Kane (American Extreme Bull Riders Tour Book 6)

by Sinclair Jayne

  “Not so easy,” she said softly.

  “We just commit,” he said. “And you can start by packing up a suitcase.”

  Sky nodded. “You are in Phoenix for a week, Kane. I have exercise classes to teach, subs to find since I’m only giving a week’s notice,” she said quickly seeing that he was about to speak. “I can stay here with Montana and start sorting things out, and you can stay in a…”

  He cut off the rest of her sentence with his mouth. Hard. Aggressive. Sky whimpered, not shocked so much as she was overwhelmed by the wave of instant hot and drugging pleasure that rolled over her and tumbled her head over heels, dizzy. She hadn’t felt this alive and intense for four years, and her inadvertent noise gave him his opening. His tongue delved inside her sensitive lips, traced her inner heat and then tangled with her tongue.

  Kane Wilder could kiss. It was like he ate her alive. Possessed her. And she jumped in, fell three hundred feet into his liquid fire.

  “Kane, we were supposed to be talking. Arranging things,” she said breathlessly when he finally broke the kiss.

  “Done talking. Tomorrow,” he said his voice dark with promise, and she was helpless to not look at his mouth. “I’d do it now, but it’s Sunday.”

  When the heck had Kane cared about keeping it G rated on Sunday? He’d loved Sundays because he had a reprieve from thinking about his next draw for the day, and if he hadn’t been too banged up, Sundays had been their lazy day just spending with each other in bed and out.

  “Monday morning, first thing,” he promised. “No waiting period. No residency requirement. ID and seventy-six dollars buys the license I already checked.”

  “What?”

  “We can get a judge or a justice of the peace to do it the same day.”

  “Wait. You’re not serious,” she said. “We are not getting married tomorrow.”

  “Yes, Sky. You. Will. Marry. Me. Tomorrow.”

  Not a proposal. A demand.

  “What is the rush?” she breathed.

  “Rush. Four years late is not a rush.”

  “We have to stop focusing on the past,” she said even though she certainly wouldn’t win any awards for her forward thinking. “We need to think about a future, building a stable life for Montana. We need to be thoughtful. Plan. Feel our way.”

  Kane was not impressed.

  “I’ve given it more than enough thought. Marriage. Pack a suitcase—enough for a week or two for you and Montana. At my next break we’ll go to my brothers’ ranch in Montana and decide where we want to have our home base.”

  She sighed. “Kane, you still want to make up for lost time, but marriage isn’t going to do that. It won’t solve all that is wrong between us.”

  “It’s a beginning.” Kane leaned forward and framed her face with his rough hands. She inhaled his scent. She had very little armor against him, and she wasn’t sure she really wanted to anymore. She was tired of fighting. One day and he’d worn her down. How did that bode for her future? “And marriage is only the beginning of what you owe me, Sky.”

  *

  Kane walked again through the tiny two-room house, rough plank floorboards creaking, unable to settle. Sky had pulled out two large canvas totes and a small suitcase to pack up some clothes, but she wanted to check on her studio first. He’d let her go. They both needed a breather. Colt was playing Candy Land with Montana, and he’d made her a grilled cheese sandwich. So normal.

  He should be the one making her a snack and playing a game, but instead he was losing his mind. He had three years to catch up on, but he couldn’t wrap his head around any of it. He had a daughter he didn’t know. Sky, the one woman he’d trusted, the one woman he’d begun to let inside his paranoid and padlocked heart, had betrayed him on the most primal level.

  She’d grown up with a loving mother and father in a sprawling, hacienda-style house in one of Scottsdale’s most prestigious neighborhoods with two acres of landscaped desert surrounding the house. She’d been cherished and safe. She’d always known who she was and that she was wanted. How could she deny his daughter that same security?

  He still didn’t understand why she hadn’t come to him. She’d told him she’d loved him over and over and even he had started to believe it. He’d started making plans, but forced himself to wait because he wanted Sky to have the opportunity to finish school. Traveling on the tour with him would have been grueling, and he’d wanted to have enough money so that they could have a home base so she could choose—travel with him or pursue her art—and he’d come home during breaks.

  But she’d left. Lied. He knew he had to get a grip. Accept. Forgive. Move on, but Kane didn’t think he could forgive this. Taking his child from him was too big a betrayal. He always believed he could do anything if he set his mind to it. It was just will. Determination. But forgiving Sky was like a huge wall between them. Three years. Three goddamn years. Lost. Stolen. Taken.

  He’d faced a few paternity claims since he’d risen in the rankings, all totally baseless—three of the women he’d never even met. One he had, but she’d been drunk so he’d done what he always did when the woman hitting on him drank too much—taxi to her apartment or condo, help her inside and make sure she locked the door behind him, before he caught the taxi back to his hotel alone. Fucking ironic. The one woman he’d actually knocked up had done a runner.

  He didn’t even remember the last bull ride in Santa Fe. Or dismounting. Hadn’t checked his score. He’d wanted to get it done. Get Sky and his daughter out of the arena and back to Phoenix to figure out the rest of their lives. But he did remember glancing up and not seeing Sky where he’d put her.

  He pinched his nose hard. Usually he could climb above the pain that was nearly always there in his body, ride it like a wave, skimming across its surface, use it to focus himself. Now it was another wall he kept crashing into. Pain from the bull muscling him into the gate, wrestled with the pain of discovering he had a beautiful daughter who thought of him as character in her daddy book. Was she going to expect him to climb back in that goddamn thing once the novelty wore off?

  Fuck the pain and fuck the past. That was the best he could muster for the moment. Sky hadn’t started packing. She’d gone to her studio to see if she had a larger suitcase, but she had pulled out a small carry-on and two large bright floral canvas totes that hurt his eyes to look at. He’d pack for her. He wanted to be clear. She and Montana were coming with him.

  There wasn’t a closet in the small bedroom with two beds, but there were two small, clearly banged-up vintage dressers and a garment rack filled with pretty patterned sundresses in a see-through plastic garment bag. Kane unzipped it and reached for one strapless sapphire blue dress. Memories crashed—Portland, Oregon—Sky in his truck, holding his hand, sucking on his finger, the moist heat of her mouth jacking him up so crazy fast he’d veered off the main road onto an unpaved and unmarked dirt road and drove cursing while she’d worked his finger in a rhythm and style that left little doubt about what she intended next.

  And when he’d finally found a turnoff and driven down that, ending up at a feeder stream to the Yamhill River, she’d unbuttoned his jeans and stared at him as if he were holy, then she’d looked into his eyes, one finger lightly stroking the moisture already leaking, and spreading it around his sensitive tip and down the underside that always made his body shiver and had said, “I love you, Kane.”

  She’d meant it. He’d been able to tell by the deep purple of her eyes, the way they’d glowed, and the way her beautiful face was so serious and her touch so sensuous and reverent. She’d said it many other times, in many other places, but that had been the first time he’d started to believe it, and this had been the dress she’d been wearing. Kane let the soft material slip through his fingers. He leaned in and inhaled. Lemon and verbena. His head settled a little. Same for his gut.

  He was back in his old truck, the blue one that had reminded him of her eyes, pulling Sky onto his lap, her skirt hiked up, the top of he
r dress pulled down so that his hands could palm her beautiful small breasts that had so obsessed him.

  He’d wanted to say the words back to her. They were true although new and terrifying. She’d become his world so fast, so unexpectedly, but his heart had swollen so full he’d choked, and his eyes had pricked and burned, so instead he’d buried his face in her neck and had inhaled her scent and fought back stupid tears and did what he always did: talked with his body.

  Kane heard a car. He re-zipped the bag of about ten sundresses and with one finger through the hangers, dangled it over his shoulder and strode out of Sky’s apartment. He unlocked his truck, hung the dresses next to his shirts on the custom bar and turned toward the other building that Sky had disappeared into a few minutes ago.

  Of course the gallery prick would drive a silver Audi. Kane wasn’t sure why that irritated him so much. Maybe because if he didn’t usually haul a trailer or drive around his family’s Montana ranch helping out during his time off, he might have bought one himself. He didn’t want to have anything in common with Jonas, and he definitely didn’t want him alone with Sky. Slamming the door of the truck, he loped into the large, long metal building, but paused at the entrance as his eyes adjusted to the light. He couldn’t see Sky, but he saw Jonas walking across the cement floor with purpose.

  He heard Sky’s soft musical voice. “Jonas, I wasn’t expecting you.” She didn’t sound tense, or apologetic or nervous like she’d sounded with him the past day and night.

  Dammit.

  “You should have been,” Jonas said looking preppy and smooth in his starched, white button-down and navy chinos. His sleeves were buttoned at the wrist with jeweled cuff links. Seriously. On a Sunday late morning. “You promised me a sculpture and you left your whole life in the gallery. Here’s your phone and your purse and…well I don’t know what’s in this bag.”

  “Thank you,” she said, her voice soft and prim, not aching with emotion and defensiveness like how she’d sounded to him the last twenty-four plus hours.

  Sky couldn’t like this guy. She absolutely couldn’t. She’d been raised in wealth and casual elegance, but she’d always been so sweet and down to earth. She’d liked to sew her own sundresses for Chrissakes. She’d even designed and tailored several shirts for him to wear during competition. He’d had them saved, and sealed in a garment bag with cedar balls. She deserved a man who would cherish her, not let her fall on her face in front of a bunch of strangers and leave her there for Chrissakes.

  “So where’s the cowboy?”

  “In the house. I needed a moment.”

  Jonas laughed. “You and me both. Dr. Sheridan’s personal assistant, and I didn’t know doctors had those even if they are considered world class—” he put the last two words in air quotes, and finally Kane could get on board with Jonas’s snide attitude “—has been ringing me hourly about the damn sculpture and your disappearance. The press has been a boon both for the gallery and for the auction. I’m opening up early today. My sister’s already there, and she says there’s quite a crowd. The other artists are thrilled with the press and extra viewing hours so all in all your cowboy didn’t create a total cluster fuck. Even missing last night made you more mysterious.”

  “That was not my intention,” Sky said.

  Kane knew eavesdropping should probably have gone out of his repertoire when he’d been eight and spying on his eleven-and-a-half-year-old brother Luke, chatting to a girl from school who’d ridden by their apartment on a Razor scooter that Kane had coveted.

  “Snow White and the Thieving Cowboy—one blogger posted the video of that idiot striding out with my art and you chasing after him like he was Justin Bieber. It has over ten thousand views already. Can you believe that?”

  Damn.

  Good thing Alicia would be busy with a family wedding. Not that she wouldn’t be looped in tighter than a bull rope within seconds of landing. Justin Bieber, his ass.

  “And then that smoking hot kiss in the spotlight has definitely not gone unnoticed,” Jonas said, sounding peeved. “You had ample opportunity to tell me you were involved with someone over the past few weeks.”

  “I wasn’t, but…” Sky sighed. “I am sorry, Jonas. I did say I wanted to keep things professional between us. My relationship with Kane is complicated.”

  “Love always is,” Jonas said. “Or so I’m told, and I imagine cowboys are especially complicated. Never mind. I want to talk to you about something else. I am here hoping to talk you into giving me something.”

  “You’d better be talking about art.” Kane walked fully into the building. His boots clicked on the cement with deadly intent. Yeah he was feeling more than a little mean right about now. “And I have a name. Kane Wilder.”

  Jonas rolled his eyes. “Yippeekaiyay.”

  “I don’t believe this.” Sky looked from Kane to Jonas. “You are men. Not boys.” She had her arms out and palms up in the international ‘stop’ pose and stood between them.

  Kane had to fight the urge to circle around her to get in the rich and prissy gallery owner’s face.

  “Kane, Jonas is here to return my phone, purse and clothes, and he is going to look at the other sculptures in the same series. Jonas, this is Kane, Montana’s father. He and I are planning on getting married.”

  Immediately he calmed. She was admitting it. Accepting it. Still she looked pissed and adorable. Sky had never once been pissed off at him that he’d known. She’d always been calm and loving, which had soothed him, but Sky standing up to him was new and turned him on. But he had to remain focused on the plan—getting married, getting his financials in order to include her and Montana. Hell, he still hadn’t found out whether her was on her birth certificate. That questioned burned hot. If the father line was blank or said ‘unknown’, he really didn’t know what he was going to do.

  For a moment he couldn’t breathe. Rage swirled around him. Taunts. Powerlessness. Fury.

  Focus.

  He breathed in to a count of seven, held for seven, breathed out for seven. Seven times. If it were blank he’d get his name added. Montana was only three. She wouldn’t know. Probably wouldn’t remember much of her life without him in it.

  Unless he died in the arena.

  That brought him up short. Hell, it was always a possibility. Every bull rider knew that. He’d seen it fucking happen. He’d seen riders go down and not get up and live but never ride again. He’d seen them die. His best friend had died by the hoof of a bull. He could be doing that to Montana. Here today, memory tomorrow.

  For the first time, seriously the first time, his determination to ride to age thirty had a big fat question mark. Did he still need to do that? He knew his savings amount to the penny. His retirement. His investments in Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and LA apartment buildings. The largest amount of money set aside for purchasing the Wild Wind Ranch in Marietta back for his family, his much larger family now since Luke had married Tanner McTavish this past Christmas, and he and his sister-in-law were expecting twins, and also in the past year he’d discovered two more brothers that his mother had birthed at age fifteen after being seriously injured in a car accident. Her father had set up two separate adoptions for the twin boys before his mother had recovered enough to leave the hospital or know that she’d given birth to twins, not just one baby. One brother, Colt was married now and had adopted his wife, Talon’s, son, Parker. Laird, his other brother was engaged to Tucker McTavish.

  Seeing his brothers settled and happy had been a mixed blessing. He’d been relieved to see them so in love, but he’d never felt more alone. Wrestling the Wild Wind ranch back from her ailing and estranged father’s nearly bankrupt hands had been his mother’s dream, not his although it had made sense. They had ranching in their blood. Luke had ridden the rodeo circuit for ten years. He and his wife Tanner bred bucking bulls for the AEBR and pro circuit. Tucker had been a winning barrel racer and now helped breed bulls but also she wanted to breed and train horses. But was ranch life
right for him and Sky now?

  “Do you still want a cowboy-themed sculpture for the donation, Jonas?”

  “Yes. I’d love the one you took.” His thoughtful gaze settled on Kane.

  “Not going to happen.”

  “It is a trademarked pose, I’m afraid,” Sky said. “I did sell the rights to that image, not just the picture. I didn’t realize what I was signing away. But I had…” she broke off and blushed and Kane found himself fascinated by the convulsive swallow of her delicate throat and her pink-stained cheeks “…thousands…um…a lot of pictures that I took while researching bull riders. I mean bull riding. I can show you more sculptures from that series.”

  “Researching,” Kane said, surprised to find himself amused. “Is that what you were doing?”

  Her blush deepened, and for the first time since yesterday at nine thirty-seven a.m., the roaring in his head stopped, and his gut stopped burning.

  “Yes. For my masters in fine arts,” Sky said primly. “Follow me, Jonas.” She hesitated and looked at Kane, uncertainty clouding her eyes. He preferred the blush. “Do you want to see them?” she hesitantly asked him.

  “Of course.” Kane frowned. Why the hell wouldn’t he?

  She nodded. “Then behave,” she whispered. She jumped when he linked fingers with her.

  “Depends on what your definition of behaving is.”

  Sky nibbled on her lip and then a hint of a smile chased across her face.

  “Jonas.” Sky walked across the concrete toward the back of the converted shop or barn. “I hope you find one of these an acceptable substitute for me to donate for the guild auction next weekend.”

  Her voice caught, and he hated that. She didn’t need Jonas’s approval on anything.

  “I’ll buy the sculptures, Sky,” he said, wanting to be gone from the reminder of their years apart and start his life with Sky and his daughter. What had her parents been thinking letting her raise their only grandchild in a former bunkhouse when they had a hacienda-style mansion a few miles away?

  “Like hell!” Jonas burst out, stopping. “You can’t buy all of her sculptures.”