Desert Heat (17 page)

“Timber Rattler.” He grinned. “I guess it’s my day for snakes.”

Patience laughed. “Good horse?”

“A Final’s horse. One of Jack Stiles’s best.”

He was dressed to rodeo, wearing his trademark blue shirt and black and gold metallic-fringed chaps. God, she loved a man in chaps. “Will you promise me something?”

Those incredible blue eyes slid down to her mouth, and there was no mistaking his thoughts. “Pretty much whatever you name.”

She ignored the coil of heat that tightened in her stomach. “Until the rodeo is over, I want you to forget Wes McCauley and everyone else. I want you to go out there and ride like winning is all that matters in the world. I want you to knock ’em dead this afternoon.”

From beneath his black hat, Dallas looked at her and his lips curved up. “Yes, ma’am,” he said.

Button danced with impatience as Patience collected the reins, shoved her boot into the stirrup, and swung up on the sorrel’s back. She had never ridden western style before and the saddle felt strange beneath her, but the cantle curving against her bottom felt solid and reassuring. Shari was so petite the stirrups were inches too short, but riding hunter-jumpers required a shorter stirrup so it didn’t feel all that awkward.

Patience walked the horse, letting him stretch his legs, then went into a trot, posting in the English manner. A slow canter followed, guiding the horse in lazy figure eights at the end of the arena. Button settled down right away, performing like the perfectly trained animal he was, responding to her silent commands as if they had ridden together a hundred times.

She was grinning when she left the arena, exhilarated by her brief return to riding, enjoying the bond between horse and rider as she always did. She dismounted outside the fence, led Button back to the trailer, and returned his reins to Shari.

“That was wonderful. You’ve got yourself some horse there.”

“Thanks.” Shari patted Button’s neck and spoke to him gently. “You ready to do your thing, sweetheart?”

Button nickered as if in reply and Patience laughed. Western music drifted toward them, the Charlie Daniels Band’s “The Devil Went Down to Georgia.” Then the distant sound of the announcer’s voice boomed over the loudspeaker. Applause from the grandstand said the rodeo had begun.

The show started with a patriot display of fireworks, then a flag-waving run up and down the arena by two local rodeo queen contestants mounted on big white horses. A loud, swelling version of the National Anthem filled the crowd with rodeo excitement.

The show clicked along without a hitch, Charlie doing his usual good job behind the scenes, keeping things running smoothly. With the Circle C bucking horses out of commission, he was forced to use Jack Stiles’s Flying S stock—for a fat fee, of course. But the horses were working well and so far there hadn’t been a problem.

Dallas had told Stormy and Shari about the sabotage that had been done to the trailer hitch and asked them to keep their eyes open for anything out of the ordinary, but Charlie had insisted they keep the information to themselves. The sheriff had sent a couple of extra officers out to the rodeo grounds but so far the afternoon had been peaceful.

The rodeo progressed. In the steer wrestling, Wes brought down his steer in three point six seconds, which was a damned fast time and put him in the lead for the money. The saddle bronc section followed. Patience looked around but didn’t see Dallas. She spotted Junior Reese running into the arena and turned to watch him do his skit.

In big, baggy, size fifty-plus Wranglers and a red striped shirt, he told the crowd, “Me and my wife was drivin’ by a field full of pigs and mules. ‘Them your relatives?’ I asked. My wife just nodded. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Them’s my in-laws!’”

The crowd roared with laughter and Patience joined in. Behind her, cowboys walked up and down the row of chutes, getting ready to make their rides. She was used to the activity by now, the shuffle of scuffed leather boots, the jangle of spurs, the big Brahmas grunting in the pens behind them. Dust hung in the air, tinged with the smell of alfalfa and manure.

She turned back to the arena just as a boot slammed down on the fence rail beside her. Spurs jingled, fringe slapped against a man’s long leg. She looked up and for an instant, she simply felt drenched in cowboy—there was no other way to describe it.

“Good show so far,” Dallas said, but he was looking at her, not into the arena, and she felt suddenly breathless. His gaze traveled the length of her, over her breasts and down her jean-clad legs, and her mouth went dry. “How about afterward we go out and get something to eat?”

She swallowed. He was asking her out to supper but looking at him, food was the last thing on her mind.
How about we just go straight to bed?
she thought, then mentally kicked herself.

What she needed least in the world was a deeper involvement with Dallas Kingman.

Then again, this was supposed to be an adventure, something to remember the rest of her life. She ran her tongue nervously over her lips and watched the hunger creep into his eyes.

“If I say yes, will you promise to think about riding and not what you’re thinking right now?”

He laughed. “If you say yes, thinking with anything other than my little head is going to be almost impossible.”

“We
are
talking about supper here, aren’t we?”

“Sustenance of some sort, at any rate.”

“Dallas…”

“All right, supper, then.”

“Concentrate on your ride and I’ll give you my answer once you’re safely back on the ground.”

He nodded. “Okay. I guess that’s fair enough. I’ll ride this one for you, darlin’.” Tugging on the brim of his hat, he leaned down and grabbed his saddle. “Don’t move. I’ll be right back.”

Hoisting the saddle over his shoulder, he started walking away, the fringe dancing on his chaps as he moved along the line of chutes being filled with bucking horses. Patience tried not to stare at the worn seat of his jeans.

She watched him climb up on one of the chutes. From a distance, she could see him working with Lee Henderson, the Asian cowboy she had met some weeks back, trying to get the big spotted horse saddled and ready to go.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer said, “please turn your attention to chute number three. Our first contestant is the current World Champion All Around Cowboy—Dallas Kingman. He’s the top saddle bronc rider in the world and he’s drawn a horse called Timber Rattler. This is a National Final’s horse and, man, he’s got a mean look in his eye this afternoon.”

Settling himself deeper in the saddle, Dallas tugged on his glove, then took a slightly shorter grip on the braided rope attached to the horse’s halter. He jerked his hat down, turned to the boys on the ground, and nodded.

The gate swung open. Fifteen hundred pounds of horse-flesh burst out of the chute as if it had rockets attached to its hooves.

“When he rides they call him The King!” the announcer shouted, and once more Dallas lived up to the name.

He might have been sitting in a rocking chair instead of on the back of a plunging, bucking, wildly twisting bronc. Rattler leaped, kicked his back feet straight up in the air, then all four feet hit the ground with a jolting, bone-jarring impact. The horse twisted right, bucked and twisted left. Dallas countered his every move as if he knew them before they occurred.

The crowd thundered its approval. Feet stamped, hands clapped, people cheered. Even the hot dog vendors roaming up and down the stands stopped to watch Dallas’s ride. The eight seconds ticked past but the horse never slowed, a keg of dynamite exploding beneath the man on top of him. Dallas stayed glued in the saddle, his left arm in the air all the way to the whistle. He pulled leather and rode a few seconds longer while the pickup men caught up and boxed the horse in.

Dallas leaned over the pickup man’s horse and caught hold of the big cowboy’s shoulders. He slid out of the saddle and landed neatly on his feet.

He grinned and waved his hat in Patience’s direction, then turned and waved at the crowd. It occurred to her that she hadn’t seen him smiling that way since the livestock truck had been wrecked and sympathy for him tightened her chest.

“You saw it, ladies and gentlemen. The judges saw it, too. Ninety-two points for a championship ride on a championship horse. That’s gonna be the number these cowboys have to beat.”

Dallas appeared at her side a few minute later, still smiling, obviously pleased with himself.

“Congratulations.”

“You brought me luck.” Bending down, he brushed a kiss over her lips. “Now let’s see if it was good enough to win the money.”

Standing together, they watched the rest of the bronc riding. Lee Henderson was the only other contestant who came close to Dallas’s score, riding a horse called Jughead for eighty-nine points, putting him in second place. A Wyoming cowboy ended up in third, but there would be more riding after the show when they bucked off the slack, so it was too soon to tell if Dallas’s score would win.

The calf roping followed. While Junior clowned in the center of the ring, Dallas headed off to collect Lobo and get ready to make his run.

“That was some ride Dallas made.” Blue Cody walked up beside her, lean and black-haired, handsome as sin. He propped a boot up on the fence and his spurs jingled, but the sound didn’t make her heart stumble the way it had before. Blue shoved his black felt hat back, revealing his striking Navajo features, the smooth dark skin and dark eyes, the high, carved cheekbones. Women flocked after Blue the way they did Dallas, though he didn’t seem to notice it much.

“He was incredible, wasn’t he?”

“He’s been off a little lately,” Blue said. “Worried about Charlie, I guess. Hard to ride when you got problems on your mind.”

“I imagine it is.”

Both of them heard Dallas’s name just then, blaring over the loudspeakers, and turned their attention toward the calf-roping chute. Hat pulled low, Dallas sat in the saddle, Lobo collected and ready to go. He nodded toward the gate. It sprang open and the calf shot out. An instant later, the big palomino leapt forward. Hooves pounded. Dallas’s arm swung up, whirling the loop above his head.

The same instant his hand shot out, he glanced in her direction. The rope stalled an instant longer than it should have. The calf veered left and the rope glanced off its shoulder, flicking backward to land in the dirt.

Dallas muttered something only he could hear and pulled back on Lobo’s reins. He didn’t go for a second loop, just sent a dark look in Patience’s direction and started collecting his rope. Blue chuckled as Dallas turned his horse and trotted out of the arena.

“I think you distracted him,” Blue said.

“Me! I didn’t do anything!”

Blue just grinned. “On second thought, I guess it was me.” He turned to see Dallas riding toward them, the dark look still on his face. “I think I’ll catch you later.” Grinning, Blue sauntered off whistling. Not long after, Dallas walked up, holding onto Lobo’s reins.

“Where’s Blue?” were the first words out of his mouth.

“Blue? He left a few minutes ago. Why?”

“What’d he want?”

“He didn’t want anything. He said you made one helluva ride and I agreed. Why are you frowning? What’s the matter with you? What happened out there?”

He took a deep breath, exhaled it slowly. He wasn’t wearing chaps, just his faded blue jeans. He slid his hands into his back pockets, then pulled them out again. “I don’t know what happened. Whatever the hell it was, I don’t like it.”

“Dallas, you aren’t making sense.”

“You’re telling me,” he grumbled. Reaching over, he caught her hand, started tugging her away from the fence. “Come on. You can keep me company while I unsaddle Lobo.”

“But—”

He glared down at her from beneath the brim of his hat. “Unless you’d rather stay here and wait for Blue.”

“Blue? Don’t be ridiculous. Blue is just a friend.”

“Fine.” He started hauling her forward. “I just hope Blue is smart enough to know it.”

The following morning, Patience sat in front of her computer, still wearing the borrowed Every Woman Loves a Cowboy—or Will T-shirt she usually slept in. Lately, it was beginning to annoy her.

Yesterday, after the rodeo, once Dallas had officially won first place, they had gone to supper at a restaurant called The Cattle Company to celebrate. It was packed to the rafters—an hour wait to get in—but the steaks were hot and medium rare and she had enjoyed the time with Dallas.

Still, when they returned to the trailer, she wound up sleeping alone. Well,
sleeping
was a stretch. More like tossing and turning, having erotic dreams of Dallas that left her covered with perspiration. But Dallas hadn’t pressed her last night, and though Shari and Stormy had a room at the edge of town, Patience hadn’t invited him in.

Whether or not to resume their affair was a monumental decision—at least for her.

Still, she was beginning to wonder who was torturing whom.

As the morning wore on, she worked on her thesis, then read a few more entries in her great grandmother’s journal. Lucille Sims’s disappearance still bothered her, just as it had Adelaide Holmes. It occurred to her that Lucky had disappeared during the rodeo in Cheyenne and an idea crept into her head.

Shutting down her computer, she picked up her purse, dug out the keys to the pickup, and left the trailer.

It didn’t take long to reach downtown Cheyenne. Patience smiled as she drove past the old brick buildings along the railroad tracks, remnants of a town that had once been called “Hell on Wheels.”

Back in the late 1860s, the first businesses to arrive at the railhead followed the track of the Union Pacific, a motley collection of false-fronted tents, mostly gambling halls or houses of prostitution—thus the name. It was a different, more modern town now, but hints of the old Wild West remained.

Patience headed for the local newspaper office, the
Wyoming Tribune Eagle
on Lincoln Street, and parked the Chevy truck in the parking lot.

The
Tribune,
she discovered, had been in Cheyenne, under myriad names, since 1867. Its archives were numerous, some of the oldest newspapers bound in volumes, wrapped, and stored away in a room that smelled of dust and printing ink. But old papers didn’t hold up very well and most of them were now on microfilm. She was told they’d been moved to the state archives downtown.

It didn’t take long to get there. Patience spoke to the desk clerk, flashed the press pass Charlie had given her that first day in Texas, and a chubby little woman named Rose led her into a back room lined with drawers and files.

“You know how to work one of these?” Rose asked, leading Patience toward a row of microfilm reader machines.

“Yes, thank you. I’ve done a considerable amount of research over the years.”

A blunt hand reached over and flicked on the machine. “Film is in those metal file drawers over against the wall. They’re all in chronological order. There’s also a master index for each decade that sorts by names and places, that kind of thing. You need help, you let me know.”