Rodeo Nights Page 6

  “Nice.”

  Walker’s single, drawled word had her flushing the way flowery compliments hadn’t in years.

  Beyond her image, the mirror showed a long, lean cowboy propping a shoulder against the doorjamb, holding a pair of jeans. She untwisted herself. “Thanks.”

  They looked at each other, and she could almost feel years peeling away.

  No. No. Nothing could take away the years.

  “For the jeans. Thanks for the jeans.”

  At her tug, he released his hold on them but didn’t budge otherwise.

  “Now get out of here so I can start trying on all this.”

  She raised a hand, prepared to give him a slight push on his way, then thought better of it.

  He raised an eyebrow at her aborted gesture, but obligingly pivoted a quarter turn so his shoulder still rested against the wooden frame but was now outside the dressing room. She pulled the curtain across behind him.

  She started unbuttoning the shirt.

  “It’s going to take most of the afternoon to try on all these clothes,” she said, willing to say almost anything to break a silence that screamed of awareness.

  “Buy it all and you’ll still be behind Belle Grissom.”

  “Belle! How is she?” She hadn’t thought of the diminutive barrel racer for years. Two years younger than Kalli, Belle had already been a veteran of the circuit and had shown the newcomer the ropes. Since Belle’s solution to any crisis was to buy clothes—preferably with rhinestones, sequins or both—her wardrobe was legendary.

  “She’s doing fine. Got divorced couple years back and went on such a shopping spree, she had to get a bigger place. I knew that marriage was doomed when he gave a bunch of her things to the mission. Belle didn’t miss them. But then she saw this mite outside the mission wearing a shirt decorated with a big glittery horse’s head. Seems it was one of a kind. Boy, did it hit the fan then.”

  Kalli laughed, Walker’s words and her memories of the people making the scene as vivid as if she’d been there. As she tried on clothes, she prompted his stories of people she’d known with questions and comments. Ten years, covered in the time it took to put on a dozen outfits.

  “And Sailor—remember Sailor Anderson?”

  “Sure.” A charmer, the Lothario of the rodeo circuit, who’d earned his nickname with a girl in every “port.” And she remembered Pammy, the unglamorous daughter of a stock contractor who adored Sailor with every fiber of her being, yet accepted being his sole unmarried female “buddy.” “How is Sailor?”

  Finished trying on, she opened the curtain as she stacked her selections and folded or hung the rejects. She’d decided to wear jeans and the rose shirt.

  “He’s fine. Finally got smart.” Walker resumed his position against the frame. “Opened his eyes and saw what he had in Pammy and married her seven years back. Two kids and a third on the way. Sailor’s settled down. His winnings bought a couple radio stations in Texas, so he’s using his gift of gab for something more’n charming ladies.”

  Two children and a third on the way...That could have been her and Walker. Kalli put on a smile. “Sailor settled down? How in the world did that happen?”

  He straightened. “You ’bout ready? Jasper oughtta be here any time.”

  “Yes. I sure hope Jasper will take a check for all this.” Her gesture encompassed five shirts, three pairs of jeans and a denim skirt.

  “And this one.” He added the jade pleated-yoke shirt.

  “No. It’s not practical, Walker. You were right. I need clothes that can stand up to the rodeo. But this is dressy. And I have plenty of dressy clothes.”

  “Then I’m getting it for you.”

  “Walker, no—”

  “I’m getting it for you.”

  “If I want it, I can afford it. You don’t have—”

  “I may not have a high-power job, but I can afford a damn shirt.”

  She put a hand to his chest, instinctively trying to soothe his harshness. The gesture seemed to shift his mood. He put his hands on her shoulders, not gripping, just smoothing over the fabric of her shirt. His voice dropped and slowed to his usual deliberateness.

  “Dammit, Kalli. I couldn’t get you things before. Not even what you needed. I’m buying you this.”

  “Walker.” It wasn’t a protest this time.

  He ran his hands down her arms to her elbows, then up again. Through the fabric that covered it, the heat of his chest seeped into her palm.

  “Let me give you this, Kalli.”

  The shirt was forgotten. There was only Walker. The boy she’d worshiped. The young man she’d loved. She moved her hand higher, so cloth no longer separated her palm and his skin. Heat seemed to leap from him, firing her blood.

  He stepped in, one hand moving to cup the back of her head.

  In the first instant, his lips on hers felt strange. But it was only a flash, immediately lost in heat, in sensation’s explosion as his mouth pressed against hers.

  “Walker.” She managed the word of caution; he made it something else. Sliding his tongue inside her mouth, he opened her to deeper expressions of need.

  She stepped back under the onslaught of emotion, but held on to his shoulders, as if he might not follow. He did. That first step and then a second, pressing her against the smooth cool surface of the mirror. He slipped his arm behind her, drawing her tighter and tighter against his body.

  Her hands reacquainted themselves with the curve of his skull under the thick hair, the harsh bones of his jaw, the width of his shoulders, the line of his collarbone, the power of his back.

  They kissed and kissed again. Moving, adjusting. Exploring faces and throats, only to return, hungry mouth to hungry mouth.

  Not as if the ten years had never existed, but as if they were being relived through these kisses. Kisses of discovery. Kisses in the pouring rain. Kisses lit by the sun. Kisses of apology. Kisses in celebration. Kisses in consolation. Kisses to shut out the cold. Kisses heated from the fire that flared from one to the other. Kisses started in anger and pain. Kisses ended in joy.

  Kisses almost desperate with loss.

  She felt the growing tension in him. She knew what was coming. She knew... Yet, when Walker pulled away from her, she couldn’t stop a whimpered gasp at the coldness. His hands gripped her shoulders, holding her at arm’s length.

  He stilled his face, as if without movement his emotions couldn’t be read. But those emotions concentrated into eyes that burned and crackled with intensity.

  A bell announced the opening of the front door.

  Walker eased his hold on her until they stood separate. But his look didn’t change, even when he finally turned and strode out of the dressing room.

  She’d first seen that look before she’d understood the strange, insistent urgings of her own body.

  But now she understood. Now she understood what it could do to her.

  Chapter Four

  * * *

  “WALKER? KALLI?”

  Jasper Lodge’s voice grated across Walker’s nerves. God, he hadn’t wanted to let her go. What he’d wanted to do was take her right then and there. To drive into her softness until they melted into each other. To claim her and possess her and never again let Kalli Evans out of his sight or his hold.

  Which was exactly why he’d had to let her go.

  Thank God and a lifetime of discipline, he’d still had the crumb of sense that told him he couldn’t afford—physically or emotionally—to let that situation go any further. Any moment Kalli would have realized the extent of his emotions and would have run due east, not stopping until she hit the Atlantic Ocean. Just like she did last time.

  “Walker, you in here?”

  “Yeah, Jasper, we’re here.”

  Walker was aware of Kalli smoothing her clothes, pushing her hair back, but he didn’t risk looking at her.

  He took another breath before walking out into the main part of the store, sparing a moment to thank Providence that Es
ther made the most of floor space by building displays good and high. They came in as handy as a tablecloth. He took his time joining Jasper at the register.

  No sense advertising to Jasper—and thus to all of Park and a good percentage of Wyoming—that Walker Riley still desired the woman who’d once been his wife with every atom of his body. Especially certain atoms.

  He wasn’t sure if it was any consolation that her body hadn’t been exactly neutral, either.

  Physical desire for each other had most definitely survived the past decade. He wasn’t particularly surprised.

  But what did it mean if the body survived and the heart didn’t?

  “There you are, Walker. Where you been? Where’s Kalli? Esther said you two were here when she stopped by the barbershop. But when I came in and nobody stirred, I thought I mighta caught the woman being wrong for the first time in thirty-six years of marriage.”

  ‘‘Thought you’d be back long before this, Jasper.”

  “Uh, well. Uh, lots of discussing going on at the barbershop. Couldn’t, er, didn’t want to walk out in the middle.”

  Walker had diverted attention to Jasper’s whereabouts because he’d felt no inclination to explain where he and Kalli had been or what they’d been doing. But Jasper’s obvious discomfort raised his eyebrows, and his instincts.

  “What’s everybody discussing down at the barbershop?”

  “Oh, all sorts of things. You know, that saying about ships and sealing wax and something else and kings.”

  “Cabbages. Cabbages and kings.” Walker reviewed a mental picture of vehicles parked near the barbershop as he and Kalli had driven past. Around here, vehicles were as recognizable as their owners. “Must have been mighty interesting cabbages to draw most of the rodeo committee. Far as I can tell, only one missing was Dawson Fletcher.”

  Jasper shot him a hunted look. “We got to look to the future. It’s our duty. It’s what folks expect of us. You’ve been ’round. You know how it is, Walker.”

  “How what is?” Kalli’s voice, forcibly bright, broke the moment.

  Jasper came around the counter to take the stack of clothes from her and talked nonstop about her selections, her good taste and Esther’s approval. He didn’t answer her question.

  But Walker hadn’t expected him to, any more than he’d expected Jasper to tell him what they’d been talking about at the barbershop. He knew, anyhow. The future of the Park Rodeo.

  The question wasn’t what they’d discussed. It was if they’d decided.

  He was still puzzling that as he and Kalli got into his pickup, her packages stowed behind the seat. But the quality of her silence soon penetrated the air that swirled around them from the open windows. And the puzzle of Kalli took precedence.

  She stared out the passenger window, leaving him only a slice of her face to consider. It was enough.

  Reaching across the gulf of seat she’d left between them, he laid a hand on her forearm where it rested across her lap. She jolted. Not that he needed that reaction to know her regrets.

  “It’s all right, Kalli.”

  “Of course it is. I know that.” Squaring shoulders that looked tight, she turned a smile toward him that brought a sour taste to his throat. “You’re too intelligent a man to mistake what happened back at Lodge’s for anything but what it was.”

  Slowly, he withdrew his hand, letting the drag of his finger over her arm sustain the contact. “And just what was it, Kalli?”

  She took up his mild question eagerly, twisting on the seat to face him fully to lend emphasis to her point.

  “It was the past.”

  “The past,” he repeated without inflection.

  “Yes. It’s natural, Walker. We’re back here where we were kids and where we, uh, we, uh, learned to care for each other. There are all the associations and all the emotions. It’s like adults going back to where they grew up suddenly feeling—and acting—like they’re eight years old again.”

  He’d felt a long way from eight years old when he had her lips under his, but the sour taste left his throat. He wasn’t about to dispute her theory, since it seemed to make her more comfortable. Comfortable enough to look at him instead of in the opposite direction.

  Not now, he wouldn’t dispute it.

  “And in addition to that, uh, sort of conditioned response because of what happened before, we never really had closure on the past,” she said.

  “Closure?” He turned away as if checking the side mirror, just in case his face showed more than he wanted.

  “Yes, a chance to finish off the past. To put a period at the end of it.”

  “You don’t think divorce was enough punctuation?”

  She grimaced at his dry drawl. “That was a technicality, a legality.”

  How many times had he thought that very thing, that the divorce was a technicality and hadn’t done a damn thing to change the heart of the matter? But he’d fought that thinking. Because just as many times, he’d realized there were two hearts in this matter. And they no longer beat together.

  “What I mean by closure is a way to finish up the emotions, in the way signing the divorce papers finished up the marriage, the legal contract. All those old feelings came to the surface just now, because we’d never really had closure on them. Actually this was good, and natural. Very healthy emotionally. Now we’ve put the past behind us, all the past, and we can move ahead. We’ve closed off the parts of our lives when we, uh, when we cared for each other. And now we can be colleagues, we can cooperate for the good of the rodeo and for Jeff and Mary, and none of those feelings should shadow us.”

  He could tell from her voice she’d about convinced herself of her words’ truth.

  It sounded to Walker like she’d been reading too many magazine articles, but he wouldn’t argue with her twisting explanations. Maybe she was right. But he figured it didn’t matter. Whatever the reason, whether the feelings carried over from the past or were something new, the result was the same. They wanted each other.

  “Maybe so,” he drawled.

  She seemed satisfied, settling back into the seat and looking straight ahead as they turned in to the rodeo grounds.

  Yes, they wanted each other. But passion’s survival didn’t guarantee anything else had survived. Not liking or respect or enjoyment. Not love.

  He knew that. But he also knew it was a start.

  And he knew that sometimes you only got a start. Sometimes you got thrown as soon as the chute opened and the bull had room to make its feelings clear about being ridden.

  The way Kalli had made it clear she wanted to put the passion firmly in their past.

  He’d just have to see if he could hold on long enough to win this go-round.

  * * *

  KALLI HAD NEARLY finished the entries for two young cowboys she hadn’t seen before, when Walker walked in the office, shadowed by Coat.

  One cowboy nudged the other and she heard a muttered, “That him? Walker Riley?”

  “Yeah, that’s him.”

  Walker nodded to them in a general way as he came in. He cut a look at her that cut away just as quickly, sparing only a neutral “Kalli” in greeting, then exchanged good mornings with Roberta before making a beeline for the coffee.

  He must have stopped at an outside spigot for a wash; the hair around his face and at the back of his neck shone darkly with captured water and his wrists and hands below the rolled-back cuffs of his shirt were devoid of the coating of dust he picked up from his usual morning work.

  As had become habit, Coat came directly to Kalli, waiting for her to rub his ears. She always obliged, refusing to allow herself more than a pang that while the dog stayed by her whenever she and Walker were in the same vicinity, Coat was at Walker’s heels the second he made a move to leave.

  Today she was in too good a mood to even have the pang.

  Kalli was inclined to be indulgent over the awe in the young cowboys’ whispered exchange and their shuffle-footed shifting so they co
uld keep Walker in sight without being obvious. The pair of them couldn’t be out of high school.

  They represented the fourth and fifth entries by newcomers they’d had in two days. She’d take that as a good sign. The entries hadn’t returned to the level of before Jeff’s stroke, but they’d improved. Word was spreading that the Park Rodeo was still a good place to compete.

  “All set,” she announced. “See you tonight, then, okay?”

  “Huh? Oh, okay.” The first cowboy flushed and started backing out of the office when Walker glanced up. “I mean, uh, yes, ma’am. See you tonight, ma’am.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” agreed the second, wasting no time in following his friend. “Thank you, ma’am.”

  Mouthing the oft-repeated “ma’am” in utter disgust—you’d think she was ninety-two and frail! —Kalli stared at the closed door. The dual splutter of laughter from behind her spun her around to face Roberta and Walker.

  “Oh, yeah, you think it’s funny, those two kids treating me like my own grandmother?”

  “Sure do,” Walker answered easily, one long leg extended from where he’d propped his hip comfortably on Roberta’s desk.

  Trying to maintain the semblance of anger, she asked “How’d you like it if they did it to you?” hoping for a more sympathetic audience. No such luck.

  “Do it to me all the time. Even Matt Halderman. And ain’t anybody can say he looks at you like you’re anybody’s grandmother.”

  Awkwardness flooded into Kalli. Some of the casualness seemed to go out of Walker’s posture. Roberta looked bright-eyed from him to her. She’d done it on purpose, Kalli realized. Roberta had brought up Matt just to watch their reactions.

  Deliberately, Kalli leaned against the counter, sliding her elbows back to rest on either side of her. “Matt’s a great guy.”

  “Guess all these kids’re making you feel older, too, huh, Walker?” Roberta turned her piercing look on him.

  Kalli might have been tempted to ask what made Roberta say that, but Walker apparently knew better than to give the rodeo secretary that kind of opening.

  “Nah. What makes me feel old is cars I once owned being called classics. Or songs I used to listen to on the radio being ‘discovered’ by some new hotshot. Or realizing I’ve been out of school longer than I spent in it.”