Dynomite: A Stepbrother Cowboy Romance (20 page)

He cut me short. “Too late, filly. I’ll be back this afternoon to get what’s left of my shitty belongings—we’re gonna rent that storage unit, right, Sequoia?”

Sequoia was buzzed, in one of those mindsets where a person is thrilled to be renting a storage unit. “You got it, buddy. I’m gonna put this couch in there, too.”

I shuddered. “It’s not too late. If I can convince my dad, he can at least write you one of those recommendation letters people of standing give to people entering the armed forces.”

Dyno slitted his eyes at me. “Don’t need it. I’m already in. I’ll be out of your life in a few days.”

“But I don’t
want
you out of my life.”

He snorted. “Since you’re not gonna leave, I will.”

And he turned on his boot heel to leave by the front door.

“Dyno!” I actually caught him by the arm. It was hotter than a pistol out, and he was wearing one of those T-shirts with the sleeves cut off. I’ll never forget how soft and satiny his skin felt during my brief contact. My hormones, my very cells, craved him.

My tone was pleading. “Isn’t there anything I can do to convince you to stay?”

He looked disgusted. Really, really disgusted. Looking at me brought that out in him. Whatever pain I’d unintentionally caused ran very deep in him. “April. Knowing you has ruined my fucking life. Now it’s up to me to rebuild it. Far, far away from your influence. You’re toxic, April. And being around you poisons my entire life.”

My fingers slowly slipped off his arm. He turned and left.

“I’m sorry, April,” said Sequoia, lifting his bottle to me in offering.

The world’s biggest sob threatened to rip from my lungs. I took the bottle and swigged, as though the liquid would cram my emotions back down inside me.

APRIL

“A
nd now! 2008’s
Rodeo Queen, April Pleasure! She’s carrying the flag of her father’s ranch, Hardscrabble! Nice form, April! And I’ll be picking up a jar of your famous zucchini pickles later on over at the Spur Barn!”

I’ll never forget that year’s annual Last Chance Rodeo opening ceremonies in March. I was riding in the Grand Entry along with my fellow rodeo queens. It sounds swanker than it was. Really, eight of us wearing identical sparkly, patriotic shirts and snow-white cowboy hats tore around the arena in tandem, creating pinwheels and figure eights. We’d practiced for a week beforehand. There wasn’t much call for us to do this, so we were out of practice.

CCPRA professionals were there to barrel race, rope, and ride. Adorable little Mutton Busters, kids wearing crash helmets, would ride sheep to win scholarship money. There had been a tractor pull that morning, I remember. The next day, the arena was slated for a demolition derby.

Rookies could compete with pros for a share of the purse. The scent of popcorn wafting from the stands, the screaming coming from the rides at the adjacent fair…These things are burned into my memory banks. I was sitting astride at attention trying not to let my flag tremble. That was always the hardest part. We had to be at attention while a CCPRA official gave a speech, then the Last Chance mayor talked, then the pledge of allegiance. They’d finally let us gallop around the arena a few more times before the bareback event started.

My eyes roamed over the bleachers. I wanted to wave to certain friends I recognized. It had been years since I’d been crowned queen, but it was still an ego-boosting thing to be in front of so many people admiring me.

God knew, I needed the ego boost. Since that awful summer of ’07 I’d been driving myself with unparalleled ambition. I’d almost doubled our head of stock on the ranch. I’d ruthlessly bought out a neighbor’s property for a good price. My dad was so confident in my abilities he’d taken a six-month sabbatical to Europe with Sadie, leaving the ranch in my hands. Oh, and the hands of Mason Simon, son of a fellow rancher.

It had taken me a long time to get over the trauma of that summer. Driving myself harder and farther helped me ignore how frightened I was inside. A panic that a shrink told me was PTSD came over me. I became afraid of almost everything. Ladders, heights, thunder, germs, cancer, needles, falling, vomiting. I had a fear of fear, butterflies, and even cows, so I had to stay away from the ones on our ranch.

I did all right, I suppose. I hooked up with Mason Simon, one of those guys with a name that sounds like two first names, like a combo rock-n-roller, just like Lawson Willard. I guess my dad didn’t trust me
that
much after all, because he had Mason take over all the corporate aspects of the ranch—meetings with stockholders and suppliers, going to conferences. Mason was all right, in a rancher’s son sort of way. He was more intelligent than Lawson, for one. He read the
New York Times
Sunday edition. He was worldlier. His dad had a home in Gstaad. He knew how to ski. His family had a foundation that donated to and encouraged restoration of midcentury buildings in the Coachella Valley.

Mason was older, too. I was fed up with boys. Boys played games, became threatened by each other, challenged each other to idiotic duels. By the time I turned twenty-five, Mason was thirty-five. I was
so over
any attraction to anyone my age. I was into older men, silver foxes. Mason didn’t bang or bag me. He
made love
to me. He treated me with respect. And, at that point, that was the biggest thing I craved.

It was all right living with Mason. We lived in The Water Buffalo Lodge, a three thousand square foot midcentury beauty on my dad’s property, named after some Flintstones building. A golf course separated it from the main ranch house, so I was able to put shitty past memories behind me, and plenty of physical space between me and Uncle Marcus. I didn’t talk at all to Marcus for a few years after that summer. He had injured me so heinously—drugging me, assaulting me, then accusing my stepbrother of doing all of the above. After a few years my rage settled into a dull roar, and I was able to discuss business with him through clenched teeth. Needless to say, he never tried mauling me again. I guess he found other teenyboppers to grope. Or I lost allure for him when I turned eighteen.

So, while Mason didn’t quite
excite
me the way I imagined a true love would, he was certainly better than acceptable. He did his own thing during the day and came home at the same time every night, and I actually cooked dinner. I finally learned to cook, and tried to make healthy choices, although Mason usually wanted beef, logically. I’d gained even more weight, and I remember as I sat at attention listening to the current rodeo queen warble out the anthem, feeling self-conscious at how tight my bedazzled shirt was.

Once we were finally allowed to make our final ride around the arena’s perimeter, I waved to Olivia and Amy Lauerbach up in the bleachers. Olivia had never wound up getting a degree from Sarah Lawrence. She’d dropped out in her third year to follow some playboy around Brazil. She’d gotten hella tan, learned to surf, and won at every game of chance, but she hadn’t advanced her life any, as far as I could see. And Amy had just stuck around Last Chance, being a competitive country club slut. I didn’t play those games. I had nothing to prove. I wasn’t going to compete with anyone.

I waved at my sister May. She’d returned armed with a degree and now made big bucks engineering information at Time Warner in Palm Springs. She lived in the main house with Dad and Sadie. I suspected she was a lesbian, due to the lack of interest she showed in any man.

As I sped past the VIP grandstand, I waved up to Mason. He waved down regally, like he was the Queen of England. That always made me laugh, how important he thought he was.

And then. The faces of the cowboys waiting by the bucking chutes were mostly just a blur.

But one stood out with such clarity, it may as well have been projected on an IMAX screen.

Dyno. Dyno Drummond
. It
had
to’ve been him. And he was wearing a fucking cowboy hat and fringed chaps, sitting on the rail of a bucking chute. He caught my gaze as I flew past. His expression seemed to be full of meaning—or maybe I was just imagining that.

In my confusion, I wound up looking like a charging medieval knight, my flagstaff falling horizontal. Luckily my horse knew which gate to exit, because I sure as hell didn’t.

Dyno Drummond
. How the fuck had
he
returned to town, and no one had told me?

Handing my flag to some wannabe queen, I dismounted so clumsily I nearly fell to my knees.

“Hey April,” said an event director. “You gonna be here at the halftime show? The clown wants to know if you’d be willing to jump out of that miniature VW van along with Kit Carson.”

“Yeah, sure,” I said vaguely.

I walked around behind the VIP grandstand, wandering through the alleyways by the catch pens. I would rip Sequoia Crooks a new one for not having told me about this. Of course I’d given up asking Sequoia about Dyno over the years. It was unseemly for me to still care about the rough outlaw. I knew he’d joined SEAL Team 6, an elite counter-terrorism force that was authorized to do some pretty brutal but necessary things. I believe his team had a hand in killing Osama bin Laden. SEAL Team 6’s official mission was classified. The whole foggy mystery just enhanced Dyno’s dark, enigmatic image. He’d forever be unknowable to me.

“Hey, you. Yes, you!” I clenched the rodeo clown’s sleeve, knowing he had at least two more shirts on underneath.

“Oo, fight,” murmured some cowboys. Some of them even backed off, although I was unsure if it was fear of rodeo clowns or rodeo queens.

Sequoia Crooks spun around to face me. “You don’t want to ride in that tiny van? I do this whole routine where I pretend I think the van’s gonna take off flying—”

I poked him in the chest. “Listen. I just fucking saw Dyno Drummond sitting on
that fence
over there, and he sure as hell looks like he’s getting ready to ride.”

“Yeah,” said a cowboy. “He’s out of the service now. Got tired of defending his country.”

Another cowboy said, “Right. Decided our life is the next best thing to a soldier’s.”

There was vast respect in the cowboys’ tones. I poked Sequoia again.

“You never fucking told me, you rat. Why didn’t you think I’d be interested in whether or not Dyno was back in town?”

Sequoia drew me aside, away from the cowboys. A big roar arose from the crowd, but it was only some cowboy from Auburn who had bucked out of the chute.

“I didn’t want to upset you. I didn’t see any reason to bring it up, if you want to know the truth. I know it’s still a sore subject for you.”

I slapped him with a backhand, not nearly as hard as I really wanted to. “You fucker! Of
course
I’d be interested! He’s my fucking
stepbrother
, after all! We’re family!” Then I realized that sounded weird, but it was too late to take it back.

Sequoia looked hurt. “Then why didn’t your
family
tell you about it?”

That was true. I mean, Dad and Sadie were in Copenhagen or some such shit, but May lived at the ranch house. She’d just been over to the Water Buffalo Lodge for dinner three nights earlier. Why the fuck hadn’t
she
told me? “Listen. Where’s Dyno staying? With you?”

Sequoia frowned. “Isn’t he living at Hardscrabble in Javier’s old house?”

“Damon Stiller from Auburn!” blared the announcer. “He’s been in rough stock for a few years now and also rides the bulls! Let’s give him a hand!”

“I’d better get out there,” said Sequoia guiltily, and ducked away.

I jumped up on the rail so I could see over the guys’ heads. From here I could see bucking chute number four where Dyno—yes, it was
definitely
him—sat on the fence.

Adrenaline rushed through my bloodstream at our close proximity. Dyno brought out the wild side of every emotion I possessed. That boy had struck me clean to the heart seven years ago in that fucking cop station. No one had ever affected me as deeply. He’d stayed in my heart since then. I treasured a photo some teacher’s assistant had taken of us in math class. We were both at the whiteboard, posing as though we worked out the problem. I really don’t remember the circumstances, but we look like a study in opposites.

There was Dyno with his ripped jeans, engineer’s boots, and sleeveless T. There I was in my sports bra and flared skirt, the costume of the cheer squad. We were pretending to look at the board but I thought you could tell…we were really dying to look at each other. I must’ve viewed that photo in secret every day of the past seven years. It had been transferred from old computer to new computer several times by now. It was definitely my most treasured belonging, and my obsession made me question how satisfied I could ever be with another man.

I don’t think he saw me before mounting the horse and going through the gate. Watching him ride was more exciting than the time a Last Chance cowboy had made it to nationals. Everyone had gotten together at The Neon Cocktail and practically beat each other up out of sheer exuberance. But the rush of pheromones that day couldn’t begin to compare to the havoc that was being wreaked inside my body right now.