Colby moved back, squatting like a cowboy out on the range, looking where the cattle drive might head next or waiting at a campfire for the coffee to boil.
"Gemma Thomas."
"Miss Thomas, it's Wally Wold." Her phone was on speaker. He was very loud. "I'm afraid something's come up and I'm not going to be able to meet you at the time we agreed."
Gemma's heart pounded. Even if she couldn't be held responsible for interviews she'd gone out of her way for who then stood her up, she hated to go back to Marla without the story. Stammering, she said, "Wait!" even though he hadn't hung up. "Is there any way you can meet me after … after whatever's come up?"
From the corner of her eye she saw Colby wince, then shake his head with a rueful grin.
"Little lady, this particular somethin' is goin' to take all night."
He was gone then, leaving Gemma still horrified at the missed interview and appalled at the man's behavior all at once. She glanced at Colby as she put her phone back in her bag and Colby began to laugh out loud.
"Sorry about that. Wally's a coyote, Miss Gemma."
She screwed her face up. "Don't call me that. And what do you mean?"
"Man's a dog. That appointment of his? It's – "
"Oh, I know what it is," she said coldly, trying to get a handle on the blush. "Damn it! Most of my interviews are by phone. It would have been so easy!"
She stood, expecting that would force Colby to move back. He didn't, but now squatted directly in her personal space, his face very close to part of her body she wasn't used to having men at eye level with. Since he didn't step back, she did, colliding with the metal folding chair so Colby shot up smoothly to his feet and caught her hand.
"Steady. You're not going to catch Wally tonight. There's one more day of events, so you can hang out here tomorrow you might catch him. In fact, you can make him late to load out if you're interested in really – interviewing him."
"He's old enough to be my father." She was collecting her goods and her wits at the same time. Then she realized what she'd protested and added, "And I don't want to interview," she said with emphasis, "Him." She kept her eyes on Colby.
He gave her a huge grin. His canine teeth looked a little like fangs, she thought, and just for an instant she got the impression he blurred around the edges, a little bigger, a little darker, a little more hirsute than he'd been an instant earlier.
Then it was the sexy cowboy offering her his arm. "Come on. I believe you could use a drink now. I'll be happy to fill you in on anything Owen left out and I can make up stories about Wally."
She laughed.
"I'll be happy to give you an interview," Colby said, suggestively.
"Thank you," she said, navigating the door of the office. Her pant leg flapped around her mid-thigh. "And I've definitely got questions for you."
There was more than one bar in the fair grounds pavilion. Someone had thought that one through. They picked the first one, and Gemma was glad to take the weight off her leg. The cut hurt.
She was also happy to let Colby put a glass of red wine in front of her. Not her drink of choice, but no need to go native with a beer right away.
She watched him walking back across the rough wood floor to her. He still wore the hat, pushed back on his curls. His broad shoulders and thick chest blocked out much of the rustic décor behind him. Long lean legs in dark but dusty jeans led her eyes to his package and made her think again of the size of his hands.
She forced herself to stop staring as he arrived at the table. His fingers brushed hers when he handed her the drink.
"So how'd you get roped into interviewing Owen Hutch?"
Gemma coughed on the wine. When she studied his face, he gave her a frank appraising look. "What, didn't I look happy to be there?"
His grin turned satisfied, as if he'd proved himself right. "I wasn't there for the whole thing, and when I came back it was – "
"Traumatic," she filled in. "You do make an entrance, Colby Tyrell."
He covered her free hand with his own. His hand dwarfed hers. Everything about him was big, thick and in shape, the muscles heavy, the skin over them smooth but thick. He was solid, like the world could go to pieces around him but a girl would be safe as long as he was there.
….what was she thinking? She caught up with what he was saying.
"Not that you looked unhappy, but you sure didn't dress for rodeo."
She glanced down ruefully at her flayed pant leg. "How about now?"
This time she interpreted his expression with no problem. "I like it," he said, with a grin at her exposed leg.
"You kind of went overboard uncovering the wound."
"I kind of didn't go far enough," he said.
She met his eyes. His were challenging and she wasn't going to back down. Colby was the one to change the subject first.
"You're not a rodeo fan."
Gemma sighed. "I'm not. Grew up rural, left it behind when I came to the city."
"No offense, darlin', but not everyone considers Reno such a huge metropolitan area."
"It works for me. Do you think I was rude to Owen?"
He shook his head, serious. "He wouldn't give a damn if you were. He's interviewed round the clock. But how come you got this assignment, then?"
She shrugged. "It's not like I have to know the subject to write about it. Plus I'm sure a great many more writers have been interviewing – all of you," she said, trying for diplomacy.
"Fair enough."
The way he was looking at her sent shivers through her body.
"So what didn't he answer?"
Last thing she really wanted to do was interview him. But Owen had just touched on something when she'd jerked around and cut her leg open. No harm in asking.
"He said something about Holden being out looking for disappeared shifters."
He nodded but didn't answer. She hadn't asked a question.
"What does that mean and why haven't we heard anything about it?"
"By we you mean, what, the normal population?"
His voice was hard and cold. She'd struck a nerve. She'd also been misunderstood. It was hot in the bar, with lazy fans swinging overhead. She felt sticky.
"By we I mean the general public who aren't in the rodeo circuit and don't know someone, shifter or otherwise, who has disappeared." She sounded more bold than she felt.
But she must have carried it off. He held her gaze for a minute, then nodded. "Come on, I can show you a couple things, and then I'll tell you. Did Owen say you could write about it?"
She flared a little at that. "He couldn't stop me from it, you know. But no, he didn't say it was off the record." It would have been stupid to dangle a carrot like that and take it away.
He nodded, his red brown hair shaggy, gold eyes briefly closed as he drained his beer. "Drink up," he said, challenge in his voice.
One didn't chug wine but she swallowed it in two inadvisable gulps and met his teasing grin.
His eyes were serious.
He let her lean on him as he led her out toward the arena. Her cut leg was somewhat anesthetized by the alcohol. She could imagine Colby's hands other places than supporting her arm and thought that would distract her sufficiently from the pain as well.
They stopped at the edge of one of the chutes where bulls were released into the arena. "You're not riding tonight?" she asked.
"It's earlier than you think," he said. "I'll be riding around eight. It's not that late. Sun's still up."
His hand at the small of her back, he urged her forward a little way so she could stand in the lee of the walls that slanted downward and forced the person or beast inside them through the gates that led to the arena. From the gates she could see over the sloped sides of the chute, up into the stands on either side. Above them rodeo goers ate popcorn and peanuts and hotdogs, drank beer and wine and margaritas. They wore cowboy hats that looked too new and sunburns that looked even newer, and expressions of rabid interest in the young ma
n being bucked fiercely on the back of a bull.
"Isn't that – " she started.
"Jacob Tyrell," Colby said. His hands on her shoulders, he turned her slightly so she looked up into the stands again. "Look at their faces. Are they waiting for him to win?"
The people closest to him were a mixed bunch. There were all ages, all weights, both sexes, and everything from the misplaced hipster to the crinkly skinned western resident. Most of them were watching, hands tense, expressions rapt. But a handful of them –
"They're waiting to see him fall. They're waiting for him to get hurt."
Colby nodded. "And look up there, just over to the left, the man in shadow of the woman with the hat." He didn't have to say which hat. It looked like a confection.
"What about him?"
"Look at his shirt," Colby said.
She squinted, staring up at the man, who turned just then and glared at her, giving her a good view.
The shirt was stained, not in the cleanest condition. But what appalled her was the image. Set against the tan cotton were a pair of silkscreened gold eyes – and a big international circle and slash symbol.
No shifters.
Colby drew her back into the shadows of the chute. Even just his hand on her arm made her hot. She could feel the heat coming off him. She trembled, wanting him. He smelled musky, like an animal. The hand that held her could easily span around her upper arm at least twice. A little breathless, she looked up at him, trying to remember what she wanted to know.
What she wanted to feel. Other than his lips on hers.
"Jacob's here. Owen. Holden's out looking. Eddie's riding. So far, our clan's intact. But shifters are vanishing. No trace left behind." Serious gold eyes stared into hers.
"Why isn't it in the news? Surely every population isn't as rigid and unwelcoming as this one." She waved her hand at the rodeo crowd back and behind them.
"It's spread through the clans. The others don't want it out. Weres don't exactly court the spotlight."
She gaped at him, then gestured back at the arena. "Don't court the spotlight? What do you call what Jacob is doing? What do you call what your whole family did in West Texas with the pigs? Everyone heard about that little stunt."
A grin flickered across his face. "Yeah, that was a good one."
She rolled her eyes. "I'm going to write about this."
Instantly he shook his big, shaggy head and again she saw a ripple of bear, there and then gone. The scent of musk increased. "Holden says no and Owen is holding to that line."
She made a moue with her mouth. "That's nice. Doesn't concern me. I found out about it. No one warned me off."
"I am." He put one hand on her shoulder and she froze.
Did he mean to hold her there against her will? Testing, she shrugged the hand off. He instantly released her.
Good.
"Look, keeping things a secret? Doesn't solve anything. I'm going to write about this. I can write about it with your help or I can write about it by piecing together what I can." She stared up at him, challenging.
Colby looked around as if somebody might come save him. Finally his shoulders slumped and he said, "Fine."
She pulled her phone out before he could change his mind and tapped the recording app. She might not care for digitals, but it was light and easy and fast. "Tell me about the disappearances. Are they from different families? Different weres? When did they start? What do you think is happening to the shifters who vanish?"
If she'd expected him to be nonplussed by the onslaught, she'd have been disappointed. As it was, she'd expected he could hold his own.
"Quite honestly, Miss Gemma, I think the shifters who are vanishing are being killed."
Chapter Four
"It started a couple years ago, slow at first," he said.
They'd found a deserted backstage type corner with an ancient table and decaying chairs. She held the phone easily in her hand, directed at Colby.
"The first disappearances were friends. From a close clan. They don't rodeo, but they work the west, mostly alpine areas, ski lifts and the like. They're fantastic skiers," he added, and she thought she might know who he meant but didn't slow down to make certain.
"Pretty much an entire family vanished, the Carsons and then the Pinions, one after another. At first it just felt like shifters going under the radar, living mainstream lifestyles."
"I thought most did." She watched his eyes, the way they lit when they looked at her and darkened with worry when he looked past her, relating the story. The way his hand held her free hand, fingers playing over the knuckles gently, as if he wasn't aware what he was doing.
As if it felt normal for him to touch her.
There was nothing normal about it for Gemma. Every touch sent lightning bolts through her body, heat racing through her.
"Pretty much. But there's always something. Civil rights are still struggling. There's still lots of attention on the people caught up in the struggle. There always is. Races will always look askance at each other and maybe that's not a terrible thing. Maybe our differences are what makes it dangerous for us to be 'separate but equal' but maybe our differences are what make us who we are."
"That's where I get confused with diversity speeches," she said while taking a note. She'd taken her hand back from him and missed the contact, but wanted to be certain she transcribed everything. "If we say we are all alike with no differences between us, then we lose things from our cultures, don't we? And if we admit our cultures are different, we're accused of not being diverse in our viewpoints."
None of which she'd meant to say. But in the next instant, he said it for her. "Bigotry is never going to go away. Not completely. I think we as people we can get better. Just not completely healed."
She'd passed some kind of test, because when he said that about we as a people, she hadn't blinked.
Of course she hadn't. She had grown up around weres. On her father's ranch. He'd employed cowboy shifters, big bears with gold eyes who kept the coyotes at bay and the rustlers farther off. Who rode the cattle drives and worked the ranch. She'd known them, grown up with them, watched her father lose his ranch when one was accused of murder and he'd gone to bat for the man. Gone to court for him.
Her father, the champion. He hadn't just lost the case. He hadn't just seen the shifter jailed for a crime he didn't commit.
He'd lost his ranch. Almost lost his life. Because the angry crowd had come in the night, no different than a lynching, and set fire to the ranch.
They'd gotten out in time. They'd saved the animals, saved themselves, and possessions weren't important after that.
But Gemma had seen hard faces of neighbors, of good old boys, of cowboys from neighboring ranches. She'd seen the bears shift, berserker rages driving them, seen them plow into the people setting the fire.
Her father had rebuilt. The bears had actually come back.
Gemma hadn't.
She didn't realize she was crying until he wiped her eyes.
Colby tilted her head up to his and kissed her cheeks. Her back was against the wall of the chute in the shadowy underground behind the arena stands. Colby stood in front of her, one hand propped at her head level on the wall of the chute. He looked down into her face, his eyes a hot gold of lust.
Colby (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 3) Page 3