Rodeo Royalty

By Christina F. York

Tyler Forrester plans to be a rodeo princess, and get the attention of Brad Young, the hottest junior cowboy around. But when Tyler’s friend Amee decides to help her find some scholarship money, the plan gets out of control faster than a seven-second bull ride.
Thanks to Amee’s meddling and a large pile of scholarship money, Tyler is headed for Valenta, a tiny European country, to spend the month of August as a temporary princess, and her rodeo plans are headed for the last round-up.
Tyler is a long way from her friends, her family, and her horse. Sure, there’s a hot prince, but he can’t make up for everything she’s missing. Or can he?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tsunami Ridge Publishing
• Release date: Dec 13, 2011
• ISBN: 9781465972286

Christina F. York

Christina F. York has written short stories for Strange New Worlds and the New Frontier anthology No Limits. She frequently writes with her husband, J. Steven York. Visit her online at YorkWriters.com.

Book preview

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

About the Author

More Books by The Author

Rodeo Royalty

Chapter 1

Most people would think living in Grant, Washington, would be the pits, since it’s in the middle of nowhere, and there aren’t any big cities close by. We don’t have a mall or a multiplex with stadium seating, or even a real downtown.

But for me, Tyler Forrester, Girl With A Plan, Grant is just fine because we have the Round-Up, which is a totally tight rodeo. They have a rodeo queen, and rodeo princesses, and that is the first part of my Plan, to be the rodeo queen — which is practically a family tradition since my mom and her mom were both princesses, and Gram met Gramps at the Round-Up, and my Aunt Sheila was rodeo queen — and get the attention of the hottest junior cowboy on the planet, Brad Young.

Oh, the Plan is bigger than rodeo queen. Even bigger than Brad Young. I also plan to go to Washington State University and be a veterinarian.

It’s what I have always wanted to be, even before I wanted to be rodeo queen, which was when I saw Aunt Sheila ride into the ring when I was a little girl.

Of course I never got to see Mom or Gram when they were princesses — not being born yet, and all — but I have seen their pictures, even if it is impossible to believe Mom was ever young enough to be a princess. But there it is, in living color.

Gram’s pictures are really old. They didn’t even have color back then — not in cameras that real people could buy, anyway, even though Gram says there were color movies.

Anyway, it all goes together, since the rodeo is all about horses and cattle, and they need vets, and I want to be a vet and take care of animals, especially horses.

So, when Amee Haller — my so-called best friend — said we needed to get our applications in, I assumed she was talking about the rodeo court applications. And we all know that old joke about what assume does, don’t we?

I had sent mine in as soon as I could, so I figured Amee had left hers until the last minute, like she usually does with deadline stuff, like her homework.

We were flaked out on the twin beds in my bedroom, where we hung out a lot, since Amee liked my house better than hers, which probably had a lot to do with my older brother, the dorkus brotherus, Greg.

It might not have been so bad. I might have figured out that she meant something else, if I hadn’t been totally distracted by the picture of Brad Young in the Grant Sentinel, which is the local rag they call a newspaper. At least it has pictures of the local spring rodeo events, and even with half the rodeo ring on his jeans and a serious case of hat hair, Brad was a definite hottie.

Brad was part of the Plan, even if he didn’t know it yet, but it would happen, just as soon as I was a rodeo princess. Sure, hotties like Brad Young didn’t usually notice freshmen, but I would be almost a sophomore when they announced the rodeo court at the Round-Up early in September, and I would make such an excellent princess that he was sure to notice me, and a senior could notice a sophomore, couldn’t he?

So I went right on staring at the picture of Brad, and just said, Yeah, to whatever it was Amee thought we should do. We’d end up doing it anyway, since I pretty much do whatever Amee wants, because she is supposed to be my best friend, and it’s usually what I want, too.

I was still staring at Brad’s picture, and trying to figure out exactly the best way to get his attention, and Amee was flipping through one of my horse magazines. Without looking away from Brad, I said, Do you think I should change my hair?

Nah, said Amee. Besides, you get a princess makeover, so why not let the experts fix you up?

I nodded. Amee had the right idea. That way I wouldn’t have to pay for a new look, and free stuff was always a good idea, or at least I thought so when she said it.

Amee got up from the bed and walked over to my computer, which she uses almost more than I do. She is a real computer wonk — since her dad was, like, some Microsoft millionaire before he decided to become some kind of hippie and move to Grant — and she knows all my passwords and stuff and can make the computer do stuff that I don’t even know what it is.

Don’t get me wrong, I know all about technology. I can use a computer just fine, I carry my phone with me everywhere, even in the barn where I keep my horse, and I have a tablet in my backpack for school. I’m just not the kind of computer geek Amee is.

I leave that stuff to her. She’s really good at it, and I don’t mind her using my computer. Her parentals have tons of restrictions on her surfing the Net and doing things online, which is weird since that’s where her dad made all his money, but trying to figure out parentals would make your brain itch, and not in a good way — so I didn’t think anything of her tapping away at my keyboard.

Even though I should have.

Chapter 2

Sometimes, you know the exact moment when your life is in the dumpster, which for me was Saturday, May twenty-seventh — the worst day of my life.

Saturdays are supposed to be good days. You know, a reward for getting through another week of school, and a time to do the things you want to, not the things you have to, and hang out with your friends, and figure out ways to get people like Brad Young to notice that you’re alive.

Well, that might be the way it is for other people, but not for me. Saturdays are the days I have to do ranch chores and help my mom around the house, and I am such a Cinderella, without the stepsisters, evil or not, and without the fairy godmother, unless you count my buddy Frank. But that’s another story.

So on the worst day of my life I put on my ratty jeans, cleaned the fireplace — honestly, how clichéd is that? — and did some laundry before I headed for the barn.

I liked to hang out in the barn, except there were always a million chores that needed doing, but at least I had Misty, my old mare, who is a total sweetie. She’s the horse I’ll ride when I’m rodeo queen.

Misty was always glad to see me, and if I finished her stall fast enough, we could sneak in a quick ride. We weren’t supposed to, because the parentals had rules about when I can ride, and one rule was no riding until homework was done and chores were finished, which, okay, made sense when I was ten. But I was sixteen for heaven’s sake, and you would think I could handle my own schedule, right?

Okay, I wasn’t sixteen, quite, but I was fifteen and eight-twelfths, which reduces to fifteen and two-thirds, and that that rounds to sixteen, right? So I was close enough to sixteen for it to count.

Mom and Dad knew I wanted to ride almost as much as I wanted to be rodeo queen, and a rodeo queen has to be a good rider, so I was practicing, not just having fun. They ought to appreciate my dedication.

But like all the adults around me, they saw this as an opportunity to motivate me, which really means blackmail and abuse of power, two things that parentals are really good at, if you ask me.

It wasn’t like they had to worry about my grades, either. To be a rodeo princess, I had to have good grades, because that was important to the committee that picked the rodeo court. I knew girls that were really pretty and really good riders, and they did all the community service and stuff and volunteered at all the events, but they could never get on the court because they didn’t have good grades.

That was enough motivation for me, thankyouverymuch, and I got almost all As, except for Mr. Sauby’s advanced algebra class, which wouldn’t be such a big deal, except I knew what I was doing, but Mr. Sauby was so lame about following the rules and showing your work, and he knew I got all the right answers, he just wouldn’t give me credit for it, because he thought marking me down for not showing my work would motivate me.

I hatehatehate being motivated.

Pulling on a pair of high-top rubber boots, I slipped into Misty’s stall. She bumped her nose against my chest in greeting, and I reached up to scritch her between the eyes, which she likes, and she shook her head a little in the way that says, Hi, it’s good to see you.

She had trashed her stall, again, so I grabbed a pitchfork and got to work. Sweet or not, Misty produced an enormous amount of what my dad politely called horse manure. Amee called it horse shit, which was a word I didn’t dare use at home, because my dad would totally have a cow, which also produces manure, and whatever you call it, it smelled.

Misty was cranky as I rushed through mucking out her stall, but I was in a hurry, because there was a lot to do and not a lot of Saturday. She wanted to go for a run, and, to tell the truth, so did I, but Amee and I had plans.

Barn work and homework came first, unless I wanted to tick off the parentals, which wasn’t a good idea, because then they would come up with a new set of rules, because they knew What Was Best For You. It was that whole motivation thing again.

Misty wasn’t happy when I tossed down an armload of straw and led her back into the stall instead of getting her tack and taking her out for a run.

I can’t go right now, Misty. Amee’ll be here in half an hour, I have homework, and then we’re going to practice for our princess interviews, and you know how important that is. Besides, if I get to be princess, you get to ride in the ring, too, and have everyone see how beautiful you are.

I thought she was beautiful, since she’s been my horse since I was a little girl, and I tell her that all the time, and she seems to like it, even though Greg, the dorkus brotherus, says she doesn’t understand a word I say, but I know she does.

Misty just rolled her eyes and pulled her lip back, even though I told her she was beautiful. She didn’t care whether I was a princess, she just wanted to run; and no matter how much I did for her, she didn’t get that sometimes other things were more important.

Now, I don’t want to say that Misty did it on purpose, but sometimes I don’t trust her when she doesn’t get her way, and this may have been one of those times.

She put her head down, snuffling in the hay, looking for the apple I hid for her as a treat, but I had been in a hurry, and hadn’t put one down yet.

There are lots of apple orchards in Central Washington. A couple of the neighbors let me pick up the windfalls after the harvest, and we keep a barrel by the barn door, which Misty knows, because it’s part of our little ritual.

I dashed out of the stall to grab an apple from the barrel, telling myself I hadn’t really forgotten, I just hadn’t got it yet.

Of course Misty knew better, and what with my not taking her for a run, she was getting ticked off. She’d get over it, but hanging around with a ticked off horse is not a fun way to spend an afternoon and I didn’t have time to deal with her sulking, so I tossed the apple under the hay for her to find, gave her neck a final pat, and edged past her to the stall door.

That was when she got even — no, she got ahead.

Somehow, as I started to close the stall door, it bumped Misty’s hind hoof, swung out of my grip, banged against the doorframe, and bounced back off the latch.

I wasn’t ready for it. It caught my elbow, throwing me off balance.

I grabbed for the door to stop it from hitting Misty, because hitting a ticked-off horse with a swinging door is not a good idea. I kept the door from hitting her, and yanked it back, trying to get out of the stall at the same time.

The next few seconds were in slow motion — not slow enough for me to actually do anything about it, but that weird slowed-down-time that you get when something really bad is about to happen, and you can’t stop it? Like that — because I was already off-balance, and when I grabbed the door it swung away, and dragged me with it. Instead of letting go, I held on for the ride.

Bad idea.

The door dragged me out of the stall, and right into the pile of dirty straw, spilled feed, and horse manure I had just cleared from Misty’s stall, which was still in the aisle because I hadn’t hauled it out of the barn yet.

I tried to hang on, but it was no use, except I managed to land on my butt, instead of my face. Considering the smelly pile, I should have been grateful, if I had been in the mood to be grateful for anything. Which I wasn’t.

I crawled out of the pile, and stopped myself before I wiped my hands on my jeans, which were pretty well covered with horse manure and gross hay. At least I had on gloves, which was another thing I should have been grateful for — not!

I went back to the house after I hauled the pile out of the barn, and I stopped in the laundry room on the back of the house to slip off my crusty jeans. The phone started ringing, not my cell, but the house phone, but somebody else would have to answer it because I was a little busy at the moment.

Mom came to the door of the laundry room with the cordless in her hand. It’s for you, Tyler. She held out the phone to me, like she expected me to answer it, standing there with my butt covered with horse manure.

Mother! Couldn’t she see I was busy? I really cannot answer the phone right this minute. In case you haven’t noticed, my butt is covered with horse shit.

There was a muffled squawk from the phone in her hand, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t much care about mom’s raised-eyebrow, watch-your-language-young-lady look either, since it was obvious that I had more important things to worry about than some lame-o phone call, which I probably didn’t even want to take anyway, since my friends all knew my cell number, so it couldn’t be anyone I wanted to talk to, could it?

Well, it is, I said. I know my voice was sulky, but how would you feel, standing in the laundry room in your underwear, with a pair of horseshit-covered jeans in your hands, and your mother waving a cordless phone in your face, and you know it isn’t anybody important to your life?

I dropped the jeans into the hamper reserved for really gross barn work clothes, like manure-covered jeans and stuff, and pulled on a pair of clean gym shorts. Mom was sighing impatiently, but I wasn’t talking to some stranger in my underwear. Even if they couldn’t see me, I didn’t know who it was, and talking to someone in your underwear is reserved for close friends, and a girl has to have some standards.

Mom handed me the phone, with a look that told me we would have to talk later, because the parentals were almost as big on talking as they were on motivating. They had talks for all kinds of things, no matter whether they were important or not, and being a smart-mouth, as my dad would call it, was definitely on their important talk list.

Hello?

Tyler? Tyler Forrester?

Who’s calling? I asked.

"This is Marcia Jolley from Teen Heartbeat magazine. Is this Tyler Forrester?"

What the heck? Teen Heartbeat was one of those lame-o rags that clustered around the checkout counter in the grocery store — you know, the kind that always has some superhot actor or musician on the cover, with giant print screaming at you, What Jason REALLY Wants in a Lady, and what is a lady anyway, because I am thinking that Jason does not want someone who is the kind of girl my mom would call a lady — and there was no reason to waste my time with this. I don’t subscribe to magazines, but thank you for calling.

It was a lie, but a polite lie. I had plenty of subscriptions — to magazines like Horse & Rider, American Cowboy, and Horse World — but not to ones like Teen Heartbeat, and I didn’t really mean it when I thanked her for bothering me while I was dealing with the whole horse manure issue.

I hung up.

I didn’t need a pit check to know I needed a shower, not after my trip through the manure, so I carried the phone back to its cradle in the hall, and it rang again, so I answered it, even though I really needed to get to the shower.

Tyler? I need to talk to you. It was the Teen Heartbeat woman, calling back.

I’m not interested.

Click.

When the phone rang again, I slipped it into its cradle and let it ring — the machine would pick it up, and whoever is was could leave a message — and ran into my room to grab a robe for after my shower.

The ringing stopped, I heard the machine click on, and when I came back out of my room, I heard Mom’s voice telling the caller they had the Forrester residence, and to leave a message.

Tyler? That Teen Heartbeat woman sure didn’t take No for an answer. "Tyler, I know you’re there, and I need to talk to you. I am totally not selling anything."

I hate adults who try to use slang — it sounds stupid, and they never get it right — and I knew she was selling something.

It just wasn’t what I expected.

Chapter 3

We need to talk about your entry in the Princess-for-a-Month contest. The one you entered online? The one that includes a princess makeover and a month in Europe?

Okay, that was totally weird, because somebody else had mentioned a princess makeover recently, but I didn’t remember who, I didn’t remember anything about a magazine contest, and I definitely didn’t remember a month in Europe.

Oh, and the scholarship? Did I mention the scholarship? There was a pause, and she said something under her breath. I couldn’t hear the exact word, but I could guess she was swearing. It had that swearing tone that turns any word into a swear word, even when it isn’t really, but it’s all in the tone and not the actual word.

Tyler, please pick up. This is important, believe me. Her voice wasn’t as confident as it had been, and she sounded almost scared, and somehow it was my fault, and I would feel guilty the rest of the day if I didn’t talk to her. Besides, I wanted to know how she got my name and number.

I picked up the phone.

This is Tyler.

Tyler! I am sooo glad to talk to you.

I shrugged, knowing she couldn’t see me. I’m listening, I said. I didn’t mean for it to sound rude, but it probably did. Even though I was trying to be nice to this strange woman, I still wanted to know how did this weird person get my number.

Yes, well. I could hear a clicking noise that sounded like computer keys, and her voice got back to its I’m-so-cool-and-hip-so-you-should-talk-to-me tone. Just let me verify the information we have here.

She read off my address, birthday, school, a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t anybody’s business except mine, and it was really freaking me out that she knew all this stuff about me.

Is that correct?

I didn’t want to just say Yes, without knowing where she got the 411.

Where did you find out all that?

It’s on your entry form. It was submitted from… a few more clicks, and she read off my email address.

I nodded, but I still wasn’t saying anything.

Can you hang on a minute? I needed to get to my computer, to check out what was on there, if anyone had been messing with it — like the dorkus brotherus — as if I could tell if anybody had been messing with it, since even though I’m pretty good with it, I am not a computer genius like Amee.

Why don’t you call me back? She sounded almost relieved, now that I was listening.

I suppose so. Let me get a pencil. I set the phone down, dashed in the bathroom and tossed my robe on the counter.

That caused a minor avalanche of shaving stuff my dorkus brotherus had left on the counter, and I left it all where it fell, because if Greg couldn’t be bothered to put away his stuff, I couldn’t be responsible for what happened to it.

I went back to the telephone table, grabbed a pencil and paper, and picked up the phone. Okay.

The Teen Heartbeat woman reminded me that her name was Marcia, and she rattled off a phone number that started with 212. No 800 number? She expected me to call her on my own quarter?

Just call when you’re ready, and I’ll call back. No reason to make you pay for the call, she said.

Cool. I didn’t bother to tell her my cell was free on weekends. I just wanted to get off the phone and find out what was going on.

I could hear Mom coming, so I ducked into the bathroom and started the shower, which would give me a little longer before I had to face her language talk.

It only took a few minutes to wash my hair — I kept it long and straight, which meant not a lot of upkeep: just wash it, squeeze out the water, and pull it into a ponytail — and scrub the barn smell off of me.

I am big on not-a-lot-of-upkeep, and what goes for the hair, goes for the clothes — good jeans for school, ratty ones for the barn, sweaters in the winter, tees and shorts in the summer. I don’t need much else, but I think there’s a dress in the back of my closet that I haven’t seen since Aunt Shelia’s wedding, and she’s been divorced two years.

When I stepped out of the shower, I realized the bathroom smelled — no, it reeked — big time, and it wasn’t the horse manure.

There was a big wet spot on the bathroom rug, where Greg’s aftershave had leaked all over the floor, and it stunk up the place, which meant so much for leaving Greg’s mess to him.

The shaving cream was okay, it was in a can, but the aftershave was in a bottle, what was left of it, and the cap was on the floor a few inches away from the bottle. I put his junk on the counter, put the cap back on the aftershave, and I opened the bathroom window to save myself from suffocating on the stink of his latest favorite.

I rushed through the towel and deodorant thing with my eyes watering from Greg’s putrid aftershave, thinking if I didn’t get out of here, I was going to puke, and at least I was in the right place for it.

I whipped on my robe and opened the bathroom door, which let the stink leak out into the house, but at least I could breathe again.

The note with Marcia’s number was still on the telephone table in the hall, so I picked it up on the way to my room.

The computer sat on my desk. Its power light was dark since I hadn’t even turned it on yet this morning. Which was another one of those motivation-rule things, because I couldn’t do e-mail before chores, no matter how critical it was.

Get caught breaking that rule, and the computer was moved into the den for a month, which was truly gross, having to answer personal, private, email with dorkus brotherus hanging over your shoulder, and trying to see what you were typing.

I only did that once.

I turned on the computer, letting it boot while I got dressed in a semi-ratty pair of jeans, a tee, and sneaks, which is the standard Saturday-at-home-after-chores wardrobe. By the time I was through, the computer was blinking its message-waiting light, and I sat down and looked at the list of headers, but there wasn’t anything important. I trashed a couple things that got past my spam filters, but the rest could wait.

I ran a quick search for Teen Heartbeat, and they had a Website — Duh! — and I clicked on it.

The home page came up, and bright pink letter danced across my screen. Welcome back, Tyler!!

Pink? Get real! And I knew I had never, ever been on this site. Why would I? So how could I be back?

But there was clearly a cookie buried somewhere, because after the welcome message danced for a few seconds, the screen changed, and the new screen was for a contest entry, with Entries Closed stamped across the entry form, and text scrolling along the bottom of the page.

Thanks for entering Princess-for-a-Month. Our contest is closed, and the names of the winners will be posted soon. In the meantime, watch this space for our next great contest, A-Date-With-Danny!

I wasn’t sure who Danny was — probably some lame-o boy band backup singer — not that it mattered, because what mattered was that here was the Princess-for-a-Month junk, and their computer seemed to think I had entered.

Well, if I understood cookies, it thought someone had entered from my computer.

I tried to read the entry form underneath the Entries Closed stamp, where there were spaces for all the stuff Marcia had asked about on the telephone, and they had been filled in. That explained where she got the 411, even if it didn’t explain who put it there in the first place.

I backed up to the home page, and looked for a contest link, which was a button for Our Contests — of course — I clicked on it, and got more dancing hot-pink letters.

Their Web designer must think teenage girls were all Barbie-wannabes — and that might be true. I mean, she has everything, like the beach house, the Corvette, a dozen cool careers, and she even got to be a veterinarian, which I did want, but I didn’t want it in that evil pink.

The career was as far as I went.

So forget the pink and look at the rules, which were lots of legalese, which, when you read it all, boiled down to a computer version of pulling names out of a hat.

Buried about halfway down was the list of prizes for Princess-for-a-Month, with a bunch of small prizes — magazine subscriptions,