“I remember.” Pretending to be intent on dishing up the casserole, he still saw how the memory of a few outrageous things they’d done with applesauce sent fire up her cheeks. “And it’s only natural it smells wonderful. I told you, Lolly Carmody—”
She latched on to that. “Ah, yes, the famous Carmodys. I did some checking after that day in Lodge’s.” He raised his gaze to hers without lifting his head, and watched the fire surge across her skin again, this time at a more recent memory. “I mean after Esther let that drop about you sending cowboys to the Carmodys’. Turns out to be a very interesting setup.”
“Nothing interesting about it,” he disagreed.
“You sent several cowboys who were running short of funds because they hadn’t won on the rodeo circuit in a while out to work for the Carmodys.”
He shrugged and kept eating. “With Lolly laid up and their boys too young to do a whole lot, Nels needed the help. And the hands needed the cash so they could enter the rodeo. Just a matter of putting them together and everybody helping everybody else out.”
“Except the cash didn’t come from the Carmodys, did it, Walker?”
Under her soft voice, he heard the steel. Wouldn’t want to cross her in business, he thought with more than a little admiration.
“No.” He lifted his head to match look for look. “But it didn’t come from rodeo funds, if that’s what’s worrying you.”
“I know—”
He broke the look to reapply himself to Lolly’s casserole, but his head snapped up at Kalli’s next words.
“—I checked.”
He glared at her. “You thought I was stealing from Jeff and Mary?”
“No! I never thought that. And it wouldn’t have been stealing even if you had taken it from rodeo funds, because we both know Mary and Jeff would have done the same thing in a heartbeat, even with last summer’s rescue operations leaving the rodeo in a bind. Though if you had, it sure as hell could have messed up my budget projections, so if the matter arises again, I want to know. Promise?”
“Promise.”
“That came awfully easily.” She cocked her head at him, considering. “Ah, of course... You can promise to tell me because you have no intention of ever using anything but your own money. And as long as you never use the rodeo’s, you figure you don’t have to tell me.”
He shrugged. “If you’d thought that, you wouldn’t have needed to check the rodeo funds this time, would you?” He caught her slight wince and didn’t regret causing it; she’d laid a cut across his pride. But he had simmered down enough to wonder, “So why didn’t you just ask me?”
And his wondering rocketed from mild curiosity to real interest at her obvious discomfort. She looked down to where she’d suddenly become very busy pushing the remnants of her food around with her fork.
“I thought you might not want me—anyone—uh, asking questions, uh, about your finances. I didn’t know...
He followed the progress of her gaze around the kitchen, not elaborate but modern, and toward the living room, then back to him.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I just brought it up because I wanted to tell you I think it was a nice thing for you to do. Helping the Carmodys and those cowboys.” She said it almost belligerently. “That’s all.”
“Okay.”
He accepted it on the surface, but found this a good time to go get more of the pills he’d given her, to give him a couple moments to mull this over. With a mumbled excuse, he headed for the medicine cabinet.
Coming out into the hall without insight having hit him in the two minutes he’d been gone, he could see her looking around his place again. That’s when insight hit him.
She’d thought he was broke.
She’d thought he was as down on his luck as his old truck looked, not knowing that its shoddy exterior hid an engine that could purr or roar depending on the demands he made on it.
That also helped explain that exchange over her green shirt at Lodge’s. She’d thought he couldn’t afford it. And she’d been worried about him.
Or had she felt sorry for him?
“More pills.”
He slapped the pills down on the table next to her plate, then went around to take his chair.
She pushed the pills away with one hand while shifting from her fork to her spoon with the other. “I don’t want them, they’ll knock me out again.”
Reaching across the table, he pushed them back. “They didn’t knock you out. You knocked yourself out. Your body’d been needing the rest a long time, but you just weren’t giving it a chance. Take ’em, Kalli.’’
She looked at him, then apparently accepted what he’d said as the truth, and swallowed the pills. Another first.
Some of the tension eased out of him.
What the hell, he was doing so well now, he might as well try another go-round.
“Trouble at the office?” He dipped his head toward the telephone.
“No, not really. Roberta’s got everything under control.”
“Meant your New York office. Trouble there?”
“Oh.” She frowned as she swallowed two more spoonfuls of applesauce. “I don’t know.”
He waited.
“They called,” she finally added. “Want me to call back.”
“And want you to come back?”
She made a production of taking her plate, silverware and glass to the sink. All of six feet away.
“I suppose so. They won’t really need me until the fall, but it makes my boss nervous not to have everyone present and accounted for. Having anybody gone for a two-week vacation is about Jerry Salk’s limit. Yes, I imagine he does want me to go back.”
“Are you going?”
It cost to make the question sound disinterested.
“I won’t leave until Jeff’s back or the season’s over.” She glared at him over her shoulder, then turned the faucet wide open with a jerk of her wrist, deluging the dishes more than rinsing them. “I wouldn’t pull out on Jeff and Mary. You know me better than that.”
She turned the water off with less vehemence.
“I used to,” he corrected.
“You still do.”
She’d said the words without thinking, but then he saw her go still and he knew their import had hit her. And he waited for her to laugh them off or take them back or turn them around. Waited for her to do whatever it took to pull away.
She slowly turned to face him, her gaze going from his shoulder to his throat to his mouth and at last to his eyes.
“You still do,” she repeated.
His lungs cried for oxygen, but he didn’t dare breathe for fear of shattering the moment.
“You might have changed.”
“In some ways,” she conceded. “Not in that.”
The moment suspended, drawing out in the uncertainty of where to go from here.
At last, Kalli broke the silence, and Walker felt almost grateful when she gave her shoulders a hitch and said, “Well, I’ll get my things. And we can head back.”
In a matter of minutes, he held the truck door open for her. She paused as she started to climb in.
“Thank you, Walker. For bringing me here. It was sweet.” She flicked a look at him, as if afraid he might take offense at the description. “For taking care of me, and...”
Her words stumbled to a halt. He wondered if she’d thought of the unburdening they’d shared but decided that wasn’t something to thank anyone for.
“You were right, you and Roberta. I needed to rest a while. I was tired.”
“I know. You don’t usually get that way unless you’re pushing yourself too hard.” He held her gaze an extra beat before adding, “I do still know you well.”
She didn’t answer. The silence as they drove down the mountain, leaving behind the afternoon’s isolation, had a different quality from the other silence that had stretched between them for so long.
The silence he’d started back when they were married and he
was too scared to tell her his fear or his sorrow or his guilt. The silence that had helped drive them apart. The silence that had kept them separated.
Well, they were talking, really talking.
But he wondered if, unlike Jeff’s situation, recovering their ability to communicate was too little, and much, much too late.
Chapter Eight
* * *
THIS WAS COMFORTABLE. Two old friends, sitting side by side on the top rail of the fence, boot heels hooked on a lower rail to balance. Two old friends watching the slow-paced afternoon activity in the arena. Two old friends chatting about this and that.
“This is comfortable,” Kalli said out loud.
It was comfortable. Over the past week, she and Walker had worked together with an ease that rather surprised her. Maybe for the first time in all the years they’d known each other, their abilities could complement each other. Walker’s low-key approach balanced Kalli’s lightning-quick responses. Kalli’s honed business sense gave structure to Walker’s rapport with the rodeo community.
They’d made mistakes when they’d been married. Such basic mistakes. He hadn’t communicated with her and she’d expected to remake him.
But they’d both grown up.
He’d certainly learned to see—and look forward to—a life after rodeo. And she knew marriage didn’t require white picket fences and a nine-to-five existence. Having learned these lessons, they’d made peace with each other, which would now free them to perhaps find the right people to make their future lives with.
That vise-like tightening around her lungs at the thought of one or both of them finding new people? That was fear of the unknown. A natural reaction, something she would get past. Because now she was simply comfortable with Walker Riley. Nothing more.
“What’s so comfortable, Kalli?”
Her mind had traveled so far that Walker’s question almost startled her. He regarded her under the brim of his hat and half-lowered eyelids. His dry tone and a slight lift of one corner of his mouth gave her the uncomfortable feeling he’d been watching her for some time and drawing his own, peculiar conclusions.
“This.” A wave of her hand indicated the two of them, the arena, the bright sunshine and the freshening breeze. “Talking about your plans for the land, your own ranch... Hey, what are you calling it? You never said.”
Walker shifted his position slightly. “Haven’t decided yet. Waiting for the right name.”
“Mmm. It’s a very good investment, you know.”
“Yeah?”
“Uh-huh. A lot of Hollywood types are buying up big spreads in Montana these days. I read about it in the Wall Street Journal. So, if you make a bundle again, that would be a good place to invest.”
“Did you also read they’re driving up prices and taxes, so a lot of working ranchers are having a real tough time of it?”
“No, I didn’t read that.” Something warm and thick pulsed through her. Walker was a good man. Not fancy, not showy. The kind of man who looked beyond how something might benefit him to how it might affect others.
“Besides...” She knew immediately from his tone that Walker had had enough of seriousness. “I’m so over the hill, the other hands’ll start calling me ‘sir’ any day.” She slanted him an evil look at the reminder of being called ‘‘ma am.” He ignored it, adding with quiet amusement, “I’m not on anybody’s list to be reaching Nationals, so I’m not likely to make a bundle any time soon.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. I don’t know about making Nationals, but you still have something that would be a good investment in New York.”
“Yeah, what’s that?”
“Your pants.”
“My what?”
She grinned, idiotically pleased with herself for jolting him out of his cowboy-cool humor. He stared at her incredulously.
“Your pants.”
“What pants?”
‘‘The ones you have on.”
The quality of his stare changed; he thought she’d gone nuts.
“They’re dirty and—”
“All the better,” she interposed.
“—worn.”
She glanced down and her composure was rattled a little in her contemplation of one place they were worn, and by what. She swallowed hard.
“That’s the way they like them. It’s a hot item—preworn cowboy jeans. Yours would go over great in Manhattan.” An image of how well the man inside the jeans would go over stabbed at her.
“Hmm.” He stretched both long legs out in front of him, balanced on the thin top tube by his rump and his hands.
“It might be worth it to go naked, then.”
That image burned in her mind. And, Lord, wouldn’t that go over great in New York.
“Hey, be careful,” she scolded, her other emotions funneling into irritation as he theatrically teetered on the rail.
Instinctively, she reached out to steady him. He responded by twisting to wrap a large hand around each of her arms. For an instant they hung there, looking at each other, caught between laughter and something more flammable. Then gravity tugged and they had no choice—to avoid falling, they had to jump.
Walker landed first, and half guided, half caught her as her feet met the thick, loose dirt of the arena.
It seemed so natural for his hands to slide up to her shoulders, for her hands to slip from his waist around to where her palms felt the smooth, long muscles of his back through his shirt.
The heat enveloped her. His heat. Their heat.
She acknowledged that as she took the full impact of his hungry stare. He didn’t mask the wanting. But was he aware of what she knew down to her bones? That if he kissed her now, they would take the final, dizzying step from the past to the present. And there would be no telling how much of the past, how many of its problems, how many of its griefs would come with them.
Worse, so much worse, there would be no telling what new problems they would face in the present.
She couldn’t do it.
She released him and stepped back.
Still watching her, Walker took another six heartbeats, then slid his hands over her shoulders and down her arms before they dropped to his side.
I’m not ready yet.
For an instant, when the blue of his eyes flared brighter, she wondered if she’d spoken aloud. Then every other thought was swamped as she recognized the import of inevitability her words held.
“I’ve got to get back,” she blurted. Back to the way she’d thought when the summer started, back to when her heart hadn’t been in such danger. “To the office. Help Roberta.”
She turned on her heel, barely noticing his curt nod as he started across the open arena in the opposite direction. She climbed the fence in record time and was nearly to the office before she considered the foolhardiness of subjecting herself to Roberta’s eagle eyes right now.
An about-face and a snaking path between two stock pens and around the concession stand helped. She started a second circuit, away from the office and toward the arena, then took a left between the pens.
“Hey, Kalli.”
She spun around at the greeting, and Jasper Lodge retreated a step. His hand flapped toward the office. “Uh, Roberta said I’d find you here. She said it was okay to come on out.”
“Of course it’s okay.” Kalli had her reaction under control immediately. Jasper’s face clearly said that this was business. “You just startled me. It’s good to see you, Jasper. How’s Esther?”
“Fine, just fine.” His tone didn’t match the words. And her abrupt reaction to his arrival didn’t explain his unwillingness to meet her eyes. “Uh, maybe we’d better call Walker over here.”
She raised her eyebrows, but before she could say that she could handle whatever needed handling—and it looked bad from Jasper’s behavior—he continued, “Call him over here, too, so I can talk to the both of you at once.”
And get it over with.
The implication was so strong in
Jasper’s manner that be might as well have said the words.
Kalli turned to where Walker now sat on the fence at the far side of the ring, and wondered if she would be heard over the noise. But Walker had spotted them. Almost as if he’d been waiting for her to turn to him, he jumped from the fence and started across the center.
Jasper headed toward the arena, leaving her no choice but to follow. They stopped at the fence, waiting for Walker.
“Hey, Jasper. How’re you?”
As Jasper mumbled a reply, Walker started over the fence, right next to where Kalli stood.
At the top, he paused. She looked up, and. he put a hand on her shoulder and squeezed.
A warning? A comfort? Kalli didn’t know. Her hand reached to cover his, an instinctive response she stopped short. In the next instant, he released her and dropped down beside Jasper outside the fence, all in one motion.
“Now, Jasper, what’ve you got to tell us?”
* * *
“...SO YOU SEE why Park needs the Park Rodeo to be running at a certain level. To be something we can count on, the businessmen, the whole community. I know I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, but I’m the chairman and I’m the one who’s got to say it.”
“We understand, Jasper,” Walker said.
Kalli wondered at his ease. She’d been in tough negotiations, but never one whose outcome meant any more to her than money and some prestige. This was different, and she’d had to fight to keep from cutting Jasper short, despite knowing the benefit of letting the other person have his say.
“And we’re not hiding that the rodeo started off the season in some red ink,” Walker went on. “We’re working on remedying that, and we’re making progress. But if that’s what’s worrying you folks, we understand, and I’ll have the committee’s lawyer write up something saying I’ll personally guarantee the rodeo’s finances.”
Kalli stared at Walker hard, wishing she could read in his face the state of his bank account. Buying his spread and doing all that building must have cost a good bit. How much could he have won on the rodeo circuit? Would he have to mortgage his land? Mortgage his future?
Rodeo Nights Page 13
