Kane (American Extreme Bull Riders Tour Book 6)

by Sinclair Jayne

  Kane had no say.

  She was moving on. She had moved on.

  See?

  She notched her chin at him, like a childhood dare when he or her brother Bennington, Kane’s best friend, had told her she was too young or too little or too much of a girl to come with them on some fantastic boy adventure.

  Only now Kane ignored her and instead walked around the piece, his eyes intense, his face lit with concentration. She tried to ignore the lines of his body. Failed. So instead she tried to see what he was seeing. She’d lived with the sculpture for three years. She could trace each line with her eyes shut. Remember the placement of each groove, the etched texture.

  The bull rider, left hand high, fingers wide like he was high-fiving God, was parallel and in alignment with the bull’s bucking, writhing body, precariously balanced on one hoof so that it appeared that both man and bull were standing vertical. The rider’s corded thighs gripped the heaving, thrashing animal’s sides, the fringe on the chaps seemed to ripple, and the rider’s sculpted ass kissed air. The two other points of contact were the rider’s hold hand, wrapped tightly in the bull rope that had taken her hours to texturize, and the spurs lightly touching the bull’s sculpted sides.

  The sculpture screamed power and grace; the defined muscles of the bull mirrored those of the rider. The energy from the heaving body, counterbalanced the Zen-like fluidity of the rider.

  The sculpture had garnered a lot of praise and attention after the press release, newspaper article and the glossy brochure that had been circulating around town. Just like the man. Sky swallowed hard, unable to breathe. She’d never thought Kane would see this sculpture. She knew how much it revealed about her feelings toward him, and he didn’t know half of it.

  “Uncanny how you captured the exact angle. Like the photo. Brilliant, Sky. I love it,” he said, finally looking at her, and Sky hated how his praise was like a supernova in her chest, even as it struck terror there as well.

  She hadn’t been able to show the sculpture to her parents. It had been part of her final portfolio, yet she’d left it out of her graduate show because if her parents had seen the sculpture they would have known. And they would have been devastated. Beyond furious. One more way in which she would have hurt them. But in the end, they hadn’t even shown up to her MFA showing. The rift she’d created by leaving home and lying and moving across the country to pursue art had just kept growing. She’d stopped trying to bridge the gap that had become a chasm worthy of the Grand Canyon.

  More secrets. They’d kept so many from her she’d later learned and then she’d added a few of her own.

  “You are so talented, baby. Incredible, but I am not surprised. Not. At. All.”

  Tears pricked her eyes at his sincere and open praise. Stupid tears. Stupid swelling heart.

  Jonas was clearly pissed, and his tension was starting to attract attention. Conversations faded. People looked. Gravitated toward the center of the gallery as if being sucked into the vortex of the building drama. Or maybe they realized the model, one of the top bull riders in the world, had arrived.

  “It’s so raw. The power’s fierce. Radiates,” he assessed her as he made another tight turn, his focus intense, until he flicked his eyes to hers again, and she couldn’t breathe. “You’ve blended metals.”

  “You’re no art critic, cowboy,” Jonas derided.

  “No. And I’m not an attorney but I got one and I do recognize trademark infringement when I see it.”

  “Come again?” Jonas demanded.

  “Kane?”

  “I remember that day, Sky.”

  Obviously.

  “Your first win on the AEBR Tour.” She stated. They hadn’t even been a couple yet except in her dreams.

  “That’s not the first I was remembering,” he said softly. His eyes lit up with something she didn’t want to think about, but the innuendo made her pale skin flush all the way down to her collarbone, which of course Kane noticed. His smile kicked up and ruined her breathing.

  “But for that part at least—” he indicated the sculpture with his head without breaking eye contact “—I was wearing a shirt. And a protective vest although I appreciate the sentiment.”

  He ticked his finger at her and mouthed ‘dirty girl.’

  It was stupid to blush. She was an artist. She’d drawn hundreds of naked men and women of all ages and sizes. And she shouldn’t be embarrassed about her artistic choices, but she felt pervy now—the sculpture was too revealing: man and bull nearly vertical, symbolizing oneness, half man half beast like a Minotaur. The only hint of clothing, of civilization, was the chaps, the fringe giving the illusion of movement. And boots with spurs prickling the tough hide in warning and daring. A dark edge. A hint of power and violence. Danger lived in every line. Spurring was worth extra points. And Kane was all about extra points.

  Sky had still been an undergrad when she’d started the project. Scared. Grieving. Lonely. Broken. Sure she’d never again be whole. Never be loved. She’d felt dead, and the project had started first as a memorial, and yet in the end, she’d felt fierce. Determined to pick up the pieces of her life. Move on. She’d been angry at so many things, unable to articulate any of it, but her roiling emotions had led her to push the symbolism and the sexuality by having the bull rider’s heavily muscled torso bare, to mirror the bull’s musculature.

  As a final flourish, she’d precision etched the tattoo of a bull in full competition mode across the rider’s broad, sculpted shoulders. And then the hat. Always the hat, although Kane hadn’t worn a Stetson that day or ever to compete. And he hadn’t worn one around her until she’d bought one for him for his birthday before their first kiss. She’d used a chunk of her summer job money from teaching dressage lessons to have it custom fitted.

  “Like hell that’s you,” Jonas jeered interrupting her self-flagellation. “Sky’s an artist not a sports fan. And no way in hell can a man do that. Please. Copyright infringement my ass.”

  “Sky was on tour with me that summer. She took the photo. And she sold the rights to the AEBR.”

  Sky winced. She’d been nearly nineteen and stupid. Then her art had leaned toward charcoal and oil pastel sketches and photography. She’d sold the picture because the AEBR had wanted it for a future cover of their annual tour book. She’d been thrilled for Kane to be profiled and then on the cover. She hadn’t even asked for money, just a photo credit. She’d received both.

  “That pose is trademarked by the American Extreme Bull Riders Tour. You want to use it, you gotta ask real nice.” He ignored Jonas and winked at Sky.

  Then he looked away, his eyes caught by someone in the crowd. Sky noticed the tick in his jaw. She followed his gaze, wondering what had upset him as Kane always kept himself in complete control. She’d only seen the tick in his jaw at the hospital the night her brother had been severely injured and Kane had stayed with her while she waited for her parents to arrive.

  What had upset him? All she saw was the doctor who had come to her studio. His attention was riveted on Kane. His expression was so strange that she stared back at him. What was it? Unconsciously her fingers danced, imagined quickly sketching him. Awe? Desperation?

  “But for you…” Kane looked back at Jonas, his gaze cold, face shuttered, all emotion shut down “…and the hospital fundraiser for the Austen Sheridan Orthopedic…” his low deep voice, always smooth so people told him that announcing for the tour or doing TV or radio commentary would be a natural fit once he retired from the tour, roughened “…no way in hell. The sculpture’s mine.”

  Jonas hissed his annoyance. “Get out. Get the hell out or I’ll call the cops.”

  Even though Kane had kept his voice low and perfectly modulated, people were noticing. The attention was probably Kane’s fault for being so masculinely beautiful. Charismatic. He looked like a movie star. It would take a giant screen to contain that much sexuality, confidence and magnetism.

  “Kane,” Sky said softly, wanting to defuse
the situation, but not knowing how, but then she saw Brandy outside the gallery, peering in, holding Montana’s hand along with her car booster seat and a travel bag. Montana saw Sky first, squealed and wrenched out of Brandy’s grip and ran into the gallery, her little light-up sandals tapped out an excited rhythm on the terrazzo floor.

  “Mama!”

  Sky couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t move. It was her biggest nightmare.

  But seeing her three-year-old daughter rush toward her kicked in her mommy instinct and Sky hurried forward, silently cursing the heels and the long hem of the rented dress.

  “Hi. Sorry.” Brandy rushed up, out of breath. “My niece is real sick and had a febrile seizure. My sister called 911 and is in the ER freaking out. Her husband’s on a fire department call, and I don’t want her to have to wait in the ER on her own. I tried calling and texting you.”

  Damn Jonas.

  Sky automatically picked her daughter up and squeezed Brandy’s hand in reassurance. Jonas hadn’t wanted her to carry her phone around today as she greeted gallery guests and donors so he’d held on to her phone and hadn’t let her know the sitter was trying to reach her.

  “Go. Let me know how your niece is doing later,” she said.

  Her throat dried and her heart pounded. She didn’t want to turn around, but knew the one moment she had dreaded above all others had inexplicably arrived. Anxiety was alive slithering through her nerves, knotting her stomach, and for a moment she thought she’d throw up. She could hear her heart thundering in her ears and her voice sounded as if she were underwater.

  Get a grip.

  She was an adult. She had managed her own life for four years without any help, but still her past hurts, her fears, her inability to deal with confrontations crashed around her, and this confrontation was about to reach critical mass at the worst moment and in the worst place imaginable.

  He’ll be shocked. You can deal. It won’t change anything.

  She turned around, shaking, and reflexively clutched Montana to her chest like a shield. Kane stared at her, and for the first time in her life she had no idea what was going on in his head. He looked at Montana, then back at her and then his eyes fixated on her daughter’s large pale blue almost silver heavily lashed eyes that were replicas of his own. So beautiful and so distinctive that no one would have any doubt. Montana’s dark curls also matched her father’s. And her jutting chin with the little indent already starting to form.

  Montana stared back at him. Eyes huge and curious. Then she grinned. Twin dimples whereas Kane only had one.

  “Mommy,” she said, pressing her small hand on Sky’s cold cheek and forcing her to look at Kane, who was pale beneath his golden tan. She could see his chest rise and fall with shallow breaths that made him seem human for a moment. He looked like he’d just taken a toss from a bull and then a hoof to the gut. Maybe another to his chest.

  Montana blissed out in her toddler ignorance took her wet finger out of her mouth and pointed at Kane like he was an unexpected gift instead of her mother’s biggest nightmare. Fear circled like buzzards ready to pick apart her carefully constructed, hard-won life.

  “Look, Mommy, look. Daddy. My daddy.”

  Chapter Two

  Montana sang out the last word crystal clear and then because she had none of her mother’s shyness, tongue-tied tendencies or fear of strangers, she dive-bombed into “Daddy’s arms.”

  Sky should have been prepared for that move. Montana never wanted to be held for long, and maybe if she hadn’t been shaky with shock and wearing heels when she normally only wore athletic shoes to teach, flip-flops when running errands or steel-toed work boots in her studio, she wouldn’t have toppled with her daughter. Kane, being Kane, didn’t miss a beat. He caught his child in one arm, pulled her to eye level. Tucked her in close.

  Sky’s arms were empty. They hung at her sides, useless.

  He wrapped his other arm around her daughter. Father and daughter’s eyes met. Held. Kane’s eyes blazed, and Sky felt the threads connecting them, pulling her child away from her.

  “Give her back, Kane.” She tried to control her voice, but the words bounced around like bingo balls rolling out of the spinning basket. “Right now.”

  He didn’t even spare her a glance. He and his child just stared and stared and stared. Pale, silvery blue-gray mirroring pale, silvery blue-gray. Sky swallowed sickly and stepped forward. She grabbed Kane’s arm. It was a steel cable, with hard, outlined muscles. Kane didn’t budge or seem to notice.

  Jonas said something, but she couldn’t hear over the roaring in her head.

  “Kane. Give her back right now.” She tried to prize his fingers open, but she might as well have tried to bend the upraised hand of the sculpture.

  “Mine,” he said. His eyes blazed with absolute possession.

  “Give her back.” Fear was a smothering cloak. “You have to give her back right now. Kane.”

  Montana had slapped her wet hand on Kane’s cheek. She smiled.

  “Daddy on a horse.” She pointed to the sculpture.

  Kane looked awed. “You want to watch Daddy ride for real, baby girl?”

  Her little dark curls bounced as she nodded enthusiastically.

  He grinned back like this was the most normal situation in the world, and Sky thought she was really going to lose it because there was nothing normal about this, and Kane had a will more honed than anything she could hammer out on an anvil. He was wild, unpredictable, and didn’t know the meaning of back off or back down. He didn’t lean in to anything. He flung himself in, and she so didn’t like the way he was holding her little girl.

  Their little girl.

  Oh. God.

  “Please, Kane. Please you’re scaring me. Give her back now.”

  “No.” The word was quiet, nearly a whisper, but it sounded like a gong in her ears. And his eyes finally cut into hers. They blazed heated mercury and Sky took an unsteady step back.

  “Kane.” She could barely force out the whisper.

  “Hey, asshole. Give the kid back and get out of my gallery before I call the cops.”

  “Call them,” Kane said casually, still smiling at his child. “We’re leaving.”

  “Wait, what?” Sky yelped.

  “My daddy.” Montana pointed to her heart and smiled so eerily like Kane that Sky’s heart skipped a beat, and still seemed to flounder in her chest like a trapped bird in a too small cage.

  “My daughter.” Kane’s eyes blazed into Sky’s. “My woman. My sculpture.”

  And then he picked up The Ride. One-handed. Like it was a box of cereal on a shelf he was going to put in his basket. Sky blinked. Two men had carried the crated sculpture into this gallery last night in a wood box. And Kane now held it tucked under one arm.

  “All of it mine.”

  Kane strode toward the exit of the gallery with the same fluid pace he’d entered only this time he had her daughter and her signature art piece in his hands.

  “Kane, wait.” Sky ran after him, awkward with the long clingy dress tangling around her legs and the heels making her sprint precarious.

  The doctor blocked his path.

  “Kane,” he said quietly.

  Kane didn’t even slow or make eye contact, just neatly dodged around him not even breaking his flow.

  “Wait! What are you doing! Where are you going! You can’t just…” Sky broke off not wanting to alarm Montana although the only person the least bit fazed was herself.

  Kane clicked the alarm on a huge black truck parked illegally. Sky stumbled to a stop. He was really planning to take her daughter. Put her in that monster truck and drive off. Without her.

  “You can’t take her, Kane. Really you can’t.” She lurched forward and grabbed his arm as he slid her little girl into the back seat. “Stop playing games,” she hissed dimly aware that Jonas was standing at the gallery door, phone in hand. “This isn’t funny.”

  “No.” Kane finally turned to look at her, and Sky wished he
hadn’t because the ice in his eyes, and the barely leashed tension in his body, scared the hell out of her. And then her mind and body did what they always did when primal fear kicked in. She froze. She felt herself do it, and she screamed inside. She had to focus. She had to get Montana back.

  “You’re right about that, Sky. Keeping my child a secret is not funny.”

  “You can’t take her.”

  “You did.”

  She opened her mouth but nothing came out. No words. And she couldn’t breathe.

  He really intended to take her child.

  “Un-for-giv-a-ble.” His voice usually so deep and warm and sexy was the slash of a whip. Each syllable was enunciated and cut through her tender flesh. She felt like he’d flayed her soul open. “And I’m not driving off without her, and hell no I won’t play nice and make this easy for you. Mine.”

  She felt so stupid trying to gather her wits in the blazing morning light on the sidewalk of Scottsdale’s arts district with a gallery full of potential clients staring at her while she shook and tried to think of words to make Kane drive out of her life and their child’s life again.

  “Kane.” She forced his name out through cold, stiff lips that no longer seemed to belong to her. His name had always been her talisman when she’d been scared or lonely or hurt. He’d been so strong. So confident. Her opposite. Now she could barely say it, could barely look at him without feeling slashed and burned.

  “Get in the truck, Sky.”

  Relief made her sag. She nearly sat down on the sidewalk. He wasn’t taking Montana away from her.

  She sucked in a shaky breath, tried to lock her knees. “Kane.” Her words trembled and tumbled out of her mouth in a frightened whisper. “You need to let her go. You can’t just take her with no warning.”

  “Like you did?”

  “I can explain.” Sky stared hard at his black boots, handtooled Tony Lama cowboy boots, and winced at her words because really she couldn’t, not in words that he would accept, and she couldn’t make herself that vulnerable to Kane ever. Tell him about her life. Her fears.