Chapter Five
Phoenix, Clovis, Reno, Salt Lake City. Runner-up here, third place there, always in the top four or five and it wouldn’t be long before a buckle went his way, Casey could feel it. Sometimes Ro was there with Harper bulls and sometimes not. He wanted to ride Over Easy for the full eight seconds and collect on that bet that sat there between them, but he hadn’t had that chance yet. All he could do was rack up points and collect his money and keep going. He hadn’t been home in over a month—no point when he was so far away.
Arizona, Nevada, Utah, and the air tasted different here. Dustier, hungrier, and so was he. Less forgiving when the rookie who’d replaced Troy—an Australian rider—went and got hung up. Vicious in his appraisal of what had gone wrong and what could go still wrong if the rookie didn’t work on getting bad riding habits gone.
He rang his mother every Monday. Called his older brothers as little as possible. Jett had won again in Switzerland and was well on his way to winning another world championship. He called Jett on a far more regular basis, and some of it was pride in his brother’s accomplishments and some of it was reciprocal support for how Jett had stood up for him and argued hard and loud for Casey to ride last year in Vegas and for their father’s funeral to be postponed for a week.
Jett had damn near come to blows with Mason over it, before finally backing down. Only backing down when Tomas had caught him by the arm and shouldered him backwards. There was no point arguing. It was three against two.
Their mother had been crying.
This being Casey’s last tour, he took extra pleasure in the little things. The cheap motels and the fancy ones, the breakfast diner with the best sausages and eggs he’d ever tasted. He savored them because he didn’t know if he’d ever travel this way again, and it was bittersweet, because a part of him loved this carney lifestyle. The people he caught up with every weekend or every other weekend were family, of sorts, and he’d miss them.
And there was Rowan, when he got to Cheyenne, and she was wearing the red boots and that sweet little pale gold top with her jeans, and she was drawing looks from all around because it wasn’t her usual attire but it suited her and she was confident about it, and she was so, so beautiful.
She had no idea.
He rode like the devil that weekend, and when the preliminary scores were in he was first in line to pick a bull for the short go and Over Easy was it for him. He had a score to settle and a bet to win.
“I need your advice,” he said when she came up to him in the hours before he rode again. “Tell me how to ride that bull of yours again.”
“Ride left handed. You’re the only one who’s ever come close to riding him. The average time for a cowboy on his back is two point six seconds, that’s if you don’t include your ride. He’s not interested in you once you’re on the ground—I promise you that. He’ll change direction on you, he did it last time at the six second mark and that’s when he threw you. You were too far back in the pocket. Stay forward, stay tight. Forget the showy moves. Ride him for the duration and you’ll get your points regardless. That’s my advice.”
“And dinner afterwards?” Casey said, within full hearing of half a dozen riders.
“You pick the place I’ll pick the wine.”
And if that wasn’t incentive he didn’t know what was.
Both Paulo and Huck were there to help him get set. Paulo had missed the final round. Huck was riding in it but was at the bottom of the pack rather than the top of it.
“This one’s yours,” Paulo said as Casey got set.
“That so?”
“I’m praying for you, my friend,” Paulo said next. “I want to say I was here when you rode this malparido.”
They got him set and Over Easy stood there like a lamb throughout. Paulo took his hand from Casey’s vest to indicate that Rowan had tied the flank strap but Casey could already feel it in the movement of the bull beneath him. Casey gave the nod.
And Over Easy exploded out of the gate.
Time slowed between one second and the next. It felt like forever and he barely drew breath but his center line never failed no matter what that son of the devil threw at him. He kept in tight, just behind the bull’s shoulders, raked when he needed to, and when that bull changed direction he was ready for it.
When the horn sounded he was ready for that too. Loosening his rope and looking for the easy exit, and Over Easy gave him one. Plenty of air on this dismount too, but he landed on his feet. This round was his.
He swaggered from the arena—there was no other word for it—up to an empty chute and over it, last ride of the night and the best, and Rowan was there, sitting a rail, witness to it all, and he smiled slow and sure. She shook her head and smiled right back, and then Paulo was thumping him on the back and near breaking a rib. Several other cowboys were congratulating him, and he thanked them, but his attention barely wavered. Cheyenne was his. The buckle was his.
And Rowan … well. He was at her service.
“Please tell me you booked a room at the hotel,” he said, once the presentation was over and the press had been and gone.
“Room 1101,” she said. “I’ve no idea where we’re going but I’ll be ready an hour from now.”
Rowan’s father waylaid him on the way out of the arena. Casey expected no less, but he wasn’t in the best frame of mind to address the other man. Too much adrenaline from the ride still in his system. Too much want and not enough patience.
“You hurt her, I’ll hurt you,” the older man said, and meant every word of it.
“I understand.” And then he’d stepped up close and let his own thoughts be known. “You give her no choice. This life is all she knows. Me or someone else, it’s going to be a bull rider who claims her because you don’t let her know any other life. That’s on you, not me.”
Old man Harper let him go without another word. But Casey felt the hate between his shoulder blades, all the way to his truck, and it gave him pause.
He could pull back on her now, minimize the damage done, see her to the door of her room at the end of the night and make her father and all who protected her happy.
And then he thought of Rowan at breakfast, bolting her food before belatedly realizing her manners and flushing. Rowan wearing gloves now when she worked. Rowan in her room, trying on the boots and the dress she’d bought, and the courage it had taken take to go against all she’d ever known and explore that side of herself. To admit that she was struggling.
Growing pains, of a sort.
He had no idea what she wanted the end result to be but damn he wanted to help ease her way, and if that meant putting up with her father’s glares and tour management disapproval so be it.
Dinner it was and more if she wanted it.
Nothing he couldn’t handle.
He told himself that all through his shower and afterward, when he swapped his jeans for fine dress trousers and a soft cotton dinner shirt that was white with a gray stripe. The buckle he’d just won stayed on the hotel bench and he opted instead for a black belt and plain silver dress buckle. This wasn’t about winning the event and claiming the girl. It wasn’t about the bet or finally riding Harper’s rank bull. It was about Rowan and that intangible something that drew him ever closer.
He felt unaccountably nervous as he knocked on the door to her hotel room. As the door opened every thought in his head fled.
She’d worn the dress and the brown boots and her hair fell in soft waves to frame her face and rest lightly on her shoulders. She wore makeup too, first he’d ever seen on her and it was light and barely there as far as he could tell, but the things it did to her eyes and lips almost felled him. Eyes big and brown, lips pink and moist, and he had no idea how he was going to get her out through the hotel foyer without stopping the rodeo world dead.
“I made reservations for a steakhouse not too far from here.” Heaven help him he was practically stuttering. “They say it’s a good one.”
“Sure. Let me get my purse.”
She wouldn’t need it. Way his luck had run this weekend and what with a thirty thousand dollar check in his pocket, he was buying and wouldn’t hear otherwise. But it wasn’t wise to go out without a wallet, or a purse—a way to get home or get help if something turned sour. Independence was important and he’d never deny Rowan hers.
“Do you have a coat?” he asked, and watched her eyes cloud over with dismay. Maybe she didn’t have a coat to match the dress. Maybe that was a different shopping trip and one she hadn’t conquered yet. “Not that you’ll need a coat. It’s a warm night and you’re welcome to borrow my jacket if it turns cold later.” Coat or no coat, she was going to turn heads. “You’re beautiful.”
“Not too much?”
“No. ’S perfect. All of it.” Her. “You ready?”
Before she changed her mind and decided he wasn’t nearly perfect enough.
The hotel foyer experience was fully as bad as he expected it to be. Cowboys Rowan had known for years stopped in their tracks to stare. From the minute the elevator doors opened, all the way past the open bar area, Casey made sure his eyes telegraphed a silent message. Make Rowan feel uncomfortable in her pretty, floaty dress that suited her to perfection and he’d make sure that discomfort was widely felt. Catcall, whoop or make a fuss and he’d eviscerate them.
“I, ah, should probably say something to my father,” she muttered. “We won today too, and I haven’t congratulated him yet.”
Of course her father was sitting at the bar along with several others—every last one of them tour officials. Bull fighters Frank and Ben—Casey had the utmost respect for them. Jesse Keener, one of the announcers. Jesse who generally followed the show script to perfection, but when he strayed he did it in service to being wickedly funny. Alicia Flores, who headed up PR for the tour. Alicia’s eyes widened and her gaze swept from Rowan to him and he thought he saw her shake her head in warning. No, keep going.
And then Alicia pinned on a welcoming smile as she got to her feet and took both of Rowan’s hands in hers. Then came the scrape of chairs as everyone in the party stood and shuffled and gave greeting. Casey’s handshake with Joe Harper was brief.
“It was a good ride,” Joe said, and then turned his attention on his daughter.
“Oh, but let me look at you.” Alicia wasn’t letting go of her claim on Rowan anytime soon, and maybe that was a good thing. “I do believe every cowboy here is in shock at the sight of you in a dress. Shows what they know. You’re absolutely exquisite. And your skin … I understand now why you cover up when you work.” The older woman’s gaze slid toward him. “You’re looking very fine too, Casey. Winning looks good on you.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Where are you off to?” Alicia kept the conversation easy as others looked on.
“Steakhouse,” he said.
“Casey and I had a bet from the beginning of the season,” said Rowan, with a quick glance in her father’s direction. “Dinner if he rode Over Easy. He’s collecting.”
“That so?” Rowan’s father didn’t sound impressed. “Who’s paying?”
“I am. Sir.” The Sir being just the right side of insolent. Or maybe not, if Frank’s gleeful grin was any indication.
“Not that it matters,” Alicia said smoothly. “I’m sure either one of you will be able to cover expenses, what with this weekend’s good fortune. Casey, did you know Harper Bucking Bulls won the bull team challenge this weekend?”
He knew. He’d picked up close to thirty thousand for his win this weekend. Harper Bucking Bulls had pocketed a hundred thousand dollar check. “Celebrations all around.”
“Rowan, we need to get together soon,” Alicia said. “I’m after some more promo photos and beyond that I have an idea I want to run past you. Will you be around tomorrow morning?”
Rowan nodded.
“Good. Let’s say ten tomorrow morning. I need my beauty sleep.”
“What steakhouse?” Joe asked and Rowan sent her father a warning glance.
“Dad, I love you, I do. But if you turn up to the steakhouse we’re eating at, with a party in tow, and crash my date—” her father winced at the word “—you and I are both going to regret it.”
“Rowan, you don’t know what you’re doing,” her father said gruffly.
“With all due respect, Dad, yes, I do. I’m heading out to dinner with a man whose company I enjoy. I’m wearing a dress, because that’s what I want to wear tonight. This doesn’t have to be a big deal unless you make it one.”
Harper gaze clashed with Harper gaze. Blue eyes stony and brown eyes imploring.
“Dad, I’m twenty-four now, almost twenty-five,” Rowan pleaded quietly. “C’mon.”
In the end it was Joe Harper who nodded, but not before sending a vicious silent warning Casey’s way. Casey, in turn, let it roll straight over him. There was a lot going on here and not all of it was his fight. Rowan was asserting her right to conduct herself as she saw fit and if she had to go against her father’s wishes in order to so, so be it.
Funny thing about independence—only the person seeking it could truly claim it for themselves.
“Go. Be young. Enjoy.” Alicia broke the silence. “I suspect we’re settling in here for the evening. You know you’re always welcome to join us later, after your meal. Or not. Perhaps you’ll go dancing.”
Information wrapped in smiles. Loose plans and a clear warning not to come this way again tonight if he wanted to keep Rowan to himself. He nodded. Waited to see if Rowan was done, and then she turned abruptly, head down as she was wont to do, and bumped straight into Casey’s chest.
It was only right that he put his hand to her waist to steady her.
“Damn, shit, sorry. I got lipstick on your shirt,” she said, from somewhere around his pecs and then her fingers came up and she started rubbing and Casey stifled a sigh because this? In front of her father?
Wasn’t helping her cause.
“It’s okay.” He caught her hand, and she looked up at him with apology in her eyes and he was toast. “It’s nothing.” His gaze flickered to her lips.
“Did I mess it up?” she whispered. “The lipstick. Do I need a mirror?”
Her confidence was wafer-thin. “No. You’re good.”
She nodded and stepped away from his hand, sending one last glance at the lipstick swipe on his shirt before ducking her head and automatically moving to put her hands in her pockets only to realize she didn’t have pockets. Instead, she clutched the straps on her shoulder purse as hot color stained her cheeks.
Rowan’s unease. Her father’s glowering disapproval. Hidden smirks and not so hidden ones.
He’d had difficult dates in his time but none so difficult as this. “Ready to go?”
“Yes. Beyond yes.”
Good enough for him.
He kept his hands off her as they headed through the bar, the foyer and out the hotel entrance. The valet had brought his truck around. He’d had it washed and polished and it glowed cherry red. Not exactly inconspicuous. Another reason for her father to think him a fool for driving such a gas-guzzling old-timer, but he liked it. It had been a gift and every last one of his brothers had worked on it with him over the years.
Fight with them, humor them, call them on their inconsistencies. Love them, make mistakes, and love them again. That’s what families did.
He helped Rowan into the cab and shut the door behind her. The valet flipped him the keys and he gave the man a fifty.
Rowan was silent as he turned the key and set the engine to rumbling. He pulled away smoothly, knowing full well eyes were still watching from inside the hotel.
“That went … well,” said Rowan after a good five minutes of silence, and Casey snorted.
“Well enough.” No punches had been thrown.
“I didn’t think me wearing a dress and going on a date was going to cause quite so much fuss.”
“Didn’t you?” Surely she’d had some idea of how such a transformation would be received. He shot her a quick glance and fell into thrall all over again at her delicate silhouette backlit by neon city lights from the cityscape beyond.
“I thought he was getting used to it, seeing me talking to you and hanging around with Paulo and Huck. Working as flank man some of the time. Becoming more a part of the tour in my own right and less of a … shadow,” she finished quietly. “Guess not.”
“Give it time.”
“Yeah.” She put her hands in her lap and played with a pretty ring on her middle finger. The stones were bright and big and probably cost more than his truck. “Did you ever have to fight for your identity?”
“Maybe as a kid I did. I was one of five, one of Casey’s boys, but that didn’t last long. We’re all different. I was doing my own thing and going my own way when I was really young. Never wanted to follow in anyone’s footsteps. Never wanted to be like my father, or my brothers, or anyone, really. I don’t know how else to explain it. My upbringing wasn’t like yours. I was left to be independent. Encouraged to make my own way. It’s always easier to go where you’re led.”
“Tell me about your family,” she said.
“All of them?” They’d be there all night.
“Maybe not all of them. The youngest one: Jett. I looked him up, saw some of his promo shots. Thighs like tree trunks.”
Casey grinned. “He keeps threatening to teach me everything he knows about sponsorship and self promotion, which, admittedly, he knows a lot. The difference being Jett likes the limelight.”
“He’s not as pretty as you, though.”
“Pretty? Seriously? You don’t want to use the word handsome instead?”
“For you? C’mon. You’re as pretty as cowboys come.”
“I’m ruggedly handsome.”
She smiled, warm and wide, and took his breath away all over again. “You keep telling yourself that, buckle boy. Prettiest face I’ve ever seen.”
“The mirror’s right there. And if you look in it I can fix that notion for you straight away.”
“Me? I’m not pretty.”
“What are you then?” Identity began with analysis of form, surely.
“Boyish. Thin. Plain.”
“Mirror,” he countered. “You really need to look in it.”
“Lacking in confidence,” she continued.
“Your father’s one of the best stock handlers I’ve ever seen,” he told her. “There’s not one man on the tour who doesn’t respect him for it. You’re just as good.”
“Mab gets more praise in one weekend than I’ve ever received,” she replied. “I’m a woman doing what’s traditionally a man’s job in a man’s world and as long as I shut up about it and keep my head down and don’t draw attention to myself they’ll let me keep doing it. The only reason I get more play in the back pens and in the chutes this year is because Jock Morgan’s got cancer and Mab’s not experienced enough yet to take his place. I take care of our bulls and my father takes care of Morgan’s stock under the guise of teaching Mab a thing or two. Mab barely even knows his father. Jock skipped out on his wife and son fifteen years ago. Met up with them last year again and came away with a son who thinks the sun shines out of his ass.”
*
“Ro.” Casey’s voice came at her quietly and wrapped around her soft and warm. “Are you jealous of the ride Mab’s getting?”
“No.” The hell she wasn’t. “A bit. I like Mab, don’t get me wrong. He works hard and he wants to learn.”
“But?”
“He’s male. I’m not.”
Mab was coming home with them in the break because her father had promised to put the kid on some practice bucking steers, and she wasn’t about to stick around and watch while her hand itched for rope she could no longer grasp. Some date she was turning out to be. Rowan cursed her insecurities and vowed to bury them instead. “Sorry,” she muttered. “Let’s change the subject.”
“Did I ever tell you about the time I went camping up in the mountains with a bunch of wildlife conservationist Aussies and they thought I was a bear?”
Rowan blinked, and then smiled. Tomas James Casey, changer of subjects. “No, you haven’t. Spill.”
“There we were, five of us, with the Aussies sleeping off their jet lag and me up early and putting breakfast together and one of them woke and decided I was a bear, prowling around the camp. They then proceeded to have a ten-minute conversation about which one of them was going to come out and piss on me because one of them had read somewhere that urinating around the tent would warn bears away.”
“Not if the bear was right there. Plus, that’s more of a myth than a certainty.”
“Indeed.”
“Did they have guns?”
“No guns.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Me? I kept throwing sticks at their tent for the next ten minutes, and occasionally grunting.” He smiled angelically. “Like a bear. And then the girl who was with them unzipped the tent flap, stuck her head out and said, ‘Casey, you bloody bastard, if you don’t have breakfast ready by the time I get up you’d better believe not one of you is going to be pissing straight for a week.’”
“I like where this story’s going,” she murmured.
“I fell madly in love with her of course, but at eighteen she was too old and far too wise for me at my tender age of fourteen. To this day they call me Big Bear. It’s a sign of affection for an Aussie to give you a nickname. Possibly. Troy says it is.”
“Troy? You mean the Wonder From Down Under? Breaker of hearts, defiler of innocence? The one with the well-developed death wish?”
“That’s the one.”
“And you believed him?”
“Troy’s all right.”
“I know. It’s just … not many other people know that.”
“He keeps it well hidden.” Casey had the most devious smile on the planet. “But he does illustrate my point.”
“You have a point? Do you want me to call you Big Bear?”
“My point is: it doesn’t matter what other people think you are. That’s their problem. Don’t let their expectations contain you. Be you. And if you’re just figuring out who you want to be, and it seems to me you might be, well, don’t forget to have fun doing it. Try things on for size. See if they fit.”
“You mean try you on for size.”
“That is definitely an option, yes. I’m pretty, you said so yourself. I’m also buying tonight, not that you care. I’m in a good mood because I finally nailed that ride and the reward is you in that dress and that pleases me.”
She stared at him loftily. “I am no man’s reward.”
“See? That’s your identity speaking.”
“Casey, I swear, if you don’t stop tutoring me I’m going to make that girl from the tent seem like sweetness and light. You’re buying.” She had no problem with him buying or driving, but heaven help him if he kept on trying to analyze her or help her realize her potential. “There’s going to be champagne and you’re going to drink it with me. There may well be dancing. I may even try on some seduction skills for size. Do you have a problem with that?”
“No, ma’am.”
If lazy enthusiasm was a thing, it was there in his smile and the appreciation in his eyes. It was the same appreciation he had when they were sitting a rail together during an event, or when he was standing back, watching her do her job.
It wasn’t dress dependent and that was good to know.
The steakhouse was an upmarket one with white linen napkins and candles on the tables. The service was good, the menu extensive, and Rowan laughed when he ordered almost exactly what he’d talked about when he’d been concussed all those months ago. She ordered the BBQ smoked ribs and an extra napkin for her dress and resigned herself to getting sticky. Ribs were her favorite, and the meal—the waiter had warned her—was huge. Casey would probably clear his plate before she did and that would be good.
She hadn’t forgotten wolfing down her breakfast in his presence.
She was a work in progress, and Casey had a way of accepting that. It gave her room to simply be.
“I’ve been talking to Alicia about some old photos I took years ago when I was messing around with a new camera,” she said as their drinks and nibbles were served. “They’re bull-rider based—sometimes it’s just the arena during setup or takedown. Some of the pictures are black and white but there’s years of them. Occasionally Alicia asks to use some of them for AEBR posters and postcards and the like.”
“Makes sense.” Casey’s eyes gleamed in the low light, intent on her, listening to her, and boy, that was a hit and a half for her confidence and her libido.
“Want to have a look?”
He did, so she pulled her phone from the silly little handbag she’d bought to go with the dress and found the folder with the pictures. “They’re a little bit bittersweet, some of them, but I think that’s why she likes them. Not the glitz and the glory but everything that’s going on underneath.” The sorrow and the pain, those were the subjects she’d sought out back then and still gravitated toward. “Maybe I should group them by season and place. Santa Fe to Salt Lake City and three between, that kind of arrangement, add a few location shots to the mix and present them to her as a Year in the Life. A seasonal thing with highs and lows and changing colors and backgrounds. I always take arena pics when we first arrive. Year after year, I have so many photographs.”
She handed him the phone and he pushed through half a dozen photographs, and maybe some of the faces belonged to people he knew but most didn’t. She hadn’t chosen action shots of bulls and riders. She’d chosen quieter moments altogether, for the most part. A cowboy trailing his rope behind him as he limped from the arena. A hand going into a banged-up glove not a foot away from where a penned bull stood waiting. A rookie with hope not yet beaten from his body. An old-timer carrying too many miles and a body bowed with injury.
Rowan sat in her chair and tried not to fidget as Casey scrolled through the photos she’d chosen so carefully. It wasn’t just the lives of the cowboys she was putting on show, this was her life too, long years of it, and if the smiling moments were altogether rare, well, maybe that was a reflection of her own feelings on the matter. There was an element of weariness to these photos—tucked in there right beside the beauty.
She wanted him to like them.
“There’s none of you,” he said finally.
“I was the one taking the shots.”
“I know that.” He nodded along. “And you’re there in every shot. It’s your story.”
“I don’t want to be the story.”
He looked some more, went back and forward between pictures. “If it were me I’d want all those shots, not as postcards but together in a book, arranged like you said. Places and seasons. Feelings. The rhythm of the years. And I’d want your story there too. I’d want to know what you were doing there too.”
“I’d rather keep me out of it.” Surely he of all people would understand her need for privacy? “You chose not to expose your family to the AEBR PR machine when your father died. You protected them and it doesn’t seem like you regret it.”
“I regret it a bit. Not riding in Vegas last year—that’s a cut that hasn’t healed fast.” He made a face, a grimace. “Just ask my brothers.”
“I don’t have a Vegas to reach for. I have …”
“An identity to protect?” he asked quietly.
“Yeah.”
“Your call.” He handed the phone back. “They’re good. There’s a story there, more than one. Don’t sell them short. Any of them.”
He changed the subject to the little black bull-riding statistic books after that, and gave her something else to talk about, even if he did tease her about being a closet mathematician. There was food and champagne and laughter and always lazy, lazy appreciation in his eyes when he looked at her.
He made her feel good about messy ribs and bull stats for dinner. The bloodlines she was chasing. The battle between size, strength and agility and that all-important quality that both bull and rider needed to succeed. The try in them.
After the meal there were suggestions that had to do with dancing and more dessert but that wasn’t quite what she wanted. Neither of them had suggested returning to the hotel at this stage. Casey was probably picturing her father waiting for them in the bar, because Lord knows she was.
And then they were spilling out into the parking lot and Casey was opening the passenger-side door of his cherry red ride and lifting her up into the seat and pulling her close rather than stepping away, close enough for her thighs to rest either side of his hips.
“Smooth,” she whispered against his ear and he huffed a laugh and drew her closer.
“I try,” he murmured, right before catching her lips with his. He started off tender and coaxing, plenty of room for push-back or pause.
Gentlemanlike, and all that.
She fisted her hand in his shirt and deepened the kiss. She knew what she wanted from him tonight and slow, careful courting in full view of the family circus wasn’t it. She wanted the adrenaline junkie version instead, the one where they let go out here in the darkness or holed up in some anonymous hotel room and stripped each other naked the better to learn what they were like together.
Kisses sweet and sticky like molasses. Touches hard and hungry or slow and soft. Casey’s hair beneath her fingers—and it really was as soft and unruly as it looked.
Moving right along to the good bits, which were his mouth at her neck and the hard curve of his erection nudging the place between her thighs, and damn but she loved dresses because dresses rode up and allowed access, and, oh.
There.
Right there.
The rasp of denim-covered hardness against her panties, and she would have as much of that as she could stand. And maybe a little more.
“We could go somewhere,” she gasped. “Another hotel. A different one.” Bypass all that was waiting for them back at the tour hotel and simply concentrate on one another.
Not the best suggestion she’d ever made. She could sense his objection in the sudden stiffness of his body and the way he rested his head against her shoulder, as if looking for a reason to deny her. Or maybe he already had one.
“It’s not that I don’t want to acknowledge you,” she said. “It’s just—it’ll make it harder, before we even know.”
“Tell me what you need,” he rasped and won her all over again.
“You and me and somewhere else.” It was a cry from the heart. “No circus, just us.”
He shuddered hard, and maybe he felt it as a blow and maybe he didn’t. He never did say. Just kissed her hard and fast and then drove to a hotel that had a concierge and a lot of stars and checked them in under his name, flashing a black card and a dimpled smile, and maybe he was trying to impress or maybe he was simply seeing to their needs.
Harper Bucking Bulls had pocketed a hundred thousand dollars this weekend by winning the bull team challenge. Casey had pocketed near thirty thousand. She’d pay him back when she got the chance. Wasn’t as if either of them couldn’t afford the room.
They got to the room and he opened the door and ushered her through, ever the gentleman. He tossed his car keys, wallet and the room card on the bench. The hotel room was like thousands of others, beige and brown and trying hard to be inoffensive. He was the boldest thing in it. Glittering green eyes that tracked her every move and a cocky stance that screamed come and get it.
“This what you want?” Nothing but challenge in him.
“Yes.” As she draped her shoulder bag over the back of a chair and turned to face him. Easiest answer she’d ever given. Every last bit of corded muscle, every roll of his hips and the heat of his mouth on her skin. She wanted it.
“How do you want it?” he asked next, and now there was a question that required consideration.
She walked back towards him and put her hand to his chest and then slowly snaked her hand up and around the back of his neck and drew him down for a kiss, stopping just short of taking it. “Hard and fast to start.” No point disguising her need. She wasn’t a virgin and her day job was altogether physical. She wanted to feel him. “And then all night long,” she whispered against his lips.
His clothes came off, and there were bruises to work around on his body and gasps to be had as her dress came off and he captured one of her breasts in his mouth. He was good at this, his hands sure and knowing, and she didn’t begrudge him any of his knowledge or how he’d obtained it.
He had her on her back on the bed in no time, lips and hands trailing a path down her body until he got to where he wanted to go, shoulders parting her thighs and calloused fingers tracing impossibly soft circles around her throbbing clitoris. He put his mouth to her next, a broad swipe of a lick, and paused when she shuddered hard. “Yeah?” he asked huskily, seeking her agreement for liberties already taken.
“Yeah.” Hell yes and pretty please and more.
*
He couldn’t stop.
Give him a present and he’d unwrap it and claim it as his, nothing surer. Treasure it protect it, love it for all he was worth, because someone had taken the time to give it in the first place.
He had skeletons in his closet, plenty of them, issues unsolved, and he had Rowan Harper in his arms, waiting to be loved, and he could do it. Learn what she liked; lose himself in the way she responded to this caress or the other. Make it good for her.
The way she arched into him when he dragged his lips along her ribs, one, two, three and then the next. She wasn’t skinny, she was compact, fit in his hand and he knew what he was doing thanks to a wayward youth. Pebbled nipples and an arch to her spine that was gratifying, and her hands—quick and sure. Perhaps she’d had a wayward youth too. Her hand on him, milking him, coaxing him, and he wanted more, always more with this woman.
In, and in, and there were condoms but she said no to them and he didn’t protest. Sorted, she said, and it was warm and so tight, and her mouth was on his and it was scrambling his brain. Rowan over him, under him, pinning her, sheathed in her, and it was all-encompassing and more than he’d ever expected. The heat and the slick, hot need and utter abandon. He wanted this.
Took it with a shudder and a groan.
They finished with her on top, bearing down and riding hard, and he appreciated the effort, fingers tangled in her hair and his lips never leaving hers, hips pistoning, over and over, pleasure building.
“Please,” she whispered, and “please,” again as he turned them and put his fingers to her center and never strayed from his course. She was part of him now and they would finish together. He would see to it, needed it, there was no other way for them, all gathered up and waiting.
He could get used to this.
She tightened and spilled over a moment before he did, one heartbeat, two, and then he was spilling into her, tense in his pleasure when hers was wordless rictus and release, a gasp and a sob and he didn’t know whose. Maybe his. Maybe so. Maybe he never needed another challenge in his life if he could have this, day in, day out. Rowan, naked and sated, sweat-soaked and his.
So much for taking his time with this.
He was done, gone and hers, and he figured it for a revelation he might keep to himself. Not cheating, just self-preservation, because who in their right mind whispered words of love to a woman on their first time between the sheets? Didn’t want to scare her off, no pressure, just this, and, “Oh,” she said, when she’d caught her breath and he’d moved off her a ways but not enough to let her go. “Oh, boy.”
“Not a boy, Ro.”
“Oh, I know.”
And if that was praise he’d take it.
So there was that, and there was the promise of sleep and Rowan wasn’t pulling away. They could go get cleaned up and head back now to the other hotel, best bet. It wasn’t yet midnight, but he wasn’t inclined to move and she didn’t seem to have any ambitions in that direction either. The room was paid for until morning.
“Was there a plan in place to go back to the other hotel?” he murmured, and then got waylaid by the promise of her collarbone and his lips and the soft sound she made when the two met.
“No plans,” she said, and that was good enough for him.
And then she kissed him and there was no more thinking.
*
There was a solution to a walk of shame, decided Rowan the following morning, and it involved ringing down to hotel reception to see what time the clothes boutiques on the ground floor of the hotel opened, only to discover that the hotel had a handy clothes purchase plan that involved giving them her dress size and clothing requirements in exchange for them sending up a selection of clothes that were likely to fit. It could arrive with room service breakfast and the day’s special was eggs over easy, bacon, pancakes and coffee, and if that wasn’t a sign to just do it, she didn’t know what was.
Casey was still in the shower when she said yes to it all and swapped his credit card that had secured the room over to hers. He wasn’t paying for this, not this time, and she’d never been more glad to have money at her fingertips, hard-earned and rarely spent.
Breakfast came, and the rack of clothes came, and they ate while Casey laughed at the clothes. Maybe anonymous morning-after hotel-clothes shopping should be her thing, because the jeans were good and the tops were sweet designer tees in either a plum color or silver. The plum one crossed over at the breast and she chose it first and slipped it on. Casey’s eyes darkened to moss and that was that.
She took the tag off and left it on.
It wasn’t that she wanted to keep their night a secret. She just didn’t want the whispers that came with spending the night with the guy who’d won the buckle. That wasn’t them. That wasn’t what this was. She wanted to protect this.
He understood. He said he did, at any rate, but as he pulled up where she asked him to drop her off, well short of the tour hotel so she could walk in, as if she’d been out to grab coffee or breakfast, she wasn’t sure if he did.
“I’m not ashamed of you,” she said and he said nothing, but there were storm clouds behind his eyes and a tightness to his features that suggested none of this sat well with him.
“But you’re ashamed of what we did.”
“No,” she said. “No. It’s just …”
“You don’t want to commit to a relationship.”
“It’s not that either. It’s complicated. I don’t want to put you in harm’s way.”
“Assume I can take care of myself.”
“I don’t want to put me in harm’s way,” she said next. “I don’t want to go from being Harper’s daughter to Casey’s woman. I want people to know me.”
Silence.
“So I’ll see you in Pueblo?” she said hesitantly. “We’ll catch up then?”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. “Okay, yeah. We’ll do it your way.”
Pueblo, Colorado. Next stop on the tour.