Marry Me, Cowboy (Copper Mountain Rodeo) (8 page)

She hadn’t seen this side of Jamie before, hadn’t seen him move this way. Around the rodeo, he seemed almost lazy in how he moved, a lot of the time, except for the short, intense bursts of action on the back of a galloping or bucking horse. He carried his saddles lazily back and forth, led Faro at an amble.

He stretched lazily before an event, too, using a repertoire of movements learned in physical therapy, or just from watching older riders. He pulled his elbow across his body a couple of times, across and back, across and back, with his opposite hand. He went down a couple of times in a deep squat, seemed to spend longer strapping a brace, after an injury, than stretching his muscles.

Here, Tegan saw how strong he was, and how good with his hands, hammering new posts into the ground, carrying heavy coils of wire, ratcheting the strainer back and forth as fast as his father did. And lord, did he look good doing it! Denim stretched tight across his butt every time he bent down, muscles knotted hard, mouth closing clean and pout-shaped over a drink bottle when they took a break for water.

Tegan wanted that mouth somewhere else, like on her skin, and those muscles knotting around her own body. It was crazy, and she didn’t even care.

RJ was right. It only took an hour to fix the damaged section of fence. They worked largely in silence, apart from instructions to each other when they needed. Nobody said, “Oh, so you really do know how to fence,” which Tegan appreciated. She didn’t need to make an issue of it.

She thought that all three MacCreadie men had begun to relax with each other a little, by the end. Families were complicated, and problems didn’t often get solved in one conversation.

Okay, another point to you, Jamie.

Robbie and RJ clearly still weren’t too happy that Jamie had taken off on the rodeo circuit, but they weren’t going to cut him out of their lives because of it. They were just... mad at him. Silently. Beginning to let it go.

“We’ll head back to the barn,” they said, when it was done. “You staying for lunch?”

“We’d better not. Tegan has first go-round on the barrels this afternoon, and that starts at three.”

“What about you, son?”

“I’m even earlier. Steer wrestling at two-thirty, if we’re back in time. Saddle bronc late afternoon. The finals tomorrow, if I make it that far.”

Rob MacCreadie nodded but didn’t say anything.

“So we’ll come see you in the hospital tonight, then,” RJ said.

Tegan gave a polite laugh, but the humor had too much of an edge. RJ wasn’t saying it to be funny, he was saying it to make a point - one that Jamie didn’t need to hear, as he’d ridden the first two months of the season with his arm and shoulder strapped in an elaborate arrangement of bandage and brace. He knew the reality of rodeo injuries better than his brother did.

“Let’s grab those horses before they’re all the way at the bottom of the hill,” he growled to Tegan.

“Might see you in town, today or tomorrow,” said his dad. “If I can get your mom out of the house.”

“Yeah, that’d be good. It’d be great if she came.”

“I’ll tell her you said that.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

They arrived back at the rodeo ground at one-thirty, which meant they would both make their events this afternoon. They unloaded the horses, yarded them, then -

“Truck’s gone,” Jamie said.

“What?”

“Look.” He pointed to his and Chet’s trailer, where the front gooseneck section now jutted out into thin air.

He began to stride over there without a second’s pause, and Tegan followed him. Inside, they found Chet’s duffel bag gone and a note on the counter, anchored down with a dirty coffee mug. “Gone home to tell mom, back by Monday morning.”

“Well, I guess he’s scratching,” Jamie said. “I’ll have to see if Dawson can be my hazer in the steer wrestling.”

“Yeah?”

“Chet’s mom lives in North Platte,” Jamie reminded her. “That’s eleven hours away.”

They looked at each other. The trailer suddenly seemed very small, and very quiet, and very private. Tegan could hear the leather belt of Jamie’s jeans creak as he moved. “Do you know what’s different with us today?” she said. “This is the first time we haven’t had other people around. First time it’s been just us.”

Jamie dropped his voice low. “You think that’s why this is happening?”

“Why what’s happening?” she said stupidly.

Stupidly, because she was only pretending. She knew exactly what was happening.

He called her on it, muttering, “You know what it is,” with his eyes fixed on her face. “Do you want to?”

“Yes.” She took the six inch step that brought her right up against him, the sides of their boots nudging each other, and stretches of soft denim brushing together. She could smell him, delicious and salty and male, and she could feel his heat. “Yes, I do.”

“You want me to get out my junk right now and do you before the steer wrestling starts?” he drawled at her with a teasing quirk on his lips, eyes glinting.

She tucked in the corner of her mouth and rolled her eyes. “Jamie, that is the most romantic thing I have ever heard.”

He reached out and hauled her that final, critical inch, so that it wasn’t just feet and thighs touching now, it was pretty much everything. “I wasn’t going for romantic.”

“I got that, trust me. What were you going for?”

“Just keepin’ it real, babe,” he drawled again, mocking both of them.

“I think I like you much better when you’re not talking.”

“That can be arranged.” And he didn’t say another word, just lifted her butt onto the counter, unsnapped her jeans, pulled the zipper halfway down, and her pony club T-shirt off over her head, and began to kiss her everywhere.

They both knew there wasn’t a lot of time, if he was going to track down Dawson O’Dell for the steer wrestling and make his scheduled draw time. Tegan decided... raggedly... that she really wasn’t a proper girl, to be wanting it like this. Their first time, in a rush, broad daylight, cramped setting, smelling of dirt and leather and horse. But, apart from a weird taste for western bling, she’d never cared all that much about being a proper girl.

Jamie made love to her as if she was all woman.

He unhooked her bra and threw it on the lower bunk, closed his cupped palms over her breasts and buried his face in the deepened valley he’d made. He had rough hands and she loved it. The way they moved, clever and strong and single-minded. The way they felt, blunt and scrapy on her skin, but almost reverent.

He was
good
at this. Who knew? He was talented, incredible.

His hands slowed at just the right times. They went light as a feather before she could ask. He seemed to know how good the ball of his thumb would feel across her nipple, and how much the sucking moist heat of his mouth would make her gasp.

They really did not have much time.

She pushed him away and started fumbling at the front of his shirt. “You getting this off or what?”

“You getting off your jeans? I started ‘em for you.”

They both scrabbled at their clothes and then stood there naked. Grinned at each other for a stupid moment and then came together again. He had the best body. “I got protection,” he said.

“I was going to ask.”

“I know you were. You’re not dumb.”

“Shoot, you really are romantic.”

“I can be. You wait.”

“Till when?”

“Till next time.”

“You better be a little bit romantic this time, Jamie MacCreadie, or there might not be a next.”

“You going to just keep talking?”

“That’s right, you don’t like that, do you?”

“Neither do you, didn’t you just decide?” He pulled on her hips and brought the two of them together again, groin to groin, junk to junk. Did girls have junk?

Ooh, she had it now. She had
his
, hard and big and hot against her. She swelled and softened down there. It was unbelievably good, feeling this. He felt hard and big and hot all over. Mouth, chest, hands. She grabbed at him, feeling her breath shorten into impatient little pants. No time to waste. They both wanted to get to the heart of it.

He wanted to get to the heart of
her
, and he did, as soon as he’d rolled the condom on. He made it smooth and slippery with her own moisture from his fingers, then lifted her against his body. She wrapped her legs around his hips and her arms around his neck and he slid into her right where they were standing, and it took about three minutes for them both to climb to the top of the wave. He bucked into her, grazing her breasts against his chest, filling her full to aching point. Breaking point.

The wave broke for both of them at the same time, and the shuddering groan that built deep in his chest joined with the moaning sound that tore out of her. They were trying to be quiet, believe it or not. She ground her mouth into his shoulder to keep herself under control... well, her voice under control. He did the same, burying his sounds in her hair.

“Need to put you down,” he said, as soon as they settled.

“Sorry.”

“No. Don’t be.” He softened his hand against her jaw, the caress incredibly gentle for the short moment it lasted. “Shoot, you weigh nothing.”

“This was definitely not romantic,” Tegan said. And yet she felt shaken to the core. She felt changed.

New.

Awakened.

As if life had started all over again and gone off in a whole new direction.

Jamie looked at her sideways. “Real question, though - was it good?”

“Ohh, yeah!”

They grinned at each other again, satisfied with themselves, feeling awed and amazed and sort of guilty about the possibility that maybe someone had heard and would be wondering who Jamie had in his trailer. “Bet they don’t guess it was you,” he said.

“We’d be the hot gossip item of the whole circuit.”

“You want that?” He gave her a sideways look.

“Not really.”

“Me neither.”

But he didn’t say what he did want, and Tegan wasn’t sure either. All she knew was that she’d liked it,
loved
it, and that her feelings about Jamie bloody MacCreadie had turned upside down almost as fast as a rider getting flipped by a bull.

She barely dared to breathe, barely recognized herself or the emotions churning inside. Everything seemed different. Everything. The slant of October sun through the window that needed cleaning. The sound of a horse being led past, outside.

He began to reach for his clothing, then shook his head and blinked as if something had made him dizzy and he needed to fight it off. “I have to get going. Dawson will ride for me, I’m sure, if I can get hold of him.” He was already pulling his phone from his jeans pocket. “Horse isn’t going to get enough of a warm-up, though.”

“Same here.”

“Think
we
had a pretty good warm-up, though.”

Another grin flashed between them, still full of secret amazement, and Tegan couldn’t think when she’d last felt this good.

Which was weird, because this was
Jamie.

Forty minutes later, with champion tie-down roper Dawson O’Dell making him a more-than-capable partner, he and Faro shot out of the chute to chase down their steer. Tegan’s heart was in her mouth. She was proud, scared, aching for that strong, gorgeous, precious, denim-clad body so vulnerable out there.

It was going to
hurt
watching Jamie ride rodeo from now on, she realized.

He slid sideways off the horse, lay back and skidded across the dirt with his steer grabbed by the horn, and got it down in 3.8 seconds, a time that wouldn’t have shamed him at the National Finals. Then he jumped to his feet looking like a man who’d only just begun his day and who had a heck of a lot more planned. His belt buckle from a previous win gleamed at his waist.

The crowd whooped and cheered, and so did Tegan. She was lightheaded with relief and pride and something else she didn’t have a name for. The place was full and the sun was out and she could smell hot salt and oil from the food concessions, as well as dust and animal, and it was amazing.

Just amazing.

And he wasn’t hurt. He rubbed at one strong shoulder with a hand that had touched her bare skin less than an hour ago, then he brushed the dirt off his thighs and walked out of the arena with rocking cowboy strides, loose and grinning.

Tegan wondered if Jamie’s mom and dad had made it into town to watch, but she couldn’t see them from her position down in the competitors’ area, near the rail. Jamie seemed to be scanning the crowd, also, and she thought he’d waved, on his way out. There were a lot of locals here, though. She heard someone say, “Hey, that was Jamie MacCreadie,” and someone else calling out trying to attract his attention.

She felt possessive about him, wanted to say, “Yes, that’s Jamie, and he’s mine.”

But the possessiveness scared her because she didn’t understand it and hadn’t been looking for it, so she told herself quite brutally that this was one weekend, this was a fling, she was leaving the country soon. None of this dreamy, knocked-off-course feeling.

And it was time to get warmed up for the barrels. Her name was sixth on the draw, and the start time for the event was listed as three o’clock. She thought they might be running a little late, but not much.

Shildara felt mellow after her gallop this morning. She was a little surprised to find a saddle going on her back for the second time today, after such a big ride. But she worked out what was happening pretty quick, and she pricked her ears forward and moved excitedly between Tegan’s legs, because she loved this, the way any top competition horse did. You wouldn’t get a good performance out of them if they didn’t.

Wyoming rider Keeley Styer skidded around the second barrel and almost fell, losing valuable time as she and the horse recovered their balance. She shook her head in disgust as she galloped past Tegan, and when her time went up it was as disappointing as she’d feared, at 19.53 seconds.

Jade Finemore did better with 17.12, but it was a time Tegan was pretty sure she could beat, because it looked like a fast surface and none of the earlier girls had done especially well. Kara was late in the draw and was still hanging out with Dean. She probably wouldn’t ride her best. She never did, when she was focused on a new guy.