Handful of Sky

by Cates, Tory

  Shallie heard the quaver in her voice and stood quickly, laying a handful of bills down on the formica tabletop. Tears were already collecting in her eyes, turning the city scene outside into a rippling underwater world as she left the diner.

  “Hold on.” She shook Hunt’s hand from her shoulder and willed her tears back to their source. She had shown this callous, brutish man too much of herself as it was.

  “Why?” she snapped. “So that I can be treated to more of your opinions as to my worth as a contractor? No thanks. I’ve heard quite enough already.”

  “Oh, slow down,” Hunt commanded. “You were foolish enough to walk here by yourself, at least I can see to it that you make it back safely. In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t Mountain View, New Mexico, where an unaccompanied woman can stroll down the street at midnight, or any other damned time the fancy strikes her.”

  “Thank you for that most illuminating geography lecture.” Sarcasm flavored Shallie’s words with a bitterness uncharacteristic of her.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Hunt asked as Shallie set off to retrace the route she’d taken. “The arena is only a few blocks the other way.”

  Shallie fell in beside him without a word. Once again he had made a fool of her.

  The silent streets echoed the lonely sound of two people walking together, yet utterly apart.

  When they reached the arena, Hunt stopped and asked, “Shallie, why?” His question hung, untouched, in the cold, still night.

  “Why what?” Shallie asked. Alternating currents of anger, longing, humiliation, desire, hostility, and regret swept through her. The crowds had thinned, but there were still clumps of fans, cowboys, and laborers nearby.

  “Why are we acting like this? Look, I’m sorry for exploding. I’ve been under tremendous pressure. Plus, it’s been so lonely these past few months.”

  “Oh? I would have thought that Trish Stephans would have provided ample companionship. Or did you mean that it’s been lonely since she moved on to other interests?” Shallie’s response was chilling. It slithered out of her like a serpent she couldn’t control. But she wanted Hunt to know that she was fully aware of what the situation was.

  “So, I’m still just a junior Jake McIver to you. Well, maybe you’re right. And maybe it would be better if I were. Find your own way back to the hotel, but feed the broncs before you do.”

  He left her at the edge of the maze of pens. A steer lowed mournfully. Desolation washed over Shallie as the tall figure dissolved into darkness. She wanted to bite her shrewish tongue. He had been lonely. Lonely? She mocked her gullibility. Hadn’t she seen the pictures of him and Trish? Seen the ever-present platoons of female fans?

  The answers to her questions were swamped by a wave of hope that rose spontaneously at her first notice of a shuffling sound coming toward her in the darkness. It was Hunt, he was coming back to her! This time she would bite back the hurt festering within her. She would listen. She would forgive. She would apologize. She would howl her love to the pale moon. She would do anything to have Hunt McIver back again.

  “Shalimar, it’s me.” Shallie plummeted from the illusory peak of her stupid dreams at the sound of Jake McIver’s voice. Her disappointment was quickly replaced by acute embarrassment, however, when she realized that Jake must have witnessed the entire exchange.

  “I apologize,” Jake said, confirming her worst fears. “I certainly didn’t intend to be lurking out here spying on you and my grandson. I just thought I might know where that damn feed was everyone was looking for and I’ve gotten so tired of no one ever asking me to do anything, that I thought I’d just come down here and find it myself. I couldn’t hear what you two were saying, but it obviously wasn’t good.”

  Shallie desperately wanted to flee, to be done forever with this torment. But Jake went on, “You’re wrong about Hunt. I know you don’t approve of me. Don’t think I really care too much for the women who do. Hunt doesn’t either, you know. That’s where you’re wrong.”

  “Jake,” she sighed, “like everyone else who reads newspapers, I’ve seen the pictures of him and Trish together.”

  Jake let a howl of laughter rip through the still night. “Trish Stephans? Hunt can’t stand the woman. They both have the same agent. It was this agent fellow that started all that ‘crown prince and princess of rodeo’ nonsense. Wait a minute. Is that why you thought I was worried about Hunt hating me?”

  Shallie didn’t answer.

  “It is, isn’t it? Shallie, I only told you half the story when you were down at the Circle M. I see now you deserve to know the other half.”

  Jake’s words were condensing into frozen puffs in the cold air, but neither of them noticed the temperature as Jake began speaking.

  “I told you about adopting Hunt. What I didn’t tell you was why. Having a wife didn’t slow my son down one whit. Hunt was just a little boy then, but he hated his father for all the nights he’d leave him alone with his mother while she cried her eyes out. Hated him even more when his mama ran off.

  “After that, Hunt’s daddy really cut loose. A week or two after she left, I stopped by the house I’d had built for my son and his bride in a far corner of the ranch. Hunt was there all alone, just a little bitty boy, eating crackers out of a box. It was all he’d had for a couple of days. I finally found his father, drunk as a skunk, with the wife of one of his rodeo buddies.

  “Courts declared him an unfit father and he never contested the decision. Didn’t even show up at the trial. Just lit out. We didn’t hear much more about him, just that he drank himself to death a few years later.”

  Shallie tried to incorporate this information into the image she’d always carried of Hunt, the golden boy, untouched by pain.

  “That’s why I was wondering if Hunt hates me, for running around the way his father did. I know he loved Maggie as much as I did. She’s what made the boy what he is, gave him his class and his heart. After she died,” Jake went on with his merciless confession, “I just couldn’t stand to be by myself. Oh, I’m not denying that I always appreciated a beauty when I saw one. But what I did out of need, Hunt’s father had always done for sheer amusement.”

  “I’m sure Hunt understands.” Shallie tried to comfort the old man, but it cost her an effort. Her mind was whirling with the secrets Jake had revealed. Hunt and Trish had never been involved! He detested the stereotypical womanizing rodeo cowboy as much as she did!

  Shallie grappled with these new facts, trying to decide what she should do about them. From the murky turmoil only one clear thought emerged—it might very well be too late to do anything at all.

  Chapter 20

  As the National Anthem boomed out, announcing the final performance of the National Finals, Shallie felt practically unhinged with nervousness. Her life was hanging in the balance and she was paralyzed with indecision. She knew it was her turn to act. If there were any chance at all left, she would have to be the one to seize it. But she didn’t know how. Perhaps things were irretrievably lost between her and Hunt. Maybe nothing she did would make any difference. The question she had to answer was—could she live the rest of her life knowing that she had let even the slimmest of chances slip past her?

  “You know what would have made a hell of a match?” Jake asked the gathering in his box. “Hunt and Pegasus.”

  Shallie had been so scrupulous in avoiding any areas where she might have encountered Hunt that she hadn’t even checked with the rodeo secretary to learn which horses had been drawn that night. It was a letdown to find out that she would never see Hunt on Pegasus again.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer squawked, “we are coming right down to the wire here tonight on the bareback riding. With the size of the purse riding on this final performance, it could go to any one of our top three contenders. Let’s lead off with a very tough cowboy from up Canada way . . .”

  Shallie’s attention drifted and she barely recorded Emile’s stunning performance. She vacill
ated wildly between utter despair and the frail beginnings of hope. Jesse Southerland’s ride was just as spectacular as Boulier’s had been, and just as lost on Shallie. She focused on the chutes only when Hunt’s name was called. This would be the ride to decide his future, whether he would lay claim once more to the title “champion of the world.”

  The sound of the gate cracking open and the crowd gasping in unison were simultaneous as Hunt’s horse reared back, rather than darting out into the arena. A chute fighter. The dreaded label flashed across Shallie’s mind. Fortunately, Petey was right beside his boss on the catwalks and jerked him free, hauling him up and off the horse before the renegade bronc could crush Hunt.

  “The judges have awarded Hunt McIver a re-ride,” the announcer told the startled crowd. “He will draw for another mount to ride after all the other bronc riders have gone.”

  Shallie felt her old insecurities rise up within her as she thought of confronting Hunt. He doesn’t want you, they sneered. What would she be letting herself in for if she went to him? More humiliation and hurt, the phantoms answered. There was so much she didn’t know, so much she was unsure of. She couldn’t go to him. Better a life of not knowing than having to endure that one soul-killing moment when he turned away, leaving her with the deadening certainty of his rejection.

  It’s better this way. She attempted to comfort herself with the old familiar chant. In the final analysis, her desperate love for Hunt was just what made it impossible. What kind of relationship could they ever have with Hunt able to wield such frightening power over her? No, it would be much better for her to remain alone until the day when she made a comfortably affectionate marriage. It was a relief to have finally reached a decision. Shallie let a deep breath escape. In a distant corner of her awareness she thought she heard something, something important.

  “What did the announcer just say?” she asked her uncle.

  “Hunt’s re-ride,” her uncle sputtered in excitement. “It’s going to be Pegasus.”

  A thrill of exhilaration managed to fight its way through the layers of resignation Shallie had already blanketed her emotions in. Hunt and Pegasus! Destiny had demanded a rematch between the two, Shallie reflected, just as she had dictated that there was to be no reunion for her and Hunt. Only this meeting of the finest horse and finest rider to grace a rodeo arena could have stirred Shallie. A hush fell over the crowd as they anticipated the collision of two legends.

  Petey led Pegasus in. Shallie’s discovery shone like the star he had become, tossing his shimmering white mane as if defying the man bold enough to challenge his supremacy in the ring.

  At the sight of the majestic beast, Shallie felt her responses tear in two directions. On one side was pride in the animal she’d discovered. On the other was a rapidly mounting apprehension. Would Pegasus prove more than even Hunt could handle? Had his brush with the chute fighter moments before unnerved him? Would he freeze again, ripping open the wounds of humiliation inflicted in this very ring two years ago? For a second, Shallie felt she was back in the Circle M’s moonlit arena wanting to plead with Hunt not to endanger himself.

  One glimpse of Hunt’s face, however, and all of Shallie’s fears melted away. He looked like a little boy about to dive into a truckload of Christmas booty. Gone was the ferocious intensity of the past months. He was a man who had labored long and hard and was now about to enjoy his reward. Shallie knew there wasn’t another bronc rider alive who would greet the prospect of eight seconds on board Pegasus with that kind of relish.

  The roan was quickly rigged, tension building in the crowd with the delay. By the time Hunt had settled onto the blue-flaked back, everyone in the cavernous coliseum was hunching forward expectantly.

  Shallie bit her lower lip, oblivious to the pain. She had no thought of sides, winning and losing, whether she should root for Hunt to best Pegasus or for her horse to vanquish Hunt. This match transcended such considerations. All she hoped for was that each would realize his potential.

  Every pair of eyes in the coliseum was trained on Hunt as he nodded for the gate. From the first buck, Shallie knew that she was witnessing rodeo history. Hunt rode as well as Shallie knew he could, which is to say he rode better than any bronc rider ever had. Hunt pushed back the limit of the sport and Pegasus tested every new frontier. The ride was an elegy written in muscle and motion, composed on the common ground where man and beast met as fellow creatures.

  The buzzer sounded and the coliseum exploded like Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Shallie too was on her feet, exhilarated by the dramatic lesson Hunt had just graphically demonstrated for her. She couldn’t even put it into words, all she knew was that it contradicted the gloomy conclusions she had just reached about Hunt’s wielding power over her because of her intense love for him. What she had just seen in the arena was a display of profound respect, not power. She slid through the cheering fans, driven by a compelling urgency, a certainty that she had one chance left and must seize it now or it would fade forever.

  She slipped around to the back, to the labyrinth of stock pens. Light from the arena seeped out through the entryway where two- and four-legged contestants came and went. Her heart drummed a pounding beat. Pegasus was driven out through the metal alleyway. He carried his foam-white head high and proud, as if he knew he had just set a standard by which all other horses would be judged. Not far behind was Hunt McIver.

  “Whoa,” he yelled, chasing the retreating horse that still wore his rigging.

  All Shallie’s newly formed assurance leaked out of her at the sight of Hunt. She couldn’t go through with it. She would slip back into the shadows.

  “Shallie, that you?” Hunt cocked his head toward her.

  “Uh . . . yes.” God, why was she hovering behind the chutes like some buckle bunny? “I . . . uh . . . Congratulations on your ride,” she finally blurted out. Hunt came closer.

  For a second they faced each other like shy and uncertain strangers, neither one knowing what to expect.

  “Thank you. That means a lot coming from my old riding teacher.” Hunt’s laugh was awkward. Neither one spoke. The vague thoughts that had formed during his ride stuck in Shallie’s mind. “Well, I better go get my rigging,” Hunt said, but he didn’t move.

  “Yeah, some fan will probably try to take it as a souvenir,” Shallie agreed lamely.

  “Yeah, well, so long.” Slowly, Hunt turned away from her in just the way Shallie had dreaded he would. He started to leave.

  “Hunt.” Her shout was louder than she’d intended, a desperate preamble to thoughts she was too confused or scared to express.

  He stopped. “Yes?”

  “Don’t leave,” Shallie asked.

  A smile crept across Hunt’s face. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  “Hunt.” With that one word, Shallie laid herself bare. There was no point in hiding any longer.

  She was in his arms, lost in his encircling strength. She drank in his presence with all her senses, drowning in his scent, his voice, his body heat, his touch.

  “I was just waiting for you to speak,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. “It wouldn’t have worked if you hadn’t made that first move. If you hadn’t stopped me. But there are some things we have to get straight. In Albuquerque you accused me of being like my grandfather—”

  “No, Hunt,” Shallie broke in. “I was wrong, I didn’t know. I was hurt, angry. It wasn’t fair—”

  “It was very fair,” he concluded solemnly. “Very fair and, as it turned out, very accurate. After Albuquerque, I started doing just what Jake has done ever since my grandmother died—trying to make a dozen women fill the empty spot left by the one he really loved.”

  Love. The word stunned Shallie. For months she had been tiptoeing around it. Now she couldn’t believe she was hearing it on Hunt’s lips.

  “The woman Jake loved died. I suppose that’s an excuse of some kind. But the one I love is very much alive.”

  Shallie felt locked i
n a kind of paralysis, afraid to move, even to breathe for fear that she would betray herself, that even the tiniest hint of her longing would deflect forever the words she ached to hear, hurling them into oblivion.

  Hunt tilted her face up to his. The distant arena lights illuminated it with an incandescent warmth. Hunt took her hands. They were icy in his. When he saw the trembling vulnerability shimmering in the tears that trickled softly down her cheeks, he felt his own defenselessness. He took Shallie in his arms again, seeking to shelter them both.

  “I love you, Shalimar Larkin.”

  At last Shallie inhaled, no longer afraid of breaking the spell. They were both under it. She felt as if champagne were coursing through her bloodstream, bubbling up from her toes, effervescing through her entire body, and leaving her mind in a state of tingling intoxication. Hunt McIver loved her!

  “Hunt.” She laughed a giddy, tipsy laugh that was as much incredulous relief as it was elation. The quizzical expression that crossed Hunt’s face surprised her. “Of course I love you,” she explained. “It’s been so painfully obvious to me for so long that I assumed you must know.”

  “Shallie, I’m no mind reader. And you certainly didn’t make your feelings obvious. You were so cold our first morning together,” he went on, “then so incredibly warm that afternoon at the hot springs.” Shallie saw in Hunt’s face that he cherished the memory of that afternoon as much as she did.

  “Then you froze me out again in Albuquerque. You wouldn’t even listen to me. Wouldn’t believe me.”

  “Hunt, forgive me. It was my insecurity.”

  “At first I thought you were trying to charm me so I’d help you get Pegasus. Being raised by Jake McIver, I’ve become very wary of women who want things. I’ve seen what they’ll do to get them and how easy it is to prey on the male ego.” Hunt’s words made a comforting rumble deep in his chest, next to Shallie’s ear.