The tow had taken a long time to arrive. Anna had sat on a stoop outside the ranger’s station, watching other people who hadn’t wrecked their cars drive by on the two-lane highway, most of them heading east, the same direction the cowboy went.
At least, he looked like a cowboy to her. She was pretty sure he didn’t buy his blue jeans with a hole in the left knee as a fashion statement. She saw how sun-browned and strong his arms were beneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. She let herself wonder what his shoulders looked like, his back. She thought about the way his hand felt in hers, the tapered, long fingers, strong and calloused. She just liked the way his hand felt. She hadn’t wanted to let go.
Crazy thought, but it felt like he had wanted to keep on holding her hand, too. Or, maybe he had wanted to do more than that. Maybe she wanted him to do more. It might be nice to feel those fingers moving up her arm, against her cheek, turning her face toward his. He’d had incredibly blue eyes, almost violet. And kind of curly dirty-blond hair. She wondered how old he was. Maybe thirtysomething. He had little crinkles around his eyes from being out in the sun, but this in no way had diminished his attractiveness. And he was very attractive.
It wasn’t just how cute he was, though—she wasn’t so superficial that just because a guy was hot she was going to start fantasizing about him. Even though that was exactly what she was doing.
After he turned her face to his, maybe he would bend down, or she would lean up—he was at least four inches taller than her five-foot-five—and they would kiss. And maybe it would be a good kiss. A devouring kiss. The kind of kiss that betraying asshole Steve had never given her.
Of course, a guy as good-looking as that cowboy, he was probably married, had a ranch, and had ten kids. But maybe not. She’d felt him looking at her out of the corner of his eye. She liked that. And she liked the way he’d teased her a little; he didn’t make her feel stupid the way the ranger had for taking her car off-road and breaking it, like she was a bad child who’d broken a nice toy.
She had not even asked her rescuer his name. All she knew about him other than his looks was that he was driving an old green pickup with bench seats and Wyoming plates. If she’d paid attention to the plate numbers, she would’ve had a chance of finding him again, but she hadn’t. That she even wanted to find him surprised her, but she wished she could. When the tow truck arrived, she had stopped thinking about him.
She had paid a lot for the tow into Cody, and she was going to pay a lot more for the repairs. Neither her insurance nor her rental contract would cover them. She was not supposed to take the vehicle off-road, and if she did she would be liable for a stiff fine, as well as being responsible for any damage. Of course, if she got the damage fixed, they would never know she took it off-road. That was as good as things were going to get.
“This is a Friday. Nobody in town has that part. Gotta come from the Ford dealer in Cheyenne. And that’ll be Monday,” the mechanic at the garage in Cody had told her.
She revised her thoughts. Getting the car fixed on Monday and spending the weekend in Cody without any wheels—that was as good as it was going to get.
But Cody was a nice-enough-looking town, with restaurants, bars, a world-class historical museum, dude ranches, motels, and a rodeo. A big-purse professional cowboy semifinal and final. All weekend long. So, she wouldn’t be bored.
On the downside, the restaurants, bars, museum, and motels were all packed with tourists and rodeo contenders. Anna had called everywhere in the phone book, looking for a room, and then she started over again, looking for cancellations.
At last she found one at a place called the Bear’s Den Motel. It was off the main drag on a side street lined with secondhand stores and a tack shop. She had laughed when she saw the room; the queen-size bed nearly filled it, the ceiling fan didn’t work, and the bath towel looked more like a hand towel. But still. It had a pool.
“It’s your lucky day, sweetheart,” the manager told her.
Other than getting fired, and finding out that her boyfriend was unfaithful, and screwing up her car to the tune of eight hundred dollars plus the tow, it had been her lucky day, all right. But, yeah, things could’ve been worse. She could still be wandering around on the fire service road and out of water. She could be sleeping in her disabled car in the back of the repair shop. She could be married to Steve.
Instead, that night, she would go check out the rodeo.
2
S o, there she was, folding her arms across her chest, punked again, this time by the weather, which was cooling off dramatically as the sun plunged behind the hills. She was wearing a sleeveless tank top and an open-weave summer sweater vest with her jean skirt, and she wished she’d brought the sweatshirt she’d left in her motel room. A wind blew up as the moon rose, sending her hair across her face. She pushed her hair impatiently behind her ears. She saw the cowboys down in the chutes jamming their hats lower on their foreheads.
The lights dimmed in the bleachers and came on bright across the arena. “Ladies and gentlemen! Let’s hear some noise—for our cowboys!”
A rodeo clown came out in absurdly large boots and a red nose and started clapping his hands and stamping his feet in time to a loud recording of Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” The bleachers shook and thundered with the response from the crowd.
“Our first event, bronc riding, is brought to you by Zane Chevrolet, right here in Cody. Coming out of chute number three”—right below Anna—“we have Grant Olson, a Wyoming boy holding the championship record for the longest and highest-rated bronc riding in the naaaation.”
There were more cheers and applause and stomping, and Anna looked down into the chute as a pretty brown horse was hustled into the wooden box, gated at front and back with metal piping. There were eight chutes, all in a row, and in each one a cowboy was waiting. The only chute with a horse loaded was this one right under her, so she kept her eyes on the action inside.
The horse was stamping and pawing, snorting, shaking its mane back and forth as if possessed. She saw the rider square his shoulders and pull on a pair of leather gloves. Two other guys were holding the horse, which was straining just to break out of there.
Grant Olson mounted up. She watched his muscular legs, taut inside worn jeans, his broad shoulders straining against the fabric of a simple blue denim work shirt as he swung into the saddle. With one hand, he gripped a handle strapped to the horse. He had his other hand up in the air, like he was going to wave at somebody. He gave a nod to one of the guys holding the horse, and the gate of the bucking chute opened.
Horse and rider burst into the arena, the horse trying to throw off the man as fast as it could.
Anna watched, fascinated. What made a man want to do something this crazy? Hold on to a horse that wild, that determined to get rid of him, doing it over and over again for the sport of it…And, yeah, the money, but it wasn’t like the NFL or the NBA. Most of these guys, even the top performers like this Grant, had a hard time making a living at it. You had to be good and tough and maybe a little bit crazy, she supposed.
Or maybe a lot crazy. There was something exciting about that.
“Eight seconds!” the announcer crowed, like that was a victory.
Grant Olson had just taken a spectacular fall, right off the side of the horse, flipping away in a gymnast’s roll seconds before the horse kicked at him, its flank straps trailing. Grant moved fast enough that the horse got only dust on his hooves.
The cowboy’s Stetson was lying on the ground, and when he bent to pick it up, he gave a bow to the crowd on the other side of the arena. Anna wished he would turn toward her. She would like to see how he looked. Was he scared, mad, happy? Apparently he should’ve been happy, because the announcer was practically ecstatic.
“Let’s see who’s gonna top that performance!” the amplified voice bellowed. “Judges say that scored a nine-two. Nine-two, ladies and gentlemen. Exceptional!”
A couple of guys roped the horse and led it out of
the arena. She saw that a new horse and rider were being readied in the next chute down the line.
Her eyes went back to Grant, who was walking with a slight limp as he passed right beneath Anna again, heading through a passage next to the chute.
The wind threatened to lift his hat again, and he put a hand on it. As he did, he turned and looked up in the stands. His eyes met Anna’s. They were very blue, almost violet. She felt a start of recognition and pleasure. She felt her heart kind of skip a beat and then hammer on faster. He smiled at her, a warm, self-deprecating, but oh-so-confident smile. She’d seen a glimpse of it in his truck, but this was an even better smile.
She smiled back, just as she had earlier. She felt a heat rise up in her cheeks. She’d found him.
He rode four more broncs that evening, never topping his first record, but taking home first all the same. He was in the calf- and barrel-roping competitions, too, and she liked watching him ride the saddle horses, swirling his rope like it was a living thing he was sending off into the shine of the arena lights.
There were dozens of competitors, some from as far away as Australia, but most of them from Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and Texas, some as young as eighteen and peaking, Anna noticed, in their early forties. After that, she guessed, it would be harder to heal up after a fall. There were women, too, some of them as graceful as ballerinas doing the roping, the stunt riding. There was one who rode a bronc, and Anna saw, with a wave of something like jealousy, that one of the cowboys holding her mount steady was Grant.
They were all hard and lean and tanned and good at what they did. Confident. Not cocky confident, exactly, but like they knew what it took to do what they were doing, and they were proud of themselves for pulling it off.
Anna watched them all, but, time and again, even when he wasn’t riding, she found her eyes drawn to Grant. It wasn’t just that he was good-looking, or even that he’d smiled at her the way he had. There was something about him, the same thing she’d felt when he’d given her a ride. There was some sort of heat that drew her gaze to him, something that passed off him in a wave and washed right over her and pulled her in. And she liked the way that felt.
He kept looking at her, too, when he was lounging with the other guys, bumming a cigarette, telling a joke, grabbing a soda. His eyes cut up to her to see if she was watching him, and, of course she was.
She’d never stared at a guy like that in her life. And she’d never had a guy stare back at her. She’d met Steve at a journalism school potluck, and he liked the crust on the takeout pizza she’d brought, which got them started talking.
She had never dated much before Steve, and their relationship never involved anything like him giving off some kind of indefinable heat that made her knees feel weak and her stomach drop.
Both of which were happening now, just because she’d been looking at this complete stranger, a cowboy in a rodeo ring.
She forced herself to look away from him, and looked instead at a vendor selling peanuts in the stands. She waved her arm wildly, as if the peanuts were something she’d wanted all her life and she just remembered how much she wanted them, and she bought a bag.
When she settled down again in her seat, Grant Olson was gone.
Using her press pass like a prop, she looked for him in the tack room behind the arena, but he wasn’t there. She waited around by the snack stands until almost all the crowd had emptied out.
Then she walked her lame self through the dusty gravel parking lot and down the highway past the Wal-Mart toward her motel. For a bag of peanuts, she’d thrown away something she really did want a chance at.
The fact that he won first place was a big photo op for Grant, and he posed more than willingly for the local paper, the Professional Rodeo Cowboys’ Association’s magazine and Web site, and the Cowboy Hall of Fame. Then came the hand-shaking and the beer-toasting and the taped radio interview in the only quiet place they could find, the manager’s office. By the time he started packing up his gear, everybody was gone. Including the girl.
Why he thought she would hang around, he didn’t know. She had been sitting next to a couple of kids, and they were probably hers. There was probably a husband, too, and he’d missed him. Although why any decent husband would let a girl like that parade around in too-tight jeans in a car not meant for going off-road up in the mountains, he couldn’t guess.
Anyway, she was gone. He figured he would take his big silver trophy, and the five grand in prize money burning a hole in the pocket of his favorite shirt, and go on down to the Irma Hotel bar and listen to more people tell him how great he was.
He knew he’d had some damn spectacular rides. He’d placed well in the roping, too. Some of it, he knew, was that he was showing off for that woman he was so sure had come to watch him. Sometimes pride just got the best of you, and sometimes you could use that pride to go yourself one better. He’d done that tonight, but the girl was gone now.
It was disappointing, but he wasn’t going to let it get him down. Now Sunday’s championship was his; everybody said so. Girls came up to the big hundred-thousand-dollar cherrywood bar at the Irma—the bar Queen Victoria gave Buffalo Bill because she was so impressed with his performance in his Wild West show. Nobody was giving Grant a hundred-grand bar, but the girls were giving him phone numbers and motel rooms on little rolled-up pieces of paper, and the guys were giving him slaps on the back. They wanted to know how he did it. He laughed, but he never said, because he didn’t really know himself.
It was a gift given to him, worthy or not. Over the course of a winning streak and good times that had lasted some twenty years, Grant had come to think of himself as worthy—at least just as worthy as the next guy.
Still, ride after glorious ride, he wasn’t so stuck on himself that he wasn’t grateful for this long run he was having. It was a perfect life, the horses and the smell of the sage and creosote out on the plains and the pale skies after it rained and the feel of himself just riding, in the arena or out, and there was only one thing that was missing, and of course it was the girl, whatever girl that would be. He knew who he wanted, but she was gone.
Then, there she was again. The one he had picked up on the road, the one in the bleachers right above his starting gate. She was at his elbow now, her cheeks all pink again, but not from a hot afternoon walk this time.
Anna decided she wasn’t just going to sulk back to her lousy motel room. She was going to have that beer. There was a Denny’s that looked dismal, and there was a steak house that was closed, and there was a sign for a roadhouse that was too far out of town for her to walk to. Then she saw the Irma. It had a plaque on the front porch identifying the building as being built by Buffalo Bill Cody for his daughter Irma. Laughter and country music spilled out into the night, and it sounded welcoming.
She went inside. It was crowded, and the welcoming noise seemed daunting up close. Still, she was inside, and she was going to have her beer. She was always talking about having an adventure or something, and now here she was, intimidated by a crowded, friendly bar. She drew herself up and plunged on in.
There were no tables, so she pushed her way up to the bar. And, standing at one end of it, with his big prize trophy, a beer and a shot glass in front of him, was Grant Olson. Third time, she thought. That had to be a charm.
Before she could feel too discouraged by the fact that most of the crowd in the room seemed to be focused on shaking his hand, she joined the throng and waited, not patiently, until she was just behind him and to the right. She cleared her throat, but he didn’t turn; she would have to say his name or touch his shoulder, and either one felt wrong. But she could stand there all night, or at least until someone elbowed her out of the way, and he would never notice her at all if she kept clearing her throat like she needed a cough drop or something.
It flashed through her mind that she could just slink away into the crowd again, and maybe that was the wiser plan. Instead, she gripped the edge of the bar like it was a life-sav
ing device and leaned across the eager young man who was edged up close to Grant, who was laughing at some joke the guy on the other side was telling him.
“You looked great out there today,” she said very loudly.
The guy between them frowned, but Grant turned, saw her, and flashed that smile.
“Well, there you are,” he said, like he’d been waiting for her all along. “’Scuse me, partner.” He edged the young man aside. “Get him another beer.” Grant gestured at the bartender, offering the guy a consolation prize of sorts. “You want something?” he asked Anna.
She wanted a lot more than a drink, honestly, but she started there. “Sure. Whatever you’re having.”
The bartender slipped her a shot glass, brimming with something clear, and a mug of Bud draft, the foam spilling over on her hand as she lifted it to her mouth for a taste. She wiped her hand on her skirt and tossed down the shot. It was Cuervo, and it burned her throat, but at least it gave her a reason for the fire she felt flare up inside her, standing so close to Grant there in the crowd.
“Why do you do it?” she asked him.
“Do what?”
“Ride like that. You got thrown—hard—over and over.”
“I’ve been stomped hard, too,” he said, not like he was bragging, just like it was a fact. “Over and over.” He tossed down his own drink.
“You do it to win?” She was genuinely curious; maybe it was some latent journalistic skill coming out, now that she’d been liberated from containing it inside questions like “Is the oatmeal scrub or the rosemary herb better for closing your pores?”
“You don’t do it for the money,” he told her. “You do it for…”
“The rush?”
“You do it ’cause it’s like love. Feel dead without it.”
“’Cause it’s like love,” she repeated after him, and her eyes met his, quite direct in what she wanted, and she could see in his eyes that it was what he wanted, too.
The Cowboy Page 22