A Dark & Stormy Knight: A McKnight Romance (McKnight Romances) (20 page)

Her heart was pounding like a jackhammer.
She felt like a bug caught in a spider’s web, but the spider wasn’t supposed to
look at her like he wanted to read her soul. “You just . . . I
felt . . .” She swallowed and tried again. “I was smothering out
here. I felt trapped.”

His lips thinned. “Yeah, you’ve said that
before. I didn’t quite believe it then, and I sure as hell don’t believe it
now. I don’t know how I broke your heart, but you sure broke mine.”

She shook her head. This wasn’t the
conversation she’d planned either, and it was starting to tread on dangerous
ground. As if by their own volition, her hands rose as though to ward him off. “Let’s
not rehash ancient history, Sol.”

The look on his face said it wasn’t
ancient history to him, but he took a calming breath.

Georgia
breathed easier, too. She was out of the woods for now, but she knew Sol too
well. Later, he’d replay the things she said. There wasn’t much about him that
wasn’t all man, but in this one area, he sometimes acted like a love-struck
girl who tried to read meaning into every word spoken by the object of her
affection.

“I don’t want Eden riding in the rodeo.
It’s that simple.”

“Fine. She’s in the paddock with Daisy.
But you’re going to have to be the one to tell her. And I ain’t watching you
break her heart and ain’t gonna be the one to pick up the pieces. You do this
on your own.” He turned and strode away.

She sighed and closed her eyes. Once
again, she was going to be the bad guy. Why in the world had she thought Sol
making decisions about Eden was a good idea?

###

Before Georgia reached the corner of the
barn, a pickup pulled into the McKnight driveway. The crunch of gravel under
the tires made her look back. The truck pulled up to the barn door, The sight
of Sol’s rodeo buddy Terry Ainsley stepping out of the cab made Georgia’s stomach clench. Sol wasn’t going on the road, was he? He couldn’t. Not when he
had Eden here.

But when he grabbed a duffel bag from
inside the barn door and threw it in the pickup bed, she knew that was exactly
what he was doing. That was what he’d meant when he’d said he wasn’t going to
pick up the pieces. Damn him.

When she reached the paddock, Georgia found Gideon leaning on the fence, watching Eden and Daisy, who were both in the saddle.

“Hey there,” he said as she took a spot
beside him.

“Hey, yourself.” She shook off her
irritation at Sol, putting it in a mental box to work through later, and nodded
toward the activity in front of her. “How’re the horses coming along?”

“Good.”

He didn’t seem inclined toward chitchat,
which suited her fine. She leaned on the fence, bracing one foot on the bottom
rail, and watched as Eden’s horse loped along the side fence. Eden stopped the
mare and backed her up a couple of steps, then she turned to lope back down the
fence, repeating the stop and backup three times until she reached the end of
the fence, where she turned the horse around to do it again.

“What’re they doing?” Georgia asked when Eden had been up and down the fence a couple of times.

“Spitfire needs to keep her legs under
her hindquarters better on the turns,” he said as he dug into his shirt pocket
for a roll of Lifesavers. He popped one into his mouth. She took the lemon one
at the end of the roll when he offered it, then they both resumed their stances
at the fence.

Daisy brought her horse over to Eden when she reached the end of the fence. Eden looked so grown up on that horse, her face
a picture of concentration as she listened to Daisy’s instruction.

Even Daisy looked older. Sol’s sister had
always seemed a little flighty and unfocused, but there was no sign of that
girl in the arena. Not today.

Daisy and Eden turned their horses in a
couple of tight circles. When they stopped, Daisy gestured with her hands,
presumably giving more instruction. Then they did it again.

Eden
looked so intent. Georgia grimaced to herself. She didn’t enjoy seeing her
daughter growing up any more than Sol did. If her daughter could only be
content to work the horses with Daisy, Georgia would be cheering. She didn’t
want to think Sol might be right and that taking this away from Eden would break her heart, but no matter how hard Georgia pushed it away, the thought
kept surfacing.

If she could have kept Eden away from
rodeos entirely, she would have. Rodeos were dangerous, though none of the
McKnights seemed to see that.

She’d gone to rodeos before she’d married
Sol, but she hadn’t cared about them much until she’d started seeing Sol. For
the first time, she’d cared about the events because she’d had someone to root
for. Actually there’d been a whole bunch of someones. Sol’s brother Zach
competed in the calf roping. His sister Rachel was barrel racing then. It had
been fun.

Then they’d graduated and gotten married
and Sol started transitioning to real rodeos where the bulls were more
aggressive.

They’d been married three weeks when Georgia realized how dangerous it really was. Not that she hadn’t already known, but until
that day, the danger had been an abstract. With all the arrogance of the young
and their faith in their own immortality, serious injuries were what happened
to strangers. She hadn’t believed it could touch her or someone she loved.

Bill Marshall had been the first of Sol’s
rodeo buddies she met. He’d been funny and sweet and soft spoken. When she’d
shown up, wearing her brand-new wedding ring, he’d teased her, insisting the
only way Sol could have convinced her to marry him was to drug or hypnotize
her. He’d continued teasing her until she blushed and Sol growled at him, but
it had all been such fun. Bill had made her feel welcome to the inner circle.

When Bill rode, she’d cheered him from
the stands almost as enthusiastically as she’d cheered her husband. Three weeks
after she’d married Sol, Bill had drawn a rank bull called Snowflake.

To Georgia’s inexperienced eye, any time
the buzzer sounded and the cowboy and the bull hadn’t yet parted company, it
was a good ride. Bill’s ride looked fine to her right up until he’d somehow
cracked skulls with the bull. He’d hit the ground headfirst, already
unconscious. Georgia stopped breathing, waiting for him to move. She was still
waiting when the cowboys and the bullfighters reached him. And when the medics
came. And the ambulance.

They’d carried him out on a stretcher and
rushed him to the local hospital then airlifted him to Dallas’ trauma center.
She’d never been able to think about Bill after that without wanting to cry.

People said he was lucky, but she didn’t
think spending the rest of your life in a wheelchair was something she’d be
grateful for. If it had been Sol, as active as he was, they’d have had to put
him on suicide watch.

But that came later.

What she remembered all too clearly was
the horror when she’d thought Bill was dead. It had frozen the blood in her
veins.

She should have been grateful it wasn’t
Sol. Instead, she’d kept picturing Sol lying there dead. All of three weeks
they’d been married, and she was having visions of the man she loved leaving
her alone and grieving because he wanted to play cowboy.

By the time Sol had climbed into the
chute, the fear of losing him had dug its claws into her and refused to let go.
From the start of his ride until she’d hugged him after the rodeo, she’d had to
fight the need to throw up.

The next week wasn’t any better. Neither
was the week after that.

Cautiously, she’d broached the subject
with Sol, trying to feel out how important riding was to him.

The man she’d married had been even more of
the strong, silent type than he was today, but once she got him started, he’d
waxed eloquently about the joy he got from riding bulls.

Georgia
had been shocked to the marrow of her bones.

She’d been so upset, she’d confided her
fears to her mama. What an eye-opener that had been.

Her parents weren’t crazy about her
running off and marrying Sol, but listening to her mama had been like hearing
the Greek Fates lay out the path her life would take.

Sol was selfish, her mama had said, but
then that’s how men were. You couldn’t change that. Georgia would always come
second to Sol’s true passion. He was like her granddaddy, who’d died riding
bulls, leaving her mama fatherless, and like Georgia’s own daddy, who’d left
them for a year to go on the road to play his music. Georgia was destined for a
miserable life, her mama said, because she’d married a man just like the other
men in her family.

That Sol loved riding at least as much as
he loved her made Georgia feel as if she were five years old and the Grinch had
stolen her Christmas.

You can’t win, her mama had said. If you
make him give up those bulls, he’ll come to loathe you.

If she even could.

She had worked out the rest on her own.
That loathing would destroy them the way it had destroyed her parents’ marriage.
He’d end up leaving her the way her father had left her mother. Or he’d stay
out of a sense of obligation. For the children. She’d have a marriage no better
than her parents’, a vision that filled her with fresh horror. And that was the
best-case scenario. Worst case was that he’d die in the arena. She couldn’t
bear that.

For a week, she’d tried to think of a way
they could both be happy, but she couldn’t see one. The only solution she
could
see had been to leave before it was too late.

She’d cried about it when he wasn’t
around to see. Then one day, when he was off working on the ranch, she’d packed
her clothes and moved out.

Okay, so she’d been a bit of a drama
queen about it. Teenage girls often were. Especially when they were in love.

What she’d really wanted, she knew now,
was for Sol to come after her, vowing to devote himself to her and only her.
What a dope she’d been. He had come after her, but his confusion made him
angry, and his anger made her stubborn. It had escalated from there.

None of those memories, however, answered
the question of whether forbidding her daughter to ride in the rodeo was the
right decision.

Eden
brought her horse around to face the arena and saw Georgia. “Hi, Mama,” she yelled and waved.

Georgia
waved back.

Any other day, Eden would have run into
her mother’s arms, but the thought didn’t even seem to occur to her. Instead
she loped toward the first barrel. The turn looked tight and clean to Georgia.

“Still a little drift in his rear end,”
Gideon said. “But it’s better.”

Well, what did she know?

Daisy rode up. “Hey, Georgia.”

“Daisy.” Georgia nodded toward Eden as she rounded another barrel. “You’ve got her working hard, I see.”

“Yeah, she’s a real trooper. The other
kids all went swimming, but she wanted to stay and help me.” Daisy grinned
wickedly. “So I let her.”

Belatedly, Georgia realized she hadn’t
seen the younger McKnights. Daisy probably didn’t know Eden was waiting for her
mother’s stamp of approval to go to the swimming hole. Sneaking off with the
others, knowing the odds were against Georgia’s finding out, had to be a
powerful temptation, but Eden was a good kid without an ounce of rebellion in
her veins.

Which only made it harder to watch her
daughter put the horse through its paces. If Eden wasn’t moping about not being
able to go swimming with the others, then Sol was right. Eden really wanted
this.

“She’s doing real good, too. It sure
helps me out.” Daisy patted her mount’s neck. “With Eden working Spitfire, I’ve
got time to train Lola here.”

Georgia
’s
smile felt stiff. “I thought Leah wanted to ride for you?”

“Says she does but she ain’t putting in
the time. I think she likes the idea of running the barrels more than the
doing.”

Great. Just . . . great.

Daisy paused and shot a look at Gideon so
quickly, Georgia almost missed it. “I really appreciate you lettin’ Eden ride in the rodeo.” She said it as though she wasn’t sure if it was something she
should bring up. “Being new to this and all, if she does go, folks’ll give the
horse she’s riding as much credit as they give her. That’ll be a nice first
step for me getting my name out there as a trainer.”

Georgia
stared blankly at her. She so didn’t want to be responsible for busting two
dreams. Why the hell couldn’t Sol have kept his big, fat mouth shut?

She took too long to recover her
composure, and Daisy shot a panicky glance at Gideon. He gave a subtle shrug
back to her.

Georgia
took a deep breath. “About that. I need to talk to Eden.”

“Sure,” Daisy said but she was stiff with
discomfort as she turned her horse and yelled for Eden.

Eden
bounced off the mare when she got there, oblivious to the
undercurrent that had become painfully obvious to Georgia. Daisy was braced for
bad news, but her voice didn’t give her away when she said, “Your mama misses
you. Why don’t you spend a little time with her?”