Chapter 9
Meli
I laid in my new room that night but the last thing on my mind was the fact that I was now housed in the nicest place I had ever lived. All I could think about was the naked cowboy I’d left at the pool.
I knew I was treading in dangerous water. He wasn’t just the best-looking guy I’d ever been around; he was vulnerable and I knew the buttons to push. That gave me power; to hurt or help him, however I saw fit.
He was, however, also my boss and I needed this job more than at any time in my life. I didn’t want to end up like my sister, Jill, lying on my back and letting guys ride me in return for drugs or a bit of money now and then. There had to be better options, at least for me. I knew I had to move out of her apartment. If I’d stayed, I knew that I would gradually think of her way of life as normal, and then I’d be lost. I wanted to make something of myself. That’s why I got my degree. I hoped that I could eventually afford a place of my own and then maybe I could get Jill in and cleaned up. It was a pipe dream; I knew that. But I’d always been a determined, ambitious survivor, and I wasn’t about to throw that all away for a pair of gray eyes that made me want to strip right there in view. I had to play it cool and distant; I had to remain professional.
I tried to go to sleep but it was almost dawn before exhaustion finally caught up to me. Nevertheless, I rolled out by seven and went for a quick swim before I got dressed. By eight, I had breakfast on the table and was ready to get down to work.
“You’re up early,” Blake commented as he emerged from his room, his hair charmingly tousled and hanging over his gray eyes. He wasn’t wearing a shirt and there were scars on the tanned skin. I was having trouble breathing.
“How do you like your eggs?” I asked.
“I don’t care. Cooked, I guess,” he attempted humor.
“Do you normally sleep in later?” I asked.
“Depends on how much I had to drink the night before.”
“Oh, that’s a system for you,” I responded with as much sarcasm as I could manage on two hours’ sleep.
“How about you? Sounds like you need more sleep than you got,” he countered, and I had to admit that I was being a bit bitchy. “Did the swim help?”
He’d heard me out there. “The swim was a great eye-opener. I already feel refreshed and ready to get busy!”
“Uh, huh. Well, I’m not. I’ll meet you back here about noon.”
“Where are you going?” I asked.
His eyebrows raised and his voice was cocky. “Do I have to check in with you?”
I flushed. “No, of course not. I just thought if we’re going to work on this publicity venture together, it might be a good idea if we actually sat and talked about it together.”
I wasn’t sure where all this verbal swordplay was going to take us, but I could feel the tension in the room rising and thought I’d keep my mouth shut on the topic. “Tell you what,” I said. “Why not let me take the day to do some research and that will help us plan our strategy? Then maybe we can sit down tomorrow and go over things?”
He looked at me over the forkful of scrambled eggs. “Sounds like a plan,” he acknowledged. “You need that truck today?”
I shook my head. “No, not that I know of.”
“Thought I’d take it in and have the brakes checked. Been a while since it’s been driven. I need to talk to a few of the guys, too. So, you do your research and I’ll do mine. Deal?”
“Deal,” I acknowledged and stood up to clear the breakfast dishes.
I heard the front door slam as he left and settled down in a lawn chair by the pool with my laptop to do my research. It turned out there were more rodeo enthusiasts than I had estimated. I found several magazines that catered to the industry and made notes of their editors and their advertising rates. Then I moved on to locating blogs and fan sites for other rodeo riders—whether they rode bulls or not. I realized that many of the cowboys did both. Not Blake; he was definitely a bull man. This last thought caused me to smile at myself.
I turned then to the more major magazines, such as Sport Illustrated. I happened to have some college connections here and there that might help. I followed some of the other riders to see if they were doing any charitable events but there didn’t seem to be a lot of that going on. So, I used football and basketball players as models to gather information. I realized they made far larger salaries, but the motivation behind their actions could be duplicated on a smaller scale. One thing working in my favor was the fact that bull riding had fans in fairly segregated demographics. I thought I could count off some of the more expensive markets such as New York City, Seattle, and Los Angeles, but was surprised to learn that there were over a million professional bull rider fans in those areas combined. This was too many people to be overlooked.
I made a note to ask Blake for his travel schedule so I could coordinate some publicity events as he travelled. That was when it struck me that I would be travelling with him. Naturally that was my place. I hoped it would be handled with some degree of professionalism.
Armed with a good deal of information, I wrote a few sample pieces on corruption within the industry, focusing in a large part on mistreatment of the animals. Shocking them to perform better seemed to run rampant among the inhumane practices. I thought it might be a good idea for Blake to come out in support of animal rights. As ironic as it might appear, animal rights activists could become real pains if not accorded the respect they demanded. It was a good idea to get ahead of that story and champion their cause.
I put away my laptop and closed my eyes in the warm sun. I must have dozed due to the lack of sleep because the next thing I knew, I was flying through the air and then engulfed in water. I surfaced, sputtering mad to see Blake standing next to the pool, grinning with his hands on his hips.
“You think you’re funny, don’t you?” I accused him, swimming to the ladder and climbing out.
“Actually, you’re the one who looks funny,” was his response at my expense.
He handed me a towel. “Go get changed, Silver, and then come back. I’ve got something to show you.”
I glared, but did as I was told. When I had assembled myself, I found him in the living area, seated with a beer in his hand. “A little early for that, don’t you think?” I sneered and hated myself for being so petty, but the pool dunking couldn’t go unanswered.
“Aw, now, Silver. That was beneath even you,” he grinned and took a pronounced sip. Rolling to his feet, he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the front door. Opening it, he stood back and with a sweep of his hand, indicated that I should precede him.
“Okay, what do you want to show me?” I asked a bit sourly.
He nodded toward the drive where a white Cadillac Escalade sat parked, a huge red bow affixed to its roof.
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Yours.”
“Mine?”
“Yours.”
“Are you kidding?”
“Darlin’, when it comes to eighty-thousand dollars, I don’t kid. You like it?”
“Blake, why are you doing this? We had a deal. Salary, room and board, and use of the truck in the garage.”
“Yeah, I know, but the brakes went bad. So now there’s a new truck in the garage.”
“That’s some truck! It’s gorgeous! You shouldn’t have spent so much money, though. You’re going to need it to clean up your reputation.”
“Darlin’, that’s what I’ve got you for!” he said and slapped me on the ass as he held out the keys and pointed at the vehicle. “C’mon, let’s burn some rubber!”
I hesitated but realized that this offer wasn’t going to come again, so I grinned and leapt toward the driver’s door and hopped in. He climbed in beside me and I drove down his drive and headed away from town.
“It’s a dream,” I said, feeling the smooth ride and the effortless way the suspension stuck to the road despite the potholes. “This just goes with the job, though, Blake. If you fire me or I quit, you keep the car.”
“Whatever you say, darlin’,” he quipped and took the last swig from the beer bottle.
“Oh Jesus, Blake. You can’t be drinking in the car. We’ll get stopped and get an open container citation.”
“Silver, you gotta loosen up a little. This is Texas and I’m the best bull rider in the state. There isn’t much here that I can’t get away with.”
“Oh, really? Then why do you have such a lousy reputation?” I pointed out.
“Me? Oh, well, that’s the fault of foreigners outside of Texas; and they’re just jealous.”
“Well, be that as it may, my job is to make you look like freaking Michael Jordan, so tone down the drinking in public, please.”
“Yeah, yeah,” he said and lowered the window long enough to pitch the bottle.
“Oh, that’s nice,” I frowned.
“Silver, you always this sour?”
“Only when I have to clean up behind you,” I commented and turned around to go back to the ranch.
I made us salads and baked potatoes while Blake put a couple of steaks on the grill. We ate out by the pool and eventually ended up on pool loungers with glasses of wine.
“So, Silver, tell me about where you come from.”
I knew he was trying to be companionable and wondered just how open I should be. “New York.”
He chuckled and took a sip. “I sorta figured that. I want to hear about where you came from. What made you who you are?”
I told him about college, and about Jeremy. He shook his head. “Not what I’m talking about.”
I was silent.
“You don’t like to talk much about your past, do you?”
“There’s not much to tell. Honestly. My mom did the best she could with what she had and Jill and I were on our own at an early age. Jill sort of stayed in that track, but I wanted out. So, I got myself into college and the rest is history.”
“Okay, Silver, keep it close to your chest. I respect that.”
“How about you?”
“Me? Well, pretty much what you’d expect. Eldest with three brothers; I left the litter as soon as I could support myself and hung out at rodeos. Made it alive through the ranks and became who you know now. Hey! You writing that down?”
“Sure, this is good stuff. I need biographical information if I’m going to make you relatable, you know.”
“Does this mean that every conversation we have is going to be on the record?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe?
“Well, you don’t have to panic. I’m not going to use it to make you look bad. That would be putting myself out of a job. But I need to know who you are so I can represent an authentic ‘you’ to the world.”
“Okay, I get that, but use good judgement, okay?”
“Don’t worry, you can trust me.”
He snickered. “I can, can I? Seems to me that’s how I got into this mess to begin with.”
“Oh, stop that.”
We sat in companionable silence for a while, watching the water move about in the dying sunlight. Blake stood up and retrieved the wine bottle to refill our glasses. “You ever get married?” I asked him as he handed mine back.
“Nope. Came close once, though.”
“Tell me about her.”
“Not much to tell. We were in high school and a month after a very hot date, she came and told me she was pregnant. I was prepared to do the right thing and had already told my parents. They had a fit and actually, that was one of the reasons I moved out. I could see my lifestyle was never going to meet with their approval. It would be a constant uphill battle.”
“So … the girl?”
“Mary Ann Tinkam was her name. Cute little thing. All blonde, soft, and freckles on the end of her nose. She was fully developed, if you get my drift; really a young guy’s dream. She came from a family on the wrong side of the tracks—her father was one mean sonofabitch. In fact, I think he may have treated her as more than a daughter from time to time, even though she never said anything about it. Well, I was lookin’ around for somewhere we could live and found a trailer for rent in a crappy park south of town. We were just going to do a justice of the peace kind of thing, you know, quick and quiet. Now, the night before we were going to do the deed, so to speak, I went over to her house to see her. She’d told me specifically not to come around because of some old superstition about the groom not seeing the bride. The only problem was, Mary Ann Tinkam thought I was the sort of fella who did as he was told. You and I both know differently, of course. Well, there she was, lady parts open to the world in the back of Donny Black’s mom’s El Dorado. Well, it didn’t take me too long to put two and two together and realize that Mary Ann Tinkam’s little muchacho could have belonged to one of any number of guys. I tapped on the window of the El Dorado and told her to hang on real tight to Donny because he was her only hope of getting a daddy for her baby. Then I left.”
I laughed aloud at the images he was bringing into my imagination. “And, did she?”
“I guess so, because she became Mary Ann Black, at least for a few months, and then after the baby was born, she went through another half dozen babies and another half dozen new names. She lives off child support and alimony these days, or so I’m told.”
Grinning, I asked, “So, is the moral of this story to never do as you’re told?”
“You catch on quick, Silver,” he smirked as his clever use of words.
“What if it is your child?”
“I think if it is was, Mary Ann would have been on my doorstep with her hand out by now, don’t you?”
“I guess you’re probably right,” I agreed. “You don’t take life very seriously, do you, Blake?”
“As serious as the next person, I suppose. But let me tell you, when you’re getting ready to lower yourself down onto a bull the size of car, you take that very seriously.”
I was thinking about this when he stood and stretched. “I’m done for the night,” he announced and saluted me.
“Good night, Blake,” I bid him.
“Lock your door, Silver. I gave Mary Ann a ride for her money, after all,” he warned with a smile as he wandered toward the door.
“If the urge should strike you, think of me as that bull and not as Mary Ann,” I assured him and could hear his chuckle as the door closed behind him.