Tara Holloway 03 - Death, Taxes, and Extra-Hold Hairspray (27 page)

Nick and I found a table near the bar and staked our claim.

“What are you in the mood for?” he asked.

If we were in Dallas, I’d order an appletini. But place an order like that here and you were likely to get your ass kicked. “Margarita, on the rocks with salt,” I said, ordering the most exotic drink the place offered.

As Nick stood at the bar, the horrendous wig now gone, several women glanced appreciatively his way. Who could blame them? A tall woman in tight jeans with breasts nearly tumbling out of her halter top sidled up to him, put a hand on his shoulder, and whispered in his ear. He gave her a smile, but shook his head. He said something I couldn’t make out and jerked his head my way. The woman looked me over, quirked her brows to indicate she wasn’t much impressed, and walked away.

Skank.

Nick returned with our drinks. I sipped at my margarita. Not bad.

Nick took a pull at his beer. “I can’t wait to see those photos,” he said. “Fischer’s going to shit a brick.”

I ran my finger around the rim of my glass, collecting large grains of salt. “What do you think will happen?”

“Gambling and ogling titties?” Nick said. “At worst, we’ll put an end to his good times. At best, the guy will be seen for the fraud he is and removed from his position as pastor.”

CHAPTER THIRTY

Eight Seconds to Qualify

A young guy who appeared barely old enough to drink climbed onto the mechanical bull in the corner. His friends gathered round the makeshift pen, urging him on, while the operator handed him a clipboard and a pen. A full release and waiver, no doubt. You break your neck, don’t blame us.

We watched as the operator started the bull. It began to move up and down slowly, regularly, hardly more than a person would experience on a trail ride. The boy motioned with his hand for the operator to up the pace. The bull now bucked in an irregular rhythm, turning first one direction then the other. The kid made a decent showing, hanging on for a good five seconds before losing his balance and being thrown to the padded mat on the floor.

Nick turned to me. “You ever ride a mechanical bull?”

“Hell no.”

He cocked his head. “I thought you were fearless.”

“I am,” I lied. “I just don’t invite trouble.” My thigh bore the wide, pink scar from my recent adventures in cockfighting. I didn’t want to take on another animal, real or otherwise.

“Give it a try,” Nick said, his eyes narrowed at me in challenge.

“Nope.” I took another sip of my drink.

“I dare you,” Nick said.

“Nuh-uh.”

“I double dog dare you,” Nick said.

“Yeaaah, no.” I shook my head.

Nick leaned toward me, his face only inches from mine. “I triple dog dare you.”

Just like the young boy in the beloved movie
A Christmas Story
who was dared by his friends to lick a frozen flagpole, I knew that backing down in the face of a triple dog dare would forever brand me as a wuss. “A triple dog dare? Well, now, that changes everything. You’re on.”

I downed the rest of my drink, mustered up my courage, and stood from the table. Nick followed me over to the bull, even paid the cost of my ride and intertwined his fingers to form a step for me to boost myself onto the automated beast.

After signing the waiver, I closed my eyes in quick prayer, grabbed the rope with both hands, and tried to relax. I’d attended enough rodeos to know that the best way to stay on a bull or bronc was to become one with the animal, to go with its flow.

A few people gathered around, mostly men.

“Twenty bucks says she falls off in under three seconds,” a man said to Nick.

Nick looked my way and shot me a wink. I was on a roll tonight. Nick just might win this bet. He turned back to the man, opened his wallet, and laid a twenty on the wooden rail surrounding the bullpen. “You’re on.”

“Ready?” the operator asked.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” I replied.

I took a deep breath as the bull kicked on and began to dip forward. I leaned back in response, rolling forward as it reversed its motion. It was a bit like riding a teeter-totter. Of course the last time I’d been on a seesaw I’d been seven years old. A girl can forget a lot in twenty years.

Nick raised his white hat over his head and shouted, “Ride ’em, Tara!”

Encouraged both by Nick and my success thus far, I let go of the rope with my left hand and raised it above my head, pro rodeo style. “Crank it up!” I hollered to the operator.

The guy tipped his hat, called out, “You asked for it!,” and turned the machine up higher.

The bull began to shift from left to right, then back again, sometimes faking one direction, then doing a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree turn in the other. While the operator eyed his stopwatch, I hung on, trying not to anticipate the bull’s moves lest I be wrong and lose my delicate balance, letting myself rock and roll with the haywire actions of the machine.

I tried to count as the bull spun, and bucked, and gyrated under me.

One second.

Two seconds.

Three.

I felt like one of those inflatable figures that waved in the wind, bending first one direction then another as the bull maneuvered chaotically under me. I stayed on only by the grace of God.

Clang! Clang!
The operator rang the cowbell that hung from a post nearby. “You got your eight seconds!”

The crowd cheered. All but the guy who’d placed the bet with Nick, that is.

“Woo-hoo!” Nick hollered, waving his hat in circles over his head before pocketing the twenty bucks he’d just won.

Eight seconds was the benchmark for qualifying in an actual rodeo and it was more than enough for me. I motioned for the operator to turn the machine off. It slowed and rocked to a stop. When I slid off the bull, Nick entered the ring and gave me a high five.

I looked up and poked a finger into his chest. “Your turn, buddy.”

“Uh-oh.” He grimaced. “I should’ve thought this through first.”

I took his hat and his spot at the rail.

Nick signed the release and swung his long leg over the bull, shifting a bit as he settled himself. I watched as the bull began bucking. Nick moved with the bull, rhythmically undulating, his chest rising up and falling back, his back arching, his pelvis moving back and thrusting forward. Damn if it wasn’t one of the sexiest things I’d ever seen a man do. The motion had me wondering how it would be to have him riding me, whether the expertise he showed riding this beast translated to the bedroom.

The crowd whooped and hollered as the intensity and action ratcheted up, yet Nick held on like a pro on the rodeo circuit. When his eight seconds were up, Nick kept right on going. I wasn’t sure whether he was trying to show me up or show off for me, but I didn’t much care. I was having a hell of a time just watching him ride.

“Shee-it,” said the cowboy next to me, taking a drag from the cigarette in his hand. “That boy’s got some talent, too.” He turned to me. “You two are a matched set.”

When the bull failed to throw Nick after thirty seconds, the crowd turned on Nick and began to root for the bull. There is such a thing as being
too good
at something.

When the bull executed five quick circles in a row, Nick began to tilt precariously to the outside and had trouble righting himself against the centrifugal force. The bull continued to spin, and Nick was eventually thrown clear. He somehow managed to land on his feet, but he was bent over, momentum carrying him forward. He staggered as he tried to right himself, moving closer and closer to the edge of the bullpen until he collided facefirst with the wooden rail.

A sympathetic “Oooh!” came up from the fickle crowd, which was on Nick’s side once again.

I ran into the ring and over to him. He stood, his hand over his nose, a trickle of blood running down his bristly cheek. A drop fell from his chin onto his shirt.

The woman in the halter top appeared with a stack of napkins and handed them to Nick. “Much obliged, ma’am,” he said.

“Much obliged?”
I rolled my eyes. “What is this, the old west?”

We left the ring, heading back to our table. We sat there for a few minutes, Nick tilting his head back and holding the napkins to his nose until the bleeding stopped.

“You think it’s broken?” I asked Nick as he wadded up the napkins.

He shrugged. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Boot Scootin’

Nick went to the men’s room and cleaned himself up, returning to the table just as the band launched into their rendition of the electric slide. The chairs emptied as everyone hit the floor.

Nick held out his hand and cocked his head in the direction of the dance floor. “Let’s go.”

I probably should’ve resisted, but in Texas refusing to dance the electric slide was akin to refusing to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Besides, what could it hurt? It wasn’t like we’d be dancing together. Line dancing was a group activity.

I took his hand and he led me onto the dance floor.

We began dancing the standard moves side by side, occasionally bumping elbows as the crowd closed in around us and we were forced closer and closer together. Nick had just as much rhythm on the dance floor as he’d shown on the mechanical bull.

It was very late by then, only an hour until closing time, and many of the patrons had left sobriety behind hours ago. While their drunken state made them less inhibited on the dance floor, it also made them far less graceful and less able to keep count or remember which direction they were headed next. A tall cowboy near the stage shuffled left when he should’ve gone right. He knocked into the woman next to him, who ricocheted off the woman next to her, who grabbed the shoulder of the man in front of her in an attempt to regain her balance. After downing untold pitchers of beer, the man could barely keep himself upright, let alone help the woman hanging on to him. His body buckled and he fell backward into her. The two of them went down hard. Without any means of escape, the tight crowd began to fall like dominos, people pushing and shoving, trying to remain on their feet but having little luck.

It was a country-western cluster fuck.

The crowd surged toward us like a wave. I looked around, but we were surrounded on all sides. There was no way out.

Nick wrapped an arm around my waist and pulled me tight against him. “Hang on!”

I latched on to Nick, hanging on for dear life lest I be crushed by the human tsunami rushing our way. He spread his legs slightly, bracing himself, swaying backward but somehow managing to stay on his feet when everyone around us fell. He held me upright, too.

Around us, people slowly pulled themselves to their feet, most laughing, a few others angrily pushing and shoving. Someone hollered “Catfight!” We turned to see Miss Halter Top and a shorter, pudgy woman, both on their knees in the middle of the crowd, engaged in a hair-pulling, face-clawing, cheek-slapping bitch match.

Classy.

A few people gathered around to cheer them on, while Nick and a couple other men made their way through the crowd to pull the women apart. When the woman in the halter top realized it was Nick who’d locked his arms around her and was dragging her backward off the floor, she smiled up at him and bellowed, “Hey, cowboy! Wanna get lucky?”

Nick deposited the drunk woman at a table with her friends and returned to me.

I looked up at him. “Gonna take her up on that offer?”

“Not even tempted.”

I turned to head back to our table.

A warm, strong hand on my forearm stopped me. “Where you going?”

I looked up into Nick’s eyes. “Back to the table.”

“Come on, Tara,” he pleaded. “I haven’t been dancing in forever. Stay out here with me.”

I looked away, knowing I’d have no chance of resisting him if I kept looking into his eyes. Unfortunately, my eyes now met those of the drunk but determined woman in the too-small halter top. She’d left her table and hung strategically nearby, like a wolf circling a sheep, clearly hoping to sink her teeth into Nick. I couldn’t very well let that happen, could I? For his sake, mind you. Not mine. I looked back up at him. “Okay.”

We danced a two-step, a lively polka, and a classic waltz, keeping a respectable distance between our bodies. Still, we were connected at three points—where my right hand rested in his left, where my left hand arced over his strong, muscular shoulder, and where his right palm cupped my hipbone.

My body ached for more contact, but my heart ached with indecision.

Should I keep things moving ahead with Brett?

Or should I give Nick a chance?

Even if I decided to give Nick a chance, the right thing to do would be to discuss things with Brett first, let him know I wanted to slow things down, keep my options open, see other people. It would be unfair to start something with Nick before extending Brett the courtesy of letting him know where I stood.

Did the fact that I was thinking this through mean I was seriously considering giving Nick a shot?

Hell, I didn’t know. It could be the margarita talking.

Nick expertly maneuvered me around the dance floor. I tried to avoid eye contact with him, but it wasn’t easy when he spun me around and I instinctively looked up at my partner to keep myself oriented. Each time I looked up, he was looking down at me, an expression on his face that was equal parts desire and pent-up frustration.

Just say the word.

The band played another two-step. Nick pulled me into a three-turn spin, then drew me back toward him, noticeably closer than before. Our knees and thighs bumped lightly as I tried to keep pace with his longer strides. I could feel the heat from his body against my chest, feel my nether regions swell with need.

He pulled me closer still, until I felt the hardness of his belt buckle pressed against my stomach. There was another hardness not far below, a long, thick hardness pressed firmly against my abdomen. The guy hadn’t been kidding. He
was
hung like a horse.