Reckless in Texas

by Kari Lynn Dell

  “Says the guy with five shiny new screws in his ankle.” Joe nodded toward Wyatt’s right leg, supported by a rigid plastic Aircast. “How’s it feel?”

  “Like they drove the bottom two screws in with a hammer.” Wyatt rotated the ankle, wincing. “Still works, though, so they must’ve got ’em in good and tight.”

  Joe rubbed the sting from the elbow Cyberbully had smacked with the top of his rock-hard skull. He ached from head to toe with the cumulative fatigue of six straight days of rodeo piled on top of all the other weeks and months of bruises and bodily insults. “What the hell is wrong with us?” he asked.

  Wyatt started for the gate. “I’m in it for the women and free booze. Let’s go make that stupid shit Rowdy buy us a beer.”

  “Just remember, you’re driving,” Joe said, yawning.

  Wyatt sent him a sympathetic glance. “Long night, huh?”

  “Yeah.” Tension crawled up his back at the memory. Goddamn Lyle Browning. Someone should’ve castrated the bastard by now. His wife had plenty of reasons to cry, but why did she insist on using Joe’s shoulder?

  Wyatt shook his head. “I shouldn’t have left you alone at the bar. You were already upset before the weepy woman.”

  “I wasn’t upset.” The tension slithered higher, toward the base of Joe’s skull.

  “Bullshit. Your old man lives fifteen miles from here and couldn’t show up to watch you in action. That sucks.”

  “I’m thirty years old, not ten. It’s not like he skipped a little league game.” But he’d missed plenty. Most of Joe’s high school sports career, in fact.

  But that was ancient history. Joe tipped off his cowboy hat, peeled the ruined jersey over his head, then balled it up and gave it a mighty heave. It landed three rows up, in the outstretched arms of a little girl in a pink cowboy hat, who squealed her excitement. Joe smiled and waved and kept moving. He wanted to be gone. Far, far away from Puyallup and any expectations he hadn’t been able to stomp to death.

  “I haven’t seen Lyle’s wife around today,” Wyatt said.

  “Probably still hugging the toilet.”

  Or maybe she’d finally smartened up and left. ’Bout time. Lyle Browning was a sniveling dog, dragging along on the coattails of his dad’s successful rodeo company. They’d grown up in the same small town and Joe had started working summers on the Browning Ranch when he was fifteen, but he and Lyle had never been friends. Early on, Joe had had some sympathy. Had to suck for Lyle, his mom dying when he was so young, and his dad not exactly the nurturing type. At some point, though, a guy had to take responsibility for his own life.

  As they stepped into the narrow alley behind the bucking chutes, a hand clamped on Joe’s shoulder. “Hey, asshole. I need to talk to you.”

  The words were slurred, the voice a permanent whine. Joe turned and found himself face-to-face with the last person he wanted to see. He brushed off the hand. “Whaddaya want, Lyle?”

  Lyle Browning tried to get in Joe’s face, but came up short by a good six inches. Even at that distance, his breath was toxic. “You fucking prick. How long you been sneaking around, fucking my wife?”

  “Don’t be stupid.”

  Lyle rolled onto his toes, swaying. He smelled like he’d passed out in the bottom of a beer garden dumpster. Looked like it, too. “Everybody saw you leave the bar together, you son of a bitch, and she told me what happened when you got back to her room.”

  The fuck she did. But Joe could think of a dozen reasons Lyle’s wife would want her husband to think she’d gone out and gotten a piece. At the very least, it’d sure teach him to screw around every chance he got. Lyle had mastered the art of trading on his daddy’s name with the sleaziest of the buckle bunnies who hung around looking for a cowboy-shaped notch for their bedpost. Too bad for them, they got Lyle instead.

  “See?” Lyle crowed. “You can’t deny it.”

  Joe ground his teeth. Hell. He couldn’t. Not without humiliating her all over again in front of the gathering crowd. “You’re drunk. Crawl back into your hole and sleep it off. We’ll talk later.”

  “We’ll talk now!”

  Joe put a hand on Lyle’s chest, making enough space to take a breath without gagging. “Back off, Lyle.”

  “Don’t push me, asshole!” Lyle reared back and took a wild swing.

  His right fist plowed into Joe’s stomach. Even if Lyle wasn’t a weenie-armed drunk, it would’ve bounced off Joe’s Kevlar vest. His left fist grazed Joe’s chin, though, and that was too damn much. Joe popped him square in the mouth. Lyle squealed, arms flailing, then toppled straight over backward, his skull smacking the hard-packed dirt. He jerked a couple of times before his eyes rolled back and the lights went out.

  Joe barely had time to think oh shit before Dick Browning’s voice sliced through the crowd. “What the hell is going on here?”

  A whole section of the onlookers peeled away to clear a path. Dick crouched over his son and gave him a not-very-gentle tap on the cheek. “Lyle! You okay?”

  Lyle moaned, his head lolling off to one side. Dick jumped up and spun around to face Joe. Where Lyle was scrawny, Dick was wiry, tough as a rawhide whip. He was only a hairbreadth taller than his son, but somehow, when Dick decided to get in your face, he made it work.

  Joe took a step back and put up his hands. “He took a swing at me.”

  “What did you expect? You mess with a man’s wife—”

  Like Lyle was any kind of man, but Joe didn’t dare say so. Sweat beaded on his forehead, part heat, part panic, as his gaze bounced off Dick’s and around the curious crowd. This was not the time or place to set Dick straight. “Can we talk about this later, in private?”

  “You disrespect my family, assault my son—there is no later,” Dick snapped. “Consider yourself unemployed. And don’t bother showing up at Pendleton, either.”

  Joe flinched, the words a verbal slap. “That’s crazy. You know I wouldn’t—”

  “Then why would she say so?”

  Joe opened his mouth, then clamped it shut. Goddamnit.

  Wyatt yanked him backward and slid into the space between Joe and Dick, smooth as butter. “If that piece of shit you call a son could keep his dick in his pants, his wife wouldn’t be out at the bar drinking herself into a coma.”

  “This is none of your business.”

  “If it’s Joe’s business, it’s mine. We call that friendship—not that you’d know.” Wyatt leaned in, got his eyes down on Dick’s level. “Don’t give me an excuse, Herod, or I’ll lay you out in the dirt with your spawn.”

  Joe grabbed him, afraid Wyatt might actually punch the old man. “You can’t—”

  Wyatt yanked his arm out of Joe’s grasp. “It’d be worth the bail money.”

  For a long, tense moment they remained locked eye to eye. Then Lyle groaned, rolled over, and puked. Dick jerked around, cursing. “Somebody give me a hand getting him over to my trailer.”

  Out of reflex, Joe took a step. Wyatt jabbed an elbow into his sternum. “Don’t even think about it.”

  He hauled Joe away, around the back of the grandstand, over to the sports medicine trailer that also served as their locker room.

  “Who is Herod?” Joe asked, unable to process the rest of the scene.

  “The most evil fucking tyrant in the Bible, but only because Matthew never met Dick Browning.” Wyatt yanked open the door to the trailer and dragged Joe up the steps.

  Matthew. Herod. Christ. “Who says that shit?”

  “I’m a preacher’s kid,” Wyatt said. “I get my gospel up when I’m pissed.”

  Preacher. Hah. Try Lord High Bishop of Something or Other. Wyatt’s family learned their gospel at Yale Divinity. He read big fat history books for the fun of it. For two guys who had nothing in common, Joe and Wyatt had been a dream team from the first time they worked in the same arena, and
hell on wheels outside those arenas. The mileage added up, though, and a thirty-year-old body didn’t bounce back from hangovers the same way it used to. Joe sure didn’t miss them, or waking up next to woman whose name was lost in his alcohol-numbed brain.

  As they stepped into the trailer, one of the athletic trainers grabbed a gauze pad and slapped it on a split in Joe’s knuckle. “You’re dripping. Wipe it off, then I’ll see if you need stitches.”

  Wyatt leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “What he needs is a rabies vaccination.”

  The trainer’s head whipped around in alarm. “It’s a dog bite?”

  “No,” Joe said.

  “Close enough,” Wyatt said. “He cut it on Lyle Browning’s face.”

  The trainer smirked. “So, more like a rat. Better dissect Lyle’s brain to see if he’s rabid.”

  “Good luck finding one,” Wyatt said. “But I volunteer to knock him over the head. And his little daddy, too.”

  “Not very Christian for a choir boy,” Joe muttered.

  Wyatt’s grin was all teeth. “One of a long list of reasons the Big Guy and I are no longer on speaking terms.”

  Fifteen minutes later, the last of the cowboys had cleared out of the trailer and the trainers had gone to have a beer, leaving Joe and Wyatt stretched out on the padded treatment tables. Stripped down to a pair of black soccer shorts with his blond hair slicked back and a bottle of water dangling from long, manicured fingers, Wyatt looked exactly like what he was—the product of generations-deep East Coast money. When asked how he’d ended up fighting bulls, he liked to say it was the best legal way to be sure his family never spoke to him again. The reporters thought he was joking.

  Joe’s knuckle was bandaged, but his whole hand throbbed in time with the pounding in his head. His initial shock had morphed into fury, churning like hot, black tar in his gut. He punched the pillow with his uninjured fist. “I should skip Pendleton. It’d serve Dick right.”

  “Don’t be an idiot,” Wyatt said. “Just because you’re his chore boy on the ranch between rodeos doesn’t mean Dick has shit to say about when and where you fight bulls.”

  Joe scowled, but couldn’t argue. The mega-rodeos they worked were too much for any one stock contractor to handle. Cheyenne lasted two weeks. Denver had sixteen performances. Rodeos that big hired a main contractor to gather up at least a dozen others, each bringing only their best bulls and horses. The rodeo committee also hired the bullfighters. Down in the bush leagues, you worked for the contractor. At the elite level, they were freelancers. Joe and Wyatt were the most sought-after bullfighters in the country, stars in their own right, which meant they could pick and choose from the most prestigious rodeos.

  It irritated Wyatt to no end that Joe chose to stick mostly to the rodeos where Dick Browning had been hired to provide bucking stock, and continued to work on Dick’s ranch for what was chump change compared to his bullfighter pay. Wyatt blamed misplaced loyalty. And yeah, Dick had given him his start, but Joe had paid that debt a long time ago. The ties that bound him were buried deep in the hills and valleys of the High Lonesome Ranch. He loved that land like nothing else except the stock that ran on it.

  How could Wyatt understand? He wasn’t a cowboy.

  He cocked his head, his gaze sharpening. “You’re really pissed.”

  “Wouldn’t you be?” Joe shot back.

  “Hell yeah, but I would’ve throat-punched both of them ten years ago. This isn’t the first time Dick has blown up in your face. It isn’t even the first time he fired you.”

  “I deserved it most of those other times.” When Joe was a showboating twenty-year-old with more guts than common sense. The anger boiled up again. “I’m not a brain-dead kid anymore.”

  “So tell him to go fuck himself.”

  Joe shook his head and Wyatt hissed in frustration. “Geezus, Joe. What’s it going to take?”

  Joe couldn’t imagine. The High Lonesome had been the center of his world for too long. Solid ground when his home life was anything but. Dick’s great-grandfather had veered south off the Oregon Trail to homestead there. He had given the ranch its name because the rugged miles of sagebrush desert were high in altitude, lonesome in the extreme, and spectacular in a wild, almost savage way that possessed a man’s soul. Joe could cut off a limb easier than he could walk away.

  “You were right before.” Wyatt adjusted the ice pack on his ankle, then reached for his phone. “If Dick wants to shoot off his mouth, slander you in front of half of pro rodeo, you should call his bluff. Let him explain to the committee in Pendleton why you’re not there.”

  Joe bolted upright. “I can’t leave the Roundup short a bullfighter.”

  “You won’t.” Wyatt’s fingers danced over his touch screen before he lifted it to his ear, holding up a palm for silence when Joe tried to speak. “Hey, Shorty! This is Wyatt. I heard you’re looking to pick up a rodeo or two before the season ends. How does Pendleton sound?”

  Joe opened his mouth, but Wyatt shushed him again.

  “Yes, really. Would I joke about something that big?” A pause, then Wyatt grinned. “Oh yeah. I forgot. That was a good one. But I paid you back for the airfare, and I’m serious this time. Joe wants out. You want in?” Another pause, and a frown. “Where, and how much?” Wyatt listened, then grimaced. He covered the phone with his hand and said to Joe, “Shorty Edwards can come to Pendleton in your place, on one condition.”

  “What condition?” By which Joe meant to say, Are you fucking crazy?

  “How do you feel about Texas?” Wyatt asked. When Joe only gaped at him, he shrugged and said into the phone. “Guess that means yes. See you in Pendleton, Shorty.”

  He hung up and tossed the phone aside.

  Joe stared at him, horrified. “You did not just do that.”

  “Bet your ass I did.” Suddenly every line of Wyatt’s body was as sharply etched as the ice in his blue eyes. “I will do whatever it takes to pry you away from that son of a bitch.”

  “Dick’s not that bad.” But there was no conviction in Joe’s voice. He was tired and hurting and every time he replayed Dick’s words, heard the contempt in his voice, his chest burned with humiliation and fury. How could he stroll into Pendleton and pretend it was all good?

  “If you stay, you’ll end up just like him—a shriveled up, rancid piece of coyote bait.”

  Joe stared at the ceiling, sick of arguing. Sick of it all. Silence reigned for a few moments. Then Wyatt sighed, and the pity in his voice cut deeper than Dick’s lashing tongue.

  “Have some pride, Joe. Go to Texas. Get a little perspective.” Wyatt flashed a knife-edged smile. “At least give humanity a chance before you sign over your soul to the devil.”

  Chapter 3

  A hard bump and the screech of rubber on tarmac nudged Joe out of the closest thing to sleep he’d had in the past thirty-six hours. He rubbed the blur from his vision as the plane taxied to the terminal. “Welcome to Dallas-Fort Worth, where the local time is 1:33 p.m. and the temperature is ninety-seven degrees. Please remain in your seats…”

  Make me. Joe was on his feet before the plane came to a complete stop, shaking the kinks out of legs that had been crammed into coach way too long. Every decent flight out of Sea-Tac had been overbooked, forcing him to hop a commuter flight to Spokane, suffer through a five-hour layover, a four-and-a-half hour flight, then spend what was left of the night and most of the morning in the Minneapolis airport. But by damn, he was on the ground in Dallas on schedule. Jacobs Livestock was expecting a bullfighter to show up by five o’clock this afternoon and they’d get one. They just weren’t expecting Joe.

  “Easier to ask forgiveness than beg for permission,” Wyatt had insisted. “Besides, what are they gonna do, complain you’re too good for them?”

  Joe wasn’t inclined to care if feathers got ruffled. Jacobs was getting double the
ir money’s worth, and with every mile, every hour that took him farther from where he was supposed to be, at Pendleton, the needle on his give-a-shit meter dropped another notch. If the point was to punish Dick, why did Joe feel like he’d been sent down to the minor leagues for bad behavior?

  He grabbed his battered gear bag from the overhead bin—the luggage handlers could misroute his clothes to China, but they weren’t touching his bread and butter—and vibrated in place while he waited for the aisle to clear. An eternity later, he broke free of the shuffling herd. His twitching muscles whimpered with relief when he was able to lengthen his stride, weaving past roller bags and shuffling Bluetooth zombies, down the terminal to the nearest restroom. He took a leak, then sighed wearily at his reflection as he washed his hands and splashed water on his face. Shaving and laundry had fallen by the wayside while he’d scrambled to make last-minute travel arrangements, by turns too pissed off at Dick and assaulted by second thoughts to care how he looked. Besides, the three-day stubble was a nice match for the dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.

  Violet Jacobs would just have to take him as he was, scruff and all. In thirty years, only three women had earned the right to tell Joe to clean up his act. Roxy had been his partner in crime, his staunchest supporter and a near-constant exasperation since the day she gave birth to him. Helen, the cook at the High Lonesome, had been trying to put some meat on his bones since he first showed up there as a gangly teenager, and LouEllen at The Mane had been cutting his hair just as long. She had a knack for trimming it so no one but Wyatt noticed. Joe just looked less like he should have an electric guitar slung over his shoulder than a bagful of knee braces and body armor. Unfortunately, she’d been out of town last month when he’d passed through between rodeo runs. No one else touched Joe’s hair, regardless of how much Dick bitched.

  He ran damp fingers through the straggly mess and called it good. Then he tapped a text into his phone. Arrived gate E-16. Have to grab my bag.

  The reply bounced right back. Come straight out the door nearest baggage claim. I’ve got the yellow car.