Kane (American Extreme Bull Riders Tour Book 6)

by Sinclair Jayne

  Kane longed to pull out his black Amex just to shut Jonas up and show him that yes, he most definitely could. And would, but Sky would not define that as behaving.

  “How will Sky establish her career if you take an entire series off the market in a private collection?” Jonas breathed, like Kane had just suggested giving everyone Hep C. “She’s getting incredible buzz. She needs to build on that, not disappear.”

  Kane didn’t want anything of Sky’s going to the cheating and lying squirt of sperm’s hospital wing named in his exalted family name. But he didn’t want to hurt her career when she had so much talent and had worked so hard.

  “Kane, maybe wait in the house,” she suggested gently. “You really don’t have a say in this part of my life.”

  “Is that so?” he drawled, furious again she was dismissing him. “No say,” he repeated even though he hadn’t intended to have a say about her art, but now he walked toward her full of purpose. Saw her swallow and clench her fingers. Her eyes widened, pupils dilated and the beautiful blue deepened to smoky purple. “Not even if it’s a sculpture of me?”

  He stopped toe-to-toe. Her breathing was shallow and ragged. Finally something he could control. Sky’s reaction to him. She still lit up like a Christmas tree. He’d been handling her all wrong. Fuck talking, being practical and trying to comprehend her twisted illogic and childish reactions. He should have just tossed her delectable small handful of an ass in his truck and taken her to a hotel and fucked her blind and stupid to remind her of what they’d had and what they’d have again when she finally got on board that Montana was his child, and he intended to raise her all the way to walk her down the aisle, and he wasn’t going to be a single dad, divorced or married to a woman not Montana’s mother when he did it.

  “Not everything is about you.” Her whisper fractured, and he could see the blush that stained her cheekbones flush down to her collarbone that he’d so loved to trace with his fingertips and then his tongue because it had caused her to moan and shiver and beg.

  For a man who’d always been highly sexed, Sky had been his perfect match—scorching hot and ready to burn within every time he even started to think about sex, which with her had been a lot. But it had been her sweet and her total acceptance of him, win or lose, good or bad, that had stormed his heart.

  “Really?” He let his voice go deep and leaned in closer to her, allowing his body to brush against her so she could feel his monster hard-on. Her eyes fluttered shut, but then she opened them again as if gathering up her tattered willpower. His Sky had been so sweet and giving and totally his. Whatever he’d wanted. Always. This Sky was new. More of a fighter, and he would never have guessed that that would have turned him on.

  “I’m going to make you prove that later, Sky,” he said, leaning even further into her space, and curling his finger under her chin to tilt her face up so that she could see his intent. He leaned closer slowly so she had plenty of time to move away, but no, not his girl. She held her own. “I’m going to make you beg.” His lips feathered along her ear.

  “You can try.” She trembled, but didn’t push him away, nor did her midnight blue eyes look away. “I won’t,” she promised.

  God, he’d forgotten how utterly beautiful she was, how she just looked at him and it was like she could climb inside him and wrap around his soul, warm all the parts that were ice cold and rigid.

  His hand spanned her throat, and he felt her swallow in his palm. Desire pierced. He knew she would. He wanted her to beg. He’d string her out as long as he could stand it.

  “You remember what I do for a living?”

  Rhetorical question, and she didn’t answer it.

  “That I live and breathe challenge, right?” His mouth descended toward hers. Her lips parted.

  “Kane,” she whispered, more of an invitation than a protest.

  He huffed a laugh and stepped back.

  Sky blinked. Spell broken. He felt like a torch ignited in his belly. Sky still wanted him as much as she ever had. They’d been good together. Too good. That summer with her was the only time in his entire life he’d come close to wavering from his goal. Make more money than his so-called biological father’s family had. Get his mother’s birthright Montana ranch back for her, him and Luke. But during the summer with Sky for the first time he’d tasted peace. He’d experienced happiness. He’d felt normal. A regular man, and he’d wondered what it would be like to be that man with a wife and a house and a regular job and to not be driven by things set in motion before he’d been born.

  “Later,” he said, the word as much of a promise as it was a dare.

  Her eyes flared. She looked at Jonas who was standing further into Sky’s studio in a shaft of light coming in through the windows up high near the roof line. He stood still, staring, mouth slightly open.

  “Stay,” Sky told Kane. “Behave.” She hurried after Jonas.

  Kane was not a dog. He followed.

  Sky switched on a light and a semicircle of six bronze sculptures shimmered in the golden light from the small halogen spot lights mounted on a dropped beam. Each sculpture, four of a bull and rider, and two with just a cowboy, one back to the viewer, walking away, rope in hand, the uneven tilt of his shoulders indicating pain and loss. One hand dangled loose at his side, and Kane felt a lump in his throat. It was him. He’d been tossed at the seven-second mark. It had been the last time Sky had watched him ride, and when he looked at the empty hand, he couldn’t stop the thought that he should have been holding on to something—his wife and child. Instead nothing. The invisible family.

  The final sculpture was of a cowboy climbing up out of the dirt. Each sculpture had its own pedestal of a different size and height, and the way the light hit the metal created shadows and a shimmer as if the image were alive.

  Kane’s breath seized in his lungs. He’d never seen anything more beautiful. More powerful. The images were so immediate, raw, still yet pulsing with energy, tension. His heart thumped hard. He swore the sculptures breathed. Moved. Sky had created these with her hands and her mind and her imagination and her heart. While he’d been riding for money and the win, she’d been watching, analyzing, remembering.

  He felt awed.

  The images captured a split second in time, but so much more. Each sculpture was a dance between the fury of the bull and the will of the rider. They were also a taunt to nature, gravity and balance. And how did she create the shape and color of the metal? He felt mesmerized and humbled.

  While he’d been playing the short game and challenging death and the laws of physics, Sky had been creating something eternal. She’d been memorializing her lover, her child’s father, while he’d been trying to forget the only woman he’d loved existed by burying himself mindlessly in the bodies of other women until he couldn’t take the boredom and loneliness of it anymore. Lately his life had felt like a black hole monk stage he hadn’t had the stomach to crawl out of.

  He felt tired. He felt worn down.

  “Amazing, Sky,” he said unable to stay in her presence another moment until he could wrap his head around what an idiot he’d been and how much time he’d wasted. He’d failed her on an elemental level. He’d kept his feelings close and secret. He hadn’t understood her. Hadn’t even tried. He’d let himself get lost in her body and what she did to his.

  She’d left him because she hadn’t trusted him.

  And he hadn’t deserved her or her trust, but he sure as hell was going to work hard to win it this time. No failure.

  He took her cool hands in his and rubbed them briefly to warm them and then brought them to his mouth. He kissed one then the other.

  “I have no words.” It was a confession. Her talent and vision humbled him. “Sort out what you need with Jonas.”

  He walked out of the studio and back to the house before the protest clawing for supremacy, the one that didn’t want a piece of him or Sky’s to help out anything associated with the hated name Sheridan, burst out like an unleashed
, unmuzzled id. His shit was his own to keep a tight lid on. He couldn’t hinder Sky’s career. She had too much talent and had worked too hard. So she could donate a sculpture, get the buzz, lay her foundation, continue her work. He’d build her a studio wherever they landed, but he was still going to change her life.

  Chapter Ten

  Kane unlocked the door to a suite at the Phoenix, one of Scottsdale’s premier resorts. Sky’d only driven past it in all the years of living here. The pleasure she felt at settling with Jonas, not only with the donation of one of her largest sculptures of a bull rider mid-ride, but also that he was going to show the other pieces in his gallery. Being featured in a gallery of that size one year out of her MFA program was truly an accomplishment, but she was so tied up in knots over Kane that she couldn’t even enjoy the moment. She wasn’t really sure yet what she’d agreed to.

  “Certainly moving up in the world,” she breathed out, a little intimidated, frustrated, and impressed all at once. Her emotions and thoughts had been all over the place since Kane had walked back into her life, and she still had no idea which one to settle with. “No more trailer?”

  “My brother, Laird and his fiancée are using it at the moment.”

  “This can’t be the tour hotel,” she said thinking that the Phoenix was astronomical. They’d come to dinner here once for Bennington’s sixteenth birthday. Sky, who’d grown up in what most people would think of as luxury, had been intimidated.

  “I don’t want to discuss money now,” he said coldly, and opened the door.

  Money. Obviously another minefield they’d need to walk across. Sky was almost relieved that Colt was still with them. He held the sculpture—the one that had kicked off the drama and reunited her with Kane and brought his daughter into his life. Permanently.

  The new normal. Sky felt like she needed to pinch herself. She also needed a few days—make that weeks—to come to terms with the changes. Kane wasn’t offering her any time to process anything, and his continued nearness was awakening too many memories that she wanted to keep locked away until she could deal with the present.

  The bellman brought the rest of their luggage—Kane’s large suitcase and his leather duffel and her smaller one that he had packed while she’d been meeting with Jonas as well as a box of toys, games and books Montana had packed up with Colt earlier. Montana carried her owl backpack and wore another, larger one on her back that she declared made her a turtle because she now carried “my home on my back.”

  Their daughter had held Kane’s hand the entire time they’d checked in and had danced in excitement beside him. Probably a lot like she had, Sky remembered disparagingly. When they’d hooked up she’d been so thrilled to be with Kane, too blissed out to ask any questions and she sure as hell hadn’t made any demands.

  Montana ran to the wall of windows that looked out over Camelback Mountain and the natural red rock sculptures tumbling across the sweeping desert view.

  The minute the bellman had left, large tip in hand, Colt put the sculpture down in the center of the large, round, reclaimed wood dining table.

  “You two have a lot to discuss,” he said.

  “You should stay at the hotel,” Kane repeated. He’d tried to reserve a room for his brother as well.

  Colt looked around at the studied, rustic elegance that gleamed with money and shook his head. “Laird’s flying out with Tucker. He’ll help me settle up Sky’s place, and Tucker’s going to take over for Tanner supervising the Triple T’s Team with the AEBR bulls.”

  The hits kept coming, Sky thought. A whole family of Kane’s she had to meet. More people to judge her. Take Kane’s side and shut her out. Tell her how she’d royally screwed up. Go big or go home, she mocked herself bleakly.

  “Colt,” Kane said taking a compulsive step forward. “Thank you.”

  “You need us we come.” Colt wasn’t looking at Kane; instead he watched Montana at the window.

  “Montana, I’m out. See you tomorrow.”

  She ran across the room and hugged Colt around his knees. She was always so comfortable with people. Like Kane.

  He smiled. “Your cousin Parker’s coming to meet you tomorrow,” he said, and the way his face momentarily softened warmed Sky on the inside. Her daughter was going to have cousins. More soon since Luke and his wife were expecting. Guilt settled more heavily around her shoulders. She’d denied Montana a lot more than her father. She’d denied her an entire family—aunts, uncles, now cousins, and a perhaps a grandmother, though she wasn’t sure how close Kane was to his mom.

  Her parents hadn’t been a presence in Montana’s life. The tense estrangement that had kicked in after Bennington died had only grown with the years, and she hadn’t wanted to subject Montana to the coldness and critical indifference she’d experienced growing up. Besides, they would have known who the father of their grandchild was on sight, and since they wrongly blamed Kane for Bennington’s obsession with being a bull rider and all things cowboy instead of becoming an attorney, that knowledge would have cut them deep.

  “You good?” Colt looked piercingly at his brother.

  “Fine.”

  A lie. Colt didn’t let him off the hook and drilled him with that strange golden stare like a bird of prey.

  “Getting there,” Kane grit out through his teeth.

  Colt nodded to her. “Sky.” And then was gone.

  So much to discuss. The silence seemed electric as if by leaving Colt had flipped a switch.

  “Daddy, when are we going swimming?” Montana looked up at Kane expectantly.

  “Now.” Kane roused himself and tried for a smile.

  “Wait. What?” Sky said. “Montana, it’s time for a nap, and we don’t have suits. Maybe tomorrow.”

  “Daddy said he’d take me swimming. Today.” Her lower lip pursed. “He promised.”

  Great. Already different pages for parenting although that was a problem she should have seen coming from a long way off.

  “Just a quick swim,” Kane said this time finding his smile. “Some fun after such a long ride in the truck. Then a nap.”

  The grin Montana shot her dad matched his, and once again, Sky felt on the outside looking in.

  “We don’t even have swimsuits,” she said in a low voice, one more thing he could judge. She’d managed the basics only.

  “I know. I looked.” Kane kicked off his cowboy boots and shucked off his jeans while Sky gawked. Kane held her gaze as he unbuttoned his shirt, snap by snap. “You gonna help me, baby, or just stare?”

  Apparently she was going to stare. Kane shrugged fluidly out of his shirt and kicked the pile of clothes into the closet. Her mouth dried. He was perfect. Defined shoulders, muscled ridges on his arms, especially his forearms, strong tendons. Six-pack abs didn’t begin to cover it and when he turned to pull out black and gray swim trunks from his leather duffel bag, she could see the flex of his obliques. Her fingers ached to trace the bull tattoo that leaped across his upper back.

  “Daddy has a picture on him, Mommy,” Montana said as Kane went to the bathroom to change into his suit. “I want one too.”

  Great.

  “Should have thought of that before you told me tats turned you on and created your stylized version of Berserker.” Kane loped back instantly, trunks on. He looked like he belonged in a magazine. He was in magazines. He’d been one of a celebrity magazine’s most handsome man two times running. He’d been one of the featured bull riders in a documentary a couple years ago and attendance at AEBR events had soared and had shown no signs of dropping off.

  Kane tugged on a snowy white T-shirt and slipped on flip-flops.

  “Ready for a swim?” Montana nodded, her arms wrapped tight about her bull.

  “Bennington goes too,” she said.

  “Bennington can watch,” Kane said easily, pocketing the room key, “but he can’t swim.”

  “Neither can Montana,” Sky whispered miserably, following him out of the room.

  The look he sh
ot her was a fierce WTF? But Sky ignored it. It hadn’t really been an issue. They lived in the desert. No pool. No rivers. Instead she focused on Montana’s pleasure as she ran down the wide sandstone hallway broken up by woven Turkish rugs.

  “You didn’t think it was dangerous not teaching her to swim when your parents have a giant pool in their center courtyard?” Kane asked after a beat of simmering silence.

  “I just moved back to Scottsdale, well, Phoenix, technically last year.”

  His eyes searched hers in the hallway. Sky sucked in a breath. He saw too much. Always too much.

  “Your parents didn’t help you?” Kane sounded outraged, watching Montana as she darted ahead and then circled back. “And why didn’t your father ever find me? Demand I do the right thing.”

  Sky winced. The last thing she’d wanted at the time from Kane was an offer ‘to do the right thing.’

  “I’m easy to find. My schedule is published a year in advance. My stats are online. Sponsor events are publicized weeks before we hit each city.”

  “I didn’t want him to find you,” she said quietly.

  “Why not?”

  She couldn’t tell him that. It would kill him. He’d loved her brother as much as she had. And Kane had been so close with her parents. He’d be so hurt, stoic, but hurt to know that they blamed him for Bennington’s death, but he’d been doing what he loved. Kane hadn’t even been in the country for a year prior to Bennington being injured. Bennington had started on the lower rungs of the rodeo circuit determined to move himself up to the AEBR. Kane had started on the professional circuit, but further from the hype—honing his skills in Australia and Brazil where it seemed like a lot of the top talent was coming from.

  Montana ran back toward them and then hopped on one foot then the other.

  “Swimming.” She took off down the hall again.

  “Can’t we go into all this later?” she asked, miserable. She couldn’t even have a normal conversation with Kane without one of them stepping on a land mine from their past.