Every Second Counts (21 page)

Being at her best was critical this week. Only the Professional Rodeo Cowboys Association’s top fifteen money-winners for the year would be invited to the National Finals Rodeo in Vegas, and the other competitors had been racking up winnings while she was recuperating. She’d had a spectacular year leading up to her injury, but she would need to place well this week to stay in the top fifteen.

Bareback bronc riding today, bull riding on Saturday. She competed in only the two events.

The hours-long ritual to transform into a rodeo gladiator began with a long hot shower and thorough shave, arms and legs. Next came fifteen minutes of stretching while she mentally evaluated every muscle in her legs, groin, arms, shoulders, and back. She felt good.

By the tail end of the rodeo season, the riders were all sore and beat-up from weekend after weekend of grueling competition. But Ryder’s few months off had given her shoulder and back muscles time to recuperate, while her gym workouts had maintained her strength.

She tugged on thigh-length compression shorts but no bra, because she wrapped her torso in a wide Ace bandage from waist to armpit to support her back muscles.

She used to pay a sports trainer to tape her, but once she learned the process, she preferred solitude as she also mentally prepared for the ride. She began with her knees, applying liquid adhesive, winding the thin pre-wrap from shin to thigh, then topping it with strong, white adhesive tape.

She taped her right wrist and hand that would grip the rigging, then taped custom-molded plastic guards to her left shin and her left forearm, where metal plates were screwed into the bones. A tight, long-sleeved compression shirt went on top to support the tendons and ligaments of her shoulders.

Then she dressed. Wrangler jeans, a colorful Western shirt adorned with the logos of her sponsors, worn Tony Lama boots, and wide bat-wing chaps. The clothing covered all clues of her first ninety minutes of preparation. Only the tape on her hand peeked out of her sleeve, and a thick glove would cover that before she broke from the gate.

After another fifteen minutes of stretching, she dropped her bareback rigging onto the floor and plopped down to straddle the handle. For the next twenty minutes, she repeatedly stretched her legs forward and pulled them back—heels to ass—as she rode the horse in her head.

She was ready. Now came the hated waiting.

She paused briefly to sign a few autographs, but talked little as she headed across the parking lot to the arena. Her mind was on the ride.

She walked the long tunnel that wrapped around the lower level of the indoor facility, crowded now with competitors, judges, roadies, and equipment that were the trappings of the event. The announcer’s voice was piped into the tunnel, keeping everyone advised of how the schedule was progressing. She was happy to hear that barrel racing was already wrapping up.

The first broncs were being led into the staging area. These were not wild animals. Most were as docile as puppies until a rider dropped onto their back and the bucking strap pulled snug around their bellies.

Ryder coughed the arena dust from her lungs and dropped her equipment bag to complete the last of her ritual. She was fourth up for her first of three rides, so she wouldn’t have to wait long. Still, she always saved a few tasks to occupy her in the dead time before she could climb into the chute.

She strapped on her lucky spurs, carefully dulled and free-spinning to meet regulations that prevented harm to the animal’s hide. Next, she wound a long leather thong tight under the arch and around the outside of each boot shaft several times and tied it off to prevent the boots from slipping off as she spurred during the ride.

She was pleased she had drawn Red River Skoal, a top gelding who would certainly be selected for the nationals. He was alert today, ears flicking forward and back as she talked to him in a low voice. She liked to rig her ride herself and chuckled as Skoal shook his entire body like a wet dog when she cinched up the latigo straps of soft cotton girth. He was feeling good, and that meant a good buck and a top score.

While a roadie led the horse to the chute, she slipped on a protective vest with a stiff foam roll in the collar to protect her neck from whiplash and settled her Stetson low over her brow. She’d probably lose it during the ride, but a real cowboy never broke the gate hatless.

The crowd roared, but she didn’t look up as she climbed over the railing of the chute and carefully lowered herself onto the horse’s back. She didn’t care how the guy before her was doing or if the leaderboard had changed. She didn’t have anything in her mind now but Red River Skoal and the ride.

“Too bad for Kip Brown. Black Betty is a tough one,” the announcer said cheerfully. “Hopefully, he’ll have better luck on his next ride.”

Ryder tested the tie on the heavy leather glove encasing her right hand and then pulled her gloved fingers through the snug handle of the rigging. Skoal shifted restlessly under her.

“Next up, we welcome Marc Ryder. Our only female competitor in bronc and bull riding, this will be Ms. Ryder’s first event since a bad meeting with a bull put her out of competition for a few months. She’s drawn a good ride for the occasion, Red River Skoal, two-time national bucking horse of the year.”

She leaned back and straightened her legs to lift her spurs above the horse’s shoulders. Riders were disqualified if they failed to “mark out” their ride, meaning they had to keep their spurs in that position until the bronc’s front feet touched the ground after breaking from the gate.

She stared down at her mount and uttered the good-luck charm that completed her ritual. “Flyin’ ain’t hard. You just throw yourself at the ground and miss.”

She popped in her mouthpiece and raised her left hand high over her head. She gave a firm nod and the chute steward yanked the bucking strap tight at the same time the gate swung open.

Legs forward as Skoal’s heels went skyward, then spurs to ass as the horse reared. Rear, kick, turn, rear and launch upward, then down hard with heels nearly vertical to the ground. Crow hop on all fours, then back to the rear, buck, rear, buck.

It was a textbook ride.

While bull riding is the most dangerous, bareback bronc riding is considered the most physical of the rodeo events. The faster, more energetic buck of the horse flings the rider back and forth like a rag doll. But few horses buck with the body twist favored by the bulls, and Ryder found their rolling motion much easier to follow.

At the sound of the buzzer, she abandoned her usual gymnastic-style dismount that won her points with the crowd and waited for the pickup men to sandwich her bronc between their horses so she could slide up behind one of them and be deposited gently on solid ground.

She didn’t need the crowd’s roar to know she had done well. She had felt the perfect rhythm of it. Hell, her hat was even still sitting securely on her head. But she pulled it off now and waved it at the cheering fans when the scoreboard flashed a high eighty-eight for her ride.

That score was her best, but her other two rides went pretty much the same. At the end of the day, she placed a close second to the winner. So she wasn’t surprised when Ashley waved her over to the ESPN camera for an interview.

Blond and lithe, Ashley was a former barrel-racing champ who had hung up her chaps when she married and started having babies. She was just Ryder’s type, and they’d hooked up once. But Ashley was more straight than bisexual, and they both wrote it off as a good time.

Ryder’s hair had grown long enough that it was starting to curl around her collar, and Ashley eyed it critically. “Not a bad look. It could use some styling, but I like it longer,” she said.

Ryder lifted her hat to brush her hair back from her face. “Don’t get used to it. I’m getting it cut tomorrow.”

Ashley shrugged. “Ready?”

“Yeah. Let’s do it.”

They turned and waited for the cameraman’s cue.

“That was a spectacular return after several months off the circuit. How’d it feel out there today?”

“It felt good. Real good. I think the layoff actually helped. Everybody else is sore and tired from the long rodeo season, but I’m rested and ready to go.”

“How ready will you be for the bulls on Saturday? You suffered some pretty bad injuries the last time you rode one. No reservations about getting back out there?”

Actually, it was a cold ball of fear in her belly that she actively nurtured. It helped block out the ache that squeezed her chest so tight she couldn’t breathe every time she thought of Bridgette. But fear wasn’t what her fans paid to see.

She tipped her hat back and grinned at the camera.

*

Bridgette smiled and waved at the two students sitting in the grass when one held up her art-history book in a gesture that said “We’re studying for your exam,” even though they’d been studying each other’s tonsils—not their art history—a moment before they spotted her.

She loved this college campus. Her heart bloomed with its abundant trees and flowers every spring. She relaxed with the shorts and flip-flop atmosphere of the summer term, and the artist in her thrilled at the explosion of color that each fall brought to the foothills where Cherokee Falls was nestled. She felt lighter, unfettered, walking now among the peak of this year’s spectacular autumn palette.

There was still the matter of Marc. She didn’t want to abandon her like others had done. She
had
survived opening the dreaded crate, but Marc was a new risk. She flushed at the thought of her. Maybe a bigger risk than Stephan.

Marc was passion and tenderness and mind-numbing hot sex. A cliff with an edge waiting to crumble under her feet. A parachute that might not open.

She would think about that later. She had Marc’s contact information. Maybe she’d e-mail her. Maybe she’d wait to see if she would show up at Skyler and Jessica’s for Christmas. It was a little less than two months away, but time she needed to examine her feelings.

She pushed through the doors of the student center on her mission to secure a large chai latte, an essential part of her exam-writing routine. The questions were already taking shape in her head.

But as she circled around the lounge area, a familiar husky voice stopped her. Twenty or more students were gathered before the big-screen television where a larger-than-life Marc Ryder peeled her eyes off the pretty blond ESPN sportscaster, tilted her Stetson back, and grinned at the camera.

“I love riding bulls. If it wasn’t dangerous, it wouldn’t be as much fun. Saturday can’t get here fast enough for me.”

“Besides the thrill, what makes the bulls special?”

“The challenge. They aren’t as neat and predictable as broncs. They twist and spin and throw their horns back. When you’re up on that bull, you don’t have room to think about anything but staying on his back and away from those horns.”

“A lot of riders who suffered the injuries you did would consider retiring from bull riding. What drives you to get back out there?”

Ryder shrugged. “It’s not really anything driving me, just nothing stopping me.”

“Well, there was certainly nothing stopping you today. Congratulations for your success and good luck on Saturday.” The blonde turned to the camera as it moved in for a close-up. “Marc Ryder, still making a name for herself in an almost exclusively male sport, celebrating an excellent return to the rodeo circuit today and looking forward to Saturday’s bull riding. Back to you, Jim.”

The picture switched to three cowboys in a studio.

“Bull riding is certainly a dangerous sport and not for the faint of heart,” Jim told the camera before turning to his co-announcers. “And a lot of people think it’s no place for a woman. What do you think, Ty?”

“I think an athlete is an athlete,” the middle-aged cowboy in the Western-print shirt said. “There are sports where women aren’t physically big enough to compete against men, like basketball and football. But rodeo requires only strength and timing. If a woman is strong enough and skilled enough, then I say go for it.”

“What about you, Jimmy? There certainly weren’t any women competing with the men when you were rodeoing.”

The old cowboy wearing a stylish white Resistol winked at the camera. “Well, Jim, my daddy used to say you gotta be a little stupid and a lot tough to ride bulls. I’ve known some pretty tough women in my day. If one of them is stupid enough to climb up on two thousand pounds of meanness, then I wouldn’t stand in her way.”

“Two thousand pounds of meanness is exactly what Marc Ryder encountered her last time out.”

The picture cut away to a video clip of Ryder settling onto the back of a huge black bull. Then the gate swung open and the bull launched into the arena, spinning and bucking.

Bridgette unconsciously rubbed her arm as she watched Ryder being jerked this way and that as the bull constantly changed directions. When the eight-second buzzer sounded, she tensed.

Instead of lying back on the bull, Ryder was hunched forward, working her hand loose from the rigging, when the bull kicked his heels high again. She pitched forward at the same time the bull threw his head back, and her forehead banged against the unyielding base of the bull’s horns.

The students groaned. “That’s gotta hurt,” one boy remarked.

Tears stung Bridgette’s eyes as though the blow had been to her own forehead. Don’t look, don’t look. But she was paralyzed, unable to turn away as Ryder’s limp body slid off the bull onto the ground.

The rodeo clowns leapt into action, but Ryder’s body jerked several times as the bull’s heels came down on her leg, bounced up, and came down again before a clown could get the animal’s attention.

He snorted and pawed at the ground, preparing to charge. The clowns waved bandanas and shouted. One clown taunted from behind a large padded barrel, daring the bull to charge to the other side of the arena. For a minute, it appeared that he would. Two roadies edged over the top of the railing, ready to jump into the arena and drag Ryder to safety.

Then the bull wheeled and, instead, charged the figure sprawled and unmoving. He plowed his horns into the dirt to root under Ryder and throw her into the air. She hit facedown and he snagged one curved horn under the back of her vest.