'd talk about horses all day, about cattle and weather and the state of the fences. But ask him anything personal, family, history, what he did on his days off, and he'd change the subject or just go quiet.

I understood needing privacy. I respected it. But I was also desperately curious about this man who'd helped me through countless emergencies, who'd saved my truck when it got stuck in mud, who'd once driven forty miles to bring me dinner when I was stranded at a remote ranch with a difficult birth.

The breakthrough came unexpectedly. I was at the local bar, The Rusty Spur, the only option in Mesquite, nursing a beer and pretending to watch the game. Cody walked in, saw me, and after a visible hesitation, sat down at my table.