Jake’s words at the diner scrolled through Cassie’s mind as she stared openmouthed at Dean.
“The Great Spirit brings you face-to-face with your worst enemy and your brightest gifts at the same time. The lesson is in how you deal with both and whether or not you can distinguish between them….”
“Dean,” Cassie said, the back of her neck tingling as Dean’s amber gaze captured hers. Cassie brought up a hand to trace the scar on Dean’s cheek. “I—I have always been my own worst enemy when it came to men. I fucked them first and thought about whether or not it was a good idea from a relationship standpoint afterward. And I did it with you, too. The difference is I knew right away that I’d messed up. I knew I wanted more with you, Dean, but I thought it was too late. I’d already followed the same pattern, and I didn’t see how it could work out.”
Dean pulled her hand into his chest. “And now?”
She stared into Dean’s eyes and smiled. “Now I know I was wrong. You are my greatest gift, Dean McCabe. You showed me that the risk isn’t in finding the right guy to screw, it’s in trusting my instincts when they say, ‘This might be the one.’”
A sudden howl split the night, followed by two, three, four more, and Cassie snuggled into Dean’s arms, her heart full.
“I’m so glad we never had to capture any of them,” Cassie whispered. “They deserve to be here. To be free.”
Cassie heard a chuckle and felt Dean’s lips near her ear. “You captured one, darlin’, and he’s not looking for freedom any time soon.”
Rodeo Man
Nikki Alton
1
T he summer twilight, blue, rose, and orange, lasts a long time before sinking fast into the dark that is the outline of the Absaroka Mountains. In Cody, Wyoming, in August, night falls late but moves quickly, and with the last fading color of the sun, the heat of the day fades, too.
Anna Hartley found herself shivering, tugging her jean skirt lower over her bare knees as she sat in the bleachers waiting for the rodeo to start.
She had scored a good seat above the loading chute when she showed her press pass. The woman at the ticket window told her the loading chute was where the cowboys climbed onto the bucking bronc or bull they were going to ride. The outdoor arena was packed, and there were scores of little kids lined up outside in the parking lot, posing for photographs on the back of a well-tethered, sleepy-eyed old Brahma bull; bigger kids were riding a mechanical bull surrounded by inflatable air cushions.
Food stands sold hot dogs and peanuts and cotton candy and soda, all cheap; Anna wanted a beer, but they didn’t sell any, which was sort of the way her entire day had gone so far.
Earlier, the magazine she worked for had flown her from LA to Jackson to review a new spa hotel. It had been a plum assignment, one she supposed she’d been thrust in to only because her boss was too pregnant to fly herself. Considered the junior writer at the LA office, despite past experience covering hard news for a suburban daily, Anna was usually relegated to stories along the lines of diet and exercise, stuff like the pros and cons of spinning classes.
So, Anna took the assignment eagerly, as a step up from her usual fare. Besides, it would feel good to get out of town for a day or two. Her boyfriend was pushing for an engagement, and she was down to holding him off with “I’m just not quite ready.” The truth was that the longer she and Steve were together, the less ready she felt. There was something missing, and when she thought about it, that something was passion. Whether passion was that important in a relationship, or just something they talked about in magazines like hers, she wasn’t entirely sure.
She’d been thinking about that just this morning, in her enormous, gorgeous, frighteningly sterile black marble and gray fieldstone suite. She had been undergoing the subtle torture of shiatsu and a goat butter and lavender wrap that made her sneeze when her cell phone rang, her boss calling.
“Anna, are you sitting down?”
“Lying down, actually. I’m having a massage of sorts—”
But that didn’t deter her boss. Nothing ever deterred her. “Good. Because this may not be a surprise, but it may be a bit of a shock. We’ve had a visit from our new editor in chief, and a decision has been made.”
The magazine had been in the process of folding into the umbrella of a larger corporate owner for months now.
Anna waited for her to go on, but when she didn’t, Anna prompted her. “A decision?”
“Yes. It seems that our West Coast women’s features are being downsized.”
Anna realized all at once that her boss had never liked her, and that she sounded way too cheerful now.
“Unfortunately,” her boss went on, “we’re going to have to let you go. Effective, actually, immediately.”
As a kind of consolation prize, Anna would receive a thirty-day severance package. And, by the way, could she e-mail in the spa story that afternoon. They needed to get this whole issue laid out fast, with the changes and all.
Anna hung up and, despite the protestations of the masseuse, was headed for the shower when her phone rang again.
She saw it was an LA number, but she didn’t recognize it, and for a moment there she thought it was going to be whoever it was who had bought the magazine, telling her it was all a mistake. She was staying; her boss, the one who was going to take a paid maternity leave any day now, was out.
But it was Steve, exhibiting his usual bad timing.
“Steve, look, this just isn’t the time to talk.” She rattled off an abbreviated version of her firing and tried to sound upbeat about it. “I’m sure there’re other things I can do with my life that’ll be a lot more interesting than—”
“We have to talk now,” he said. “You can’t keep putting me off.”
Steve’s voice had an edge to it that made her sigh impatiently. She was wrapped in a towel and covered with goo and she’d just been fired.
“Please,” she said. “Not now.”
“You’ve made it clear that you’re not ready to commit. And if what you mean is you’re not ready to commit to me, then let’s just come out and say so.”
“Where are you?” it finally occurred to her to ask.
“I’m at—I’m with—” he was struggling. “I’m seeing someone else,” Steve managed to get out.
“Since when?” Anna had kept her voice cool and even, but the phone had been shaking in her hand.
“Since the last time you told me you weren’t sure—you weren’t ready—I guess two months ago.”
“And now the other girl wants you to be sure about her.” Anna sounded remarkably calm, even to her own ears. But inside she was seething, furious, and she wanted to cry.
“I love you,” he said, his voice anguished.
Boy, she really doubted that one.
“But you do understand—I have to make a move. If there’s no real chance for us—”
“There’s no chance now,” she said, and she hung up.
She had showered and thrown her overnight bag and the laptop in her rented car in less than five minutes; screw the resort review. She had booked right out of Jackson without paying much attention to the direction in which she was going.
She should’ve taken the 89-A South and headed for the 15 and Salt Lake and that night’s Jet Blue flight back home. But instead, she was going north into Grand Teton National Park. Well, she’d always wanted to see it. She had no real reason to drive to Salt Lake, catch that particular plane, go home. She had no office to go into tomorrow. Eventually she would have to go in and pick up her check—if she still got one, because she wasn’t going to write that last story. At least not that day, not that night. She could always say she had written it, and that the e-mail got lost. And Steve certainly wasn’t going to be picking her up at Burbank.
She had paid the park entrance fee, and she kept driving. Hot tears stung her eyes. She wasn’t sure why she was crying. For her hurt pride, maybe. When she came right down to it, she wasn’t going to miss her job or S
teve, not all that much. When she came right down to it, she hadn’t particularly liked the way her life was going at all. She desperately needed a change in direction. She needed to find that missing passion. It was just that she wasn’t entirely sure which direction she should go or how she would go about finding it, or even if she would recognize it if she did.
The directionless part had become rapidly and literally true. The mountains were beautiful, so blue and stark and sudden, capped with perfect streaks of snow, no foothills to soften their raw majesty. She just kept driving toward them, taking a turn at a crossroad toward some place called Dubois and then barreling up an unmarked side road that looked interesting, which went from paved to gravel to dirt, and still she kept going as it climbed higher and higher, the car bouncing on the washboard surface.
It was too narrow to turn around without hitting a pine tree or vaulting off the side of a cliff anyway, so she just drove on. The road had to lead somewhere. An hour passed, and the mountain views diminished behind a thick veil of ponderosa pine. Branches were scratching at the side of the car when the road ended in a thicket of disappointing scrub pine.
She’d gone off on an adventure and ended up at a dead end. It was an apt metaphor for her entire life up until then.
She had turned off the ignition and hammered her hands against the steering wheel, beyond frustrated. After a minute her hands hurt, and she drew a deep breath and turned the key again and began to back the car up and inch the front end around by degrees. Minutes ticked by until she finally got the car facing downhill again.
To make up for lost time, and because she was more familiar with the road now and less intimidated by it, she was bumping along quite nicely, almost speedily even, downhill. And then she scraped something with the bottom of the car. She heard a clatter, and that wasn’t good. And soon there was a red warning light on the dash about oil and temperature, and then the car started sputtering, and then it died on her.
She had sat there in the middle of nowhere on a one-lane, rutted dirt road with a cell phone that had absolutely no signal bars, a laptop, an overnight bag, and, fortunately, a pair of sneakers to change into. She put on the sneakers, tied her hair back with a rubber band, locked up the car, and started walking.
It was hot, ninety maybe, and where the pines did not cast their shadows over the road, she could feel the sun burning her neck. So much for adventure, direction, passion. What she really wished she had was some water.
“I’m wondering if it’s a tie.” Grant Olson’s friend Chick chugged a glass of iced tea. They were finishing up a lunch of burgers and home fries at Irene’s Mustang Diner in Dubois.
“You have probably ridden as many women as I have horses,” Grant said, taking a sip of his coffee. “But I keep my horses between my legs longer.”
Chick snorted. “Just don’t start thinking they’re a substitute.”
Grant swallowed the last of his coffee. “Much as I would like to hear more of your sage advice, I gotta hit the road,” he said. “To make Cody this afternoon—see which broncs they’ve brought in, get my gear stowed—I have to hustle.”
“Don’t want to hear no complaining,” Chick said, walking him to his pickup. “Wish I had to make Cody. But first I woulda had to make the semifinals.”
Grant shrugged. “Next year.”
“Gonna look into a job at a ranch up near Whitefish. You interested, let me know,” Chick said.
“I will,” Grant promised. He hoped he wouldn’t be interested. If he took first, he could winter with his own horses and kick back instead of wrangling someone else’s livestock. Of course, that kicking back…he’d be doing it alone this year. He exhaled sharply.
“Worry about you, buddy,” Chick said. “You’re not still missing that girl who worked for the park service, are you?”
“Sometimes,” Grant admitted. Then he grinned the smile that seemed to get him most of the women he got. “But you don’t need to worry. I’m gonna find some new consolation.”
Chick punched him on the arm and popped a toothpick into his mouth. “Just make sure,” he said, “you’re looking at a filly with two legs and not four.”
Grant gave him a salute and climbed into his truck.
He drove a long way listening to Dwight Yoakum and the Warren Brothers and just thinking about the rides he was gonna make tonight, thinking how much of a chance he had of taking first and feeling pretty gut sure he had a good one. From there it would be a lock to move in to the finals.
Man, how he loved to ride. And he loved the untamed horses, the bucking mares, geldings, and stallions; he loved the eight seconds riding the broncs’ unbroken backs best of all. That was what he lived for.
Mandy, the park service girl, she told him if he didn’t settle down, turn off some of the fire inside him, he was gonna burn out. She seemed to think he should get gentled, put a bridle on, get led out to pasture. It just wasn’t him.
He took a shortcut he knew and crossed the old fire road near the Gros Ventre slide. It would bring him down the pass to Buffalo Bill Cody Scenic Byway at about Pahaska Teepee, Buffalo Bill’s old hunting lodge. He liked the brown hills that made themselves purple late in the afternoon, the Wind River running fast alongside the road up to the Buffalo Bill Dam.
Buffalo Bill. Now there was a man, he thought, who, if anybody told him it was time he stopped living on the road, riding broncs, shooting off firearms, and time to settle down, would’ve known what kind of a response to make to a woman. If only Grant could just figure out what sort of response that would be and use it himself. He laughed. Here he was wondering what he would say the next time a woman asked him to change his spots, and he didn’t have anyone to say anything to.
And it was right then, just at the place the fire road crossed his pavement, that he saw a fine example of a woman—just sitting on a rock fanning herself—he knew he would sure like to say something to.
She jumped up and waved her hand at him, panicked that he would drive off without stopping.
He pulled over fast, sending a skid of dust over his truck and the girl. Even through the haze of it he could see she was strikingly pretty, dark hair, green eyes, a little sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks. She had on a pair of tight jeans that cried out “city girl” and showed off a round, firm bottom and a scoop-necked T-shirt that was damp and clinging to some equally round, firm breasts. Her face was flushed, and a thin sheen of sweat glazed her arms and neck.
“Can you give me a ride?” she asked. “My car—it’s a rental—broke down up that mountain.”
He followed the direction she was pointing. “There’s nothing up there but an old fire break. What were you doing up there?” He leaned over and opened the passenger door for her.
“I don’t know. I sort of got lost, I guess. I was looking for scenery.” She was already climbing in the truck. “Thank you. Not that many cars pass along here, do they? The only other car I’ve seen in an hour was a lumber truck, and he went straight by me. I thought nobody would ever come. I thought I would be stuck here all night—”
“Do you breathe out?” he asked her, smiling.
She seemed to start to get offended, but she saw his smile and smiled back instead. She put her hand to her hair and tucked behind her ears the ends that had come loose from a rubber band. She ran her tongue over her lips. There were other things he would like to see her run that pretty pink tongue over.
“You thirsty?” he asked.
“Very,” she said.
He leaned across her, his arm accidentally brushing her knee, and opened the glove box.
“Help yourself,” he said. He noticed she didn’t draw back when he touched her. Maybe it meant nothing except she was too worn out to care.
She took a bottle of water from the glove box and drank it straight down.
“I’ll take you down to the ranger station,” he said. “They’ll call a tow truck for you.”
“I appreciate it.” She leaned back in the seat and closed her
eyes.
He looked at her out of the corner of his eyes. A few drops of water had escaped the bottle and spilled onto her shirt, and watching her breasts straining against the fabric…How he would like to open up another bottle, and pour it all over her. See how she would look all wet. Even now he could see the faint outline of a nipple. The heat flush on her cheeks—he bet she colored like that all over under the right circumstances. It had been a long time since he’d had any of that consolation he’d told Chick he would be getting. He could feel himself getting hard beneath his jeans, and he shifted in his seat, put his eyes back on the road.
If he didn’t have to sign in, check his gear, check out the mounts they’d brought in…if it wasn’t the biggest purse of the season he would be riding on tonight…he would’ve liked to have waited with her at the ranger station, talked her up a little; a woman that pretty, he would like to see where things might lead.
But, as it was, he took her to the station, apologized for having to move on, and shook hands with her. He let his hand linger just a second or two longer than necessary on her skin, feeling the warmth of her hand in his. Wondering what it would feel like if she ran that smooth little hand over other parts of his body. She was holding his hand just as long as he was holding hers.
There was something about her, he knew there was, something that just clicked with him. She knew it, too. They both looked into each other’s eyes for a moment, and they were going to say something, he wasn’t sure what it was, but something, until they got interrupted.
The ranger on duty started asking her questions about the color of her vehicle and the license plate—“Just how many sedan cars do you think are abandoned up on that fire road?” she asked, which made Grant laugh—and then he came to his senses and left her there.
The Cowboy Page 21