Rodeo Nights (13 page)

He gave the interviewer a long, serious look. “Guess every kind of operation could say that. Folks maintain some TV news shows aren’t on the up-and-up all the time.”

Kalli figured that would never make the final edit.

“I understand you’ve had your share of injuries.” The woman’s voice gave no indication she’d hit a brick wall.

“I haven’t bought any spare teeth yet,” he answered mildly.

“Were you prepared to when you got into rodeoing?”

“‘Bout the same as a hockey player, I figure.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “You ever hear of Jim Shoulders?”

“Uh, no.’’

“Well, he’s one of the best rodeo hands ever and he had more than his share of injuries—broken bones, a spare part to fix one hip. But he used to say as long as he didn’t set off airport security scanners, he was fine.”

The interviewer had been listening intently, but the bland finish drew a genuine laugh from her, as well as from the cameraman and another technician.

“What makes it worthwhile?”

His smile got a little sly, letting the camera in on the humor before be spoke. “I gotta quote another of the great ones. Casey Tibbs said he kept rodeoing because he was winning all the money he could spend.”

Kalli didn’t realize she’d made a sound until Walker turned toward her, slitting his eyes against the lights.

‘‘What is it, Kalli?’’

At some level, she was aware that a man with a clipboard on the other side of the cameraman had started forward, perhaps to cut the tape, but the interviewer gestured to keep it going.

“What is it?” he repeated.

“Don’t pass it off,” Kalli blurted out, not sure why this was so important. “Answer it. Why do you do it?”

For long, silent seconds, she thought he might not answer.

Then she knew he would.

He never looked away from her as he spoke slowly. “For eight seconds, you’re on top of a force of nature. Riding it. Not trying to master it, but just trying to go with it. Because if you’re not in sync, it’s like slamming up against a truck. But when you are in sync... Lord, when you’re in sync, for those eight seconds, you share the power. You’re not just on top of that force of nature, you’re part of it.”

Silence ticked by while Kalli looked at Walker and he looked back, though she doubted he could make her out beyond the lights.

“Aren’t you frightened?” the interviewer asked.

“Of the bull? Of getting hurt? No. That’d be like being afraid of life. Only thing I was ever afraid of was loneliness.”

Only then did he look away from Kalli, to focus on the interview. She barely heard the rest of it.

“YOU LOOK LIKE
you’ve been rode hard and put up wet, Kalli.”

She mentally cringed at Gulch’s words. She’d been only half-conscious of turning away when the office door opened so she’d be out of the direct line of sight. But she was fully aware of it now that the ploy had failed. She looked up from checking entries and smiled wanly.

“I’m okay.”

Gulch looked doubtful. Worse, he looked stubborn. And worst of all, he wasn’t the only person looking that way.

Roberta stood right next to him with an identical expression and Walker was a couple of feet behind them, making it three for three.

“Don’t look okay,” disputed Gulch. “Does she, Roberta?”

“I’ve been tellin’ her since she dragged in here first thing that there’s no cause for her to stick around, specially not with her having a face that would scare a ghost.”

Walker stepped around Roberta and sent Kalli a piercing look. But at least he didn’t say anything.

“Thanks, Roberta.” Kalli’s glare had no apparent impact on the other woman.

“If you’re thanking me for having a bit of sense, I’ll say you’re welcome. And then repeat that you should go home.”

“I’m not going home. I’m fine,” she said sharply, and rose, intending to go around the counter to replace the entry clipboard. And to escape this scrutiny in triplicate.

Moving so quickly was a mistake. She could feel it in the clamp of discomfort at the small of her back and the squeezing in the pit of her stomach. It wasn’t like this most months, but it was far from the first time she’d felt like this—or worse. When she woke up this morning, she’d immediately known both the symptoms and the cure—go to bed with a heating pad for a day. Or tough it out. She’d made her usual choice. Tough it out.

But she couldn’t help leaning on the desk as she lowered herself to the chair.

Walker was standing beside her before she knew he’d moved. He placed one rough palm on her sure-to-be clammy forehead and wrapped the other hand around her wrist. She backed away from both touches but knew it was too late. She heard his expelled huff of exasperation.

Then she felt the earth give way as he scooped her up in his arms, one arm across her back, the other under her knees, and headed out.

“Walker, don’t be ridiculous. This is silly. Put me down.”

He ignored her. “Get the door, Roberta.”

“You bet, Walker.”

She sounded mighty pleased to follow the curt order, as did Gulch, when he contributed, “I’ll get the truck door.”

“Good. And give those folks a call and tell ’em we won’t be by this afternoon. Reschedule for tomorrow.”

Already out the door, Gulch called back, “Sure thing.”

Kalli wanted to demand to know what folks he and Gulch had planned to meet and what would be rescheduled, but she considered being carried like a baby a very weak position for making demands. First things first. “Walker. Put me down. Now.”

The words were right, but the voice lacked punch.

He kept going, out the door, down the two steps, across a few yards of dirt, to where Gulch held the red pickup’s door wide open.

“Walker—”

He deposited her on the worn upholstery of the passenger seat and met her glare. His face was so close, she could see the dark centers of his eyes, could watch them expand, could absorb the warmth of his breath across her lips, could feel it sucking the oxygen out of her system, leaving her suspended, unmoving.

“Don’t push me, Kalli.”

He stared an instant longer, then backed away, leaving room for Coat, who jumped up with surprising nimbleness to the spot in the middle of the seat. Kalli’s foot nudged at a brick wrapped with string, a contraption Walker used to need for wrist-strengthening exercises.

“Hook your seat belt.” He stood and waited until she’d complied, then handed in her purse, brought by Roberta.

Walker closed the door with controlled emphasis that told her he’d wanted to slam it. Ten years ago, he would have. But that thought was lost in others, more urgent, as she watched him circle the front of the pickup. Only by an act of will did she prevent herself from continuing to stare at him as he slid into the driver’s seat, fastened his seat belt, started the engine and headed out of the dusty rodeo grounds. He looked so damned good.

Coat sat down between them with a gusty sigh of contentment.

Don’t push me, Kalli,
he’d said. There had been another phrase tagging along with those words, unvoiced, but clear.
Or I’ll
— Or he’d what? That’s what she wanted to know.

What had he thought as he’d bent over her so close, his mouth not even inches from hers, his arms still partially wrapped around her?

What would have happened if she
had
pushed? Would he have kissed her? Would he have slid his tongue in her mouth the way he’d taught her when he’d been the first to kiss her that way, the way he had at Lodge’s and in the mountains watching the sunset? Would she have experienced the blessed weight of his body pressing against hers, felt the hot evidence that he desired her, as she had so often in that other time, that lifetime ago?

As she’d been dreaming of again?

Or would he have pulled away? Would he have said words that would rip apart the fragile barrier she’d erected between her scars and the present?

Swallowing, she closed her burning eyes, turning her face from Walker and resting her cheek against the top of the worn seat back.

She didn’t realize she’d dozed until she woke. And she didn’t wake until the pickup stopped.

A leftover skill from those days on the rodeo circuit, this ability to sleep no matter how rough the road, followed by instant alertness upon arrival at the next stop. Strange that it lingered after all these years.

“Where are we?”

That, too, was a common refrain from their past. But this time, her question wasn’t the idle curiosity of a woman so in love it didn’t really matter where they were as long as they were together.

She rolled down the dust-dimmed window.

Instead of the well-established sprawl of the Jeffrieses’ ranch she’d expected, she looked out at the wooden skeleton of a corral under construction, a new barn and a log house about half its size, all set in a semicircle of partially tamed landscape, the whole thing apparently cut out of the side of a mountain by nature’s sharp hand. The mountain continued rising behind the buildings, not close enough to crowd them, yet giving a sense of solid protection.

Some distance in front of the buildings and the open space where the truck sat, the earth fell away to reveal a valley’s spreading tapestry—the hues of green where irrigation reached, the dusty golds and browns where it didn’t, the dots of cattle, the silvered glimmer of cottonwoods tracing streams or encircling the rarer blues or reds or whites of a house or barn. It stretched to the horizon, where she could imagine she saw the shadowed steps of the Big Horn Mountains some hundred miles away.

Walker had come around to the passenger door while she took her survey and now appeared prepared to scoop her up again. She slowed him with an arm to his chest while she unhooked the seat belt, then quickly climbed down herself.

“Where are we?” she repeated.

“My place.”

“Your place?”

“Yep.”

“But...” She clamped down anything else. This was where his money had gone. Money earned in dusty arenas, amid the smells and sounds of courage and pain and adrenaline. He’d turned it into this. This piece of land swept fresh by the wind.

“It’s...it’s beautiful, Walker.”

He said nothing, and she risked a glance at his profile as he looked out over the valley. Behind his barriers, she recognized his pride and satisfaction.

He’d bought it, and he was building it. She guessed his hand had joined the logs into a house, his strength had raised the barn, his imagination had designed the corral.

“It’s a wonderful place,” she added. “And the view...” You could never feel closed in when you could look out and have the world at your feet like this.

“You can see Jeff and Mary’s place.” He sounded gruff, and she suspected it hid other emotions. “Down there, see?”

He pointed toward the valley. East and a little to the south. Shrunk by distance, but clearly recognizable. She also saw the twisting road they must have traveled to get here. A road reached by going straight along the main road after the drive to the Jeffrieses’ ranch branched south. So maybe it
had
been his headlights behind her the other night.

“My land stretches down to Jeff and Mary’s western border, then up the mountain almost to the top.”

“All this?” Her eyes opened wider.

“Yeah. It’s hard to tell from here, but there’s some flat around the south side of this old rock.” He pointed. A branch of the road continued around the curve of an outcropping. Through the trees, she caught a glimpse of open space.

“I haven’t been here enough to do much more than get the house and barn up, then keep them standing. But I’m running some stock with Mary and Jeff’s. And a few head of horses I’m hoping to breed. Maybe next year. Then I can—” He broke off. “C’mon, get inside. You don’t want to be standing out here listening to me and taking in the view.”

Oh, yes, she did. When he got that dreamy look in his eyes and that deep note in his voice, she could have listened to him forever. But he clearly had other ideas. He cupped her elbow, his big hand spreading warmth.

“This is ridiculous, Walker.” Her protest had less power than the breeze slipping around them. “I’m not really sick. I’m just not feeling great. I’m just—”

“I know what you’re just. And I know what to do about it.’’

He hustled her up broad wooden steps flanked by a pair of rather unhappy looking evergreens, across the planked porch, which held a trio of wooden rocking chairs, through the living room so fast she had no more than an impression of earth tones and a stone fireplace, and into a bedroom.

The room was almost painfully neat. A big, quilt-covered bed was centered on one white wall, facing a set of windows that looked east. She noticed a bookshelf, a dresser, a couple of area rugs, a bootjack by the hall door and two more doors. Living mostly out of a trailer or hotel room so many years had definitely taught Walker minimalism in decorating.

He opened one door to reveal a closet as neat as the room. With no fumbling, he pulled out a flat box and removed a heating pad.

“If there’s one thing old rodeo cowboys know, it’s heating pads.”

He aimed a dry grin somewhere over her left shoulder, moved quickly to the outlet next to the bed to plug in the pad, then disappeared momentarily beyond the other door. She heard water running. Must be the bathroom. Still, she stood stock-still in the middle of the room. He returned almost immediately with a glass of water in one hand; the other was closed in a fist.

“Here, take these.”

She looked blankly at the pair of pills he deposited in her palm.

“Won’t upset your stomach,” he assured her as he turned down the quilt and positioned the heating pad. “If there’s another thing old rodeo cowboys know, it’s painkillers.”

He straightened, and she swallowed the pills quickly. For a moment, they looked at each other. His face had gone still, and when he took the glass from her unresisting hand, the movement lacked his usual slow grace.

“C’mon,” he ordered, but he stopped short of taking her arm to guide her to the bed.

She sat on the bed, her initiative fogged by discomfort and a tremendous lethargy. He gruffly told her to take her boots off, and she complied. She also obeyed his gesture by pulling her stockinged feet up on the bed. On her own she curled around the warmth of the heating pad.