To Tame a Wild Cowboy

by Lori Wilde

  They’d both worn braces at age thirteen. Both lost their virginity at seventeen. Both raised calves in FFA their freshman year in high school and showed them at the Fort Worth Stock Show.

  Neither cared for gin, bologna, or any brand of jeans other than Wrangler. They agreed it was important to vote but they were both lax about it. Politically, they were moderates who thought both parties had gone a little mad. They discovered they shared an obsession with the Texas Rangers—the baseball team, not the law enforcement agency—and they enjoyed hiking the Davis Mountains on the search for arrowheads.

  And yes, they did a bit of sexting and Skype sex—they were newlyweds, after all. Long-distance romance sucked, but Rhett knew all kinds of innovative ways to spice things up.

  Two or three times a week, he sent gifts. Some romantic, others practical. A footbath, which she adored. Long-stemmed red roses that filled the house with a beautiful scent. A gurgling fountain to help her fall more quickly asleep between Julie’s frequent feedings. An oversized chocolate chip cookie, iced in chocolate ganache with the words “I Hear the Hum.” Then impishly, the next day, a personal vibrator engraved with “You Hear the Hum.”

  One time a massage therapist showed up on her doorstep and announced Rhett had hired her to give Tara a ninety-minute massage. Kaia was right behind the therapist. Rhett had sent her to watch Julie, so Tara could have uninterrupted self-care.

  The next time it was a pedicurist and Aria.

  When she told him that while she appreciated the lavish gifts, he needed to save money, he sent her a toy bullwhip with a note that said: You can crack this over my head when I get home. A case of Juicy Fruit gum. A box of animal crackers. Cute cards. Silly social media gifs.

  He was a helluva romantic, and Tara luxuriated in his attention. She couldn’t wait to see what creative surprise he came up with next.

  Every Friday and Saturday, she was parked in front of the TV watching the channel that aired the PBR events. Eyes glued to the screen, watching her husband ride. The stakes were high, and every time he got on the back of a bull, her heart was in her throat.

  Sometimes Ridge and Kaia would come over to watch the events with her, but mostly, it was just she and Julie. She would sit on the couch, fists clenched, yelling at the bull to leave her man alone. Hopping to her feet to yell, “Yes, yes,” every time the timer hit eight seconds. He was on a hot streak. Winning events right and left. The announcers were impressed. Going on and on about the changes in him. How focused he seemed. How he’d matured. They speculated marriage and fatherhood were good for this rodeo cowboy.

  When he was home, it was a sexfest as they made up for lost time. They had lots of quickies. With a small infant in the house, long, lingering make-out sessions just didn’t happen. There was a rousing encounter on the washing machine as he seduced her in the laundry room during one of Julie’s naps.

  And a fun time on the backyard swing until the frame broke and they ended up on the ground laughing their asses off. Then there was a frantic, naughty roll in the hay barn one night when her parents dropped by. She’d left them in the living room with Julie and had gone to the barn to call Rhett in for dinner, and one thing just led to another.

  He cooked for her and watched Hallmark movies with her and gave Julie her baths. It wasn’t easy, but they made the best of it. Laughing together when things didn’t go as planned. Working as a team. Appreciating every single moment they had in each other’s company.

  It was the best two months of Tara’s life, and then came the Labor Day weekend rodeo that turned everything upside down.

  On Saturday, August 31, Tara sat glued to the TV in the living room, watching the PBR event in Tacoma. Julie was in her bassinet beside the couch, studying the mobile of galloping horses that Rhett had bought her when he’d been in Wyoming.

  Rhett was up next, and the two announcers were speculating about why he’d gotten married in the middle of the season. How taking time off had dropped him in the standings.

  “Claudio Limon took advantage of Lockhart’s absence last month,” the first announcer said. “And Lockhart lost his solid lead. They’ve been neck and neck ever since. Given Claudio’s win history, Lockhart’s marriage just might have handed the Brazilian the title.”

  “It’s still early in the season, Ray,” said the other announcer. “A whole lot can happen between now and November. There’s bad blood between Lockhart and Limon. They were dating the same woman. It’s turning out to be a world-class grudge match.”

  “The thing about bull riders is, at the end of the day, these people are a little crazy, Tom,” the first announcer said.

  “You’ve got it,” Tom said. “It’s not a question of if these riders will get hurt, but when and how bad.”

  “Looks like they’re having some trouble in the chute with Widow Maker,” Ray said. “Lockhart’s getting off.”

  The camera panned down to the chute. Rhett was huddled with his manager, while the bull named Widow Maker was thrashing wildly in the chute.

  “Do we know what it’s about, Ray?” Tom asked.

  “There’s some kind of delay,” Ray said. “While we’re waiting, let’s cut to Lacy Manning’s behind-the-scenes interview with Lockhart from last night’s win.”

  The screen shifted to a female reporter with a mike in Rhett’s face.

  Rhett’s eyes were shiny from his victory the previous night, his stance deservedly cocky. Tara’s heart swooned. She’d been so damn proud of him. Watching him in action was a natural high.

  “That was quite a ride, Mr. Lockhart,” the reporter said, standing far too close to Rhett for Tara’s liking. “Great hip action.”

  “Well,” Rhett drawled, looking straight into the camera, clearly courting America. “You gotta know how to move your hips to ride bulls.”

  “Oh my.” The reporter giggled and batted her false eyelashes.

  Tara covered Julie’s ears. “Don’t listen to this part, button. Your daddy is making a fool of himself.”

  “Tell our viewers, Rhett—may I call you Rhett?” The reporter simpered. “How you got started in the sport.”

  “Well, ma’am,” he said, giving her his humble cowboy, aw-shucks smile. “You can call me anything you want as long as you call me for dinner.”

  Tara rolled her eyes. Hard.

  “Oh, none of that ‘ma’am’ stuff. You must call me Lacy.” The reporter laughed and showed a mouthful of straight white teeth.

  “Veneers,” Tara told Julie. “I could have them too if I wanted to spend the money.”

  “Lacy,” Rhett said. “I been riding bulls since I was knee-high to a grasshopper.” Rhett stuck his thumbs in the front pockets of his jeans. “When I was three years old, I used to ride on my daddy’s back and he’d buck around the living room like a bull. Later, he told me I used to wear him out.” Rhett’s smile widened. “I treasure those memories. Whenever I climbed on the back of a bull, it was the only time my daddy paid much attention to me, especially after my mother died. I knew when things got bad I could always find a bull to ride and everything would be okay.”

  The words he spoke were sad, but there was no trace of bitterness in his voice. No residue of disillusionment or blame. His childhood was what it was.

  “That’s such a touching story,” said Lacy, totally missing the point. She turned to the camera. “To all you little cowboys out there, keep riding, and someday you too can be in the PBR.”

  Tara, however, did not miss the point. She sat up straight, Rhett’s baby clutched her in arms.

  Whenever I climbed on the back of a bull, it was the only time my daddy paid much attention to me, especially after my mother died.

  In that poignant statement, Tara learned everything she needed to know about why Rhett was the way he was. Why the PBR meant so much to him. Why he was an incorrigible flirt. Why he was hard driven to succeed as a bull rider. Why he really did want to be a good dad to Julie.

  Her heart broke for him. He was living his life
trapped in old childhood patterns, and he didn’t even realize it. Trying to please a father who was impossible to please. Trying to replace the love of his mother with a string of women who always fell short of ideal.

  He had a fear of going too emotionally deep, terrified of getting chewed up. His attraction to all things pleasurable—sex, a good time, the high of a win—he saw as a positive flow when in fact, his constantly seeking the next emotional high masked a flight away from pain.

  It made such sense why he could never pass up an invitation for fun. Why he’d gone back on the circuit. Rodeo and its unpredictability was all he knew.

  Yet, in his soul he craved stability, just as he feared it.

  But now, Tara knew why. The sudden realization that he was still running away from his mother’s death, twenty years later, touched her to the core.

  And all she wanted to do was love him back to wholeness.

  The camera panned back to the arena. Rhett was back in the chute on Widow Maker.

  “Looks like they’ve got the problem resolved,” Ray, the announcer, said.

  “Do we know what caused the delay?” asked Tom.

  “Oh, this is a funny one. Apparently, Lockhart lost his good luck charm and wouldn’t get on the bull without it.”

  “What is his good luck charm?”

  “It’s an animal cracker.”

  “An animal cracker?” Tom cackled. “What kind?”

  Ray pressed his fingers against his earpiece. “I’m being told it’s a giraffe.”

  “These riders are a superstitious lot. Did Lockhart find his animal cracker?”

  “Afraid not, but he has to get on the bull or forfeit.”

  The camera focused on Rhett for a close-up in the chute at the Tacoma Dome, geared up and ready to rock. His head was down, and he had a helmet on, so she couldn’t see much of his face, but his body was loose, and easy. He was at home here. This was where he belonged.

  Even so, she couldn’t help wondering what he was thinking. Was he scared? Was he freaked out over losing his lucky charm? And when had he started carrying animal crackers as a good luck symbol? Or was he feeling pure thrill? Was adrenaline spilling through his bloodstream? Or was he as cool as his body language?

  The bull beneath him bucked and snorted. He looked very mean. Tara’s stomach somersaulted. How in the world did Rhett do this? What drove him to time and again test his mettle against such angry, gigantic beasts?

  Tara drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them. “This is nerve-wracking.”

  Julie made cooing noises.

  “That’s your daddy,” Tara said, pointing at the screen. “He might not be the smartest man alive, straddling an animal that could kill him, but he’s pretty darn brave. You should be proud. Not everyone has the courage to go for their dreams.”

  Julie flapped her little arms and legs.

  The chute opened, and the bull came charging out, snorting and bucking. The time ticked off on the TV screen agonizingly slow. One second, two seconds, three . . .

  Her heart slammed into her chest—ka-bam, ka-bam, ka-bam. She crossed all her fingers and toes. Please, please.

  Rhett held on. Looked magnificently in control. A man in his element at the top of his game.

  A rush of feeling she couldn’t quite name cleaved her. She curled her hands into tight fists, squinted, rocked forward on the cushion as if it were she on the back of the bull. “Hang on, hang on.”

  Four seconds . . . five . . . six.

  Dear God, eight seconds was a lifetime. She chewed a thumbnail. How did the wives and mothers of bull riders stand the suspense?

  Widow Maker was spinning and leaping out of control. Just as the buzzer sounded, indicating that Rhett had managed to hang on for those eight interminable seconds, the bull’s back hooves briefly touched the ground, and using the momentum the giant beast sprang straight up into the air.

  “Widow Maker’s gone vertical!” exclaimed Ray, the announcer, stunned awe in his voice. “And Lockhart is still along for the ride!”

  For one breath-stealing moment, man and beast hung suspended as if dangling from a giant invisible rope. A seemingly impossible feat.

  The announcers gasped in unison as the crowd cheered insanely. Terrified, Tara screamed and jumped off the couch. Julie burst into tears.

  Widow Maker landed with a teeth-jarring jolt.

  Rhett flew off the bull’s broad backside. Immediately, Widow Maker spun around and came after him. The bullfighters jumped in, trying to distract Widow Maker. But the bull lowered its head, hooked its horns beneath Rhett’s shoulders, and tossed him across the arena like a straw scarecrow.

  Rhett landed hard, facedown, dust flying up around him . . .

  . . . and he did not move again.

  Chapter 23

  Out the backdoor: When the rider is thrown over the back end of an animal.

  Rhett heard his name being called from a faraway distance, blurry and indistinct, as if he were floating above the earth on a fluffy white cloud.

  His face was buried in the dirt and his head buzzed. His vision dimmed, and the voices grew more distant as the cloud he was riding drifted farther away. Everything slowly going black and quiet.

  It would be so nice to go to sleep. Nap, just for a little bit. He was so very tired. But he couldn’t because some irritating bullfighter was screaming in his ear.

  “Cowboy up, you candy ass!”

  Go away.

  “C’mon, Rhett, get up. Get up. GET UP!”

  Then someone was slapping his back and he gasped, drawing in a lungful of dust. He opened one eye, saw his paternal grandfather squatting in the dirt next to him. He had a cigar clamped in the corner of his mouth and a tumbler of whiskey in one hand.

  Huh, this was weird. Grandpa Cyril had been killed in a cattle stampede when Rhett was five. What was he doing here?

  Grandpa Cyril glanced at his watch. A raggedy-ass Timex that could take a licking and keep on ticking. “Tock, tick, buckaroo.”

  Tock, tick? Wasn’t that backward?

  “They’ll be here soon. You better get up or you’re going with us,” Grandpa Cyril advised.

  He tried to lift his head.

  “Don’t move!” someone commanded.

  It wasn’t Grandpa Cyril. Through the dust in his eyes, he made out Claudio Limon on his knees beside Rhett’s head, as paramedics and the bullfighters rolled him over and loaded him onto a backboard and strapped him down.

  “You be okay?” Claudio asked, springing up to follow the crew as they carried Rhett from the hushed arena. His face was drawn with concern, and he commanded, “You be okay.”

  Rhett tried to nod but they’d taped his head to the backboard. Claudio was a great competitor who would do anything to win, but Rhett knew he didn’t want to win like this.

  Claudio squeezed his hand just before the paramedics whisked him into the ambulance, and the last clear thing Rhett thought before he lost consciousness was Tara is gonna kill me.

  Tara stood paralyzed in the middle of Rhett’s living room, watching the paramedics carry her lifeless husband from the arena. Panic wrapped her lungs in a vise, seized. Her knees rippled like coastal Bermuda grass in a northerly breeze. Both hands plastered against her mouth.

  Dear God, no, no, no. This could not be happening. Maybe she’d missed something, and it was another rider who’d gotten injured. Maybe he was spoofing everybody, and he was totally fine. Rhett could be a cutup.

  Oh denial, that sweet self-deception.

  Face facts. It had been Rhett on the ground, and he wasn’t joking around. The arena was silent, the announcers solemn. Speaking in hushed, reverent tones reserved for funeral parlors.

  Please let him be okay, please let him be okay, she bargained, turned her eyes heavenward.

  He couldn’t die. Not her strong, vibrant, daredevil cowboy.

  Anger ripped through her. At the bull, at the PBR, at Rhett for being so reckless. He was a father. How could he continue
to ride? This was why Judge Brando had ordered him to leave the PBR. This very reason right here. The sport was incredibly dangerous.

  But mostly, she was mad at herself. By marrying him, she’d enabled him to stay on the circuit. If she hadn’t stepped in and proposed a marriage of convenience, he would have quit.

  Pressing a palm against her forehead, she paced the living room, emotions falling in on her. Anger, fear, worry, hurt, sorrow, guilt, regret, sadness, so much sadness.

  The PBR program had cut to commercial after they hauled Rhett off. Yes, never mind that a man had been injured, even possibly killed, they had to keep up the advertising to pay for that air time.

  Denial, anger, bargaining. She was crashing through the five stages of grief with a sledgehammer.

  She had to go to him. She couldn’t stay here and do nothing. She had to tell him how much she loved him. Had to be with him.

  But she couldn’t. She had Julie.

  Her world spun, tilted off its axis.

  A knock at the door.

  Before she could answer, the door opened, and Ridge and Kaia burst in. She stared at her sister and brother-in-law. “Rhett—” She whimpered.

  “We know,” Kaia said. “We were watching.”

  A tremor rattled Tara’s body as her sister moved to hug her.

  “It’s okay, Tea,” Kaia whispered. “We’re here. I’ve come to get Julie, and Ridge’s flying you to Tacoma to be with Rhett.”

  “She needs—”

  “Shh.”

  “I should—”

  “Shh, we’ll figure it out. Don’t worry about Julie. Rhett needs you now.”

  Tara broke down, sobbing into her sister’s hair, whispering over and over, “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

  Kaia produced a tissue from her pocket, pressed it into Tara’s hand. “C’mon,” she said. “Let’s get you packed.”

  “Where are Cody and Ingrid?”

  “Aria’s watching them. We’ll all pitch in with Julie while you’re gone. Me, Mom, Aria, Archer and Casey, even Vivi said she can help. Don’t worry about a thing except looking after Rhett.”