A Dark & Stormy Knight: A McKnight Romance (McKnight Romances) (33 page)

Georgia pointed her car south to catch
I-20. She was almost to the interstate before she realized she’d forgotten all
about her parents.

As always, her phone was in the bottom of
her bag. All those lectures to Eden about how cars and phones didn’t mix, and
here she was, digging for it, but the guilt couldn’t stand up to the sense of
urgency burrowing its way under her skin. It wouldn’t let her pull off the
road, even for this.

“I know you did your share of taking care
of Mama and now it’s my turn,” she said when Bethany answered. “And I know I
have no right to ask, but would you please, please take care of Mama today and . . .
probably tomorrow, too?” She winced even as she asked.

Bethany was silent for so long, Georgia
wondered if she’d lost the connection. Finally, Bethany asked, “Why? Where will
you be?”

Georgia took a deep breath. “I’m going to
Mesquite.”

“To the rodeo?”

“Yes.”

“Is Sol there?”

“Yes.”

A pause then, “Does this mean what I
think this means? Are you going to mend your fences with Sol? Are you going
back to him?”

“I—” Saying it out loud felt serious as
hell. God help her, it felt like a commitment. Everything inside—all her
internal organs—felt jittery. Going after Sol was scary as hell, but it also
felt as if she could maybe make it happen. “Maybe. I think so. I want to. I—”

She sounded like a blithering idiot, but
apparently that didn’t matter to Bethany. An elongated,
“Yesssssss!”
exploded
from Georgia’s cell phone. It didn’t take much imagination to picture the
stoked fist pump, the kind her sister did when the Texas Longhorns made a
winning touchdown in the last seconds of the fourth quarter.

Knowing Bethany was enthusiastically on
her side, Georgia’s jitters faded. “I love him.” She drew a fresh breath and
dove in deeper. “I’m in love with him.”

“Of course you are. Didn’t you know that?”

No. No, I didn’t.

Bethany didn’t wait for an answer. “You
go do what you gotta do. I’ll take care of things here. Whatever you need.”

As good as her sister’s reaction felt,
Georgia knew it wouldn’t be universally shared. “Um, you might not want to
mention what I’m doing to Mama.”

“You think she’ll stroke again?”

She just might, Georgia thought, but that
wasn’t the reason. “Let’s be sure there’s something to tell them.”

“You think Sol will say no?” Bethany’s
tone was amused.

Her stomach threatened to start its
jittery dance again. “Let’s just say . . . It’s not a sure
thing.”

“Oh, I think it is, but however you want
to handle this is okay with me. As long as you come home with Sol.”

From your lips to God’s ears.

Halfway to Mesquite, Georgia remembered
she had her daddy’s CD in her bag. Maybe now was the time to listen to it.
Keeping her eyes on the road, she dug down until she felt the edge of the case.

She felt an odd split in perceptions as
she listened to the first soft guitar chords. Aware that she was driving down a
busy Texas highway, she also felt as if she’d stepped back into her own past.
Her daddy’d sung a lot before he’d gone on the road but not much in recent
years. How long had it been since she’d heard him sing? When his Bob Seger
voice came through the speakers, so vivid, so familiar, and yet so different,
too, because he wasn’t singing for her and Bethany or even for himself. He
sounded like someone who should be on the radio or playing a concert.

And then she got caught up in this music.
Her daddy’s voice sang a song she’d never heard before. The lyrics told of a
dream that wouldn’t let him rest, a dream that took him away from the ones he
loved. He sang of all the things he was missing back at home. He sang of the
division in his soul. He sang of wanting two things that couldn’t coexist and
the loneliness of the road.

Georgia’s heart broke for him. It broke
for herself as well.

After the song ended, she realized her
daddy could have lived both dreams if her mama had been a different kind of
woman.

She didn’t want to be her mama. She didn’t
want to make Sol choose the way her daddy’d had to.

###

Damn,
Sol thought when he found out he’d drawn Colonel Mustard
for the short round. Just when things had started looking up.

He’d scored eighty-four on an
Angus-Brahma cross whose bucking style suited his in the first round. A good
enough score to put him in position to win this event if he had a solid ride in
the second round. His history with Colonel Mustard, however, wasn’t promising.

“I’m quitting,” Sol told Terry as he
fastened his chaps in the locker room. Even here, they could hear the muffled
drone of the rodeo announcer. The calf roping had just started.

“Quitting? You made the prettiest ride in
the long round that I’ve seen out of you in a while. Why would you quit now?”

“Just am,” Sol said. “This is my last
round-up.”

Terry shot him a long, hard look. “Is
this about drawing Colonel Mustard?”

“It’s got nothin’ to do with the bulls.
It’s time, that’s all.” It was too much to hope that his buddy wouldn’t give
him grief over this.

Terry snorted and wound tape around his
hand to protect it from injuries. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

They both had. Hundreds of time. Some
cowboys actually went home. Sat out the rest of the season. A few stayed away.
Most showed back up when the new season started. Cowboys were like smokers that
way. Most of them had to quit several times before it actually stuck.

“You ain’t heard it from me before,” Sol
said.

“You’re right.” Terry eyed Sol. “So why
now?”

Sol had been down too many roads with
Terry not to at least try to explain. “I gotta get serious about life. Find my
place on the ranch. I gotta be Eden’s daddy.” He couldn’t lose her the way he’d
lost Georgia. “Zach wants help with the breeding program.” He huffed out a deep
breath. “And I ain’t gettin’ any younger.”

“Yeah,” Terry muttered, sounding a touch
grouchy. “None of us are.”

Sol attributed his grumpiness to the presence
of Molly, Terry’s newly minted fiancée, who was in the stands. The wedding was
slated for December, after rodeo season.

Smart girl, Sol thought. If she couldn’t
get Terry to quit, at least he’d be home for their anniversaries. However many
of them she hung on for.

###

Thanks to an accident on the freeway that
had tied up traffic for hours, when Georgia finally pulled into Mesquite, she
was worried that it was all over. Coward that she was, she didn’t know whether
to be relieved or grateful when the ticket seller told her the short round was
coming up.

In other places, the rodeo came to town
once a year. In Mesquite, since 1958, every Friday and Saturday night through
the summer was rodeo night. Most places couldn’t have sustained the level of
interest necessary to keep the weekly rodeos profitable in an arena with a
capacity of six thousand, but this was Texas, and Texans loved rodeo the way
NASCAR fans loved car crashes.

The climate-controlled arena was a long
rectangle with the entrance for the timed events at one end and the chutes for
the bucking events at the other. Georgia considered spending the sixty bucks
for club seating. She needed to face what Sol did, to accept it, maybe even
embrace it, if she wanted to be with him. If she couldn’t see it as anything
but torture, a trial to be gotten through, they had no chance of being happy
together.

Watching from club seating right by the
chutes was the most difficult test she could devise, but sixty dollars to watch
a single event—in truth, a single ride—was outrageously expensive. And if Sol
wasn’t riding or had gotten bucked off in the long round, it would be money
wasted. Besides, she didn’t want to be where he might look up and see her.
Especially if she failed the test. So instead, she paid thirty dollars for the
next section up.

When she found her seat, it was closer to
the action than she’d thought it would be. A hundred miles closer than she
wished it were, if she wanted to be honest. From there, she’d be able to see
every excruciating detail.

Excruciating.
Now there was a word that described her
expectations perfectly.

Stop it.
She couldn’t think that way, or she’d
never get through this.

Georgia closed her eyes. Could she watch
Sol ride without feeling like she was on the verge of throwing up? How many
times had he gotten on the back of a bull? Hundreds, easily. Thousands?
Probably.

He’d ridden professionally for twelve
years. If she considered only that—leaving out the high school rodeoing and the
screwing around with bulls on the ranch—and calculated two bulls a week, that
was 104 a year. Some weeks would have been more—three or four. The week of July
Fourth—what rodeo people called Cowboy Christmas because of the number of
rodeos—there would have been a lot more. But there were also weeks, even
months, when he hadn’t ridden at all because of injuries or in that short gap
between seasons.

So an average of two bulls a week,
Georgia decided, knowing she was probably erring on the conservative side. Some
quick some mental math gave her a total of 1,248.

She hadn’t seen even a tenth of his
rides.

Even so, she’d seen him injured.
Concussions, sprains, broken bones. But he hadn’t died. And he won’t die
tonight, her logic argued.

Her logic wasn’t completely convincing,
but her stomach felt less knotted. She could do this. She could watch him ride
without her world collapsing around her. She pretended to believe that right up
until the first bull left its chute and bucked the rider off. Then all her
anxiety came flooding back.

The rider picked himself up and waved at
the crowd.

Relief washed through her, but it wasn’t
enough to dispel the adrenaline that had flooded her bloodstream the second the
chute had opened.

She took a couple of measured breaths, in
through her nose, out through her mouth, as she listened to the announcer sum
up the disappointing ride.

One down and . . . how
many to go?

She shut her eyes and tried to find a
happy place inside her head. The crowd around her buzzed while they waited for
the next ride. With a little effort, she throttled it back until it became
white noise.

This wasn’t so bad.

The announcer started talking about the
second pairing of bull and rider, but she didn’t let herself register the
words.

This was almost tolerable.

Then the noise from the crowd spiked.

I should open my eyes.
But it was so much better this way, so
she didn’t. She kept them closed for the next one, too. By the fourth ride, she’d
learned to interpret the sounds.

The crowd got louder the longer the rider
stayed aboard. The quality of the noise altering when the rider dismounted,
changing from encouraging yells to appreciative noises if he made the buzzer.
If he bucked off, there was a slight hitch followed by a rapid drop in volume
that quickly stabilized into a contented drone when he picked himself up.

The crowd would let her know if something
went badly wrong. There’d be a collective gasp, some prayerful “oh my Gods,”
and a tension-filled hush. None of the rides induced those sounds.

Once she had it worked out, she figured
out it was safe to open her eyes, but it was better if she didn’t. Maybe it was
cheating, but staying calm was easier if she didn’t watch.

When the announcer said Terry’s name, she
squeezed her eyes tighter, resisting the urge to peek because if Terry was
riding, Sol would be hanging over the chute, pulling his rope. She shoved Sol
out of her head, though he seemed reluctant to go, and focused on Terry. Would
it make a difference that she knew and liked Terry?

Amazingly, it didn’t. She was too focused
on interpreting the crowd noises to actually visualize what was happening with
the bull. What a relief. This was almost easy.

After one more ride, she heard, “. . . Sol
McKnight on Colonel Mustard,” and her heart started pounding. Something about
the bull’s name made her palms sweat.

None of the other bull names had sounded
familiar, so why did that one? Bulls developed followings just like the cowboys
did, but she avoided rodeo news. She was still listening with half an ear, so
when the announcer commented that Sol had met up with this bull before, right
there in this same arena, the memory dropped into place.

She’d watched him get bounced off this
bull, and the result had been a concussion. Somehow, she’d ended up taking him
home with her to watch over him for those first crucial hours. That had been an
interesting night, but what she remembered so vividly now was the sight of Sol
on the ground, curling into a ball as the bull—the one Sol was about to ride
again
—went
after him.