*
“Do you remember Jenna?” Talon finally asked after taking a large gulp of the whiskey laced latte.
“Jenna?” Luke could barely tear his eyes away from Tanner.
She seemed to glow with some inner light that was heating him up when Talon’s questions and hungry eyes made him feel so icy cold. She was bound to be disappointed. Hurt. Because he already knew what his maybe brother would be going through. Why had Luke been kept? Why had Kane been kept, when Colt had been discarded? Forgotten.
Hell, he was wondering now. His mom was volatile. Exacting. Beautiful. Loving. Damaged. He couldn’t imagine her abandoning a child but if the baby had come before him that would have made her young, heartbreakingly young. Hell, he didn’t know if he wanted the answer. It couldn’t fix anything. Heal anything. And he wanted to kick his father as far down the road of never meeting as he could.
“Jenna. She had a dimple in her right cheek. And thick, glossy black hair, and a smile and laugh you could see from a mile away.” Talon seemed to wake up from her stupor. “She was real pretty. You met her at the rodeo about eight years back.”
Talon swiped her finger across the phone and held it up. He saw a pretty young girl with a lot of jet black hair tumbling around her shoulders with her face squished next to Talon’s. They looked unbearably young and the shot looked like one they’d taken at a photo booth and then Talon had later snapped a picture to keep on her phone.
“What rodeo?” he asked, not remembering her specifically. A lot of girls waited to meet the cowboys after their rides.
Jesus, they both looked so young. But, hell, eight years ago he’d been nineteen or twenty. Far from home. New on the circuit. Lonely. Wanting to be a man. Prove himself.
“You remember her?” Talon stood up and walked closer. “I think you met her at the Copper Mountain Rodeo here in Marietta.”
He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding. He should sit back down, but Talon was really making him edgy and, combined with everything else that had happened today, his body felt tight, restless, his skin too small for his bones. Itchy.
“Never been to Marietta before today.”
“You’d remember a girl, right? If you slept with her?”
Shit.
He so knew where this was going. No. No. No. He’d never seen that girl. Where was this coming from? It was like the biggest Punked day ever.
Hell, yes, he’d remember. Wouldn’t he? But having a relationship when he was traveling every weekend was mostly out. Hooking up at the rodeos was beyond easy and, unless the woman was a barrel racer, or working with a sponsor, he wouldn’t see her again for months if not longer. And he’d never tried.
“Talon?” Tanner asked, looking at the photo.
“I thought maybe…” Her bottom lip trembled. “I don’t want anything from you. I don’t need it. I love Parker and Colt does, too, and he asked me to marry him, and he wants to adopt Parker.”
He forced himself to breathe. Tanner made an odd sound and she’d taken Talon’s coffee from her shaking hands and put it on a side table, and then she took Talon’s hand in hers and squeezed.
“So?” None of that had anything to do with him, but no one answered. “Who’s Parker?” He demanded.
Even as his mind spun back to all the different rodeos, the different girls. Lots with dark hair. One with red hair who’d so pissed him off he’d become practically a saint for a while and a hell of a lot more discriminating.
“Jenna and I were friends. We grew up together sort of, in some group homes for a while. I adopted Parker when Jenna died. It’s just I thought… he looks so much like Colt, that I initially thought maybe… but Colt hasn’t been home to Montana for twelve years and you both look almost like twins.”
“You think I’m your kid’s dad?” His voice echoed in disbelief.
He shook his head. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. He walked around the trailer like he was looking for something.
“No. No. No way. I don’t know that girl.” Shit, he couldn’t even remember the name she’d said. “I never met her.”
Talon stood up and faced him. “You can’t be sure of that. You weren’t sure.”
“I’m sure.” He said striving for conviction. He’d remember. Of course he would. He wasn’t Kane. And he damn well wasn’t his father. His mom and Sam’s words echoed in his head. “Blood’s blood.”
“She doesn’t look familiar.” He said, trying his best to stifle the desperate edge his voice wanted to teeter on.
“She was in love.”
“No one’s in love after a one-night stand.” Luke ran a tired hand through his hair. “No one.” He would know.
God, he was tired. Bone tired.
“She kept following the Montana rodeos. Looking for her cowboy.”
“It wasn’t me.” Her words settled him. “This is my first Montana rodeo. I’ve been to Missoula once with friends but didn’t… ahhh…” He looked at Tanner and felt like the biggest sleaze. “I didn’t meet up with any women.” He hoped that was sensitive and polite enough.
Kane would have handled this so much better.
“I rode the California circuit for two years and now the Mountain State circuit for the past eight.”
“Would you be willing to take a paternity test?”
He stared at her. It had to be a stunt. Or something. He kept staring at her, waiting for what he didn’t know, but her eyes filled with tears. She was serious. This girl was all kinds of crazy. His maybe brother was lassoing his star to crazy town, just like his dad had.
Luke felt sick.
“Talon,” Tanner said, standing up, her voice soft and slow whereas Luke felt like throwing something.
“That’s a pretty big stretch and an accusation.” Tanner was stroking Talon’s back soothingly. “Maybe think on it a bit first, talk to Colt.”
This day couldn’t suck anymore. First the demand from his mom. Then the fight. Then the big reveal of some brother he’d never heard of. Then being tossed out of a bar. Tossed off his grandfather’s ranch. And the grand finale—now he was being accused of fathering a child with a woman he’d never met. At least he didn’t think he’d met her. And he wasn’t that hard to find. He did give women his name. Anyone could find him. Google the damned circuit. His schedule was online. Stats online. Injury status online. Earnings… that must be it.
“Money,” he said flatly. “Did he send you here for money?”
“What?” Talon, who’d sat down again at Tanner’s urging, jumped to her feet again. “Why would you think that?”
“Obvious conclusion.”
He remembered how hard his mother had worked to get Kane’s father to acknowledge him. First it was for money because she was putting herself through school and had two small boys. Then it was for pride. Then it was for Kane’s feelings. His sense of security and belonging. His schooling.
“You said you’d adopted your friend’s kid. That… that your… fiancé…” He would not say the word brother; it was too damn complicated and alien. “Was going to adopt him, which makes me pretty damn superfluous if I were the biological father, which I am not.”
He used condoms. Always. And hadn’t had any accidents.
He was not going to put some woman through what his mom had gone through. He knew from personal experience, first dreaming his dad would appear on the horizon and play happy families and then watching his mom spend hours trying through legal aid to get Kane’s dad to accept his paternity and provide financial support, that the search for daddy’s acceptance was a moving target. A sick game of whack-a-mole. Impossible to win. And he one he had no intention playing.
Damn it. Just damn it. The day sucked. The town sucked. Now Tanner would think he was some jerky, cavalier cowboy who rolled into town, mounted a bronc and a bull and then a woman, then sauntered off into the sunset. He’d never dodged a woman’s texts or calls after he slept with them. He knew plenty of cowboys who did, but he sure wasn�
�t one of them.
And he sure as hell wasn’t going to give the town of Marietta one more reason to despise a Wilder.
“Fine,” he said. “I’ll take a test. But I want that so called brother of mine to get a cheek swab too. “And now”—he opened the door wide to his trailer—“out. Both of you.”
He would have loved Tanner to stay. To talk to her about her bulls and her breeding plans. Hear her laugh again. But he had to get all this crap out of his head. Get himself together because he wasn’t going to be maimed or killed because he was distracted, and he’d never scratched from a rodeo. Ever. He’d imagined this afternoon going so differently.
But his mood was all shot to hell along with the rapport he’d had with Tanner. Now some blonde who’d mistaken him for someone else was going to drag his reputation through the mud. Just another Wilder who couldn’t keep it in his pants. Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?
Hell, the Kardashians had less drama. Tanner stared at him and he had no idea what was going through that agile mind of hers, but he felt like a bug pinned to a slide the way she was eyeing him.
Tanner drained her coffee mug, washed it out in the sink, and deliberately full body brushed by him.
“Thanks for the whiskey and splash of coffee, cowboy. See you around.”
Chapter Six
Tanner rolled out her thick, self-inflating air mattress in the back of her truck and spread out her favorite comforter as well as her sleeping bag as the September evenings and early mornings could get chilly in Marietta. Although, so far, it was still fairly warm. She stretched out, eyeing the constellations, but she still couldn’t settle.
Her attraction to Luke Wilder. Her hope of signing a deal with the IBR now played alongside the possibility that Talon’s fiancé, the former bachelor/army special forces sniper, was Luke’s brother and that Luke might be an unwitting dad. But over all of the voices, the clashing words and fears and hopes, was the undeniable attraction she felt towards Luke and the wondering if he could possibly be attracted to her, not just to talk to and work with but more.
If it had just been physical, she could have acted on it, or let it go. She hadn’t had a relationship since she’d moved home over three years ago. She’d never mastered Tucker’s enthusiastic embrace of the one-night or weekend stand.
“There’s only one of me, and so many smokin’ hot cowboys lining up.” Tucker would always joke and toss her long, smooth auburn hair over her shoulder like none of the men really mattered, except for how their desire and attention thrilled her in the moment.
Tucker loved the attention and the chase. Once caught the cowboy bored her.
Tanner wished she could channel at least some of that. She was lonely. No matter how much she loved her ranch and her bulls and her science, she couldn’t stave off the growing hole of emptiness that clawed at her some days. Seeing Talon connect with Colt in April when Tanner had impulsively talked four friends into pooling some serious cash to bid on the soldier bachelor number three, had broken something open inside of her. Talon too had been lonely, and she’d jumped fearlessly into what she’d been told seriously by Colt wouldn’t be more than a two or three week fling together because he had to head out on another deployment, and yet he’d come back after completing his time. He’d proposed marriage. Was going to adopt Parker. It was like a movie.
Talon’s happiness was inspiring, but Tanner didn’t know if she could be so fearless. Could she jump into something with Luke just to watch him drive off Monday night after spending the day at her ranch after the rodeo with no guarantee he’d drive back again? Luke was at the top of his game in the rodeo. Barring injury, she crossed her feet and fingers and wished hard for his safety, he could compete another five or more years and easily be competitive. And his job involved a lot of traveling.
She had a ranch and a business. She traveled too because a team always went with the Triple T bulls to rodeos. If she could jump enough bulls up to the IBR, maybe she and Luke would be at the same events. And if he treated her like a buckle bunny, what then? She didn’t have Tucker’s confidence. She didn’t have Talon’s resilient heart that had been battered over and over again but was still beating, whole and capable of a deep love for an orphaned boy and an intense, isolated soldier.
Deep inside where Tanner never looked or let anyone else see, she still felt like that broken fifteen year old girl, patched together enough to survive the life flight to Seattle’s children’s hospital where she stayed for nearly four months with no visits from her father who “couldn’t leave the ranch and didn’t know a dang thing about medicine,” and only a handful of phones calls from him and her twin who was “too devastated to talk about it.”
Tanner sat up. Not a good night. And pity parties were boring. So she wasn’t the pretty twin. So she couldn’t barrel race competitively. So she walked with an awkward limp. BFD. Move on. And she did. She hopped out of the bed of her truck, ignoring the sharp pain in her right hip and pulled a clean, flannel, western shirt from her duffle bag.
She’d check on her bulls before sleeping. There was always work to do that would turn her mind off and tire her body enough so when she hit her mattress, whether it was her bed at home or in her truck, which she often preferred to the trailer as she loved the spangled sky, she’d fall into a deep, restful sleep.
She walked across the dirt and slid open the door to the large barn where the bulls were kept. She had delivered ten bulls today. Four more would come tomorrow. More than any other Montana ranch. She’d brought several of her favorites—Hang Ten, Dervish, and Slayer because she knew the IBR stock rep would be watching them compete if they got drawn. Luke would later view the videos frame by frame and compare their athleticism to other bulls both already on the IBR tour and vying for a position with the tour. He was already booked for a full day out at her ranch on Monday and he might stay through Tuesday. Almost a whole week with Luke Wilder.
She tamped down on the thrill that ran through her blood at that thought. Business. Business. Business. She chanted. No jumping him. Yeah, he was hot, but it was more than that, and that was what she was most afraid of.
Getting Triple T bulls on the IBR Tour was too important to let her hormones interfere. She would maintain professionalism. She promised herself, watching her favorite pair of green cowboy boots eat up the sawdust and dirt of the path to the bullpens. Her resolve melted the moment she saw the long, lean figure of her cowboy, one arm hooked over the railing, one boot up on a rung, posture relaxed but shoulders rigid and the contrast of tension was for some complicated reason so sexy. In his other hand loosely dangled a bottle of beer that was full.
On complete impulse, which was far more like something Tucker would do, Tanner reached out, snagged the bottle and took a deep swallow, very conscious of his gaze on her.
“Thanks, cowboy. I was thirsty.”
Unable to let that slightly suggestive action and comment hang alone in the space between them, which would declare her interest as clearly as a dating site, she rushed on. “He’s a beauty, huh?” She stared at Hang Ten. “I have four bulls that maintain a one hundred percent rating this year.”
“Beautiful.” The deep timber of his quiet comment settled deep in her stomach, curled around her spine, and crept lower.
She didn’t want to read anything into his voice or his one word response but, damn, the way he looked in the dim light of the bull pen area made it dang near impossible not to envision every sexual fantasy she’d stomped down since the first moment she’d seen Luke Wilder three years ago at the Steamboat Springs Rodeo.
She swallowed hard and handed back the beer bottle, not able to hide the shake in her hand. She shouldn’t have acted so impulsively. What must he be going through, meeting his secret brother, getting kicked off his grandfather’s land?
He took the beer. “Do you know this is the second time a woman swiped my beer today?”
Her breath fractured. Blood surged to her cheeks. No way to hide the fierc
e embarrassed blush. She was such a clumsy, girlish cliché. She was a scientist. A business owner. Goal oriented. She needed to get a grip.
“Only this time,” he said softly. “I don’t mind.”
He brought the bottle to his mouth, took a long swallow before holding it out to her.
Tanner was more a whiskey girl, but beer had never tasted so amazing. It slid like nectar down her throat and she felt as if the taste fizzed and danced on her lips and tongue. She drank, feeling like she was in high school again, and then handed it back feeling silly and turned on simultaneously.
He smiled and took another swallow. She’d only seen him a smile a few times, but this time, his entire face, his entire body smiled. Deadly. There was no way she could resist that. And the way his gold-brown eyes had heated like honey as they drifted over her face killed. Beer back to her.
She tilted the bottle to her lips, but before she could swallow a shiver started deep in her body, radiating out, and it was almost like the earth was shaking. Her heart and blood rushed and instinctively she reached out and put her hand on his waist. Heat. Solid muscle. Her fingers curved, gripped, and she took a step forward, unable to resist his draw.
His golden eyes flared, and it was like a match had been lit, and she so wanted to close the rest of the distance between them. A millimeter was too much of a chasm. She wanted to feel him, all his heat and hardness and strength and sheer male energy. His hand snaked around the back of her head and cupped it. She looked up. His eyes searched hers, questioning, but hell if she had any answers. She shouldn’t do this. Not smart or professional and it would be hell on her ego and heart if he didn’t kiss her and, worse, when he stopped, but if she didn’t go for it, she’d regret it. Big time. They stood there. She, feeling like time had slowed, every second fraught with suspense and he, who knew what was going on in his mind, but women probably threw themselves at him daily, and Tanner couldn’t quite bring herself to care.
Want Me, Cowboy Page 6
