Marry Me, Cowboy (Copper Mountain Rodeo)

by Lilian Darcy

  “I did,” Jamie told her. “Did you see the last two?”

  “Oh, they beat me?”

  “No, that’s the point. They didn’t. You won.”

  She let out a whoop that startled her mare, and only then noticed that Jamie’s parents were standing there, too. “Hi, Rob and Melinda, sorry about the scream.”

  “That’s okay, honey,” Mom said. “I love your pretty shirt.”

  “Thanks.” She looked down at it, fingering the soft cotton for a moment. “You’ve come to see Jamie in the saddle bronc? That’s great.”

  “See if he wins, first,” Dad joked in his gruff way.

  “Oh, now, Rob…” Mom said. “Jamie, RJ is here somewhere, and Jess said this morning that she thought she might drive over, too.” In an aside to Tegan she added, “She’s in Bozeman.”

  “Wow, half the family,” Jamie said.

  “Everyone but Rose and Jodie, but they’re too far, you see.” It wasn’t clear who she was talking to.

  “I know that, Mom,” Jamie told her, in case it was him.

  “Could we have something to eat?” she asked almost shyly. “Seems like a long while since I’ve had rodeo food. Remember, Robbie, when we were dating?”

  “Long time ago,” Dad said.

  “I still remember, though. Sitting in the bleachers with those corn dogs. I was wearing that dress with the flowers, pink peonies, and I had a bracelet on, with the charm you gave me… We were so young, weren’t we?”

  He smiled down at her. “Sure, we can get corn dogs, if you want.”

  “Tegan, will you come?” Mom asked.

  “If you can wait for me to take care of Shildara, first.”

  “Of course, honey.”

  It ended up so nice. They found Jess pulling out her phone to call them, and RJ heading toward the food concession area, and Dad introduced Jess to Tegan, and both siblings joined the family group. They all had corn dogs, standing where they could see the action, leaning forward so they didn’t spill anything down their fronts. Jamie almost missed his event. It was Tegan who pointed out the fact. “Shouldn’t you be getting ready, Jamie?”

  “Hell, yeah, I should.”

  He raced off, leaving her to watch with his family, liking the fact that they seemed to be getting along.

  His ride was average. The horse not sluggish enough to warrant asking for a re-ride, but not impressive enough to allow him to post a high score, even though he’d stuck the eight seconds. Dawson O’Dell came in right after him and had the crowd whooping with his ride. He had an excellent chance at winning Best All Around Cowboy, now. He was a great guy and a good rider, trying his best in a difficult situation with his little daughter. He deserved it.

  “Bad luck,” Dad said, when he got back to them. “You rode well.”

  They were all still standing there, Mom smiling, Jess texting a friend to see if they could meet up, RJ looking at the pretty women passing by, when he thought no one was watching. He needed a girlfriend, but he had a lot of Mom’s shyness and some of Dad’s gruff impatience, and the right girl - the right serious girl - hadn’t come along yet.

  “Best I could,” Jamie said in answer to Dad, “but not good enough.”

  “Can’t get ‘em all.”

  “If I could, I’d be Trevor Brazile.”

  They separated shortly afterward, Jamie and Tegan heading back to the trailer parking lot, RJ ambling off on his own, Mom and Dad wandering away for a stroll around, and Jess standing where she’d arranged to meet her friend.

  “That was nice,” Tegan said to Jamie.

  “It was.” He felt a deep wash of relief about it. Nicest moments he’d had with his family in a long while. Well, since before he’d stuck to his rodeo plan against all opposition, he realized.

  He’d always intended to have some kind of a confrontation about that, force his father… and maybe RJ, too… to concede that he hadn’t made such a mess of his life, after all.

  But maybe it wasn’t necessary. Maybe if he forced the issue, it would only make things tense again. Dad wasn’t good at admitting he was wrong in straight-out words. He said it differently, with actions. He was indirect about it. The way Tegan had planned to be at four o’clock this morning, when she’d tried to reach her family… and had failed… and been relieved about it.

  Today, for example. Probably as close as Dad would ever comfortably come to giving Jamie any support.

  That was okay.

  “You should go back,” he said to Tegan suddenly, without even stopping to think about it.

  “Go back?”

  “Home. Australia.”

  “Well, I don’t have much choice, do I?” Her old prickliness and aggression was back. “I am going back.”

  “You should go back because you want to, not because you have to.”

  She glared at him. “But I do have to, Jamie.”

  He ignored her snippy response. “Just spend some time with them. Forget the phone calls. That little thread of connection you get on a phone-line is so thin, no wonder it snaps sometimes. Probably wouldn’t have helped if you’d gotten through to them this morning. Might easily have made everything worse. It needs to be face to face. Go see your dad and step-mom and… Ben, is it?”

  “Ben, my brother, yes. Half-brother.”

  “Maybe it won’t seem so bad when you’re actually with them. Maybe they’ll have more to say about what happened with the farm. Or maybe they won’t, but you’ll just remember…” Shoot this was so sappy. “… why you love each other. Or something.”

  She looked away. “Yeah, maybe. S’pose I’ll find out, one way or the other. Whether I do love them, or whether I’m too angry.”

  “Don’t look at it that way.”

  “No?”

  “Just… try not to.”

  “Thanks for the wisdom, Jamie.” The sarcasm dripped thick.

  But he knew her enough now to understand the prickliness. “Yeah, yeah,” he said. “I get it. I’m over-stepping.”

  “So you’re going to stop over-stepping now?”

  “Sure, if you want.”

  He was about done with the family psychology. He was probably wrong, anyhow. He didn’t know her folks. Didn’t have the right to claim much insight, just because of a couple of talks and a little session on the step of her trailer under the stars. Shouldn’t have said anything.

  She was still glaring at him. He reached out and pinched her nose. She tried to bite his fingers. He locked her chin in place with his grip so she couldn’t move. She laughed, finally. “We are sooo mature.”

  “Yeah, we have a combined maturity IQ of about six hundred and five.”

  “Higher.”

  So it ended up okay.

  And later that night, way better than okay. Hot and liquid and perfect and strong. She stayed with him again, and her body seemed to catch fire in his arms, seemed to belong there, made him tremble with need and release.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Maybe the second night was a mistake. You had to know when to quit, and maybe Tegan didn’t.

  Lying beside Jamie in his bunk, feeling his warm, bare body against hers and his breathing going gently up and down, she didn’t want morning to come, because something told her that everything would be different then. All these new, churned up feelings that she didn’t fully understand would have nowhere to go.

  The rodeo was over. She’d collected her prize money for winning the barrels. Colton Thorpe had wowed the whole crowd with his speech at the end. The trash cans were filled. The food concessions had run out of hot dogs and coffee. The organizers had announced excitedly how much they’d raised for local causes. The parked rows of trucks and trailers had already thinned out, and in the morning the last of them would leave, and she would have to talk to Kara properly about the future, and make decisions.

  She’d barely seen Kara all weekend, and hoped the thing with Dean wouldn’t add yet another complication. What if Kara didn’t want to buy out her half of the trailer a
nd pickup? What if she wanted to sell up, too, and partner with Dean?

  She shouldn’t have stayed in Jamie’s bed tonight, Tegan decided. She should have gone back to her own trailer, because it was too hard to think properly when she was lying in a man’s arms.

  A man she’d sincerely thought she couldn’t stand, until a day and a half ago.

  What changed, Jamie?

  Well, the third point of the triangle, aka Chet Wyndham, had a life-changing moment and then went missing, that was a big part of it. She’d already worked this out. She saw another side to Jamie, in the way he’d handled everything, and it impressed her, so she stopped being so prickly, and Jamie saw another side to her, as well. Was this all? Was this the trigger?

  No, the trigger is because I’m leaving.

  It suddenly struck her. She was leaving the country, and Jamie seemed almost eager about that, telling her it was a good thing to reconnect with her family, that maybe she’d feel different about things if she went home. She realized, in a cold rush, that he hadn’t shown the remotest interest in getting her into bed until he’d known there was a very firm end-date to their fling.

  Was that part of the attraction?

  Was that all of the attraction?

  She would be flying halfway around the world within the next few weeks, with no concrete plan to come back, and if a man was looking for a complication-free arrangement, what could be better than that? Australia was an awful long way away.

  No risk of awkward meetings after it was over.

  No chance that she’d get clingy and want more.

  Just a nice, responsibility-free fling.

  True, though, Jamie could have accused Tegan of exactly the same thing. You didn’t want me. You’ve never even liked me. You just wanted my body, with no risk of a future.

  Okay, so they were even, on that front. They were equals. Using each other. Mutual about it. Fine. No problem. No reason to feel angry or disappointed or lost.

  So Tegan decided she just wouldn’t.

  She wouldn’t feel any of that bad stuff, simple as that. She’d make love with him again, instead, since that was what this whole thing was about. Even when they had a serious talk, it was foreplay as much as anything else. Right now, she was going with foreplay of a more traditional kind.

  Almost angrily, she began to rouse him from sleep, sliding her palm down his chest, cupping that package of man-junk that she liked so much. He stirred and groaned, but didn’t make a definite move. Maybe he thought this was just a dream. She raised the game, pressing her mouth into his shoulder and neck, then sliding on top of him, deliberately rubbing her breasts across his chest until her nipples went hard. That took a whole nine seconds. “Hey, Jamie…”

  “Wha - ?”

  “Not going to wake up?” She made her breath hot in his ear and reached down to cup him again. “What do I have to do?”

  “Okay, I’m awake now.” His voice creaked.

  “Good.” She kissed him.

  “You pretty much rang a bell in my ear.”

  “Oh, I did?”

  “Different kind of bell, but loud and clear.” After a moment, he broke away. “But I’m feeling pretty lazy.”

  “You want me to do all the work?”

  “If you’re offering.”

  Yeah, she was offering, if he liked it a little rough. Her mood was rough. Angry and confused and hurting, wanting to hurt back. She didn’t like the idea that they’d been using each other. What did that say? About her? It made her angry that Jamie could confront her with the things she wasn’t sure about, in herself.

  Shoot, what kind of power was that in a man? Bloody Jamie! Bloody, yummy, beautiful Jamie.

  She pressed her hands hard on his hips to center them both in the right place. She bit him a little when she kissed him, the way he’d done this morning in the dark on the trailer step, then gave him a hickey on his shoulder, right where it curved into his neck. No one would miss that in the morning, and she was glad. She’d branded him as hers, even though it was temporary.

  “Hey… wild woman,” he said, still creaking.

  “That’s me.” She rubbed herself against him, until she had what she wanted – that hot, hard throbbing part of him, ready for her, and his hands as rough on her breasts and her butt as she’d been when she’d bitten him.

  He shuddered as she guided him into her. And even though she was angry and didn’t really know why she was doing this, that moment felt so liquid and silky and big and good. She shuddered right along with him, and couldn’t help groaning.

  She rode him, wild as he’d said, and there was no subtlety about it, no finesse, and maybe he enjoyed his climax, but hers, in the end, was tight and tense and unsatisfying, and she had to press her lips together to stop from whimpering at the end of it.

  “Thank you,” he breathed. “You’re amazing.”

  “So are you.”

  She lay back down beside him, eyes pricking with tight little tears. Throat tight, too. Waiting for him to say something, but she had no idea what. He was almost asleep again, already, and it wasn’t fair to blame him for that, since he’d said he wanted to be lazy, if she was offering, and she had offered, she hadn’t argued.

  She lay here with her leg across his thighs, her arm wrapped around his chest, and her nose buried in his neck, inhaling the clean male smell of his skin and hair, feeling her heart like a lump of lead in her stomach. Why?

  Because I don’t want to let go. Now that I don’t hate him, I -

  Love him?

  Don’t be ridiculous, Tegan.

  Like him, though. That felt safe enough to say.

  Like him a lot.

  Like him too much, way too much, just when I have to say goodbye.

  She felt as if she’d wasted almost two years on not really knowing him, making assumptions based on his worst moments and ignoring all the good things that had been there all along. The way he was such a loyal friend. The way his horses responded to him, trusted him. She could think of times when he’d been annoying – maddening, actually - but she couldn’t think of anything he’d ever done that was shady or sly or mean-spirited.

  She couldn’t find a safe name for this feeling welling up inside her, all she knew was that it felt too powerful and too painful and she didn’t know what to do with it. Was she really and honestly in love with Jamie MacCreadie?

  How stupid. How dumb.

  She lay miserably awake most of the rest of the night, with her feelings so powerful and mixed up it was like having an unwanted third person right here in the bed. She didn’t doze until almost dawn.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  In the morning, Chet came back.

  Tegan and Kara were taking care of the horses, while Jamie had gone in search of something to bring back for their breakfast. Dean had already left town, but had texted Kara about twenty times, and Keeley had gone, and Lisa, and more pickups and trailers were peeling carefully out of the rodeo ground gates, hitting the road.

  Tegan didn’t register Chet’s pickup until it began reversing up to the trailer, so they could hitch the gooseneck later on. He was an expert at judging the distance, and stopped in precisely the right spot before jumping out.

  His eyes were still bloodshot. Tegan had almost forgotten what they looked like when they weren’t. This time, though, it was from the eye-strain of driving twenty-two hours in less than two days.

  “I’m back,” he announced.

  “Yeah, I worked that out.” She grinned, nervous for him. Nervous for herself, too. She thought about Jamie, and had a massive need to blurt out a warning.

  You can’t have him back, Chet, not the way you did before, best buddies. He’s mine now.

  Managing to bite back the words – which might not even be true - she asked instead, “How’d it go with your family? Tell me. I want to hear it all.”

  “Mom was great. And my sister, too.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t believe some of the things they said.” He wiped away some
tears. “Shoot, I’ve cried more in the past two days than my whole life before. I’ve talked till I was blue.”

  “Can I ask you something, Chet?”

  “Of course. Anything.”

  “When did you last have a drink?”

  He gave an upside-down smile. “Friday night. And don’t think you’re the only one who’s worked out the connection.”

  “Well…”

  “Drowning my sorrows. Drowning my identity. Jamie trying to do the right thing by playing the drinking game right along with me.”

  “Is that what was happening.”

  “Yeah, don’t you think?” He tipped his head to one side.

  “I do. I’m glad it stopped. Can I hug you?”

  “I would love you to hug me.”

  They had a close, warm embrace and Tegan thought it felt different, too. Softer, now that Chet wasn’t fighting so much.

  “Jamie’s gone to get breakfast,” she said. “Should be back soon.” It was just after seven. “Did you drive all night?”

  “Pulled over to sleep for a few hours just before Billings.”

  “You didn’t have to rush back so fast, did you?”

  “I came back for you,” Chet announced.

  “For me?”

  “Didn’t want to miss you before you left.” He took her hands in his and began chafing them against those rodeo rider calluses. She had similar ones on her own palms. “Tegan, I’ve been thinking. I want to go through with the wedding, after all.”

  Her mind went blank. The wedding? It seemed like half a life-time ago that they’d been planning it. A million heartbeats ago. She still needed it, on paper, just as much as ever, but…

  I can’t. Not when I’m in love with someone else.

  And she was in love with Jamie. There was no point in lying to herself about it.

  “Now that everything’s out in the open, can’t I do that for you?” Chet was saying. “Don’t you think? No strings. Nothing going on underneath. We’re friends, Tegan. I want to marry you, so you can stay.”

  Jamie had heard. He came striding up to them faster than he needed to, eyes narrowed, chin very square, one arm holding a white paper bag filled with - from the spicy smell - breakfast burritos, and the other hand balancing a cardboard tray of plastic-lidded coffee cups. “No, Chet,” he said. His blue eyes were blazing and he looked determined and electric and ready for action. “You can’t marry her. You’re not going to.”