Chapter Eight
Nine days, one photography course, and many parcel deliveries later, Rowan’s first dinner guests arrived at her door, took off their hats and boots, and knocked politely. She’d started small and invited only her father and Mab to dinner. Mab who was still with them while his own father underwent chemo, and who’d somehow wrangled his way into staying in the main house rather than the bunkhouse with the other ranch hands. Rowan had gathered her courage and asked her father why Mab was staying in the house’s middle regions and received a sharp stare and a curt ‘he’s just a kid’ for her efforts.
Mab was sixteen.
At ten she’d been sleeping in one of the cab cozies in one of the Harper transport trucks while her father had slept in the other. Granted, the trucks had been parked side by side but her father had been noticeably absent on many occasions.
Not that she had anything against lanky, fresh-faced Mab who went out of his way to do things for her. Set the table, take the garbage out, even wage war on the cobwebs on the porch. Right now, Mab was rifling through her fridge for the soda she’d got in especially for him. He was also finding a white wine for her and a beer for her father—Mab the drinks waiter—while her father stood in the middle of her kitchen, his blue eyes baffled and his expression guarded.
He’d held his tongue as the homeware vans and parcels had started coming in. He’d said nothing about the pretty tops and designer sunglasses that had worked their way into her wardrobe or the pretty silk scarf that she’d bought on a whim before deciding it wasn’t for her and cutting it up and wrapping it around an old lampshade instead.
Her father studied the bread that had come out of the bread maker minutes earlier and the big red earthenware casserole pot resting on the stove top.
She served the meal on plates of duck-egg blue and, okay, maybe her kitchen was never going to grace the style pages of a glossy magazine but it was progress, and her casserole looked good on blue plates with a sprig of parsley on the top and bread on the side. Not that her father was paying any attention to the food.
He was too busy having a staring competition with the ducks on the wall.
The casserole must have been better than she thought, because her father plowed his way through it, and several slices of the bread, like a starving man. Mab went back for seconds and poured more wine and got her father another beer. Nice boy, always willing to help. Hard to dislike, even when she was looking for things to criticize.
Conversation ranged around bulls and the upcoming weekend in Omaha, and Hammerfall’s recent shoulder injury and treatment.
Tell a cowboy that the bull who tried to buck them into the sun would stand meekly still while a chiropractor worked on the bull’s shoulder with a tennis ball and they’d snort their disbelief, but it was true. Her father didn’t keep bulls they couldn’t handle, no matter how well they bucked. It wasn’t worth the hassle.
The ducks hadn’t moved but her father was still keeping an extremely close eye on them.
“More casserole?”
He looked longingly at it, even as he shook his head. “Too full. But it was good. Real good. Your grandma used to make one just like it.”
“The recipe was in an old cookbook I found in the attic.”
He nodded and shot a furtive glance toward the ducks. Still there.
“I bought them,” she said. “The ducks.”
“Why?” her father asked.
“Don’t you like them?”
“No.” Her father always had been decisive.
“I like them,” said Mab. “Mallards.”
Could be Mab had a teeny-tiny crush on her. Her lack of height and petite frame had never been a help when it came to avoiding the gaze of teenage boys.
“So, next weekend, after Deadwood, I’m staying on to spend the week with T.J. Casey,” she said.
Silence.
Could have gone better. “Any questions?”
“Does he have anything to do with the ducks on the wall?” her father asked.
“No, Dad. What is it with the ducks? They’re fun. I like them. I bought them. I like Casey too. He’s fun. I don’t plan on buying him but I do aim to spend more time with him in the future.”
“Boy doesn’t finish what he starts.”
“The man had other priorities,” she corrected. “He buried his father the weekend of the Vegas finals. He has four brothers and family politics to deal with that you know nothing about.” And maybe she shouldn’t be speaking of that in front of Mab. Not his business. None of it was. “Anyway. I’ll organize one of the hands to cover my work the week after Deadwood. Just letting you know.”
Her father stood and reached for his hat. “You don’t need my permission to take up with a man, Rowan. You haven’t needed it for years.”
“Maybe I’d like your blessing.”
“I barely know the man.”
“You could get to know him. I’m asking you to.”
Her father nodded, and then left without saying a word.
Mab stayed behind, looking torn. “I can help you clean up,” he offered. Mab, who’d been raised by his mother and who knew his way around a kitchen and had table manners to boot.
“You can if you want.” She wouldn’t say no to the help. For all that her kitchen now looked the part and she was cooking more regularly than she had been before, she hadn’t exactly developed a burning passion for kitchen chores. “How long have you been on the road with your dad now?”
“Since January and the start of the tour.”
“Your mom must miss you.”
Mab nodded. “She wasn’t real happy when my father showed up wanting to take me away for a year. Even less happy when she figured out he was dying. I think she wished he’d never shown up again at all.”
“I’d be feeling the same.” It was a lot to drop on a sixteen-year-old. “So you chose to come on tour anyway?”
“Wasn’t much of a choice. It was now or never if I wanted to get to know him,” Mab said bitterly as he reached for the plates and started stacking them. “I call home every week. Ask after what’s happening at school and how everyone is, how my basketball team’s getting on without their star shooter, see if my dog misses me.”
“You could’ve brought your dog along for the ride.”
“It’s a miniature poodle.”
“Oh.” Did he even want to be here, this kid? Or was he simply another displaced child being hauled to and fro? “So are you looking forward to learning how to ride a bucking bull while you’re here?”
“Yeah.” His lips twisted into a parody of a smile. “No.”
*
Omaha was challenging in more ways than one. Huck was sitting this one out and so was Paulo, and Casey didn’t yet have anyone to stand him in the chute. Someone would—there were always plenty willing—but the familiarity would be missing.
Rowan wasn’t here either, and she’d told him she wouldn’t be, but there was telling and there was experiencing her absence in full.
He missed standing around the pens with her discussing this bull and that. He missed shouldering up next to her as she watched cowboys ride and the slight lean of her weight into his that said welcome and I’m glad you’re here without her ever having to utter a word.
They hadn’t fooled many on the tour with their secret rendezvous or his hot, hard glances in her direction, but at least the other cowboys took care not to rib him when Rowan was around. He’d made it real clear that wasn’t on. He was making it real clear to one of the rookies that teasing him about riding worse when Rowan wasn’t around wasn’t appreciated either, when Joe Harper rocked up and shut that rookie down with one long deadeye stare.
The rookie immediately took his leave. Casey contemplated similar action, but that would be running. So he stayed and waited in silence and watched the latest group of cowboys get set up to ride, while the entertainer entertained and the music blared and a cowgirl in Daisy Dukes and cowboy boots ambled past selling bourbon shooters from a hip belt that also boasted cans of beer, bags of peanuts and empty cups. She had the sales spiel down pat and a smile that promised wholesome fun and she’d been charming the children, flirting with the men and swapping wisecracks with women about the men for near on two hours now.
She was a smart-mouthed tour regular who knew her job and could handle a crowd and she’d taken a pass at Casey earlier, but he’d shut her down gently rather than hard and she was still smiling at him. Rowan’s father had most certainly noticed but it couldn’t be helped. Those kinds of interactions were part and parcel of being here in the first place.
“Why’d you ride your last bull left-handed?” the older man asked finally, as he too cast his eyes over the action at the chutes. “You didn’t need to.”
“Practice.” True, Casey hadn’t exactly turned in a spectacular ride but he’d stuck the eight seconds and the short go was still within reach.
“It’s going to cost you. The only bull you need be riding left-handed now is that little dun terror of Rowan’s. Unless you’re not serious at all about chasing the championship buckle.”
“I’m serious.” He’d never not been serious about his ambitions, no matter what other people thought.
“They cut you a million-dollar check at the end of the year, what are you going to do with it?”
“Live off it while I go back to college and get the piece of paper that says I have a veterinary degree. Heading back to college is going to happen at the end of the tour whether they cut me that check or not.”
The only difference would be in whether he lived easy or hard doing it.
“No more bull riding?”
“This year’s my last.”
“I’ve heard that before,” said Joe.
“I’m sure you have.”
“So if you’re leaving, what do you want with my daughter?” The older man had the best poker face Casey had ever seen, and it was a good question. One that had started to come around on repeat.
“Rowan’s tied up here, with you and with bull riding.” She was, to all practical purposes, bull-riding royalty, even if she didn’t see it that way. “I know she’s not going to follow me out of the sport, if that’s what you mean.”
“It wasn’t.” Joe Harper had a piercing stare. “You could come her way.”
Trap.
Say yes and Casey could be accused of gold digging. Say no and he’d be accused of putting his needs and desires before hers.
“I’m ready to finish riding at the end of the season and that’s the truth. Riders come and go and so they should. You and all the others like you pick and choose who gets to stay on tour in a different capacity, and we all know I’m not anyone’s pick.” Never mind Rowan’s thoughts on him offering his services as a vet on the tour. That was years away, if at all.
“You could work for me.”
Not what he’d been expecting. “Sir, with all due respect because you’re the best stock contractor in the business … I don’t want to work for you. To be clear, I wouldn’t want to work for Rowan either. I don’t want to be part of your business or hers. That’s not my area of interest. Rowan knows this already. Now you know it too.”
Whatever Joe Harper had to say next was interrupted by the next ride. It was one of Harper’s bigger bulls, Hard Landing, out of the chute and he tossed that cowboy within the first two bucks with a sweet midair roll.
“Beats me why some cowboys ride at all, when nine times out of ten they can’t finish what they start,” said Joe Harper, his gaze following not the cowboy but the bull as the animal trotted defiantly from the arena. And then the older man turned back to him. “You started something with my daughter, and that’s your choice and hers. I hope you have a plan for finishing it without hurting her. I can’t see one from where I’m standing, but maybe you’re smarter than you look. And like I said: enough with the left-handed showboating. It’s not doing you any favors.”
The older man walked off. Casey wrapped his hand around the back of his neck, caught the smirk of the nearby cowgirl with the drinks and the hat and figured news of his little chat with Rowan’s father would have done the rounds by nightfall.
Casey rode his next bull right-handed, and nailed the ride to pull the best score of the day. He went into the short go in third place, stuck that ride too, and came second overall—losing only to one of the Brazilian competitors who’d ridden solid all the way through.
It didn’t escape his notice that Joe Harper had been right about not riding that first bull left-handed. It had cost him the win.
As for this thing with Rowan and how no good was likely to come of it?
Chances were Joe Harper was right about that too.