by Vicki Tharp
The nomadic rodeo life was more suited to tantalizing trysts than long-lasting relationships. Not that he’d decline if she offered.
He was parked across the lot from her truck, but he walked her to her driver’s side door.
“Thanks,” she said. “You didn’t have to walk me out.”
The single light at the top of a nearby utility pole left much of the gravel lot in the dark. “Yeah. I did.”
She unlocked her door and tossed her purse inside. In the glow from her dome light, he spotted the finger sized bruising on her arm. Anger heated his veins. A slow, insidious burn. “Monte do that to you?”
“I can handle Monte.” Standing in the pocket behind her open truck door, she held her hand over the bruising as if it could make him unsee what he’d seen. “I handled Lloyd Cagle a few weeks back, didn’t I?”
“I hear he’s still spending his nights icing his bruised balls.” Silas chuckled, an unanticipated warmth settling in his chest for this woman. She was unlike anyone he’d ever been with before, and he found that both refreshing and enticing. He’d had enough success on the circuit that he got his fair share of attention from the ladies. You’d think being treated like you’re something special wouldn’t get old.
It did.
The front door of the bar swung open and Rowdy stumbled out with a woman on each arm.
“Awh,” Josephine said, “that’s so sweet.”
Sweet? Silas chuckled. “He’s looking to get laid.” The words were out of his mouth before he could filter them, and here he’d thought he was over that concussion from last month.
But instead of being offended, Josephine laughed, too. It wasn’t musical. It was off-pitch and had the most adorable snort at the end. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. Josephine Cox. Where have you been all my life?
“Yeah, but he’s a nice guy. It’s good to see him getting some female attention for a change.”
“That news report last month didn’t hurt. You would have thought he’d taken a bullet for the president.”
“He did save Cooper’s life. That bull was bent on breaking him and making him bleed, and Rowdy got you out of that mess with Thunderclap tonight. With your hand caught in the rigging, that tight spin the bull had you in, I thought that it would—” The way she cocked her head at him reminded him of a puzzled puppy. “Why do you have that goofy grin?”
“You watched my ride?” He’d had his eye on her for months, sometime before Houston. The fact that she’d noticed him, watched him, made him want to puff his chest out and strut around like a proud peacock. Monte Shaw could suck his—
She mumbled something he didn’t catch. With a finger under her chin, he tilted her head up, glad the open truck door partially protected him from a well-placed boot tip in case she thought he was getting too fresh. “What was that?”
She didn’t pull away. “I said, I had a spare moment.”
The warmth in his chest spread wider. He dropped his hand, even though he wanted to brush his thumb over that bottom lip. That bottom lip that begged to be nibbled. “Shouldn’t you have been cooling off your horse instead of watching the bullriding?”
“I managed.”
Behind him, the girls giggled as the threesome got closer. Those kind of giggles used to make Silas hard. Now they just made him shudder.
When Rowdy was a car length away, Josephine said, “Great job, tonight.”
Silas stuck out his hand and Rowdy released one of the ladies long enough to shake hands. “Yeah, thanks, again.”
“I appreciate that. But I was only doing my job.” Looked like lust got rid of Rowdy’s stutter, too.
The threesome scooted between a Ford Fairlane and a rattle-trap GMC pickup and disappeared into the dark. Silas stepped beside Josephine. His hand cupping her cheek before he had time for conscious thought.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t pull away, and she didn’t kick him either. It was practically an open invitation, so he eased closer. “I’m going to kiss you Josephine Cox. If that’s not what you want, you need to say so now.”
“You can have any woman you want. Why me?”
He couldn’t deny it. The more he’d won, the more the women skittered out of the woodwork like he was a tasty morsel of bull riding meat.
But she was Caine Cox’s daughter. In Texas, beef was big, and Cox was king. Which made Silas a peasant to Josephine’s princess. But Josephine was also different than the other women on and around the circuit in a way he’d been unable to ignore these last few months. He didn’t have an answer for her question. Instead he said, “Is that a yes or a no?”
She leaned in as her tongue wet her bottom lip. A yes then. His hand went around the back of her neck, his fingers tangling in her soft, lazy curls. He bent his head and—
A hand clapped him on the back. “Hands off the merchandise, Foss.” Chet Orin. Silas swallowed the growl.
Josephine jumped and squeaked, but Silas hardly had time to get angry at Chet before she brushed past him and got in Chet’s face, or rather, his chest. She was so close she had to tilt her head back to look the guy in the eye. “Go away.” With a finger, she prodded him in the sternum. “Far, far, away.”
Silas pushed his hat back and crossed his arms. “I’d do what the lady says if I were you.”
Chet spared Silas a quick glare then pinned the look on Josephine. “If your father—”
The slap came fast and sharp. Chet’s head snapped to the side and he took a step back.
“Shoulda listened.” Silas liberally coated his words with I-told-you-so’s.
Josephine pointed toward the back of the lot, her lithe body tensed and ready for a fight. The last time Silas had seen her that mad, future generations of Cagles had been obliterated. “Go.”
Was it wrong that her fire lubed Silas’s gears?
Chet backed a couple steps before turning and walking away. The fact that Chet rubbed at his jaw as he left gave Silas more satisfaction than going the full eight seconds in the short go.
Josephine climbed into her truck and slammed the door. She didn’t drive away. She gripped the wheel and yanked and yanked as if she wanted to tear the steering wheel from the column. Then she yelled. Even with her window closed, her frustration hit Silas like a bull stomp to the chest. Then she dropped her hands and sat there in her seat, staring out the windshield, her chest rising and falling in large gasps that fogged the windows.
He gave her a moment. Two. Did she even remember he was there? He rapped his knuckle on the window. Nothing. He rapped again. She reached over and cranked the window down, the glass making a scree-scree-scree sound as it scraped against something inside the door frame.
“You okay?” He asked.
“Sure.” Her pitch was off, but that wasn’t unexpected.
“Wait here while I grab my truck. I’ll follow you back to the rodeo grounds.”
“I don’t need—”
“Josephine.”
“What?”
He smiled when she mimicked the exasperation in his tone. “Humor me.”
She huffed out a breath and her breathing returned to normal. She didn’t answer, but she nodded. He took a step to leave when she said, “Oh, Fossy?”
He turned back, his hands on the sill of her door as the warmth blooming in his chest made something ignite. “Fossy? No one’s called me that since grade school.” He hadn’t like it then, but coming from her mouth, from those lips…it taunted him. In a good way. “What do you need?”
“Thank you.”
“For what? I didn’t do anything. You had the situation under control.”
“Exactly.” She smiled at him. It was big and bedazzling.
It was bold and bodacious.
It was trouble.
No. She was trouble.
2
Friday night found Josephine sitting on an upturned bucket inside Comet’s stall at the rodeo grounds in Calgary. The best thing she could say about Calgary was that it wa
sn’t Pecos. Oh, and being so far north, at least it cooled off at night and she wouldn’t parboil in her trailer while she slept.
Her horse was tied, munching hay as his right rear hoof soaked in a shallow feed bowl filled with an Epsom salt and Betadine mixture. She glanced at her watch. Five more minutes. She dropped her head back against the wall. As her eyes drifted closed, she wished for the end of her sucky, sucky day.
Comet chuffed a welcome around a mouthful of hay, and Josephine startled awake.
Silas leaned a muscular shoulder against the open stall door. He was still dressed in his looser pair of jeans the bull riders used for competition, but had changed into a western shirt that probably hadn’t seen starch since well before Pecos. “I hear Terry Lewis has an open bunk in his trailer if you need a place to sleep.”
“Terry, don’t-call-me-Jerry, Lewis? The stockman?”
“The one and only.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Thanks, but Comet’s stall has fewer flies buzzing around it than Lewis’s trailer. Besides, I’m just about done here, and I have my tack compartment to myself tonight.”
“You don’t say.” Silas’s tone came out equal parts open curiosity and…was that…naked invitation?
Josephine shook herself awake, certain she’d only heard what she’d wanted to hear. Silas didn’t have Monte’s classic ranch-boy-next-door good looks, or the massive arms of the bulldoggers. He was a fine, rugged man and there was something about his confidence, his sincerity, his integrity, his heart, that pushed all her go-go buttons.
They had been running into each other more in the two weeks on either side of the Pecos rodeo than they ever had in all the time since Houston in the early spring. Coincidence?
Nope. She didn’t believe in coincidences.
His hat shaded his eyes from the glare of the overhead lights, but something in the way he stood there, drew her attention. Whether it was the turn of his head, the easy way he leaned there, feigning a calm, cool, and content cowboy, when the tension in his shoulders said he was anything but that.
He tucked his thumbs into the front pockets of his jeans, and his long fingers fell over the front of his Wranglers. She tried not to stare, but the term “hung like a bull” came to mind. She really had to stop spending so much time with Cora. She was a bad, bad, influence.
Silas bobbed his head toward Comet’s rear hoof. “What happened?”
Her stomach slid to a stop faster than Jester’s roping horse. When the acid settled, she said, “Threw a shoe coming around the third barrel. Got a puncture in the sole from one of the nails. Must have come down on it before he lost it completely. I’m trying to keep him from abscessing.”
Silas made one of those that sucks faces. “Oh, man. Bad luck.”
She didn’t believe in luck, any more than she believed in coincidences. When things happened, they happened for a reason. If Comet abscesses, what’s the reason for that? Does that mean you have no business riding the circuit?
Does that mean father was right?
No. She refused to believe it meant that. What, it meant she didn’t know. But not that.
Silas cleared his throat. “Mind if I join you?”
“I was just leaving,” she said, though she was too worn out to bother getting up.
He slipped behind her horse, knocked an errant ball of manure out of the way, and started easing himself onto the clean pile of shavings next to her. Partway down, he caught himself with a hand on her shoulder, hissed in a breath, and clapped an arm over his ribs. He grunted as he sat.
“What the heck, Fossy?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. Let me see.” She dropped to her knees in front of him and tugged the tail of his shirt out of his jeans. “Holy mackerel.”
“Shouldn’t that be holy cow? Or maybe holy bull?”
“You’re not funny. Don’t give up your day job.” A raised purple bruise covered his ribs. “On second thought, maybe you should give up your day job.”
Her hand went to his side, and he hissed in a breath.
“That hurt?”
“No. Sweet Jesus, your hands are cold!” He gathered her hands in his and started rubbing the heat back into them. Only his touch heated way more than her hands, making her wonder for the first time, if her promise to forgo men while riding the circuit would be that big of a deal to break.
Wait. Yeah. It was a big deal.
Affairs led to engagements, which led to marriages, and then the next thing you knew, a promising future chasing cans had turned into a lifetime of chasing kids.
Not that there was anything wrong with that.
But she had goals. She had dreams. Goals and dreams that didn’t involve her staying home and waiting week after week for a break in the circuit schedule, or for the rodeo to swing close enough for her to see her man again.
She pulled her hands away from his and went to stand up.
He grabbed her wrist. “Did I do something wrong?”
“No.” The word came out too fast and too high pitched to be believable.
“Then what’s with that someone-stole-my-horse face?”
“That’s my what-the-heck-are-you-doing-here-when-you-need-ice face.” She slapped her hands to her cheeks, dropped her jaw and made her eyes go wide. “This is my someone-stole-my-horse face.”
He laughed, but it was cut short by string of curses. He curled in on himself. “Damn. Don’t make me laugh.”
She sat back on her heels. “Sorry. But really, what happened? I thought that bull you drew was supposed to be nice.”
“You checked my draw?” One corner of his mouth tipped up and he got a spark in his eye. The Silas equivalent of a wide grin.
“That’s beside the point. Answer the question.”
He sat his hat beside him and leaned his head against the wall. Despite the chill in the air, his short brown hair was sweaty around his head where his hatband had rested. “The bull was nice. Too nice. He came out of the chute, spun once to the left, once to the right then took me on a victory lap around the arena.”
“So you got a reride?”
“Yeah. Wasn’t so lucky that time. Some bull by the name of The Man Eater or The Maimer or—”
“You mean Bone Crusher?”
He pointed a finger at her and gave her a wink which she refused to admit did stupid, silly things to her stomach. “That’s him. Determined to live up to his name. He tossed me after the buzzer, then danced on my ribs to congratulate me.”
“Ouch.”
He grinned—part humor, part grimace, part pain—and held out his hand. “Help me up.”
She didn’t take his hand. “You stay put. I’m going to get Comet settled, then we’ll put ice on those ribs.”
Silas settled back, covering his face with his hat. Josephine hurried through her chores—hoof dried off, hay net stuffed, water buckets filled. Check, check and check. She freed Comet in the stall and tapped Silas on the bottom of his boot. “Rise and shine, cowboy.”
Silas rested an arm on his knee, and glanced up at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
“Nothing, hell.” He pointed at her face. “You’ve got the Grand Canyon carved between your brows.”
She reached up and smoothed out the furrow. “I think this circuit is cursed. Or there’s bad juju. Something.”
He laughed, then groaned with pain. When she didn’t laugh with him he sobered. “You’re serious.”
Comet put his chin on her shoulder and snuffled in her ear. She scratched his nose. “First that bull rider, Cooper, almost gets killed last month, and a few others are hurt. Tonight, you got stomped.”
Silas raised his hands. “That’s not bad juju. That’s bull riding.”
“There’s been other things. Cora said one of the ropers’ horses bowed a tendon, and then Comet lost a brand new shoe and…”
“And what?”
“And as much as I don’t want this circuit to end. It will almost be a r
elief when we all finish in Cheyenne, hopefully in one piece.”
“All that, that’s the nature of the beast. Bad things happen.”
She made one of those I-don’t-think-so faces, but she was too tired to argue. She held out a hand for him.
He groaned and locked his hand around her wrist. Helping him get up took a lot of grunting on her part and a lot of cussing on his. “Still think you don’t need the ice?”
It wasn’t meant to be rhetorical, but he didn’t answer like it was.
She’d just gotten him steady on his feet when several large banks of overhead lights blinked out. “I guess that’s our cue to leave.”
There were still some lights on at the end of the aisles. Enough at least for them to stumble their way out of the stall. She pulled a pocket-fuzzed carrot from her jeans, brushed it off, and gave it to Comet, scratching the fine bristles on the end of his soft nose while he chewed. She turned to leave and bumped into Silas.
“Ooof.” He caught her by the shoulders and steadied himself.
He backed her against the stall door. Comet shuffled over and nibbled and tugged on her ponytail, but as Silas stepped one muscular thigh between her own, she stopped noticing what her horse was doing.
Silas’s hands slid up her arms and across her shoulders until his thumbs brushed the pounding pulse at the base of her neck. He ducked his head. She knew what was coming and met him halfway.
Their lips touched, a tantalizing slide of skin on skin. She smelled the hops on his breath, the roughstock on his skin, and something else that made her think of clear nights and the rugged hill country…home.
He came back in for a second run. She wanted to cup the back of his neck, to pull him closer, to deepen the kiss. But he pulled away, resting his forehead on hers. His breath hitched and she didn’t know if it was his ribs or her that had affected him. He shifted and his erection brushed against her belly.
Her then. She smiled.
“That was a beautiful run you and Comet had tonight.”
What? Her brain slipped a gear then caught. “Uh, thanks?” There was a time for compliments and a time to shut up. This was one of those times he needed to shut up and kiss her.