Rockin' Rodeo Series Collection Books 1-3

by Vicki Tharp

  She didn’t know, but she was about to find out.

  After putting Comet in the large pasture with his buddies, and seeing to a few more chores, Josephine went to find her father. Up near the house, she found her father’s coverall covered legs sticking out from beneath one of the trucks they used to haul the horse trailers.

  “Dad?”

  She heard the slap of a wrench against metal, a grunt and a muttered curse. “Shouldn’t you be fixing your mother lunch?”

  “It’s barely noon, and she had a late breakfast. She can survive a few—”

  “Josephine Waylon Cox.” It seemed like she hadn’t gone a day in the last month without one of her parents using her full name. She wasn’t ten anymore, but sometimes she felt like it.

  Ok, so using the word survive in the same sentence as her mother so soon after her stroke, probably wasn’t the best choice of words. “Sorry, Dad. That’s not what I meant.”

  Her father scooted out from beneath the truck and stood, wiping his greasy hands and a bloodied knuckle on a rag he’d snatched from his back pocket. “You shouldn’t leave your mother alone, she—”

  “She’s fine, Dad. She’s stronger every day. She’s getting around on her own, she can bathe herself, eat by herself. She doesn’t need someone hovering over her every second of every day.”

  “If this is about the fall circuit, I’ve already made up my mind, and the answer is no.”

  This wasn’t about the circuit. It was about something much more important to her future. “Has Silas called for me?”

  “Who?” Her father buried his head under the hood and started fiddling with the carburetor.

  “Silas Foss. He called, didn’t he?” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, she had no doubt they were true. She didn’t even give her father time to deny it. “When? When did he call?”

  Her father looked up at her. There was no remorse in his eyes. “Turn the key, would you?”

  “What? No. Answer the question.”

  Her father shouldered past her and climbed into the driver’s seat, but before he could turn the key in the ignition, she reached into the open window and yanked out the keys.

  “Tell me when he called, or so help me, I’ll toss your keys so far into the hay field you’ll never find them.”

  “Caine Cox’s only daughter is not hooking up with a no-account bull rider.”

  “This isn’t about you or what you want. I love him.”

  “You’re a kid. You don’t—”

  “No, Dad. I’m not your little girl anymore. I’m a grown woman who loves a damn fine man. I have a mind of my own, with hopes, plans, dreams, desires.”

  Her father turned green at the mention of desires and stared out the windshield, as if she would relent if he ignored her long enough.

  She brought her arm back, ready to pitch the keys as far as she could throw them. “Last chance. When?”

  “That Sunday. After the Cheyenne rodeo. You were already on your way home.”

  Josephine dropped the keys in the dirt at her feet. “You should have told me.”

  “You had more important things to worry about. You had your mother to take care of and—”

  “Don’t use mother as an excuse to keep me from Silas. I’m here. I’m doing my duty. You had no right to mess with my life.” Her pulse pounded at her temple. She wanted to yell and scream and holler. More than that, the impulse to load Comet into her trailer and head down the road and never look back, hit hard.

  She turned on her heel, determined to do just that.

  She’d made it only a few steps before the truck door slammed behind her, and her father said, “Before you storm off, there’s one more thing you should know.”

  Though she stopped, she didn’t turn to face him. She couldn’t bear to look at him right now. Her father was supposed to protect her, not betray her.

  “The night he called, I wired Foss twenty thousand dollars to stay away. He hasn’t called since. How’s that for a damn fine man?”

  14

  As Silas drove under the arched Rockin’ C sign, he slipped on his shades. The sun setting over the harsh scrabble of the Hill Country flashed in his eyes. Bright lights and the sun still hurt, but after nearly two months, he no longer had to reach for the pills to relieve the pain.

  Silas didn’t drive fast, and he didn’t drive slow down the gravel road to Caine Cox’s ranch. His belly did a slow roll, as much from hunger as nerves. It had been two, long, excruciating months since Josephine had said she loved him.

  He’d almost called again, many, many times. Toby had told him he was an idiot not to, but he’d been at a loss for words. How do you tell the woman that you love that you almost died?

  That’s not something you tell someone over the phone.

  If he had called, if she hadn’t come, it would have killed him. Not that he’d wanted her to see him laid flat out in the hospital, helpless like that anyway.

  She may not want anything to do with him, but if she didn’t, he was going to make her say it to his face.

  Plus, he had unfinished business with her father.

  He pulled up to the ranch house, a cozy one-story number wrapped with a porch. Pulling the rear-view mirror toward him, he rubbed his hand over the new patch of hair growing in and covering the two-inch semicircular scar just in front of his right ear. He stuck his hat on his head and climbed out. No one needed to see that, especially not Josephine.

  A screen door slammed on the back side of the house, and a man stepped onto the porch, with a shotgun in his hand. Silas was mostly sure Caine Cox’s threats had been idle, but…

  Silas reached into his truck and pulled out a backpack and waited at the front of his truck. He’d been out of the hospital for a month, and every ounce of weight and strength he’d gained since had been a battle. Leaning a hip against the hood, he let Cox come to him.

  “Silas Foss, I assume.”

  Silas nodded.

  “Didn’t expect to ever see you here.” Cox rested the barrel of his shotgun on his shoulder.

  “I told you I would come. Where is she?”

  “We had a deal. You got your money. Now leave.”

  Silas unzipped the backpack and held it open for Cox to see the short stacks of hundred-dollar bills. All in their original little paper wrappers. As pristine as the day he’d picked the money up. He’d almost refused to pick up the money that fateful day, but that would have deprived him of seeing the look on Cox’s face when he threw the money back at him.

  Silas dropped the bag at Cox’s feet. “I can live without roughstock. I can live without the money. I’m not living without Josephine. I love her.”

  “So you’ve said before.”

  Cox was a hard man to impress. Not that Silas needed Cox’s approval, but he was smart enough to know life would be a hell of a lot easier with Cox’s blessing because despite the friction between Josephine and Cox, he knew she loved her father, and Silas didn’t want to get between them.

  Cox glared and shifted his weight. Silas didn’t know if Cox was going to punch him or shoot him or—

  “Silas?” Josephine called out from the front of the barn.

  Like an idiot, he raised a hand to wave. Jesus, you would think the doctors had sucked out all his brain cells when they’d gone in and drained all the blood. She took a step and then another. Like at the beginning of rehab, his legs refused to move.

  In his mind, he’d pictured her running up to him, and like they do in those sappy movies, he’d wrap her in a hug and swing her around. But she wasn’t running. In fact, she turned and went back into the barn.

  Cox kicked at the bag of money. “It’s not too late. I’ll double it if you leave now.”

  Silas got in Cox’s face. Pound for pound, inch for inch, they were well matched, except for Cox’s age and Silas’s slow recovery. “And you wonder why your daughter fights to stay away from you. You are a sad man, Cox. Josephine’s happiness, Josephine’s life, is not something you
can barter with.”

  “You’re not good enough for her. You never will be.”

  “I won’t argue with you there. Lord knows what she sees in me. But whether or not she wants to be with me is her decision, not yours.”

  * * *

  He was there. Josephine’s throat closed, and her eyes welled. Had he come back for her or had he come to cut her free? She should have known Silas wasn’t the kind of man who would walk away without some sort of closure.

  She ducked back in the barn and stared at her partially packed tack locker. The lock had gotten rusty, and the green paint was starting to chip. What was she going to do if Silas had come to tell her it was over?

  Or worse, what if her father shot him?

  That shotgun had just been for intimidation, right? The proverbial father? Shit. She spun on her heel and ran smack into Silas’s chest. He caught her arms and kept her from stumbling.

  She opened her mouth to speak, as his lips came down on hers. Not halting and tender and sweet, but demanding and needy and dark, his mood matching her own.

  His tongue slid into her mouth, exploring. Hauntingly the same, but intensely different. As he held her to him, taking the kiss deeper, her hands went around his neck. She took the hat off his head and tossed it in her locker, her hand brushing against a patch of short hair on the side of his head.

  He stilled, then pulled back.

  “What happened to your hair? You fall asleep with gum in your mouth and—” He turned his head and let her see the cropped hair, the angry scar. Her hands went to her mouth. “Silas?”

  He reached down and retrieved his hat and plopped it on his head. “I was going to tell you about that.”

  “When?”

  All that tingling at her core from his kisses vanished, and her blood heated in her veins. She crossed her arms over her chest. “I’m sick and tired of the men in my life thinking I’m some innocent kid that they have to protect from the big, bad world. You have a lot of explaining to do, and probably a bit of groveling as well.”

  He took her hand and closed the lid of her tack locker and sat her down beside him. Removing his hat, Silas scrubbed his hand over the patch of short hair. “I won.” He smiled, but it was one of those equivocal ones that said that was the good news right before he delivered the bad. “But I had a brain bleed—”

  Brain bleed? “What?” She’d heard the word, but it sat there in her mind as if it had no meaning.

  “I had been having headaches that last week or so. I thought it was residual from the concussion, but apparently, I had a slow bleed in my head. Long story short, they caught it… and fixed it.”

  In his hesitation, she heard the words in time. As if he’d been almost out of it.

  Josephine couldn’t catch her breath. She ran her fingers over his jaw and down his neck to the pulse that pounded near his collarbone.

  He looked away and took a deep breath, then met her gaze. “I’m not going to lie. It was a close call.”

  “Why didn’t you call me or have Toby call me? Don’t you think I had a right to know?”

  She tried to pull her hand out of his, but he wouldn’t let her. “I was out for a week, and then…you’re the one who left, Josephine.” His tone was direct, not accusing.

  Her growing anger diffused.

  “I didn’t call because I didn’t know if there was an us.”

  This was her fault. If she hadn’t run, if they’d talked…but as that third can had dropped, her world had shattered. It wasn’t because she hadn’t won in Cheyenne, it was because she couldn’t see where she and Silas could have any kind of future. But she’d grown up a lot in these past two months, and if there was anything in her life that she would do over if she could, it was climbing in that truck and driving back to Texas.

  “And then,” he said, “the doctors weren’t sure what kind of recovery I would have, or if there’d be any permanent damage. With what you were going through with your mother, I didn’t want you burdened with that.”

  “If it had been me in that hospital bed, with the chance of not being a hundred percent, of not being me when I was released, would you have loved me any less?”

  “What? No. That’s crazy. I love you.”

  “Yet you think my love is conditional?”

  “You told me you loved me. Then you disappeared. What was I supposed to think?”

  Her throat spasmed, and she choked back a sob. “I-I’m sorry. I-I—” How could she explain what an idiot she’d been?

  “Hey, hey, hey.” He pulled her onto his lap and settled her head against his chest. She could hear the steady rump-tump, rump-tump of his heart and she concentrated on that. “No apologies. What matters is that I’m here now. We can figure out the rest.”

  She settled into him, but there was a tension in his body that wouldn’t ease. There was something he wasn’t telling her.

  “Tell me the rest.” Her words came out stronger. She and Silas were in this together. Whatever they had to face, at least they had each other.

  His hold on her got tighter as if he expected her to run for the hills once he said what he had to say. “I’m broke. The money Toby and I had saved to buy our own land, and the money from my win in Cheyenne, we used it all to pay the hospital bills. And to top it off, the doctors said I can’t ride anymore. So not only am I broke, I have no job, and I have no prospects.”

  “You have me.” The money she didn’t care about. Silas was a good man. He’d find work, she had no doubt. She had him, and that was all that mattered.

  * * *

  “There you are.”

  Silas shifted in front of his bed in the hayloft of Cox’s barn so Josephine wouldn’t see what he was up to. Without glancing back, he said, “Wait downstairs, I’ll be there in a sec.”

  But her steps came closer instead of going away. Silas glanced over his shoulder, then dropped what he had in his hand and turned. She stood in the shaft of light from a set of windows carved into the upper walls of the loft, and he was thankful the light no longer brought him pain.

  Her hat sat on her head, her pressed western shirt and jeans hugged her form, and her polished boots shone like new pennies. His breath caught, and he knew that no matter how many times he looked at this woman, her beauty would always hit him hard and fast.

  She walked into his arms, and he buried his face into the crook of her neck, breathing in the scent of hay and horses, and that signature salty-sweet mixture that came from within that made her not only the incredible woman that she was, but a force to be reckoned with.

  “You all packed?” He rubbed a thumb across her cheek wanting to memorize the softness of her skin.

  “Just need to load Comet and pick up Cora. But I have an hour before I have to hit the road.”

  “I’m going to miss you.” When she left, she’d take a piece of his heart, and he had no words to describe the crater it was going to leave in his chest.

  She hugged him tight and said the words he wanted, no, needed, to hear. “I don’t have to go.”

  But just because he needed to hear them didn’t mean he agreed. “Yeah, hotstuff, you do. The fall season is only a few months long, and with Toby coming and working here until the spring, I’ll be able to slip away when the circuit swings close and see you ride.”

  “What about you and my dad?”

  “We’ve come to an understanding this past month or so.” Which basically amounted to Cox reluctantly agreeing to give him and Toby room and board, and to teach them the ropes of roughstock ranching, in exchange for free labor. With the tiny caveat that if Silas broke Josephine’s heart, her father would kill him.

  Seemed fair.

  But he had no plans to hurt her, so Silas considered himself relatively safe.

  “And my mom?”

  “You let us guys worry about her. Besides, she’ll hardly let us help her anymore.”

  With a finger, he lifted her chin so he could see her eyes. “Don’t worry. Just relax and ride. That’s all
you have to do. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  He bent his head and kissed her, not knowing how he was going to get through the next few months without her and not go crazy. He almost wished Cox was sending Chet out on the circuit again to keep an eye on her, but at the same time, the ugly green, jealous part of him was damn glad Chet wasn’t going to be around her.

  She broke the kiss. “You know, we do have an hour to kill.” She took his hand and turned toward his bed. “What’s all this?”

  On the bed sat a small square box and some wrapping paper. She’d interrupted him before he’d had a chance to finish. “You spoiled the surprise.”

  “Oooh. What is it, what is it? I love surprises!” Her eyes lit up, and for the bazillionth time, he was struck by how incredibly lucky he was to have her in his life.

  “Close your eyes.” He had wanted to watch her unwrap his gift, but this would have to do.

  Closing her eyes, she held out her hands. Silas reached for her belt buckle, and she smiled. “If I’d known it would be that kind of gift, I’d have put on my fancy underwear.”

  “Sadly, it’s not that kind of gift.” He chuckled, and it took all he had to stop at only removing her belt.

  “Hurry,” she said, as he removed her buckle from her belt, and attached the silver and gold one he’d won in Cheyenne.

  He re-buckled her belt at her waist and gave it a little tug as he pulled her closer. “You can look now.”

  She glanced down at the buckle and ran her finger over the raised gold lettering. “Oh my god. I can’t take your buckle. This is yours, this is—”

  He pressed a finger to her lips. “I love you, Josephine. I don’t have much, but I have you, which makes me the richest man in Texas.” In her eyes, he could see her soul and her love. The emotions they raised, made his throat tight, and he had to clear his voice to speak again. “But what I do have is yours. I want you to keep this, to wear this. I wanted to give you a ring, but…” He shrugged. One day. “But until then, I want you to have this. I want everyone to know you’re mine and I’m yours. When you get back, if I don’t have the money, we’re going to melt it down, and I’ll have them make you the most amazing ring you’ve—”