Cowboy Take Me Away (11 page)

“I guess you don’t need a gym as long as you have horse feed,” she said.

“Normally I stay in hotels with workout rooms. Here I have to make do with whatever I can find.”

“I thought it was your knee you were supposed to exercise.”

“That, too. But bull riding is no different from any other sport. Gotta stay in shape.”

Shannon knew she should at least pretend to do something productive, but she just couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Luke. He moved with the smooth assurance of a man who treated his body like the fine instrument it was, making sure it was polished and tuned and ready to go at a moment’s notice.

“If I’d had surgery, I might be tempted to take it easy for a while,” she said.

“Nope. Miss one workout, then another, and sooner or later you’re drinking until midnight and sleeping until noon. If I didn’t stay focused, I’d never get anywhere.”

Shannon thought about the wild, angry boy he used to be, whose every move was filled with attitude. She remembered how he used to drive his old Mustang along the road leading from his father’s house, kicking up gravel behind him before swinging the car onto the highway and burning rubber. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that same kid riding a bull equally as wild as he was. What she’d never imagined was how much discipline it must take to do it well.

“So how did you start riding bulls in the first place?” she asked.

He completed two more reps, then sat up and tossed the horse feed to the bench in front of him. “I worked on a ranch outside of Amarillo. Learned how to ride. How to rope. One day one of the guys dared me to ride a bull. Found out I was pretty good at it. So I went to a rodeo school where I could trade lessons for working around the place. Then I started competing. Met a few good people along the way who helped me out. Pretty soon I was winning. A few years later I went on the pro circuit, and I’ve been there ever since.”

He rose from the bench, favoring his knee, and reached for a bottle of water.

“Is the work around here going to be too much for your knee?” she asked.

“If it is, I’ll let you know.”

“There are plenty of things to do that don’t involve a lot of physical effort.”

“I’m fine.”

“Just for a few weeks, until your knee gets better.”

“You hired me to do a job. I intend to do it. So why are you arguing with me?”

“Because I’m afraid you’re going to push too hard.”

The faintest smile crossed his lips. “Worried about me, are you?”

Shannon felt a flicker of embarrassment because that was exactly what it sounded like. “Of course I am. What good are you to me if you screw up your knee again and can’t work at all?”

“That’s a relief. For a minute there, I thought you were actually concerned about my well-being.”

“I’m concerned that things get done around here.”

“You don’t need to worry about that,” he said, his voice gearing down into a slow Texas drawl. “I intend to do all kinds of things around here.”

His expression made her feel as if he was only seconds away from tearing her clothes off. It annoyed her to no end that he could make her hot just by looking at her. Worse, he knew it. With every word he spoke and every glance he sent her way, he knew just how much he made her sweat.

He took a long drink from the water bottle, then put it aside again. He moved the sack of horse feed and lay back down on the bench. Carefully bending his knees, he began doing sit-ups slowly and methodically, his abs standing out in sharp relief with every move he made. And once again, Shannon couldn’t seem to stop watching.

Then she heard footsteps. She spun around, shocked at who she found behind her.

Russell?

He wore a starched dress shirt and a pair of slacks, looking cool and put-together as always. As he stared at Luke, though, his expression was considerably more rumpled, as if he didn’t quite know what to make of what he was seeing.

“Russell!” Shannon said as cheerfully as she could, even as she looked nervously back and forth between him and Luke. “Sorry. I didn’t know you were here.”

He mumbled a hello, but he still wasn’t looking at Shannon. As for Luke, he didn’t appear to notice he had more company. She could probably scream
fire
and he’d wait until he’d finished that set of sit-ups before he walked out of the barn.

“What brings you here?” Shannon asked Russell.

“You asked me to come.”

“What?”

“The sponsorship,” he said, talking to Shannon even though his attention was still on Luke. “You told me you have a sign you want me to see.”

“Oh, yeah,” Shannon said, a little surprised. “The sign.”
Now he decides to come see it?

Luke sat up for the last time, moving his braced knee carefully to straddle the bench. The attention he’d been focusing on his workout he suddenly turned full-force on Russell. Shannon had the sense that if Luke wanted to, he could blow him over backward with a single glance.

“Russell, this is Luke Dawson,” she said. “Luke, this is my…friend, Russell Morgensen. He’s the new dentist in town.”

They nodded a greeting, and then Luke grabbed a towel and swiped it across his forehead. Russell frowned, as if something about the situation really pissed him off.

“Luke Dawson,” he said. “Heard you grew up in Rainbow Valley.”

“That’s right,” Luke said.

“When we were at Shannon’s parents’ house last night, your name came up.”

Uh-oh.
“Russell,” Shannon said. “The sign is right back here in the—”

“I hear you got yourself into a little trouble now and then,” Russell said. “Let’s see…how did Eve put it? That people used to think you were the devil himself?”

Shannon cringed. Did he have to bring that up?

But Luke just wiped the back of his neck with the towel, as if it didn’t bother him in the least. “No, I believe my father held that title. I was the
son
of the devil himself.”

“Russell,” Shannon said. “The sign?”

“Don’t worry,” Russell went on. “Shannon took up for you. She told them you weren’t nearly as awful as they said.” He slipped his arm around her shoulders. “That’s what I like about her. She’s always looking out for the underdog.”

Not funny
, Shannon thought, but Luke seemed unaffected by any of it.

“Real nice meeting you, Russell,” Luke said. “But I have to get back to it.”

He took another long drink from the bottle and snapped the cap shut. He set it on the bench, then went to the doorway of one of the horse stalls. With a little hop, he grabbed an overhead two-by-four and started doing pull-ups, his biceps and shoulder muscles straining with the effort. Russell’s gaze followed every move, as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was seeing.

“Shall we take a look at the sign?” Shannon asked him.

Russell snapped out of his trance. “Forget the sign. I’ll sponsor the…what was it again?”

“The petting zoo.”

“Right. The petting zoo. After all,” he said, a little too loudly, “what’s a thousand dollars for a good cause?”

When Luke continued with his pull-ups as if he hadn’t even heard, Russell told Shannon he had patients to see and left the barn.

Shannon started after him, calling over her shoulder to Luke. “We have some new procedures for taking care of the animals since you were here last. Come to the office when you’re finished and I’ll fill you in.”

Without even waiting for his response, she left the barn and caught up to Russell as he strode toward his car. “That’s great about the sponsorship. It’ll give your business a lot of visibility, and—”

“I know. It’s a tax deduction. And it’s a nice thing to do for the animals. And the townspeople will thank me.” He hiked his thumb back over his shoulder. “What’s with the Rocky routine?”

“He’s competing in the World Championship bull riding competition in November. He has to stay in shape.”

Russell frowned. “Does he intend to do that every day?”

“What? Work out?” She shrugged. “Yeah, I guess. He says he never misses a day.”

Russell’s frown grew deeper still. They reached his car, and he turned to face Shannon. “What are you doing next Friday?”

“Uh…”

“Come with me to the club. My membership will be approved by then. They’re having a wine tasting event.”

Shannon felt an automatic twinge of aversion. The club?
Ugh.
But after he’d offered to buy a thousand-dollar sponsorship for the shelter, and because they were more or less dating, turning him down would seem a little ungrateful. He’d done something nice for her, and she really did intend to keep going out with him. So why
wouldn’t
she accept?

“Uh…yeah. Sure. That sounds like fun.”

“It’s a date, then.”

She forced a smile. “It’s a date.”

After Russell drove away, Shannon went back to the office and headed to the kitchen to start a pot of coffee. While it brewed, she sat down with her phone. She pulled up Google and put in the search terms
“Luke Dawson”
plus
rodeo
.

She couldn’t believe what came up.

Stories about his rides. His stats. His injuries. Interviews with sports magazines. She hit “Images” and saw photos of him accepting awards at rodeos across the country. Then there were dozens of photos of him riding bulls that looked mean enough to stomp a man to dust. There were even a few YouTube videos. She played one that showed Luke going the full eight seconds on a particularly evil bull, only to get hung up in the rigging as he bailed off. The bull continued to buck, dragging him over half the arena. The rodeo clowns finally got him loose and he walked away without injury, but it didn’t make it any less heart stopping.

And then there were the blogs, one by a woman who called herself Queen of the Buckle Bunnies. In the next few minutes, Shannon learned it was a term for women who dressed in a sexually provocative way and chased after rodeo cowboys. Luke was number two on Buckle Bunny’s list of top ten hot cowboys. Number one was a cowboy named Carter Hanson.

Shannon looked up Carter’s photo. He was handsome, and probably four or five years younger than Luke. But he couldn’t touch Luke when it came to sheer sex appeal. Buckle Bunny must have been
Blind
Buckle Bunny.

Shannon dropped her phone to the tabletop. She never would have dreamed this. Never. Anytime she’d thought of Luke during the past several years, she’d always seen a hazy vision of him, a man still in the shadows, still wild, still angry, still observing life but never really becoming part of it. Now she saw a man with a goal, driven to excel, who let nothing stand in his way.

Luke might be down right now, but he wasn’t out. Not by a long shot.

L
uke let the horses out and went back to the office, where he saw Shannon typing like mad. She held up her finger, telling him to wait, and hit a few more keys. Then she rose, went to the printer, and caught a few pages as they came out. She looked at the top one, then handed it to Luke.

“This is the new wound treatment and medication schedule,” she said. “We’ll post copies in the cat cottage, the kennel, and the barn as we go through them.” She reached into a nearby desk drawer and pulled out a notebook. “And here’s a copy of our general procedures manual for animal care. I’ll give you the highlights as we do a walk-through, but you can refer to it if you still have questions.” She handed that to Luke. “Did Freddie Jo give you an employee manual?”

“Uh…no.”

She reached into another drawer. “Here. This tells you what’s expected of you around here. It includes benefits. Safety issues. Your rights as an employee.” She stacked that on top of the other manual. “And this,” she said, reaching for a green folder in the same desk drawer, “is a copy of each of the forms that have to be signed by anyone who adopts an animal. Freddie Jo and Angela and I will handle most of the adoptions, but I want you to have something to refer to just in case.” She stuck that on top of the rest of the stuff he held. “Might want to look all this over in your spare time.”

Luke glanced down at the pile in his hands. “I don’t remember Rita having all this.”

“Different management style,” Shannon said, shutting the desk drawer. “I like everything spelled out so there’s no misunderstanding. Follow me.”

Luke dropped the notebooks and papers and other crap in his apartment and followed Shannon to the cat cottage. By the time she finished talking about cat litter and poop disposal and claw clipping and ear mite treatments, Luke felt like a private getting the boot camp rundown from a particularly anal drill sergeant. Even as a teenager, Shannon had been goal driven, but the woman she was now put the girl she’d been to shame. He guessed it was because she was in charge now, and responsibility only fueled her burn to get more done than ever.

Then they moved to the kennel, where the dogs barked like mad the moment they stepped through the door.

“We have more runs now,” Shannon said. “Fewer small cages. But we have to be careful which dogs we put together. We have plenty of volunteers to walk the dogs. It’s cleaning up after them that they’re not so thrilled to do. That’s where you come in.”

After a few words about feeding and grooming the dogs, they went to the barn.

“I think you have the gist of caring for the horses,” Shannon said. “The only one with a medical issue right now is Clancy and his barbed wire cut. Just twice daily antibiotic cream, gauze, and an Ace bandage until it’s completely healed. And I’d tell you to watch out for Manny, but I think you already know that.”

Then she filled him in on caring for the llamas. “Don’t get too chummy with them or baby them too much. The more they feel like you’re just another llama, the more likely they are to spit.”

As if he intended to baby a llama anytime soon.

“Angela will be helping you with all this. But she’s about to go back to school for the fall semester, so she won’t be here nearly as many hours a week.” Shannon took a deep breath and let it out. “That’s about it. Any questions?”

“Yeah. What’s with that guy you’re dating?”

Shannon drew back. “What has that got to do with anything?”

“You asked if I had a question. That’s a question.”

“What do you mean, ‘what’s
with
him’?”

“He’s wrong for you.”

Shannon blinked. “
Excuse
me? I don’t remember asking your opinion.”

“He spends all day with his hands in other people’s mouths.”

Shannon narrowed her eyes. “He’s a dentist. What do you expect?”

“And he looked like he spends a little too much time with crap like blow dryers and moisturizers.”

“It’s a problem that he likes to look nice?”

“Tell the truth. He gets manicures, doesn’t he?”

She glared at Luke. “What about the guy who spends his life in dirty rodeo arenas riding big, nasty animals who are trying to kill him?”

Luke gave her a sly smile. “Now you’re on the right track. Let’s talk about
that
guy.”

“
That guy
,” she said, “is sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

“Go ahead. Ignore my advice. See where it gets you.”

“Look, I know what this is about. You didn’t like the things Russell said to you. And I agree. Some of it was out of line.”

“Some of it?”

“He was just repeating things he’s heard.”

“Yeah? And where did he hear those things? At your mother’s house? When I was the subject of dinner table conversation?”

Shannon was silent.

“How is Mom these days, anyway?” Luke asked. “I’m betting she just
loves
Russell.”

“Okay. I get why you’re angry, but—”

“Nope. I quit getting pissed off by guys like him a long time ago. You’re the one who needs to think twice about him.” He nodded toward Clancy. “I’ll get that dressing changed now.”

He went into the storage room to get the bandage and ointment, and when he came out again, Shannon was gone. That was probably a good thing. It irritated the hell out of him that she was seeing a guy like that, and if she’d hung around any longer, he’d have said even more things he shouldn’t.

Russell might have thought Luke wasn’t paying attention to him when they were in the barn, but he had good peripheral vision and could read a person at twenty paces. It was a skill he’d honed through years of his father hovering over him, his face changing from irritated to angry to dangerously outraged. Sometimes there had been only a single second of warning before he got a fist across the face, so Luke had learned early to read people’s expressions. Russell might look good and have a lot of money, but he wore a blanket of insecurity Luke picked up on at first glance. It amazed Luke that Shannon couldn’t see it, too.

Luke had come there with every intention of lying low, putting in his time, and then hitting the road. But this was too much. He remembered things Shannon had told him as they sat in the grass outside the barn on those hot, humid evenings. Things he’d bet she’d never told anybody else, even to this day. Things that revealed who she was beneath the good-girl mask she wore for the rest of the world. She’d been taught from the cradle that Russell was the kind of guy she was supposed to go for, and the fact that she still bought into that crap meant she hadn’t learned a thing in the past eleven years. To watch her waste her time with a guy like him pissed Luke off like nothing else. He knew what kind of man she needed, and it wasn’t an uptight, insecure, stick-in-the-mud dentist only her mother could love.

Luke had told himself he was going to steer clear of Shannon, but that wasn’t going to happen. Already he was dying to cause a few sparks, set her on fire, and burn right along with her. He wouldn’t compromise this job. He needed it too much. And any emotional involvement he’d had with her was a thing of the past. But the first chance he got when they were both off the clock, things were going to get hotter than she could possibly imagine. Before he left this place, she was going to know the difference between a guy who had to spend a thousand bucks to get her attention and one she couldn’t stop thinking about to save her life.

On Sunday morning, Shannon didn’t set an alarm, because that was the day the caretaker was supposed to handle things at the shelter and let her sleep in. She had good intentions the night before, but could she help it that she woke up at seven thirty, anyway?

Even when George was there, she usually dropped by just to make sure everything was okay.
That’s why Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone,
Rita had told her about a dozen times, but it made Shannon uncomfortable for a whole day to pass without her stopping by at least once. And since George had been gone, showing up on Sunday hadn’t been an option.

But Luke was there now. He’d proven he could physically do the work, so she needed to roll over, shut it out of her mind, and go back to sleep. In the next ten minutes, though, she managed to accomplish only one out of the three.

Oh, hell. Who was she kidding?

She threw back the covers, took a quick shower, and grabbed Goliath. As they left the building, they met Rita returning from her morning walk.

“You’re back from vacation,” Shannon said.

“Got in late last night. Thanks for taking care of Ollie.”

“No problem. He’s a sweet kitty. How was Key West?”

“Great. It was a fun tour group.”

Rita took all kinds of vacations, hooking up with any group that struck her fancy. And she always came back with a bunch of stories and a dozen new friends.

“I’ll tell you all about it later,” Rita said. “But for now, why don’t you tell me about your new employee?”

Shannon froze. “You heard about Luke already?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“While you were out of
town
?”

“That’s the Rainbow Valley grapevine for you. So…how are things going?”

“Fine,” Shannon said, as Goliath circled her, wrapping her in his leash.

“Interesting. You didn’t even want to speak to Luke when he was here for his father’s funeral, and now he’s working for you?”

“Long story.”

“I’ll bet. So where are you off to so early?”

“I need to walk Goliath,” she said, unraveling herself.

“And then you’re going back to bed?”

She paused. “Eventually.”

“Last I checked, this is Sunday.”

“Don’t start.”

“Isn’t Luke at the shelter? Staying in the caretaker’s apartment?”

“Yes.”

“You’re paying him to take care of things on Sundays, right?”

“Right.”

“Then stay home. Sleep in. Have a cup of coffee. Read the Sunday comics.”

“I will.”

“If you do those things in the afternoon, it doesn’t count.”

“This is his first Sunday. I’ll just do a quick check-in.”

“Sure you will.” Rita shook her head and went into the building.

Rita was right, of course. But that didn’t make Shannon any less driven to drop by to make sure everything was okay. Just for a minute.

When she got to the shelter, she didn’t see Luke in the kitchen or the office. She went outside and glanced down at the barn. The horses weren’t anywhere in sight, which meant he probably had them in the barn eating.

Maybe he’s working out.

Because of that, she thought twice about going down there. Staring at him one more time wasn’t going to accomplish anything except to make her look as shallow about sexy men as Freddie Jo was. But she did want to check on Molly, a restless saddlebred mare somebody had brought them yesterday. She had ribs like the tines of a fork and the wary look of an animal who still wasn’t sure about her surroundings. The people who owned the property she was found on had vacated the house and abandoned her in the pasture, leaving her to subsist on five acres of scraggly, rain-starved grass. What was wrong with some people that they treated an animal like a pair of old shoes they were tired of and just tossed away?

When Shannon reached the barn, Luke was nowhere in sight. Molly still had some grain in her bucket, but she moved to the back of her stall when Shannon approached. Shannon sighed. It was going to take months of assurance and endless buckets of food before she was ready to be adopted.

Then Shannon heard a soft voice.

She left the mare’s stall and walked around the outside of the barn, where she saw Manny in the small corral behind it. Luke was with him, his back to Shannon, leaning his forearms on the fence and watching him as he ate. Too short for the grain bins in the stalls, Manny had to be fed out of a bucket. And the corral was a better place for him to eat than in a stall, anyway. The smaller the space he was confined to, the more defensive he became and the more likely he was to bite.

Shannon started to say something, only to hear Luke’s voice again.

“So how’s it going, buddy?” he said. “Better every day, huh?”

Shannon froze, then took a couple of silent steps backward and ducked back around the doorway into the barn, then peeked out to watch. Manny continued to eat, but his ears flicked toward Luke with interest.

“You’re a dinky little thing,” Luke said. “I could dangle you from my key ring.”

Manny lifted his head, chewing, one eye trained watchfully on Luke, his tail switching nervously.

“Carry you around in my pocket.”

Another ear flick.

“Set you on my dashboard and watch your head bobble.”

Manny dipped his head into the bucket again, but by the way he snuffed around, Shannon could tell he was finished with his grain.

“I know what happened to you,” Luke said softly. “But I’m not that guy.”

Manny raised his head, but that wary look was still in his eyes.

“Oh, so you want me to prove it?”

To Shannon’s surprise, Luke reached into his pocket and pulled out a carrot. He offered it to Manny through the fence. Manny regarded it for a moment, then took a few steps forward, stretched out his neck, and closed his teeth around it, chomping off the bottom half and crunching it between his teeth. Miraculously, he didn’t take Luke’s finger along with it.

“Now, see?” Luke said. “That’s worth coming closer for, isn’t it?”

Manny swallowed, then turned back to Luke, looking for more. Luke held out the rest of the carrot, which the horse took calmly. As he chewed, the nervous twitching of his tail relaxed into a routine back-and-forth swish to chase away flies.

“The bad days are over, buddy,” Luke said. “Shannon’s not going to let anything happen to you, and neither am I.”

Shannon stood motionless, mesmerized by the low, melodic sound of Luke’s voice, its heartfelt tone sending a shiver of warmth between her shoulders. Back when they were in high school, he’d done his job just as he was supposed to, but she’d always thought that the emotional connection with the animals that came so easily to her had been missing in Luke. Even back then she’d had the sense of how hard it was for him to share love and affection with the animals when it was clear he’d experienced so little of it himself.