Rodeo Nights (22 page)

She opened her mouth to him, and gave.

“KALLI...”

He pressed against her, his face buried in her hair, as she held him.

“I’m here, Walker. I’m not walking away.”

Her fingers had barely freed the last button of his shirt before he dragged her hand lower, pressing it against himself. She made a sound deep in her throat at the imprint of that heat on her palm, and he echoed it, arching more deeply into her grasp.

“Let me... Walker...”

She had to fight to get her other hand between their bodies, to get enough room between them for her to manipulate the intricacies of belt buckle and fly.

Even when he understood her intention, he made it no easier, drawing the fabric even tauter with his efforts to dig out a foil packet from his back pocket at the same time he scrambled her nervous system with soft bites and open-mouthed, dragging kisses along her throat, under her chin, into the valley between her breasts. Without hesitation, he bunched her short denim skirt around her waist and tore off her panties with one quick yank.

The moment she freed him from the constriction of his jeans and cupped him in her hands, he held her briefly away to pull on the protection, then shifted to pull her close again. She gasped at the speed of his move, widening her eyes an instant, before closing them in the intensity of sensation. Holding her hips high, he dipped to get his legs between hers, spreading them as he straightened his legs and brought them into full contact.

And there he held her.

Breathing hurt from the fire in her lungs, so she stopped. She waited, suspended, for the final movement that would unite them. But it didn’t come.

She gave in to her lungs’ demand with a released breath that did nothing to release the tension of being held just at the edge of fullness.

She opened her eyes.

His face stark, he held her look, unwavering, relentless, allowing no escape, as he came into her.

She met him, not halfway, but beyond, somewhere so deep it was as if they melded. Slowly, deliberately, each withdrew to repeat the motion. And again. Still staring at each other. Almost like two combatants not taking their eyes off each other...or two people making a pledge.

The end came fast, explosive, disorienting for Kalli.

The world seemed to tip, spin, shatter. All that remained solid was his body. His shoulders that she clung to, his face above her, his hips driving against her.

That was all she needed.

“Kalli!”

He arched, held stone-still an instant, then shuddered into release.

She held him, pinned by the weight of his limp body against the door, his face pressed against her neck as she stroked his hair with short, feathery touches where the thick ends lapped the collar of his loosened shirt.

She stroked him in silent assurance that she was here.

She was here now, and she was his.

WHEN THEY REACHED
the spot where Walker’s road forked off from the one to the Jeffries ranch, Kalli waited for him to flash his lights as always, a sign that he would park his truck, then come back to her. But the lights stayed steady.

She made the turn, her gaze pinned to the rearview mirror, then twisted around to be sure the mirror hadn’t deceived her.

He had definitely made the turn into the Jeffrieses’ road. Openly following her.

When he pulled in, she stood by the truck, waiting. Not sure what she waited for, or what it might mean.

There’d been no time to talk before the night’s rodeo; there’d barely been time to adjust their clothes and assume public masks that would get them through the evening. He’d said only that they would talk tonight and apologized rather formally for the damage to her underclothes.

Now, leaving his truck running, he got out and stood in front of her. He didn’t touch her but she felt tension in him. His first words came out short.

“I was rough with you.”

“Yes.”

“Did I hurt you?”

“No.”

He absorbed that in silence a moment. His stance didn’t change and his voice didn’t mellow, but it didn’t carry as much pain when he spoke again.

“Come home with me, Kalli.”

She felt a burn in her chest.

“I—’’

He cut off her answer before she could give it. “No sense pretending people aren’t going to know what’s going on between us after today. If it ever was a secret, it isn’t now.”

“No, it isn’t.” She recalled the looks she’d gotten tonight in the office—interested, but not in the least surprised. It probably never had been a secret.

“So come home with me.”

“Okay.”

That was it. He handed her up into his truck from the driver’s side, holding her next to him when she might have slid farther over, and he drove them to his place. To his home. To his bed.

“I TRIED TO TELL
you, Kalli.”

“Not very hard.”

“No. Not very hard. I wasn’t looking forward to your walking away—just the way you did.”

She turned to him in the thinning dark of predawn. They’d made love several times during the night, dozing between, never speaking of anything but their desire for each other and their pleasure. Until now. “You can’t blame this all on me, Walker Riley. You can’t—”

“Not all. Half.”

“Half? You sneak off and—”

“Can’t hardly call it sneaking off when you’d known about the trip all week.”

He rolled onto his side, then propped his head on his hand, looking at her. The move slid the sheet and quilt down to his bare hip and sent the excess into the valley between them.

“You
sneak
off to go bull riding, acting as if you can just pick up riding after two months away from it like you were still nineteen instead of thirty-three. Risk your neck, and with it, this rodeo’s welfare and possibly Jeff’s recovery and it’s half
my
fault?”

“Yes.”

That’s all. No explanation, no defensiveness, just the statement.

She pushed up on her elbows to put her on a level with him.

“How do you figure that?”

“I would have been working out and competing more than I did—” He cut a look at her and pieces clicked together in her mind of Walker’s disappearing for chunks of afternoons, sometimes longer, often in Gulch’s company, occasionally returning with a slight gingerliness in his movements, always returning freshly showered. She should have guessed. “—if I could have told you.”

“Well, next time, damn it, tell me!”

The words were out before the implications of a
next time
hit her.

A next time of his riding a bull. A next time of her having any right to know what he did or where he went.

Next time
edged them dangerously close to the uncharted expanse beyond this summer.

“I’ll tell you.” No fanfare, no oaths, but Walker had just made an unshakable pledge.

And had asked nothing in return.

But he needed something in return. Or perhaps she needed to give it.

“And I won’t ever walk away like that again, Walker.”

He looked at her a long moment, then nodded.

“Good.”

He twisted around, reaching for something.

She sat up straighter, half wanting to make him see what a step she’d taken with that promise, half afraid to.

“That’s all you have to say?
Good
?”

He straightened, the lopsided grin tugging at his mouth.

A slight sound drew her eyes to his hand and she saw another shiny packet.

“Thought I’d express myself another way,” he said.

In one motion, he lowered her back to the mattress and covered her body with his.

She opened to him, and he found his place in her.

“FOUR DAYS OF
rain. My God, this is Wyoming—not Seattle, or Ireland or the Brazilian rain forest. What is going on?”

Neither Roberta nor Walker answered Kalli’s tirade. She didn’t expect them to. They’d done their share of griping about the weather the past four days. For the second time in four nights, they’d taken the rare step of calling off competition because the morass made it too dangerous for human or animal participants. The other two nights, the rain had made it too miserable for anybody but contestants’ relatives to come watch.

Kalli stared out the office window at the relentless rain.

“Go on ahead home, Roberta,” Walker said. “I cut Gulch free, too. No sense in you staying.”

For all its quiet, his voice deepened the uneasiness Kalli had felt since he’d walked in a few minutes ago. With the water still streaming off his hat, he’d stood in the doorway, looking at her. There’d been something in his eyes, something she hadn’t wanted to see. That’s when she went to the window.

She’d been very aware of his gaze on her, even as he’d told Roberta that he and Gulch had gotten all the stock back to the ranch and everything squared away for the night.

Another night without a rodeo.

Another night without selling a ticket.

“There’s no sense in any of us staying. Go on ahead home,” Walker repeated.

From the corner of her eye, Kalli caught Roberta’s glance in her direction, and Walker’s nod. Roberta gathered up her oversize purse, spare sweater and umbrella, leaving with brief good-nights.

The office was quiet except for the rain. Then she heard the sound of Walker’s boot heels on the wooden floor, coming to a stop behind her.

“It rains like this sometimes in the East, like it’s never going to quit,” she said. “But I don’t remember it ever happening before when I’ve been in Wyoming.”

He waited long enough for the sound of rain to fall between them again.

“I’m riding, Kalli.”

She kept her back to him, concentrating on keeping her head and shoulders up.

“We’re too close to not matching last year’s sales,” he said.

At that, she faced him. “We should make it, Walker. I told you that.”

“I’m not risking this rodeo on a ‘should.’ ”

She backed away at the harsh note in his voice. Without changing position, he reached for her, cupping one hand around her elbow. Touching her but not holding her.

“Kalli, if the figures are a little off, if it rains a couple more days, if a tour cancels, if any of a hundred things happen... If we fall short, we won’t have another chance. The rodeo’ll be gone, out of Jeff’s hands. For good. Neither of us wants that.”

The thought flashed through her mind that he expected her to keep backing away, to walk away. Deliberately, she took a small step closer to him, and thought she detected an easing of the lines around his eyes and mouth.

“But your riding won’t guarantee—”

“No, it won’t guarantee anything. But I’m a champion, Kalli. Folks don’t forget that in rodeo. They’ll come. Some because they cheered me on then, some because they want to see what all the fuss is about, some to remember, some to see if I’m washed up.”

“That’s awful. How can you let them use you—?”

“The same way we’re using them—to hold on to the rodeo. Having a champion riding will help sell tickets. It’s as simple as that. Besides, you said yourself that using me’s good PR. And you proved it. If my being in the arena sells ten, twenty extra tickets each of these last seventeen days, that’ll give us some—”

“Seventeen days! The championship is one thing, even the final weekend, but seventeen days—”

“Is what we need to give us some margin on the tickets. Besides—” The corner of his mouth lifted. “You were the one who pointed out last week that I’m not as young as I used to be. I need the rides to get in competition shape for the final. We’re planning some real rank stock for that show. I’ll need to be sharper than I am now. Seventeen days ought to about do it.”

Seventeen days. Seventeen days waiting for him to go out that night to pit himself against eighteen hundred pounds of bull that didn’t want him clinging to his back. Seventeen days…

“You said to tell you before I rode the next time. Not a week ago you said it.”

The rumble in his voice shuddered something through her body that went beyond the fear.

“Yes.” She swallowed, trying to keep up her end.

“Maybe you can call some of those news people you know, give ’em a new angle on the story, a sort of update.”

“Yes. I could do that. It’s a good angle.” She would do it—for Jeff, and because Walker had offered a kind of gift by suggesting it—but she couldn’t think about it quite yet.

“There’s another aspect, you know,” he said.

“Oh?”

“At my age, I gotta stay limber, work on my moves, keep moving all the time. Even all night long.”

She looked into his eyes and saw desire and humor glinting in them, mixed with a pleasurable excitement at the prospect of two and a half weeks of steady competing. He didn’t try to hide it.

He slid his palm along her cheek until his fingers delved deep in her hair.

“I could use some assistance on that. Do I hear any volunteers?’’

She went into his arms, wrapping hers around him, holding him tight, trying to keep the fear at bay.

“Sure thing, cowboy.”

ANOTHER DAY PASSED
before he could ride, as rain wiped out another night’s rodeo.

It was hard to wait. He hadn’t competed in front of his hometown crowd in a long time. And he hadn’t competed much at all this summer. Eagerness hummed through his system like high frequency through a wire.

It was hard to watch Kalli, too. All that next day, her uneasy glances bounced from him to the rain-peppered window and back.

Lying in bed, with her head tucked under his chin, her cheek on his chest, he considered that.

She hadn’t been nervous about his riding when they were kids, when they were first married. Not until Cory died, and she suddenly demanded that Walker give up the rodeo. Immediately, and for good.

He’d been in too much pain to even really hear her at the time. And after she left, the new pain had kept him from seeing what her motives might have been—other than to get away from him.

She’d seen rodeo as a kid, but she hadn’t grown up with it, not the way he had, not from inside. She hadn’t felt the bumps and bruises, hadn’t taken the knocks and learned from them the danger was real. Until she’d learned—in one heartbreaking blow—that the danger could be deadly.