Desert Heat (9 page)

Aside from that, getting more rest would help. He could sleep on the plane, be rested by the time he got to Wyoming. As he turned on the hot water in the bathroom, drew the curtain and stepped under the spray of steaming hot water, a couple of things were clear.

He was through partying for a while.

And it was time he started focusing on his work.

Which meant he was going to do everything in his power to avoid Patience Sinclair.

“God, I hate to leave.” Charlie tightened his hold on Annie. They were standing in the kitchen, in front of the old white enamel stove that his father had bought his mother when Charlie was a kid. It sat next to the big white side-by-side refrigerator he had bought for Annie for Christmas last year. She was baking an apple pie, his favorite, with others and the fragrance of apples and cinnamon filled the cozy kitchen.

“I wish I could go with you,” Annie said, “but the way things have been going, I think I’d better stay here.”

When they were younger, Annie had traveled with him all the time, but in the last few years, the constant moving, the uprooting every week to head off for another rodeo, had just become too much for her.

Annie preferred to stay on the ranch, to tend her chickens and grow things in her garden and generally keep things running smoothly at home.

“I hated to see you sell those horses,” she said, her arm around his waist. “They were some of our very best.”

“Yeah, I know. Lem paid top dollar for them, though.”

“He and Jack still after you to sell?”

Charlie chuckled. “They’ve never really stopped. We beat them out of the contract for the Greeley Stampede this year. I think it rankled them plenty.”

Charlie released his hold so Annie could check on the pies. When she bent over, he noticed the curve of her hips beneath her jeans, felt the twinge of desire he always felt for her, and found himself smiling.

“The sheriff says he’ll keep an eye on things here while I’m gone,” he said, though so far no more Circle C stock had been stolen in the time he had been gone.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you. Sully called about an hour ago.” Malcolm Sullivan was their nearest neighbor, the owner of the four-thousand acre spread, the Double Arrow, that bordered the Circle C.

“What’d he want?”

“Wanted to talk to you about those cattle thieves. He’s been out of town, I guess. Wanted to know if you’d talked to Sheriff Mills lately and if he’d turned up anything new.”

Charlie hadn’t lost any more cattle, but according to Mal, the Double Arrow had lost some twenty head. “Mills hasn’t found anything that I know of.”

“Sully’s cows turned up missing about a week after ours. Nothing’s happened since then. Maybe whoever did it has headed somewhere else.”

“I sure hope so.”

Annie turned off the oven, pulled out two golden-brown apple pies, and set them on top of the stove. Charlie walked over and inhaled the cinnamon fragrance, then turned and kissed the side of her neck.

“Charlie!”

He grinned at the flush that rose into her cheeks. They only had one night left and he meant to make it a good one. They usually ate early. After they were finished and he’d had time to let his pie settle a little, he intended to take her upstairs and spend the evening showing her just how much she meant to him.

“I wish Dallas could have come home with you,” Annie said wistfully. He was the son she never had and though the boy called at least once a week, Charlie knew she missed him.

“He’s been busy. Maybe he’ll come home with me next time.”

She untied the apron around her waist and tossed it onto the table. “I worry about him. He works too hard. He tries to ride in too many shows and then he still has to do all that darned publicity. He needs to come home and rest for a while.”

“What that boy needs is a good woman,” Charlie grumbled. “By the time I was his age, you and I had been married four years.”

“I think he’d make a really good husband. He loves kids and he’s good with them, and you taught him the right way to treat a woman.”

Charlie grunted. “If he ever makes up his mind to settle down with just one.”

Annie shoved the pies a little farther back on the stove. “He just hasn’t met the right girl, that’s all.”

“I guess not.” But an image of Patience Sinclair flashed in his head. She was not the sort of woman Dallas usually went for, the flashy types like Jade. She was sweet and thoughtful and sincere. She was intelligent, too, the way Dallas was.

Still, they didn’t have much in common. A high-tone Boston gal would hardly make a suitable wife for a Texas cowhand. And that was all Dallas ever wanted to be.

Charlie thought of his sister, Jolene, and her ill-fated marriage to Dallas’s father, Avery Kingman. The pair was doomed from the start, no matter how much they were in love. Avery came from old-money Houston society while Jolie was raised on a ranch. Though they never divorced, in the years before Jolie died, they grew further and further apart and neither was ever truly happy.

Charlie sure didn’t want that to happen to his boy.

“Supper’s almost ready.” Annie pulled open a drawer and started taking out silverware for the table. “Maybe we’ll go for a ride or something after we finish eating.”

Charlie flicked her a look and his eyes twinkled. “Yeah, maybe we will.”

Patience couldn’t stop thinking about him. No matter how hard she worked, no matter how deeply she immersed herself in her thesis, Dallas was always there, hovering at the edge of her mind.

At first she told herself she was acting like a fool. She wasn’t the kind of woman who went for guys like him. Guys who wanted only one thing from a woman and made the fact more than clear. No-strings sex was fine for Dallas, but for Patience, sleeping with a man without any sort of relationship was out of the question.

Or was it?

Day and night, the notion haunted her.

The hard truth was, she wanted to sleep with him, wanted it more than anything she could remember in a very long time. She began to think,
why shouldn’t I?
She was a modern, liberated woman. Besides, traveling the rodeo circuit was supposed to be her grand adventure. Why not just give in, go to bed with him and get it over with?

She remembered the way it felt when he had kissed her. No man had ever stirred her that way. Dallas knew women. He had made love to dozens of them. He would know how to make a woman respond. She thought of the men in her life. In high school she had been the shy, bookish Sinclair sister with short hair and glasses. Hope had had to bribe a friend to take her little sister to the prom.

In college she’d had a couple of dates, then began to see a guy in her psychology class. She was tired of being a virgin, the last one at the U., she began to believe. Danny Shepard wanted to make love to her and eventually she said yes. The first time had hurt and the second time wasn’t much better. Danny was gangly and not much fun. She wasn’t really that attracted to him, so she had ended the affair.

Her relationship with Tyler wasn’t much better.

But Dallas…Dallas was the sexiest man she had ever met. Her heart started knocking the minute he walked into the room. Her legs felt shaky when they danced. Maybe with Dallas it would be different. Maybe afterward, she could banish her low self-image where sex was concerned, go out and find a man who was right for her.

By the time Dallas rejoined them in the little western town of Sheridan, Wyoming, Patience had made up her mind. She was going to bed with Dallas Kingman. If one night was all he wanted, well, there was every chance one night would be more than enough for her.

“You hungry?” Shari stuck her head inside the trailer. They had arrived at the fairgrounds late in the afternoon. It was nearly seven o’clock in the evening and her stomach was making an embarrassing rumble.

“I’m starved.”

“You might want to grab a sweater. As hot as it was today, this high up in the mountains, sometimes it gets cold in the evenings.”

“All right.” She reached into the tiny closet next to her bunk and dug out a lightweight cardigan, reached over and grabbed her purse. “We’re out of here.”

They weren’t going far, just over to Kendrick Park to the rodeo Welcome Barbecue being given by the local Kiwanis Club. She was hungry enough to eat roast mule, and besides, Dallas would be there, or so Stormy had said.

Patience’s stomach contracted. She wasn’t sure she could go through with this. It wasn’t her nature to be aggressive when it came to men, but this was different. Dallas had made the first move. The next move was up to her.

“Dallas isn’t back yet,” Stormy told them as he walked her and Shari toward the big black Dodge dually he’d been driving while his partner was gone. “He’s doing a local TV show. He’ll meet us at the park as soon as he’s finished. I think he’s missed seeing everybody.”

Patience couldn’t help wondering if Dallas might have missed
her.
Probably not. He had probably been too busy.

The chuck wagon barbecue at Kendrick Park, where there were acres of grass and big, leafy cottonwoods, was in full swing when Stormy drove the pickup into the parking lot. Once they reached the picnic area, they grabbed bottles of ice-cold beer and wandered toward the old-fashioned chuck wagon that was about to start serving up food.

“Hey, Stormy!”

Patience turned at the sound of the gruff, unfamiliar voice. It was the grizzled old cowboy Patience recognized as one of the Circle C crew who worked behind the chutes.

“You seen Dallas?” he asked. “Charlie’s lookin’ for him.” He was slightly stoop-shouldered, his cheeks sunken in and rough with stiff white whiskers. Sun-browned skin stretched like rawhide leather over his bone-thin arms.

“Dallas had a TV interview,” Stormy said. “He’ll be here as soon as he’s finished.” Stormy’s hazel eyes flicked to Patience then back to the old man. “You two know each other?”

“’Fraid I ain’t had the pleasure.”

“Salty Marvin, meet Patience Sinclair. Most of us call her P.J.”

Salty tipped a dusty, battered felt hat that looked about a thousand years old. “How do, ma’am?”

“Hello, Salty. It’s nice to meet you.” A second man walked up just then, average height and build, dressed in the usual scuffed boots and faded jeans of the rodeo world.

“And this fella here is Junior Reese. He’s clowning the show with Cy Jennings. Junior, this is P.J. Sinclair.”

She smiled. “Nice to meet you, Junior.”

“Same here.”

He didn’t say more and neither did she. In Flagstaff, Shari had mentioned the clown who would be taking Ritchie Madden’s place until Ritchie got back on his feet. Patience had watched him perform, mostly working the barrel, but he had been wearing his clown makeup then.

He looked far different now.

Shari had told her the story, that years ago, as a young bull rider, he’d gotten hung up on his rope and been trampled by a bull. The Brahma had kicked him in the face, breaking his nose and jaw, leaving a scar that bisected his eyebrow, and crushing his cheekbone. In profile, Junior looked perfectly normal. When he turned, half his face was caved in.

“Anybody seen Cy?” Junior asked. “I want to go over tomorrow’s routine.”

“Haven’t seen him,” Stormy said. “He may be downtown, doing that interview with Dallas. Dallas mentioned something about the station asking him if he could get one of the clowns to come along.”

“Thanks.” Junior wandered away as they moved toward the chuck wagon line, which stretched half a block across the grass. Wes McCauley walked up to join them.

“I’m so hungry I could eat the ass end out of a skunk,” Wes said, making them laugh.

Wes hadn’t been at the Greeley show, but he had competed at the rodeo they had been to in Pecos. Wes had wrestled his steer to the ground in three point four seconds, the fastest time of the night, and taken home first place money. To celebrate, he had invited them all out to dinner at the Caramba Cafe. Wes had asked her to go out the following night and finding no good reason to decline, she had said yes. They had doubled with Stormy and Shari and gone to see a movie.

Afterward, Wes had kissed her. Though she hated to admit it, she had been hoping for a rousing, blood-stirring, Dallas-Kingman-sort-of-kiss, but it hadn’t been even close.

Patience sighed, thinking there was only one man who could excite her the way Dallas did, and if she were going to explore her sexuality, no other man would do.

“Boy, that looks good.” Stormy eyed the thick, perfectly grilled New York steak and heaping pile of barbecued beans that passed by on a plate in the hands of Reno Garcia.

The line moved forward. They drank another beer and inhaled the rich aroma of roasting meat and thick slabs of buttered, toasted garlic bread. They were all loaded up with heaping plates of food, plastic silverware, and red-checked paper napkins, heading for one of the empty picnic tables when Dallas showed up.

“Get your plate and join us,” Stormy called out as he set his plate on the table. Dallas flicked a quick glance in the group’s direction and shook his head.

“I’m sitting over there with Cy and a couple of his friends. I’ll catch up with you later.” He turned away without so much as a hello, how are you, kiss my backside—nothing. Patience’s chest tightened with disappointment. Obviously, he hadn’t missed her.

“Wonder what’s got into him?” Shari asked.

“He was fine when I talked to him earlier,” Stormy said. “He’s probably just tired after being on the road for so long.”

Not too tired to sit with a couple of little blond buckle bunnies, Patience noticed. Not too tired to fetch one of them a beer then take her over to meet Charlie and some of the local VIPs before they joined Cy and sat down to eat.

After all the restless nights Patience had spent pondering whether or not to sleep with Dallas Kingman, after the tug-of-war she’d had between her conscience and her brain, Dallas didn’t even want her anymore. Maybe he never really had.

She finished her second beer and set the empty long-neck down on the picnic table, angry at Dallas, even more angry at herself. What was it about him that made her act like a fool again and again? She took a deep breath, shoved her hands in her pockets as she rose from the picnic table.