A Dark & Stormy Knight: A McKnight Romance (McKnight Romances)

by Quint, Suzie

  “This ain’t about Georgia. I’m explaining why Eden’s at the ranch for the summer.”

  “Well, that explains the ban on cussing at least.”

  “Yeah. She’s here until Georgia’s mama recovers enough for them to head back to Dallas.”

  “So we’re still talking about Georgia,” Terry said.

  “No. We’re talking about Eden. Daisy’s been training a barrel racer, and Eden wants to ride her in a rodeo.”

  Terry grinned, which seemed to relax him. In his world, nothing was more absorbing than talking rodeo. “Is Georgia going to let her?”

  Sol glowered. Maybe he was beginning to lose his sense of humor. Just a little. “Why does everyone seem to think it’s up to Georgia? My opinion counts. If I decide she can ride in a rodeo, she’ll ride.” Yeah, when pigs grow wings and fly south with the geese. But he wasn’t telling Terry that.

  Terry laughed. “Where’d you get the idea your opinion counted? Georgia decides everything about Eden. Always has.”

  Sol folded his arms over his chest. “Well, that’s changing.”

  He could see Terry fighting more laughter. As predicted, Sol’s sense of humor was fading fast.

  “When did you get Georgia’s permission to grow a set of balls?”

  Sol nearly choked. Terry’s question hit way too close to the mark. “I thought we weren’t going to talk about Georgia.”

  “You’re right,” Terry said, but he still wore an amused smirk. “So tell me about the horse Eden wants to ride.”

  Sol told him about the mare. Somehow, they segued into talking about the local horse rescue where Daisy volunteered. After that, they moved on to rough stock, stock contractors, and the McKnights’ bucking bull business.

  At a deeper level, Sol’s thoughts kept coming back to what Terry said about his lack of balls. He hated admitting, even to himself, that it was true. He let Georgia have her way about everything.

  And they weren’t even sleeping together.

  He was surprised they hadn’t revoked his man card years ago.

  ###

  The festivities were well under way when Sol and Terry pulled into the rodeo grounds. They’d both called it much closer than that in years past, arriving with barely enough time to pull out their equipment, jump on their designated bulls, and ride. There were advantages to being the last event of the night. Even so, they didn’t have any time to goof off.

  They found the locker room, which was really more of a wide, open space behind the arena where the other riders were getting ready. The muted sounds of the announcer and the crowd provided a steady background that quickly faded from Sol’s awareness.

  He hadn’t seen most of these guys in a while, but to varying degrees, he knew them all. He and Terry found an open corner and dropped their equipment in a pile as they exchanged greetings. Sol sorted through his stuff while Terry went off to check in with the rodeo secretary and find out which bulls they’d drawn.

  He’d rosined his bull rope, donned his spurs, and was taping up the knuckles of his riding hand when Terry returned, dropping down beside him. “You are the luckiest son of a bitch I know. You drew Colonel Mustard.”

  Yeah. Lucky. That was his middle name. More like Sol Not-So-Lucky McKnight. He groaned as he bit into the edge of the tape. The nick made it easy to tear the tape and finish with his knuckles. “Colonel Mustard? Fuck a damned duck.”

  Terry tsked and wagged a finger in Sol’s direction. “Language,” he said in his best schoolmarm voice.

  “Fu—dge,” Sol corrected. He started taping between each finger.

  “I don’t know why you’re swearing anyway. You got a rank bull. You could score good on him.”

  “Yeah.” He wrapped strips of tape between his fingers to support his hand and to protect the calluses. “Or I could end up eating dirt like I did the other two times I got on him.”

  “Oh, yeah. That’s right.” Terry sat down on the bench beside him, picked up Sol’s rosin, and started applying it to the tail of his bull rope. “You pulled him in Mesquite that time.”

  Yeah. Right after Georgia threatened to kill him for running off one of her potential suitors. That actually hadn’t turned out so bad. He’d traded a mild concussion for a decent score, and in spite of her threat, Georgia had watched over him that night.

  “And last season in Fort Worth on that damned bull. I thought I tore my rotator cuff.” And missed six weeks of the season because of it. “And that was after he tried to beat me stupid against the inside of the chute.” Now that he thought about it, he’d seen Georgia the day before that ride, too. Maybe Terry was on to something when he’d said Sol rode like shit when she was around.

  In the past two years, his injuries seemed to come at regularly spaced intervals, just close enough to keep him down in the rankings. He’d work on strengthening his upper body then injure his knee, so he’d work on his legs, and he’d hurt his hand. He’d get that squared away, then his shoulder would give him grief.

  What was it again that he loved about this miserable lifestyle?

  “Sheesh, you gotta get your head straight, buddy,” Terry said. “You get on this bull’s back thinkin’ you’re going down, sure as shit, you will.”

  He was right. Sol needed to see Colonel Mustard as a challenge, a chance to score well, and get jacked up about it.

  Near them, Wayne Baxter started taping up his knee. Only in his second year of riding in the PRCA, Wayne was just a kid in Sol’s road-weary eyes, but he’d been on the circuit long enough to already be injured. He grimaced in obvious pain.

  Across the room, his older, more experienced road partner, Don Ames, shook a plastic prescription bottle so the pills rattled. “Need some cowboy candy?”

  Wayne hesitated a second then nodded. He caught the container neatly in his cupped hands. “Oxycodone,” he read from the label. “Fucking-A.”

  “Hey, none of that language.” Terry clamped his hands over Sol’s ears.

  Sol swatted him away.

  Don snorted. “Since when does Sol have virgin ears?”

  “Yeah, ‘coz he sure don’t have no virgin tongue,” another of the cowboys chipped in. Their laughter had a good-natured quality.

  “Sol’s trying to quit swearing, y’all,” Terry said. “He’s got a daughter with impressionable ears.”

  “Oh, man,” Don said with a groan. “I go through that every time I get home.”

  “Stars and bars,” one of the younger cowboys murmured. Everyone stopped and looked at him. He looked up and blushed. “That’s what my dad says.”

  “When we were kids, my sister called me a futher mucker,” Wayne said. “Dad washed her mouth out with soap anyway.”

  “When someone cuts my mom off in traffic, she calls them a stupid gerbil,” one of the other cowboys offered up.

  “Holy sheepdogs,” another one said.

  “My granny used to say, ‘sugar balls.’“

  “Rats and beans. That’s my wife’s favorite.”

  “My wife says, ‘mother flower,’“ came another offering.

  “Son of a biscuit,” came in the midst of their laughter.

  “Son of a biscotti,” someone else said, hot on the heels of the biscuit remark.

  “Son of a tea cozy,” another threw out.

  “Ahole,” one said, pronouncing the e so it sounded Spanish.

  “Holy Hannah in a hail storm.”

  “My wife adopted ‘some beach’ from that Blake Shelton song.”

  Sol didn’t think Georgia would go for that, but he liked it.

  “My sister uses Frappuccino and Bolsheviks,” another cowboy said. “Oh, and shish kebab.”

  “Butterscotch.”

  “Jesus wept.”

  Sol grinned. His mama used that one, usually when her kids were trying her patience beyond a reasonable point. He fastened a spur to his boot.

  “Cain and Abel.”

  “Snickerdoodles.”

  They were coming fast and furious and wit
h so much laughter, Sol couldn’t hear them all. He wouldn’t be able to remember half of them, but then, he didn’t need to. He only needed enough to get him through the rest of the summer.

  Sol’s gaze landed on Rory Calhoun, who sat silent in the corner. Rory shook his head. “Don’t look at me. The women in my family swear worse than all of us here put together.”

  One of the other cowboys snorted. “You should hear my sister. She’s in the Army. When she comes home on leave, about the time she has to go back is when she can finally make a sentence in front of Mama that won’t get her backside tanned.”

  The guys were laughing about that when a cowboy appeared in the doorway. “Y’all ready to lock and load? It’s nearly time. Rory, you’re up first. Then Don and Terry.”

  The bull riders chuckled as they settled down to their final preparations, broad smiles painted on their faces.

  While they’d been exchanging swearing substitutes, Terry had finished his preparations. He slapped Sol’s thigh with the back of his hand. “C’mon, partner. Let’s roll.”

  ###

  Terry’s bull, Dapper Dan, was rank—not as rank as Sol’s—but Terry rode him sweet and scored an eighty-six. Good enough to get him in the short round.

  Six more riders were up before Sol. Some guys needed time to get “in the zone.” Not Sol. If he gave himself too much time, he’d overthink the ride, so he helped out at the chute.

  When there were only two riders ahead of him, he pulled his gloves from his hip pocket and tied them on with a rawhide cord. A few minutes before his bull was run into the chute, he did some stretching exercises, took a couple of deep breaths to oxygenate his muscles, and made a last check of his gloves.

  The rodeo loaded two alternating chutes, cutting down the waiting time between rides. Colonel Mustard, nearly one ton of muscle, bone, and attitude covered by a hide the color of Grey Poupon, passed through a railed alley and into a nine-foot-long, three-foot-wide chute. When the gate clanged shut behind him, he rammed a shoulder into the heavy metal of the arena gate on his left, testing it for weaknesses. Ornery bastard.

  Sol jumped onto the eighteen-inch-wide catwalk on the back side of the chute. He ran his tongue over his mouth guard, put his foot on the bull’s back, so the bull would know he was there, then eased himself down. His feet rested on the horizontal slats of the chute, his spurs carefully kept away from the bull’s hide.

  Because Colonel Mustard was well known for acting up in the chute, a spotter grabbed Sol’s belt in case he needed to be pulled out. Terry appeared on the other side of the rail. That was a stroke of luck. Terry knew how Sol liked his rigging. They worked together, pulling the rope tight, making sure the clangy cowbells were properly set under the bull. He pulled the rope through his gloved fist, spreading the rosin, warming it so it would be tacky.

  The bull shifted, banging into the side of the chute. With his boots on the slats, Sol was able to stand, which kept his leg from getting mashed between the eighteen-hundred-pound bull and the chute. The hand on his belt tightened, prepared to pull him out, but Colonel Mustard calmed, and Sol settled onto his back again.

  He aligned the pinky finger of his left hand with the bull’s backbone and finished his wrap, laying the rope between the ring finger and his pinkie. A suicide wrap, it was called because it gave him a nearly unbreakable grip on the rope. The downside was that it also made it harder to let go if he needed to. He’d explained that to Georgia once, way back when they were married. Horrified, she’d asked him to stop using it, and he had, but he used it now.

  Why was he thinking about that now? Get your head back in the game.

  Inside the glove, he stretched his fingers wide one last time then curled them closed. With his other hand, he pounded his riding fist tight.

  At his signal, Terry leaned over the rail and applied a steady pressure on the rope. Sol laid the tail of the rope on top of the bull’s shoulders, so he could grab it with his free hand to release the wrap when the whistle blew, then centered himself.

  Terry slapped his shoulder. “Show ‘em whacha got. Ride ‘im purdy.”

  Sol gave Terry a nod then took a deep breath. His heart thumped hard in his chest, and his body, well familiar with this process, dumped a truckload of adrenaline into his bloodstream.

  He laid his free hand on the gate and pushed himself forward the last bit until he sat just behind the bull’s shoulders and brought his weight forward from his butt to his crotch.

  One deep breath, slowly released. He lifted his free arm to a neutral position. One last nod of his head. The gate was flung open, and the bull lunged out.

  Only on the back of a bull did eight seconds ever seem like more than an eye blink. Sol’s brain went offline. The crowd disappeared. It was just him and the bull.

  Instinct ruled here. Any attempt to think, plan, or strategize only put the rider a step behind the bull, and a step behind meant bucked off.

  He relied on his body to anticipate what the bull was going to do next.

  Almost immediately, Colonel Mustard spun right, into Sol’s riding hand. Sol leaned forward to counter the lunge, shifting his weight onto his right leg to keep from bucking off the bull’s left side.

  The bull planted his front feet and kicked his hind legs out high. Sol leaned back, staying with him.

  A good ride made eight seconds seem like nothing. This was shaping up to be a good ride.

  The bull changed directions and spun left. Sol countered the move too late. The dowels of his spur slipped, and his balance became precarious. Being the wily bull he was, Colonel Mustard bucked flat as he spun left again. Sol fought to get his weight back to his right leg, to get centered again, but gravity was against him. He slid toward the well at the center of the bull’s spin.

  Oh, shiiiiit.

  And the party was over.

  ###

  Sol was done, eliminated in the long round, but Terry’s high score meant they were there for another day. Sol was happy for him, but he couldn’t shake the question of why he kept doing this.

  He was still asking himself that at the local watering hole after the rodeo. From a table against the wall, nursing a bottle of Lone Star, Sol watched Terry laughing with the other cowboys and flirting with the local girls. That had been him once upon a time. Back when he’d ridden regularly, scored high, and pocketed prize money.

  All the years on the road, all the flea-bitten motels, all the junk food eaten on the run, the fortune in entry fees gambled on having a good day on a good bull, the medical bills to fix his knee and then his shoulder, watching a bull put not one but two of his best rodeo buddies into wheelchairs they’d never climb out of.

  Was it worth it? The answer to that question had always been a resounding yes. Tonight, he didn’t have an answer.

  He’d had his shot at the brass ring two years ago. A spot on the PBR Cup team—the Professional Bull Rider tour—was no small feat. He’d never had any illusions that he could take home the championship buckle, and even his wildest fantasies couldn’t wrap themselves around the million-dollar prize that went with it. But for a while—eight short weeks—he’d touched his dream. He’d been among the best bull riders in the world. He’d beaten out not only homegrown cowboys but Australians, Canadians, Mexicans, and Brazilians—damn, those Brazilians could ride—for his place among the top-ranking forty-five riders on the Built-Ford-Tough tour. And then a bull named Toro Diablo had bucked so hard, he’d dislocated his left shoulder.

  He crossed his arm over his body and grasped his shoulder. The bones moved under his fingertips, popping only a little as he flexed. The scars from the surgery shifted under the heel of his hand. He’d learned the hard way that a dislocated shoulder wasn’t the minor thing portrayed in movies. Slipping the shoulder bone back into the socket didn’t do any good if the ligaments wouldn’t hold it in place. And in his case, the ligament had been pulled away from the bone. They’d had to go in from the front of his shoulder to reattach them.

  By th
e time he’d healed enough to ride again, he’d lost too many points and been bumped back down to the challenger tour. Since the injury had come at the beginning of this season, putting him behind before he even got out of the gate, chasing the dream hard that year hadn’t made any sense. Hell, he hadn’t even entered half the challenger events, but he couldn’t quite leave the bulls alone either. So he’d moved from the PBR tour back to the PRCA. Temporarily. Or so he’d thought at the time, but he knew now he’d never go back to the PBR. The sands of time had run out on him.

  Like any extreme sport, bull riding was a young man’s game. In spite of the number of times he pointed out that Adriano Moraes had ridden bulls until he was thirty-eight, Sol knew he was whistling in the dark. He was no Moraes. He never had been.

  At thirty years old, he already felt like a has-been.

  Maybe it was time to give it up.

  Sol hated the idea of quitting because he’d been bucked off. He wanted to go out on a high note. The dangers of holding on for that, however, weren’t minor.

  He’d seen too many cowboys lured back into the game by one good ride, seduced into thinking they were starting a winning streak, forgetting they’d promised themselves they’d quit. Or he could get badly injured holding on for that perfect time. He should get out now, but he knew he wouldn’t. He just flat wasn’t ready yet.

  But the time was coming. He could feel it breathing down his neck.

  Terry fell into the seat across from him, his beer sloshing on to the table. “Please don’t tell me you’re over here sulking about your ride.”

  “Nope. Just in a philosophical mood.”

  Terry groaned. “Lord, spare me from cowboy philosophers.”

  One of the waitresses Terry had been flirting with stopped at their table. “You boys ready for another?”

  She wasn’t there for him, Sol knew. Not the way she smiled at Terry. He ordered another beer anyway. Terry turned sideways on his chair to watch her sashay away. Sol tipped his bottle up, finished it off, then set it to the side.

  “So how’s Molly?” Sol asked.

  Terry turned back to face him. “Wanting to get married.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you need,” Sol said before he could stop himself. He’d met Molly a few times, and except for her decision to keep company with a rodeo cowboy, she seemed like a sensible girl. “She’ll get over it.”