Fearless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

Well…okay. That made sense. Wyatt took a deep breath and drew upon his progressive relaxation training to consciously push the tension out of his body with the exhale and allow his shoulders to slump.

  “There. That’s already better.” She swung her gaze around to study the trail, which crossed over the highway and meandered toward the river, skirting a series of large ponds. “How much farther does that go?”

  “About half a mile.”

  She jerked her chin. “Give ol’ red there his head.”

  Wyatt did as she instructed, putting slack in the reins. The horse heaved what sounded like a sigh of relief. For the rest of the way, Wyatt attempted the opposite of contact, imagining himself so light in the saddle that he all but floated. In response, the gelding dropped his head and settled into smooth, ground-eating strides designed to cover a lot of Texas country. The sun was warm on Wyatt’s back, the air sweet with the scent of blooming Russian olive trees. He was so lulled by the clomp of hooves and the easy, rocking gait that he was surprised when they emerged from a cluster of trees at the river’s edge.

  “Much better,” Melanie said.

  “Thanks.” He had to squelch a foolish smile at her approval.

  She slid off of Roy, unsnapped one end of the roping rein from the bridle, and picked her way across the stretch of rocky beach, leading the horse. Wyatt followed suit. The horses eased up to snuffle and lip at the river, cold, rushing water being a novelty to creatures of the flat, hot Texas prairie. Melanie crouched to trail her fingers in a small side stream, as graceful as a deer with sunlight striking fire in the chestnut brown of her hair.

  Another image permanently burned into Wyatt’s brain. Another place—along with the bar, his arena, the Roundup grounds, and especially the apartment—where he would never stop seeing her.

  He cleared his throat. “How’s the job hunt going?”

  “I just finished putting everything together. My portfolio is pretty strong, but the cover letter…” She grimaced. “I’m eager for new challenges. Ugh. And I wouldn’t ask Westwind for a letter of recommendation even if I thought I’d get one.”

  “As your most recent client, I’ll give you a reference.”

  “For what? I haven’t done anything yet.”

  “I beg to differ. Our business has quadrupled since you came to town. Louie had to restock the beer cooler a week sooner than usual.” A chore most bars performed nightly—at least.

  Her mouth twisted. “That’s just pathetic.”

  “Tell me about it.” He picked up a small piece of driftwood and turned it over in his hands as he watched her from the corner of his eye, trying to sense her mood, what direction she might swing. He edged back from the side of the river. No sense making it easy if she settled on being mad at him for screwing up her chances with Hank.

  “Speaking of doing something about the bar,” she said, “I have thoughts.”

  “I was hoping.”

  She threw him a mock sneer. “These things take time. I drafted a preliminary plan, but I like to get to know the client, figure out the things they don’t want to tell me.”

  And now she’d reached a verdict. His body tensed, fiber by fiber, as he braced to hear what she’d deduced about him.

  “Such as…” She flicked water from her fingers in a shower of sunlit diamonds. “You failed to mention that you’d talked to Hank since Cole fired him. When, pray tell, was that?”

  Crap. He’d hoped Hank hadn’t got around to mentioning that. Wyatt scored a groove in the soft driftwood with his thumbnail. “About a month after he left Texas. There’s a winter rodeo series in Billings, Montana, that needed a bullfighter, and they would have put him up.”

  “He said to give you this…” She flipped him a middle finger.

  Figured, but at least the gesture hadn’t been aimed at his sister. Wyatt heaved the driftwood out into the river. “I should have found someone else to make the offer, but I thought it would be worse if he accepted, then found out after the fact that I set it up.”

  “And his sister was too wrapped up in the big release of our new fly control mineral formula to be bothered.”

  Oh hell. He grimaced in apology. “I’m sorry. I didn’t even consider—”

  “You shouldn’t have had to! He’s my brother. My responsibility.” She stood abruptly, causing the sorrel to jump back a step, rocks clattering under his metal-shod hooves. “I tried so goddamn hard to fill in all the gaps for Mama, did everything I could to keep the peace between him and Daddy, hauled him to practice and rodeo and the ER, and he won’t even…” She gulped in a breath, giving her head a violent shake. “No wonder he was hiding. As usual, it’s me, me, me!”

  Wyatt wanted to insist that she’d been a teenager, for hell’s sake, doing the best she could, but she wasn’t asking his opinion. She was just thinking out loud, still sifting it all through…

  Still in her time-out corner. And she’d invited him inside the space she so rarely shared. He felt as if she’d handed him the key to a secret glade wrapped in sunshine, water, and rustling trees. His heart stumbled, half joyfully, half fearfully.

  Don’t screw this up. Do not screw this up! He bit back the reassurance that leapt to his tongue and waited.

  She wound the end of Roy’s bridle rein tight around her hand. “Hank tried to tell me how he felt about Mariah. And I told him not to be stupid. How’s that for supportive?”

  “Understandable, considering the circumstances. You were trying to protect him.”

  She hunched her shoulders. “Maybe I should have tried listening instead. Then he wouldn’t be…”

  She bit her lip and kicked at a rock before turning dark, miserable eyes toward Wyatt. “I know I promised not to ask…but if you could explain what in the hell would make you want to be more like this, I could really stand to hear it right now.”

  “You believe,” he said simply. “In yourself, your friends, a greater power…and in Hank. For all of the times and all of the reasons he’s given you to stop, you’ve kept believing in him.”

  “Have I? Or was I just using him to get back at my parents for leaving me to pick up their slack? Nothing better than helping him do exactly what Daddy didn’t want.”

  “Now you’re being stupid.” He caught her arms to make her face him. “Tell me…what did you think the first time you watched Hank fight bulls?”

  She bowed her head and closed her eyes, as if fixing the image in her mind. And then she blew out a wavering sigh. “I was amazed. He was so good. And I was excited, because I’d never seen him so excited. He was one of the best players in every school sport, and he liked them all, but the day he made his first save in the arena…it just lit him up.” She raised her head to meet Wyatt’s gaze. “You know how that feels.”

  “I do.” And it still did, every single time, but this wasn’t about Wyatt. “Are you listening to yourself? You watched your brother find his calling, and you were thrilled for him. Those are not the words of a self-centered person.”

  She ducked her head again, pressing a fist to her temple. “I can’t tie him up and drag him out of that place, no matter how much I want to. But I can’t stand doing nothing. I just…I don’t know how to help him. I’m supposed to know.”

  “We’ll figure it out.” He rubbed her arms, resisting the impulse to fold her close. His body was already trying to misinterpret her proximity. “I’ve been through worse than this, Melanie. I’m not going to pretend it’ll be easy, or quick, but Bing is right. He’s showing signs of recovery. And you need time, too. Everything you’ve had to deal with…most people would be flat out on the floor. Give yourself a break, and a chance to sort it all through.”

  She tilted her head, considering, then angled a look at him through her lashes. “While you start prodding your contacts for the best treatment options?”

  Busted. “I may have made a mental list on the fl
ight home,” he admitted.

  She huffed out a soft laugh. Then she threw one arm around his neck and gave a quick, hard squeeze before stepping back, turning to toss the rein over Roy’s neck and snap it to the bridle.

  His unguarded heart gave another of those hopeful bounds before he reined it in. Stop! Even if she’d meant it as more than a platonic gesture, he couldn’t…could not allow her to believe they could be anything more than friends—and even that was unforgivably selfish. His fall was inevitable. Encouraging her to climb onto this crumbling ledge with him would be flat-out cruel.

  “What was that?” he asked, lacing his voice with a touch of easy humor.

  She grabbed two fistfuls of Roy’s mane and vaulted onto his back, then swung the horse around to face Wyatt. “I told you I wasn’t sure whether to kick you or hug your neck. I made up my mind.”

  Without waiting, she pointed Roy toward home. By the time Wyatt climbed into the saddle and caught up, she was almost to the highway.

  “Got any plans for the evening?” she called over her shoulder.

  “No. Why?”

  “No better therapy than work, and no time like the present to get started on my plan for the Bull Dancer. Like I said, I have thoughts. And I have an extra rope.”

  “A…what?” On top of that unexpected embrace, the images that popped into his head short-circuited his ability to process information.

  She frowned thoughtfully as she reined up and waited for a car to pass. “I wonder where we could find a dummy steer.”

  Oh. His lust bubble burst into Technicolor shreds. “There’s a farm store on Southgate that carries rodeo gear. They’re open until nine, and they probably have what you need.”

  “Me?” She splayed a hand across her chest and gave him a wide-eyed grin. “Au contraire, mon ami. We’re gonna teach you how to rope.”

  Chapter 38

  Melanie watched with growing amazement as Wyatt wrestled with a loop that seemed determined to strangle him.

  She’d never seen anyone make swinging a rope look quite that difficult, and one year during the Amarillo State Fair she’d taught a Cowboy 101 session to a group of retired insurance salesmen from Cleveland whose idea of athletic prowess was balancing four full beer cups on a paper tray.

  Maybe a shot of something from the bar would help Wyatt. It certainly couldn’t hurt.

  He threw the rope on the ground, grabbed the tail, and began coiling it—the one part of the process he did with his usual ease. He’d probably been handling lines on the family yacht since birth. No wait, they would have a crew for that, but people in his social set would have to have a sailboat, too, wouldn’t they?

  “This is stupid,” he growled.

  “You’re just saying that because you keep whacking yourself in the head.”

  He divided his glare between her and the dummy steer she’d also persuaded him to buy. It was lightweight, made of tough plastic plumbing pipe, and built low to ground for roping on foot instead of from a horse. They’d set it up on a decent-sized space behind the bar that might’ve once been a patio but was now home to nothing but the Dumpster, baking aromatically in the direct glare of the evening sun. Put a high board fence around this, though, slap some patches and stain on the cracked, pockmarked concrete, and it’d make a dandy cowboy playground.

  All part of the plan.

  Wyatt built a new loop, gritted his teeth, and promptly wrapped it around his neck. Wow. He was actually getting worse.

  “No. Watch.” She rescued the wadded-up rope, straightened the loop, and demonstrated—again. “You have to rotate your wrist…see?”

  His expression went borderline murderous. “Do I look like I’m not trying?”

  “Honestly?”

  He gave another growl and yanked the rope out of her hands. “Explain to me again how this is supposed to help the bar.”

  “You are the Bull Dancer,” she repeated, the soul of patience. “It’s your brand. You put it on your corporation, your car, and the sign out front. Therefore, people expect you to be the face of this establishment…but that’s not gonna work unless you learn to connect with the clientele.”

  “By connecting this rope with that goddamn steer?”

  He was gonna have to get to the point where he could throw it first. She had to bite her lip to keep from laughing. God, it was fun watching him get all cranky. After everything with Hank, this was exactly the kind of distraction she needed. “There is no place better to get to know people than at the ropin’ pen. And believe it or not, being bad is good. Team ropers love to give advice, even the ones that suck.”

  Especially the ones that sucked. If you can’t do, coach, whether anyone asked your opinion or not. And most of ’em got smarter—and a lot handier with a rope—when they were astride a barstool. Best of all, their version of roping was as much of a social occasion as a competition, which made them prone to stopping for dinner and drinks on the way home from the local jackpot or the weekly team roping practices at the saddle club.

  And the Bull Dancer had plenty of parking out back for horse trailers.

  She folded her arms and watched him try again. This time, he managed two swings before the loop twisted up and smacked him in the ear. Dear Lord. She couldn’t take it anymore. She confiscated the rope, untangled it, then stood with her back to him, holding up the loop in her right hand and the coils in her left. “Here. Put your hands over mine, and I’ll take you through the motions.”

  He hesitated for a beat, then stepped up behind her. His palms were damp, and the scent of hot male enveloped her. She sucked in a breath, and the air stuck in her lungs, as if trying to absorb the essence of him. She forced herself to exhale, then nearly gasped when he flexed his knees to accommodate their height difference, his denim-clad thigh sliding between hers and his cheek so close his breath tickled her ear.

  “Okay,” she managed. “Here we go.”

  Her bare arm pressed against his when she demonstrated. His wrist was stiff, resisting the motion as she brought the loop around and tried to roll her palm upward.

  She gave their entwined hands a shake. “Relax, and let me move you.”

  Crap. And her breathy voice made it sound even more suggestive. She felt the reaction shiver through his muscles and heard him swallow. She did the same, then said, “Let’s try this again.”

  She hadn’t realized how much hip action was involved in swinging a rope, every swoosh of the loop accompanied by the excruciating slide of body against body. She was so cross-eyed with lust that she gave up and closed her eyes. Swing. Swing. Swing. The swaying movement increased the friction and mimicked that age-old rhythm, waking every primordial urge. The temptation to arch her back and press into the hardness she knew she’d find was nearly irresistible.

  Swing, swing, swing, swing…

  She wasn’t sure how much more of this she could take. Had she really thought she could have him once and walk away? Now that was delusional.

  “There,” she said, her voice so throaty it was barely recognizable. “Feel that?”

  The noise he made summed up her state of arousal in one low, hot breath—and erased the last of her self-control. She dropped the rope and turned in to his arms. His hands came to rest on her hips, pulling her closer even as he shook his head. “Melanie…”

  “Don’t.” Her gaze followed her fingers over the stubble on his jaw, already softer than the last time she’d touched him. “I listened to more of those science podcasts while I was driving around the other day. Do you know what an event horizon is?”

  “The boundary where the force of gravity around a black hole is so strong that nothing can escape.”

  “That’s my walking encyclopedia.” She patted his cheek and lifted her eyes to meet his, losing her breath yet again at pure, hot blue of them. God, he was gorgeous…and she was going to have him, to hell with the conseq
uences. “We have crossed the event horizon, Wyatt. We can’t stop this now, no matter how hard we try.”

  He pressed his cheek into her palm, rubbing like a cat. “What about Hank? You know how he’d feel about this.”

  “Once or a hundred times…in his mind it’s all the same. And this has nothing to do with my brother.” She slid her hands down to take Wyatt’s and squeeze. “I’m not looking for comfort, or a distraction, or anything else except this.”

  Those eyes searched her face, dark with concern—and tightly controlled need. “Are you sure?”

  “That I want you?” She laughed. “Believe me, I’ve had a year or five to think about it.”

  They walked around to the door of the apartment, strolling hand in hand as if they were determined that this time would be as slow and thorough as the last had been rushed. When they stepped into the room, Wyatt pulled out his phone, muted the ringer, and set it on the fancy lady’s desk. Melanie followed suit, but connected hers to a wireless speaker and started a music app. Lilting Native American flute music floated on the breeze that ruffled the sheer silk at the windows. She also reached into her purse, pulled out the remaining condoms, and tossed them on the bed.

  Wyatt stepped up behind her and once again wrapped his hands around hers, then smoothed his palms up her arms. She sighed in pleasure. He nuzzled her hair aside to murmur in her ear. “Do you trust me?”

  “If I didn’t, instead of crawling into that plane, I’d be hitchhiking back from Montana right now.”

  He laughed softly, his breath playing across the fine hairs at her nape. “There’s my incurable romantic.”

  “Just statin’ the facts.” She tilted her head to give him better access. “I’ve already put my life in your hands. What now?”

  He traced a line with one finger from the underside of her chin all the way down to the first button on her shirt. “Take off your clothes.”

  * * *

  To his dying day, Wyatt would never forget the sight of her strolling over to the bed and looking him square in the eye as she stripped, then gave a long, languid stretch, arms overhead and back arched, pulling her body into a single taut curve. She smiled at his low groan and draped herself across the bed, head propped on one hand and her hair spilling over her shoulders. “Your turn.”