Cowboys & Kisses (20 page)

He nodded, a small smile on his mouth.

“I’ll see you later,” I added.

He nodded again.

We still stood there, staring at each other. The screen door slammed. I glanced over to see Mom and Dax were gone—then there was no more space between me and Wyatt. He pulled me against him, fiercely at first, then gently. He pressed a kiss to my temple, his breath caressing my forehead and unleashing new shivers and tingles and…

He let me go, sighed, and climbed into his truck. I wrapped my arms around myself and watched him back down the driveway, loving the smile on his face.

***

“Dad just went off.” Dax shrugged, driving onto the right shoulder to let a huge truck pass us on the country road we were travelling. “They haven’t fought like that since…”

“Before we moved,” I finished for him. “No idea what set it off?”

He edged his truck back onto the road and glanced at me. “Mom got a phone call this morning.”

“O-kay. You shooting for cryptic or is it just coming naturally?” I didn’t want a lot of build-up or drama.

He laughed. “Ass. You tell me. If Mom got a phone call from someone and Dad stormed out of the house, who do you think it was?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” I made no effort to hide my irritation.

Dax was just as irritated. “Were you really that self-absorbed?”

I punched him on the shoulder. “At least that was past tense.”

“You seem to be getting…better.” He was reluctant.

“Gosh, thanks.” I hoped he was right. I didn’t want to be that girl anymore. “I thought it was part of teenager-dom.”

“Allie, in your case, it was a full blown episode.”

Guilt twisted my gut. “Back to Mom, please.”

“You know Todd Dowdy.”

“Dr. Todd?” I asked. “From the vet hospital? Taffy Todd?” Dax and I had nicknamed him Taffy Todd because he’d kept a bowl of saltwater taffy on his desk just for us. Dax and I had spent a lot of time at the teaching hospital growing up, our home away from home.

“Yeah, that one.” His mouth was pressed flat.

“What about him?”

Dax let out a long, low sigh. “Mom and he…well…they…”

“Are besties?” This wasn’t news. Todd had been hilarious, always making Mom laugh.

“You could say that,” he ground out.

“Dax, what
about
Mom and Taffy Todd?” As soon as I said it out loud I got it. And I felt vaguely nauseous. “Mom…a-and Todd?”

“I don’t know what happened between them, exactly, okay?”

I couldn’t think. “But…how…what do you
know?
”

“We, Dad and I, caught them kissing.” He paused. “The night of your accident.”

Officially wanting to throw up here
. “Oh my God.”

“It was…Dad went nuts. He punched Todd in the face, broke his nose.”

“Mom?”

“Dad hardly spoke to her. He said you were in the hospital, that Lindie was dead.” He paused over the last part, looking at me.

It hurt to hear him say it out loud. But this—Mom and Dad? Had I always been so fricking self-absorbed? A wave of self-loathing washed over me. “I’m a horrible, horrible person. How could I not know?”

“You kind of had a lot going on.”

“Dax. Oh my God.” I paused, still trying to process everything he’d said. “Poor Dad.”

He snorted. “It was a
kiss
. They weren’t eating each other’s faces, you know? Dad’s been kind of MIA for the last two years.”

“So you’re defending her?” I asked, astounded.

“I’m not defending or blaming either of them, okay? I just know their marriage isn’t a rock, it’s rocky. I don’t know what Todd called about this morning. But when we got home from the river, Dad heard Mom say something on the phone, and took off.”

“When did our family get so screwed up?”

Dax was quiet for a while. “I think all families are screwed up. The older you get, the more obvious it is.”

I looked at my brother. “Get that from a fortune cookie?”

He laughed. “Nope, I’ve always been wise and philosophical.”

We turned in to the fairgrounds and parked. The sun was dropping and the sky was turning a peachy-pink, with streaks of feather-white clouds. A few stars were beginning to appear, reminding me of that night with Wyatt. The dark, the cliff, the stars…feeling safe and secure and…loved.

We made our way to the gate entrance. “Twenty dollars, honey.” The ticket attendant with helmet-hair and bright red lipstick smiled at me. “Aren’t you a pretty thing?”

“Thank you.”

Dax snorted. “She was talking to me, Allie.”

The woman laughed. “You two kids have some fun tonight.”

“You do look extra nice,” Dax said as we made our way to the stands. “Any reason why?”

I glanced down at my pale yellow strapless sundress. A sundress I’d picked because my back and shoulders were burned pretty badly and I couldn’t deal with a bra or anything else rubbing up against me. I was still wearing my boots; lots of girls wore skirts and dresses with boots, so why couldn’t I? And some pretty earrings, too. I wanted to look extra nice for Wyatt.

“Allie?” Dax nudged me. “Earth to Allie.” I smiled at him. His brows rose. “Uh-huh.”

“What, uh-huh?”

“Uh-huh, it’s about time.”

I nudged him back. “And how are things going in the make-a-move department with Molly?”

He frowned. “Not.”

That was interesting. I figured they’d have been having some serious make-out sessions at this point.
Because I’m interested in having some serious make-out sessions.

“I think there might be someone else,” Dax added.

I stopped walking then. “What?”

He shrugged, but kept walking to the bleachers. “I don’t want to talk about it tonight. Let’s just chill and relax, okay? No Mom. No Dad. No Molly. Deal?”

I swallowed back the questions I had. “Sure.”

We headed to the middle section of the bleachers and climbed halfway up. High enough for all the people walking back and forth not to block our view but still low enough that the bugs and bats didn’t do regular fly-bys.

The “Star-Spangled Banner” was sung. The announcer did an especially cheesy opening speech about freedom, how blessed we were to live in America, and our troops—and somehow I still ended up teary-eyed.

Mutton bustin’ was up. “I’m going to have to dig out the pictures of you doing this,” I teased Dax.

He glared at me. “Great.”

I laughed, remembering Grandma steering a resistant four-year-old Dax into the dirt-packed arena. I—blond pigtailed princess that I was—got to sit and cheer him on from the stands. Nothing like watching parents put their three-, four-, and five-year-olds on a sheep tearing across a dirt-packed arena for their amusement. Dax had made it almost the length of the arena before the sheep had tossed him off. He face-planted and came up spitting dirt.

“This is just cruel,” he muttered now.

“Only for the kids bouncing on the back of the sheep. I think it’s hilarious.” I kept laughing.

He relaxed after the fourth kid—a genius who rode the sheep backward and made it all the way to the end of the arena—finished. We were all on our feet clapping then.

“Cut the kiddie crap,” someone yelled from the end of the stands.

“Sounds like someone’s had too much to drink,” Dax murmured.

When the kids were done, the rodeo clown entered the ring, wearing baggy pants, a beat-up cowboy hat over his microphone head-set, and suspenders with lots of bandanas tied on. He was making bad jokes and trying to keep the crowd amused. “Anyone here from jolly ol’ England?” he asked, with an absolutely horrible accent. “How about Japan?” He climbed up the arena wall and straddled the fence, searching the crowd.

“Want anything to drink?” Dax asked me.

“Water, please.”

“
Please?
” He shook his head. “Remind me to thank Wyatt.”

I grinned. “Don’t trip and break anything on your way down.”

“
There’s
my sister.” He winked and climbed down the bleachers.

“I think we have a winner,” the rodeo clown said to the rodeo announcer.

“Really, Cowboy Jack? Where are they from?” the announcer asked.

“Why, they’re all the way from South Africa,” Cowboy Jack answered. The family in question was all smiles.

“Cut the shit, Cowboy Jack. Nobody gives a rat’s ass if those people are from South Africa,” the same slurred voice called out.

Cowboy Jack ignored the heckler, asking the people, “How long is that flight?”

The woman was giggling and nervous. “It took—”

“Who cares? Sit down and shut up,” the irate voice continued.

I leaned forward, looking for the obnoxious drunk that was giving poor ol’ Cowboy Jack and the South African tourists so much grief.

“What was that again?” Cowboy Jack was good—I had to give him that.

“Twenty-plus hours,” the woman said, her enthusiasm somewhat deflated. She kept glancing over Cowboy Jack’s shoulder at the heckler.

“You hear that? More than twenty hours just to see our lil ol’ rodeo! Well, I’ll be.” The announcer sounded impressed. “We’ll have to get you and your family something special. What do you have for them, Cowboy Jack?”

“A swift kick in the butt back to South Africa?” the heckler continued. I wasn’t having any luck seeing him, so I stood—so did half the stands.

The man was leaning against one of the lamp poles that surrounded the arena. His hat was tipped forward over his face, so I couldn’t see much of him. He held a longneck beer bottle in one hand, the other shoved into his pocket. He looked relaxed, at ease. Apparently he was completely comfortable being an asshole.

“How about some boots for the whole family?” Cowboy Jack asked the announcer.

“And some hats, too,” the rodeo announcer added.

“Give me a break,” the heckler yelled.

“How about you give
me
a break, Travis?” Cowboy Jack said to his heckler.

Travis—the obnoxious drunk man—pushed off the pole and threw his bottle over his shoulder, into the arena. Security came running. I think it was security; they were wearing white button-down shirts and white cowboy hats. Travis wasn’t impressed. He leaned back against the rail.

“Look, the white-hat brigade to the rescue.” Travis laughed. “Am I supposed to be shakin’ in my boots?”

One of the men stooped low to talk to Travis.

“Let’s get this rodeo started!” the announcer called out. Thumping music blasted—nothing like the twang of a steel guitar and a nasal-voice singer to kick things off cowboy-style. “We don’t just have some of the best US roping teams here tonight, we’ve got some international cowboys too.”

Roping. Finally. Wyatt.
I sat, ignoring the white-hat brigade stand-off.

“Miss anything?” Dax asked as he sat, handing me my water bottle.

“You did, actually,” I replied.

“More child abuse? Wait, let me guess. Animal abuse?”

“Way better. A rowdy drunk.
And
cowboy security.”

He looked at me, surprised. “Man,
seriously?
And I missed it? That sucks.”

I laughed, opening my water bottle and taking a long drink.

“Roping’s up first?” Dax asked. I nodded.

“First in the chute, a couple of native Montana boys: Cary Green and Lance MacMasters. Points are based on time and any errors the boys make on the way out of the chute. Let’s see how they do…”

The gate burst open, the steer shot free, and the team swarmed in. They didn’t do so hot. Apparently the heeler broke the boundary before time—whatever that meant. It added fifteen points to their score. I sat back, smiling.

“Next up, all the way from Chile—”

Not Wyatt and Hank.
I took another sip of water.

“How’s Mrs. D doing?” Dax asked.

I sighed. “Let’s add the Duncans to the off-limits topic list for the evening.”

He wrapped his arm around my shoulders. “Really?” He gave me a squeeze. “Sounds good to me.”

“Da-ax.” I felt my guilt rising. “I can’t turn my back on her—”

Something was happening. The header had the steer lassoed, but he let go of the rope—almost threw it.

“Ooh, that right there, ladies and gentlemen—a cowboy will put the safety of his horse before the win anytime,” the announcer said as the rider leapt from his horse, cutting quickly through the rope that was around the steer’s horns. It was tangled between the horse’s front legs. “After all, a cowboy is only as good as his horse. The trust they have is what lets them work as a team.”

The cowboy stooped, running his hands up the horse’s front legs. He patted the horse on the neck and tipped his hat to the crowd.

“Judges will have to decide if they’ll qualify for a re-run or not. Next up, Black Falls’ best, Wyatt Holcomb and Hank Pendleton.”

I sat forward on the edge of the bench but I didn’t have long to wait. Hank was fast, but Wyatt was faster. I knew, after talking to Molly, that the heeler had to be patient. He had to watch for just the right second, when the rope would catch both feet cleanly. And he had to do that as fast as possible.

He has a lot of patience
. I smiled.

“Best score tonight, ladies and gents. 16.25 seconds. Let’s give them a big hand.”

I whistled, standing up and clapping, and I think I might have stomped my foot too—I was
really
proud and happy. Wyatt turned, lifted his hat in my direction, and smiled that holy-hell smile just for me.

Dax laughed when I sat down. “Don’t play hard to get or anything.”

“Okay, I won’t.”

He shook his head and nudged me. I nudged him back.
Yep, seriously making a fool out of myself and so not caring.
I watched as Wyatt and Hank rode out of the arena.

“You the Cooper girl?”

I turned. It was the heckler, staring down at me, looking really pissed off.

“You gonna answer?” he snapped.

“No, sir,” I spoke calmly, facing the arena, “I don’t think I will.” I didn’t know who he was or what his problem was, but I’d learned ignoring people normally made them go away. I could only hope Drunk Travis would do just that.

He didn’t. He stood there staring at me, completely unfazed by the people he was standing in front of.