Handful of Sky

by Cates, Tory

  The crowd was absolutely silent as Zeus bucked into two more high, wild jumps that didn’t even jiggle the cowboy’s sunglasses. The horn blared out, signaling the end of the eight seconds, and the rider, timing his moves perfectly, let Zeus loft him up into the air so that he landed on his feet. The stunned crowd broke into bleacher-pounding applause. As the cowboy retreated to the back of the chutes, he stopped directly in front of Shallie. With exaggerated chivalry, he swept his silver-gray hat from his head, unloosing a thick headful of dark, sweat-dampened hair, and bowed toward her.

  Embarrassment and anger heated Shallie’s cheeks. Cahill and Hoskins weren’t merely snickering anymore, they were laughing openly, delighted by the humiliating trick that had been played on the boss woman by the obviously experienced rider.

  “Pecos,” she barked. “Get up here and finish running the bareback. Wade, get the calves ready for the roping.”

  Shallie’s boot heels pounded a furious tattoo on the planks of the catwalk, then down the metal steps at the end of the chutes. She looked over her shoulder and saw the bronc rider coming after her. The soft earth slowed her escape, but she plowed forward determined that he was not going to enjoy any more cruel sport at her expense. The ecstatic cheering rang in Shallie’s mind like one long jeer.

  His hands broke through the nimbus of rage whirling about her and gripped her shoulders. The full length of his taut, muscular body pressed against her back, the rider held her the same way he’d ridden the bronc; with a pressure that was both firm and masterfully light. Again Shallie felt the inexplicable, smothering claustrophobia. She could smell the freshly laundered scent of his shirt combined with a mild tang from the sweat he’d worked up riding Zeus. As his body slid next to hers she could feel its warmth envelop her, penetrating the thin material of her blouse. His thumbs pressed against the taut muscles at the back of her neck. His hands spanned her shoulders, his fingers plunging over her collarbone. Their size made Shallie feel as if her shoulders—well-developed from years of riding and ranch work—were tiny, delicate as a bird’s wing beneath his palms. She knew her heart was beating rapidly as a trapped bird’s too and wondered if he could feel it. She was infuriated by everything, by the joke he’d played on her, by her own gullibility, but most maddeningly of all by his effect on her.

  “Look, I’m sorry if I’ve upset you. I wasn’t intending to make a fool of you.”

  “Well, then I congratulate you.” Shallie heard her words come out tight and angrier than she really felt at that moment. “Because you succeeded in doing exactly that without even trying.” Whether to add emphasis to her words or to make herself believe them, Shallie folded her arms in a furious barricade across her chest.

  The instant she did, though, she realized she’d made a mistake because the action pushed her breasts upward until their plump tops lay beneath his fingertips. She felt the four points of his fingers on the swell of each breast as eight separate sensations. The effect was breathtaking. She spun from his grasp.

  “Do you get your kicks from ruining people’s reputations?” she demanded. “You obviously know something about rodeo so you know that it’s a sport where reputation is everything. That little trick you didn’t intend to play might just have cost me mine.”

  “Hold on a minute.” Shallie had difficulty concentrating on his words; the mouth forming them had claimed her attention. “You work for Walt Larkin, right?”

  “I’m his niece and we work together. I’m half owner of the Double L.”

  “So you’re John Larkin’s daughter.”

  The mention of her father’s name cooled Shallie’s anger instantly. She nodded her head.

  “He was a great roper,” the bronc rider said, his voice low and respectful. “One of the greatest rodeo ever had.”

  “Thank you.” Shallie’s mouth quivered and she jerked it back into a grim, tight line. “For the last two years, I’ve been working hard to be taken seriously. I’m sure that at this very moment the two men who work for me are busy telling everyone who’ll listen about the ‘greenhorn in sunglasses’ who made a fool of the silly female who thinks she can be a rodeo contractor. That story is going to spread as fast as men in pickups can carry it. Given the efficiency of the rodeo grapevine, it’ll be all over the circuit by next week, and whatever credibility I have managed to build up will be destroyed.”

  “Aren’t you taking this all a bit too seriously? I doubt that your credibility has been destroyed. It wouldn’t even have been dented if you had been the first one to laugh at yourself.”

  Shallie’s anger flared anew, burning now as hot and bright as ever. “Why, of all the presumptuous things to say . . .” She sputtered. “ ‘Laugh at yourself.’ That’s easy for you to say—a man. You can afford to look like a fool. But I—”

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer’s voice cut into Shallie’s tirade. “I can’t believe the score the judges have come up with on that last ride. A ninety-six! I can’t remember when I’ve seen one higher.”

  The crowd came alive again.

  “May we have that last rider back out in the arena again.”

  “Your fans await you.” A chilly tone frosted Shallie’s words. The cowboy looked from her to the arena full of stomping, whistling fans. “Better get back in there before they tear the stands apart.”

  He stood undecided for a moment. Then that slow, supremely arrogant smile cut his strong face. “You haven’t seen the last of me, Miss Larkin. I promise you that.” He jammed his hat down onto his head and stormed back to the arena.

  Shallie fled to the safety of the cab of the semi-truck with the intertwining L’s painted on the side. She wasn’t ready yet to face Wade and Hoskins and whomever they had told their amusing story to. She needed time to rein in her stampeding emotions. That brazen son of a buck, who did he think he was? Making a fool of her, then telling her she should lead the laughter at herself?

  Far behind her she heard the applause die away. It was soon replaced by the crunching of pebbles against boot leather. He was coming back to look for her!

  Shallie slid far down in the cab so that her head was hidden. The crunching grew louder. Then it stopped near the truck. Shallie prayed that he wouldn’t have the audacity to peer inside the cab and find her crouched down like some frightened animal in its burrow. The crunching started again. As the sound faded Shallie peeked up over the dash.

  He stopped at a mahogany-brown pickup and tossed his duffel bag in the back, then quickly stripped off the fancy shirt he’d worn to ride in.

  Shallie gasped. His torso was taped from his waist to just below his armpits. He had ridden Zeus, the best bronc in her string, with a chest full of broken ribs! He pulled on a nondescript T-shirt and climbed behind the wheel of the truck.

  As he slammed the door, Shallie’s anger gave way to an intense curiosity. Who was this backwater champion who wasn’t even staying to pick up the prize money he’d won? A tall plume of dust rose in the still, cool air to mark the truck’s departure. It fell back to earth as the truck disappeared in the distance. Curiosity and anger both dissolved, giving way to a sentiment she rarely experienced—regret—regret that she would never see the eyes behind those dark glasses.

  Chapter 3

  In spite of having stayed up late the night before, checking over all the stock to make sure that none had suffered any cuts or scrapes during the day’s performance and giving each one an extra ration of grain in reward for their good work, Shallie still awoke before dawn the morning after the rodeo. In the dozy state between sleep and consciousness, she rubbed the scoops beneath her collarbones where his hands had been. She half expected to find an imprint on her neck as clear as the one his touch had seared into her mind.

  Outside her window a flock of killdeer trilled their good mornings to one another. Off in the distance, a horse nickered. Shallie tugged on a cuddly-soft flannel robe and went to the window cut into the thick adobe wall of the ranch house. The milky light of early morning glinted off
the crusty patches of snow dumped by the late spring storm that had blown through a week before. The Sandia Mountains looming to the northeast shimmered a chilly blue. Albuquerque lay on the other side. It was almost as if the serrated peaks were a demarcation line separating one life from another—the stifling suburban life of cell phones and shopping malls her mother had wanted for her, from the life of freedom she had found here. Even with her mother gone—remarried and living in Denver—the Sandias still seemed to divide her past from the future she hoped to build.

  Shallie wondered vaguely how her mother was doing. It was so hard to tell anything from her phone calls. Her mother always made her voice sound cheery and bright, the beautiful bird in the gilded cage who never failed to sing for her supper. People used to remark on how much they resembled each other. At least they had when Shallie was younger and her mother had insisted that they dress in identical clothing, even when it meant paying a seamstress to stitch up the expensive outfits. They did have the same wheat-streaked hair, the same delicate build, and the same porcelain-doll features. Or they used to until Shallie had let the sun and hard work resculpture her.

  She had consciously begun to reject the similarities after her father had exposed her to another, happier world. That was when Shallie stopped wearing her hair in a neat, meticulously flat-ironed style just like her mother’s. She let the silky strands find their own curls and waves. And where her mother abhorred even the slightest hint of muscularity, years of working with animals, putting up fences, and cleaning out stalls had put wiry strength into Shallie’s slender limbs. When she looked into a mirror, Shallie didn’t see the pert chip of a nose or the rosebud lips that were copies of her mother’s. She saw the warm chocolate-brown eyes and thick dark lashes and brows that had been her father’s.

  She wondered what her father would have thought of that impudent cowboy yesterday. It was certain that her mother wouldn’t have liked him—she rated rodeo cowboys just slightly above child molesters, and Shallie usually agreed with that evaluation. She’d overheard enough behind-the-chutes banter to know that the average cowboy’s outlook on women was prehistoric and that most were faithless as tomcats. Of course, there were exceptions, her father and uncle proved that. Might the cowboy in sunglasses be another?

  Before the question was fully formed, Shallie was berating herself for her foolishness. Surely, a man so devastatingly male had honed his attractiveness on the hearts of dozens of women who had hoped he might be the exception—the rodeo cowboy who could be happy with one woman.

  Still, she couldn’t stem the tide of memories that washed over her. Each one came as a distinct image: a cream-colored Western shirt camouflaging a panther-quick body; a silver-gray hat jammed down on sweat-dampened ringlets; sun-darkened muscles contrasting sharply with the stark white of adhesive tape.

  From the kitchen, the sound of water spilling into the old metal coffeepot jerked Shallie out of the dangerous vortex of emotions swirling within her. Uncle Walter was up already. His knees must be bothering him, Shallie deduced. She pulled the cozy robe more tightly around her slim waist and went to join him.

  “Good morning.” Uncle Walter’s hearty greeting betrayed no hint of the pain he suffered constantly from his old injuries. “Sorry I wasn’t up to help you unload last night, but I didn’t think I’d be much use to you anyway. Not the way this damned cold weather has sunk into my bones.”

  “Here, let me do that.” Shallie gently relieved him of the pot of water he was struggling with while balancing on his cane and lighting the burner at the same time. Walter Larkin hobbled to a seat behind the old wooden table. Shallie ached to see him so crippled. She wished there were some way to send her uncle to a warmer climate. But the Double L was a hard mistress; she provided only enough to survive on and not a cent more.

  The day’s first light slanted in through the kitchen window, falling golden across her uncle’s face. It illuminated a quality that Shallie had always loved in her uncle. It was the kind of unblinking innocence captured in old photographs of turn-of-the-century cowboys. Like them, Uncle Walter had never known the stress and unavoidable compromises that city life imposes. He was sixty-three years old and he’d never married. There had been rumors, snatches of whispered conversations Shallie had overheard when she was barely old enough to understand the words, about a sweetheart who had left him for another man. But she’d never had the heart to speak to him about it.

  “So what kind of rodeo did you put on for old Johnnie Eckles?” The creases carved out by sun and laughter around his dark eyes deepened in amusement.

  Shallie cringed. Should she tell her uncle about Wade and Pecos? About how she had been made a fool of by that infuriating cowboy? Should she tell him that there was probably little sense in her continuing to masquerade as a rodeo contractor? That the double L’s would always stand for the Larkin brothers? She looked into his face. It filled with happy anticipation.

  “Couldn’t have gone better,” she answered. There was no point in dumping her problems on Uncle Walter. She’d either have to solve them herself or admit that there was no room in rodeo for a woman contractor. Eager to change the subject, she went on, “Had a fellow goose-egg on Mercury.”

  “That dink,” Walter snorted. “I could ride that horse myself if somebody’d help me climb aboard. Any complaints on the roping stock?”

  “Not a one. Mr. Eckles said that, as usual, Double L supplied the best roping calves and dogging steers of any outfit around.”

  Uncle Walter smiled with pride. He spent an exorbitant amount of time and energy seeking out and developing Double L’s roping stock. Shallie believed they needed to put more emphasis on what the majority of fans came for—the bucking broncs and bulls. She was convinced that they would never be recognized as truly first-rate, never have a chance to advance beyond the ranks of the amateurs into professional rodeo, unless they also had the finest in bucking stock. But Uncle Walter’s loyalties lay with his former colleagues, the ropers.

  Shallie decided that now was not the time to reopen their good-natured debate on the subject. “I ran into a cowboy who said you and Daddy were two of the greats.”

  Uncle Walter was as transparent as a clear stream and his pleasure at the compliment was obvious. “Must have been an old-timer,” he laughed.

  “He wasn’t that old. Early thirties, I’d imagine.” Shallie tried to sound casual, unconcerned about the mysterious praise-bearer. “You and Daddy did win every buckle they gave out in team roping until ten years back. That’s not so long ago.”

  “Didn’t happen to catch the fellow’s name, did you?”

  “No. No, I didn’t.” But I can describe him for you. Shallie’s rebellious mind added the haunting details: an arrogant son of a buck with powerful, yet gentle hands, a crown of dark curls, and—

  “He a team roper?” Her uncle interrupted the pestering mental image.

  “No. Bareback rider.”

  “Who’d he draw?”

  “Zeus.”

  “Did he get his gourd thumped?”

  “No. He rode him. Scored a ninety-six.”

  “A ninety-six!” Stupefaction froze his features. “You wouldn’t kid a crippled-up old man, would you, Shallie?”

  “Not my favorite crippled-up old man,” Shallie laughed. Anxious to change the subject before she inadvertently revealed just how unsettling she’d found her brief encounter with the nameless bareback rider, she asked, “What about those steers we got at auction last week? Which pasture do you want me to put them in?”

  “Don’t worry about that.” Walter waved aside the question. “I’ve got much bigger fish for you to fry. You’ll never guess who called me late last night.” He stared expectantly at Shallie. She couldn’t think of a single person who would elicit such delight.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugged. “Tell me.”

  “Guess,” he insisted. When Shallie clucked in mild annoyance, he prompted her: “Who’s the biggest contractor in the business?”
/>   “Jake McIver?” Shallie leaned forward incredulously, seeking confirmation.

  “You guessed it.” Walter beamed. “Mr. Rodeo himself. They’re going to be running a rodeo school down there at his ranch and he’s short a few dozen dogging steers. Said he’d heard we have the best Mexican steers around for wrestling. Asked us to ship down as many as we could spare. Old Jake is stuck, Shallie. I expect we’ll get a good price out of him.”

  Shallie was puzzled. She was surprised that a big-time contractor like Jake McIver would have called up for stock, especially when he was close to seven hundred miles away. But she didn’t want to dampen her uncle’s enthusiasm.

  “That’s great,” she declared enthusiastically. “Now we’ll be able to pay off our feed bills.”

  “I’ve left word with Wade to get the steers loaded up. I’m sending you and him down to deliver them as soon as you can get ready.”

  Shallie felt her stomach lurch sickeningly. “Me and Wade?” she echoed miserably, hoping she hadn’t heard correctly. “The McIver ranch is down near Austin, Texas. That means I’d be fourteen hours cooped up in the cab of a truck with Wade Hoskins.”

  “Something wrong with that?” Shallie looked into her uncle’s face. He was so far removed from the Wade Hoskinses of the world and their sleazy attitudes that they didn’t even occur to him. Shallie couldn’t bring herself to admit to him that the prospect of spending fourteen hours in close quarters with Wade Hoskins made her physically ill.

  “Couldn’t you send Pecos?” she asked, hoping for the lesser of two evils.

  A look of slightly irritated puzzlement crossed her uncle’s face. “With you gone I’ll need Pecos to keep the ranch running. You know that Wade isn’t worth a damn if someone doesn’t keep after him every second. At least Hoskins won’t be tempted to sleep on the job if he’s behind the wheel of a semi.”

  “But why do I need to go?” Shallie asked, trying to camouflage her misery.

  “Look, Shallie”—her uncle leaned forward over the scarred wooden table—“I’ve thought long and hard about this. With me fading more and more out of the picture—” Shallie opened her mouth to protest, but her uncle silenced her and went on—“it’s important for you to get to know the movers and shakers in rodeo. A contact like Jake McIver could be invaluable.”