Rockin' Rodeo Series Collection Books 1-3

by Vicki Tharp

  He chuckled, and shifted her in his arms, but he didn’t let her go. She was okay with that. “If you’re looking for a happy story, you’ve picked the wrong shoulder to cry on.”

  She pulled back enough to see his face, her hand coming to rest on his chest. “It doesn’t have to be happy, just real.”

  Swallowing hard, Ian said, “Real?...Fuck...All right. My whole life my father and brothers treated me as if I didn’t belong. That I wasn’t one of them. That I wasn’t a real Murphy.”

  Ian paused, his focus going inward. Cora waited him out, not wanting to interrupt. “You see my father and brothers all have red hair and are fair skinned, but I’m what you call a black Irish. My mother had darker hair. I didn’t think anything about it. Mostly. Until...”

  His voice faded out and he went quiet for so long she feared he wouldn’t continue. But somehow knowing his childhood hadn’t been perfect either made her feel not quite so alone in the world. She should have told him it was okay, that he didn’t have to tell her anything he didn’t want to, but a small part of her needed to hear it. It was that part of her that waited through the silence.

  Ian cleared his throat. “Until a few days before I left the Bronx.” Glancing down, Ian met her gaze for the first time since he started his story. “That’s when I found out that my father wasn’t really my father.”

  “Oh, no.” Cora’s chest tightened as if one the ropers had used her for a practice dummy. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not.” Ian’s conviction made Cora believe him. “It explains so much. The truth is, the more I think about it, the more I’m glad to know I’m not Patrick Murphy’s spawn.

  “Spawn. You make it sound like your siblings are the seeds of the devil.”

  “If the truth fits.” Ian laughed it off as if his brothers weren’t that bad.

  “Do you know who your real father is?”

  “No clue.”

  “Maybe he was a photographer too. Maybe it’s in your blood. Maybe that’s why your mother gave you the camera for your birthday.”

  “Could be.”

  “Are you going to look for him?”

  “Naw.” Ian shook his head, though the way he hesitated before he did made Cora think that he harbored some curiosity about his real father. “I wouldn’t even begin to know where to start. Besides, I’m not a kid that needs his daddy.”

  “No, you’re not a kid. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need him, that having him in your life couldn’t be a positive thing.”

  “Ha. Yeah. I don’t think I need a man in my life who refused to claim his son.”

  She could understand his bitterness, the sense of rejection he must feel. Briefly, she wondered if it would hurt more to be rejected by the father you knew or know that your father couldn’t even be bothered to get to know you before rejecting you. But everything in life wasn’t black or white.

  “Maybe it wasn’t like that. Maybe he doesn’t even know he’s a father,” she said.

  Ian shifted and let his head fall back against the stall, staring off into the distance. He took in a deep breath and blew it out. “I hadn’t thought about it that way. Wrapping my head around my mother’s infidelity has been difficult enough. Though honestly, I can’t blame her for it. Patrick Murphy isn’t a lovable man.”

  “I could help, if you want. Make some phone calls—”

  Ian cut her off with a shake of his head. “What if he doesn’t want anything to do with me?”

  The stark vulnerability in Ian’s eyes squeezed her heart and made it difficult to breathe. She had to whisper to keep her voice from breaking. “What if he does?”

  His soft smile came slow, his eyes searching her face almost as if he were afraid to hope. He pulled her in and pressed a kiss to her forehead before tucking her back against his chest. “Ah, me bonnie lass,” he said, “what if he does.”

  She stayed in his arms, both of them drawing comfort from their closeness. The lazy way his thumb traced small circles at her hip had her leaning into him. The salt and sea air still clung to his shirt, his skin, and she could almost hear the whoosh of the waves as they hit the shore.

  The urge to tilt her head up, to taste the salt on his neck, to work her way across the stubble that marked his jaw until she could kiss those lips, breathe the same air that he did, tempted her to push the boundaries of their friendship. She shifted. Ian groaned as her hip pressed against his erection.

  He took her hips in his hands and pushed her just far enough away to break contact. “Ignore that.”

  “Why would I want to?” Despite what her father thought, she wasn’t a whore. Did she like sex? You bet. Was she afraid to admit it? Nope. But what she gave, she gave freely. She shifted back against him.

  “Cora,” he had that fatherly tone. It should have turned her off, but somehow coming from him, it had the opposite effect, especially knowing she turned him on. “As pathetic as this sounds, you’re the first real friend I’ve had in a very long time. A real friend wouldn’t screw that up by trying to sleep with you.”

  * * *

  Santa Fe.

  Nothing but another weekend, another rodeo, another crap run.

  The inability to get her father’s confrontation out of her head didn’t help.

  “It’s okay, boy. It’s not your fault,” Cora reassured Panache. “I’ll get my shit together. Promise.”

  Panache snorted as Cora combed her fingers through his forelock and the gelding tucked back into his bag of hay. This horse had a heart the size of Texas, and it killed her that she kept letting him down.

  That late at night, most everyone had turned in for the night, and only a select few banks of lights remained on in the barn. She plopped down on the bale of hay in front of Panache’s stall and rested her forehead on her knees with Josephine’s words ringing in her head. You just need to get laid.

  Maybe Josephine was right. Maybe Cora should stop fighting the losses and instead, do something about it.

  “Hey. You okay?”

  Cora glanced up and roughstock man, Scottie Hines, dropped down on the bale beside her. He spit a wad of tobacco into the dirt. She gave him a wan smile. “Never better.”

  “I watched ya ride. Ain’t nuthin’ but a thang. Everyone has their tough spells. Ya gotta ride like it don’t matter, like way back in the day when ya did it for fun.”

  “Yeah, well it was a lot more fun when I was winning. Panache keeps eyeballing me. I think he’s worried his hay’s gonna be in short supply if I don’t get my head screwed on straight. He isn’t far from wrong.”

  “You’ll get there.” The way Scottie said it, she almost believed him.

  Almost.

  “Thanks. That means a lot.”

  “You know...” Scottie was quiet a moment, then turned to her as if he had something he wanted to say, then decided against it. Exhausted, Cora didn’t press the point. Scottie stood and hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “I gotta check the animals one last time before I hit the hay.”

  They said their goodbyes and Cora stepped out of the barn into the darkness. The night was crisp and clear, and her breath come out in puffs of white as she marched her determined ass over to Ian’s trailer.

  The Santa Fe rodeo grounds had some outbuildings with electrical outlets, and Ian had parked away from everyone, so he could plug in his camper.

  It had been more than three weeks since she and Josephine had mistakenly ‘outed’ Ian, and he’d been paying the price ever since. She’d apologized repeatedly. He’d accepted, repeatedly, but while they’d spent a lot of their downtime together, something remained off between them. Despite everything she’d tried, she couldn’t completely kill the rumor.

  Which only made what she had to ask Ian that much scarier.

  But as scared as she was, she found the probability of her career slipping through her fingers even more terrifying.

  Which made her desperate.

  As she crossed the parking lot, the hairs on the back of her neck sprang
to life. She stopped and listened, but all she heard was the occasional distant neigh of a horse, and the bellow of a bull. In a parking spot off to her right, Matty’s parked truck rocked, the windows steamed up. From inside she heard a girl giggle, then groan.

  That wasn’t what had made her skin crawl. She picked up her pace, making a beeline for Ian’s trailer. The light shone through his closed blinds as she stepped up to the camper and rapped her knuckles on his door, thankful she wouldn’t have to wake him to make her request.

  He did say he owed you one.

  “It’s open,” Ian called out.

  Here goes nothing.

  She blew out a breath, pulled open the door, and stepped inside. Reclining on the bench seat at the dining table, Ian lay with a pillow behind his head, a strip of negatives in his hand, and a pack of ice on his bare ribs.

  The plastic smile she’d manufactured, melted. “What happened to you?” Stupid question. She knew what happened. This was all her fault.

  “I ran into Matty’s fist. Twice.” Ian’s lips twisted. How could he find anything about getting beat up amusing?

  “I’m so—”

  Ian held up his hand to stop what had to be her sixty-fourth apology. He sat up and dropped the ice pack on the table. Goosebumps covered his chest, and a dark purple bruise bloomed over his left side.

  She shook off her jacket and slid onto the bench across from him. “Please tell me this is where you say, ‘you should see the other guy.’”

  Ian shrugged. He looked tired. Beat. The last few weeks hadn’t been easy on him. It pissed her off that some of the people she’d considered friends were so narrow minded and bigoted. “I won’t have to give up my street brawler membership card.”

  She accepted his beer and his not-so-subtle change of subject.

  Something Ian had said came back to her, how not taking advantage of a vulnerable woman made him a gentleman, not gay. How he’d been pissed on her behalf at how she’d expected men to treat her badly at times.

  Then and there, she knew she’d come to the right man. If anyone could help her get back on top, it would be Ian. She wanted it to be Ian. Needed it to be Ian.

  Maybe it could help him out, too.

  Seeing Ian in this different, more focused light, made her throat tight. Like some of those photos of his that he’d shown her, where the subject of the picture was crisp and in focus and the background was fuzzy and blurred. Making what mattered stand out.

  Ian stood out.

  Ian mattered.

  This might be a great idea for her career, but she was starting to think it wasn’t such a great idea for her heart. “You’re a good man, Ian Murphy.”

  He didn’t respond, he just stared at her over the top of his beer as if she were a conundrum he couldn’t puzzle out. “Not as good as you think.”

  She knew that to be untrue. Which made what she had to ask him even more awkward. She nibbled on her thumbnail.

  “We’re friends, right? You cook me breakfast sometimes, we stay up late and talk or play cards.” She thought she knew the answer, but she wanted to be sure.

  He glanced up at her, his scowl replaced by a reluctant grin. He nodded. “We shook on it.”

  Then his eyes narrowed, and his smile slipped as if he knew she was up to something but couldn’t figure out what. “Where are you going with this?”

  Instead of answering right away, she took two long swallows of beer. “Do you still owe me one? Or has this...” she waved her bottle in the general direction of his bruised ribs, “made us even?”

  “This doesn’t negate what I owe you. Because of you, I’ve made some connections and some friends. I’ve been behind the scenes for some spectacular shots I wouldn’t have gotten otherwise. So yeah, I still owe you. Big time.”

  She rolled the bottle between her palms and made circular designs on the table top with the condensation. “I need to call in that favor.”

  “Name it.” His eyes were soft and sincere. Here was a man with a heart of gold. A man of his word.

  This was the best-worst idea she’d ever had. “I want you to have sex with me.”

  8

  I want you to have sex with me.

  Beer got sucked into Ian’s windpipe. He choked. He sputtered. Pressure built behind his eyes and a vessel thrummed at his temple as he struggled to catch his breath.

  Yanking the beer out of her hand, he set them out of her reach and cleared his throat. “Exactly how much have you had to drink tonight?”

  She leaned across the table and snatched the beer back. “This is the first drink I’ve had all night.”

  “You’re cr—”

  She held up her hands, her eyes wide with some weird combination of panic and vulnerability and freaked-the-fuck-out. “Will you just hear me out?”

  A swig of beer was his answer. He listened while she explained Josephine’s theory on why she kept knocking down the barrels. All the while he tried not to think too much about what she was really asking, because the thought of having her in his arms, in his bed, made him hard.

  His sweatpants wouldn’t hide a thing. He glanced at the ice pack but couldn’t think of an inconspicuous way of dropping it in his lap without being obvious.

  Her dark, wavy hair lay across her shoulders and she took a hunk of it in her hand and started playing with it, chewing on the inside of her cheek while she waited for his answer.

  He’d like to think he paused to give the question—proposition? —the considerable thought it deserved. He’d like to think that he was thinking with his brain and not his dick, and he’d really like to believe that maybe she’d started to feel something for him. Even though the way she’d explained it made it perfectly clear this was nothing more than a transaction.

  A payment on a debt.

  Which stung more than a little.

  “Let me get this straight,” he said. “You want me to have sex with you because Josephine thinks you lost your groove, because you had a pregnancy scare and swore off men. Now you’re in the middle of a sexual dry spell and hitting barrels and losing runs. Is that right?”

  “It sounds worse when you say it like that.”

  “So, this is a no strings, no expectations, simple sex—”

  “Unless you think you can’t do it without falling for me because like I said—”

  Ian cut her off. She didn’t come off as conceited, just concerned.

  “You don’t do relationships.”

  “Exactly.”

  How many kinds of fucked up was it that he was even considering accepting her offer? He’d be a complete bastard to do it. Right? Right?

  Cora fidgeted in her seat and she plucked at the label on her beer. “If it’s my reputation that’s turning you off, in my defense, my sex life has been waaay over exaggerated. You’ve experienced firsthand the staying power of the rodeo rumor mill. I learned early on you can’t stop it. So, I stopped trying.”

  “You think I’m not taking you to bed because you’ve had sex with other men?”

  She shrugged and sunk lower in the booth. Certainly, a woman like Cora wasn’t used to rejection, but Ian was equally as certain she wasn’t used to being cherished.

  Like she deserved.

  His veins heated as emotion flooded in. Jealous? Of the sex? No, he realized, pissed that the men in her life hadn’t appreciated her for the sweet, sexy, funny, intelligent person that she was. “I’ve got news for you, babe. I don’t care how many men you’ve slept with. I haven’t exactly been a choir boy myself. It would be pretty hypocritical for me to judge you for having sex when I’ve done the same thing.”

  She sat up, hope flooding into her eyes. “Is that a yes?”

  “No.”

  Yes.

  No. No, no, no. Argh. That’s not how he’d seen that little speech going. So much for letting her down easy. Now he’d gotten her hopes up. Time to change tactics. “Look, I don’t like to start things I can’t finish.”

  The declaration sounded lame even
to his own ears, but the truth was he’d never been a ‘one-and-done’ kind of guy. What she asked for wasn’t something he could give without falling deep for a girl who didn’t do relationships.

  “As soon as I get that assignment, I’m out of here.”

  As her eyes got glassy, she swallowed hard, and she nodded. She glanced up at the ceiling, a rueful laugh falling from her lips. “S-so that’s a definite no then.”

  The silence built. He didn’t know how to let her down any easier.

  “This could help you too,” she said, her tone saying she was grasping at straws, but didn’t care. “Sleeping with me. When word gets out, it’ll stop that gay rumor in its tracks.”

  “I don’t kiss and tell. So, no. It wouldn’t.”

  “Still...” Her voice had shrunk three sizes and she shrugged.

  “Besides, we could just as easily kill the rumor with a lie.”

  “Maybe. But that wouldn’t help me with my barrel problem.”

  Ian cradled his head in his hands. Lord help him, he was trying to be the good guy here, but even a good man had his limits.

  “There are so many ways this can go wrong.” He reached across the table for her hand and rubbed circles across her knuckles. “Look at me.”

  When she did, the vulnerability in her eyes ripped and tore at his heart. How on earth could anyone, could he, tell her no? “Cora, I win that contest, I’m leaving. I don’t plan on coming back maybe for months or years or...or ever.”

  “I’m not asking for forever. I’m asking for now.”

  “Why me?”

  She laughed—not that full bodied, full-of-life laugh that never ceased to make his heart feel full—and discreetly swiped at her eyes. “For the first time in my life, I don’t want some random guy. You’ve been a good friend to me and you’re trying so hard to say no. That’s why I know it has to be you.” Then her eyes cleared, and she screwed on a wily, seductive smile. “That, and because of your ass.”

  “My ass? Not my sparkling personality?”

  “Well,” she said, as if it were an afterthought, “that too.”