Rodeo Nights

by Patricia McLinn

  He laughed, a grating sound that matched the harsh lines of his face. But his hands stayed gentle as he dropped them to her shoulders.

  “Glad? Glad to see you crying because for those few days, you’d been dreaming and planning, talking up a storm about our baby, then found out there wasn’t one?”

  “I’m sorry, Walker. I’m sorry. But you never said– You never told me.”

  “I never told you a lot of things.” With the barest hint of pressure, his hands guided her to the bale of hay and induced her to sit. He dropped down beside her. His hands curved around her upper arms as they faced each other, knees bumping, but neither bothering to pull away. “Like I was scared spitless.”

  “But, why would you—”

  A jerk of his head stopped her question. “And if we’re being honest here, yeah, I got to admit that, mixed in with all the other feelings when we found out you weren’t pregnant, there was a sliver of relief that I wasn’t going to be revealed as a horse’s rear end quite so soon. Hell, I didn’t admit it to myself for a couple of years, but it’s the truth.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You were thrilled with the idea of being a mother, flying up there with the eagles. And you expected me to feel the same about being a father, but I didn’t know squat about it.” His hands dropped from her. He rested his forearms on his thighs as he stared straight ahead. “My own father’d been dead so long, I only had vague memories and some family stories. What did I know about being a father, having a family? A family! God, I was going to have a family to provide for and that scared me even more.”

  “You would have found a job.” Leaning forward, she touched his arm, tried to see into his face. “We would have managed.”

  “I had a job. The rodeo. It’s all I ever wanted to do.”

  The words were so simple. For all the changes, she knew that in this he remained the boy she’d known. The boy who had always dreamed of the rodeo, who had loved it long before he’d loved her. God, she’d been naive back then, thinking he’d give it up. Naive, or stupid. How could she ever have thought that if they were having a baby, he’d stop wanting to ride and suddenly develop a taste for the nine-to-five life and white picket fences?

  He turned to look at her, moving only his head. “And it’s what I knew. I figured I could provide for my family by jumping to the bigger purses—”

  “That’s why you entered that rodeo?”

  “Yeah.”

  He said it almost with disinterest, as if the answer was obvious. He probably wouldn’t believe her even now if she said she’d thought his announcement that he’d entered a bigger, tougher, more competitive rodeo with bigger, tougher, more competitive stock to ride had been his reaction to the fear of being tied down, brought on by the thought that she might be pregnant. That he’d been declaring his defiance of his own mortality and what she’d viewed—oh, with what arrogant naiveté–as the inevitability of quitting the rodeo and settling down. Getting a house in a suburb somewhere with a job in some city, an up-and-corner in an unspecified business. The two of them becoming...becoming her parents.

  “That’s why I entered that rodeo. And Cory followed. And then you...and we weren’t having a baby, after all.”

  But he’d never considered pulling out of the rodeo, not after he’d paid his entry, not after he’d signed up, not after he’d given his word.

  “And then that night...” His voice grated with pain.

  They looked at each other without touching, seeing the memories in each other’s eyes.

  An audience’s cries, ambulance sirens, nurses’ voices and doctors’ orders slipped through her memory. The only constant was Walker. Walker with Cory, helping him set up in the seconds before the gate swung open with his friend— their friend—on the back of a ton of angry bull. Walker trying to clamber over the fence when Cory lost his grip and was shaken into an awkward tumble through the air, then lay there under the bull’s hooves. Walker being held back by others so the rodeo clowns could do their serious, dangerous work in corraling the bull. Walker the first to Cory’s side, while the spectators stood, hushed, fearful. Walker shoving aside the ambulance attendant who tried to keep him from riding with his friend to the hospital. Walker in those hours in the emergency waiting room.

  His eyes.

  The raw agony and—yes, she recognized it now, with the wisdom of another decade of living—the grief he’d never spoken. And something more.

  “God, why didn’t we talk back then?” Her question was a cry at the futility of all that pain.

  She’d learned to accept what had happened—with Cory, with Walker. That couldn’t change. But they might have spared each other a good deal of hurting if they’d only been honest. If she could only have told him what a failure she’d felt when she realized she wasn’t pregnant. If she could only have told him how terrified she’d been when she saw Cory lying still and white in the churned dirt of the arena as the medics worked on him. If she could only have told him of that moment when she’ thought that it could have been Walker, and for a split second that carried an iron weight of guilt, that she had been grateful it wasn’t. If only...

  “Talk?” He made a sound of derision. “Talk was the last thing I wanted to do. If I didn’t talk to anybody about Cory’s death, maybe nobody would have a chance to tell me what I already knew—that I could have prevented it.”

  She straightened at that.

  “Walker, you couldn’t have prevented it. No one could have.”

  “If I hadn’t jumped to the higher class, if I hadn’t tried going to a major rodeo, neither would Cory.”

  His words brought a realization that stunned her. She pushed at his shoulder, catching him enough off guard that a second push brought him around to face her. That was the other emotion she’d seen in his face that night, and the few days that had followed before she’d left.

  Guilt.

  “You’ve been blaming yourself. My God, Walker Riley, you’ve been blaming yourself all these years.”

  And he’d carried the grief and the guilt alone. Always alone.

  He’d closed her off and she’d run away. God— What a pair they’d been. Old enough to hurt each other, but not wise enough to help each other.

  But that was a long time ago. They’d changed. He’d opened himself to her now, and she wouldn’t leave him to carry that guilt any longer, not if she could help it.

  She took his face between her hands, and she spoke with all the conviction she had.

  “Walker Riley, you listen to me. You are not to blame. Cory’s not to blame. There is no blame. He made a decision. Things went wrong. We couldn’t have prevented it, just as we can’t change that it happened.”

  A sheen in his eyes betrayed him. Maybe he could have blinked the tears away; instead, he stared into her face, seeming to need what he could read there more than he needed to protect his pride.

  One tear slid from the corner of his eye, across the lines sunk into his cheek.

  As he had done for her, she wiped it away with the side of her thumb.

  “All we can do is go on,” she said, gently now. “We won’t ever forget Cory or how it hurt losing him, but there’s nothing to forgive. Not him, not each other, and not ourselves. You know Cory wouldn’t have wanted you to feel guilty. Or me.”

  “You? What could you have to feel guilty about?”

  “I...I...” Over the years, she’d made peace with herself, with Cory’s memory, for her transgression, yet she’d never spoken the words aloud. But how could she deny Walker the truth now? “There was a moment, before you got to him, while he was lying there, not moving. Before I knew it, I was saying a prayer -- not for Cory, but...but thanking God it wasn’t you.”

  She rushed the last words, sucking in a final breath to try to stop a sob. Cory, Cory, I’m so sorry.

  “Oh, Kalli. Kalli, honey.”

  It was the most natural thing in the world to put their arms around each other, to seek and give solace. To com
e together in a meeting of soft to hard, instantly familiar and somehow safe. To put her head on his shoulder so her face sheltered against his neck. To feel his cheek against her hair. To hold on tightly enough that they exchanged heartbeat for heartbeat.

  She felt his strength and his heat, but she also knew his pain and sorrow.

  Enervated by the buffeting of memories and emotions, she held him and let herself be held.

  He stroked her hair, the rhythm not perfectly steady, the rough surface of his callused fingers now and then catching on the strands.

  He took a quick breath. Drawing in the air brushed his neck against her lips.

  “What?” she asked softly.

  Without conscious thought, she shifted slightly to maintain that bare contact when his expelled breath would have ended it. Under her lips, his pulse thrummed with life.

  “All these years,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “We should have talked.”

  “I know.” She wondered if he was thinking of how he had drawn into himself those days after Cory’s death. Refusing to talk about his grief, refusing to listen to her demands that he give up rodeo for good, refusing to acknowledge her ultimatum that he give up rodeo or lose her. He’d looked at her with dull, unseeing eyes and gone off to compete.

  She’d packed and left, ending their marriage. Telling herself that he had made his choice, and that giving it time, as Mary and Jeff had urged, would make no difference. Not in her, and not in him. He would never grow up, so she could do nothing else. She wouldn’t stay around and watch him get killed.

  Not acknowledging for years—perhaps not fully until right now—how scared she’d been. Scared that he was hurting and she couldn’t make it go away. Scared that she had betrayed Cory with that relief it wasn’t Walker. And scared—God, so scared—that someday it could be Walker.

  If it had taken her years to get beyond that, how long had it been for Walker to come around? How long had it been before he’d wanted to open the door he’d closed, and realized he couldn’t because she was gone?

  “At least we’ve talked now,” she said.

  “Yeah, at least we have now.”

  He shifted, and she felt his lips against her forehead, then her temple. Not brushing caresses, but unhurried, luxurious kisses that lulled and relaxed.

  Still, an instinct for self-preservation remained, warning her of defenses dangerously lowered. If he kissed her now the way he had kissed her the past two times...

  Tipping her head back, she tried to look into his eyes, to gauge his intentions. His eyes weren’t completely closed, but enough to hide their expression from her. And then his lips were on her eyelids, kissing one shut, then the other, and the need to read him became unimportant.

  All that was important was the healing of touch.

  Telling him, with fingertips that skimmed the new hollows and lines of his face, the same message that her words had held. The impossibility of blame. The necessity of self-forgiveness.

  He answered with hands that cradled her head, stroked her back with regret for sorrows unshared.

  And when his mouth touched hers, it was a sealing of the understanding.

  With hypnotic slowness, their lips came together, parted, met again and clung. The deepening of the kiss seemed a preordained progression rather than a conscious act.

  Beyond where their bodies pressed against each other, providing warmth and support in solid form, everything else ceased to exist. Leisurely, thoroughly, they explored needs, leaving the explosiveness of desire to simmer under the surface.

  But the surface holding back that desire was thinning. Kalli could feel it in the tightening of his muscles, in the liquefying of her own. The warmth threatened fire and the leisure preceded urgency.

  She broke the kiss with a gasp. They held there a moment, still wrapped tightly in each other’s arms, both breathing hard as she stared into blue eyes lit from behind by a glow she remembered, and knew to be her downfall.

  “We agreed to be friends, Walker.”

  The glow flared to something hotter for an instant. “I don’t recall agreeing to be friends.”

  He was right. She’d avoided using that tepid word after the incident at Lodge’s. And after the evening watching the sunset, she’d avoided talking about it at all. These embraces had brought such healing and comfort.

  So why didn’t simple friendship seem possible?

  “Colleagues, then.” Still caught in the circle of his hold, she slid her hands from his back to his shoulders, and exerted a symbolic pressure. In common with most symbolic gestures, it had no effect. “Colleagues who are cooperating in trying to keep the rodeo going for Jeff and Mary. Nothing more.”

  “Don’t recall agreeing to that, either.”

  But he loosened his hold some.

  She resisted the urge to try to scoot away. Partly because she didn’t want to engage in an undignified tussle; even loosened, his hold was strong enough to keep her if he wanted to. She satisfied herself with straightening her shirt, and her back.

  “I’m glad we talked, Walker. It’s helped a lot, helped me understand a lot. But it’s still the past.” We’re still the past. But she couldn’t say those words out loud. “We have to leave it there. We can’t change what happened.”

  He let her go then, though even in the act of releasing her, his hands bestowed a slow caress. His voice held a note that made her want to shiver when he finally answered.

  “No. We can’t change the past.”

  * * *

  IT WAS THE future he wanted to change.

  Did she have any inkling of how much he wanted that?

  No. She wouldn’t be even this relaxed if she did.

  And nobody would describe her as totally at ease. Walker took in the tense line of her shoulders as she talked on the telephone, keeping her back to him. She’d jolted like a bronc coming out of the chute when it rang.

  He thought she might answer it, since she was about two feet away from the phone. He’d been at the other side of the kitchen, taking two glasses out of the cupboard for the cool drink he’d promised her. Still, she left him to answer.

  By the time he turned to tell her it was for her and handed her the receiver, he saw she was composed again.

  Had to be a flaw in his character that made him itch to peel that reserve away. Make her forget it for more than a minute or two. The way she used to during long, hot nights in that old trailer.

  Friends ? Colleagues? Bull.

  She thought that was all there was between them? She thought the way their bodies ignited each other at Lodge’s store and Sunset Rock, the way their hearts healed each other this afternoon, was simply a remnant of the past?

  Something gone but not quite forgotten? Bull.

  Yeah, they’d dealt with the past this afternoon. And he’d never regret that they had. At least some of the shadows had been lifted from those early days. He would no longer shun the memory of them just to keep his hands steady and his mind clear. No, the past wouldn’t be such a bad place to visit in his memory, come fall, back on the circuit with its long, blank travels from town to town.

  But no matter what Kalli said, no matter whether she believed what she’d said or not, they’d also been dealing with the future.

  Now, hips comfortably leaning back against the sink, arms folded across his chest, he unabashedly listened to her side of the conversation. It told him Roberta was relaying the news that Kalli’s New York office had called.

  Of course, he already knew that, because Roberta had told him when he answered the phone.

  They probably wanted her to get back there as soon as she could, probably booking the next flight out. Kalli hung up and glanced at him.

  “We need to get back.”

  To New York or Park? he wanted to ask. Instead, he made a flat-out statement, “Not till you eat something.”

  For some reason, that seemed to relax her. She quirked a look at him that held amusement.

 
; “I need to help Roberta.”

  “Not going to help her by keeling over.”

  “I’m not going to—” She broke off and looked at him. This was the first time this summer he could recall she’d done that without looking as if she were preparing to run for cover or considering drawing a bull’s-eye on his forehead. “You’re not going to budge, are you?”

  He allowed himself a small grin. “Nope. And I got the keys to the pickup.”

  She laughed then, a real laugh. “And it’s a long, dusty walk back, huh?”

  “Yep.”

  “All right. Do you want me to fix something?”

  “No, you sit there—” he nodded at a chair at the small table by the open end of the U-shaped kitchen “—and I’ll get it all ready.”

  He took a casserole dish out of the refrigerator, removed the foil covering it and put it in the microwave before rummaging in a cabinet.

  “Uh, Walker? I don’t want to insult you, but I remember some of the things you used to eat.”

  He fought to produce the frown her comment demanded. It wasn’t easy when he wanted to grin at her comfort with pulling out a memory for them to share. “Are you disparaging my cooking skills, ma’am?”

  “I don’t think I’d call them cooking skills. More like can-opening skills.”

  He accepted that with a thoughtful nod, but defended himself. “I’ll have you know my can-opening skills have improved a good bit.” He ignored her murmured “Thank goodness,” and went on. “But for your information, this late lunch is courtesy of Lolly Carmody. And if you’ve ever seen her sons and her less-than-slim husband, you’d know she’s one of the county’s best cooks.”

  The microwave dinged just as he finished emptying a can of applesauce into a bowl. He brought the casserole dish and the bowl to the table together, then returned for plates, glasses, forks and spoons and a paper towel each to serve as napkins.

  “I guess microwaves help even you.”

  He nodded, deadpan. “I’m not above accepting a little culinary aid here and there.”

  She grinned, then inhaled eagerly. “I guess I am hungry. It smells wonderful. And applesauce! I love applesauce.”