by Drake, Laura
“You think you’re better than me.” Softly spoken words, but the close walls amplified their sharp tips.
His smile deformed his movie-star looks. His lips curled back from unfriendly teeth—a dog’s warning, before it bit. She’d thought Cam’s eyes had been mean, earlier. She now realized he’d only been irked. Edward’s narrowed ice-blue eyes glittered with silver, like razor blades in a bathtub.
His steady gaze made her want to flinch, though she had nothing to feel guilty about. She sat up straight, refusing to look away.
Mad dogs sense fear.
“Don’t be ridiculous. I was trying to explain earlier. Bree and Max owed me dinner and I needed to ask them some questions. I had no idea we’d end up—”
“I’ve met women like you.” He crossed his arms and leaned his weight on his left leg, effectively blocking the doorway.
Was it intentional? The walls, close before, edged closer. Her pile-driver heartbeat bounced off them.
“You tease, with all that wild hair and big innocent eyes. With that sweet ass, twitching when you walk. You know men’s eyes follow you. You play games.” His voice slid to a whisper. “You like games? We can play.”
“That’s enough!” A surge of anger and indignation melted her fear. “I do no such thing. Ever.” Adrenaline poured into her blood and she shot to her feet.
Big mistake. It put his hate-filled face inches from hers. There was no room. Her lungs worked, trying to find oxygen in air thick with antipathy.
“You’re a bitch. A stone cold, cock-teasing bitch.”
His whispered hiss sent shivers skittering over her skin. Her eyes flicked to the door.
“You going to yell? Scream for some big he-man to come save your nonexistent virtue? What a freaking joke.”
Spittle flew from his lips. She recoiled in disgust.
His face contorted to a hate mask, he lunged, grabbing her shoulder with so much force her shirt ripped.
Her dog tags clinked. They reminded her of what surprise and his hulking intimidation had made her forget.
You’re a soldier.
Panic drained down her legs and out her feet as if her body were a bucket with a hole in the bottom. It left exposed a solid bedrock of knowing.
A smile rose from her chest to break on her lips. It felt righteous. “I’d only yell if I needed help.”
Cam was the last cowboy through the door to the treatment room after the event. Some guys trooped through to the locker room, while others stood around rehashing their rides. He dropped into the first empty seat and lifted his right boot across his left knee.
Figures. The odor told him he had stepped in what he’d suspected he had.
Well, didn’t that just top it off, a visual and olfactory representative of his ride tonight. Or lack thereof.
Dammit. He knew what was wrong. He was thinking too much, letting his head get in the way of what his body knew how to do. And the more he tried to not think about it, the more he did. As the buck-offs mounted, the more he tried to fix it.
Buster walked by on his way to the locker room. God, the kid looked about fifteen. Cam snorted. Shoot, the kid couldn’t be much older than that. He remembered those days—the whirlwind new world of the tour, running, big-eyed and stumbling, trying to figure it all out. He ignored the needle of conscience in his gut.
Katya didn’t get it. He wasn’t jealous. Oh, he’d had help, sure. But Buster had to earn it. The veterans had been just as hard on him until he’d proved he took riding seriously.
Coddling doesn’t make a cowboy. Adversity does.
BANG!
A door slammed open, hit the wall, then bounced back, striking the body that fell through it. Cowboys scattered. Cam jumped to his feet.
Whap! The head hit the tile floor last. Cam recognized the upside-down face of the trainer, Edward, out for the count, a lump already rising on his temple.
“What the—”
Bam!
The door slammed open again. Katya walked through it. Her blouse was torn at the shoulder, the top two buttons ripped off. Jagged red scratches marred her pale skin from collarbone to the upper slope of her breast.
But she didn’t seem to notice that, or the slack-jawed cowboys. She stood over the body at Cam’s feet.
“That’ll teach you to mess with the U.S. Military.” She stepped over Edward’s inert legs. “Hooyah, Asshole.” Head up, she strode to the hallway door.
She sounded like a girl.
She walked like a soldier.
She looked like a Valkyrie.
When the door closed behind her, the cowboys expelled their held breath.
Tuck came through the locker room doorway. “Damn.”
Another whistled low. “I heard one punch.”
“You son of a bitch,” Cam said to the unconscious man at his feet.
Doc Cody stepped forward. “Cam, when this piece of trash wakes up, tell him for me, he’s fired. I’ll check on Katya.”
“Too happy to, Doc.” Cam bit out the words.
Doc lifted someone’s shirt from the back of a chair and walked to the hall door, then turned, hand on the knob. “Oh, and Cam? Let’s be sure that the last punch he feels is from a woman.”
Cam glanced at the faces around the room.
This could get ugly. “Yessir. I’ll see to it.”
Doc Cody walked out. Dusty, the only remaining conscious trainer, opened a melting ice bag and poured the cold water on Edward’s face.
He woke sputtering, to a ring of riders’ faces over him. “Wha—what happened?”
“A woman just kicked your sorry ass, dude,” one of the faces said.
“Yeah and with one punch.”
“You’re fired,” Cam said.
Edward wiped ice water off his face, moaning when he touched his damaged temple. “I’ve been assaulted. I’m pressing charges. And you can’t fire me, Cahill.”
“You’re right. I can’t. Doc Cody asked me to pass on the good news.” Cam’s foot itched to kick in this guy’s ribs. But he knew if he did, the cowboys would be on Edward in a heartbeat. Doc Cody was depending on him. “You’re free to press charges. Course, then it’ll be in the public record that you assaulted a woman. And that she took you out.” He touched the toe of his boot, gentle, to Edward’s shoulder.
“Oh, and if you do, you can be pretty sure every man in this room will be by to pay you a visit.”
Nods all around. The silence proved scarier than the threat. After all, Edward didn’t know Doc’s warning to Cam pretty much forbade any violence.
“Stand back and let me up, damn you.”
Cam straightened, not offering the jerk his hand. “Show’s over, men. Let this weasel slink back to his hole.” He waited while the cowboys walked to the locker room. Dusty crossed to the sink to dump the ice bag.
Cam stepped over Edward, making sure the bottom of his smelly boot smeared Edward’s pristine white shirt.
Katya passed two bends in the hallway before the mad bled away, taking her energy with it. She stopped and leaned against a tile wall, sliding down to sit with her throbbing hand cradled in her lap. When she leaned forward and touched her head to her knees, her hair fell around her in a curtain. Somewhere in the melee she had lost her hair clip.
This job was gone for sure, now. Regardless of the provocation, you can’t punch out a coworker and expect to stay employed. But that was only the top problem on the shit heap. She took this job to get better and she was getting worse.
What is wrong with me? She clamped down her muscles to squeeze out the shakes. Being Stateside was changing her; making her soft. For a few minutes in that room, she’d acted like a victim.
Leaning her head on her knees, she tried to harness the wants that pushed up from the deep corner of her brain, where she’d stuffed them. She wanted to be home, in Kandahar. She wanted to talk to Trace.
Most of all, she wanted Grand. The hole in the world where Grand used to be expanded, opening a huge hollow cavern in h
er chest. Putting a hand over the ache, she rocked, straining to remember the old, scratchy voice falling on her like a balm.
Boot heel clicks echoed, getting closer. Doc Cody came around the corner.
She dashed her fingers across her cheeks and scrambled to her feet, yanking at her torn shirt to cover her bare shoulder. “I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t—”
“You’ve nothing to be sorry for.” Taking care not to touch her, he settled a blue shirt with sponsor names running down the sleeves over her shoulders. “Edward was an outstanding therapist. It’s my fault for not realizing he was a lousy human being.” He stepped away. “You don’t have to worry about him. He’ll be gone for good by the time you go back in.”
Wow. She hadn’t expected that. Back East, she’d have had to go to the labor board to try to keep her job. Thank God and old-fashioned values for that. Edward was one witness that she wouldn’t have to face. But the rest remained. She clutched the lapels of the borrowed shirt in her fist, wishing the rest of her was so easily held together.
“That’s the good news.” He blew out a sigh. “The bad news is that we’re now short a trainer. Until I can get one hired, you’re going to have to take your turn, standing first responder duty at the out gate.”
Panic shot through her like electricity down a wire. If she hadn’t been so busy feeling sorry for herself, she’d have seen this wall before she walked into it.
That didn’t happen to trained army officers. Was she losing that, too?
The sympathy in his brown eyes hardened like a chocolate glaze on ice cream. “Are you able to do that, Katya?”
Hadn’t she always known it would come to this? It was time to take the next step even if it was off a cliff.
She stood straight, grateful for the wall at her back. “I won’t let you down, sir.” She’d have believed it more if her voice hadn’t cracked at the end.
Doc’s hesitation proved that he might not believe it either.
She cleared her throat. “Sir.” Authority echoed off the cinderblock walls.
“Good. Now, let’s go take a look at that hand.”
She followed him down the hall, sleeves of the borrowed shirt drooping over her fingers, hoping she hadn’t just overpromised.
And praying she wouldn’t underdeliver.
CHAPTER
11
Cam leaned, ankles crossed, against the cement wall of the arena, waiting. The wall radiated retained heat of the day, but the impending desert night pushed a cool breeze against his face. The Tucson sunset reminded him of home, the huge orange ball of sun and a band of gold-orange stretching on the horizon.
This sure hadn’t been your normal day on the PBR Tour. He chuckled, wondering what Edward thought of those magic hands now.
Army. He’d recognized the battle cry. Probably a medic. How had Katya landed here, on the Tour?
After seeing her today, he sure wanted to find out.
He remembered his ex-wife’s heavy eye makeup, red lips, and hair teased up, looking like she’d just fallen out of a man’s bed. He’d learned the hard way that Candi didn’t like the real thing mussing up that look.
The vision of Katya standing in the doorway, proud, primitive, and pissed had burned onto the backs of his eyes. Every time he closed them, he saw her.
Now there’s a woman. Maybe it was time to update his type.
The door slammed open and Katya walked out, head down, wearing a flowing white skirt and an army green T-shirt that showed off the long, strong muscles of her arms. She set off in long strides, her backpack bouncing.
“Smitty.”
She turned, jaw tight, surprise in her eyes. “Only someone who loves me gets to call me that; my name is Katya. What are you doing here?”
“Waiting for you.”
She rolled her eyes to the sky, as if irritated with God. “Well, here I am. If you want something, you’ll have to talk walking. I want to get to the hotel and a shower.”
He pushed off from the wall, jiggling his knee to get it to work.
“You don’t take pain meds.” She stood watching, hip cocked, arms crossed.
“How do you know that?”
“Because I have eyes.” She had her “mother voice” on. “If you took them, you wouldn’t be in pain every time I see you.”
“It’s not bad.” He tested his knee on the walk over to her. It decided to cooperate. “You were going to walk to the hotel alone?”
“You don’t think I’m capable?” She managed to look down her nose at him, even though he was taller.
He grinned. “Hon, after today, I’d pity the dude who tried to mug you.” He fell in beside her.
She marched more than walked. “I wish you’d let me brew you some dandelion-ginger tea. It has wonderful inflammation- and pain-reducing qualities, with none of the side effects of drugs.”
“I’m good.”
Her nose went higher. “Suit yourself.”
“You were army.”
A frown softened her hard profile. She huffed out a sigh.
“You’re not the only one with eyes.”
She motored on, clearly trying to leave the subject behind.
He should let it drop, but he’d found out today that there was a lot more to the new therapist than exotic eyes and a smoking bod. He wanted to know how much more. “Where were you stationed?”
“That’s not relevant. Did you want to discuss something current?” Her voice could have etched glass.
Hmm. Sore spot. “Look, I know what it’s like, having people poking at you, wanting to know intimate details of your life. I won’t go there if you don’t want to.” He laid a hand on her forearm. That stopped her. “I just want you to know that if you want to talk, I have ears, as well as eyes.”
She squinted at him, assessing. “Thanks.”
At the exit to the parking lot, he followed her when she turned left. Only an occasional car passed as they walked in silence on the edge of the road. The sun had dropped to a white-hot sliver at the horizon. In the light breeze, the wild oats at the side of the road rustled a sigh of relief.
“I do have questions, if you wouldn’t mind answering.” For the first time tonight, she sounded like a woman, rather than a soldier.
He didn’t like talking about himself. They had that much in common. He would be taking a chance, but he had a feeling he wouldn’t learn more about her without a little quid pro quo. “Okaaay.”
“Why do the riders wear chaps? Do they help you stay on the bull?”
That question he hadn’t expected. “Nope. They’re more a tradition. Working cowboys wore them to protect their legs from brush. Nowadays, they’re more for the flash. You know, they look good during a ride.”
“What’s a ‘head hunter’?”
“It’s a bull that’s looking for a target on the get-off. Why all these questions?”
“Because I want to know. You guys speak a different language. I talked to the Jamesons and they helped a lot, but they’re not riders. I have some of the terminology, but I don’t have a framework to hang it on.”
The tension between his shoulders eased. These questions he could handle. He could talk bull riding all day. “Ask away.”
She looked at him out of the corner of her eye. “Anything?”
“Look, if a two-thousand-pound bull doesn’t scare me, I think I can handle a couple of questions from a Yankee.”
Her face was intent, two tiny lines formed between her brows, telling him that this question mattered. “How do you do it? Ride I mean.”
“Well, it helps to be really brave. Or really stupid.” He hadn’t really thought about the why of it in years. He took a moment, watching the advancing dusk. “When you’re raised around cattle, you’re not as afraid of them as you’d think. This was all I ever wanted to do from the time I was old enough to ride mutton. There’s something about testing yourself against nature—to see how you measure up.”
“Too much testosterone then.”
�
�More like adrenaline. Like the song says, ‘Sometimes I think I get off on the pain.’ ”
Her green eyes urged him to dig deeper than glib.
“Actually, it’s a lot bigger than me. We carry on a tradition—a link between the past and the future. Being a cowboy is an honest, good way of life. It shouldn’t die.” Damn, now he was babbling like a lovesick calf. He shut up.
They turned in at the parking lot of the hotel just as the neon sign out front flashed on.
“But how can you do it? Get on, knowing that every ride could be the one that kills you?”
He shoved his hands in his pockets and watched the pavement passing under his boots. “By being more afraid of the day I can’t do it anymore.” He rushed on, before she could say something he was sure he didn’t want to hear. “Hell, this way of life isn’t something somebody can tell you.”
“I guess.” She shrugged out of the straps and pulled a key from the pocket of her backpack.
He didn’t want her to go. He didn’t want to wait two weeks to see her again. God, the waning light loved her face, making her look soft, almost vulnerable. He slowed his steps. “I can show you.”
She threw her head up. “Show me what?”
“Next weekend. We’ve got a week off, and a bunch of us are riding in a fund-raising event in Stephenville. If you want to know about cowboys, that would give you a good idea. It’s on the way to the event in Dallas.”
She stopped in front of a long line of rooms on one wing of the hotel. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
Her first questions had been the Katya he knew: clinical, professional, and factual. The last revealed a deeper interest right before she shut down. Why was she so determined to keep her distance?
He tipped his hat. “Suit yourself. But if you’re going to ask questions, you’d better be ready for the answers.”
The following Saturday, Katya squinted into the low sun, searching for a sign to tell her where the heck she was. She’d turned off the main road miles ago and all she’d seen since was ranchland, cattle, and mesquite.
She’d been intrigued by the fund-raiser ad. It was to be held not far from Fort Worth, in Stephenville. Dubbed “The Cowboy Capital of the World,” the list of local cowboys read like a “Who’s Who” of bull riding. She half expected to have to flash a champion’s buckle to gain entrance at the outskirts of town.