Corralled (37 page)

Not good. Seriously not good.

“I offered you something I had no right to.”

“Is this is about the office position?”

“Yes. I’m afraid the job’s already been filled.”

Her hopes sank to the tips of her boots. “By who?”

“A woman with previous experience in office management.

She started last week. I’m sorry. It was out of my hands.”

Bullshit. “When was this decided?”

Dusty didn’t answer.

She forced herself to remain calm. Forced herself to swallow the ugly reality. “You never intended to hire me for the full- time office position, did you? You used it as a carrot to force me to take vacation time, knowing that when I returned you could pull this

‘the position was filled’ crap on me.”

He didn’t deny it.

“After you talked to me in Lamar, I came back to Colorado Springs and quit my EMT job, thinking I wouldn’t need it.” She laughed bitterly. “How wrongheaded that decision was.”

Dusty wouldn’t meet her gaze— an indication that this situation was worse than she’d initially believed. “Are you firing me outright?”

“No. When we spoke in Lamar I told you the organization was being restructured, remember?”

“The entire organization? Or just this office?”

“Mostly this office.”

Liar. Dusty could do whatever he wanted, hire whoever he wanted. Something else was at play here.

“The good thing is, I can keep you on in your current capacity, part- time, as a med tech, but only on the CRA circuit.”

LORELEI JAMES 9

Lainie was stunned into speechlessness.

“We feel it’s best for our employees to stick with one rodeo organization, rather than switching back and forth between them like you’ve done.”

Her disbelief expanded. “You’re penalizing
me
because of Ace attacking me on the EBS circuit?”

“Not a penalty,” he chided. “We’re making a business decision.

To be honest, sending you to the EBS wearing the ‘Mel’ name tag was a joke gone awry. I’m rectifying that mistake by assigning you solely to the CRA.”

The EBS was blaming her for getting attacked. She’d bet money Ace wouldn’t even get a slap on the wrist. “So I’m being reassigned because of my gender?”

“No. But Bryson did contact the Lariat corporate office questioning your medical qualifications.”

“And?” she demanded.

“His phone call brought up an oversight. So corporate revised the med tech standards for employees working in the Lariat Sports Medicine division, specifically relating to our professional relationship with the EBS. New criteria, effective immediately.”

“Which is?”

“A four- year degree in a health- related field. So, see, you don’t qualify with your CNA, LPN degree, and EMT certificate.”

Shame, hot and thick, expanded in her throat. She couldn’t speak. She’d been so proud of her accomplishments. So confident in her ability. Certain Lariat Sports Medicine had hired her as a qualified medical professional on her own merits. When the truth was, Dusty had hired her out of pity, or worse, solely out of an obligation he felt to her dead father.

Had her mother been right all along? Dusty used her, overworked her, knowing she’d be thrilled with any menial job in the

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rodeo world because it was a connection to her father? Knowing she wouldn’t complain about the shit wages?

She’d never felt so betrayed. So heartsick. Her future was as much in shambles as the past she couldn’t get away from.

“Do you have any other questions?” Doc asked.

She shook her head.

“Look. I can get you on the docket Thursday for—”

“No.” Blindly, she stood. “I quit. Have corporate send my last check to the address you have on file. I should be there for a few more weeks until the lease on my apartment is up.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. So what if you can’t work in the EBS?

The CRA doesn’t have the same rigid medical requirements. The CRA is happy to have you, Lainie. I’m happy to have you here.”

“Because of what I do? Or who I am?” She whirled on him. “I believed you hired me on my own merits. I moved here and worked another job so I could keep this one. For what? The hours suck.

The pay sucks. The travel sucks. Everything sucks. Why didn’t I see that before now?”

“Lainie, you’re confused and hurt. I don’t blame you. But don’t make a rash decision and throw everything away until you’ve thought it through.”

“You’re damn right I’m confused and hurt. I have to take a good hard look at my life and I can’t do it while I’m looking at you.”

Surprise registered on his face. “What?”

“I see broken promises and outright lies on your face, Doc. I deserve better. I always have. So, no, I don’t need time to think it through. Maybe I’m thinking clearly for the first time.” She stumbled out of his office.

“Lainie. Wait.”

She didn’t.

LORELEI JAMES 9

Lainie climbed in her truck, her mind racing as she sped away.

She’d never been unemployed. She could get her EMT job back.

She could apply at a nursing home. She could return to the health club as a massage therapist. She could start over. But she didn’t want to do it in Colorado Springs.

Why had she been in a holding pattern for the last two years?

Putting off making any decisions about her life and her future?

Because she was stuck in the past? Mourning her grandmother?

Living her life in the shadow of a man she hardly remembered?

Had she been deluding herself? Choosing to work in the rodeo world her father loved in some misguided attempt to feel close to him?

Enough. Get a grip on the here and now.

Problem was, Lainie had no freakin’ clue where to start.

Her grandmother’s voice drifted into her head.
Sometimes getting on the right path takes a step back to see where you’ve been.

Once Lainie returned to her apartment, she paced until she mustered the guts to just pick up the damn phone and call her mother.

Sharlene answered. “I’ll admit I’m surprised you’re calling me, Melanie.” Pause. “Although I am really glad to hear from you.”

Lainie looked at the receiver as if it were playing tricks on her.

“You are?”

“Yes. I’ve been really worried about you. And I hate it when we fight, even though it’s all we’ve seemed to do in the last few years.

Are you okay?”

No.
Stupid tears started again.

“Lainie?”

She swallowed hard at the soft, concerned way her mother said her name. “No, Mom, I’m not okay. You were right about Dusty.

About the whole situation. God. I feel like such an idiot.”

“Oh, sugar bear, what happened?”

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Sugar bear. She hadn’t called her that in years. And for the first time in years, Lainie found herself spilling her guts to her mother.

About her job. About seeing the real rodeo world. About the hardships of life on the road. About her relationship with Hank. About her confusion over it all.

When she finished, Sharlene was quiet. Too quiet. Like the kind of stillness one felt in an animal about to attack and rip its prey to shreds. Lainie braced herself when her mother expelled a drawn- out sigh.

“Thank you for telling me. I’m horrified and sick to my stomach about what you went through. But I’ll be honest. If it were me?

I’d sue the living shit out of both the EBS and Lariat.”

Lainie froze. No wonder Dusty had asked about her stepfather.

He feared a lawsuit.

“But it’s not about me. And I’ve overstepped my boundaries with you too many times already. So my next question is, What can I do?”

Not the response she’d expected.

Maybe because you’re putting lousy expectations on your mother that
she never deserved. Good or bad.

“I don’t think there’s anything you can do. I just needed to let you know. To thank you, I guess, for giving me an insight I didn’t have. Or I didn’t believe, is probably a more accurate statement.”

Her mother laughed. “We always seem to be at cross- purposes, don’t we? I never intended to hurt you, sweetheart, and it seems I always do. I know our relationship has never been easy.”

That was putting it mildly.

“There’s a lot I haven’t told you, or you’ve misunderstood. I kept hoping you’d come to me with questions, but you just closed down. Resented me. I know this will sound harsh, but I resented you for that resentment. I hated that you made assumptions.”

LORELEI JAMES 9

“Assumptions about . . . you?”

“Yes, about me. But also about your father. About what happened after he died.”

Lainie’s stomach lurched in the brutal silence.

“Twenty years have passed and it’s still so damn hard.”

Lainie actually felt her mother’s anguish over the phone lines.

“I’m in a place where I can listen with an open mind. And a closed mouth,” she added.

Her mother let loose a half laugh, half sob. “I forget how funny you are. I miss that. You’re so like your father sometimes it makes me crazy. So determined to make your own way. So helpful to others at the expense of your own happiness.” She sniffed. “Do you know you even have his cowlick?”

Lainie closed her eyes. “You mentioned that a time or two when I was a kid.”

“I loved Jason. He was . . . everything in the world to me. He
was
my world. Without going into too much detail, we fought hard, we loved hard. We were happy. Even when he wasn’t around as much as I wanted, especially after you were born, we made the most of our time together.

“When Jason died . . . I wanted to die right along with him.

Everybody mourned him. He became more famous in death than he’d been in life. Which pissed me off. I’d lost my everything, you’d lost a father, and all anyone could talk about was the lasting legacy he’d left on the bull riding community. Your grandma Elsa, God rest her soul, loved talking to the press about her only son.

She was no stranger to tragedy, but I was. I’d never lost anyone important in my life. And I was so damn young. All I wanted was to hole up and mourn. In my own way. Not in public.

“But Elsa saw my grief as a weakness. She’d lived through heartbreak several times and figured I was being a drama queen by letting sadness consume me. She took over your care and I let her.

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I remember about a year after Jason died I finally woke up from my fog of misery.”

“I don’t remember any of that.”

“I know you don’t. I’m actually glad. Anyway, I’d met with Marcus a couple of times about a wrongful- death lawsuit. But mostly I was interested in setting up a foundation in Jason’s name, where any use of his likeness and his image would be under my control.” An edge entered her voice. “Elsa accused me of profiting from Jason’s death. But she didn’t understand that if I didn’t have legal protection in place, other people would profit. It wasn’t about the money. It was about retaining some goddamn dignity. I didn’t want to see the man I’d loved become a commodity. I wanted to ensure that his face wouldn’t end up on a commemorative fucking spoon or something.”

Lainie’s heart squeezed painfully at the raw anguish in her mother’s voice and the rare burst of profanity. How had she not known any of this? Had she really assumed her father’s death had no impact on her mother at all? How could she have been so clueless? So selfish? So self- involved?

Because you were a kid, and kids are notoriously selfish. But you’ve
never given yourself a chance to have a decent adult relationship with her.

“Is that when we moved out of Oklahoma?”

Silence.

“Mom?”

“Yes. I needed a fresh start. Away from rodeo, away from the memories. By that time I’d fallen in love with Marcus. We both knew I’d never overcome the stigma of being Jason Capshaw’s widow if we lived in Oklahoma. And I didn’t want you to grow up a curiosity.”

Sharlene had succeeded there. No one in California had heard of bull rider Jason Capshaw or his tragic end. Since she’d been involved with rodeo, and with the questions she constantly fielded LORELEI JAMES 9

about her father, she had a better appreciation for her mother’s choice.

“You were unhappy. We’d left Elsa on bad terms because she’d threatened to sue for custody of you.”

“She did?”

“I hated that it’d come down to that. She cooled down— it took her over a year— and I agreed to let you spend summers with her.

As long as she kept you away from the world of rodeo.”

“And I ended up there anyway,” Lainie murmured.

“When Dusty told me he’d hired you, but only part- time, I knew he’d taken advantage of your curiosity, your grief over your grandmother’s death, and your restlessness. I worried you’d schedule your life around those twenty hours a week in some attempt to relate to your father’s life on the road.”

“Maybe. Probably. I was flattered that he thought I was qualified. I feel like such a fool that Dusty had counted on that reaction from me.”

“He’s shrewd. He saw how much you were like Jason. I hoped after Elsa died you’d come home and we could talk about some of this stuff. When you went to work for Lariat immediately, I’ll admit I went off the deep end. I called Dusty and he was so fucking smug. . . . I called him every name in the book and hated how he was using you. I thought that if I encouraged you to go back to school . . . but you mistook my encouragement as an indictment of your abilities. I never intended that.” Her mother made an exasperated sigh. “Lainie, sugar bear, I seem to go about this all wrong with you all the time. I’d like to figure out a way to make it right for both of us.”

Lainie said, “Me too,” and for the first time, she meant it.

“As much as I’d like to see you, I won’t guilt you into coming to California. I know this won’t happen overnight, but can we stay in touch? Take it a step at a time?”

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“I’d like that.”

“Are you going to talk to Hank now that you’re unemployed and unencumbered?”

“Yes. But there’s something I have to do first.”

The intent hung between them.

“Maybe someday I’ll get up the guts to go too,” her mother said softly. “Call me if you need me.”