by Lilian Darcy
Instead, he looked miserable and/or hung-over, and/or about to have a stress breakdown. He and Jamie both held themselves as stiff as boards, their ropey, muscular frames hard and unmoving in their crisp new jeans, black cowboy shirts and black and tan boots. Two sets of blue eyes, one bloodshot, one clear. Two shocks of dark hair. Jamie’s was getting a little long around the collar.
He took a quick, sideways look at Chet, and Tegan could see that he was worried about Chet, too. Jamie’s smooth bow of a mouth was set flat and his eyes had narrowed, and when he looked back down the aisle at Tegan, they narrowed more. Instantly, she felt to blame, although she didn’t know what for, and went hot and aware all over.
Why did Jamie always make her feel so uncomfortable inside her own skin? He drove her crazy.
She reached them, and tried to smile at Chet, and he greeted her with the words, “I can’t do this, Tegan. I can’t marry you.”
He flashed an agonized look at Jamie, while Tegan hid her painfully intense disappointment and rage. She was pretty sure what that look meant, now, and pretty sure about the meaning of Jamie’s narrowed eyes. He must have tried to argue Chet out of the marriage idea last night, and unfortunately Chet hadn’t been too drunk to remember the arguments this morning. She didn’t know what to do, or how to feel.
Guys, I need this wedding. You know that.
Her visa ran out in six weeks, there was nothing for her at home any more - Ah, jeesh, that still hurt so much! - and Bob Crannock had lost interest in helping her.
When he’d seen her on the rodeo circuit in Australia on a visit there two years ago, he’d made huge promises about her potential in barrel-racing and what he could do for her. He’d brought her over here on a temporary working visa, helped her find a good horse, given her a part-time job so she could make ends meet, hadn’t hit on her once.
Well, not seriously, anyhow.
But although she’d had some great wins, her success so far hadn’t been as fast or as stellar as he’d wanted. She’d made it to the National Finals Rodeo in Las Vegas last December, but she’d only placed fourteenth, and she wasn’t his flavor of the month, any more. There were other, younger, hotter and more well-connected barrel-racers coming through, and he was backing them instead. As far as he was concerned, it was bye-bye, Tegan.
And maybe she should just have sold her horse and her half-share in the horse trailer and gone home, but she had nothing to go home to.
Not now that Dad had sold the farm.
Not now that she understood the painfully false foundation underpinning her whole life. Or was she wrong about that?
Don’t think about it.
She was stubborn and she had something to prove, now more than ever, and she’d given so much to this quest already. Lost so much to it. She wasn’t going to let Bob Crannock’s shallow faith and short attention span dictate her life, nor the fact that she had no real home.
Hence, the wedding plan.
Chet had been the obvious candidate for groom. They liked each other, and yet there was no hint of awkward attraction getting in the way. It was the absolute opposite of how she felt about Jamie – no, wait, except for the attraction bit. Chet had agreed to the marriage plan right away, with an air of deep inner relief, almost as if he’d needed something like this to happen. As if it was a lifeline of some kind.
“Of course I’ll marry you,” he’d said. “Wow. Of course. It’ll be great. So good. Perfect.”
And now he was jilting her at the altar with a look of such pain on his face that she couldn’t let him see that she was mad at him. She just couldn’t. She cared about him too much. There was something deep inside him that called to her instincts and made her want to protect him, the same way Jamie always did.
Maybe she wasn’t mad at Chet. Maybe it really was all down to Jamie, and whatever had happened with the two of them last night at their wretched stag night, and this would be typical because Jamie was a bad influence - a very good-looking, stubborn and immovable bad influence - and she didn’t have the slightest clue why Chet liked him so much.
“It’s okay,” she said to both of them brightly. “I’ll find someone else.”
The man officiating looked a little startled at this, but had probably seen a lot worse. They got themselves out of there, because they’d only had a ten-minute slot booked for the ceremony and another wedding group was probably due in.
Then they got on with their lives.
In other words, they loaded horses into gooseneck trailers, filled guzzling gas tanks with a giant amount of fuel, and hit the road.
Over the next four days, Chet apologized to her about a thousand times, in person, on the phone, via text, in a card. He even sent her chocolates and flowers, just about the prettiest arrangement she’d ever seen, with another card that read, “I have stuff I’m working out. You got caught in the middle. I’m really, really more sorry than you can possibly know.”
All of which only made her blame Jamie MacCreadie more.
CHAPTER THREE
The Copper Mountain Rodeo in Marietta, Montana was one Tegan and her hauling partner Kara hadn’t been to before. This year was their 75th anniversary event, so it was much bigger than usual, with much better purses, therefore drawing more and better competitors. Winning the barrels would be tougher, but more lucrative for whichever girl could pull it off.
Tegan and Kara drove their beat-up Chevy pickup and even more beat-up four-horse Cimarron gooseneck into town at three o’clock on Friday afternoon after the drive from Nevada via Bob Crannock’s bucking stock ranch near Casper, Wyoming.
This was where Chet’s flowers had reached her, and they must have cost him a mint because the florist’s van had had to drive ten miles out of town to get to Bob’s ranch. Tegan and Kara had stayed three nights at Bob’s, helping him with some new horses and keeping their own mares fit, before hitting the road early this morning to start the almost seven-hour drive.
There was rain threatened in the forecast and they hoped it would hold off until they’d set up. Unloading, yarding, feeding and rugging horses in the rain was almost as uncomfortable as riding horses in the rain. Tegan had done all of these things plenty of times, but she always crossed her fingers and begged the weather gods, “Not today.” So far the weather gods were smiling.
Marietta would have been a pretty town in any setting, with its classic western storefronts, but the mountains you could see in every direction made it truly beautiful. Above the square and solid fronts of Nineteenth Century western-style buildings, you would suddenly see a row of rugged peaks, with streaks of snow still visible in the highest and most sheltered places.
It was the first weekend in October, and soon there’d be fresh falls covering the whole range. The closest and most dominant peak was Copper Mountain, after which the rodeo had been named, and its jagged shape featured on all the posters and banners that filled the town.
The rodeo ground lay on the outskirts of Marietta, and looked like any of the scores of such grounds Tegan had seen over the years. She was at home in places like this, and she loved them. The yards and chutes and bleachers made of sturdy metal with peeling paint. The rodeo ring itself, thick with a pungent mix of sawdust and old manure and dirt. Clusters of modest-sized bathroom blocks and canteens and sheds. Open areas out the back that were already beginning to fill with pickups and trailers.
If you lived close enough, you came for the day and went home again at night. If you’d traveled like Chet and Jamie and Kara and Tegan, you camped.
Kara was feeding the horses and Tegan was sweeping out the trailer’s living area, when Chet appeared at its open doorway. “Oh, you still have the flowers?” he said, standing on the top step and leaning on the door handle.
“Well, this place needed something to jazz it up.” She and Kara shared ownership of the trailer, an economical purchase that would still have been way beyond Tegan’s budget on her own. Until recently, that is. She had money in the bank now, from the sale of the far
m back home, and she valued the cash less than dirt because of what it said about her loss. Don’t think about that, Tegan. “I’m telling you, mate, they’ll be three-quarters dead before I throw them out,” she finished, about the flowers.
Chet touched a peach-colored rose petal. “They did a nice job with them. Looks just like the picture.”
“Hey, you’re telling me you chose them by picture, not just by price? I’m touched.”
And still mad at Jamie – because somehow she always found it very helpful to be mad at Jamie - and disappointed in Chet, and hiding all of it because she didn’t want to be unfair.
He must have read her mind, and gave a big groan. “I hate that I did this to you, Tegan. You’re a good friend. The best. It kills me that I let my own stuff - ”
“No… No, Chet!” He looked terrible again, the way he’d looked at the non-wedding. “It was a heck of a lot to ask of anyone.”
She touched him and he flinched, then said in a desperate tone, “I don’t think I can live like this any more.”
“Hey, guys…” came a voice.
Bloody Jamie. Bloody, bloody Jamie.
Chet’s eyes were bloodshot and red-rimmed and he was clearly on the point of saying something hugely important. And Jamie was standing at the open rear door of the trailer - the one that led in from the horse bays - being loud and insensitive as usual. “Bar time… Saw an advertising sign for a place, on the way through town.”
Tegan turned to him, warned him off with her eyes and hissed, “Not now.”
But it was too late. Chet backed away from whatever he was going to say, looking like he’d just been pardoned for a capital crime with the noose already around his neck. “Saw it, too,” he said. “Grey’s Saloon. Can we walk? Is it too far? Or do we have to unhitch and drive? They have the streets barricaded for the dance tonight, so we won’t be able to park close.”
“We can walk,” Tegan said quickly. Maybe on the journey they could grab a minute to finish the talk they’d started, even if Chet no longer thought he wanted to.
She could push him on it, and Jamie could go jump in the lake. If there was a lake. If not, then there were some handy railroad tracks they’d crossed to get to the rodeo ground.
He could lie down on those and wait until a train came.
Or, she and Chet could just hang back while Jamie walked with Kara. They’d had a little skirmish a while back, Kara and Jamie. A flirtation, based on Kara’s brunette prettiness and Jamie’s blue bedroom eyes. Tegan didn’t think it had gone as far as actual sex, but close, maybe, and they’d been a little abrupt with each other for a while afterward. As you were, when you hooked up on the rodeo circuit and it didn’t last and you had to go on seeing each other.
But they seemed to be over that now, and were friendly enough. On Jamie’s part, this meant two-syllable conversations when he was sober, and lame jokes when he wasn’t. Kara had grown up with three brothers and none of it fazed her.
Maybe if Tegan and Kara had a word or two, she could ask Kara to keep Jamie busy on the walk into town, so that Tegan could get Chet to finish talking. Men sometimes talked better when there was no possibility of eye contact.
Didn’t work.
They finished their current bout of horse and trailer and rodeo chores, and walked back into town, passing the locals setting up for the fund-raising welcome dinner being held tonight. The main street ahead of them had now been closed off with barricades, ready for tonight’s street dance later on. There were signs advertising a pancake breakfast and charity auction tomorrow and Sunday, a steak dinner tomorrow. In the park, there were amplifiers for music, long tables and stacks of plastic chairs, and lots of busy volunteers.
Jamie said hello to a couple of them by name – Chelsea, Jenny, Mrs. Collier - and Tegan was surprised. They weren’t rodeo people - or not ones she knew, anyhow. They definitely didn’t look like rodeo people. How come he knew them?
She let the moment of curiosity go, because what she really wanted was to get Chet alone, but Jamie and Chet stuck to each other like grass seeds to socks, and she couldn’t work out which one of them was driving that.
Jamie, she thought. He was protecting Chet, and it was odd that he always seemed to do this, and that he was so good at it, because in any other context Tegan wouldn’t have said that Jamie MacCreadie had a protective bone in his body.
The two men walked in lockstep, two pairs of scuffed boots crunching on the gravel or the blacktop, upper bodies rocking in the way of muscle-bound horsemen who’d had more injuries than they could remember, dark hair just short enough to show two very nice tanned necks, without their hats. Tegan wasn’t going to get anything more out of Chet yet, she could tell.
They stayed in the bar for an hour, downing a tray load of Big Sky beers among the four of them as well as a huge dish of onion rings. It was one of those dark, cozy places with quirky bric-a-brac for decoration. It looked as if it had been serving up beer and food uninterrupted for about a hundred years, and the onion rings were very, very good. Tegan sat back and didn’t say much, just let the different conversations flow over her.
At their own table, the talk was all about the rodeo - who was out for the season, who’d drawn a bad bull on their last ride. Behind her, up at the bar, she could hear snatches of conversation from the locals.
“…can’t believe how well Colton Thorpe’s done for himself…”
“…heard he’s competing in the bull-riding…”
“…thought Annabeth was going to spit nails…”
“…mighty fine looking piece of machinery, that motor-cycle…”
“Mighty fine looking piece of man, you mean.”
“…think it’s his little girl, but I’m not sure…”
Snippets of gossip just floating by on a cloud of beer foam, flavored with crispy, salty-sweet onion rings.
Then they headed back to the park for the welcome dinner, hitting a shower of rain as they walked.
It passed quickly. The sky lightened again just as they reached the open-air setup, and the panicked flurry of activity from the local organizers switched to a sigh of relief and a resumption of normal operations. Country music started playing over the speaker system, and Tegan recognized the delectable voice of Landry Bell, singing Rodeo Nights. Someone else greeted Jamie, a man in his fifties. “Hey, you came for it.”
“Yeah, seemed like I should,” he said gruffly.
“Seen your folks?”
“Not yet.”
“But you will.”
“Course I will.”
“You’re from here?” Tegan said, in amazement as they moved on. He hadn’t said a word about it. Ever. She vaguely knew he was from Montana, but it was a big state.
Still he didn’t say a word. Just shrugged those hard, square shoulders.
Okay, Jamie, great, that’s so informative.
After a moment, he added reluctantly, defensively, “Colton Thorpe’s from here, too. It’s a good area for rodeo. He was my hero, when I was in my teens.”
“He’s the honorary rodeo chair. Pretty big name.”
“I know. Someone said he was riding, too.”
Chet drank as doggedly at the dinner as he had at the bar, and Tegan couldn’t work out for sure if Jamie was trying to keep up with him or trying to hold him back.
Maybe neither.
There was a whole group of them, now. Steer wrestlers, barrel racers, pickup riders. They started to get noisy, along with the locals who were about to head off to the street dance back in town, and it was a fine old night.
Until someone who didn’t know them that well asked her and Chet, “Hey, so, did you two get married?”
They both froze, and Chet looked as if he’d swallowed a pack of razor blades.
“Chet bailed,” Kara said, stepping into the breach. “Decided Tegan was just too much woman for one feeble cowboy to take on.”
“So what happens now about your green card, Tegan?”
“Looking for husband
number two,” Tegan said. She took her cue from Kara and made it as flippant as she could.
But she wasn’t really looking for another green card marriage. That ship had sailed. There was no one else she trusted enough, even as a temporary husband. If she couldn’t find another way to extend her visa within the next couple of weeks, she’d just have to leave. No other choice.
Sell Shildara.
Get Kara to buy out her half of the gooseneck or help her find another hauling partner.
Buy an airline ticket, email a couple of friends in Tamworth or Armidale to see if she could stay with them until she regrouped and worked out her next move. She wasn’t going to stay with Mum and Dad, or Ben. She was still too angry and hurt.
She didn’t want to overstay her US visa, though, because then it would be incredibly difficult to come back legally for another try in the future, and when she thought about just staying in Australia for keeps, with all that this implied about her torn-up roots there, she felt ill.
“Dean? You up for it?” Kara said to one of the other guys. She was doing her best to help, because she could see that Chet’s change of heart was killing him, just as Tegan could. Everyone else except Jamie seemed oblivious. “Wanna marry my travel-buddy?”
Dean laughed and shook his head. He gave Kara a look that said if she was the one in need of a husband he might have been happy to give her a test drive for the job, in bed. She gave him a look in return that said she might have been happy to oblige. This little exchange took both of them out of the picture for pretty much the rest of the weekend.
Jamie had been looking sideways at Chet, trying not to let anyone see. Tegan was probably the only one who could pick up on the alarm in his eyes, because she was alarmed, too. Chet was still hopelessly miserable about ditching Tegan at the altar. She wanted to reassure him about it, but there were too many people listening, or in the way.
Jamie was stirring in his seat, now, going from one laid-back, crooked pose to another in a way that told Tegan he’d had a little too much to drink.