A Bull Rider to Depend On

by Jeannie Watt

Hard to believe, since he felt as if he’d been hit in the face with a fence post. “Then what’s all this?” Tyler pointed at the front of his shirt, which was covered with blood and dirt, and he could still feel the stuff oozing down his face and out of his nose.

  “I’d say the gash between your eyebrows.”

  “Sweet.” Tyler tried to pull a breath in through his nose. He failed, and the effort hurt. “You’re sure it’s not broken?”

  “Yeah. Swollen, but not broken.”

  “Small blessings.” He moved his shoulder, winced again. Pain was no stranger to him, but this went beyond pain. The shoulder felt oddly weak. Useless. “You think I’m going to be out for a while?”

  The medic stood back. “Talk to the doc, see what he says.”

  * * *

  SKYE SIPPED HER coffee and studied the calendar on her refrigerator. She had fourteen days of peace before Tyler returned for a short break. With Cliff’s help, she’d managed to get the branding and preg-checking done a few days after his departure, despite Tyler’s insistence upon being there to assist. Skye couldn’t help it—she felt territorial. Tyler could putter around the ranch to his heart’s content as long as he stayed away from her and her cows. There was nothing about that in the agreement, but she was fairly certain she could get her point across without having it in writing. At the very least, they’d discuss the matter.

  Yes—they would discuss. Partnership and all that.

  Skye set down her coffee cup and gently rolled her neck, taking out the kinks and noting that her muscles weren’t nearly as stiff as they’d been not that long ago. As much as she hated to admit it, she’d been sleeping better since Tyler bought into the ranch. She didn’t like sharing control of her operation, especially with a man who’d driven her so crazy in the past, but she was no longer overwhelmed by fear of losing everything. For the first time in a long time, Skye felt free to make plans—to act instead of react. She had projects on the ranch that she’d ignored for too long as she struggled to hang on. Now she could tackle some of them.

  Now she could build her chicken house.

  She’d had chickens as a kid, but they’d roosted in the barn, thus making them easy prey for various nocturnal varmints. After her last hen had gone to the big chicken coop in the sky, she’d decided not to keep chickens until she had a proper house. There hadn’t been a hen on the place for almost fifteen years.

  It was time.

  Jinx threw himself against her legs, and Skye set down her cup to get a kitty treat out of the ceramic container next to the flour and sugar. The cat was spoiled, and she didn’t care. He’d been a steady companion during the rough times.

  “Fourteen days, Jinxy. Can we get our chicken house done by then?” There was a lot of scrap lumber stored in the barn, but she’d have to buy wire and roofing—or perhaps she could finagle a deal from the roofing crew that had finally shown up the day before.

  She wasn’t familiar with the outfit—they’d driven over from a nearby town—but they’d given Tyler the best price and had seemed polite and professional as they spent the day ripping into the outbuildings. Tyler was right about the roofs—they should have been replaced years ago and a few more bad winters would destroy the buildings. It was hell keeping up with an aging ranch and even worse to see it falling down around her.

  But at least the equipment was new—thank you, Mason. He’d done a good job around the place when he’d been there, even though his heart hadn’t totally been into ranching and farming. He’d been a bull rider, pure and simple.

  Skye had just poured the last of the coffee into her cup when she heard a truck pull in. The roofers were early. She picked up the cup and headed out to the front porch, only to almost drop it when she stepped outside. Dear heavens, no.

  Tyler climbed out of his truck, his movements stiff and awkward. Skye closed her eyes, took a calming breath. He was back. Fourteen days early. That could mean only one thing. He caught sight of her then, gave a curt nod in her direction and headed around the bunkhouse to his trailer.

  Skye couldn’t help herself. She set down the cup on the porch rail and started down the walk. Tyler came back around the bunkhouse as she reached his truck, and even at a distance she could see that both eyes were black. He seemed startled to see that she’d moved into his territory. She was certainly startled by his appearance, although, having been married to a bull rider, she shouldn’t have been. He had four stitches along the bridge of his nose. Both eyes were black. And his nose was swollen and bruised, as was the right side of his face.

  “How long are you out for?” she asked flatly.

  “Four to six weeks. If I behave myself, I may be able to compete for the rest of the season without surgery.”

  Skye lifted her eyebrows, unable to squelch the expression of disbelief. None of this was new to her. “Will you be able to hold off for four weeks?” Because she knew it would never be six.

  “Going to do my best.” He opened the truck door and pulled out his duffel with what must have been his good hand. Judging from the odd way he was moving, his right shoulder was probably bandaged under his shirt.

  Four weeks. Four. Long. Weeks.

  This is what you signed on for. You can do this.

  “I see that the roofing crew showed up,” Tyler said as he shut the truck door.

  “They got here just before I left for my shift yesterday and were gone when I came home.” In that amount of time they’d stripped half the roofing from three buildings, which seemed like an odd way to tackle the project, but Skye figured that as long as they got it done, she didn’t care how they did things.

  Tyler frowned as he studied the buildings. “I wonder why they aren’t here now.”

  Skye shrugged, even though she’d been wondering the same thing. She had a more pressing question. “Why didn’t you let me know you were coming home early?”

  He smiled at her, but it was lopsided due to the swelling on the left side of his face. “Planning big parties when I’m not around?”

  “Yes. I’m such a party person,” she snapped.

  “Maybe you should be,” he replied easily, making her aware of how waspish she’d just sounded.

  “Why is that?” Skye took care not to bite her words out.

  Tyler closed the door to the truck, wincing a little as he did so. “If you let go every now and again, you might feel less stress. Right now you’re a candidate for a heart attack.”

  Tyler Hayward was giving her life advice?

  “Thanks for the judgment,” she said. “Perhaps I should tell you that riding bulls is hazardous to your health. No. Wait. Maybe you already know that, yet you continue, even though it defies logic.”

  “What’s your point, Skye?”

  A sigh escaped her lips. “No point. I’m just reacting.” As always.

  His eyebrows lifted...or at least tried to go up. She was definitely going to have to find a video of his wreck—it had to be a good one given the state of his face.

  “I’m not trying to bait you,” he said. “I’m just...talking.”

  Stop being so reasonable. Skye sighed again, inwardly this time, and went with the truth. Partners should be truthful. “Sorry for being short with you. I thought I had two weeks of alone time and didn’t expect you back so soon. I’m not used to sharing the place.” She resented sharing the place, but she was better off because of it. For now anyway.

  “Feel free to go about your business. I’ll be passed out in my trailer.”

  “For the whole four weeks?” she asked innocently.

  “I wish,” he said, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Pain meds?”

  “Lack of sleep. I drove most of the night to get here.”

  For some reason the thought of him driving all night while injured bothered her. It was habit, of course. She wa
s conditioned to worry about bull riders and their crazy ways, but damned if she was going to worry about another bull rider. “Look—”

  “Skye. Stop.” He met her gaze dead on, all traces of easy humor gone from his face, and the rest of her sentence died on her lips. The blue-and-yellow bruises around his eyes and the stitches between his eyebrows made him look all the more serious as he said, “You don’t need to hammer the point home. I understand that you don’t want me here.”

  “Then why are you living here?” she asked in a low voice, even as she told herself to just shut up. “You could have parked your trailer on Jess’s property. It isn’t that far away.”

  “Keeping an eye on my investment. Sorry you hate it so much.” He gave her a nod before adjusting his grip on his duffel and heading for his trailer, moving stiffly as he crossed the short distance.

  Skye watched him go, her mouth tight. If they were going to coexist, she really, really had to start thinking before she spoke.

  She turned on her heel and headed back to the house. He was back for a goodly amount of time, and she had to deal. She’d still go to work on her chicken house, but she was taking the coward’s way out and building it on the opposite side of the barn from Tyler’s trailer.

  * * *

  TYLER WOKE WITH a start, then groaned as he pushed himself upright. Bull dream. He didn’t have them too often, but every now and again, a bull stomped him good while he slept. He swung his feet onto the floor and sat a minute, waiting for his groggy thoughts to clear before getting to his feet and walking down the short hallway to the kitchen. Outside he could hear the sound of hammering. The roofing crew, no doubt. He’d have to see how it was going and get a time estimate. Once they were done, he was going to slap a fresh coat of paint on the siding—using his good arm, of course. How hard could it be to paint left-handed? Next year they’d tackle the barn, which wasn’t in as bad of shape as the rest of the buildings. Mason had not been one for maintenance.

  He guessed he could say the same thing for Skye, but she’d worked full-time while Mason had been on the road, pursuing his career, so when would she have had time? If Mason had been dipping into the ranch fund that he’d drained for as long as Tyler suspected, he’d probably discouraged Skye from hiring out any repairs.

  Skye...beautiful, closed-off Skye, who had never been closed off with his brother. Tyler was not his brother, and Skye was not the fantasy woman he’d made her out to be...but there was something about her that continued to draw him in, made him feel protective even as she took potshots at him. She was his business partner, who resented him, yet needed him, which probably made her resent him even more. Great situation, Hayward. And not one that would be sorted out anytime soon.

  Tyler turned on the tap and poured a glass of water, then took a couple of ibuprofen tablets to dull the aches in his shoulder and his head. He caught the sound of distant hammering and decided to check the roofers’ progress, hoping the fresh air would help clear his head. He’d driven too far last night before pulling into a truck stop and catching two hours of sleep and then driving again. He wanted nothing more than to be unconscious, but the aches in his body were stronger than the urge to sleep.

  The hammering from the other side of the barn stopped as Tyler stepped out of his trailer, and that was when he realized that the driveway was empty. No truck belonging to a roofing crew. The only vehicles were Skye’s old ranch truck and her small car. The hammering continued on and off as he crossed the driveway and walked around the barn to the opposite side, where Skye was kneeling over a small two-by-four frame. She was about to swing the hammer again when she heard his footsteps and instead of smacking the nail, laid her hammer down and got to her feet.

  “You didn’t sleep long,” she said, dusting her hands on her jeans and looking more than a little self-conscious. Secret project? “Did the hammering bother you?”

  “I thought it was the roofers.” As curious as he was, he didn’t ask about her project. They’d keep things on business-level, because that was where she wanted them kept and right now he felt too foggy to hold his own.

  “They haven’t shown.” She pushed tendrils of windblown hair off her face. “Seems kind of odd.” She tilted her chin up as she spoke, and he wondered if she was making an effort not to say anything to start another argument. If so, he truly appreciated it. They could pick up again when he felt more himself.

  “Yeah. It does.” He checked his watch. Eleven o’clock. “I’ll give them a call. See what gives.”

  “Let me know.”

  “Yeah. I will.” He glanced down at the frame, then turned without comment and headed back to his phone in the trailer.

  Skye shot Tyler a cautious look as he came back out of his trailer five minutes later, as if expecting bad news. She would not be disappointed.

  “The number is disconnected.”

  She blinked. “As in...”

  “Out of service.”

  “Maybe a glitch?”

  “I have a bad feeling it’s not.” He looked past her to the roofs that now had no shingles. Roofs in worse shape than they’d been when he’d contracted the job.

  “If it’s not a glitch...” Her mouth tightened, as if she didn’t want to acknowledge the alternative out loud. Neither did Tyler. He had money tied up in this deal—one-third of the cost of the job—and now that he wouldn’t be riding for the next four weeks, this could turn out to be some serious stuff.

  “I’d better go to town. See what’s going on.” She gave him a sideways glance, her gaze traveling over his banged-up shoulder in a speaking way. “Hey,” he said. “It isn’t like I didn’t just drive seven hundred miles to get here from Reno.”

  “I’m coming with you.” When he lifted his chin, she met his eyes, a vaguely challenging light in her own. “Partners, remember?”

  Twenty minutes later he pulled his truck to a stop in front of the building where he’d made the deal to roof the outbuildings. The windows were dark, the small parking lot was empty and there was an ominous-looking bright pink sign on the door.

  “Not good,” Skye muttered, reaching for her door handle.

  No. Not good at all.

  They came around their respective sides of the truck to walk together to the abandoned office to read the notice. Tyler stopped a few sentences after “Out of Business,” but Skye leaned closer to read the rest of the smaller print.

  When she was done she looked over at Tyler. “How much of your money do they have?”

  “A couple grand.”

  She exhaled. “I have a feeling that we’re going to be in a long line of creditors if they shut down just like this. How much research did you do before booking these guys?”

  “Research?” He frowned at her. “I asked places for bids. These guys came in lowest.”

  “Did you check online reviews?”

  “I don’t see where reviews would have warned me that these guys were about to secretly go out of business.”

  “True.”

  He studied the Out of Business sign grimly. “They knew they were going out of business and they took my money.”

  “That stinks.”

  Tyler shot Skye a quick look and decided that she wasn’t being sarcastic. He pushed his hands into his jacket pockets. “What stinks even more is that we have half roofs on all of the buildings.” That and the fact that he felt stupid for dealing with these guys. The price they’d given him was so much lower than the lumberyard in Gavin that maybe he should have suspected something was up. Shaking his head, he headed back to the truck.

  “What now?” Skye asked as she caught up with him.

  “I buy shingles and do what these guys were supposed to do.”

  “You?”

  She may not have meant to sound insulting, but all the same... “I’m not without skills.”

&n
bsp; “Have you ever roofed anything—?”

  He scowled at her. “It’s not rocket science.”

  “While incapacitated?” she continued smoothly, ignoring his interruption.

  “Incapacitated?” He gave a scoffing laugh. “Nothing’s broken.”

  “Which hand is your hammer hand?”

  “So I learn to hammer left-handed. Big deal.”

  “Jarring your shoulder every time you take a swing? Yes. That will help your recovery.”

  He had a strong feeling that she was concerned about his recovery only because the sooner he recovered, the sooner he would be out on the road again. “What do you suggest?” he asked with exaggerated patience.

  Her mouth flattened and she started for her side of the truck. “Let’s go price shingles.” She yanked the door open. “And we better start buying the newspaper, in case there’s a notice of bankruptcy. Or maybe we can sue in small claims court.”

  “Yeah.” But for all intents and purposes, the money was gone and he needed to focus on getting roofs on the buildings. “I’ll see if Jess is available to help with the roofs.”

  She put the truck into Reverse, and an odd grinding sound came out of the transmission. He looked over at her with a questioning raise of his eyebrows. “Ignore it,” she said as she shifted into a forward gear.

  “I don’t know how long you can ignore stuff like that before it gets you into trouble.”

  “I’ll take my chances.”

  “I don’t want you stranded somewhere.”

  “I don’t go anywhere,” she pointed out. “I go to work and I go home. Sometimes I go shopping in town on a day off. It isn’t as if I’m heading out across the wilds of Montana.” She checked for traffic, then eased out onto the road. “Besides, I couldn’t afford to get it fixed if I wanted to.”

  “It will need fixed.”

  “Right now I’m more concerned about the roofs.” She kept her gaze glued to the road, but he saw the corner of her mouth go tight. “If you’re out of work for a while—”

  “I still have some money.” Enough to buy roofing and fencing anyway.