Rodeo Nights (3 page)

Then he raised his head.

She tried to keep her heartbeat steady. No use. It was like some reflex action. One deep look from those blue jay eyes and her blood hammered. But that’s all it was, a reflex. It didn’t mean anything.

“How ‘bout if you spend a couple days getting adjusted, seeing exactly what the situation is here before you go looking at changes?” he suggested. “Take time to get settled.”

It was so damned reasonable.

Answering evenly ranked with her top feats of mind over lungs. “Very well. We can each assess the situation, then get back to each other.”

He said a little quizzically, “Yeah, we’ll get back to each other,” before heading out with Tom.

What was the matter with her? Under normal circumstances, she would never rush into a business and start talking about changes before she’d studied the operation. Oh, a few stopgap, easily implemented measures like the computer, but nothing beyond that. Why had she been so quick to jump in here?

Because these weren’t normal circumstances. Because she’d hated her helplessness standing beside Jeff’s bedside. Because— “Let’s get to work,” she said to Roberta, but that didn’t quiet the final possibility sounding in her head.

Because she’d needed to feel in charge, in control. Because she had been so strongly reminded of the fear and helplessness of being in love with Walker Riley.

SHE’D BEEN A
girl when they were married.

He’d never fully realized that. Not until he’d walked out of the dazzling sunlight into the dim, dusty office only to be dazzled all over again by the woman she’d become.

She still made him think of the mountains bathed in sunset. Brown hair tinged with russet, fair skin edged with peach, generous mouth fired with orange. Strength and quiet beauty brightened by fiery light. Her eyes were the color she’d derisively called khaki. He thought the color—silvered, pale brown, flecked with red near the pupils—matched a kind of sage he often spotted along the roadside as he drove from rodeo to rodeo. Every time he saw the sage, he thought of her.

Standing there in the office, she’d been wearing clothes draped in loose folds. Though not so loose he hadn’t been reminded of curves he’d once known. Not so loose he hadn’t seen the long line of her slender thighs and remembered that though she stood some five inches shorter than his six feet, her legs were so long that when he and Kalli rode together, they fixed their stirrups only two holes apart.

“Jeff’s got a good crew up in the press box,” Tom said, breaking into Walker’s thoughts as they circled the arena.

“Announcer, scorekeepers ‘n’ all. Veteran group. You shouldn’t have trouble there.”

They’d passed the web of metal-tubed fences that formed chutes for timed events and moved around the stadium until they stood by the grandstand, looking across the arena to the staging area for roughstock events. This was topped by a small set of bleachers dubbed the Buzzards’ Roost for spectators who liked to watch the cowboys’ preparations, with the press box above that.

A few people were already in the stands. Out-of-towners, Walker figured. People not accustomed to driving five minutes to events with easy parking.

“How about the rest of the crew?” he asked Tom. “Pickup men, judges, timers, stock sorters, chute tenders…”

“Should be fine. You know how Jeff organizes. ’Course, there’s likely to be some turnover. ’Most always is. Especially with Jeff out of the picture right now. You’re going to need to set some folks’ minds at ease about newcomers running the rodeo. Not just the committee, but the merchants and your crew. Even the cowboys. There’s enough uncertainty in rodeo— They like to know who they’re dealing with. Hell, you know that. But that’s something Kalli might not be taking into account with her talk of changes.”

Walker felt the force of Tom’s look, but didn’t take his eyes off the pens that held tock for tonight’s show. Horses, steers, calves and bulls. Rounded up from the Jeffries ranch west of town and trailered here, they were rotated out each night before new stock was brought in for the next day’s performance. The animals looked fit; Jeff wouldn’t stand for anything less. The cowboys would soon learn
that
wouldn’t change.

“Could be people’ll be worrying this might be less of a show without Jeff running it,” Tom said. “The people in town have felt safe recommending the rodeo to visitors because they know folks’ll get their money’s worth. They’ll be more cautious for a spell with you and Kalli running it. Changes could make it worse.”

Behind them someone shouted that Tom had a phone call in the office. “Keep going. I’ll catch up with you,” he instructed.

Changes...

Walker had opened his eyes one summer to find his tagalong buddy of the past six years transformed. And the way she’d looked at him... No man could ever want more. At nineteen, he’d been just old enough to know seventeen was too young, and young enough to suffer hell’s torments as each kiss and touch brought them closer. He could still sweat in memory of that summer’s frustration.

Then he’d made her his. He’d thought forever.

A girl. Twenty when they’d married, just past twenty-one when she left. Maybe if they’d waited the way her family wanted, instead of getting married one week after she finished college. Or maybe no amount of waiting would have helped.

“Walker, you old sonuva—”

The slap on his back was nearly as jolting as the disruption of his thoughts. A seamed face beamed at him from under a cowboy hat that barely reached Walker’s shoulder. Without consciously moving, he’d nearly completed a circuit and now leaned against the fence by the Buzzards’ Roost.

“Hey, Gulch. How’re you doing?”

“I’m doing just fine for an old man, which you took every opportunity of telling me I was when you were a smart-mouthed kid. And you?”

Walker grinned. When he’d started rodeoing in earnest, Gulch had been wrapping up his competitive career and Walker had thought him ancient. Since Gulch had then been about a year younger than Walker was right now, he appreciated the irony. From this spot in Walker’s life, Gulch Miller didn’t seem such an old guy.

“Can’t complain.”

“You never did even when you could,” Gulch said with a clicking noise that resembled disapproval, but wasn’t that at all. “Wish you were back under better circumstances.”

“Yeah.” Walker let out a breath.

“Jeff...?”

“Doctors say it takes a while to know what’s what with a stroke. But he’s doing better, coming along a bit every day. They’re talking about sending him to Billings for rehabilitation. Might wait some because they’re short-staffed up there, but that’s not all bad since there’s more folks to spell Mary here than in Billings.”

“But?”

Walker felt his frown deepening. No wonder Gulch had spotted the “but.”

“He isn’t talking yet. When Tom first called, I got ahold of a doctor on the rodeo committee where I was at and started asking questions. Almost every answer started with ‘it depends,’ but one thing he did say was that if somebody who’s had a stroke isn’t talking some, least making sounds the first week or so, chances are they’ll never talk.”

“You worrying about it won’t change what’s going to happen, Walker. Won’t change it anymore than drinking ever changed what’s already happened. I sure know that.”

Without answering, Walker looked at the sky, still blue and cloudless even as the sun withdrew its warmth.

When he’d met Gulch, the nickname was so long established most people had forgotten it originated when Miller went off the bottle—because he’d gone dry. But one morning in Pendleton, Oregon, eighteen months after Kalli left, Walker had woken to a thundering hangover and a dim memory of a spectacularly careless ride on a bull named Killjoy. He’d found Gulch Miller sitting in his camper.

Gulch hadn’t done any more than talk and pour coffee, but Walker knew what it had cost the little man to tell about the auto accident years before that had killed his wife and baby daughter and left him, at twenty-two, healthy enough to rodeo and sick enough at heart to nearly drink himself to death.

“And that’s what you’re in danger of doing, Walker,” he’d said that rainy morning. “But you’re the impatient sort. Not waiting for booze to do it from inside. You’re trying to get stomped to death first. I’ll give you this, you’re getting some hellacious rides out of it, good enough to put you in the Finals come December. But chances are, you won’t live to ride in them. Is that what you want?”

No, that wasn’t what he wanted. And in time, he’d accepted that no matter how much he drank, it wouldn’t blot out the fact that he couldn’t have what he did want—Kalli.

“She looks good, doesn’t she?” Gulch’s matter-of-fact tone didn’t hide the underlying empathy. Clearly, his thoughts had followed a similar path to Walker’s.

“Yeah, she does.”

“‘Course, I saw her year before last when she was visiting Jeff and Mary....”

Like all her visits, it had been arranged for when Walker had let his aunt and uncle know he’d be rodeoing in some other part of the country. Not that anyone had acknowledged that. Nobody ever mentioned Kalli to him, except that once, when his mother had died two years after Kalli left, and Mary had given him the carefully written note. He’d recognized the handwriting. He’d burned it that night.

“So I’d seen her since she became a big New York City executive. Even discounting that Jeff and Mary were bragging on her, she’s doing mighty well for herself. ‘Course, she was always smart as a whip.”

As he had with Tom, Walker sensed an underlying concern from Gulch:
We know how you fell apart last time. We were there to pick up the pieces. Don’t leave yourself open for a second time. The pieces might be too small.

And they were right.

Gulch went on recounting Kalli’s accomplishments, but Walker only half took it in. Spectators filed in, some pausing on the catwalk to the Buzzards’ Roost to ooh and aah over the livestock penned below. To his right, gruff chatter and occasional raucous laughter punctuated the arrival of cowboys, preparing their rigging and their psyches for the competition. Cooling breezes mingled the smells of animal and human with coffee and popcorn from the concession stand.

No wonder Kalli looked different. While this had remained his world, she’d left it to make another—and most would consider it a better—life for herself. A life he’d had no part of.

It didn’t bother him she looked different. What bothered him was she still looked so damned good to him.

“NOW THAT EVENTS
have started, there’ll be a lull,” Roberta announced. Kalli felt her mouth quirk. Woe to anyone who put the lie to that proclamation! “So why don’t you take those feet of yours outside and let ’em take you someplace instead of no place?”

Kalli halted in mid-pace, the habit so automatic she hadn’t realized she’d been doing it. “Sorry. The pacing can be annoying, I know.”

“As far as bad habits go, it’s better than chewing tobacco.”

Kalli laughed. Even to her own ears, it sounded a bit ragged, but Roberta looked approving.

“I promise you, Roberta, no matter how tough things get, I won’t put a pinch between my cheek and gum.”

That earned a nod. “Good. How ’bout promising you’ll go out and walk around awhile, too?” Before Kalli could protest, she added, “Might as well get reacquainted with the layout. Some things might’ve changed. Fresh air’ll do you good, too. Besides, never hurts to let folks see you on the scene.”

Kalli might have disputed the other points, but the last one was inarguable.

“You’re right. I’ll take a look around.”

She snagged her blazer from the back of a chair, pulling it on as she headed out. Decisiveness carried her around the corner and four strides down the side of the office before impressions and memories flooded in.

An amplified voice announced a cowboy’s score, slipping in the information for the uninitiated that this was a very good performance, indeed. Thus exhorted, the crowd cheered. Ahead of her, floodlights pasted stars against the darkening sky. Grilling hot dogs overlaid the scents of horses, cattle, sweat and hay. In a pocket of silence, she heard a distant call, then the
thunk
of a chute opening, swallowed by the crowd’s roar.

Twisting away, she leaned against the wall and looked out on the parking area. But the haphazard array of horse trailers, campers, pickups and every vehicular hybrid imaginable brought other memories—memories of hot, loving nights spent in just such a temporary home.

A new sound slipped in. Low, a little pitiful, yet excited and...familiar. Her eyelids lifted.

A dog was framed in the open passenger window of a camper-topped pickup, dusty red and well traveled, its right front fender primed an equally dusty black.

“Coat?” The dog yipped excitedly, and Kalli found herself jerking open the pickup’s door, throwing her arms around the dog, tears flowing and her face being thoroughly licked between ecstatic barks. “Coat, is that really you, boy? Oh, Coat...Coat.”

The slightly wiry texture of the dog’s multicolored coat was so familiar, but the puppy of memory was now gray-muzzled and moving with the gingerliness of age. That didn’t dim the unconditional joy of his greeting.

“Kalli? Kalli, you okay?”

She spun around to face Walker, standing just behind her, one hand half raised as if he’d considered touching her, then changed his mind.

“It’s Coat,” she said, and knew instantly how stupid that sounded. Of course it was, and of course Walker knew it. This was the puppy they’d adopted not a week after their wedding, the one she’d named after the Dolly Parton song “Coat of Many Colors,” in honor of his varied tints and because she’d loved the sentiment of the song. This was the dog she’d left behind, with some muddled idea that Coat would look after Walker even if he wouldn’t let her.

“You kept him.”

Walker dropped his hand, and in the artificial light, the lines of his face seemed harsher. “Of course I kept him. You didn’t think I’d dump him because it wasn’t convenient anymore, did you?”

Kalli straightened and brushed away her tears with the back of one hand, though the other remained in Coat’s fur.