Handful of Sky (26 page)

“Courts declared him an unfit father and he never
contested the decision. Didn’t even show up at the trial. Just lit out. We didn’t hear much more about him, just that he drank himself to death a few years later.”

Shallie tried to incorporate this information into the image she’d always carried of Hunt, the golden boy, untouched by pain.

“That’s why I was wondering if Hunt hates me, for running around the way his father did. I know he loved Maggie as much as I did. She’s what made the boy what he is, gave him his class and his heart. After she died,” Jake went on with his merciless confession, “I just couldn’t stand to be by myself. Oh, I’m not denying that I always appreciated a beauty when I saw one. But what I did out of need, Hunt’s father had always done for sheer amusement.”

“I’m sure Hunt understands.” Shallie tried to comfort the old man, but it cost her an effort. Her mind was whirling with the secrets Jake had revealed. Hunt and Trish had never been involved! He detested the stereotypical womanizing rodeo cowboy as much as she did!

Shallie grappled with these new facts, trying to decide what she should do about them. From the murky turmoil only one clear thought emerged—it might very well be too late to do anything at all.

A
s the National Anthem boomed
out, announcing the final performance of the National Finals, Shallie felt practically unhinged with nervousness. Her life was hanging in the balance and she was paralyzed with indecision. She knew it was her turn to act. If there were any chance at all left, she would have to be the one to seize it. But she didn’t know how. Perhaps things were irretrievably lost between her and Hunt. Maybe nothing she did would make any difference. The question she had to answer was—could she live the rest of her life knowing that she had let even the slimmest of chances slip past her?

“You know what would have made a hell of a match?” Jake asked the gathering in his box. “Hunt and Pegasus.”

Shallie had been so scrupulous in avoiding any areas where she might have encountered Hunt that she hadn’t even checked with the rodeo secretary to learn which
horses had been drawn that night. It was a letdown to find out that she would never see Hunt on Pegasus again.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the announcer squawked, “we are coming right down to the wire here tonight on the bareback riding. With the size of the purse riding on this final performance, it could go to any one of our top three contenders. Let’s lead off with a very tough cowboy from up Canada way . . .”

Shallie’s attention drifted and she barely recorded Emile’s stunning performance. She vacillated wildly between utter despair and the frail beginnings of hope. Jesse Southerland’s ride was just as spectacular as Boulier’s had been, and just as lost on Shallie. She focused on the chutes only when Hunt’s name was called. This would be the ride to decide his future, whether he would lay claim once more to the title “champion of the world.”

The sound of the gate cracking open and the crowd gasping in unison were simultaneous as Hunt’s horse reared back, rather than darting out into the arena. A chute fighter. The dreaded label flashed across Shallie’s mind. Fortunately, Petey was right beside his boss on the catwalks and jerked him free, hauling him up and off the horse before the renegade bronc could crush Hunt.

“The judges have awarded Hunt McIver a re-ride,” the announcer told the startled crowd. “He will draw for another mount to ride after all the other bronc riders have gone.”

Shallie felt her old insecurities rise up within her as she thought of confronting Hunt.
He doesn’t want you,
they sneered. What
would
she be letting herself in for if she went to him?
More humiliation and hurt,
the phantoms answered. There was so much she didn’t know, so much she was unsure of. She couldn’t go to him. Better a life of not knowing than having to endure that one soul-killing moment when he turned away, leaving her with the deadening certainty of his rejection.

It’s better this way.
She attempted to comfort herself with the old familiar chant. In the final analysis, her desperate love for Hunt was just what made it impossible. What kind of relationship could they ever have with Hunt able to wield such frightening power over her? No, it would be much better for her to remain alone until the day when she made a comfortably affectionate marriage. It was a relief to have finally reached a decision. Shallie let a deep breath escape. In a distant corner of her awareness she thought she heard something, something important.

“What did the announcer just say?” she asked her uncle.

“Hunt’s re-ride,” her uncle sputtered in excitement. “It’s going to be Pegasus.”

A thrill of exhilaration managed to fight its way through the layers of resignation Shallie had already blanketed her emotions in. Hunt and Pegasus! Destiny had demanded a rematch between the two, Shallie reflected,
just as she had dictated that there was to be no reunion for her and Hunt. Only this meeting of the finest horse and finest rider to grace a rodeo arena could have stirred Shallie. A hush fell over the crowd as they anticipated the collision of two legends.

Petey led Pegasus in. Shallie’s discovery shone like the star he had become, tossing his shimmering white mane as if defying the man bold enough to challenge his supremacy in the ring.

At the sight of the majestic beast, Shallie felt her responses tear in two directions. On one side was pride in the animal she’d discovered. On the other was a rapidly mounting apprehension. Would Pegasus prove more than even Hunt could handle? Had his brush with the chute fighter moments before unnerved him? Would he freeze again, ripping open the wounds of humiliation inflicted in this very ring two years ago? For a second, Shallie felt she was back in the Circle M’s moonlit arena wanting to plead with Hunt not to endanger himself.

One glimpse of Hunt’s face, however, and all of Shallie’s fears melted away. He looked like a little boy about to dive into a truckload of Christmas booty. Gone was the ferocious intensity of the past months. He was a man who had labored long and hard and was now about to enjoy his reward. Shallie knew there wasn’t another bronc rider alive who would greet the prospect of eight seconds on board Pegasus with that kind of relish.

The roan was quickly rigged, tension building in the crowd with the delay. By the time Hunt had settled onto the blue-flaked back, everyone in the cavernous coliseum was hunching forward expectantly.

Shallie bit her lower lip, oblivious to the pain. She had no thought of sides, winning and losing, whether she should root for Hunt to best Pegasus or for her horse to vanquish Hunt. This match transcended such considerations. All she hoped for was that each would realize his potential.

Every pair of eyes in the coliseum was trained on Hunt as he nodded for the gate. From the first buck, Shallie knew that she was witnessing rodeo history. Hunt rode as well as Shallie knew he could, which is to say he rode better than any bronc rider ever had. Hunt pushed back the limit of the sport and Pegasus tested every new frontier. The ride was an elegy written in muscle and motion, composed on the common ground where man and beast met as fellow creatures.

The buzzer sounded and the coliseum exploded like Times Square at midnight on New Year’s Eve. Shallie too was on her feet, exhilarated by the dramatic lesson Hunt had just graphically demonstrated for her. She couldn’t even put it into words, all she knew was that it contradicted the gloomy conclusions she had just reached about Hunt’s wielding power over her because of her intense love for him. What she had just seen in the arena
was a display of profound respect, not power. She slid through the cheering fans, driven by a compelling urgency, a certainty that she had one chance left and must seize it now or it would fade forever.

She slipped around to the back, to the labyrinth of stock pens. Light from the arena seeped out through the entryway where two- and four-legged contestants came and went. Her heart drummed a pounding beat. Pegasus was driven out through the metal alleyway. He carried his foam-white head high and proud, as if he knew he had just set a standard by which all other horses would be judged. Not far behind was Hunt McIver.

“Whoa,” he yelled, chasing the retreating horse that still wore his rigging.

All Shallie’s newly formed assurance leaked out of her at the sight of Hunt. She couldn’t go through with it. She would slip back into the shadows.

“Shallie, that you?” Hunt cocked his head toward her.

“Uh . . . yes.” God, why was she hovering behind the chutes like some buckle bunny? “I . . . uh . . . Congratulations on your ride,” she finally blurted out. Hunt came closer.

For a second they faced each other like shy and uncertain strangers, neither one knowing what to expect.

“Thank you. That means a lot coming from my old riding teacher.” Hunt’s laugh was awkward. Neither one spoke. The vague thoughts that had formed during his
ride stuck in Shallie’s mind. “Well, I better go get my rigging,” Hunt said, but he didn’t move.

“Yeah, some fan will probably try to take it as a souvenir,” Shallie agreed lamely.

“Yeah, well, so long.” Slowly, Hunt turned away from her in just the way Shallie had dreaded he would. He started to leave.

“Hunt.” Her shout was louder than she’d intended, a desperate preamble to thoughts she was too confused or scared to express.

He stopped. “Yes?”

“Don’t leave,” Shallie asked.

A smile crept across Hunt’s face. “Not if you don’t want me to.”

“Hunt.” With that one word, Shallie laid herself bare. There was no point in hiding any longer.

She was in his arms, lost in his encircling strength. She drank in his presence with all her senses, drowning in his scent, his voice, his body heat, his touch.

“I was just waiting for you to speak,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. “It wouldn’t have worked if you hadn’t made that first move. If you hadn’t stopped me. But there are some things we have to get straight. In Albuquerque you accused me of being like my grandfather—”

“No, Hunt,” Shallie broke in. “I was wrong, I didn’t know. I was hurt, angry. It wasn’t fair—”

“It was
very
fair,” he concluded solemnly. “Very fair
and, as it turned out, very accurate. After Albuquerque, I started doing just what Jake has done ever since my grandmother died—trying to make a dozen women fill the empty spot left by the one he really loved.”

Love.
The word stunned Shallie. For months she had been tiptoeing around it. Now she couldn’t believe she was hearing it on Hunt’s lips.

“The woman Jake loved died. I suppose that’s an excuse of some kind. But the one I love is very much alive.”

Shallie felt locked in a kind of paralysis, afraid to move, even to breathe for fear that she would betray herself, that even the tiniest hint of her longing would deflect forever the words she ached to hear, hurling them into oblivion.

Hunt tilted her face up to his. The distant arena lights illuminated it with an incandescent warmth. Hunt took her hands. They were icy in his. When he saw the trembling vulnerability shimmering in the tears that trickled softly down her cheeks, he felt his own defenselessness. He took Shallie in his arms again, seeking to shelter them both.

“I love you, Shalimar Larkin.”

At last Shallie inhaled, no longer afraid of breaking the spell. They were both under it. She felt as if champagne were coursing through her bloodstream, bubbling up from her toes, effervescing through her entire body, and leaving her mind in a state of tingling intoxication. Hunt McIver loved her!

“Hunt.” She laughed a giddy, tipsy laugh that was as much incredulous relief as it was elation. The quizzical expression that crossed Hunt’s face surprised her. “Of course I love you,” she explained. “It’s been so painfully obvious to me for so long that I assumed you must know.”

“Shallie, I’m no mind reader. And you certainly didn’t make your feelings obvious. You were so cold our first morning together,” he went on, “then so incredibly warm that afternoon at the hot springs.” Shallie saw in Hunt’s face that he cherished the memory of that afternoon as much as she did.

“Then you froze me out again in Albuquerque. You wouldn’t even listen to me. Wouldn’t believe me.”

“Hunt, forgive me. It was my insecurity.”

“At first I thought you were trying to charm me so I’d help you get Pegasus. Being raised by Jake McIver, I’ve become very wary of women who want things. I’ve seen what they’ll do to get them and how easy it is to prey on the male ego.” Hunt’s words made a comforting rumble deep in his chest, next to Shallie’s ear.

“I probably loved you from the moment back at that podunk rodeo when you helped me pull my rigging,” Hunt confessed. “But I wouldn’t admit it to myself, wouldn’t let myself feel it until you showed me that you would never just love me for what I could do for you or give you. After watching you in action, I knew you were perfectly capable of getting anything you really wanted without any
help from me. That’s when I decided you were the one I wanted. But not before you came to me.”

“It was hard, Hunt,” Shallie admitted. “I could never have believed you loved me.” Saying it aloud put a seal on Hunt’s words. Shallie began to accept their reality. She found further confirmation in the brush of his lips.

“Lord, I’ve missed you, woman.”

Shallie let her kiss tell him of the long months of loneliness, of wanting him. Of desire and desperation. Their tongues exchanged the messages each had harbored unspoken for so long, and the bitter taste of heartaches unshared melted in the sweetness of union.

Through the distance, the announcer’s voice echoed. “That’s it, folks, it’s official. Hunt McIver is our world champion in the bareback riding, with Emile Boulier taking second and Jesse Southerland in third place.”

“Marry me, Shallie,” Hunt breathed.

The crowd erupted in pounding, hooting cheers, calling for the new champion.

“They want you back in the arena.”

“Answer me,” Hunt insisted. “We’ll merge the Double L and the Circle M under a joint brand. You won’t have to give up anything. What do you say?”