Peace River (Rockland Ranch Series) (11 page)

             
Then the events started.  The roping was great!  She especially loved the team roping.  Watching Slade and Rossen compete together on horseback for the first time was an incredible thrill.  It was almost like watching a choreographed dance or something.  Their precision and teamwork were amazing, and she couldn’t help feeling a sense of pride when they took first place and took their victory lap around the arena.  In just a few short days she’d come to feel these were
her
cowboys. 

             
The tie-down roping was interesting, although she sometimes felt sorry for the calves.  The steer wrestling, or as the announcer called it, bulldogging, was just flat out unbelievable.  She didn’t ever remember having seen it before, and when the first cowboy  jumped off that racing horse and actually threw the steer she laughed right out loud.  She thought to herself,
These guys are nuts! Who comes up with these ideas?
  Throughout the whole rodeo there was a ridiculous clown wearing huge, baggy Wrangler jean shorts held up by wildly colored suspenders, running around teasing the contestants and audience alike.  He started in poking fun at the “daggers” and Isabel was astounded to realize that the team he was teasing was, in fact, Slade and Rossen. 

She’d tho
ught they were only ropers and realized she really didn’t know much about what they did for a living.  The announcer was saying they were headed to the National Finals Rodeo again if they kept competing as well as they had been, and she wasn’t even sure what that meant.  It sounded important.  She probably ought to find out. 

             
Her heart was in her throat for just a second as Slade dove off his horse.  Almost immediately his steer was down and the crowd was cheering wildly and continued to cheer as Rossen swung his horse around and pretended to rope the clown who’d been teasing them.  Leave it to Rossen to clown with the clown!  The thought crossed her mind for the umpteenth time,
Why were these two men single? 
They seemed to have it all.  Were they just not the settling down kind?  She’d only been with them a few days, but had yet to see any sign of a girlfriend.  The cowgirls were missing out!  These two were good men. 

             
The first bareback bronc out of the chute ended her musing.  Bareback bronc riding was exciting, but she quite honestly thought the cowboys were trashing their bodies for an adrenaline rush.  Getting beat up like that for a show seemed incredibly foolish.  And when the saddle bronc event began and Slade’s name was announced she couldn’t even believe it! She’d thought him far too intelligent to do such a thing, and found herself disgusted with him as she watched. 
What a brain dead thing to do to such an incredible physique!

She thought back to that first morning when he’d sat up in bed shirtless and his hair all tousled.  Her heart beat faster just thinking about it.  She’d hardly been able to look away and was sure he’d known it.  She’d tried to be up and outside when they got out of bed these last few days.  She was much less likely to gawk that way. 

Pulling her mind back from
memories of Slade’s bare chest to his bronc ride, she watched him finish with the second highest score and held her breath again as one of the pick-up men rode up to help him dismount.  Slade simply leaned over onto the pick-up horse and then slid safely to the ground as Isabel finally breathed.  She decided she definitely appreciated the job the pick-up men did and knew they were easily some of the best riders out there.

             
She ultimately did see the barrel racers and as Jesse came out and knocked over the first barrel, Isabel felt bad for her.  She may have been a bit of a ditz, but the girl could ride.  Isabel admired her talent and guts.

             
The last event of the evening was the bull riding. She’d seen some of this on TV on Saturday afternoons and, frankly, she didn’t like it at all, but it held a certain morbid fascination.  These riders made the bronc riders look intelligent.  At least the broncs didn’t try to kill the cowboys after they were thrown! 

             
Several of the riders wore thick vests the announcer called a flack jacket, which he explained was like a bullet proof vest to protect the cowboy’s vitals.  Some also wore neck pads, mouth guards and helmets.  Even with all the protective gear it still seemed to her to be a crazy, dangerous way to make a living. 

There were actually two new clowns
who were introduced as bull-fighting clowns.  They had the important job of trying to protect these overly gutty cowboys from the aggression of the bulls.  She had to remind herself that jockeying was also very dangerous, but she rationalized that at least winning a race seemed to have a point.  This was just foolish. 

             
Three or four men had ridden their bulls when suddenly almost right in front of her the rider was thrown.  As the whole crowd gasped, she knew instantly something wasn’t right.  Strangely, it made the entire scene around her appear to go into slow motion with every detail heightened. 

Instead of being th
rown clear, the rider’s hand hung up in the rope, and as the bull continued to spin and buck, making deep grunting noises with every impact, the bull rider was whipped around like a rag doll.  The sheer violence of the bull only accelerated and even the smell of the arena dirt was more pungent.  No one in the crowd seemed to breathe as the bull-fighting clowns dove in, trying to free him and stall the bull, but it felt like days before the rider was finally freed. 

As one, the
crowd continued to hold their breath as the obviously wounded young cowboy couldn’t move fast enough to escape the bull that immediately turned on him.  The scene slowed even further as the huge bull closed the meager distance, dirt flying with every digging, determined stride.  It caught the cowboy in the back with its horns and threw him high into the air.  As soon as the cowboy landed, the bull began to grind him into the arena dirt with its massive head. 

             
The bullfighting clowns were still there whooping and slapping, trying to distract the bull and pull the cowboy to safety, but the bull would not be deterred. 

             
Seemingly minutes later, although it could only have been seconds, when the bull was finally pulled away by a pickup man who had roped its horns, the cowboy lay piled up in the dirt not moving.  An ambulance quickly drove into the arena from a back gate and the young man was carefully moved onto a stretcher and put into the back.

             
As the vehicle pulled away, lights flashing, leaving a somber and strangely silent arena, all the earlier excitement of the evening faded, leaving Isabel sick to her stomach.  Trying for a deep breath, she shuddered involuntarily.  Tears welled up and coursed quietly down her cheeks as she left her seat and wended her way through the crowds and the cars and vendors, back to the trailer to let herself in. 

             
At first she climbed up on her bed and closed her eyes, but as soon as she did the scene would replay itself over and over in her head.  She climbed back down and tried to keep her mind on the late dinner the guys had requested.  Tears still dripped down her face as she grated cheese for the Alfredo.  What a horrible waste of a life.  She had no doubt that the young cowboy had died that night.  There was no way a body could survive that kind of abuse.

              Slade and Rossen were watching the bull riding from an area behind the chutes.  As soon as Slade saw the bull catch the young rider, he knew they needed to get to Isabel.  She was sitting almost directly in front of the wreck and this was her first rodeo.  They were trying to reach her through the crowded grandstand when they saw her get up and leave, and Slade groaned.  He had hoped tonight would be a happy experience for her.  They hadn’t really settled whether she would stay or go, and he wanted her to stay badly enough that it almost scared him.  Even if she did go, he wanted her to take good memories of the rodeo life with her. 

             
When they finally made it back to the trailer, she was quietly sobbing into the pasta sauce she was making.  Slade took one look at her and knew she needed to be held, but he’d given her his word.  Rossen gently rubbed her shoulder as they told her the young cowboy had indeed died on the way to the hospital. 

             
No one really felt like eating, so they put the dinner away for another day and got undressed and went to bed.

             
Rossen and Slade knew she was crying behind her privacy curtain, but didn’t have a clue how to deal with it.  They could only imagine what she’d seen.  It had made them sick and they were clear across the arena and had dealt with this kind of thing before.  Listening to her cry was killing them, and when she finally drifted off to sleep she still breathed with an occasional little sob.

             
Deep in the night, Slade was awakened by her moans and could tell she was having a nightmare.  Unsure of what to do, he hesitated for several minutes until finally he stood up against her bed and pushed the curtain back.  Just as he went to touch her to wake her, she whispered, “Oh, Dante, he died.  He died.”  She began to cry in her sleep. 

             
Slade hesitantly brushed the tears aside as he softly spoke to her, “Isabel. Isabel, wake up.”  He gently rubbed her arm until she began to wake.  He could feel exactly when she went from bad dream to half awake fear.  She stiffened and jerked away and instinctively he knew she was going to scream. 

She cried out in such fear it made the hair on the back
of his neck tingle.  He spoke her name again and the scream died out when she realized who it was.  There was incredible relief in her sleepy voice as she breathed, “Oh Slade, it’s you.”  Half asleep, she stopped pulling away from him and moved toward him instead, burying her face against his neck.  Still breathing hard, she whispered, “I thought you were Judd.”  He held her against him for a moment until she stopped shaking and her breathing slowed.

             
Reassuringly, he said, “You’ve been having bad dreams.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to scare you.” 

             
“Oh, Slade, he died.”  Her sad whisper against his skin gave him chills.  He felt her breath on his bare chest and pulled her more firmly against him.  Even this upset, she felt good here in his arms. 

             
He held her as she cried again. It was much easier to hold her than just listening to her cry last night had been.  That had killed him.  She sniffled and through her tears said tiredly, “I’m sorry I‘m being such a baby.  It’s just such a waste.  What a waste of a young life.”  He stroked her hair.  It wasn’t pulled back and fastened for once and it was incredibly silky.  He wished he could have seen it loose, but it was too dark and he wondered why she never let it down in the daytime. 

             
Still stroking, he said, “I’m so sorry you had to see that, especially your first time.”  He whispered against her hair.  “It’s not usually like that, I promise.” 

He continued to
hold her and stroke her hair until finally he was sure she was back to sleep.  As gently as possible, he eased her back further onto her bed and went back to his. 

             
Now he was wide awake, which was good because he needed to do some serious soul searching.  He had finally found a girl who truly intrigued him, and it was actually frustrating.  Because, first off, he’d promised her he would maintain a strictly professional relationship, and secondly, he’d found out she was ridiculously wealthy. 

             
He had given his word, never dreaming that within a few days he would be more attracted to a woman than he’d ever been in his whole life.  He should have known it would happen.  He’d known there was something about her that first time he laid eyes on her.  She’d felt so good in his arms just now.  So right.  She was warm and soft and smelled like wildflowers.  She was so different from all the rodeo groupies who would have given him anything he asked, anytime, day or night. 

             
But her world was obviously a far cry from a ranch in Wyoming, although she didn’t act it.  The only thing that had even hinted at her wealth before their discovery was one day he had happened to notice her watch.  He still felt foolish when he remembered those loads of jeans.  

             
He turned over, telling himself it was just the novelty that intrigued him.  He’d never really known a woman like her.  In a few days, or weeks, when they got to know her better she wouldn’t be so fascinating.  Her perfume would stop haunting him and the magic of her laugh would fade.  He didn’t even try to tell himself he’d get used to the way her jeans fit.  Even the most cynical part of him didn’t really believe that.

              The next morning Isabel slept late for the first time since she’d been with them.  Slade hadn’t pulled her curtain closed again after her bad dreams last night and he could hardly keep his eyes off her as she slept.  He and Rossen poured cold cereal and went outside to eat.  They were in the lawn chairs again when she stepped out of the trailer.  Rossen was on his cell phone, and Slade looked up from his laptop as she sat in the chair beside him. Her hair was back in the twist again.  She had little dark circles under her eyes, but other than that, she was as beautiful as ever.