Rodeo Nights

by Patricia McLinn

  “I see. The good ol’ boy network passed you the word that Jeff had let his generosity go beyond his means, and you didn’t bother to tell me.”

  “Wasn’t anything that firm. More a worry than a word.”

  “And you didn’t think I’d be interested in a ‘worry’? Or was it that you didn’t think my feminine little head could take the stress?”

  “Not used to sharing worries.” He spoke the words before he’d considered them. Once out, he didn’t like leaving them solo. “No sense brawling about it now. Once the chute’s open, there’s no sense trying to close it back up. You make the ride the best you can. That’s what you have to do.”

  She jumped right on that. “Exactly. It’s time to make the changes I talked about. The first thing is finish getting computerized. If the rodeo’s books were on the computer, I would have known about this from the start and been able to take steps. And then, special promotions to—”

  “Hold on there, Kalli. These figures aren’t that bad.” He tapped the papers on the table between them. “If we just go day by day—”

  “Still living only for today, Walker?” Kalli’s voice, quiet as it was, cut. “Maybe you don’t want to look beyond today in your life. But if we don’t look beyond today on this, there might not be a tomorrow for Jeff’s rodeo.”

  He leaned back, tilting his head to consider her.

  “We got a rodeo to run tonight. And we both need some time to let this sink in. We’ll talk in the morning. Ten o’clock in that room where we had the meeting before. You bring coffee, I’ll bring doughnuts.” He held up his hand to stop her words. “For once, Kalli Evans, give something some time. We don’t have to decide things right this second. Not things that are going to have a long effect.”

  Before she looked away, he saw the recognition in her eyes that he was referring to their past as well as this situation. He waited until she looked back to him to finish.

  “I’ll tell you this, Kalli. I don’t just live for today. I look to tomorrow. But I’ll be damned if I’ll break my back trying to prove it to you.”

  * * *

  NOT USED TO sharing worries.

  Walker’s words, along with the emotions that had muddied the blue of his eyes for an instant—surprise, maybe a little regret, and something else she was even less sure of—echoed in her head as Kalli drove through the familiar darkness to the ranch. Odd how the landscape could be indecipherable yet so familiar.

  She glanced in the rearview mirror. Even the pair of headlights faintly visible there seemed oddly familiar.

  She slowed and looked again. A pickup. Walker’s? There wasn’t much on this road other than the Jeffries Ranch.

  Did Walker intend to spend the night there?

  A surge of something like panic hit her and she pushed it back with both hands. He had as much right to stay as she did—more, since he was blood kin. At the start, she’d braced for the possibility he might arrive, claiming a room. But surely Mary would have warned her if Walker had decided to stay at the house.

  Maybe he hadn’t believed Kalli’s assurances that she wasn’t lonely in the house by herself. Or maybe he’d decided to talk about the rodeo’s finances tonight instead of in the morning. Maybe he intended to stay in the bunkhouse.

  But when she forked south onto the Jeffrieses’ road, the headlights kept going. She slowed almost to a stop, but the vehicle that flashed past was no more than a vague shape. It could have been anybody. She had no reason to believe it had been Walker.

  Not used to sharing worries.

  When she slipped into soft sheets with only the sound of the stream that ran between the house and the bunkhouse to disturb her thoughts, the words stood out like an amplified declaration.

  Walker Riley was a man not accustomed to sharing his worries. More, he was a man not accustomed to the idea that anyone would want to share his worries.

  Lying here in the dark, she recognized that the other emotion she’d seen in his eyes had been bone-deep loneliness.

  The idea of Walker being that lonely tore at her in a way she never would have expected. Especially since she wasn’t a stranger to bone-deep loneliness herself.

  Chapter Five

  * * *

  ‘‘THE HELL OF it is...” Kalli’s voice faded to a spurt of impatient breath.

  Elbows propped on the table, she dropped her head briefly into her upraised hands. Walker noticed she hadn’t touched the doughnuts, but was on her second cup of coffee. Trying to fill a sleep deficit with caffeine. He knew the feeling.

  She pushed her hair back with both hands, and Walker stifled the curse that came to his lips. God, he’d like to have both his hands in her hair, stroking it more gently than she just had, or threading his fingers through it to hold her head still while he brought to her eyes a look so different from the worried shadow there now. To make them dark and lazy, the way they used to turn when she wanted him.

  The way they’d looked after they’d kissed at Lodge’s.

  “The hell of it is,” she repeated, “we can’t implement the changes that would do the rodeo the most good because nearly every one of the ideas the group came up with would require some outlay of cash—which we don’t have.”

  He’d wondered when she would recognize that aspect. It had been part of the reason he’d postponed their talk about the specifics of dealing with the financial situation until this morning. He’d figured even ten years wouldn’t make a dent in that trait of hers— She’d rather trip on the snag on her own, even if it meant a fall, than have him point it out.

  The other part of the reason had been more personal, and less altruistic.

  He’d wanted to postpone this meeting because this was Kalli’s specialty, knowledge gained and honed into expertise after she’d left him. All this talk of business and profit margin and marketing and cost-effectiveness was an echo from her life in New York. With her throwing words like that around, how could her head help but drift back to that other life, even while her feet stayed planted in Park? And he didn’t want her thinking about that other life.

  He knew she’d be leaving. But she was here now, by God, and he wanted all of her, or as close as he could get, for as long as he could, dammit.

  Maybe he’d even been guilty of pushing aside hints the rodeo’s finances weren’t rock-solid for the same reason.

  If that was selfish, then he was a selfish SOB. He’d been called worse, including by himself. And, as he recalled with absolute clarity, by Kalli Evans Riley not long before she removed his wedding band and dropped his name.

  “There’re a few things we can do that won’t cost.”

  She raised her head, met his look. Most of the bitter wariness her eyes had held had disappeared. He was glad, even though he knew not quite all of the bitterness and wariness was out of his system.

  “Like what, Walker?”

  He might be a selfish SOB about wanting to keep Kalli’s attention here, but even selfish SOBs had their limits. He wouldn’t let the Park Rodeo die just because efforts to save it might cause him some discomfort.

  “Like me.”

  “You?”

  “Me. Like you said before, maybe we can get some mileage off my name, my reputation. You seemed to think this angle of me coming back to where I started would get those reporters all fired up.”

  “You’d be willing to do that?”

  “Yeah.”

  She still looked doubtful. “You’d be willing to talk to reporters—a lot of reporters? As many as I can get interested in the story, and not just from around here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve got some connections, Walker, and I would hope to get interest from some of the biggest newspapers back East. Some radio and TV, maybe even the networks.”

  He didn’t have to put much acting talent into his wince.

  “No need to tell me all the gory details, Kalli.”

  That drew the first thing resembling a smile from her since she’d found him sorting stock the day
before.

  “Okay,” she said slowly, but he could tell from the determined glint in eyes she focused somewhere over his shoulder that she was already plotting ways to get his name and face spread all over the map along with the Park Rodeo.

  At least one of them had cheered up, he thought sourly.

  As if she’d sensed his mood, she turned to him. “I know how you dislike this sort of thing, Walker. It’s very generous of—”

  “There’s one condition,” he interrupted.

  “Condition?”

  “You be there for the interviews”

  “But—”

  “You’re as much a part of running this rodeo as I am, and these are your connections you’re calling on.”

  “But it’s your story they’ll be interested in.”

  “That’s the condition.”

  He met her probing look and knew exactly when she decided he meant it.

  “Okay. I agree to your condition, Walker.”

  “Good.” He wasn’t quite done. “You know there’s something else we haven’t exploited as much as we could.”

  He caught her slight wince at his use of the word “exploited.” He felt satisfaction that her memory of using that word about him still caused her discomfort. He also felt an urge to apologize. He ignored both.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Guess you could say it’s Jeff’s connections, and some of mine—the goodwill toward the Park Rodeo and the network of rodeo hands going all over the country.”

  An uncertain tuck drew her eyebrows together. “You mean to draw more entries.”

  “Sure, more entries, and bigger names. We can get a quiet word out that we could use some bigger draws. But the traveling cowboys can also help us get more ticket buyers. We get them to take fliers along to their next stop, and the one after that, leave a few at the airports they fly through, the rest stops they break at, the motels and restaurants they use.”

  “It is another way to get the word out, isn’t it?”

  “Yep, and the folks a rodeo hand runs into are the ones most likely to be interested in seeing a rodeo.”

  “Jeff listed an expense last year for advertising fliers, but it looks as if less than half the fliers got used. I wonder where they might be...”

  She put down her coffee cup and picked up her pen to make notes on the pad she carried. He considered that a sure sign she was feeling better about the situation. Her weariness remained, and the worry hadn’t disappeared, but a spark of determination had joined them.

  “And it shouldn’t cost any money for you to keep on dragging us rodeo hands into the computer age.”

  “You’re right.” She’d looked up at his dry tone, and he thought she might get defensive about his mild teasing. But he saw a bit of humor enter her eyes before she bent to make another note, muttering phrases as she wrote. “Keep updating entries system, get the books on, streamline payroll... May not have immediate effects, but it can’t hurt.”

  With that, she straightened and smiled. He smiled back, and hers grew. A real smile, all the way to her eyes.

  He didn’t want to consider too closely what parts of his body reacted to her nearness while they smiled into each other’s eyes. Or why, exactly, he was about to open his mouth and volunteer for another duty he’d rank a poor second to getting gored by a Brahman.

  “I could take a stab at learning that computer stuff, too. Help you and Roberta out.”

  Silence.

  “Close your mouth, Kalli.” He handed her a doughnut. “Close it around this.”

  She smiled again, and then she did just what he’d asked with no argument. A first.

  * * *

  KALLI WASTED NO time in taking Walker up on his offer—all his offers.

  She started him on the computer that afternoon, much to Roberta’s delight.

  The secretary teased unmercifully. It didn’t seem to fluster Walker’s concentration, but Kalli figured her pupil’s frustration level had reached high enough without someone chortling at him that just because the little blinker was called a cursor didn’t mean he had to swear at it all the time.

  She distracted Roberta by putting her in charge of finding the rodeo fliers that Jeff’s inventory indicated should be around, somewhere.

  For another hour, Kalli sat next to Walker, instructing him in the basics of the keyboard, symbols and commands. He seemed to wear a perpetual frown, but he listened.

  She only wished her concentration was half as good.

  A voice in the back of her head commented that her concentration was fine— It was just concentrating on Walker instead of the computer.

  The blinking cursor, lighted screen and detailed keyboard had to fight to hold her interest. Especially when he turned to her, listening intently, and his deep, deep blue eyes pinned on her face. Or when she stumbled on a phrase, had to struggle to regain her train of thought, and the fan of creases at the corners of his eyes gave away his effort not to grin.

  She stood, moving behind him as if that improved her vantage point on the keyboard and screen. It did little good. She found herself noticing the way his thick dark hair lapped over the back of his collar. She wondered if the back of his neck was still as sensitive as it used to be. She used to be able to draw a shudder just by running a nail lightly up the center....

  “Kalli? Kalli!” His voice snapped her out of her reverie. “What the hell does invalid key mean? I’m hittin’ the one you said.”

  “Oh. Yes, but you also have to hold down the Alt key for that function.”

  “Alt?”

  “A-L-T. Here.”

  She leaned over his shoulder to press the key, and dived into the combined wave of scent and heat that surrounded him. The uncompromisingly crisp aroma of soap and shampoo, the lingering musk of leather and animal, the baking warmth of summer that seemed bred into his skin. But did the heat all emanate from him?

  She sat down abruptly, determined to keep some distance and under no circumstances to touch.

  It didn’t help. The sight of his large, rough, tanned hands ranging uncertainly over the pale, inanimate keys enthralled her. The endearing hesitation before an index finger pressed the next key, the impatient jerk of his right ring finger as it frequently went to the backspace button to delete a mistake, the confident tap of the thumb on the space bar.

  Still, she might have been okay if it had been simply her physical senses involved. Her imagination did the real damage.

  It produced images real enough to draw a flush, images of those same hands against a different pale surface. Not inanimate, but most definitely animate—and reactive. Her skin. Absorbing the sensations now bestowed on the unworthy keyboard, as well as movements never called for on a computer—sweeping, stroking, gripping, caressing.

  “Kalli? You okay?”

  She pulled her gaze from Walker’s hands to take in his expression of mingled concern and puzzlement.

  ‘‘I, uh...”

  “You look kind of pale. Except right here—” A blunt, roughened fingertip brushed at one cheek, then the other. “You gotta fever or something?”

  A fever and something.

  The something being the unnerving realization that these images were not memories of their safely distant past.

  Instead, they were memories of the moments in Lodge’s dressing room. And—worse! —moments from some vague vision of an impossible future.

  The door swung open with a muffled thunk against its wooden surface, a blow sufficient to send it hard against the wall with another clunk. Kalli started at the sound, but welcomed the intrusion by Roberta, carrying a cardboard carton. Both she and it were liberally dotted with smears of dust and cobwebs.

  “Roberta, you found the fliers?”

  “The fliers, the lost continent of Atlantis and Dr. Livingstone,” the older woman grumbled.

  Chuckling, Walker rose to take the carton from her.

  She released it, then gave his arm a slap for laughing at her disheveled s
tate.

  “I’ll tell you, I had times I didn’t think I’d get out of that storeroom alive. I don’t care what that stubborn old man says, this winter I’m going to put that place in order, and Baldwin Jeffries is going to pay me for my time and effort, along with paying for the bulldozer I’ll need.”

  She glared from one to the other of them as if daring a response. Walker put the carton down, turned away from Roberta and gave Kalli a wink, his blue eyes laughing in a way that had her pulse stumbling. As he kept watching her, though, the look changed, slipping toward something more knowing. And more dangerous.

  Kalli should say something, should thank Roberta, should smooth the moment, should say anything to break the hold Walker’s eyes had on her. She couldn’t get a word out.

  “Well, if that’s all, I’m going home to get cleaned up and changed, then go into town for a real dinner at a real restaurant. And I might just take a whole hour for dinner. Of course if you need anything else,” Roberta said with false sweetness, “you just let me know, Kalli.”

  What Kalli needed was time to cool her imagination—a few months out in a blizzard might do the trick. But with a blizzard an unlikely occurrence in late June, even for Wyoming weather, at least she could put some distance between her and Walker Riley.

  She scrambled out of her chair with more enthusiasm than grace.

  “I’ll come with you, Roberta. And dinner’s my treat.”

  * * *

  TO BE A good rodeo hand took timing, lots of practice, some tolerance for pain, an ability to sleep or eat anytime, anywhere and a combination of patience and rock-hard stubbornness.

  The way Walker saw it, other than the eating and sleeping, caring for Kalli required the same things of him.

  There was a saying that there was only one way to make sure hours and weeks and months of training turned out a good horse—have more time than the horse. He believed in that. Patience came naturally working with a horse. With Kalli, biding his time and using gentle persistence came harder.

  It didn’t take much figuring to see Kalli would have liked to keep their contacts to a minimum.