championships, but several of her students had. She was this wonderful, grizzled old cowgirl who knew horses and barrel racing. She lived it. The first time she watched me run barrels, she told me why I wasn’t increasing my time. One little trick of hers and I shaved seconds off my time.”
His eyebrows rose. “Full seconds?”
“Yep. She took a serious interest in my riding style and made me unlearn everything and start from scratch. It worked. I learned so much from her—first off that the horse does matter. Shitty horse, shitty time. When my folks picked me up, she took them aside and gave them the hard sell about letting me compete full-time because I had the talent. Offering to train me exclusively.”
“You jumped at the chance?”
“Yes, and I haven’t looked back. She tracked down my first competition-grade horse.”
When Tanna pursed her lips around the straw and sucked, Fletch’s cock stirred. What she could do with that mouth . . .
Focus, man.
“I immediately started winning. I moved up in the standings and people—meaning sponsors—began to notice. By the time I was twenty-two I was ranked top ten in the world and by twenty-nine I’d won back-to-back world championships.” A fleeting smile crossed her lips. “I was so thrilled she was in the audience in Vegas when I won. She and I went out and got rip-roarin’ drunk. It was a blast and a little bittersweet to think back on now, because the next year she died from a brain aneurysm.”
“So it’s not like you can go to her, return to basics, and get your riding mojo back.” He spun his cup around and decided head-on was the best approach with the fiery cowgirl. “I read about what happened to you last year.”
“Where?”
“Online.”
Tanna’s eyes became guarded. “You could’ve just asked me.”
“I figured I needed to suss out some details before I’d know what to ask.”
“So what do you want to know?”
Fletch picked up her hand. “Everything.”
“That’s a pretty broad subject.”
“You’re a pretty broad.”
She laughed softly. “You don’t ever react the way I expect you to.”
“I hate to be predictable.” He grinned. “Start talking, barrel racer.”
“How far back do you want me to go?”
“To when everything fell apart.”
“That’s easy to pinpoint. When my mother died.” Tanna took a long drink of iced tea. But she didn’t let go of his hand. “Now I see how spoiled I was. Of course, I took it all for granted then. I never bothered to move out on my own. Why should I? When I went home between events, I had a mini-suite to myself with a big bed, a big screen TV and a bathroom. I had home-cooked meals, someone to do my laundry, a place to train my horse. I had someone to talk to who thought I hung the moon and stars.”
He threaded his fingers through hers. Tanna’s hands weren’t pampered; hers bore the marks of hard work, like his did. But her fingers looked delicate in his big paws.
“I’ve always been a mama’s girl. My mother, like so many Texas mothers, had dreams of her daughter bein’ a beauty queen. She entered me in my first and only pageant when I was eight.” The corners of her lips turned up. “I got last place. Mama claimed it was because I hadn’t grown into my looks. But I knew even then that big-haired blondes with blue eyes would be crowned the winner. I’m too ethnic-looking for some things and not ethnic-looking enough for others.”
“Astute observation.”
She shrugged. “My mother was half-Mexican; my father a white Texas good old boy. Anyway, I’d only agreed to the pageant because I’d struck a deal with my mom. I’d compete in the pageant if she let me sign up to learn to barrel race at the fairgrounds.” She snickered. “I’m sure she thought I’d win the beauty contest and I’d forget all about barrel racing. But I won and was hooked. On the back of the horse and in the arena, it didn’t matter if I was dark skinned or light skinned—it was about skill.” Her gaze locked on to his. “I don’t need to explain ethnic issues to you.”
“No, you don’t. My mother was Native. My dad is white. I never spent time on the rez. There weren’t any Indian kids at our school. Eli and I suspected we would’ve been thrown together even if we hadn’t been related.”
“Wait. You and Eli are . . . ?”
“Cousins. His mom and my mom were second or third cousins. Although, I didn’t meet Eli until he moved in with his aunt and we started goin’ to the same school.” That was a situation she’d have to ask Eli about. “Has your family always been in Texas?”
“I’m . . . third generation? My grandfather and his brother ran away from their family in their late teens and crossed the Mexican border into Texas. They became U.S. citizens and worked any and every job they could until they earned enough to buy a small ranch. My grandfather was quite the vaquero. He caught the eye of my grandmother Bernadette, a white girl. They married against her father’s wishes and she gave birth to my mother, Bonita. Bernadette died when my mother was eleven. My mom took over running the household.”
“At age eleven?”
Tanna nodded. “She didn’t have much of a childhood, taking care of my grandfather and my uncle Manuel—who never married. They bought more land and started running cattle. Which is where my dad came in. They hired him as a ranch hand. That’s where he and mama met. He ended up taking over everything after my grandfather died. I never met my grandfather. My mama always said he worked himself to death.
“I always assumed my dad liked ranch life. So it shocked me and my brother, Garrett, when he sold off all the horses and cattle within two months of Mama’s death. We even had a good friend of his intervene, trying to get him to see how irrational he was acting in grief. But Dad told him to butt out. Then he just looked me and Garrett right in the eye and said he hated everything about living on a ranch. He had for quite some time, but my mother refused to consider selling or moving. Now that she was gone”—those beautiful brown eyes welled with tears—“he had no intention of keeping it.”
“So in addition to dealing with your mother’s death . . . you found out your father wasn’t the man you thought he was?”
Tanna pulled her hand from his and grabbed a paper napkin to blot her tears. “That’s a nice way of putting it. He told me and Garrett that we were spoiled brats and that it was coming to an end. I understand where he was coming from where I was concerned. I was a thirty-four-year-old woman who hadn’t left home. But the land succession should’ve gone to a blood relative descendant. Dad said since my mother had left everything to him, to do as he saw fit, we had no say in any decision he made. It was such an ugly situation.”
“Aw, darlin’, this is breaking my heart.”
“It broke mine too. And my spirit, which is how I ended up on a long losing streak on the circuit. Six months after we’d buried my mother, my father had rid himself of the ranch, married Mama’s best friend, Rosalie, and bought beachfront rental property in Florida.”
What a selfish asshole. “Did you and your brother get anything?”
“He gave us each one hundred K.” Tanna’s eyes were burning with rage when she looked at him. “Not that I’m ungrateful or greedy, but that money was an insult. He sold the ranch for ten million dollars. Ten. Million. Dollars. And he couldn’t part with less than that amount for his only children?”
Fletch whistled.
“So in some ways, I lost both my parents that year. He never even called me after I got injured. It’s like that part of his life ended with my mom.”
Silence stretched between them.
When Fletch couldn’t stand it any longer, he stopped her restless fingers from ripping the napkin to shreds. He brought her hand to his mouth and placed a kiss in the center of her palm. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through.”
“Thanks. As tired as I am of talking about it, that’s not the whole story. During that time I tried to maintain my standings but kept falling further and further
down. I didn’t qualify for CRA World Finals. My sponsors understood. The breeders who owned the horse understood but they took Jezebel back to their stables. Which I found a relief. I was too embarrassed to tell anyone that I didn’t have a place to go, so I hid out in my horse trailer. That was a wake-up call. I realized just how spoiled I’d been.”
“I’ll bet your mother loved having you home to spoil.”
She smiled wistfully. “Maybe. By the time the new year started, I was rarin’ to go. But because I didn’t have a good showing the previous year, my sponsors cut my funds in half. So I had to curb the number of events and only entered ones with a decent purse and points. After months of limited winning, I decided to enter every event I could. I didn’t tell Jezebel’s owners and I stopped answering their calls.”
“Not smart.”
“Yeah, but I wasn’t pushing Jezebel too hard. I took extra precautions with her and had her checked out by a vet at least every two weeks. I sent those health reports on to the owners like I always did.” She took a breath. “Labor Day weekend I was scheduled to compete in Dallas at an outdoor venue. I’d drawn last, which I usually prefer. It sprinkled a little off and on. Nothin’ to be alarmed about. The other competitors said the dirt was fine. My turn rolled around and we shot out at a good clip. Made the first barrel and she didn’t feel slippery. On the second barrel . . . she spun out. We both went down. Hard. Jezebel landed on top of me, knocking the wind out of me. So it seemed like minutes that she was crushing me when in all actuality it was only seconds.
“Somehow my boot slipped out of the stirrup or I might’ve broken my tibia or fibula and cracked my femur instead of just ripping the shit outta the ligaments in my right knee and fracturing my ankle. I thought Jezebel was okay because it didn’t take her long to get up after the spill. Her body was a blur as she raced off. Then she made the most god-awful high-pitched cry I’ve ever heard. I freaked out, and tried to chase after her, but I crumpled into a heap. Somehow I forced myself to get up and walk.”
Fletch had read the online articles about what’d happened, but even knowing how it’d played out didn’t lessen the impact or the horror of what Tanna was about to say.
“Jezebel had kept goin’ after she got up, running out of the arena like she’d always been trained to. No one knows for sure if her initial injury happened in the arena or if she’d stumbled into a hole during her break for freedom and made it worse, but her hind leg snapped above the hock—as you know a compound fracture isn’t fixable. The only thing that did stop her was her reins got caught on a metal fissure in the pens behind the arena—which was just another freaky thing. She panicked even more when she couldn’t get free. She couldn’t rear up. She didn’t know what was goin’ on and I wasn’t around to calm her down.”
His heart dropped to the tips of his boots.
Tanna swallowed hard. “Jezebel was a high-strung horse. The worst part was I saw the whole thing happen. I couldn’t save her. I couldn’t even help her. When the med techs came over, they were all fired up because they thought I’d just dislocated my shoulder when I hit the dirt—they didn’t know my right leg was useless because of multiple injuries and I wouldn’t let them touch me.”
His guts twisted into a knot. She’d suffered through three major injuries at one time. “I dislocated my shoulder in high school during a football game. Hurt like a bitch when they reset it.”
“I don’t even remember them resetting my shoulder. They knocked me out. I’d become hysterical after they wouldn’t let me near Jezebel. When I woke up, no one would tell me what’d happened to my horse. Finally, the next day, Ralph Costas, the rep for the owners, showed up in my hospital room and laid it out for me. I guess one of the bulldoggers who also used one of the owners’ horses for competition had called them.” Tanna’s hands balled into fists. “Ralph told me after the accident, Jezebel was confused and in a lot of pain so the vet tranqued her to reduce her stress level. They had no choice but to put her down. Everyone says it was easier—better—for me not to be there, but dammit, I should’ve been. After all we’d been through . . . I let Jezebel down.
“I spent the next two weeks in a fog of pain meds after the ACL tear repair surgery on my knee, having my arm in a sling and my ankle in a cast.” Tanna dropped her chin. “I’d lost everything, so in some ways, bein’ out of it for those two weeks was a blessing. I haven’t been able to get on—or even near—a horse since.”
Fletch didn’t offer her platitudes. But he did know how to offer her comfort and that’s what she needed right now. He scooted out of the booth and threw cash on the table. He held out his hand to her. “Come on. We’re getting out of here.”
She didn’t protest. She grabbed his hand, letting him lead her outside.
Rain fell softly, in a foggy mist rather than a steady downpour.
As soon as they were out of the glare of the diner’s front windows, he gently folded her into his arms. Tanna squirmed. He merely pulled her closer and murmured, “Hush. Let it go. There’s nobody here but us.”
“I can’t.”
“You can.”
“Why are you bein’ so nice to me after I told you—”
He kissed her forehead. “Because I am a nice guy. And because I really like you.”
She buried her face into his chest. She didn’t sob, even when he suspected she wanted to. Tanna just held him tightly, her palms flat on the middle of his back. Her fingers flexing and kneading like a cat digging its claws into his flesh.
Finally she raised her head. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. And I’m sorry.”
She looked confused. “For what?”
“This.” He dropped his mouth over hers, taking the kiss he’d been dying for. Her surprised gasp gave him easy access past her trembling lips and he slipped his tongue inside her mouth.
She tasted so sweet—tea and Tanna. And she gave herself over to the kiss, just like she’d given all of herself over to him the night they’d wound up in bed. Part of him wanted to crank the kiss to the combustible stage, where the steam rising off their bodies wasn’t from the rain, but from lust. Yet, for all her bold sex talk, right now Tanna was as skittish as a new colt. He wouldn’t give her a reason to flee. So he kept the kiss easy. Slow and thorough. A first-date kiss, because in his mind, that’s what this was.
Tanna retreated first. She tipped her head back to look at him.
Tiny drops of mist clung to her long eyelashes. With those enormous brown eyes, dark hair curled around her heart-shaped face and her well-kissed lips, she was so damn beautiful, looking at her stole his breath.
“That went beyond a friendly kiss, Doc.”
“Yeah, well . . .” He had no real defense so he didn’t offer one. “You’re the prime example of why the words hot and mess go together so well.”
She looked shocked for a second. Then she shook her head. “You’re possibly the only man on the planet who could say that to me and I’m not tempted to knee you in the ’nads.”
That sassy mouth made him smile. “That’s why we should hang out more often. In places besides bars.”
“Anything but horseback riding.”
Fletch framed her face in his hands. Before he could assure her that she didn’t have to be flip with him, that he’d be there for her anytime she needed him, she spoke.
“You’re not laughing.”
His thumbs swept across her cheekbones. “Because I don’t think you were trying to be funny.”
Tanna moved her head, forcing his hands to fall away. “What is it with you?”
“What do you mean?”
“You like to badger me about stuff and I let you. But it doesn’t piss me off like when other people do it to me.”
“See? We’ve already got that goin’ for us. The only way we’ll know if this”—he hated to say friendship, so instead, he emphasized—“thing will work is to spend more time together.”
Her eyes searched his. “No pressure to hit the sheets.” br />
A statement of fact? Or a request? “If that’s what you want.”
“I do.”
But Fletch definitely heard the for now that hung in the air between them.
“It’s late and I know you get up at the crack of nothin’.” Tanna started across the parking lot and he fell in step beside her, watching water splashing across the black asphalt.
“Do you have any full days off this week?”
“Tuesday. Harlow is working in the clothing store and Tierney is handling hostess duties with Renner in the lounge. The rooms are booked Monday and Tuesday night with people he knows from the world of rodeo. And I’d rather not be there slinging drinks; know what I mean?”
“I do. I’m glad Renner’s conscientious about it.”
“He’s a great boss—as far as bosses go. I’d probably be worthless in the lounge anyway since I’m supposed to go to Eli’s on Tuesday.”
“You decided to go to Eli’s on your own?”
She shrugged.
“Or is the brat railroading you into it?” he demanded.
“Celia strongly suggested it. Several times,” Tanna said dryly.
There were so many things he wanted to say but everything sounded trite in his head. “Is that what you were talking to Eli about at the branding? Whether he can help you get back on a horse?”
“He thinks he can help me overcome my”—she waved distractedly—“debilitating fear or whatever the fuck it is. But I think I’m beyond helping.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Because I’m reacting like one of those combat veterans suffering from PTSD. I feel this pressure to get back to normal. Everyone says my fear will blow over. It’s past time to get over it. But what if . . . I can’t? Ever?” Tanna blew out a frustrated breath. “But the truth is, if I hadn’t felt comfortable with Eli, I wouldn’t be goin’. I’m not exactly a pushover, in case you hadn’t noticed.”
So Tanna was one of those women—she showed him her vulnerability but then she’d snap at him if he showed concern. “I noticed. But if my cousin is mean to you, it’d be my pleasure to beat him up for you.”
Tanna laughed. “You are the most unpredictable man I’ve ever met.”
Tempting to kiss her good night, but she’d expect that so he didn’t.
Chapter Ten