Crazy For You (9 page)

He frowned at the anger in her eyes. “Ella—”

“Don’t say anything else.” She scrambled to her booted feet and glared at him. But behind the glare he saw hurt. “I don’t want to hear it.”

She spun and hurried out of the stall, straw sticking out of her hair and on her wet backside.

“Ella,” he called out. “There’s straw all over you, honey, and it’s in your hair.”

“Don’t call me honey.” She paused and started brushing off the seat of her jeans and the backs of her legs, giving him time to close the stall door behind him and reach her.

“Let me help.” He grasped her upper arm so that she couldn’t take off and pulled straw out of her hair. He brushed off more hay from her back and everywhere else he could see it.

When he finished he turned her around, holding on to both of her shoulders. “This isn’t over,” he said softly. “We’re not through.”

She raised her chin. “This never happened and it will never happen.”

“You and I both know it did.” He brought her up against him. “And it will happen again, I promise you.”

“Leave me alone, Clint.” She narrowed her eyes. “This was a mistake that I don’t intend to repeat.”

With that she jerked out of his hold and marched out of the barn and into the rain.

By the time he’d closed up the barn and made his way into the house, Ella was already inside and out of sight. Alice was ready with his own clothes that she’d taken out of the washer and dried, along with a big towel. Again he left his muddy boots on the porch.

After he’d changed and had taken his borrowed wet clothes to the laundry room, he met Carl in the living room. “I’m driving, so just a little whiskey,” Clint said as Clive brought out a bottle of Jim Beam.

Carl’s hands shook as he poured two small glasses of whiskey, but Clint knew better than to offer to help. Carl handed Clint his glass then took a seat in his recliner. Clint sat on the couch nearby.

Alice walked in from the kitchen and smiled at Carl and Clint. “Goodnight, you two young men. I’m off to bed.”

Clint set his drink aside to stand and give Alice a hug. She kissed his cheek then patted it with her hand. She went to Carl and kissed his cheek, too, before heading down the hall to the bedrooms.

After Alice left, Clint settled back on the couch and began answering Carl’s questions. They talked about places Clint had gone, and things he’d seen and done.

At one point, Carl got up and gestured to him to follow to where a bronze sculpture was resting on a credenza.

Clint studied the bronze of a rodeo cowboy riding a horse, lasso in the air, a calf running ahead of the horse and rider racing behind it. The detail was amazing and it gave such a feeling of motion that Clint could imagine the scene in his mind. “That is a great sculpture.”

“Ella sculpted it,” Carl said with clear pride.

Clint shot his gaze to Carl. “Ella made this?” Clint looked back to the bronze. “It’s incredible.”

“Let me show you another.” Carl turned away as Clint dragged his attention from the sculpture.

Clint followed Carl to another sculpture, this one resting on a sturdy table with a lamp. The light illuminated another detailed sculpture. This one made him smile. It was a pair of rodeo clowns, now called bull fighters in the rodeo world, getting the attention of a wild looking bull as they tried to get the beast out of the arena.

Clint was still thinking about the bronzes as he and Carl sat again.

When Carl began to look tired, Clint leaned forward on the couch. “It’s about time I head back to the motel.”

Carl nodded. “When can you start?”

“Tomorrow morning I need to go to Phoenix to return the Mustang to the rental agency then buy myself another vehicle.” Clint dragged his hand down his face. “By the time I get back it’ll be late afternoon, early evening.”

“Day after tomorrow, then.” Carl got to his feet and Clint stood, too.

Clint thanked Carl who slapped him on the shoulder then saw him to the door. The rain had stopped but the night was still dark and heavy with clouds. Clint tugged on his boots then headed down the stairs and to the Mustang.

He glanced back at the house and saw a light in the window of the room he knew was Ella’s. He thought about the wild kiss in the hay and how he had almost taken her then and there. It had taken more restraint than he’d known he’d possessed to stop.

Ella’s reaction hadn’t surprised him. She was strong-willed and when she didn’t get what she wanted, she’d always tended to get a little pissed off.

And tonight she’d wanted him.

Once Clint was on the road, he turned over in his mind everything that had happened that evening. The revelation about Bucky’s death, Alice and Carl’s warm welcome, and what had happened with Ella in the barn. Damn but he had wanted to take her, right there in the horse stall. But like he’d told her, she deserved a hell of a lot more than some brief romp in the hay.

Clint blew out his breath and shook his head. Maybe he should feel guilty for wanting Ella, but he didn’t. There was something about Ella that brought out a hunger in him like he’d never felt before. Not just for sex… For something far more than that.

But those were feelings he didn’t want to explore right now.

He tried to still his mind as he drove back to town, but memories started assaulting him. His head ached as memories of Bucky and the night everything had gone horribly wrong rushed over him.

Bucky had stumbled a couple of times when he’d walked to the chute and Clint frowned. He put his hand on Bucky’s shoulder to stop him. “You’ve been drinking. You can’t get on that bronc.”

Instead of responding to Clint in his usual good-natured way, Bucky shoved Clint’s hand away. “You know I don’t drink and ride.”

“And I’m not going to let you start.” Clint didn’t smell alcohol on Bucky but something wasn’t right.

Bucky spun on Clint, his eyes narrowed. “Don’t you try and stop me. I haven’t had a damned drop to drink. I’m ridin’.” Bucky walked the few feet to the bucking chute where the bronc was waiting and he climbed up the metal pipes to the top.

“Wait,” Clint said, but in the next moment his friend was on the saddleless horse.

The bronc tossed his head and shifted uneasily beneath Bucky’s weight but couldn’t move because the chute was so narrow.

Bareback riding was physically rodeo’s most demanding sport with muscles, ligaments, joints, and bones strained and pounded mercilessly. Bareback bronc riders’ bodies suffered more abuse and had more long-term injuries and damage than any other rodeo sport.

Clint couldn’t let Bucky on a horse if his friend wasn’t in peak condition. “Bucky, stop.” Clint’s voice was hard as he climbed up the side of the chute, speaking in a hard, warning tone. “Don’t do it.”

Bucky gripped the leather rigging, concentrating on the horse and ignoring Clint.

Clint started to tell the cowboys preparing Bucky and the bronc to stop everything but Bucky gave the signal for the gate to be opened.

The bronc shot out of the gate with Bucky gripping the rigging. The horse bucked and twisted—

And Clint’s heart nearly stopped when Bucky slumped and tumbled off the bronc. Immediately the rodeo clowns shot toward the horse but it continued bucking, slamming its rear hooves down on Bucky as if the bronc had every intention of killing him.

Clint climbed over the chute railing and ran toward the bronc and Bucky.

Horror tore through Clint when the bronc’s hooves came down on Bucky’s head.

Bucky was completely still.

The rodeo clowns managed to get the bronc out of the ring but Clint knew it was too late. There was no way Bucky could have survived the damage done to his face and skull.

Still, he dropped to his friend’s side, trying to resuscitate him.

But Bucky was dead.

Clint snapped out of the nightmarish memory. He blinked, trying to separate what was real and what wasn’t.

He was parked on the side of the slick, muddy road, his body shaking and his skin clammy and cold. His knuckles ached from the death grip he had on the steering wheel as he tried to catch his breath.

Shaking his head, Clint tried to separate the memory from reality. How had he ended up at the side of the road? He had to thank God that he hadn’t ended up in the ditch just feet away.

He tried to swallow past the lump in his throat, but his mouth was dry and the lump too big. No matter what Carl had said, Clint should have dragged Bucky down as he was climbing the pipes to the top of the chute.

What would life be like for Bucky now if he’d been alive? Maybe he’d have a family and his own ranch.

How different would life have been for Clint?

Clint lowered his head until his forehead touched the steering wheel. He worked through everything in his mind. No matter what he’d done, could he have stopped Bucky? A doctor could have been called and Bucky saved when he’d had the heart attack. Right? But maybe it had already been too late.

Bucky would never have stopped. It wouldn’t have mattered what Clint had tried, stubbornness ran deep in the Fisher family. And Carl was right—Bucky would have wanted to go out riding.

Clint leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. When he opened them he recognized the truth. It wasn’t his fault.

He swallowed as his breathing evened out. He’d been running for so long from something he couldn’t have prevented.

Clint dragged his hand down his face, feeling the sandpaper stubble beneath his palm. He couldn’t change the past. All he could do was live in the present, and that included forgiving himself for the things he’d done wrong and allowing himself to enjoy life again, something he hadn’t done in a long, long time.

He put the Mustang back into gear, pulled the car onto the road, and headed into town, thinking about what tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, might bring.

Early Tuesday morning, Ella pulled her hair back in a ponytail as she looked at herself in the mirror. She looked tired, with dark circles under her eyes. There had been too much to do on the ranch and she hadn’t had time to work on her latest sculpture much at all for the past several days.

When she did have time, the more she’d worked on it, the more it had looked like Clint. After Sunday night and his kiss, she’d been tempted to scrap the thing. But, like she’d decided before, it was going to be one of her best works.

She turned away from the mirror, sat on her bed, and pulled on first one boot and then the other before tugging her jeans down over them. She always tried, but rarely beat her father out to the barn in the mornings even though there weren’t a lot of things he could do with his arthritis. She guessed it was the cowboy in him that kept him going.

Ella stepped carefully down the wooden stairs from the second floor to the first, avoiding the creakiest steps to try not to wake her mother. Alice was a light sleeper and she’d be up and in the kitchen, fixing breakfast instead of sleeping in.

After Ella grabbed her western hat off the hat rack, she walked out the front door. The sky was starting to lighten. She came to a halt when she saw a strange truck parked in the driveway next to her old rusted pickup. The unfamiliar truck was a red late-model Ford king cab that she’d never seen before.

Who could possibly be here this early in the morning? She jogged down the porch steps and headed for the barn. The barn’s double doors were open, a sure sign that her father was up, and apparently he had company.

She strode into the barn, expecting to see her father, and instead saw a man with his back toward her. He was standing in front of Rosie and Ben’s stall. The man’s posture and build were all too familiar.

“What are you doing here?” She braced her hands on her hips as she spoke to Clint.

He turned to face her and she almost melted on the spot. Was it even legal to look so good and so sexy that it sent her belly tumbling and caused her skin to tingle? She was afraid she was drooling over the way he filled out his work shirt and jeans. She had to remind herself that she wasn’t happy with him for any number of reasons, including the way he’d left them all for so many years.

The corner of his mouth quirked as he caught her staring at him. He pushed up the brim of his Stetson with one finger and she saw the golden brown of his eyes. “Your dad didn’t tell you?”

Ella gathered herself and marched up to Clint. “Tell me what?”

He hooked his thumbs in his jeans. “I’m the new hired hand.”

Her jaw dropped. “Dad hired you to replace Pistol?”

Clint gave a single nod. “Yep.”

She shook her head. “We’ve been doing just fine without you. We don’t need you around.”

He studied her. “Your dad thinks your family does.”

A hot flush crept over Ella. She clenched her fists at her sides then forced herself to relax them. “
I
don’t need your help.”

“Well, you’re going to get it whether you want it or not.” He gave a casual shrug that made her madder than she already was.

She gritted her teeth and went around him toward Rosie and Ben’s stall. She looked in to see that Rosie had already been fed a flake of alfalfa hay and some sweet oats and horse pellets. Even the stall had been mucked out. How early had he come to the ranch?

“Your dad said it’s time to check the fence line,” Clint said from behind her and she turned to face him. “I’m going to saddle up Charger and head on out. It’ll give me a chance to get to know the ranch better. Want to join me?”

For one moment, Ella was tempted, but instead she shook her head. “I’ve got things to do here.” She wasn’t going to mention that she’d planned on checking the fence line herself.

He gave a nod. “Suit yourself.”

“I always do,” she snapped back.

The corner of his mouth quirked. “Need any help before I leave?”

“I don’t need your help with anything.” With that she went to Buttercup’s stall to muck it out only to find it was already done and the horse was fed, too.

“All of the horses are taken care of, and I fed the cattle, too.” Clint went to Charger’s stall.

Ella bit the inside of her lip to keep from snapping at him again.