Chapter Four
Casey liked being in Atlanta. The lazy drawl and easy manners reminded him of his mother and her family, and the arena was an indoor one with corporate booths and club seats, high-end acoustics and concert-hall lighting and audio options. The sound and lighting guys invariably went mad with all the extra toys on offer and the crowd liked it. The more experienced bulls and cowboys put up with it.
He covered his first two rides and was sitting in fourth place going into the short go, but he hadn’t drawn a Harper bull and didn’t like his chances of pulling off a high-scoring ride with the bull he had drawn.
Rowan Harper was ignoring him. Every time he so much as looked at her she put her head down and disappeared. Even Paulo noticed.
“You asked her out, didn’t you?” Paulo said as they sat waiting for Paulo’s bull to come into the chute.
Like Casey, Paulo had made it through to the short go. Unlike Casey, Paulo had drawn a bull that actually had the potential to deliver him a winning ride.
“I did ask her out.”
“I heard she stayed on and that you two ended up having breakfast together.”
“That was all it was. There was no going out the night before. Rowan was having breakfast in the hotel dining room with Gisele and Flynn and I happened along.”
“So you took advantage and sat on down.”
“I sat down with all three of them, and then the other two left. Wasn’t a date.”
“You do realize her daddy’s watching you watch her.”
Casey smiled tightly and turned his head to meet Papa Harper’s narrow gaze. “I’m aware.” He held the older man’s gaze a little too long for it to be mistaken for anything other than outright challenge. “He keeps her on too tight a leash. Doesn’t have to be me who meets his approval but he can’t deny his daughter the right to a life beyond that of a ranch hand. The sooner he realizes it the better for everyone.”
Now Paulo was looking at him in flat appraisal, before shaking his head slightly and then turning it into a series of neck and shoulder stretches.
“C’mon. Here comes your bull,” Casey said. “Time to get set.”
“I hate coming out of the chute closest to the wall,” Paulo muttered. “Every bad ride I’ve ever seen at this arena has come out of this chute.”
“Don’t be superstitious.”
“It’s not superstition if it’s true.” But Paulo was climbing over the rail and into the chute and time for talk was over. Paulo never fussed once he sat a bull. He positioned his legs and set his rope, every movement swift and economical. He never riled the animal unnecessarily, never pumped himself up like some did. The man was a study in quiet, concentrated focus.
Paulo used a Brazilian bull rope, which meant he set his right hand well to the right of the bull’s backbone. Different setup to the American bull rope Casey used, but equally effective. It was what you grew up with, what you got used to. When Paulo bumped his fist against the rope to signal it was as tight as he wanted it, Casey handed it over for the wrap and patted the other man on the chest. “Screw superstition. You’ve got this.”
He honestly didn’t care if it looked good or not that he still stood Paulo’s bulls when he could or that Paulo was now sponsored by the same big-name sponsor who’d dumped Casey at the end of last season. He and Paulo were both riding well and sponsors counted for nothing during the seconds when it was just man and bull. The people you wanted at your side before those seconds started should damn well be the ones you trusted and wanted there.
The bull moved restlessly but Casey kept his hand pressed front and center to Paulo’s vest. The kid acting as flank man, and he was a kid, was still fussing with the flank strap, and no sooner had he tightened it than the bull tried to climb its way out of the chute, rearing back, getting its feet up where they should never go and thrashing about as if possessed.
Sometimes a bull would settle but this one kept on fighting and with a curse Paulo released his rope hold and let Casey pull him off and out of harm’s way. No rider liked a reset, and who the hell owned this bull and why weren’t they releasing the flank strap and getting the animal settled?
But then Joe Harper was there, his hands sure and his movements calm as he leaned across the rail and loosened the flank strap back off.
“Show you a trick,” he said to the boy who’d been acting as flank man, and then he looked toward Casey and Paulo as if to say what are you waiting for, and Paulo needed no second invitation to settle once more on the bull’s back and trust Joe Harper to do absolutely right by him.
“No rider’s going to wait for an engraved invitation the second time around. He knows full well we’ve already wasted enough of the bull’s energy.” Joe Harper’s voice came low and reassuring as Paulo reset. Mouth guard already in, no time to waste as Casey tightened the rope again and held it taut as Paulo warmed up the rosin on his glove.
“This animal’s going to bunch up the minute he feels that flank strap tighten so you want to wait as long as you can before disrupting the rider’s preparation. Wait until you see the rider take his rope and start to wrap. That’s your signal.” Joe Harper was still talking, making it sound easy as he quietly called the shots. “See how Casey’s got one hand on the rider’s chest and one eye on us? We do our job and step back, Casey takes his hand away, the rider gives the nod and the gate opens. It’s all in the timing. That’s how we want this to go.”
And that’s how it went.
God damn the Brazilian could ride.
Eight seconds and eighty-five points later, Paulo sat at the top of the scoreboard.
Paulo resumed his position alongside Casey, eyes bright, doubtless pumped, as they watched the other riders roll through. None matched him although several came close.
Close wasn’t good enough.
It was Casey’s turn to ride in the next set. He caught Rowan’s eye, right before the nod, and she smiled and suddenly the world was all right.
He stuck his ride and came off clean and uninjured. It was a good ride and the crowd showed enthusiastic appreciation as he picked up his rope and gave them a smile, but he hadn’t done enough for the win. He was looking at third place, maybe fourth.
This was Paulo’s night.
On the other hand, Rowan had smiled at him.
*
She found him packing up his kit, getting ready to roll, and figured she had about five minutes before her father started wondering where she was. Five minutes in which to say hey, and shove a wad of money at him. Money he’d used to buy clothes she still hadn’t worn.
The ‘hey’ part of the conversation went well enough, but the money part went wrong from the outset. She held out the roll of greenbacks and his eyes went flat and hard and he got that stubborn look about him. Same look he gave every bull he rode.
“No,” he ground out. “You want to avoid me all weekend, that’s your prerogative. I got the memo. But let the time before that stand. You don’t owe me anything.”
Which left her closing her fingers around the roll of cash and shoving her hands in her jeans pockets for good measure. “You rode well,” she said. “Best you could do on that bull.”
“Maybe I’ll draw a Harper bull next time. I still have a score to settle with Over Easy.”
She nodded. Eggs had made short work of the cowboy on his back this weekend, drawing plenty of attention from both cowboys and tour officials. It was too early to say, except that her father was already saying it. They had a new, young, unridden champion bull on their hands, and that was a very good outcome for any stock contractor.
“I have to go,” she said, glancing back toward the Harper truck currently taking up space in the loading bay. “But when you do ride that bull, don’t forget to collect on that bet.”
“Rowan—”
She turned.
“You trucking that bull to Charlotte next weekend?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
“Good,” he said. “Bring the dress.”
*
Charlotte came and went without a win and without him riding the Harper bull he’d staked their date on. It got around, no fault of his, that he and Rowan had bet a date on him riding the bull and he wore the teasing of the other cowboys with equanimity. Growing up with four brothers had been good for something after all.
Rowan, who’d grown up with no siblings at all but who’d been traveling the circuit since she was small, paid no mind to the teasing either. These days if she saw Casey around she’d make an effort to talk to him. They got into a habit of sitting a rail together, way back behind the crowd at the chutes, and discussing the pros and cons of the bulls he’d drawn. She predicted the shape of the ride more often than not, and damned if Paulo and Huck didn’t want in on those conversations too, and then it was all four of them sitting back and talking beforehand or afterward and benefitting big-time from the information exchange.
Rowan was flank man, or woman, more often these days, although her father was never far away when that happened and neither was Jock Morgan’s son, Mab. Casey had no idea what the deal was between the two rival stock contractors other than Joe Harper had taken the boy under his wing and was teaching him the ropes and that Jock seemed to be around less and less. Rowan too was picking up some of Jock Morgan’s slack but her lips went tight and she shook her head when he quizzed her on it.
“My father owes him one,” was all she’d say. “It’ll sort itself out.”
“Not before you run yourself ragged.”
“What’s a few more bulls to put in the chute? Anyway, Mab’s coming on. Pulls more than his weight now.”
And that much was true.
Casey went home in the long break between Charlotte and St. Louis and became Tomas again, fourth of five sons, but it wasn’t the same without his father there to settle differences and scores. His two oldest brothers were feuding over the way things should be run, Jett was competing in ski races in Europe, and Seth had half a dozen building projects in full swing.
It had taken Casey all of five minutes to figure out that his mother was barely holding it together, and that her distress resulted largely from the ongoing argumentative wankery between Mason and Cal—both of whom believed in their God-given right to step into shoes neither of them could ever fill.
He brought it up with them out in the barn, far away from their mother’s watchful eye, and squared his shoulders when two sets of hostile eyes swung his way.
“Oh, and I suppose you can run this place better than either of us, college boy?” This from Mason, his oldest brother.
“Maybe I could, but that’s not the point. I’ve always known this place wouldn’t support us all so I’ve made plans elsewhere, and, yeah, it involves more study. So what? Not as if I’ve ever asked anyone here to pay for it. I make my own way. All I’m asking is that you respect our mother enough not to start a turf war. Can you do that? Or do I have to take you both on?”
“Testy,” said Cal. “Probably not getting laid enough.”
“He didn’t win last weekend either,” said Mason. “Vicious cycle.”
Testosterone had to go somewhere.
He got in the first punch. And maybe his brothers weren’t trying all that hard to put him down or maybe all the prep he’d put into getting fit to ride this season and all his workouts in gyms and boxing rings along the way had made a difference, but he also got in the last punch several grueling minutes later.
He’d pulled his punches, more or less. They all had.
More or less.
“I covered every bull I rode last weekend,” he ground out between gasps, and, okay, maybe he was groaning on the inside and only just standing up but they were listening to him now instead of mouthing off. “I brought home seven thousand dollars and change in prize money, and now I get to listen to you two mock me for it while I put my head down and do whatever shit job you want me to do for the next two weeks of my break.”
He caught Mason’s gaze and kept right on glaring. Screw them both; he deserved to be heard. “What gives either of you the right to act as if you own the place when you don’t? What gives you the right to give me grief, and Jett grief, for making our own way? I’d like to see you win Olympic gold or handle all the press interviews and charity appearances the way Jett does. I’d like to see you work all year toward earning a place at the pro bull-riding championships in Vegas and then turn your back on it because your family decided they couldn’t, or wouldn’t, change funeral plans to suit you.”
Could be he had some latent anger about that that he needed to get a handle on. “Instead you sit here in paradise arguing over who’s gonna run this place while the woman who raised you sits in the kitchen worrying herself to tears because you’re not getting on. I’m fucking ashamed of you both!”
And now he sounded like their authoritarian father. Dear God, the madness was catching.
“Figure your shit out,” he grated and headed back toward the house, but not before stopping to turn on a faucet and run his hands beneath cold water for a while. Keep the swelling down, get the blood off his knuckles. He needed his hands in order to ride and he needed to ride in order to get out of here. He loved this valley and everyone in it, but some days it strangled him. The expectations here that were set in stone. The roles each of them were destined to play.
The way so many people relied on him to keep the peace, create the peace, damn well enforce the peace when he had to—only somehow, in some twisted way, that peacekeeper role came at the expense of people thinking him the weak one. The one who could be pulled this way and that; the one who’d listen when others had had enough. The one who’d bend and never break.
He wasn’t weak. He never had been.
But every man had a breaking point.
His mother was at the wood-fired stove when he came in, pouring coffee into a blue mug with a chipped handle. Her hair was steely gray and she’d lost weight since he’d last been home. She was still adjusting to life as a widow, still adjusting to being the head of a corporation that had a seven-figure turnover. She’d been a Southern belle once, before James Casey had swept her off her feet and brought her with him to this valley. She’d borne five sons and put down roots and made this place her home, but sometimes of late he wondered how long she’d stay now that she was alone. She had sisters down South. Her mother was still alive.
“The tour heads south after the Easter break,” he began, and doggedly began to set out a different way forward to the road she’d been traveling. “I was thinking we might travel together and I could drop you off in Louisiana and you could go visiting. Pick you up again on the way back. Get a place down there, even, for a month or two. Use it as a base.” It wouldn’t be much but he’d make sure it wasn’t a hovel either. “Just a thought.”
“Want one?” she said, gesturing to the coffee, and her soft Southern twang, even after all her years living in Montana, still soothed his soul.
“Please.” Guess that was a no on her heading south for the season.
“How’d it go last weekend?” she asked. “I couldn’t watch. I just couldn’t. That sport …”
She hated it. She’d always hated it, even more than she hated Jett’s speed-demon ski racing and the extreme heli-ski tours Jett took tourists on. They were similar types, her two youngest boys. He and Jett had always enjoyed pitting themselves against something bigger and stronger, be it beasts, the elements or older brothers. “I came fourth. Didn’t get hurt. It’s early days and I’m not pushing too hard. Just looking to get from one event to the next with enough points in my pocket and no damage done.” It was a long game, bull riding. To get to the end of the tour and still be in top physical and mental condition required more try, luck and dogged determination than a lot of cowboys had.
“That’s good.” She took a sip of her coffee, but maybe it was too hot because she turned and added some water from the faucet to it. “Did you talk to your brothers about getting on with each other?”
“Yeah, Mama.” His moment of receiving maternal attention was over. “I did it just then.”
“How’d it go?”
“Real good.” They were probably together somewhere, over beer, dreaming up ways to try and destroy him. “I left them with a common cause.”
Best not to dwell on his most recent methods for peace creation.
Overall.
*
Rowan Harper had it all. Enough prime Wyoming grazing land to expand the business twice over. Thirty years’ worth of superior bucking bull genetics in the bulls on the ground and all the cowboys required to run the place. She didn’t need to be out there with them working every day. Her father had never asked that of her, she’d simply tagged along as a kid, determined to make herself useful. He’d taught her as he went, almost as an afterthought.
And now she was all grown up, full of knowledge and opinions about bull breeding that occasionally got heard, and not another woman in sight to teach her the other things—like how to put on makeup or flirt with dark-haired bull riders with green eyes and wicked smiles that promised good times and more good times.
It was nine thirty in the evening and her father was asleep and Rowan was in her room, with her dress on and her boots on and nowhere to go, and a tube of mascara in her hand. One eye looked good and the other eye looked like she’d been in a fight and who was she kidding? She needed makeup lessons from girl-friends she didn’t have—the Internet directions simply weren’t cutting it.
She had an ache in her heart and an ache in her loins and the temptation to do something about it was strong. She’d had Casey’s number since he’d taken off last year, and how she’d come across that had less to do with asking and more to do with outright theft of tour information, but the phone was in her hand and she dialed the number before she could change her mind.
He answered on the third ring and she should have hung up. Instead she said hello and gave him her name and the silence after that was deafening.
She was phoning for no reason. Didn’t have a thought in her head, and who could make conversation out of that? “What are you doing?” she asked instead.
“Looking at my hands,” he answered.
“I’ve done that. Although possibly not for the same reason.”
“They’re all busted up.”
“Oh. Same reason, then,” she said, and relaxed a fraction when he chuffed a quick laugh. “I’m wearing my dress,” she said next. “And my boots. I figured you should know.”
“Where are you?”
“In my room. It’s a practice run.”
Silence again, then: “So how’s it going?”
“The mascara needs work. I haven’t tried the lipstick yet. I’m not sure red’s my color. Not without practice, at any rate.”
“I hope you’re not expecting my help there.”
“No, but I’d like praise for trying. Can you do that?”
“Always.” He sounded so warm and sure and she settled back against the pillows on her bed, boots and all, and crossed one knee over the other the better to observe them. It wasn’t as if they were dirty. They were straight out of the box.
“Which boots?” he asked.
“The red ones. The brown ones make me taller and I love the round toe but the red ones are bold and make me feel reckless.”
“And how does the dress make you feel?”
“Lost,” she confessed. “I love it, don’t get me wrong. I want to wear it out. But there’s a confidence issue.”
“What if you were somewhere no one knew you? Would that make it easier?”
She thought about it. “Would I be alone?”
“Probably not for long,” he said dryly. “But for the sake of fantasy, pretend that someone you know is with you. Someone you like and are comfortable with. A friend.”
She didn’t have any of those.
“What about Gisele? The ones with identities of their own who bring something other than admiration for bull riders to the mix.”
“Okay, I’m making up an imaginary friend,” she said. “She comes from Brazil, her family grows oranges and she’s a well-known portrait painter. She talks to me about artwork I’ve only seen in books but I like her anyway because she never makes me feel stupid. I wish she existed.”
“So you’re at a gallery opening of a friend of hers, in Brazil,” he said. “And you’re wearing your dress and those red boots and everyone there wants to know who you are because you’re unique and they’ve never seen the like and they’re interested. When you say you raise bucking bulls for a living and take photos on the side they’re doubly interested. You could have any one of a dozen men. What do you do?”
“I look for you.” The words were on the tip of her tongue, and she let them fall.
Silence. “I’m not there,” he said at last, and it seemed as if the words were reluctantly said. “What do you do?”
“You bought the dress. Why aren’t you there?”
“I gave you the tools. You did the rest. Figured out what you wanted and how to make room for it in your life and went for it.”
She was still looking for him. “Oh,” she said. “How did you bust your hands?”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he offered gruffly. “Nothing to be proud of, though.”
“Tell me about college,” she said next. “How was it?”
“Easy in some ways, hard in others. I was used to sharing space but I didn’t fit. I was more used to doing, rather than thinking. Climbed the walls on occasion. Got into bull riding when I blew off an assignment to go to a rodeo. A guy I’d gone to school with was there. He loaned me his gear and I signed up to ride. I went back to college more relaxed than I’d ever felt, and with enough cash to see me through for a month. I wasn’t born to it, I wasn’t bred to it, but hell I needed it. And it wasn’t just for the money.”
“It’s the challenge. There’s nothing like it. The focus. The danger. The adrenaline dump running through you at the end.”
“How long since you last rode?” he asked, and now it was her time to be quiet.
“I—a while. I got hung up here at home a year or so back. Cracked ribs, a punctured lung, ruptured my spleen and ended up in hospital awhile. My father fired three men over it, including our foreman who’d been with us for fifteen years. I haven’t ridden since.”
The boots suddenly looked garish and she uncrossed her knees and drew her legs down the better not to see them. Confidences like that should never be spoken, and if they were they should be glossed over as soon as possible.
“Which bull was it?”
“One of our younger ones. I thought he was going to be good, you know? He could buck, and he was one of mine, the bloodlines I’ve been using, but he never made it on tour. He was a little too interested in killing people. My father had always thought so, but I couldn’t see it. Didn’t want to see it. Turns out my father was right all along. Lesson learned.”
“And you were the wreck. It turns my stomach.”
“Because I’m a woman?”
“Because bull riding’s a coliseum sport. Death is always in the wind. Doesn’t matter who goes down, my stomach churns until they get back up.”
Hers too. “Anyway, I don’t ride anymore and on the whole I don’t miss it.”
“Here’s a question. Would you let your daughters ride?”
“Yes,” she said and closed her eyes. “Sheep first, then steers. I’d start them young. Train them right. Same way I was trained.”
“I don’t know if I could let them,” he said.
“That’s the thing about children—sooner or later they’ll find a way to do what they want. Letting them has nothing to do with it.”
Silence again.
“I’m a full partner here in the business,” she said. “Half of everything is mine, and it’s a lot, and I’d appreciate if you kept that to yourself. I don’t even know why I’m telling you except that I need you to know. I also need you to know that I’ll never cash out.” She couldn’t see her way clear of this life. Her family unit was too small. Unlike Casey’s family situation, there was no one else to inherit, no one to pick up the slack.
“I won’t mention it,” he said gruffly, after a long pause. “But for what it’s worth, people have already figured where you stand and what you’re worth. I know well and good that I’m never going to match you for money or possessions. Maybe you think less of me because of it.”
“I don’t. Maybe you think less of me because I don’t have much of an education.”
“Education’s about information. You probably know more about genetics, animal breeding and bull riding than I do. And photography.” She could hear the smile in his voice. “Want me to tell you what I own?”
“Yes,” she murmured, and picked up the other lipstick she’d bought last time she’d been in town. This one was a soft beige-pink. She’d liked it in the shop when she’d drawn a line of it on her inner wrist like the Internet tutorials had told her to. Now not so much. “I want to know more.”
“I have a log cabin in the mountains that I rent to hikers over summer and skiers during winter. It comes with not enough land to run a horse but it’s mine free and clear, and maybe one day I’ll sell it or maybe I won’t. And while I’m motivated to make the money I need to get the education I want, I’m not motivated to make money just so I can buy stuff. I don’t want the big spread. I don’t want to be tied down. I want to see more of the world and everything in it, not less.”
“Bull riding’s good for that. You could go to Australia and Brazil.” He fascinated her, this man.
“I’ve already been to both.”
Oh.
The wanderlust was strong in this one. He was telling her that up front.
“If I went out with you to dinner, where would it lead?” It was a question she’d been tossing around ever since he’d kissed her.
“Judging from the kiss we shared it’d probably lead straight to the nearest bed.”
“And after that?” She wasn’t saying no. She hoped he realized that. “What happens at the end of the tour? When you leave?”
“I ask you if you want to come with me, you say no, and we walk away with battered hearts and a pocketful of fine memories. That’s how I see this going, Rowan. No lie.”
“So why would you still want to do it?”
“Did I mention the memories?”
“Yes.”
“And the personal growth and exploration?”
He hadn’t mentioned that. “Sounds painfully won.”
“The fun,” he said next.
“You’re not exactly one of the fun-loving cowboys on the tour,” she reminded him. By and large he kept his alcohol consumption low and he didn’t screw around. Not that she knew of, and she would know.
“I do like to keep my fun times private,” he said. “Nothing wrong with that.”
“Do you think we could keep others from finding out about any fun times we might have?” she asked, and he was silent for a long time.
“You mean your father,” he said at last.
“I mean everyone.”
“You want to keep me a dirty little secret?” His words came a lot faster this time.
“I don’t want people to pity me once you’re gone,” she corrected.
“Why would they? Most everyone I know would be calling me the fool, not you. And they’ll be taking their cue from you. It is possible to take up with someone and let go later and still be friends.”
“You read that somewhere, did you?” She recapped the pinky-beige lipstick and tossed it in the wastepaper basket. Score. “Have you ever done it?”
“No.”
She smiled wryly. “So we’ve established that you’re not a love ’em and leave ’em fun times individual and neither am I. Beyond that, I have family expectations to consider, ones that don’t dovetail with the kind of future you want to pursue. Beyond that, I don’t want to get a reputation for screwing pretty cowboys, because that’s not going to go down well with management and they barely tolerate me as it is. You might also want to consider that if you don’t treat me right my father will skewer you, or at the very least make your life miserable. We’re doomed.”
“But the kissing was good.”
“You were high as a kite at the time.”
“The kissing was exceptional. We should do it again. Not to mention you’re phoning me out of the blue and I don’t recall giving you my number.”
“Yeah, well. The kissing was good.”