Yeah that about summed it up.
Again the strong, tanned hand spearing through his hair, and Tanner found it so sexy it was all she could do to not reel him in for a true round of lip mash-up, but the heaviness in his shoulders, the shuttered look of his face hurt. She wanted him happy, playful again.
“You’re a really awesome cowboy, Luke Wilder. And a better man.”
He looked at her, his hair falling sideways over one of his eyes and laughed ruefully, and she could imagine him as a kid.
“I feel like a stupid prick.”
She laughed. “Ouch. Can’t have that. Okay, so let’s start over.” She stuck out her hand. “Tanner McTavish.”
He shook his head, smiled, linked his fingers with hers. “Tanner McTavish. My day has sucked, but meeting you is the best part, and I would like to see you again when I’m not feeling so out of sorts. Would you please do me the honor or being my date for the steak dinner Saturday night?”
“Smooth, cowboy,” Tanner said, trying but failing to stifle the thrill zinging through her at his words.
“Is that a yes?”
“Maybe.” She tried not to let her gaze rove hungrily over his body, but damn the man looked like a god in Wranglers. “But I want to hedge my bets.”
“How so?”
“If you draw Hang Time, you’re gonna be tossed on your ass like never before and won’t be able to dance with me.”
“If I draw Hang Time, I’m going to be in first place going into the finals and will feel like celebrating with a slow dance, under the stars, far away from the lights and the crowd.”
“Still hedging my bets, cowboy. Go to the parade with me tomorrow. Kick off the rodeo with one of my favorite events.”
He made a face. “Pretty public,” he said.
“You can size up your competition. Make them tremble with fear. Besides there’s funnel cake.”
“And you.”
“And me.”
A light lit in his eyes turning them to honey. “Tanner McTavish, is there licorice at this parade?”
“Maybe.”
“I love Red. Rope. Licorice.” He nuzzled her ear and that sent shivers through her entire body, and somehow she got the feeling he was not planning on eating it.
Bring it on.
Chapter Seven
Luke still couldn’t sleep. Not good for a man who was planning to sit astride eighteen hundred pounds of thrashing muscle, furious and determined to toss him airborne, and trample him just to drive home his point that he was pissed off in a couple of days. Luke didn’t need to meditate, expose Zen principles, and imagine himself one with the bull to know he had to get his shit together or withdraw from the competition. The rodeo had always felt like home.
He’d always been able to focus. Always been able to leave the rest of the world behind when he pulled onto the rodeo grounds.
Usually it all fell away, the loneliness, money concerns, aches and pains all dissolved when he’d set up his rig, flipped shit back to other competitors, checked his equipment, shared a beer, and some stories. Tonight his mind wouldn’t settle. Back to his mom’s demands. Back to the fist of his brother connecting. And Luke’s connecting back. The odd thrill of a fight, something he’d never done. Had deliberately eschewed, proving that unlike his father he had control. And now the dislocating sense of recognition and loss and anger and regret he couldn’t quite sort through.
How the fuck did his mom lose a son? How did she go twenty-eight years without a word about it? Like her firstborn son had never happened. What else was she hiding? Did he even know her? Were any of those tight-lipped stories he’d manage to wheedle out of her as a young boy about his father even true? Had his father really walked away from him? And what was his brother, Colt, Talon had said his name was, thinking tonight?
Luke couldn’t imagine it was any better than what he was thinking. What he was feeling. And Luke didn’t specialize in analyzing feelings. Kane was more into the analysis. Fuck. His mom had probably gone off like a bomb to Kane since he hadn’t picked up any of her calls. He didn’t know where his brother was on the tour. Didn’t check in ever. Kane did all the connecting. At least with four weeks on and one off, he stood pretty decent odds that Kane wouldn’t be able to soothe their mom in person.
Unable to handle the curved, beige lines of the ceiling of his vintage Airstream trailer another second, he grabbed a beer from the fridge and opened the door, intending to sit on the top step and try to not think about Tanner and how he’d let her go tonight even though she’d obviously been willing, and he definitely wasn’t going to think about his brother—make that brothers—now. Shit. One was hard enough to deal with.
Only when he opened the door, his brother stood at the bottom. The new one. The silent one. Luke bit back the instinctive curse, shoved the beer in his brother’s hand, and ducked back inside to grab another. Awkward as hell but might as well get this over with. He pushed outside, not even realizing he was bracing for another round of whatever until his brother took two steps back, twisted the cap off the beer, flicked it with enviable precision through the open door of the trailer into the sink and then, beer dangling between two fingers, he held his arms slightly away from his sides as if daring Luke to take an open swing.
Luke blew out a breath. He might not be the man everyone else thought he should be, but he was who he was, and he wasn’t by nature a fighter. He didn’t have anything to prove to this guy.
“Not that I’m complaining, but I’ve been kicked by bulls that caused less damage than you did today,” Luke said.
His brother tipped the beer to his lips, but his eyes, the same color as Luke’s, he realized with a punch of dismay, never wavered. Luke felt like he was in the crosshairs of something fierce. He’d thought to pull out two chairs for them to sit, but he didn’t think the man before him could relax enough to sit, and Luke doubted it was wise for him to try to get that comfortable. Defenseless. Who the hell was this guy?
“She comin’ back tonight?” He jerked his head to indicate the direction of Tanner’s truck and Luke found himself tensing.
“Not your business.”
Luke immediately regretted his tone and the way he’d bristled. Gave too much away to a man who obviously missed nothing.
“Just took you longer to finish up than I thought.”
“What the—” Luke found himself taking an aggressive step forward. “Were you spying on us?” He hadn’t seen or heard anything. Hadn’t sensed being watched. “Mind your own damn business.”
“I was,” he said, shrugged, and took another swallow of beer. “Colt Ewing. Don’t think we got around to that earlier.”
Luke blew out a breath. Was it only this afternoon? Felt like a week ago at least. “Luke Wilder.” He took a deep swig of beer.
Thought about grabbing another but didn’t want to turn his back on Colt.
Luke thought of something to say then disregarded it. “Can’t begin to imagine what’s going through your mind,” he finally said.
The silence hummed between them, not uncomfortable, really, which was to Luke probably weirder than not feeling strange and awkward and even guilty even though he had done nothing wrong.
“You think it’s true?” Luke finally asked, surprised the guy wasn’t peppering him with questions.
The shrug made the question irrelevant.
“Not why I’m here. Talon said she asked you to take a paternity test. You gonna make trouble?”
“What?”
The whole day just got weirder. First, Luke didn’t make trouble. He’d grown up as the peacekeeper between his mother and the world. And second, he’d been accused of fathering a child with a woman he was pretty convinced he hadn’t met to even have sex with. Damn. That would be one hell of an awkward super power, and the paternity test had been more of a demand.
“Trouble about what?”
Colt had thrown the first punch. Well, maybe that had been him, but he’d shoved him hard enough that his ri
bs still felt sore as hell, and he was beginning to think a couple might be cracked from his graceless fall to the floor, and that was before he planned to climb on a bull. He was glad he hadn’t entered the saddleless bronc riding as well this time around.
“I don’t give a shit about the results,” he said. “I’m adopting Parker. We’ll take care of him. Not asking you for anything.”
But some cheek cells. Tanner had told him what it entailed.
“Then why the test?”
And the silence again. But it was peaceful. Luke realized he’d never been with another person who didn’t pulse and surge with a cackling, wild energy. His mother was a whirlwind, a diva, dramatic, fairly bursting out of her skin, and Kane was loud, fun, full of life, except before he mounted a bull then he went somewhere else entirely, and Luke had never been able to describe or explain it.
“Talon didn’t have a family growing up,” Colt finally said, his eyes narrowed, looking far away at something that wasn’t there. “She’s not going to walk away from the possibility of an extended family, and I won’t try to cut you out of Parker’s life, but if you’re going to try to take him away from her if the results are positive then”—his physical gaze swung back into a micro-focus on Luke—“you and I will have trouble.”
The cold, matter of fact way he said each deliberate word was definitely a threat, but Luke had been around the rodeo for a decade, and in a rodeo school before that. He didn’t spook easily, and he couldn’t fault the man for protecting a kid he wanted, and the woman he wanted. Then something occurred to him.
“Boy or girl?”
“Boy. Seven.”
Luke thought about that. Seven years ago. No more like eight. He would have been maybe twenty. How he’d acted. Thought or, more accurately, hadn’t thought, but he had always used condoms. Even pretty drunk he’d used condoms. Always.
“Talon tell you I wanted you to get the test, too?”
What might have passed as a ghost of a smile was gone before Luke could fully register it.
“Yeah. I left Marietta at eighteen. Didn’t come back until April. Haven’t been stateside much, but Talon isn’t sure the cowboy Jenna felt she’d fallen in love with was from Marietta. All she knows is that they met at a rodeo and Jenna brought Talon back the next year and the year after that to try to find him. Jenna doesn’t seem like the most reliable narrator so”—Colt broke off and took another swig of his beer—“I can’t say I’m one hundred percent certain about Jenna.”
Luke felt an unwelcome and unexpected prickle of shame. He couldn’t exactly judge there.
“I’m with Talon now. It’s different. My Life.” For a moment Colt’s voice softened fractionally with what sounded like awe and Luke now felt a stab of envy, which was stupid because he had nothing to complain about.
He was having one of his best years on the circuit. He was healthy and had recently landed his dream job with the IBR, so why was he getting all squishy with analysis?
“I’m going to be totally faithful to her in every way but, fuck, I’ve been thinking about it and I’ve been with a lot of women.”
Luke choked. Bit back a totally inappropriate laugh, but it still burbled up, rent the calm between them, the night and the quiet, and he couldn’t stop for a full thirty seconds.
“Damn my ribs still hurt from this afternoon,” he said to break the tension. “You’re built like a block of granite.” He complained to Colt, but in a way, it was also a compliment.
“What’s funny?” Colt’s voice was so terse it could cut steel.
“What you said about being with women. I was just thinking the same thing before I found you on my door. I’ve never had a long-term relationship. Don’t know how. Not proud of that.” He couldn’t help the glance across the grounds where a few trucks were already lined up with rodeo staff who were extras or more local so they didn’t need a full trailer for the weekend. Already twelve other trailers had joined his. By tomorrow midmorning this area would be packed.
“My mom.” He paused. Should he say our mom? Too soon probably. “She’s real smart. Successful now. Land rights attorney but, growing up, we didn’t have much. She was”—he blew out a breath and let the silence sit for a while—“it’s like she was broken in some way.”
It occurred to him that maybe the reason she’d always been so damaged was standing next to him. “I think she was real tortured by her past and could never quite get above or beyond it, but…” He couldn’t say the rest.
That he doubted his mother had given up her baby by choice. That wouldn’t help anything.
“She was eighteen when she had me. Sixteen when she had you.” He pretended not to look, yet he did, but Colt didn’t react. Not a flicker of expression. “It’s like because of my dad, your dad too, she couldn’t love again and, well, I always think of my brother, half brother really, to you and me, as the Romeo, total player, but I’ve had my share of fun.”
Colt didn’t respond and Luke wondered what was going through his head. He’d never been around a man harder to read and ranchers and cowboys were not known to wear their hearts or their thoughts on their sleeves. He braced for more questions about their mother or him or Kane. Hell, even the requested paternity test. He was jumping out of his skin about that though he was pretty certain it would be a big fat “no”. Instead nothing, then Colt clinked his bottle with his.
“Something we had in common,” he said.
Luke nodded. Were his casual weekend hookups going to be a thing of the past? It had been getting old now, but with his life, his schedule, how could it be different? He couldn’t picture sticking with one woman in one town. What would it even be like? How would she handle him being gone so much? He drained the beer and then remembered the way Tanner’s skin glowed in the truck, her smile, the way she hadn’t pried but also hadn’t ignored the situation, the way her hazel eyes sparkled when she laughed. He couldn’t picture her as a weekend hookup. She wasn’t that girl. She was a forever girl, and she might be giving out signs that she was fun and casual, but he didn’t trust it.
“Talon’s mine,” Colt said, startling Luke out of his reverie. “She and Parker are the best thing that ever happened to me, and I’m not ever going to be stupid and do them wrong.” His voice was quiet, matter of fact, but there was a ring of conviction in it that made Luke pause.
What would it be like to feel that finally he belonged with one woman? To not feel like a misfit, to be able to relax and be himself, come home to somebody. He remembered how Tanner had fixed his eye today, bullying him and teasing him even as she took care of him. Like he mattered.
“I’ve done enough wrong,” Colt said into the silence, the night closing in further as the temperature dropped a little bit more. “But I will do Talon and Parker right.”
Luke’s heart thudded at the peace and determination he heard in Colt’s voice. And again he couldn’t stop his gaze from wandering to the left of his brother’s powerful build to the outline of a familiar truck he could barely make out in the dark. Colt clapped him on the shoulder and walked off fluidly. Luke blinked, thinking that couldn’t be it. They hadn’t even begun to scratch the surface of what they needed to talk about, but when he took a surprised step intending to follow, Luke was alone in the field. He couldn’t see any movement. Couldn’t hear the rustle of clothing or thud of footsteps and Colt Ewing was a big man. But he was also stealthy as a spirit.
It spooked him how Colt seemed to vanish, like he’d been a figment of Luke’s imagination only he would have imagined conversations with more explanations. More closure, but deep inside where he’d been so restless, so unsettled and if he were honest, more than a little angry, he felt at peace for the first time all day.
*
For all the rodeos Luke had entered over the years, he had been to surprisingly few parades. Usually he was pulling into the rodeo grounds late Friday night, or early Saturday morning. The parades were for the community, the businesses, and the tourists. But wasn’t the small-
town folksy gathering exactly why he loved the rodeo over the more high tech, glossy marketing of the IBR Tour? He loved the kids lining Main Street with their smiling folks. The other kids, girl scouts, boy scouts, church groups, 4-H clubs, walking in the parade, dressed up in their uniforms, throwing candy, waving flags, holding glittery, homemade banners proclaiming their identity.
It just bled small-town closeness, families, love of the land and farming. A place to figure out who they were and who they wanted to be. Growing up in the one bedroom apartment in the grungy and graffitied urban sprawl of Phoenix, watching over Kane while their mom worked and went to school, Luke hadn’t had time or money for any after-school activities or parades.
Watching the parade and later attending the rodeo meet and greets with the fans was probably as close as he was going to get to family. He had no idea how to be a dad. He hadn’t had much more than a fly-by sperm donor, but he did think dads needed to be home, participate, lead by example, not be on the road visiting stock contractors and risking their lives for the thrill of competing. And that was why he picked up women who weren’t like Tanner. Tanner oozed small-town cowgirl and ranch down to her bones. No way would she be a weekend hookup with a cowboy, which made her passionate kiss last night puzzling.
And his reaction, off the chart crazy. He’d had a hell of a time not giving into the fire she’d sparked. He’d lain awake half the night trying not to think how soft her skin was, how intriguing her freckles were, how her plump, defined lips felt so perfect against his. She was off limits to all but business transactions. Landing his first solo IBR account couldn’t be complicated by emotions, and Tanner’s fun, teasing personality combined with her brains and hint of vulnerability occasionally peeking through all of her steel would balloon to an unwieldy complication if he didn’t keep his hands and other parts to himself.
Want Me, Cowboy Page 8
