Last Chance Rodeo

by Kari Lynn Dell

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 their 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.

  Wyatt had arranged this ride from the airport to the first rodeo—four hours west of Dallas—and Joe had been forbidden to offer to pay for gas. Whether Wyatt had called in a personal or professional favor Lord only knew, and Joe hadn’t bothered to ask. He snagged his duffel off the carousel, walked out the door, and stopped dead at the sight of the car parked directly across the street, its owner contributing to the traffic congestion in the loading zone as she lounged against the hood, her long, bare legs crossed at the ankles. Oh yeah. Wyatt definitely had personal business with this one. Joe blew out a breath that was half laugh and headed for the car.

  He might not make a great first impression, but he was damn sure going to make an entrance.

  * * *

  Violet swiped away a trickle of sweat that oozed down her temple and glared at the last stinking water tank left to be cleaned. Emphasis on the stink. Whoever used these stock pens last had left water in the tanks to ferment into foul green soup. Violet’s father and Cole drained and upended all of them, propping them on their sides against the fences for Violet and Beni to attack with a hose and a scrub brush while her mother brought up the rear with a bucket of bleach water.

  Violet smelled like the Swamp Thing after a hard day, probably looked worse, and their new bullfighter was due to pull in any time now. Not that she had to impress him, but she was nervous enough about bringing a stranger on board that she’d feel better if she at least combed her hair and put on a clean, dry shirt. She scowled at the green-black slime coating the bottom of the tank, steeling herself to move in, when a flash of canary yellow caught her eye. A Corvette turned into the rodeo grounds and crept along the dusty gravel driveway, its engine grumbling in disdain. Violet’s heartbeat kicked up. Could this be Shorty? She wouldn’t put it past a bullfighter to go for the flash, even if it would be hell to keep the dirt off all that gleaming paint and chrome.

  The car stopped and idled for a moment as if the occupants were inspecting their surroundings—a bare dirt parking lot, the old wooden grandstand, a ramshackle hut that functioned as a rodeo office…and Violet. She was tempted to dive for cover behind the tank until the car passed, but the doors opened instead. The driver emerged first and Violet’s jaw dropped. Wow. Give this woman pom-poms and a pair of miniscule white shorts and she could stroll right onto the sidelines of the next Dallas Cowboys game. Her cloud of brilliant red curls seemed impervious to the humidity, and her elegant nose wrinkled as she surveyed the stock pens. She made a face and what sounded like a joke as a man climbed out of the passenger seat. He responded with a tight smile.

  Definitely not their bullfighter. Shorty was, well, shorter, compact, and dark. Violet judged this guy to be close to six feet, long, lean, and as potentially hazardous as the car he stood beside. His shrewd gaze cataloged every rusty nail and weathered board of the aging rodeo grounds, snagging for a moment on Violet, and then moving on as if she were just part of the scenery. The intensity of that gaze contrasted oddly with his shaggy brown hair, bleached to gold at the tips, and the wrinkled T-shirt that hung loose on broad shoulders. When he turned to reach into the backseat of the car, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see him pull out a skateboard instead of a pair of road-weary duffel bags. Who—

  “Hey, Mommy!”

  A blast of water hit the stock tank and ricocheted, drenching her in slime. She shrieked, whipped around, and a second blast caught her square in the face. Beni cackled in delight as Violet choked and sputtered. She made a lunge for the hose, skidded, slipped, and landed flat on her butt in the middle of a rapidly growing puddle. Beni giggled louder and doused her again as she wallowed around, trying to get her feet under her.

  “Beni!” she heard her mother say. “Give Grandma that—”

  Then a shriek as Beni hit the trigger on the hose nozzle.

  “Benjamin. Steven. Sanchez. You stop that right now!” Violet made another grab for him.

  Beni ducked and dodged, howling like a hyena with the nozzle gripped in both hands, using the powerful spray to fend her off. Suddenly, the water stopped. Beni shook the nozzle and squeezed the trigger. Nothing happened. His eyes went wide and his mouth made an uh-oh shape. He dropped the hose and ran, diving under the fence and tearing past the skater dude, who stood with one hand on the lever of the water hydrant. Violet glanced over at the car then back at the hydrant, at least thirty yards away. He’d covered the distance in the space of a few heartbeats.

  So he didn’t just look fast.

  She started to wipe the water from her face before she realized her hands were coated in rancid mud, which she had now smeared across both cheeks. Awesome. She brushed the drips from her eyebrows with one forearm then squelched across the pen to where the stranger stood outside the fence.

  “Can I help you?” she asked.

  His eyebrows rose. “Looks like it’s the other way around to me.”

  He wasn’t from around here. No sign of a Texas drawl in those lazily amused words. His gaze took a stroll from her bedraggled hair, down the front of her sopping-wet denim shirt, and over her mucked-up jeans and boots before returning to her grubby face. Her cheeks heated under the scrutiny.

  “Thanks for that.” She spared a dark glance for where Beni had disappeared around the end of the bucking chutes, seeking temporary asylum with Cole or his grandpa. “My son and I will be having a chat later. Are you looking for someone?”

  “You, I assume.”

  Violet blinked. “Me?”

  “You hired a bullfighter.” He spread his hands, inviting inspection. What she saw didn’t inspire confidence. His T-shirt was worn through at the collar and the Mint Bar logo was so faded and cracked she could barely read the Hangovers Installed and Serviced tagline. His jeans were, if possible, even more decrepit, and his face was rough with at least a few days’ worth of stubble.

  “You aren’t Shorty,” Violet said, confused.

  “No kidding. I was…” He stopped, a muscle in his jaw working as if chewing off the end of an unappetizing explanation. “Shorty got an opportunity to work Pendleton. I’m taking his place.”

  Her gut went alternately cold then hot as she absorbed the implications. No way. This could not be happening. The one time she stuck her neck out, acted unilaterally to hire an unknown, and he had left them flat. Her father was going to be furious. Come to think of it, so was she.

  “He doesn’t bother to call, give us a heads-up, nothing? Just sends”—her voice climbed an octave and she chopped a hand toward him, flicking mud onto the B of Mint Bar—“whoever? And I’m supposed to just accept it, assume you’re good eno
ugh to turn loose in our arena?”

  His chin snapped up and his deep-set eyes narrowed. “I’m better than anything that’s ever set foot in one of your arenas, sweetheart. But if you want me to leave—”

  Violet drew a breath to tell him yes, and provide detailed directions to exactly where he could go, when a small, damp hand closed around her arm, the grip like iron.

  “Violet.” Her mother’s voice was soft, the tone unmistakable. Mind your manners, young lady. She extended her other hand to the imposter. “I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure. I’m Iris Jacobs.”

  As he accepted the handshake, he angled a smile at Violet that glinted with a grim sort of triumph. “Joe Cassidy.”

  Oh. Oh dear God, no. She hadn’t just… She couldn’t have failed to recognize… But of course it was him. So obviously him that she wanted to head-slap herself. Beni had an autographed poster of Joe Cassidy and Wyatt Darrington on his bedroom wall, for pity’s sake. Violet swore silently, closed her eyes, and prayed the puddle she was standing in would swallow her whole.

  Chapter 4

  Joe Cassidy was going to be trouble. Violet just hadn’t figured out what kind yet. Fifteen minutes on Facebook and she’d learned why he was in Texas. Rumors were flying fast and hard about the blowup between Joe and Dick Browning, starting with Joe leaving the bar with Dick’s daughter-in-law, and ending with Joe punching Dick’s son.

  Drinking, fighting, and adultery. Yep, her dad was real impressed with her decision-making skills. And now, to top it all off, their starstruck rodeo announcer had given Joe a wireless microphone, so instead of lounging around behind the chutes until the bull riding—the final event on the program—he was in the arena, schmoozing the fans. Violet tried not to glance over to where he leaned against the fence chatting with a trio of autograph seekers. Female, of course. They flashed a lot of tanned skin, white teeth, and big hair as they shoved their rodeo programs through the fence. He said something that made them giggle.