Kitabı oxu: «The Bull Rider's Homecoming»

Chapter One

“Mom!”

“Just a sec, honey...” Annie Owen squinted at her sewing machine, trying to turn a tight corner. Just a few more stitches and—

“Mom!”

Annie jumped from her chair, recognizing the something’s-about-to-explode tone in her daughter’s voice just as she heard the awesome sound of water spraying against...something. She raced into the kitchen, skidding to a stop to gape at the stream of water shooting wildly out of the tiny utility room and hitting the hallway wall.

“Get back,” she automatically ordered her seven-year-old twin daughters, who were inching closer to the utility room, green eyes wide. Picking up a towel from the laundry basket and using it as a shield, she approached the wild hose that had broken free from its clamp during the rinse cycle and was now shooting water in all directions. She made a grab at it just as the doorbell rang.

“Peek through the side window and see who that is,” she called as she made another grab at the hose. She caught it but now that she had the spewing hose, what was she going to do with it? She had to turn the water off somehow and she couldn’t reach the faucet behind the washer.

“Stranger,” Katie called. “A guy.”

Great.

Annie opened the washer lid and tried to jam the hose inside but it instantly came free, banging the lid open and spraying her full on, soaking her hair. Sputtering, she wiped her hands over her face and slicked back her hair.

“He looks like a cowboy,” Katie said. “He has a black hat just like Uncle Grady’s.”

Great. Mystery cowboy.

“Give me a second.” Something she was saying way too often of late. Since taking the job at a local Western boutique and putting in all the hours she possibly could, she seemed to be one step behind the action, playing catch-up. But she loved her job. Truly she did. Finally she was gaining financial ground, and that felt great.

She wiped her face on the wet towel then tried to turn off the faucet, but it refused to budge. Finally she wrapped the towel around the hose, which stopped the spraying but not the flow. Muttering a word that the girls weren’t allowed to hear, much less say, she made her way out into the living room, marched to the door and opened it as far as the chain would allow. The guy standing on her porch, wearing a hat that really did look exactly like her brother’s, was tall, dark and unsmiling. In fact, he looked as if he wanted to be anywhere but where he was. The feeling was mutual. She wanted him somewhere else, too.

“Can I help you?” she asked with more of a clip in her voice than she intended.

“Uh,” the guy said, looking over her head at the waterworks going on behind her. The towel had come loose. “Maybe I can help you.”

And let a man she didn’t know into the house? She thought not. “I’ve got it,” she said dismissively.

“I don’t think so.”

Annie jerked her chin up. “Do you need directions?” She was about to close the door in his face so she could deal with her flood.

“I’m Trace Delaney.”

Annie blinked at him through the cracked door. She knew the name from the bull-riding circuit, but had no idea why the guy would be standing on her porch. “Grady’s on the road.”

His frown deepened. “I know. I’m watching Grady’s place for him. Or I guess it’s really his girlfriend’s place. He asked me to stop by and check in with you after I got here.” Once again he looked past her at the water. “Where’s the water main?”

“Cellar. I can get it.” She didn’t like his take-charge tone, and as far as she knew, Cliff Fife was watching Lex’s place, as he always did when the couple traveled together. Her brother was very good about keeping her apprised as to what was going on in his life, and he hadn’t said one word about a change of plans. Or about a fellow bull rider “checking in” with her.

“You sure?” Trace pointed his chin at the water behind her. Annie wanted to look but didn’t.

“Positive.” He was most likely Grady’s friend as he said, but until she knew what was going on, the guy wasn’t coming into the house. Besides the stranger-danger factor, there was something about him that made her feel slightly off center. It was a discomforting feeling. “I’m used to handling this kind of stuff alone and I really need to get at it. Maybe we can talk some other time.” She gave him a tight smile and stepped back, getting ready to close the door.

The man opened his mouth as if to argue then seemed to change his mind. He gave a cool nod and turned to head down the porch steps toward a black Ford truck. Annie shut the door and twisted the dead bolt before he’d hit the last step and raced toward the cellar. She could debate her level of rudeness later, after the water was turned off.

“Let me know when he drives away,” she called to the girls. “Do not open the door.”

“He’s driving away,” Kristen called as Annie started down the cellar steps.

Excellent. A few minutes later she trudged back up the stairs, thinking that she needed to keep a wrench next to the main. That faucet was hard to turn. And the one behind the washer—that one needed a blowtorch.

Now the aftermath.

“There’s a lot of water.” Kristen edged up to stand beside her while Katie walked barefoot back and forth through the puddle in the hall.

“Lot of water,” Annie agreed, propping her hands on her hips. She tried hard to face all disaster with equanimity. The girls needed to see that panic helped nothing.

“Why didn’t you let the man help?” Katie asked midsplash.

“Because I don’t know him.” She didn’t even know if he was really Trace Delaney, although she couldn’t think of one reason why a guy would pretend to be a bull-riding friend of her brother. She’d have to do a Google search as soon as she got her house dried out. She rarely watched bull riding, preferring to get her stress in other ways, so she hadn’t a clue as to what Trace Delaney looked like.

“He’s Uncle Grady’s friend.”

“That’s what he says, but how do we know for sure?” Annie dropped the towel she still held on the encroaching water, stopping the flow into the kitchen. Lately the teaching moments seemed to be happening with alarming regularity.

“Oh,” Kristen said. “He might have been trying to fool us.”

“Yes, that’s true.”

She tried to be matter-of-fact. She didn’t want her daughters to grow up frightened—merely sensible. Kristen was a little too fearless; Katie a bit overly cautious. She’d love to edge them both toward a happy medium.

“Girls, why don’t you get the bathroom towels? I think this is beyond mopping.”

When she was done sopping up water, she was going to call her brother and find out why he hadn’t told her someone other than Cliff was watching Lex’s place and why that someone was checking in with her. It might all be very innocent, but she was getting a bad feeling...like maybe Grady was trying to fix her up, or, at the very least, getting her a watchdog. She did not need a fix-up and she certainly didn’t need a watchdog. She understood that her brother was trying to make up for the time he wasn’t there for her as he built his career, but what he didn’t understand was that she had been fine handling her life on her own then, and she was fine handling it alone now.

* * *

SO MUCH FOR DUTY.

Trace hadn’t been wild about checking in with Grady’s sister from the beginning, but he’d agreed to do so because Grady had been nice enough to offer him a place to stay while he recovered from the shoulder surgery that had put his career on hiatus. Emphasis on hiatus. His career wasn’t anywhere near over.

But why Grady thought his sister needed looking in on was beyond him. If she handled the waterworks with the same cool efficiency with which she’d handled him, she was probably already mopping up the damage.

If she wasn’t...well, he had offered to help.

He slowed as he approached a fork in the gravel road and checked the GPS. Left. He’d never been to this part of Montana, but within a matter of minutes, the GPS successfully guided him to Grady and Lex’s small ranch. The property was located almost five miles from that of Grady’s sister, so there wasn’t much of a chance of him accidentally encountering her while he was running or riding.

As he pulled into the driveway, he half wondered if that was a good or bad thing. No, he hadn’t wanted to check in with her, but now that he’d seen her, he had to admit to being somewhat intrigued. The steely glint in her eye as she’d quickly assessed his unworthiness had contrasted sharply with her small, almost delicate stature, her full mouth, the soft blue of her eyes. The front of her light brown hair had been soaking wet and slicked back from her forehead, accentuating the angles of her face, but when she turned to check on her girls, the hair that swung to the middle of her back looked as if it would feel like silk.

He let out a soft snort. If he ever tried to touch her hair, to see if it really did feel like silk, he’d probably find himself on the wrong end of a judo hold or something. Grady might be concerned about his sister, but Trace’s first instinct was that, small as she was, she could take care of herself.

Three dogs jumped at the fence when he parked his truck next to a classic GMC pickup. Lex had written their names down and he’d have to match them up to their descriptions as soon as he did a quick check of the other livestock. There was a pen of ducks and several horses grazing in the pasture. All the troughs were filled and the ducks seemed to have plenty of food.

When he returned to the truck and pulled his duffel out of the backseat, a white-and-black cat sauntered out from behind a tree and approached, getting close but not too close.

Felicity. He remembered that name. He’d once dated a Felicity. It hadn’t ended well. Hopefully he and the cat would get along better. The cat probably wasn’t going to demand that he find a new occupation.

The dogs greeted him with a mixture of suspicion and joy. Yay, someone is here to feed us! But...who is this guy?

Whoever he is, I hope he feeds us!

“I’m your new roommate,” Trace murmured as he headed up the walk with the entourage of sniffing pooches and one mildly interested feline. He unlocked the door and opened it. To his surprise, the dogs didn’t rush in. Instead they plunked their butts down on the porch and stared at him. Lex ran a tight ship.

“All right, you can go in,” he said, gesturing toward the inside of the house. He probably didn’t have the right command, but the dogs seemed to have understood. They raced past him into the living room and then he waited as the cat took a few slow steps forward then trotted daintily past him.

A neighbor by the name of Cliff had taken care of the place for the past two weeks, and all the animals had been fed for the day. Lex had written detailed feeding instructions and drawn small maps showing him where everything he would need was located. She’d offered him the master bedroom, but after taking a quick tour of the shipshape house, he decided to sleep in the extra room, which, judging from the horse show ribbons on the wall and the collection of rodeo buckles lined up on the bookshelf, had been Lex’s childhood room. He dropped his duffel and sat on the bed to take off his boots. Long, long day; long, long drive.

He rubbed his sore shoulder, squeezing slightly to test the depth of the pain, and winced. For once he was going to follow doctor’s orders and take it easy for at least another week. An ornery brockle-face bull named Brick was waiting to test him at Man vs. Bull in December, and he was determined to come out on top. Three times he’d tried to ride Brick and three times he’d failed. Not only did he want the purse, which would make up for all the events he was missing while he healed, he also wanted vindication.

To do that he’d have to allow himself to heal fully. He just hoped his head didn’t explode from frustration before that happened.

* * *

IT TOOK MOST of the evening to chase Grady down. Both his and Lex’s phones kept going to voice mail, and Annie began to wonder if he was in an emergency room somewhere. Bull riders tended to spend inordinate amounts of time being checked out by medical personnel, so she was starting to get truly concerned when on the sixth call he answered the phone. “Annie. Is everything all right?”

“I was about to ask you the same. Why didn’t you guys answer?”

“No cell service in Calico Valley. We just now drove into range. You called...five times? What’s up?”

“Who’s watching your place?”

“Trace Delaney is taking over for Cliff. I take it he stopped by?”

“He did. Why didn’t you warn me? He came at a rather inconvenient moment and I wasn’t all that cordial.”

“I’m sorry, Annie.” Grady did indeed sound sorry. She could almost see him slapping his forehead. “We threw this deal together at the last minute and then I had a bad ride at Livermore. After that I drove like the wind to make it to Calico...sorry.”

“Are you okay?”

“I was in the money last night.”

“Congratulations.” Annie checked to see if the girls were indeed at the kitchen table working on their reading homework before she said in a low voice, “So why did Trace Delaney check in with me? As opposed to you simply calling me to let me know that you’d changed caretakers?”

“You’re my sister,” Grady said patiently. “I just thought it would be good if he had a contact while he was there. So I told him how to find your place.”

“As opposed to simply giving him my phone number.”

“I did that, too.”

“You aren’t trying to hook us up, right?”

Grady sputtered. “I learned my lesson when I tried to fix you up with Bill Crenshaw in high school.”

Not quite true. He’d sent a couple of carefully vetted bull-riding buddies her way over the past couple years, but Annie wasn’t in the market for a man—especially a bull rider. Too much stress involved and, besides that, she had her hands full with her girls. Who had time for a guy?

“I hate being blindsided,” she finally said.

“I get that and I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Okay...well, ride hard tomorrow.”

“Day after.”

Annie smiled a little. “The girls send hugs.”

“Hugs back,” Grady said.

Annie ended the call and settled back in her chair. What was done was done, so why was it bothering her? Because the guy had stopped by at Grady’s urging and she’d run him off the property. Not a very nice thing to do.

She needed to explain. Make amends. And maybe get another look at the guy. He’d had kind of amazing hazel eyes, and while she may not be in the market for a guy, there was no reason she couldn’t look.

* * *

TRACE’S BIGGEST ADJUSTMENT after having the surgery to repair the torn ligaments in his shoulder had been adapting to downtime. Never in his life had he held still for so long. Even busted and cracked ribs hadn’t kept him from practicing. A good, tight wrap and he’d been ready to go, but the doctor had been quite clear that if Trace didn’t allow himself sufficient healing time with this injury, then he was looking at destroying the work the surgeon had done and perhaps putting himself out of competition forever.

Not going to happen, which meant following orders.

Which also meant champing at the bit as he marked time, watched bull-riding technique videos and exercised the parts of his body that he could. He was eating carefully—lots of protein, not much sugar or bread—trying to keep the weight off and the muscle intact as he worked his lower body. Legs were important and he wasn’t going to lose the strength in his.

When Trace had agreed to watch Grady’s place, he’d figured he could spend the hours when he wasn’t concentrating on rehab puttering around the place, doing whatever he was capable of with a bum shoulder. Unfortunately, the ranch was in pristine condition and there were no handyman jobs to do. His only duties were to feed the animals twice a day, water Lex’s plants and mow the yard. If ever there was an incentive to heal up and get back on the road, this was it.

Grady had called the night before to apologize for the mix-up with his sister. He’d neglected to tell her that Trace would be checking in, so naturally she’d been startled when he’d shown up at her door, acting as if she should be expecting his arrival. And it wasn’t as if he’d come at the best of times. The highlight of the call had been when Lex had taken over the phone and asked if Trace would mind exercising her horses. He had a feeling she knew just how much time he’d have on his hands, and the thought of riding off into the not-too-distant mountains appealed. He could ride bareback, work on his balance and leg strength.

First thing Sunday morning Trace experienced the thrill of trying to mount a sixteen-hand mare bareback without jarring his left shoulder. It was doable...kind of. At least there was no one around to see him climb up onto a fence and ease himself onto the horse’s back, just like little kids had to do—although it wasn’t unlike mounting in the chute. Yeah. That was it. No shame there.

After settling on the mare’s back and doing a few practice circles in the wide driveway to make certain that she and he were communicating properly, he started down the road toward the mountains. The dogs complained bitterly about being left behind, but he wasn’t going to risk taking Lex’s dogs out on the road, no matter how lightly traveled it appeared to be. Riding felt good—no, it felt great—after weeks of being cooped up, and after a good two hours exploring the foothills, he finally headed back, hungry and thirsty. He hadn’t expected to explore for so long, but there was no reason for him to hurry back to the lonely ranch.

The ranch, however, wasn’t as lonely as he’d left it. He spotted a small white car parked in front of the house when he rode into the driveway and immediately recognized the little girls poking their fingers through the fence at the dogs, who were wiggling ecstatically. Grady’s sister and nieces had come to call. Annie was on the way back to her car from the front door when she shaded her eyes against the sun and spotted him.

“Hey!” one of the girls yelled as he rode closer. “That’s my horse!”

“Katie,” her mother warned, and although the girl’s mouth clamped shut, she didn’t look happy. Trace dismounted stiffly several yards away, sliding down the horse’s side carefully, so as not to jar his stiff shoulder too badly, then led the mare up to the car where the girls started petting her shoulder and neck.

“Can I please have Daphne’s reins?” one of the girls asked. Trace looked at Grady’s sister. She gave a small nod and he handed the reins over.

“We’ll get her a drink,” the other twin announced.

Trace watched them lead the mare toward the trough then turned back to find Annie regarding him. Yesterday, with wet hair slicked back from her forehead, she’d been all serious blue eyes and unsmiling lips. Today the long brown hair spilling in waves around her shoulders softened the angles of her heart-shaped face and accentuated the fullness of her mouth, the soft blue of her eyes—but her expression was just as serious as it had been while dealing with a flood and a stranger at the door. Somehow those full lips of hers didn’t look right pressed into a flat line.

“Look, I’m sorry for being short with you when you came by the house. I didn’t know—”

“It’s all right.” The naturally husky notes of her voice strummed along his nerves in a pleasant sort of way.

“I was rude.”

“Understandable, given the circumstances.”

Annie didn’t reply. She shifted her weight and looked past him to where her girls were watering the mare, presenting him with her delicate profile. Trace rarely had a problem filling in gaps in conversation, but as she brought her gaze back to his, he found himself at a loss. She was a small thing, serious, yet sexy in a girl next door sort of way...and being near her stirred something deep inside of him. Something he didn’t particularly want stirred.

“I appreciate your understanding,” she said coolly.

“Not a problem.”

No problem at all, although he couldn’t help but wonder if being attracted to Grady Owen’s sister might introduce a complication or two into his life.