Handful of Sky (21 page)

“Shallie, what’s wrong?”

She looked into Hunt’s face and realized that she’d been staring into her brandy as if it were a crystal ball.

“You look as if you’ve seen a ghost. Are you okay?”

She nodded, trying to shake the shadow of the past
from the present. She finished her brandy and signaled the waiter for another. Its warmth relaxed her and soon she was wrapped in conversation with Miriam Prescott, delighting in all her insider’s tales of New Mexico’s high and mighty.

“Shallie,” her uncle said, “why don’t you keep your hotel room for another night. It’s too late for you to drive back to the ranch alone. I’ll be seeing Miriam home. We can load up the stock tomorrow.”

Shallie caught a new sparkle in Miriam Prescott’s eyes and, for what might have been the first time in her life, realized what an attractive, virile man her uncle was.

She glimpsed at the wrist of the man opposite her. “It’s almost three in the morning!” she exclaimed.

As if he’d been waiting for her cue, Hunt stood. “That’s too late for me. May I take you back to the hotel, Shallie?”

Shallie smiled, appreciative of his courtliness and formality in front of her uncle. She stood as Hunt pulled the chair out for her. “Yes, it’s been a long ten days.” After a round of good-byes, Hunt whisked her outside. Shallie’s last glimpse of the gathering focused on Trish. Jesse was slumped down in a chair beside her, but Trish was as predatorily alert as ever, her eyes gleaming an unspoken message to Hunt. Was Hunt aware of Trish’s rapacious interest in him? Shallie didn’t dare a direct question, so she probed indirectly.

“Jesse Southerland didn’t seem too pleased about being beaten,” she observed as Hunt held the car door open for her.

“I don’t understand why he should be so bothered. He’s still way ahead in the standings and I’m not even ranked yet.”

“Trish didn’t seem to be having a very good time either,” Shallie ventured.

“Trish? You can never tell about her.”

Shallie wished she’d been facing Hunt when he made his cryptic evaluation. Sitting beside him in the dark car, it was impossible to decipher his meaning. She was afraid she detected a hint of admiration in his voice. Was Trish’s jealousy ploy working? Perhaps I’ve made myself too available, Shallie thought with a stab of remorse. She wondered if she shouldn’t leave Hunt with a good-night kiss and a yearning for more. She wished she were more adept at making the kinds of calculations that seemed to come naturally to Trish.

The car pulled to a stop in front of the hotel and Hunt leaned over. “I’ve been wanting to do this all night,” he confessed, his lips finding hers.

All thoughts of strategies and pretenses of aloofness flew from Shallie’s mind as her lips returned his kiss with the warmth it had elicited. Hunt would be leaving early the next morning. She had a long list of obligations at other rodeos. It would be weeks, maybe months, before
their schedules brought them together again. Hang what Trish would do, Shallie decided. She wanted only to spend every second she could with the man she loved, no matter if they would never spend another together again.

In the hotel room, Hunt drew off the emerald sheath as if he were unwrapping an exquisite present. He stood back to appraise Shallie, her legs long and slender beneath the short bit of apricot lingerie.

“You are one sexy woman,” he growled throatily.

The brandy loosened her tongue enough to reveal, “Only with you, Hunt.”

“Shallie,” he said, his voice suddenly serious, “it’s not fair for me to say anything right now, because I’ll be leaving in a few hours and I’ll be going down the road so hard and so fast that there won’t be time for anything but phone calls. But when I’m through this year, there will be all the time we’ll ever need. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Shallie was afraid to answer. Afraid that her slightest breath would blow his words away forever. She nodded. His hand brushed her cheek, sliding back to tangle in her hair. He pulled her head to his chest, burying his face in her hair. “Shallie,” he whispered, “you don’t know what you mean to me.” There was an ache in his voice, which was silenced as his mouth fitted itself to the sinuous curve of her neck.

Her head fell away, exposing the sensitive arch even
further. Hunt’s hands slid over the silken material at her waist and rose to caress her breast. He tugged down the shoulder straps. Her hands glided over the snap buttons of his shirt. Impatiently, Hunt shrugged off his clothing and the remainder of hers. His lips pressed her back down onto the bed. He followed.

Shallie felt herself slip away again to that place she had visited only with Hunt, where all thoughts—past, present, future—had no meaning. Sensation became all that mattered. She was ruled by Hunt’s smell, his taste, the feel of his chest against hers. Worries, doubts, insecurities, all vanished, swept away by the tidal wave of feeling crashing down on her. She gave herself over to it and swam in a black, weightless sea of desire.

The pounding seemed to come from within her own head, passion’s relentless beating. But it didn’t stop when she willed it to. It continued until Hunt cursed and, pulling a sheet around himself, went to the door.

“This had better be mighty important,” he growled, letting in a streak of daylight as he opened the door.

Shallie couldn’t hear the response, but she froze when the pitch of the voice reached her ears. It was Trish and she was crying.

“Are you sure?” Hunt asked.

All Shallie could make out was more sniffling and a few muffled words.

“Dammit to hell,” Hunt cursed. He looked around the
room behind him, his gaze ricocheting distractedly from Shallie before he turned back to Trish. “All right. I’ll be down. Wait for me by the pickup. You know which one it is.” Hunt shut the door gently behind her. “I’ve got to get over to the grounds,” he announced, grabbing up clothes off the floor. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Wait here for me.” With that curtly delivered order, he was gone.

Shallie listened to the muted sound of his departure down the long, carpeted hall, then the slamming of two doors and the spatter of gravel as Hunt’s truck pulled away. Shallie slumped down in the bed. An icy fist plunged down her throat and settled in her stomach. Hunt had gone away with Trish. That one bare fact echoed and reechoed through the empty room. The streaks of sunlight peeking around the corners of the drapes lengthened but did nothing to warm Shallie. When she finally pulled herself out of the stunned numbness engulfing her and glanced at the clock, it was nearly seven. She estimated that Hunt had been gone for well over two hours. She had to help her uncle load up the stock. Dully, she pulled back the covers and forced her legs over the side of the bed. She pulled on the silk dress and slunk to her own room. She was dressed and packed in less than fifteen minutes.

As she pulled up to the rodeo grounds, she saw Jesse Southerland stagger toward his truck, parked near the stock pens. A trickle of fresh blood ran from his nostril.
Moments later, Hunt came out of the coliseum. Trish was clinging to his arm. Hunt’s right eye was nearly swollen shut. The three of them on the deserted parking lot looked like the major characters in some primitive drama. It took Shallie only seconds to know how the script they’d just played out had read: Trish had somehow maneuvered Hunt onto the rodeo grounds. Perhaps she’d fabricated some excuse, perhaps he’d come willingly. Perhaps two factors, deception and Hunt’s own undeniable urge, had combined. It didn’t matter. Once they were alone, Trish had reclaimed Hunt just as Shallie had feared all along that she would. Then Jesse, the recently scorned lover, had stumbled upon them. The fight that followed was as inevitable as Hunt and Trish’s coupling.

The icy fist in Shallie’s belly wrapped its fingers around her heart. She cursed herself for having been half a dozen kinds of fool but mostly for being the kind stupid enough to care for a rodeo cowboy. She’d known how it would end and had only herself to blame for the dull throb of pain that was already beginning to crack through the shocked numbness.

Hunt saw her. He shook Trish from his arm and came toward her. With every slap of his boots against the parking lot, his words “Shallie, you don’t know what you mean to me” came back at her like a jeering taunt.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t get back,” he said, as casually as if he’d left her in the middle of a card game or a television
program. “We couldn’t find Jesse at first. Trish was afraid he was going to try something really desperate. We finally looked here and found him trying to get Pegasus into the chutes and rigged up. It took some physical persuasion to convince him that he was in no condition for a ride.”

Shallie stared at Hunt, amazed to see his eyes sparkling as if she were supposed to enjoy his hastily constructed fiction. Behind him, Trish cocked her head, trying to catch more of their conversation. An amused smirk tilted the corners of her mouth. It was the smirk that snapped the thin leash Shallie was holding on her rage.

“You liar,” she hissed. “Who do you think I am? Some dumb buckle bunny who’s so thrilled to be with the big rodeo stud that she’ll believe anything he tells her? Well, I’m not.” Anger pumped a rush of blood to her head where it pounded so fiercely in her ears that she could barely hear his feeble lies.

“Shallie, what are you talking about?”

His retort rang hollow and false. She couldn’t believe he’d resort to such a cliché.

“You’re just like your grandfather, aren’t you, Hunt?” Shallie hurled the accusation. “That’s why you stay with him, admire him in spite of the abominable way he treats you. You’re two of a kind, two whoring tomcats—”

Hunt’s hands clamped around her forearms, as if Shallie were some shrill accordion that he could silence
with one decisive gesture. “I love that old man.” His face had gone a deathly white. “And I won’t stand for you or for anyone else—”

“What?” Shallie challenged. “What won’t you stand for? To hear anyone speak the truth about him? About you? Because you’re cut from the same cloth, Hunt McIver.”

His hand snapped back and quivered in the air next to her cheek, poised to strike, to slap at both the mouth and the words that issued from it. With one convulsive gesture, he pushed her from him. In a voice of iron calm, he told her, “We’ll be forced together at some rodeos. Don’t come anywhere near the chutes when I’m competing. If you need to know anything about the contracts you’re working, call Jake or have your uncle call me. We won’t speak again. Ever.”

“Don’t worry. The last thing in the world I want is to see or talk with you.” Even as she spoke them, Shallie knew that her venomous words were a lie. As she watched Hunt McIver walk away, Trish molded to his side, she knew it was a lie she would live with the rest of her life.

F
ort Worth. Scottsdale. San Antonio.
Tucson. Salinas. Odessa. The rodeo grounds changed from floodlit grandstands to sunbaked bleachers over the next months and so did the names of the towns. Even the weather changed, heating up along with the furious pace that would climax in December at the National Finals. Yet in the face of constant change from one motel room and arena to the next, over long, dusty miles traveled in the cab of a semi loaded with rodeo stock, Shallie felt like an insect imprisoned in amber, locked in a static and unmoving world ruled by pain.

Intellectually she realized that she was living the dream she’d had since first deciding to challenge one of the last great bastions of masculinity and become a rodeo contractor. But emotionally she took no delight in the acceptance and recognition she was achieving. A rodeo didn’t pass when the top cowboys and members of
the rodeo committee didn’t compliment her and Walter on how smoothly the show had run or on what fine stock they’d turned out. Especially Pegasus. Shallie’s “pig in a poke” had, in the space of a few months, established himself as a legend on the circuit—the horse that bucked straight and fair and didn’t fight in the chute, but absolutely could not be ridden.

At the rodeo in Phoenix, Shallie heard the words of an old hand, a man who had held the bronc-riding title for six years in the late fifties and early sixties, and who had ridden every great horse to come out of a chute during those decades, as he told one of his cronies, “I saw that Pegasus today and I do believe that he is the finest bronc I’ve ever seen. And that includes Midnight. I drew that danged grave-digging horse back in ’59 . . .”

Shallie left the pair to reminisce about mounts ridden before she’d even been born. For a moment her spirits soared, then plummeted just as far when she realized that she would never be able to share that accolade with Hunt. That realization and its effect were like the symptoms of a lingering infection that was cutting Shallie’s appetite for life.

She’d climbed to the highest rung on rodeo’s ladder. At that height she discovered that the excitement in the arena was outdone only by the perpetual partying which accompanied it. Her new friends and acquaintances were champions she had only read about before: movie stars
who liked to rope and be part of the exclusive rodeo fraternity, oil millionaires playing cowboy, agents searching for a face that would epitomize the West and sell their clients’ products, and the ever-present swarm of hangers-on—buckle bunnies, photographers, and reporters. Among the last group, Shallie quickly became the year’s novelty attraction. She was interviewed and reinterviewed about what it was
really
like to be the only female stock contractor working the professional circuit. She repeated her answers for countless digital recorders and television cameras.

“What about dating?” The Houston talk-show hostess cocked her head toward Shallie while the television camera blinked its red light at her. The woman had obviously patterned herself after Katie Couric, hoping to catch the manner that made people bare their innermost secrets in public. “I mean, all those gorgeous cowboys, isn’t that quite a temptation? Or would mixing business and pleasure be bad for business?”

Lady,
Shallie thought to herself,
if you only knew just how little I was “tempted.”