Rockin' Rodeo Series Collection Books 1-3

by Vicki Tharp

  She shrugged. It wasn’t about locking up. It was about making sure he was really as okay as he tried to make everyone believe. She’d seen wicked wrecks before, and he’d been lucky to come away without any major damage. “Is Chunk okay?”

  “Looked like it. Cooter stopped by the ambulance with him. He didn’t look lame. I’ll throw him in the round pen in the morning and make sure he’s still sound.”

  “You got lucky.”

  “I’m good at dodging bullets.”

  “As much as I hate to say this, June wasn’t entirely off base.” When his eyes narrowed at her, she quickly added, “About you getting hurt, I mean. Have you thought about what would happen to Clementine if—?” She cut herself off. Not wanting to say the words if you died out loud. As if speaking it would make it so. She reached up and touched the bandage wrapped around his head. The last thing Clementine needed was to be an orphan.

  That’s it? All you’re worried about is how Clementine would feel?

  The kid had been through a lot already, losing her mother—

  Admit it, your worry about him isn’t only for Clementine’s sake, it’s for your sake as well. You like him, Olivia. Admit it.

  As in like like.

  As in your feelings are more than platonic.

  As in you’d like to take your hands and—

  “Fine. I admit it.”

  Levi reached up and took her hand in his, with a light chuckle. “You admit what?”

  She squeezed her eyes and shook her head before looking back up at him. His eyes were bright and that crooked, sexy smile, beamed back at her. “Nothing. It’s been a long day and an even longer night.”

  “It’s not even that late.”

  “Feels like it.”

  He still had her hand, his thumb bumping back and forth across her knuckles, raising goosebumps on her arms. He leaned against his camper, forcing her to take a step closer. Then she took another on her own. “Are you really okay?”

  He brought her hand to his lips and planted a kiss on the palm of her hand. “I’m better now.”

  He tugged her in between his legs, and she went willingly. Tucking their joined hands to his chest, he cupped her cheek, his thumb brushing across her bottom lip. His gaze flicked down when she ran her tongue over the pad of his thumb.

  His eyes went dark, and he dipped his head. “I’m going to kiss you, Olivia Marsh.”

  “I think you should.” Her answer came out no more than a whisper.

  He touched his lips to hers, then pulled away a fraction, and she had to bite back the groan of frustration. “You do?” He sounded taken aback, as if what she’d said finally registered.

  “I do.” She slid her hand behind his neck and pulled him back into the kiss.

  He opened her mouth with his, and her tongue met him halfway. That close, she smelled disinfectant on his skin. Her stomach did a tiny flip when her brain went to that terrible place that gamed out every possible tragic thing that could have happened to him. If he only knew how hard it had been for her to keep her shit together when she’d approached the ambulance.

  He pulled back and said, “Hey, you still with me here?”

  Smooth, Marsh. She touched her head to his chest, then looked back up at the concern on his face. “I’m here.”

  “Where’d you go?”

  “Someplace I don’t want to be.”

  He studied her. His fingers tracing across her forehead, down her temples to her cheekbones, then he cupped her face in his large, calloused hands.

  Ducking his head again, he drew her into the kiss, the light exploratory touch of their lips quickly turning deep and demanding. She angled her head and raised up on her toes, taking the kiss even deeper.

  His hands started roaming, and she arched into him. It took everything she had not to take his hands and slap them on her breasts or her ass or the V between her legs.

  She shifted and straddled his thick thigh, his arousal pressing into her hip. He broke the kiss, and they both struggled to catch their breath. He nipped down her neck, his hands cupping her ass and pulling her in tighter. She ground against him, and he groaned.

  Into her ears, he said, “I like you here.”

  She ran her hand down his chest to the bump of muscles across his abdomen. “In your arms?”

  “In my life.”

  In my life. He must have rattled a few brain cells to have said that, but a little thump on the head wouldn’t stop her. Her hand went lower and lower until she cupped him through his jeans.

  He hissed in a breath, his head falling back, thumping against the camper. “Jesus Christ, woman.”

  “You like?” she asked as she continued to fondle him, loving how his breath had gone ragged and he’d grown impossibly harder under her touch.

  “You know I do.”

  With her other hand, she popped the top two snaps on his western shirt and buried her face in his chest and started kissing her way across the wide expanse of hard muscle.

  “You realize we’re out in the open here, right?” Though that didn’t keep him from running his hands up her sides and his thumbs from skimming the underside of her breasts.

  “That big rig is blocking everyone’s view.” She ran her fingernail up his zipper. That far out in the parking lot, it was quiet, and she could hear her nail drag along the zipper teeth until she reached his belt buckle. They really should take things inside, but she couldn’t wait that long to get her hands, her tongue, her lips, on him.

  She unfastened the large silver and gold championship buckle he’d won the year before and had reached for the button on his jeans when one of his large hands came down on hers.

  “What are we doing, Liv?”

  Liv. In the past, she’d admonished him when he’d called her that, but now... now so many things had changed. That word, that familiarity that had grated her nerves now made the blood whoosh behind her ears. “If I have to explain it to you...” she teased.

  She tried to shake off his hand, but he held on tighter.

  He took in a deep breath and blew it out. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”

  “You’re kidding me, right?” Though even before he answered, she knew he wasn’t. It was written on his face—in the lines on his forehead, in the tension around his eyes.

  His breathing slowed, and the heat, the passion that had been there seconds before, cleared away. “Look. My life’s pretty complicated right now.”

  Yeah. And she was one more complication he didn’t need. She lifted her hands in surrender. “It’s okay. I get it.”

  She patted him on the chest. “I’m going back to the ranch after this rodeo anyway. It would be stupid... you know... you and me...”

  “It’s not stupid, it’s—”

  “It’s okay.” She didn’t bother hiding her disappointment. She wasn’t into head games. It was what it was, and she wasn’t going to pretend to feel anything that she didn’t.

  “I’m really sorry,” he said as he refastened his belt buckle.

  “Don’t be.” She took another step back. Not embarrassed or angry but confused and in truth, a little hurt. He’d seemed as into her as she’d been into him. She turned to go. “Night.”

  His hand came down on her wrist, locking her in place. “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

  “You knew this was a temporary gig until Rusty got up to speed and I could take his training wheels off.”

  “You still could have said something sooner.”

  “Then I guess we’ve both been a little caught off guard.”

  “This isn’t what I want.” The sincerity in his tone rang true.

  She pulled her arm free, and he let her go. “Me neither.”

  6

  After watching Olivia drive away, Levi stomped up the steps of his camper, not sure which head hurt the most, the big one or the little one.

  He reached into the cabinet above the stove and poured a healthy dose of analgesics into his hand and washed it down
with a fresh beer out of his refrigerator. At least he had an easy solution for one of his problems.

  If only his remedy for Olivia were that simple.

  He set the beer down, his full bladder nagging him, but he could only stand there at his toilet with his hard-on in his hand, trying to take a piss. He thought long and hard about rubbing one out, but he didn’t want his hand, he wanted Olivia.

  He leaned an arm against the upper cabinet and waited, his gaze dropping to the mud-caked doll Olivia had left in his shower pan. When he finally finished, he washed his hands and picked up the doll.

  One inanimate eye opened. The other remained closed and dirt clogged, the “momma” sounding hollow and creepy in the confines of the camper. Maybe he should toss the doll and get Clementine something new, but that wasn’t what he’d promised her.

  Since Clementine was gone for the night, he converted her bed back into the table and settee. He had to come up with a better living solution if he and Clementine were going to stay on the road together. But that worry was for another day.

  He set the doll on the seat closest to the stove and took a quick shower to wash the arena dirt and disinfectant off him. When he’d finished, he threw on a pair of sweats and removed the damp bandage from around his head and examined the damage in the bathroom mirror. The bruising and swelling were surprisingly minimal. The cut ran deep, but the butterfly bandages kept the edges closed.

  He’d gotten lucky. Dodged a bullet, like he’d told Olivia.

  One of these days, you’ll be too slow, too pre-occupied, too old, too something and that bullet will hit. This is rodeo. It’s not a matter of if but when.

  He stepped away from the mirror, unable to look himself in the face. He had difficult decisions to make for his sake as well as Clementine’s.

  Grabbing his beer, he sat with his back to the door, his bare feet propped up on the seat across from him. He stared at the doll. She stared back. Her dark hair lay matted against her plastic skull, mud caking her face like a kind of skin care mask, that one eye winking at him as if they shared an inside joke.

  Only he wasn’t laughing.

  If Clementine were with him, he’d be cooking her dinner, or helping her with her shower, or maybe they’d be tucked up in his bed reading one of her picture books on farm animals.

  But she wasn’t there, and the camper was too quiet. His life was too quiet. What the hell had he done with his nights before?

  Had he always been this damn lonely?

  He took another swig of beer and rested his head against the wall, closing his eyes. The beer and the analgesics would beat the throbbing in his head down to the occasional dull thud if he didn’t move too quickly.

  He waited for his thoughts to settle, for the sleep to creep in, but his mind ping-ponged between Clementine and Olivia. Between trying to do what’s right for both of the women in his life and not lose himself in the process. He’d been right not to take things any further with Olivia. It didn’t matter that they both wanted the same thing in the moment. She was leaving and—

  You didn’t know that when you stopped her from putting her hands on you.

  Didn’t matter. She was leaving. He was a father with new responsibilities and commitments and—

  Desires.

  Damn.

  He opened his eyes and stared down at the doll. “Why can’t I get them out of my head?”

  Dolly didn’t have any answers or words of wisdom. She just sat there, dropping bits of dried dirt onto the seat.

  He set the beer down. He couldn’t sit there talking to a damn doll all evening. With a groan, he slid out of the seat. “Time to get you more presentable.”

  Over the next half hour, he stripped the doll and hand-washed her clothes in the sink and hung them to dry on the clothesline strung across his bathroom. Then he took one of Chunk’s old snaggle-toothed tail brushes and washed and brushed the doll’s hair until the tangles cleared and mud swirled down the sink. Then he took a damp washcloth to the body, careful not to get the internal speaker wet.

  The whole time his mind kept returning to Olivia’s question—What if something happened to him? What if? What if?

  Was he making a colossal mistake? Should he do right by Clementine and let her grandparents raise her in a home where she could have friends and school and stability?

  Damned if he knew.

  But he did know that giving her up wouldn’t be easy.

  * * *

  Olivia laid on the lumpy bed in the cheap motel on the outskirts of Lufkin, listening to the soft tic, tic, tic of her windup alarm clock on the bedside table as she watched the second-hand sweep around the dial again.

  Her stomach grumbled but she couldn’t drum up the energy to get back in her truck and pick something up from the diner. She thought about working on the list of duties, contact numbers, and whatever else she could think of to give to Rusty when she left him in charge of the road stock, but she’d already tried, and what she’d ended up with was a bunch of silly doodles in her notebook.

  She’d thought when the day came to return to the ranch, she’d be kicking up her heels and waving adios and good riddance, but as much as she hated the impermanence of life on the road, there had been one bright constant—Levi and Clementine.

  For once, she had a good reason to stay on the road but even if she’d wanted to, she knew she couldn’t. Her grandfather was running the ranch while she’d been gone. He hadn’t complained. He loved the life as much as she did, but his health wasn’t what it used to be. The long hard days had taken their toll on a man beaten down by wear and tear and age.

  She couldn’t risk him working himself so hard that he ended up back in the hospital.

  There came a knock on the door, and Olivia glanced at the clock. It was only a little after ten at night. Rusty had her number at the motel. If there had been a problem with any of the stock, he could have called her from one of the pay phones, not shown up at her door.

  “Who is it?” She rolled off the bed and shoved her legs into a pair of jeans, letting the long hem of her over-sized Waylon Jennings concert T-shirt cover her open fly.

  “It’s me,” Levi said from the other side of the door.

  She hurried over, removing the chain, and opening the door. “Is everything okay? Clementine—”

  “She’s fine. At least as far as I know.” He stood there, one large hand gripping the jamb above the door. He was dressed in a ratty T-shirt and an old pair of sweats, looking freshly showered but completely done in.

  She leaned against the edge of the open door. Why was he here?

  Before she could speak, he asked, “What am I doing?”

  He could mean any number of things. What was he doing bringing her dinner, since he had a bag of takeout in his hand that smelled amazing? He could have meant what was he doing coming to her door late at night, or what was he doing when he’d turned her down for sex.

  But by that haunted look on his face, she knew he had to be referring to Clementine.

  “You wanna come in?”

  He nodded.

  Plucking the dangling bag from his fingers, she stepped back and let him in. They settled at the table under the window, where the ancient air conditioner spit out fractionally cooler air every once in a while. She pulled out cartons of food.

  “Which do you want? The lasagna or the chicken fried steak and mashed potatoes?”

  “Lady’s choice.”

  She picked the lasagna and passed out the plastic ware. Aiming her fork at his forehead, she asked, “Where’s the bandage?”

  He swallowed a bite of potatoes. “Got damp in the shower. I really don’t need it. The head wrap was a bit of an overkill.”

  “I guess you’ve got to give the paramedic points for enthusiasm.”

  Levi mumbled something around a bite of food that sounded like an agreement.

  “But that wasn’t what you wanted to talk about, was it?”

  His swallowed and wiped his mouth. “It’s not.�
��

  “Then what is it?”

  Glancing down at his partially eaten meal, he pushed his plate away as if his stomach had gone sour. “You got anything to drink?”

  “Beer.” She bumped her chin toward a small cooler by the dresser. “Grab me one, too.”

  Levi popped the tops off the bottles of beer using the edge of the table and handed one to Olivia. She tucked her heels on the seat and rested her chin on her knees.

  He took several long pulls of his beer, swirling the bottle through the drops of water dripping from the bottom. “More than anything, I want to make sure I do right by my girl.”

  He met her eyes, and every raw emotion he had for Clementine shined in his eyes. Commitment. Protection. Pride. Love. Devotion. For that brief moment, he let her see everything that he was, everything he felt.

  Her chest went tight, and her throat felt like a tumbleweed had lodged itself halfway down. Unable to speak, she waited him out.

  “I’d be lying if I said this was how I’d pictured my life, a single father trying to make a living on the circuit dragging his kid from one arena to the next. It’s a difficult, demanding life for an adult. It can’t be easy for a kid.”

  Olivia took a swallow of beer to clear her throat, though her words still came out raspy. “You love her. That’s what matters.”

  Levi scoffed, shaking his head, and draining the last of his beer. “Is it? She sleeps on a damn table. She doesn’t have a yard to run in, or friends her own age to play with. And what about school? What then? How am I—”

  “Take it.” She handed him her beer. He needed it much more than she did. In a few slugs, he drained that one as well.

  He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “How am I going to give her everything she needs? How am I going to keep her safe? You saw what happened out there today.” His voice broke, but he didn’t let that stop him. “What if it hadn’t been a doll in that steer pen? What if that had been Clementine? I can’t lose her. Not now.”

  “All you can do is your best.”