Rodeo Nights (16 page)

For some reason, that seemed to relax her. She quirked a look at him that held amusement.

“I need to help Roberta.”

“Not going to help her by keeling over.”

“I’m not going to—” She broke off and looked at him. This was the first time this summer he could recall she’d done that without looking as if she were preparing to run for cover or considering drawing a bull’s-eye on his forehead. “You’re not going to budge, are you?”

He allowed himself a small grin. “Nope. And I got the keys to the pickup.”

She laughed then, a real laugh. “And it’s a long, dusty walk back, huh?”

“Yep.”

“All right. Do you want me to fix something?”

“No, you sit there—” he nodded at a chair at the small table by the open end of the U-shaped kitchen “—and I’ll get it all ready.”

He took a casserole dish out of the refrigerator, removed the foil covering it and put it in the microwave before rummaging in a cabinet.

“Uh, Walker? I don’t want to insult you, but I remember some of the things you used to eat.”

He fought to produce the frown her comment demanded. It wasn’t easy when he wanted to grin at her comfort with pulling out a memory for them to share. “Are you disparaging my cooking skills, ma’am?”

“I don’t think I’d call them cooking skills. More like can-opening skills.”

He accepted that with a thoughtful nod, but defended himself. “I’ll have you know my can-opening skills have improved a good bit.” He ignored her murmured “Thank goodness,” and went on. “But for your information, this late lunch is courtesy of Lolly Carmody. And if you’ve ever seen her sons and her less-than-slim husband, you’d know she’s one of the county’s best cooks.”

The microwave dinged just as he finished emptying a can of applesauce into a bowl. He brought the casserole dish and the bowl to the table together, then returned for plates, glasses, forks and spoons and a paper towel each to serve as napkins.

“I guess microwaves help even you.”

He nodded, deadpan. “I’m not above accepting a little culinary aid here and there.”

She grinned, then inhaled eagerly. “I guess I am hungry. It smells wonderful. And applesauce! I love applesauce.”

“I remember.” Pretending to be intent on dishing up the casserole, he still saw how the memory of a few outrageous things they’d done with applesauce sent fire up her cheeks. “And it’s only natural it smells wonderful. I told you, Lolly Carmody—”

She latched on to that. “Ah, yes, the famous Carmodys. I did some checking after that day in Lodge’s.” He raised his gaze to hers without lifting his head, and watched the fire surge across her skin again, this time at a more recent memory. “I mean after Esther let that drop about you sending cowboys to the Carmodys’. Turns out to be a very interesting setup.”

“Nothing interesting about it,” he disagreed.

“You sent several cowboys who were running short of funds because they hadn’t won on the rodeo circuit in a while out to work for the Carmodys.”

He shrugged and kept eating. “With Lolly laid up and their boys too young to do a whole lot, Nels needed the help. And the hands needed the cash so they could enter the rodeo. Just a matter of putting them together and everybody helping everybody else out.”

“Except the cash didn’t come from the Carmodys, did it, Walker?”

Under her soft voice, he heard the steel.
Wouldn’t want to cross her in business,
he thought with more than a little admiration.

“No.” He lifted his head to match look for look. “But it didn’t come from rodeo funds, if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“I know—”

He broke the look to reapply himself to Lolly’s casserole, but his head snapped up at Kalli’s next words.

“—I checked.”

He glared at her. “You thought I was stealing from Jeff and Mary?”

“No! I never thought that. And it wouldn’t have been stealing even if you had taken it from rodeo funds, because we both know Mary and Jeff would have done the same thing in a heartbeat, even with last summer’s rescue operations leaving the rodeo in a bind. Though if you had, it sure as hell could have messed up my budget projections, so if the matter arises again, I want to know. Promise?”

“Promise.”

“That came awfully easily.” She cocked her head at him, considering. “Ah, of course... You can promise to tell me because you have no intention of ever using anything but your own money. And as long as you never use the rodeo’s, you figure you don’t have to tell me.”

He shrugged. “If you’d thought that, you wouldn’t have needed to check the rodeo funds this time, would you?” He caught her slight wince and didn’t regret causing it; she’d laid a cut across his pride. But he had simmered down enough to wonder, “So why didn’t you just ask me?”

And his wondering rocketed from mild curiosity to real interest at her obvious discomfort. She looked down to where she’d suddenly become very busy pushing the remnants of her food around with her fork.

“I thought you might not want me—anyone—uh, asking questions, uh, about your finances. I didn’t know...

He followed the progress of her gaze around the kitchen, not elaborate but modern, and toward the living room, then back to him.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I just brought it up because I wanted to tell you I think it was a nice thing for you to do. Helping the Carmodys and those cowboys.” She said it almost belligerently. “That’s all.”

“Okay.”

He accepted it on the surface, but found this a good time to go get more of the pills he’d given her, to give him a couple moments to mull this over. With a mumbled excuse, he headed for the medicine cabinet.

Coming out into the hall without insight having hit him in the two minutes he’d been gone, he could see her looking around his place again.
That
’s when insight hit him.

She’d thought he was broke.

She’d thought he was as down on his luck as his old truck looked, not knowing that its shoddy exterior hid an engine that could purr or roar depending on the demands he made on it.

That also helped explain that exchange over her green shirt at Lodge’s. She’d thought he couldn’t afford it. And she’d been worried about him.

Or had she felt sorry for him?

“More pills.”

He slapped the pills down on the table next to her plate, then went around to take his chair.

She pushed the pills away with one hand while shifting from her fork to her spoon with the other. “I don’t want them, they’ll knock me out again.”

Reaching across the table, he pushed them back. “They didn’t knock you out. You knocked yourself out. Your body’d been needing the rest a long time, but you just weren’t giving it a chance. Take ’em, Kalli.’’

She looked at him, then apparently accepted what he’d said as the truth, and swallowed the pills. Another first.

Some of the tension eased out of him.

What the hell, he was doing so well now, he might as well try another go-round.

“Trouble at the office?” He dipped his head toward the telephone.

“No, not really. Roberta’s got everything under control.”

“Meant your New York office. Trouble there?”

“Oh.” She frowned as she swallowed two more spoonfuls of applesauce. “I don’t know.”

He waited.

“They called,” she finally added. “Want me to call back.”

“And want you to come back?”

She made a production of taking her plate, silverware and glass to the sink. All of six feet away.

“I suppose so. They won’t really need me until the fall, but it makes my boss nervous not to have everyone present and accounted for. Having anybody gone for a two-week vacation is about Jerry Salk’s limit. Yes, I imagine he does want me to go back.”

“Are you going?”

It cost to make the question sound disinterested.

“I won’t leave until Jeff’s back or the season’s over.” She glared at him over her shoulder, then turned the faucet wide open with a jerk of her wrist, deluging the dishes more than rinsing them. “I wouldn’t pull out on Jeff and Mary. You know me better than that.”

She turned the water off with less vehemence.

“I used to,” he corrected.

“You still do.”

She’d said the words without thinking, but then he saw her go still and he knew their import had hit her. And he waited for her to laugh them off or take them back or turn them around. Waited for her to do whatever it took to pull away.

She slowly turned to face him, her gaze going from his shoulder to his throat to his mouth and at last to his eyes.

“You still do,” she repeated.

His lungs cried for oxygen, but he didn’t dare breathe for fear of shattering the moment.

“You might have changed.”

“In some ways,” she conceded. “Not in that.”

The moment suspended, drawing out in the uncertainty of where to go from here.

At last, Kalli broke the silence, and Walker felt almost grateful when she gave her shoulders a hitch and said, “Well, I’ll get my things. And we can head back.”

In a matter of minutes, he held the truck door open for her. She paused as she started to climb in.

“Thank you, Walker. For bringing me here. It was sweet.” She flicked a look at him, as if afraid he might take offense at the description. “For taking care of me, and...”

Her words stumbled to a halt. He wondered if she’d thought of the unburdening they’d shared but decided that wasn’t something to thank anyone for.

“You were right, you and Roberta. I needed to rest a while. I was tired.”

“I know. You don’t usually get that way unless you’re pushing yourself too hard.” He held her gaze an extra beat before adding, “I
do
still know you well.”

She didn’t answer. The silence as they drove down the mountain, leaving behind the afternoon’s isolation, had a different quality from the other silence that had stretched between them for so long.

The silence he’d started back when they were married and he was too scared to tell her his fear or his sorrow or his guilt. The silence that had helped drive them apart. The silence that had kept them separated.

Well, they were talking, really talking.

But he wondered if, unlike Jeff’s situation, recovering their ability to communicate was too little, and much, much too late.

THIS WAS COMFORTABLE.
Two old friends, sitting side by side on the top rail of the fence, boot heels hooked on a lower rail to balance. Two old friends watching the slow-paced afternoon activity in the arena. Two old friends chatting about this and that.

“This is comfortable,” Kalli said out loud.

It
was
comfortable. Over the past week, she and Walker had worked together with an ease that rather surprised her. Maybe for the first time in all the years they’d known each other, their abilities could complement each other. Walker’s low-key approach balanced Kalli’s lightning-quick responses. Kalli’s honed business sense gave structure to Walker’s rapport with the rodeo community.

They’d made mistakes when they’d been married. Such basic mistakes. He hadn’t communicated with her and she’d expected to remake him.

But they’d both grown up.

He’d certainly learned to see—and look forward to—a life after rodeo. And she knew marriage didn’t require white picket fences and a nine-to-five existence. Having learned these lessons, they’d made peace with each other, which would now free them to perhaps find the right people to make their future lives with.

That vise-like tightening around her lungs at the thought of one or both of them finding new people? That was fear of the unknown. A natural reaction, something she would get past. Because now she was simply comfortable with Walker Riley. Nothing more.

“What’s so comfortable, Kalli?”

Her mind had traveled so far that Walker’s question almost startled her. He regarded her under the brim of his hat and half-lowered eyelids. His dry tone and a slight lift of one corner of his mouth gave her the uncomfortable feeling he’d been watching her for some time and drawing his own, peculiar conclusions.

“This.” A wave of her hand indicated the two of them, the arena, the bright sunshine and the freshening breeze. “Talking about your plans for the land, your own ranch... Hey, what are you calling it? You never said.”

Walker shifted his position slightly. “Haven’t decided yet. Waiting for the right name.”

“Mmm. It’s a very good investment, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Uh-huh. A lot of Hollywood types are buying up big spreads in Montana these days. I read about it in the
Wall Street Journal
. So, if you make a bundle again, that would be a good place to invest.”

“Did you also read they’re driving up prices and taxes, so a lot of working ranchers are having a real tough time of it?”

“No, I didn’t read that.” Something warm and thick pulsed through her. Walker was a good man. Not fancy, not showy. The kind of man who looked beyond how something might benefit him to how it might affect others.

“Besides...” She knew immediately from his tone that Walker had had enough of seriousness. “I’m so over the hill, the other hands’ll start calling me ‘sir’ any day.” She slanted him an evil look at the reminder of being called ‘‘ma am.” He ignored it, adding with quiet amusement, “I’m not on anybody’s list to be reaching Nationals, so I’m not likely to make a bundle any time soon.”

“Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t know about making Nationals, but you still have something that would be a good investment in New York.”

“Yeah, what’s that?”

“Your pants.”

“My
what
?”

She grinned, idiotically pleased with herself for jolting him out of his cowboy-cool humor. He stared at her incredulously.

“Your pants.”

“What pants?”

‘‘The ones you have on.”

The quality of his stare changed; he thought she’d gone nuts.

“They’re dirty and—”

“All the better,” she interposed.

“—worn.”

She glanced down and her composure was rattled a little in her contemplation of one place they were worn, and by what. She swallowed hard.

“That’s the way they like them. It’s a hot item—preworn cowboy jeans. Yours would go over great in Manhattan.” An image of how well the man inside the jeans would go over stabbed at her.