Cowboy Crazy

chapter 7



“How bad is it?” Sarah asked as soon as she and Lane were out of the doctor’s earshot.

Lane scuffed his feet and shrugged, wincing as he lifted his shoulder. “I’m okay, but I could use some help getting my gear. Somebody probably grabbed it for me, but by morning they won’t remember they have it.” He tugged at the sling. “And carrying it’s going to be a problem.”

Great. She was with the most powerful, muscular man she’d ever met and she was going to have to carry his bags.

He strode confidently toward the area past the stands where the cowboys parked their trucks and horse trailers, forcing her to trot to keep up. Vehicles were scattered haphazardly around the wide, dusty lot, some lit only from within, some running with lights beaming out into the night. The sharp, acrid scent of exhaust overlaid the earthier scents of cows and horses as a big diesel pickup rumbled past.

“Hey.” A cowboy seated on the tailgate of a parked truck gave Sarah a friendly smile. He was rolling a cigarette, something he’d evidently done many times before, since he didn’t watch his hands as they pinched and twisted. He watched her instead, his eyes flicking up, then down, scanning her from head to foot. “Who’s your friend, Carrigan?”

Lane ignored the question. “You seen my stuff? Those EMTs hustled me out of there without my gear bag.”

“I got it.” The cowboy reached back into the bed of the pickup with one hand and tossed a green canvas duffel at Lane. Instinctively, Sarah stepped in front of him and caught it. It was surprisingly heavy and she stepped back so fast she almost fell. Lane caught her, holding her tight against his chest.

“Who’s this?” the cowboy asked. “New girlfriend?”

Lane didn’t seem to be in any hurry to answer—or to let her go. She could feel his breath stirring the hair on the back of her neck, tickling her ear. She jerked away and slung the bag’s frayed canvas strap over her shoulder. “Nope.”

“Good.” The cowboy thrust the finished cigarette between his lips. It bobbed as he spoke. “You want to go get a beer, hon?”

“She’s with me,” Lane growled.

“Thought you said—”

“I said she’s with me.” Lane grabbed Sarah’s arm just above the elbow and half pushed, half pulled her away from the cowboy. She shrugged him off, but it was too late to stop heat from rocketing through her body, beginning at the place where he’d touched her and bouncing around to various body parts like a pinball racking up a high score.

What was that all about? Sure, he was sexy, but he was everything she didn’t want. A cowboy. Worse yet, a rodeo cowboy. They were adrenaline addicts, risk takers. The last kind of person she wanted to let into her life.

It was just chemicals that made him seem so—so tempting. Testosterone and estrogen, scientific and inevitable. The setting, the scent of leather and horses—it was all so dang masculine. And the touch of his hand was a turn-on for the same reason it annoyed her: he was domineering, overpowering.

It made her want to prove him wrong. Do a little domineering of her own.

Where the hell had that thought come from? She didn’t go for domination on either side of a relationship, did she? She liked men like Eric—polished and civilized.

“You cowboys have a little problem with testosterone, don’t you?”

“Some of us do. I don’t.”

“Oh, really.”

“Really.” He looked down at her, then back at the cowboy who was leaning against his pickup clearly enjoying the rear view of Sarah walking away. “You want me to go back there and knock him out?”

She rolled her eyes. “Oh, right. No testosterone problem here.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you’re being irrational.”

“What do you mean? He was rude to you.”

“Why would that bother you? You’ve been nothing but rude to me since we met.”

“Not that kind of rude.” He looked almost contrite, staring down at the gravel-strewn dirt lot as they walked. “Well, not really. Besides, I have reason to be rude to you.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You came in here from God-knows-where, cozied up to my brother, and messed up my family. Messed up my life.”

“I’m not cozying up to anybody. And I’m not the one messing up your life. You’re the one who trashed your own company on TV.” She slipped her hands in her pockets. “And don’t try to tell me your family is your life.”

“Isn’t yours?”

She winced. Only my sister. She’s all I have left.

“Family’s always part of your life, whether you want them to be or not.” She shoved her hands deeper in her pockets. “But if a messed up family means your life is messed up, I’m a train wreck like you’ve never seen.”

“What’s wrong with your family?” He actually looked concerned, and she had to squelch an impulse to tell him—about her sister, about herself, about all the ways she’d failed her own family after her stepfather died.

“Never mind.” She tossed her hair and hoped she looked casual and at ease, not nervous and flighty like she felt. “We’re not talking about my family. We’re talking about yours.”

“Right. Because your family’s probably not exactly fascinating. Where you from? New York or something? Your family’s probably got the permanent pinkie cock.”

“The what?” So far as she could see, it was the cowboys who had the permanent—whatever.

“The pinkie cock.” Lane lifted his hand and mimed sipping from a cup, his little finger thrust out in an exaggerated imitation of an aristocrat drinking tea.

She smacked him in the arm, then remembered she was hitting an injured man and laid her hand over the spot she’d struck. “Sorry. Forgot.”

“Didn’t hurt.” He sounded unconcerned, but he was speaking through clenched teeth. “But for a pinkie-cocking girl, you pack a wallop.”

“I’m tougher than I look.”

“You’re different than you look.” He gave her one of those appraising stares, but this one felt even more intimate than before. It was like he was seeking out who she was deep down, not just what she’d be like in bed. She fumbled with the gear bag so she didn’t have to look back.

“If this business with your brother ruined your life, you’re not tough at all,” she said. “He figured you didn’t care about it. You never returned his calls.”

“I didn’t know what he wanted. Figured it was just more Carrigan bullshit.”

“Oh, yeah,” she said. “I can tell your family’s everything to you.”

“Well, it seems to be everything to you. And I still don’t understand that.”

His fifth wheel was parked on the edge of the lot, the gaudy gold Carrigan logo glinting in the fading light of the sunset. She remembered how he’d asked if she was “something more than an employee” and stopped feeling bad about hitting his hurt arm.

“I’m not taking anything from your family, Lane. An honest paycheck, that’s all. I’m just doing my job.”

“And that makes everything okay, right?”

“It’s what I have to do, so yes, it does.” She tightened her lips. “If you’ve been shut out, it’s not my fault.”

“I wasn’t shut out. I was never in. My father just trotted me out like a prize pony every once in a while.”

“Like Whiplash.” She couldn’t help smiling.

“What?”

“Whiplash the Cowboy Monkey. He rides a dog around the arena, does some rope tricks. They trot him out—I don’t know, what you said just made me think of him.”

He lowered his brows. “How do you know about that? You a rodeo fan?”

She flushed. “Of course not.”

“Hardly seems like your kind of thing. And anyway, I’m not a monkey.”

He reached for the gear bag, lifting it as effortlessly as if he’d never been hurt.

“Where’s the sling?” she asked.

“Took it off.” He flung it on the bed along with the gear bag.

“Doesn’t your arm hurt?”

“Nope. You want to come in? I need to check on my dog.”

“No, I’ll wait.” What did he think she was, stupid?

Lane stepped inside and whistled. “Willie? Come on, Willie.”

Sarah laughed. “Does this work very often?”

“What?”

“Getting girls to come to your trailer to see your Willie.”

He didn’t answer, just called again, sounding slightly muffled from the back of the trailer. “I can’t find him.”

“And I suppose you want me to help you look.”

He reappeared at the door. “He’s probably out visiting the barrel racers.”

“Yeah, right. I bet he does that a lot.”

“He does, actually. Sociable little dude.”

Sarah snickered, but he didn’t seem to notice as he jumped the steps and relocked the door.

“So,” he said. “Beer tent?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “You were going to show me something good about your world tonight. You had all that talk about community, but the only cowboy I’ve met tried to steal your girl.” She grimaced. “Worse yet, he assumed I am your girl.”

He grinned. “Well, you are a woman, princess. And you are walking beside me.”

“Behind you, actually.”

He paused and waited for her to catch up. “Sorry.”

He sounded like he meant it, but she couldn’t tell if he was going to fling another zinger her way because his eyes were hidden in the dark shadow cast by the brim of his hat. “You know, you’re right. This hasn’t exactly been the best of the West.”

He set off again, but this time he eased his pace so she could keep up. They passed the grandstand, heading toward the pens where competitors kept their horses. “Want to take a look at the horses?”

She shook her head so fast she almost gave herself a case of whiplash. “No. I’m…” Dang. What could she tell him?

Maybe it would be good to tell somebody the truth for a change. “I’m afraid of them.”

“Really? I didn’t think you were afraid of anything.”

She shrugged, suppressing a faint glow inside at the compliment. Fearless. That’s what she wanted to be. What she’d been, once. But fear ruled her life these days. Fear of poverty. Fear of losing control. Fear of failure.

Because she’d failed her family back when Roy died. All the way home from the hospital after his death, she’d listened to her mother rant about Flash, about how dangerous he was. He should be put down, she said. Sarah had convinced her to call the sale barn instead of euthanizing the horse, but her mother had still insisted that Flash would stay in the trailer until they came to take him away.

It was the one time in Sarah’s life she was glad her mother reacted to stress by drinking herself into a stupor. With her little sister asleep and her mom passed out, there had been no one to stop her from sneaking out to save Flash.

***

The stallion’s coat had been hot and damp, lathered with sweat from the stress of staying so long in the trailer. She’d whispered soothing words to him until he calmed, nudging her pockets for treats like his old self. Then she’d walked him to the barn and groomed him slowly and carefully in a slip of moonlight that slanted through the door. At first he’d spooked and sidestepped, but she’d stroked him until he stood quietly. Nothing but the tension rippling under his skin told her how the day’s tragedy had affected him.

“I’m scared too,” she’d told him. “But it’s going to be okay.”

She’d saddled him slowly, methodically, taking comfort in the familiar motions and hoping the horse did too. It seemed like it, because she could feel the knotted tension in his mind giving way as she slipped on a bridle with a sweet iron snaffle bit and led him outside. Then she’d slipped her foot in the stirrup and grabbed the saddle horn, just like she had a hundred, maybe a thousand, times before.

She’d visualized this ride all the way home from the hospital. She’d ride him up to the house, spin him right and left in the front yard, then holler to her mother to watch so she could prove he was safe as a child’s pony. Or maybe she’d ride him into the sunset like a movie cowboy, leaving her old life behind and taking him with her into some unknown future.

Somehow, some way, she’d save him from going to the sale barn.

But as she shifted her weight to the foot in the stirrup, Flash rolled his eyes back and whinnied, a hoarse scream tearing through the night. She’d clung to the reins, knowing that if she let him go he’d bolt off and run until a semi on the highway stopped him or a barbed wire fence cut his legs and tangled him to a stop.

He spun to face her and reared, and in that instant she could only think of Roy, broken in the dirt at the foot of the trailer ramp.

She’d been afraid of a horse for the first time in her life. She’d barely been able to hold him, but he’d finally bucked out and stood trembling, docile as a kitten. With shaking hands, she unsaddled him and led him back to the trailer.

He’d loaded without a fuss, just like he’d always done for her, and she’d thought again of how different things would be if she hadn’t been so selfish, if she hadn’t thought it was so important to primp and preen for some boy she barely knew. Roy was dead. It was her fault. And the next day somebody from the sale barn hitched the trailer to a growling diesel pickup and took Flash away for the last time.

Flash had sold for two thousand dollars—a tenth of his value. And no wonder: the last thing he’d done was kill a man. It didn’t help that the various stories Sarah had told Brian Humboldt about how hard he was to handle had made their way around the small world of horse traders.

Everything Roy had brought into their life was gone, swept away by his death and her foolishness. Everything he’d worked for was gone.

All because Sarah couldn’t work up the courage to ride a horse.