Authors: Joanne Kennedy
“Well, change fast.”
Though Roy had way more bark than bite, she changed as fast as she could. It wasn’t like she had to decide what to wear. She’d thought through half a dozen outfits during algebra class, settling on a sparkly T-shirt that would glitter in the sun as she let Flash out of the trailer. Maybe Flash would rear and prance a little. She’d told Brian how hard he was to handle, and she’d seen a spark of admiration in his eyes.
But when she scanned herself in the mirror, turning right and left, she looked disappointingly childish. Brian was a senior. He’d never ask an unsophisticated freshman tomboy out on a date.
Makeup. That’s what she needed. Opening her underwear drawer, she rummaged around and found a bag that held her meager supply of beauty aids: a sample of foundation from the Clinique counter at the Casper mall, an almost-empty tube of mascara she’d nabbed off her mother’s vanity, and a compact of brush-on blush. Leaning into the mirror, she dabbed foundation in her T-zone, just like it said in
Seventeen
magazine, and brushed a little blush onto the apples of her cheeks.
She was just about to open the mascara when Roy pounded on her bedroom door. “You ready yet? We need to get that horse in the trailer.”
“Just a minute.”
For once, she was glad Roy was just her stepfather. A real dad would have charged right into her room and seen what she was doing, probably yelled at her for wearing makeup. But Roy always respected her privacy.
“I’ll load him,” he grumbled.
She heard him thump down the stairs and turned back to the mirror, opening her eyes wide to stroke on a coat of mascara as she thought about how Brian would fall in love with her new longer, blacker lashes.
She was on the second coat when a high-pitched shriek pierced the quiet afternoon. It was followed by a clanging, pounding racket and then another scream, lower this time. A man’s scream.
Flash. Roy.
She dropped the mascara brush and ran down the stairs. Flash was high-strung and nervous, and he hated the trailer. She’d always coaxed him in with treats, letting him take his time. He’d do anything for her, and secretly, she enjoyed the fact that he wouldn’t behave for anyone else. Roy told her she was spoiling him, but he could never get the horse to load.
He must have tried, though. When Sarah ran out the door he was curled in the dirt at the foot of the ramp, blood pooling around his head. One hand was extended toward the trailer, where Flash stood trembling, glossy with sweat. As Sarah watched, he tried to rear and hit his poll on the top of the compartment, then flung up his back hooves in protest.
Somehow, Roy must have gotten in the way of those hooves. His gray felt hat lay in the dust beside him, its crown crushed by a perfectly shaped hoofprint.
Sarah ran to him, but one look at his ashen face told her he needed more help than a teenaged girl could offer. Slamming the trailer door shut on the trembling horse, she ran to the house to call 911, the newly applied mascara turning her tears black as they streamed down her face.
Sarah didn’t know where Brian Humboldt was now. For all she knew, he was in charge of the arena, but this was the first time she’d been to the rodeo grounds since the accident. With Roy gone, she’d focused on a new future—one where fortune didn’t turn on the whims of a nervous horse. Once she’d loved rodeo and ridden horses every day. Now even the smell of saddle leather made her shudder.
She stared at Lane’s hat lying in the arena and mouthed a quick prayer as a couple of cowboys ran over and knelt beside the unconscious cowboy. Lane’s hand twitched, then waved away his would-be rescuers.
Thank
God
, she thought.
I
couldn’t take it if it happened again.
The minute the thought crossed her mind, she wanted to smack herself. How could she think of her own feelings at a time like this? She forced herself to focus on Lane’s body, lying in the dust. She thought about his eyes, his smile, his face. His butt in those jeans.
No, wait. That was almost worse. Self-preservation and sex—were those the only things she ever thought about?
Yes.
Lane rose to his hands and knees, his head hanging low, his back arched in pain. Silhouetted against the sunbaked arena, the man who’d been the picture of confidence that afternoon looked as utterly beaten as any man Sarah had ever seen. She felt tears prick the backs of her eyes.
That was more like it.
She swatted at her eye with the back of one hand and sniffled.
One
extreme
to
the
other.
What was she crying about? She didn’t know Lane, not really, and what little she knew about him she didn’t like. But he seemed so strong that seeing him hurt was almost physically painful.
His first try at standing failed and he fell to his knees. His chest heaved as he braced himself and tried again, slowly rising to his feet. He lifted one hand over his head and waved to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd, then stumbled a few steps in the wrong direction. Sarah clasped her hands to her chest and watched him fall again just a few yards away from her spot at the fence.
She was jolted back to reality by the pounding of hooves. A pickup man on a sturdy gray gelding loped up and skidded to a halt right in front of her. Sliding down from the saddle, he scanned the crowd and finally nodded to Sarah.
“You,” he said. “Come on through and hold my horse.”
His tone was so authoritative she obeyed without thinking, ducking between the metal poles to stand at the horse’s head. A medical team surged into the arena and the pickup man helped them lift Lane onto a backboard. He seemed to regain consciousness and tried to sit up.
Too
ornery
to
die
, Sarah thought. But then he collapsed again.
It was hard to watch. Sarah stroked the neck of the horse who stood motionless beside her, regarding her stoically through a pale blue eye set in his white face. She was surprised by the softness of his sun-warmed pelt and how comforting the horsey scent of him felt.
The medics lifted the backboard and she realized with a start that Lane’s eyes were open and fixed on her. God, she was probably the last person he wanted to see. He probably thought he’d died and gone to the Carrigan Corporation version of hell.
Tears threatened again, but she blinked them back and gave him a tentative smile. The medics whisked him away before she could tell if he’d been looking at her or simply staring at the sky.
“Let’s have a round of applause for our boy Lane Carrigan,” the announcer said in his down-home twang. “That’s what we call the cowboy spirit here in Wyoming, the real cowboy spirit.”
Sarah braced herself for some mention of the corporation or a comment on his interview the day before, but the announcer was apparently done with Lane. The pickup man returned for his horse, and the crowd’s attention returned to the clown, who had brought out a goat on a leash and was kneeling in front of it as if proposing marriage. He presented a bouquet to the animal, who stretched his neck out and took a big bite of the flowers. The crowd laughed and Lane’s wreck was forgotten as if it had never happened.
Sarah ducked back under the fence and edged through the crowd, following the signs that pointed toward the Justin Sports Medicine Clinic under the grandstand. The venue had turned a concession stand into a makeshift hospital, with a few folding cots laid out for the inevitable cowboy casualties. The scent of antiseptic burned in her nostrils, making her stomach tighten and twist. The scent of blood and sweat overlaid the smell of horses and cheap concession food, and she wished she’d taken one more breath of fresh air before she’d stepped into this space.
Maybe she should just go back to the truck and wait. Lane was sitting on the edge of a cot with his back to her, so he hadn’t seen her yet. He’d doffed his shirt and his bare shoulders were hunched slightly, as if protecting his ribs.
A short, bandy-legged doctor in a cowboy hat glanced up from the bulb of a blood pressure cuff and Sarah realized with a start it was a woman, dressed in the cowboy uniform of chambray shirt and jeans. Only her white coat and the stethoscope draped around her neck separated her from the rest of the crowd.
The world of rodeo was still overwhelmingly male, and Sarah felt a stab of something like sisterhood as the woman grinned, bright eyes dancing, and set one hand on Lane’s bare shoulder. “Well, this’ll make you feel better. You got a visitor. And it’s a girl!” She widened her eyes in mock wonder and grinned. “There’s a surprise for you.”
Lane turned and Sarah was stunned by the way the harsh fluorescent lights emphasized the prominence of his cheekbones and the deep set of his eyes.
“You okay?” she asked.
Dumb question. The man had just been gored. Of course he wasn’t okay.
***
“I’m fine.” Lane tried not to wince as he said the words. His shoulder was killing him, and his ribs hurt every time he tried to breathe. But he was fine, he really was. Pain was a part of rodeo, going hand in hand with the adrenaline and the cheers of the crowd.
Sarah looked appalled and he wondered just how bad he looked. “You got some dirt on your pants,” he told her. “Makes you look almost human.”
He gestured toward a row of plastic chairs set against the cinder-block wall, using the arm opposite the bruise. He kept the other one cradled in his lap, holding it motionless until he could figure out just how badly he’d been hurt.
“You might as well sit down,” he said. “Doc Myrna’s probably going to torture me for a while.”
The doctor swatted his good arm. She was a fixture at rodeos and could set a broken bone faster than most doctors could take your temperature. But she wasn’t much for sympathy.
“Sit still,” she ordered.
He stared straight ahead while she shined a little light in his eyes. “Didn’t anybody ever tell you to first do no harm?” he asked.
“Didn’t anybody ever tell you not to insult the lady with the white coat?” She poked him in the ribs with her index finger. “That hurt?”
“You bet it does. Sadist.”
“Whiner.” The doctor turned to Sarah. “You the girlfriend?”
Sarah straightened, ready to issue a denial, but Lane beat her to it. “No, she works for my brother. I think she’s supposed to make sure I behave like a good little Carrigan.”
The doctor slapped her leg and hooted. “You need a keeper all right.”
To his surprise, Sarah grinned. “I’m not keeping him. I’m throwing him back.”
Maybe she wasn’t such a priss after all. He’d sensed a sharp intelligence under her tightly wound demeanor, but he hadn’t expected her to tease him with the kind of good-natured joshing the other cowboys dished out. She fit into this world surprisingly well.
“She’s giving up,” he told the doctor. “Can’t handle me.”
“She’s gonna have to learn,” the doctor said. “You’re gonna need a ride home.”
“I’m driving.” Lane grunted.
“Not after I get done with you, you’re not,” the doctor said. “This is gonna hurt.” She looked up at Sarah. “Pulled a tendon in his arm, maybe tore it. Bruised those ribs real good too, but I don’t think they’re broke.”
She busied herself fashioning a sling with competent but not terribly gentle hands while Lane tried to figure out which hurt worse—the wreck itself, or the doctoring afterwards.
“Take two of these.” The doc handed him a small white envelope. “And let your lady friend take that beat-up carcass of yours back home.”
“Keep your pills. I’m not taking that stuff.” He slid off the table, which jarred his injured arm and sent a bolt of pain rocketing through his ribs. Sarah grabbed his good arm, but he shook himself loose.
“Yeah, you are.” The doctor snatched the envelope from him and shook one into her palm. “It’s an anti-inflammatory. You want to ride tomorrow, you’ll take it.”
He grumbled but obeyed when she handed him a Dixie cup of water.
“Tomorrow?” Sarah turned to the doctor with wide eyes.
“You can try and stop him, but I doubt you’ll have any luck.”
“How can he be that… that…”
Lane tried not to look smug as she fished for the right word and resisted the impulse to help her out. Brave, maybe. Courageous. Indomitable.
“That
stupid
,” she blurted out.
“It’s a cowboy thing.” Doc Myrna walked Sarah to the doorway, both women ignoring Lane as he trailed behind them. “You can’t do a damn thing about it. They got to learn on their own.” She shrugged. “Just get him home and take good care of him. That’s about all you can do.”
“I’m right here,” Lane protested. “And I can take care of myself.”
“Right. That’s why you’re thinking of getting back on a bull tomorrow,” Sarah said. “But Doc, I’m not taking care of him. I told you, I’m not his girlfriend.”
The doctor gave her a saucy wink. “Give him a couple of these and he’ll think you are.” She handed Sarah another pill envelope. “They’re for pain.”
Sarah glanced back at Lane. He’d hunched his shoulders, probably to protect his injured rib, but he straightened up and did his best to look unconcerned when he caught her gaze.
“I’m fine,” he said again.
The two women eyed him, then looked at each other and executed simultaneous eye-rolls.
“Anything wrong with leaving him alone for the night?” Sarah asked.
“Not for his sake, but maybe for yours.” The doc winked again. “I saw you looking, girl. That’s some prime, Grade A cowboy you got there.” The smile faded along with the good-natured gleam in her eyes, and she patted Lane’s good shoulder with a surprisingly gentle hand. “Take care of him, okay?”
“How bad is it?” Sarah asked as soon as she and Lane were out of the doctor’s earshot.
Lane scuffed his feet and shrugged, wincing as he lifted his shoulder. “I’m okay, but I could use some help getting my gear. Somebody probably grabbed it for me, but by morning they won’t remember they have it.” He tugged at the sling. “And carrying it’s going to be a problem.”
Great. She was with the most powerful, muscular man she’d ever met and she was going to have to carry his bags.
He strode confidently toward the area past the stands where the cowboys parked their trucks and horse trailers, forcing her to trot to keep up. Vehicles were scattered haphazardly around the wide, dusty lot, some lit only from within, some running with lights beaming out into the night. The sharp, acrid scent of exhaust overlaid the earthier scents of cows and horses as a big diesel pickup rumbled past.
“Hey.” A cowboy seated on the tailgate of a parked truck gave Sarah a friendly smile. He was rolling a cigarette, something he’d evidently done many times before, since he didn’t watch his hands as they pinched and twisted. He watched her instead, his eyes flicking up, then down, scanning her from head to foot. “Who’s your friend, Carrigan?”
Lane ignored the question. “You seen my stuff? Those EMTs hustled me out of there without my gear bag.”
“I got it.” The cowboy reached back into the bed of the pickup with one hand and tossed a green canvas duffel at Lane. Instinctively, Sarah stepped in front of him and caught it. It was surprisingly heavy and she stepped back so fast she almost fell. Lane caught her, holding her tight against his chest.
“Who’s this?” the cowboy asked. “New girlfriend?”
Lane didn’t seem to be in any hurry to answer—or to let her go. She could feel his breath stirring the hair on the back of her neck, tickling her ear. She jerked away and slung the bag’s frayed canvas strap over her shoulder. “Nope.”
“Good.” The cowboy thrust the finished cigarette between his lips. It bobbed as he spoke. “You want to go get a beer, hon?”
“She’s with me,” Lane growled.
“Thought you said—”
“I said she’s with me.” Lane grabbed Sarah’s arm just above the elbow and half pushed, half pulled her away from the cowboy. She shrugged him off, but it was too late to stop heat from rocketing through her body, beginning at the place where he’d touched her and bouncing around to various body parts like a pinball racking up a high score.
What was
that
all about? Sure, he was sexy, but he was everything she didn’t want. A cowboy. Worse yet, a rodeo cowboy. They were adrenaline addicts, risk takers. The last kind of person she wanted to let into her life.
It was just chemicals that made him seem so—so tempting. Testosterone and estrogen, scientific and inevitable. The setting, the scent of leather and horses—it was all so dang masculine. And the touch of his hand was a turn-on for the same reason it annoyed her: he was domineering, overpowering.
It made her want to prove him wrong. Do a little domineering of her own.
Where the hell had that thought come from? She didn’t go for domination on either side of a relationship, did she? She liked men like Eric—polished and civilized.
“You cowboys have a little problem with testosterone, don’t you?”
“Some of us do. I don’t.”
“Oh, really.”
“Really.” He looked down at her, then back at the cowboy who was leaning against his pickup clearly enjoying the rear view of Sarah walking away. “You want me to go back there and knock him out?”
She rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. No testosterone problem here.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you’re being irrational.”
“What do you mean? He was rude to you.”
“Why would that bother you? You’ve been nothing but rude to me since we met.”
“Not that kind of rude.” He looked almost contrite, staring down at the gravel-strewn dirt lot as they walked. “Well, not really. Besides, I have reason to be rude to you.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. You came in here from God-knows-where, cozied up to my brother, and messed up my family. Messed up my life.”
“I’m not cozying up to anybody. And I’m not the one messing up your life. You’re the one who trashed your own company on TV.” She slipped her hands in her pockets. “And don’t try to tell me your family is your life.”
“Isn’t yours?”
She winced.
Only
my
sister. She’s all I have left.
“Family’s always part of your life, whether you want them to be or not.” She shoved her hands deeper in her pockets. “But if a messed up family means your life is messed up, I’m a train wreck like you’ve never seen.”
“What’s wrong with your family?” He actually looked concerned, and she had to squelch an impulse to tell him—about her sister, about herself, about all the ways she’d failed her own family after her stepfather died.
“Never mind.” She tossed her hair and hoped she looked casual and at ease, not nervous and flighty like she felt. “We’re not talking about my family. We’re talking about yours.”
“Right. Because your family’s probably not exactly fascinating. Where you from? New York or something? Your family’s probably got the permanent pinkie cock.”
“The
what
?” So far as she could see, it was the cowboys who had the permanent—whatever.
“The pinkie cock.” Lane lifted his hand and mimed sipping from a cup, his little finger thrust out in an exaggerated imitation of an aristocrat drinking tea.
She smacked him in the arm, then remembered she was hitting an injured man and laid her hand over the spot she’d struck. “Sorry. Forgot.”
“Didn’t hurt.” He sounded unconcerned, but he was speaking through clenched teeth. “But for a pinkie-cocking girl, you pack a wallop.”
“I’m tougher than I look.”
“You’re different than you look.” He gave her one of those appraising stares, but this one felt even more intimate than before. It was like he was seeking out who she was deep down, not just what she’d be like in bed. She fumbled with the gear bag so she didn’t have to look back.
“If this business with your brother ruined your life, you’re not tough at all,” she said. “He figured you didn’t care about it. You never returned his calls.”
“I didn’t know what he wanted. Figured it was just more Carrigan bullshit.”
“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I can tell your family’s everything to you.”
“Well, it seems to be everything to
you.
And I still don’t understand that.”
His fifth wheel was parked on the edge of the lot, the gaudy gold Carrigan logo glinting in the fading light of the sunset. She remembered how he’d asked if she was “something more than an employee” and stopped feeling bad about hitting his hurt arm.
“I’m not taking anything from your family, Lane. An honest paycheck, that’s all. I’m just doing my job.”
“And that makes everything okay, right?”
“It’s what I have to do, so yes, it does.” She tightened her lips. “If you’ve been shut out, it’s not my fault.”
“I wasn’t shut out. I was never in. My father just trotted me out like a prize pony every once in a while.”
“Like Whiplash.” She couldn’t help smiling.
“What?”
“Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey. He rides a dog around the arena, does some rope tricks. They trot him out—I don’t know, what you said just made me think of him.”
He lowered his brows. “How do you know about that? You a rodeo fan?”
She flushed. “Of course not.”
“Hardly seems like your kind of thing. And anyway, I’m not a monkey.”
He reached for the gear bag, lifting it as effortlessly as if he’d never been hurt.
“Where’s the sling?” she asked.
“Took it off.” He flung it on the bed along with the gear bag.
“Doesn’t your arm hurt?”
“Nope. You want to come in? I need to check on my dog.”
“No, I’ll wait.” What did he think she was, stupid?
Lane stepped inside and whistled. “Willie? Come on, Willie.”
Sarah laughed. “Does this work very often?”
“What?”
“Getting girls to come to your trailer to see your Willie.”
He didn’t answer, just called again, sounding slightly muffled from the back of the trailer. “I can’t find him.”
“And I suppose you want me to help you look.”
He reappeared at the door. “He’s probably out visiting the barrel racers.”
“Yeah, right. I bet he does that a lot.”
“He does, actually. Sociable little dude.”
Sarah snickered, but he didn’t seem to notice as he jumped the steps and relocked the door.
“So,” he said. “Beer tent?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “You were going to show me something good about your world tonight. You had all that talk about community, but the only cowboy I’ve met tried to steal your girl.” She grimaced. “Worse yet, he assumed I
am
your girl.”
He grinned. “Well, you are a woman, princess. And you are walking beside me.”
“Behind you, actually.”
He paused and waited for her to catch up. “Sorry.”
He sounded like he meant it, but she couldn’t tell if he was going to fling another zinger her way because his eyes were hidden in the dark shadow cast by the brim of his hat. “You know, you’re right. This hasn’t exactly been the best of the West.”
He set off again, but this time he eased his pace so she could keep up. They passed the grandstand, heading toward the pens where competitors kept their horses. “Want to take a look at the horses?”
She shook her head so fast she almost gave herself a case of whiplash. “No. I’m…”
Dang. What could she tell him?
Maybe it would be good to tell somebody the truth for a change. “I’m afraid of them.”
“Really? I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”
She shrugged, suppressing a faint glow inside at the compliment.
Fearless.
That’s what she wanted to be. What she’d been, once. But fear ruled her life these days. Fear of poverty. Fear of losing control. Fear of failure.
Because she’d failed her family back when Roy died. All the way home from the hospital after his death, she’d listened to her mother rant about Flash, about how dangerous he was. He should be put down, she said. Sarah had convinced her to call the sale barn instead of euthanizing the horse, but her mother had still insisted that Flash would stay in the trailer until they came to take him away.
It was the one time in Sarah’s life she was glad her mother reacted to stress by drinking herself into a stupor. With her little sister asleep and her mom passed out, there had been no one to stop her from sneaking out to save Flash.
***
The stallion’s coat had been hot and damp, lathered with sweat from the stress of staying so long in the trailer. She’d whispered soothing words to him until he calmed, nudging her pockets for treats like his old self. Then she’d walked him to the barn and groomed him slowly and carefully in a slip of moonlight that slanted through the door. At first he’d spooked and sidestepped, but she’d stroked him until he stood quietly. Nothing but the tension rippling under his skin told her how the day’s tragedy had affected him.
“I’m scared too,” she’d told him. “But it’s going to be okay.”
She’d saddled him slowly, methodically, taking comfort in the familiar motions and hoping the horse did too. It seemed like it, because she could feel the knotted tension in his mind giving way as she slipped on a bridle with a sweet iron snaffle bit and led him outside. Then she’d slipped her foot in the stirrup and grabbed the saddle horn, just like she had a hundred, maybe a thousand, times before.
She’d visualized this ride all the way home from the hospital. She’d ride him up to the house, spin him right and left in the front yard, then holler to her mother to watch so she could prove he was safe as a child’s pony. Or maybe she’d ride him into the sunset like a movie cowboy, leaving her old life behind and taking him with her into some unknown future.
Somehow, some way, she’d save him from going to the sale barn.
But as she shifted her weight to the foot in the stirrup, Flash rolled his eyes back and whinnied, a hoarse scream tearing through the night. She’d clung to the reins, knowing that if she let him go he’d bolt off and run until a semi on the highway stopped him or a barbed wire fence cut his legs and tangled him to a stop.
He spun to face her and reared, and in that instant she could only think of Roy, broken in the dirt at the foot of the trailer ramp.
She’d been afraid of a horse for the first time in her life. She’d barely been able to hold him, but he’d finally bucked out and stood trembling, docile as a kitten. With shaking hands, she unsaddled him and led him back to the trailer.
He’d loaded without a fuss, just like he’d always done for her, and she’d thought again of how different things would be if she hadn’t been so selfish, if she hadn’t thought it was so important to primp and preen for some boy she barely knew. Roy was dead. It was her fault. And the next day somebody from the sale barn hitched the trailer to a growling diesel pickup and took Flash away for the last time.
Flash had sold for two thousand dollars—a tenth of his value. And no wonder: the last thing he’d done was kill a man. It didn’t help that the various stories Sarah had told Brian Humboldt about how hard he was to handle had made their way around the small world of horse traders.
Everything Roy had brought into their life was gone, swept away by his death and her foolishness. Everything he’d worked for was gone.
All because Sarah couldn’t work up the courage to ride a horse.