Rodeo Legends--Shane

by Pamela Britton

  “It’s impressive.”

  On either side of the road was a rock wall that must double as a fence. Beyond it, on either side, were acres of grassland studded with oak trees. She could see cattle grazing in the distance.

  “My dad and uncle bought the land when it was pretty inexpensive.”

  She had a feeling even back then it probably hadn’t been cheap. “Who built that wall?”

  “Old Spanish settlers. It crosses and crisscrosses our property. Part of some kind of land grant ages ago.”

  Her perception of him underwent a shift. She’d had this idea in his head that he came from a poor, country family. Clearly that wasn’t the case at all...

  “Your dad used to rodeo.” That much she remembered from her quick search of the internet.

  “Both my dad and uncle did. That’s how they were able to buy this place. They pooled their purse money together and bought the place, oh, thirty or so years ago. Before my dad met my mom. Turned out to be a smart decision. This is all my dad and uncle’s land. I have the option to buy some land from them, but I’m not there yet. My dad is pretty firm that we all need to earn our own way in the world.”

  “They must have been really, really good at what they did,” she muttered as they wound their way through low-lying hills.

  “Ten time world champions between the two of them.”

  How had she not known this? Her Google search had mentioned his dad was famous in the rodeo world and that he’d won world championships, but this went beyond that. It was like finding out a big-league pitcher had been to the World Series not once but several times. Unbelievable.

  “What’s your mom like?”

  His face froze. His hand tightened on the steering wheel. Emotions flitted across his face. All this she saw and more in just a brief flicker until he closed the shutters of his eyes.

  “She died a few years back.”

  And it’d hit him hard. “I’m so sorry.”

  He took a deep breath. “The rest of my family is alive and well. You’ll meet them all today.”

  “All?”

  “It’s Sunday. Family dinner night. We switch back and forth between ranches, but tonight’s my dad’s turn.”

  Wait. Just how many houses were on the Gillian property?

  And then she saw the family homestead and what a view it was—like something out of a travel guide.

  The hills had parted and up ahead sat a low-lying valley with a vineyard stretching to the north and south and a road intersecting the middle of it. And just past that, some kind of massive barn with a terra-cotta roof. And beyond that, a home up on small hill that was the same color as the cotton-candy clouds above, off-white, with a veranda that ran along the back side. She spotted a second home then, one just as large as the first but a little ways away on a different hilltop.

  “Just how wealthy is your family?”

  It seemed impertinent to ask, but the sight of the massive estate and all the outbuildings took her aback. She’d pictured something so entirely different that she couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it all.

  “I don’t know, actually.” He looked over at her as they started to drive through the vineyards. “My dad doesn’t share that kind of information. He believes we all need to make our own way in the world. But I know my dad and uncle were smart with their money. The vineyard might be on the smaller scale compared with some, but they were one of the first to plant vines in this area and now there’s a whole host of vineyards trying to buy up land here. Plus there’s the cattle operation. And the cutting horses. So I’m guessing my dad and uncle do okay.”

  They’d started up the small hill, driving on an asphalt strip with a slight drop-off on either side, and as they rounded a small turn to the right, the view took her breath away. Or maybe that was nerves. She could see cars and trucks parked at all angles in front of a gorgeous Spanish-style house that seemed to stretch on forever.

  “Looks like everyone’s here.”

  She drove race cars for a living. She’d met some of the most powerful and influential people over the years. She’d even jumped out of a plane once upon a time. Nothing had prepared her for the fear she felt upon facing the prospect of meeting Shane’s family.

  “Do they have any idea about us?”

  He parked the truck, turned to look at her, and he was back, the man who stared at her with kindness and consideration and made her heart beat in a whole other way. She didn’t know why this California cowboy with his starched jeans and straw hat made her melt in her seat, but he did.

  “They don’t but you have nothing to worry about.” He patted her leg. “Our family’s known for doing crazy and unconventional stuff.”

  He slipped out of the truck. She prepared to do the same, but he intercepted her after she opened the door and held it for her like some kind of gallant knight of old. And when he took her hand to help steady her as she slid off the high seat, she found herself wanting to hold on to those big fingers of his, but she couldn’t do that.

  Business deal, remember?

  Sooner or later she’d return to North Carolina, at least for a little bit. She shouldn’t get used to depending on him or having him around.

  “Ready?”

  No. “Let’s go.”

  She could do this. It was just like a meet and greet at the racetrack. She’d always been good at those. She’d learned from an early age how to pour on the Cooper charm. Except her last name was no longer Cooper.

  Her palms were sweating. She’d chosen jeans and a red shirt that hugged her curves but didn’t show off too much, thanks to a boatneck collar. But the coolness of her outfit did nothing to allay the heat of her cheeks as she entered the house. Terra-cotta tiles led the way to an open seating area framed by thick beams and a high ceiling. Off to her left, just inside the door, hung framed numbers, each of them with NFR across the top. At least ten of them. Souvenirs from the national finals, she realized, a few of them with Shane’s name on the bottom.

  Outside, she could hear the sound of voices on the veranda. Someone laughed. The sound of ice in glasses. The smell of roses someone had placed on a nearby side table. These were the things she would remember for the rest of her life.

  Shane walked ahead of her. She didn’t mean to, but she hung back a bit. Okay, so she freaked out and stopped well back from the ornate double doors with Spanish-style scrollwork embedded into the glass. The home would do some of her racing friends proud.

  “Hey, hey!” someone, a male someone with thick sweeping brows and a dented chin, said. “Look who’s here.”

  “You made it back,” said someone else, a stunning woman with black hair and the same thick lashes as the men in her family. Kait wondered if she was a sister or a cousin. So many people sat around a large table it was hard to take them all in and it made her feel even more intimidated, but so far nobody had spotted her hiding behind the veranda doors.

  “I told you I would,” Shane said. He turned and she saw him jerk in surprise when he realized she wasn’t right behind him. His eyes connected with her own. She froze. He motioned with his hands.

  “Uh-oh,” said the first man, and Kait realized she’d been spotted. “Who’s this?”

  And it was time. No escaping it. The moment had come.

  Taking a deep breath, she tentatively moved forward. Shane turned back to his family.

  “Everyone, this is my wife.”

  * * *

  YOU COULD HAVE heard a pin drop.

  Shane looked around the table and tried not to wince. Of course it was his brother Carson who laughed. He leaned back in the heavy wooden chair that matched the ancient oak table his family, including his aunt and uncle and cousins, sat around and guffawed. Jayden, his sister, was in the midst of setting down a tray of olives she’d just pilfered from, her hand frozen in midair, and she looked anything but amu
sed. And his father, well, Shane refused to look at his father.

  “That’s funny,” Carson said when he stopped chuckling. He looked around the table, clearly wanting to share in the joke with everyone else. But nobody said a word, probably because it wasn’t in Shane’s nature to joke around, and his family knew it.

  Shane glanced at Kait. She tried to smile, but it was rocky at best.

  “Hey,” said his cousin Tyler. “Isn’t that Kaitlin Cooper?”

  Leave it to his cousin to recognize Kait’s famous face.

  “Did he say wife?” his aunt Crystal asked.

  “I think he did,” said Uncle Bob.

  “Hey, everyone,” Kait said during a slice of silence. She waved.

  “Wait,” Carson said. “Are you for real?”

  His little brother’s eyes grew wide, and given his prominent eyebrows, the look seemed exaggerated. He pulled his gaze away from Kait to stare around the table.

  “We were married yesterday,” Shane announced, pulling Kait to his side. He held up his hand just in case they thought he was still joking. Kait followed suit, showing them her ring finger, and it must have been the sight of the diamond he’d bought her that convinced his family because suddenly everyone was speaking at once. His sister was the first person to stand up, rushing around the table to greet Kait.

  “Congratulations,” she said. She leaned in and gave Kait a hug, and Shane could tell Kait was surprised by the greeting.

  “You are Kaitlin Cooper,” said his cousin. “Right?”

  She forced the wattage of her smile up a notch. “I am.”

  “Wow.” Carson seemed genuinely impressed. “How’d you bag her?”

  “Carson,” he chastised. Leave it to his brother to say something like that. The man didn’t have a serious bone in his body. “She’s standing right here.”

  “It’s okay.” Kait turned her smile up to its full effect. “I can take it.”

  He would bet she could. She drove cars at two-hundred-plus miles per hour. It was so easy to forget these days. He’d gotten to know the woman, not the race-car driver.

  “So your father is Lance Cooper?” This from his other cousin, Levi, a carbon copy of his uncle Bob right down to the green eyes.

  “He is.”

  “Wow.” He tipped his cowboy hat back, peering up at her with an expression as close to awe as he’d ever seen on his cousin’s face.

  And still not a word from his dad, who sat at the end of the massive table like a disapproving sovereign. He even resembled one with his bushy gray brows, somewhat longer hair that matched his brows and his patrician nose. That was what he’d heard his mom call it once upon a time.

  “I don’t care who she is,” said Aunt Crystal, standing up and coming around the table. “She’s cute as a button and part of the family now.”

  He could always count on Crystal to make someone feel at home. When his mom had died, it was his aunt who’d gotten him through the dark moments. He should have figured she would welcome his new wife with open arms.

  Wife. It still took some getting used to.

  “You want to sit down?” Crystal asked. She turned back to the table. “Dylan, move on down a seat.”

  Everyone shuffled around, and Shane risked another glance at his father. He was busy eating whatever appetizer came before the meat Shane could smell roasting on the barbecue. He didn’t look up and it might have been that his face was in shadow thanks to the thick beams overhead, but his expression seemed dark. He could see his uncle Bob peeking glances, and Bob frowned at what he saw. As luck would have it, room was made so Shane could sit right next to his father.

  “Dad,” he said before he sat down.

  His dad grunted. His beige shirt matched his straw cowboy hat. He didn’t look up.

  Damn him.

  Kait took a seat next to Shane. He waited for his father to look up and finally acknowledge her. Kait clearly knew something wasn’t right with the eldest Cooper because she stared at him, puzzled.

  “Dad, this is Kait.”

  His dad finally met his gaze, and Shane almost flinched. There was so much disappointment deep in his eyes that it took him aback. He knew why, too, and it had everything to do with the three Ps of success, at least according to his dad. Perseverance. Passion. Purpose.

  None of that will mean a hill of beans if you let a girl turn your head.

  How many times had he heard the lecture? So he knew why his dad sat there fuming. It’d always been Reese Gillian’s dream to have his son follow in his footsteps. He wanted him to continue the Gillian rodeo legacy of winning as many NFR titles as he could. And he had, to some degree, succeeded. But it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough for his dad.

  Reese Gillian set his fork down. “Is she pregnant?”

  The words had been dropped into one of those odd moments of silence where everyone seemed to stop talking at once. He saw his aunt flinch. His brother Cooper looked in his direction, probably trying to gauge his reaction. In fact, half the table seemed to lean in a little and then draw back.

  Something snapped inside him then. Something that’d been rolling and boiling and bubbling to the surface from the moment he’d walked out into the patio and been ignored.

  He took off his hat and soothed his hair before cramming it back on again. His hands shook. “She’s my wife, Dad.” He glared at his father. “What difference does it make?”

  His dad leaned forward. “Is she?”

  “Yes.”

  Someone moved. It was Kait. “Excuse me.” She threw a napkin someone must have handed her back on the table and ran off before he could call her back.

  Chapter Seven

  She’d never been more humiliated in her life.

  The house seemed to swallow her up, and she was grateful for that. Out on the veranda, the sudden eruption of voices made it seem as if her leaving had popped the cork on a bottle of good behavior. There were raised voices and accusations, and she just wanted to get away from them. She reached for the front door.

  “Kait.”

  A hand fell on her own. She hadn’t even heard Shane follow her into the house. She’d been too blinded by her own tears.

  Tears.

  Damn her stupid hormones. She hated how sensitive she’d gotten.

  “Don’t leave.”

  He wedged himself in front of her, and she froze because when she looked into his eyes she saw misery there and it took her by surprise. Her hand slipped away from the door.

  “That was rude. And—” he blinked and she lost sight of his eyes behind the brim of his cowboy hat for a moment “—uncalled-for. I should have waited for the right time to break our news. We should have done it together.”

  His apology smothered the flames of her anger, but she still couldn’t imagine going back out there again. When she heard the back door slide open, he must have seen the panic in her eyes.

  “Come here.”

  He didn’t give her time to answer, just grabbed her hand and led her down a hall with heavy wooden doors on the right and a wall of windows to the left. Their feet made hardly a sound on the terra-cotta floor.

  “In here.”

  She smelled it first. Him. His smell. How strange that she should know it so well already. She knew the moment she entered the room that it’d been his in the past. His childhood room, though it had long since been stripped of almost all things Shane. A few items remained. A picture of him atop a chest of drawers to her left. An old rope hanging around the bedpost to her right. And above the bed, belt buckles. Dozens of them but behind glass in a shadow box that reflected the light that came through windows overlooking the back of the house. On them she could make out the word “champion” above the silhouette of a bull. Beneath that were dates. He must have won them all when he was a kid.

  “Sit,” he ordered.
>
  She didn’t like being ordered around, not usually, but today she surrendered to his bossiness mostly because she was exhausted. Pregnancy seemed to be kicking her butt.

  She sat.

  “Look. My dad and I are...” He sank onto the bed next to her and swiped a hand across his face. “We don’t exactly see eye to eye sometimes.”

  “I can tell.”

  Along the short wall that held the door stood another dresser, this one lower and with a picture of Shane in front of a rodeo-announcer’s booth, or so she guessed. He held a buckle, and next to him stood his dad and what must be his mother. But while his dad stood by his side, it was his mother who had her arm around him and who smiled proudly into the camera. She realized where Shane got his good looks from. Mrs. Cooper—gosh, she didn’t even know her name—but Mrs. Cooper reminded her of a movie-star cowgirl, one with perfectly coiffed blond hair, a trim figure and a smile that had probably won her the title of rodeo queen.

  “He just gets under my skin.” He shook his head, looked into her eyes again. “But that’s no excuse for blurting our news like that.”

  She released a huff of exasperation. “At least it’s out in the open now.”

  He nodded. “There is that.”

  But then she looked down at her hand, at the diamond that sparkled on her ring finger. It was beautiful, far prettier than she had expected or maybe even deserved given the situation they were in.

  “Where will we live?”

  The question had been burning a hole in her brain for hours. She’d been afraid to ask. So many uncertainties and unknowns. She hadn’t wanted to open the floodgates of problem solving. Now seemed like as good a time as ever.

  “Here, I guess. In Via Del Caballo.”

  “Shane, I have a life in North Carolina.”

  “I know, but my horses are here.”

  “And my race cars are back east.”

  “But you won’t be racing.”

  The reminder smacked her in the face. She stared at her hands again.

  “I’ll need to return home to help my family find a replacement for me.”