Chapter Two
Bull riders got concussed on a regular basis. It was an undisputable fact and Rowan had lived with that knowledge since before she was old enough to understand what concussion meant. Blunt force trauma to the head. Traumatic brain injury. Bruising. Bleeding. Just because you couldn’t see it, didn’t mean it wasn’t happening.
Rowan far preferred broken bones and muscle tears.
She should have been helping load up, and she did her job the way she always did, but when it was time to get in the truck and begin the haul back to the overnight livestock facilities the tour had arranged, she looked her father in the eye and told him she wanted to stick around for the night.
“Why?” Her father was never one to mince words.
“I want to do some clothes shopping in the morning.”
“You.” One word, heavy on the disbelief, and, okay, it wasn’t the brightest excuse she’d ever come up with.
“Well, yeah. I saw a dress in a shop window this morning and thought I might go in when the shop was open and try it on.”
“You. In a dress.”
“Maybe.” She hunkered into herself, head down, and toed the dirt with her boot. No fancy cowboy boots for her, she wore plain leather, steel-capped work boots and didn’t regret it. She didn’t look up. She had her mother’s eyes, her father had once told her in a fit of drunken rambling.
Right before telling her to get out of his sight.
Sometimes it was best not to look at him when his mood was uncertain. “Maybe I thought I could give it a try, yes.” The last time she’d worn a dress she’d been eighteen, a bridesmaid for her cousin, and there had been apricot frills involved. “I’m thinking I might dial back on the frills this time.”
“Good idea.” She had no idea why her father’s voice had softened so much between one comment and the next. Maybe he wanted her to embrace her feminine side. “Do you need money?”
“I have money, Dad.” He paid her to work and she barely spent any of it.
“Here.” A wad of notes appeared in front of her downturned face. “It’s been a while since we had a forty-six bull score. When you get home we’d best look at working up a schedule that’ll give that bull of yours a shot at Vegas.”
“Really?” This time she did look up, brown eyes meeting the cornflower blue of her father’s as her smile began to spread. She’d had to fight him every step of the way before he’d even let her load lightweight crossbred ‘Eggs’ Over Easy onto one of their trucks destined for an AEBR event. Her father in turn had had to convince the tour’s livestock manager that Over Easy was a bull to watch.
So far, the gamble was working.
“I was wrong; you were right. Take it.” The money was still there. “Don’t come home without something you like. And I don’t mean a new belt or set of spurs.”
“I do have enough belts to last me a while,” she offered. She’d been collecting them since she was a child, and—what was worse—many of them still fit. There was a downside to being five foot two and a hundred and six pounds dripping wet. “Thanks.”
He fished a set of keys out of his pocket next. “Take the Chevy. And don’t be spending the night around here. Get yourself a room somewhere nice.”
“What is this, my birthday?” she asked as she swapped keys with him.
“I can spoil my daughter if I want to.”
“You are in a good mood.” And so he should be. Their old bull champion, Road to Ruin, had been ridden for the win today. Road to Ruin’s brother Hammerfall had pulled a forty-three. If anyone had won this event hands down it was Harper Bucking Bulls. “We might even have a shot at the bull team challenge in Cheyenne?” A hundred thousand dollars for the winning team of three bulls. And currently, Harper Bucking Bulls had three very good bulls on the road.
“We’ll talk about that too.”
Plenty to talk about, yes. She suspected one thing she wouldn’t be talking about was her quiet need to see Tomas James Casey get up off that medical stretcher. She nodded at nothing in particular and turned on her heel.
“Rowan?”
Her father’s gruff voice stopped her in her tracks. He could probably smell the lie on her. Since when had she ever been interested in clothes?
“Don’t you go partying with any of those cowboys tonight.”
“You know I never do.” That much was truth. “But I might ask after Casey before I leave. See if he’s standing.”
“You’re not responsible for every cowboy who wrecks off the back of one of our bulls. It’s their choice to ride. They don’t want to do anything else.”
“I know that, Dad. I just want to check on him. You know I don’t like concussion injuries.” She’d had one herself and a bad one at that. “See you in Montgomery.”
She walked away fast, before her father could call her back to dispense even more advice. She knew the rules—she’d heard them often enough. No sleeping around, never more than two drinks, no dating AEBR officials and emphatically no dating bull riders. Those rules had been laid down shortly after her sixteenth birthday and hadn’t changed since.
Where her father expected her to find a suitable date was anyone’s guess.
She didn’t know anyone or anything else but this life. And in the midnight darkness where secrets lived she would reluctantly admit she was tired of it.
Maybe tomorrow she would buy a dress.
*
Casey got let out of the sports medicine room two hours after the winner had been announced. The crowd had left but the lights were still on. Paulo had come in third, Casey an almost respectable fifth. It said a lot for the quality of the bulls that only four riders had managed to stick their rides in the final round. That or the riders simply weren’t trying hard enough.
He had a grade two concussion, a referral for an MRI if symptoms persisted, and the only reason they let him go was because they were packing up equipment all around him and he’d told them he had a ride back to the hotel and didn’t want to wait around for one of them to take him.
Doc Freeman had checked his eyes and ears, made him count fingers (one), made him walk in a straight line to the door and back, and then made him recite a bad Irish limerick before finally pronouncing him good to go. The doc had then doled out a truly stingy number of painkillers (two). Two more could be had tomorrow, so as to save everyone the hassle of Casey getting back to his hotel room tonight and taking all four at once and overdosing.
It had been done before, albeit not by him.
“Anyone staying with you tonight?” Doc Freeman had asked.
“Not yet.”
“Someone needs to wake you after you’ve been asleep for a couple of hours to ask you comprehension questions all over again.”
“I know the drill.” Which didn’t sound very grateful. “Thanks.”
“Any unusual symptoms through this next week, you get to a hospital.”
“Will do, Mom.”
“Don’t you old woman me.”
“Don’t insult my mother. My mother’s young.”
“And recently widowed, or so I hear. Sorry to hear about your father.”
Travis Freeman, the team doctor, was a good man. Casey nodded. He didn’t want to talk about it. “Thanks again.”
Head down he’d made his way along the long, narrow walkway toward the exit, not even seeing Rowan until he plowed into her. He steadied her, or she steadied him, he couldn’t quite tell. He muttered an apology that might have been more heartfelt if the jolt hadn’t felt as if someone had stabbed him in the eye with an ice pick.
“Sorry,” he said again, and he should probably let go of her arm anytime now. God, she was tiny. Arms like kindling and, “Do you bruise?” He bet she bruised easily. He bet she’d have his fingerprints on her arm tomorrow. Horrified, he stepped back, straight into a cinder block wall.
“Whoa. Easy, cowboy. You right there?” She was steadying him again, had her hands on him again, and in his current state of not quite tracking well, having her hands on him at all was a little bit too much. It gave him ideas.
“Sorry,” he mumbled again, and took a careful step away from her until he was standing on his own two feet without her support.
“You almost had him,” she said next. Her voice was light but her eyes were doing a thorough job of assessing him, although he wasn’t quite sure what for. “The bull.”
“Wasn’t long enough.”
“Better than any other cowboy on that bull so far.”
“Still not long enough.”
“Oh, you’re one of those.” She fell back a little, gave him some room to move, which he did, toward the exit. And then she fell into step beside him. “Hard to be around when you don’t cover your ride.”
“Am not. I’m very easy to be around all the time.” Could be he heard his brothers howling with laughter from afar. Could be he was still concussed.
“Are you heading back to the hotel?”
He risked another nod and regretted it immediately.
“Want me to drive you there?” she asked.
That could work. “You’re heading past?”
“Yes,” she said. “I’ve had a change of plans. I’m sticking around for a day or so. I want to buy a dress.”
“I’d like to see that. Not the buying of a dress, but you in a dress. That I’d like to see. Pretty. But you’re always pretty.” It was the drugs. Or the concussion. Had to be. Why else would his mouth not stop running?
“Okay, cowboy.” Now she was humoring him. “You traveling with anyone at the moment?”
“Just me.” Which suited him fine, all things considered.
“Do you trust me to drive your truck?” she asked, and he blinked, because her dropping him off at the hotel was one thing, but her driving his truck there was something altogether different. “Remembering that I’m fully capable of hauling a stock carrier loaded with bulls,” she said dryly. “I’m offering to drive you and your truck to the hotel and park you both there and then get a lift back to collect my ride.”
“And you’re staying where?”
“At the hotel.”
“And why are you driving there twice?”
“Casey, do yourself a favor and stop trying to think. I’m doing you a favor.”
“Why?”
“Because you took my advice and I can count on one finger the number of people who do that. I’m feeling generous toward you. Where’s your truck?”
“Where’s my gear?” His rope. His hat. He’d lost track of them.
Rowan sighed. “Paulo picked them up. He probably put them in your truck, assuming he knows what it looks like, which I don’t. What are you driving?”
“A cherry red Chevy. 1967. Me’n’m’brothers restored it last winter. Runs like an angel, guzzles gas like the devil. Inconspicuous.”
“You keep telling yourself that, buddy,” she muttered beneath her breath, and slipped her hand through his elbow, and he smiled at her afresh and crooked his arm because now they were walking out from beneath the stadium seating together and that was what he wanted. “I can probably find your inconspicuous little Chevy fairly easily, even if you can’t remember where you parked it. I’m offering to get you, your ride and your gear to the hotel. You planning on taking me up on it or are you going to be stubborn about it?”
“Taking you up on it,” he said, and left off the nod because he was a smart, smart man.
People noticed her attention toward him as they made their way from the coliseum and the fair grounds—of course they did. Secrets were hard to keep when on tour. Didn’t need to be a secret, the way Ro told it.
Not as if he was aiming to do wrong by her, no, sir.
Get the poor, concussed cowboy to his room, that’s all.
She said it to people half a dozen times before they even reached his truck. “You’re protesting too much about being seen with me,” he offered helpfully. “It’s your guilty conscience.”
“I haven’t done anything!”
“Yet.”
He didn’t think he was mistaking concern for attraction. Not with the way her breath caught as they both reached for the passenger door of his truck and their fingers tangled. Not with the way her gaze hitched on his mouth and stayed there. Not for the full eight seconds, no, but long enough.
“Like what you see?” he murmured, and she put her hand to his vest as if to push him away only she didn’t push him away so much as stare at her hand and then snatch it away as if burnt. “It’s hotter beneath the vest,” he assured her. He needed core strength to stick his ride and his abs could rival anyone’s. “Feel free to check.”
“You’re going to be so embarrassed later.”
Probably not. He got into his truck, passenger side, and that was just plain wrong but he suffered in silence and she drove him to the hotel. He approved her gear changes with a measured hum.
Once inside she steered him toward the reception desk and got him to get a second room-card from reception because he couldn’t find the first, and then she piled him into the elevator and took him to his room.
“I hate to break it to you, Ro, but we spoke to three more tour people on our way in and they know you don’t usually stay at the tour hotel and you’re still over-explaining your involvement with me. You sure you know what you’re doing? Seeing as you’re not intending to go out with me an’ all?”
“I have a plan,” she said as she opened the door to his room and pushed him inside. “It involves putting you solidly in the friend zone for all to see. Nothing else happening here.”
“Oh, that’s harsh.” Not to mention wrong. Because there was plenty happening here. “Why don’t you want anyone to know?”
“Know what?”
“Know what you want.”
Silence, thick and uncomfortable.
“You are allowed to go after what you want,” he murmured.
“Your ego’s as big as the sun,” she told him.
“Not quite.” Healthy though, and he saw no reason to deny it. He’d been blessed with a hard body, a face women sighed over and a brain in there somewhere. “Wasn’t actually talking about me.”
Silence again.
“Tell me about the dress you want,” he said, more for conversation and getting rid of the awkward silence than any great interest in clothing. “What color is it?”
“I haven’t bought it yet.” She sounded a little cross. He started to reach for the buckle on his chaps and then thought better of it. Perhaps he should hold off on the undressing until after she left.
“It could be cherry red like my truck.”
“We all have our little fantasies. You planning to get any of your riding gear off anytime soon?”
“No, ma’am.” Because he’d stopped all that. Hadn’t been thinking about getting him naked and her naked and them both beneath the shower at all.
“Sit down, cowboy. Let me at least help you get at your boots and your spurs. If you bend over to do it you’re either going to pass out or throw up.”
“Doubt it.” There was nothing left to heave. But he sat on the bed and unbuckled his chaps—wasn’t as if he didn’t have jeans on beneath—and she helped him lose them and tugged his boots off while he unhitched his riding vest, and now he had even more fantasies to consider. “Why are you doing this again?”
She sat back on her haunches and looked up at him, her smile wry and her eyes serious. “I saw a cowboy ride once, get knocked out, get up five minutes later, act a little confused for a couple of hours after that and then die later that night in his sleep. Or not in his sleep. Hard to say because no one was there with him when they should have been.”
“Someone you knew well?”
“Not that well, but it left a mark on everyone around at the time. Not to mention that I told you how to ride and I might be feeling a little guilty about the end result.”
“Nothing for you to feel guilty about. That’s just stupid.”
Her eyes narrowed.
“Not that I’m calling you stupid. No sirree. What I mean to say is that you’re not responsible for my inability to cover my ride. Or for what happens afterward.”
“I’m going to look in on you later, okay?” she said, standing up and pocketing his swipe card.
“I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist me for long.”
“You keep telling yourself that and I’ll keep wallowing in my guilt, and I’m still going to look in on you later.”
“Do you like peas?” he asked, and made her blink.
“I do.”
“I knew it,” he said. And then she left and he sagged back onto the bed, and closed his eyes and then nothing.
*
Cowboys were big gossips, Rowan decided several hours later as she closed her tab and said her goodbyes and made sure everyone saw her leave alone. Her father had wanted her to stay somewhere other than the official tour hotel, but she didn’t have to take his advice. The tour hotels were four star, minimum, and she liked the reassurance of being surrounded by familiar faces.
She’d already made Doc Freeman go up and check on Casey once—by the simple act of mentioning that Casey had been more than a little out of it on the trip back to the hotel. Not quite watching his words the way he usually would.
That was when Doc Freeman had mentioned that Casey’s father had died just before Vegas last year and had been buried the weekend of the finals. Rowan had sat back in silence as everything about Casey’s absence late last year came crashing into place.
Family first, he’d said. Family before buckles and winnings, confetti and a possible million-dollar paycheck with his name on it.
His father dead.
Why the hell hadn’t he said anything, the close-mouthed bastard?
*
It only made sense for Rowan to check on Casey later that evening. She’d said she would, Doc Freeman’s efforts notwithstanding. She was on the same floor as him, a few doors down, and if no one was in the corridor to see her all the better. She rapped lightly on his door, and when that got no response, let herself into his room with the key she’d pocketed earlier.
Casey had obviously showered at some point and forgotten to put half his clothes back on. Instead of jeans he wore soft-looking black sweats that showcased his perfectly rounded ass, and although he’d managed to push bedcovers aside, he definitely hadn’t opted to pull them back over him. It left his back and arms bare and glowing golden in the lamplight, and Rowan looked her fill at muscles honed for fast-twitch responses rather than endurance. She could smell eucalyptus body wash and beneath it the tantalizing scent of man, warm and clean, and something about it made her blood thicken and slow, the better to absorb the scent.
She’d been hoping Casey would wake as she came in so that she’d feel less like an intruder—or a voyeur—but it hadn’t happened yet and his body had that boneless quality of someone deeply asleep.
Or possibly unconscious.
“Hey, cowboy.” She edged a little closer and tried not to stare. He had one arm beneath his pillow and the other outstretched beside him, and don’t let her get started on the corded musculature in his arms. Not too built, not too underdeveloped, and too damn perfect. “Casey.”
Nothing.
“Tomas James. T.J.” The man had a lot of names. She pushed lightly at his shoulder and tried to ignore the silky warmth of his skin beneath her fingertips. “Hey lover. Stud.” He wasn’t answering to those either. “Big boy?” Hard to tell given that he was lying on his stomach, but a woman could hope. “Ready for round two?”
Casey groaned and cracked open the eye that wasn’t currently smooshed into the pillow.
“Atta boy. Now tell me your name.”
“You know my name.”
True. “But do you?”
“Tomas James Casey.”
Sweet. She felt like a schoolmarm taking roll call. “And what day is it?”
“Sunday, unless it’s gone midnight,” he murmured. “Which it might have.”
“Not yet. How old are you?”
“Thirty-one.”
“And how many serious relationships have you had?”
He rolled over onto his back and there was one question answered at any rate. Tomas James Casey was packing plenty of weight in the big boy department.
“Why? See something you like?” he murmured and she tore her gaze from his low-slung sweats and stuck her hand in her jeans pocket for the little bottle of over-the-counter pain meds she’d picked up. She sat the bottle beside the water on the bedside table instead.
“I got you these,” she said.
“Thank you. You still fixing to go dress shopping in the morning?”
Nothing wrong with his memory. “Yeah.” She risked a glance toward his face, and if she needed any more proof that his concussion wasn’t all that severe, there it was. His eyes were clear, nothing hazy or unfocused about them, and they really were the most unusual deep forest green. No flecks of gold, no hazel, no blue. Just green and darker green, softening to gray around the edges. “Just checking up on you. I’ll go now.”
“Stay.”
Bad idea. “No can do, cowboy. Far be it for me to take advantage of the sick and the poor.”
“M’not either. Going back to college soon.”
“To do what?” She had no idea who he was beyond bull riding, but she’d pegged him for a rancher’s son.
“Vet.”
“You’ve started?”
“Finished my undergrad. Did my first year of postgrad. Ran out of money and started riding bulls. That was five years ago.”
“Do you even like riding bulls?” She’d never considered that this wasn’t his first choice when it came to what he wanted to do with his life.
“I like it well enough when it pays,” he said with a tired smile. “What do you do when you’re not hauling stock?”
“I breed bucking bulls,” she said as he raised his arms to the headboard and stretched, and, oh. He didn’t just have a six-pack. He had an entire continent of hills and valleys and ridges just waiting to be explored.
“Ever wanted to do anything else?” he murmured.
She was rapidly coming to the conclusion that she wanted to do him, but that was a conclusion better left unsaid.
“Sometimes I do. But it’s the family business, you know? And I don’t know anything else.” She’d been homeschooled on the road and while she thought she was okay education wise, rocking up to college had never been on her agenda. “I take photos sometimes—some of those have made it into bull-riding tour brochures and magazines—but the subject matter is right there, and I’m there too, most of the time, so if the light’s right I’ll get the camera out. It’s mostly behind the scenes stuff. People packing up when the glitz and glamor show is over.”
“Do you take photos of anything else?”
“Ranch life. Wildlife. Wyoming.” She’d read his publicity bio. She read them all. She didn’t usually memorize them all, and also, some of those bios were more fiction than fact. “You’re from Montana, right?”
“Yeah. My family’s been ranching there since the early nineteen hundreds. It’s a good spread but it doesn’t sustain five sons. I’m second youngest and I need another way to earn a living. Something helpful when it comes to the family business but portable too, you know?”
She nodded as if she did know what it was like to contemplate going her own way, but the truth was she never had. She was her father’s only living child, although not the son he’d always wanted. She was fully involved in the family business. She had her own bull breeding program—Over Easy was part of it. She owned half the ranch outright—her mother’s half—not that she ever advertised that fact. She had resources that took generations to build and opportunities others envied. It wasn’t a bad life.
She’d lost count of the cowboys trying to get into her pants so as to claim a piece of it.
“Where will you go when you start studying again?” she asked.
“Not sure yet. Washington State or UC Davis. Depends how much money I make this year. The more money the better my options.”
“And then what?”
“And then I don’t know.”
“But not back to bull riding?”
“C’mon, Ro. You know as well as me this is no sport for old men. Gotta have an exit plan.”
She nodded again, frowning. “A lot of cowboys look at me and see one.” There. She’d said it.
He sat up suddenly, and swung his legs over the edge of the bed. “Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“Probably.” In all honesty. “Yes.”
He really was too pretty for his own good. Messy dark hair, strong jaw, great lips and a fair bit of shadow defining them. Expressive eyes that seemed to telegraph his every emotion—and how he’d survived that trait with four brothers was anyone’s guess.
His current emotion was pissed off.
Just a guess.
“How about I say that if I married into a wealthy family—like yours—I’d still not want to work for either you or your father? I’d rather keep my balls. But there’s the door if you don’t believe me.” He nodded toward it.
“I was going anyway.” She put the hotel door card on the bedside table and headed for the door, only by the time she went to open it he was right there beside her, his hand on the handle as he opened it for her. He was so close she could see the flawlessness of his skin and the unearthly length of his lashes.
“I still want that dinner,” he rumbled. “I’d still like nothing more than to see what kind of sense we make, in bed and out, but not for the reasons you think. I like you, Rowan. I like the way you look and the way you move, the way you work, and the way you make my body ache in all the right places. I’d like to know more.” He pulled the door wide open and stood aside to let her leave. “I’m drawn to you. Not your money or your father’s bulls. Is that so hard to believe?”
“It’s a little unexpected.”
“Try looking in the mirror some time.”
“I do.”
He said nothing to that, just stood there, eyeing her steadily, as if he could see every insecurity she’d ever owned.
“Thanks for checking on me,” he said finally.
She nodded jerkily, shoved her hands in the pockets of her baggy jeans and wished she hadn’t left her cap in her room. She could have hidden her confusion beneath it.
Her room was on the twelfth floor, same as his. She’d asked for one here, but as he watched her walk the three doors and fish her card from her pocket, she wondered if that too hadn’t been a bad idea in a day full of them.
He was still watching, leaning against his doorframe as she pushed her way inside her room and let the door thud closed behind her.
So the man had ambitions beyond the world she’d been born to. That was good, right? He wasn’t a fortune hunter out to charm his way into Harper Bucking Bulls. He wasn’t a cowboy bent on riding bulls until his body gave out. He was here for what he could rightfully earn and once he earned enough to see him through his studies he’d be gone. He’d meet a college girl with golden hair and a sunny smile and she’d be studying law or medicine and hosting dinner parties on the side.
What would he want with a woman whose main claim to education consisted of knowing every back road and cheap gas station between Wyoming and Texas?
What was she even doing here, hovering around him like some fool?
She let her head thud against the back of the door and jumped when someone knocked back in reply. The knock sounded again, so she opened the door cautiously.
Casey.
“I forgot to thank you for the riding advice,” he said, and leaned forward, snaked his hand around her neck and kissed her.
It really wasn’t a thank you kiss. It was an I’m starving and you’re so damn tasty kiss. One that started hot and slid straight into downright filthy between one second and the next. A kiss that promised absolute abandon and no regrets and her hand went to his chest and her fingers curled and that moan of approval … She was pretty sure it was hers.
She tilted her head to allow him better access and boy did he take it. Man wasn’t slow when it came to gathering her close and letting her know by the hardness of his body and the heat in his touch that he hadn’t been lying when he’d said he wanted her.
Maybe even just her.
She craved one last kiss and took it before putting her hand to his abdomen and pushing him away. “You don’t have to thank me for riding advice.” She was breathless and too soft-voiced for her own good but at least she wasn’t begging him to take her to bed and love her forever.
“Let me take you to breakfast,” he rasped.
“Not a good idea.” People would see and draw their own conclusions.
“Do it anyway.” Gravel-rough and so compelling, he had a voice that stroked her senses. “What time do you eat?”
“Six.”
He groaned, and now there was a sound that would keep her company tonight. “Have a heart, Ro. I’m walking wounded.”
“And you call yourself a cowboy.”
“Bull rider. Special breed. Worthy of respect.”
“Uh-huh.” It wasn’t easy to sound bored in the presence of T.J. Casey’s bare chest but she did her best.
“Respect and the occasional concession when it comes to five a.m. awakenings.”
“I might have breakfast at eight,” she said. She had no real reason beyond habit to get up at five tomorrow morning. She could sleep in. Daydream a little. Probably about him.
“I’ll be downstairs in the breakfast room at eight. You won’t regret it,” he said.
She already did.
“Sweet dreams, Rowan.”
Close the door; don’t call him back. Don’t start something you can’t finish. Those were the thoughts that swirled and meshed with the memory of his kiss. Be a grown-up. Have breakfast. State very plainly that nothing could come of his interest, never mind the pull she felt toward him. She couldn’t afford to screw around on tour and get a reputation—not when tour management barely tolerated her presence in the first place. As for his career, there were a hundred and one subtle ways her father and his ilk could make Casey pay if he didn’t treat her right.
Rowan was simultaneously unwanted and overprotected by those around her.
Story of her life.