Rodeo Daddy Read online

  He laughed. “More like a waltz. In spite of the bucks and jumps, it actually resembles three-quarter time.”

  She smiled over at him, surprised. “You make it sound almost…romantic.”

  “It’s anything but that. Some people say rodeo is part physical ability and part poetic interpretation.” He scoffed at that. “It’s actually just a lot of balance. And a test of endurance.”

  Behind them, Sam put away her books and turned out the light before coming up front to give her father a kiss good-night.

  “Buckle in,” he said.

  “I will.” She ignored Chelsea as she retreated to the back of the motor home and her bed.

  “What do you think about when you’re on the bull?” Chelsea asked, not wanting him to quit talking. She loved the sound of his voice and the intimacy of the cab in the dark night.

  “There are a thousand things going through your head,” he said after a few moments. “Your only hold is your grip on the rope. For eight seconds you rely on your sense of timing, anticipation and balance.” He chuckled. “Mostly, it’s just adrenaline flow. Then the ride is over and all you’re concerned with is getting away from the bull and out of the ring.”

  She said nothing, remembering him trying to get away from the bull the first time she saw him ride.

  “I know you don’t understand why I’m doing this,” he said quietly. “Sometimes I don’t, either. It’s grueling, both physically and mentally. Being on the road for months on end, riding day after day. I’m always tired and sore, always looking for the bull that will put me in the money.”

  “Then why do you do it?” she had to ask.

  “For me it’s more than a sport. It’s a means of making a living and accomplishing something with my life. It’s also something I’m good at.”

  She remembered what Dylan had sent her on Jack and what she’d found on the computer about his pro rodeo bull riding. Only 120 cowboys qualified for the National Finals Rodeo every year out of almost six thousand competitors. Jack had been eight times over the last ten years. Of those 120 competitors, only seven were awarded world titles at the end of the event. Jack had won seven out of the ten years for bull riding.

  “I heard about your world championships,” she said. “It seems you’re very good at what you do.” Which would make it all the harder for him to quit.

  “You don’t sound very happy about that fact,” he noted. She could hear the disappointment in his voice.

  “I’m very proud of you,” she said honestly. “It just scares me, Jack. I don’t want to see you hurt.”

  “There are risks to any challenge, Chelsea.”

  “Yes,” she agreed, reminding herself of the risk she was running right now. “But how do you know when to stop?”

  “Depends on what you want.”

  “What do you want, Jack?”

  He stared at the road ahead, and even in the dim lights from the dash, she sensed his expression alter.

  For a moment the only sound was the hum of the tires on the pavement. “I remember when you wanted a ranch of your own,” Chelsea said when he still hadn’t answered.

  “Some dreams don’t change,” he replied without looking at her.

  “Jack—”

  “You should get some sleep.” His words were clipped and cold. “You’re going to have to drive soon.” He reached over and turned up the radio, putting an end to further conversation.

  She leaned back in her seat and turned her face toward the night. What had upset him? Had it been bringing up the past? Or bringing up his dream for a ranch? She closed her eyes, unable to let go of that slim thread of hope. Jack still wanted a ranch and she just happened to have one.

  * * *

  “YOU LIKE HER, don’t you?” Sam said, suddenly appearing at Jack’s right shoulder.

  He looked back from his driving. “Hey, why aren’t you asleep?” he whispered so as not to wake Chelsea.

  “I had to go to the bathroom.” She folded down the seat he’d made for her when she was smaller and sat down between him and the sleeping Chelsea.

  “Get yourself buckled up, young lady,” he ordered.

  “You do like her, don’t you?” Sam persisted as she snapped her seat belt in place.

  “Who?” he asked, pretending stupidity.

  “Chelsea,” she said in a whisper, then gave him a “duh” look.

  He glanced over at Chelsea, listened for a moment to her steady breathing. “Sure, I like her,” he said, his eyes on the road.

  “Do you think she’s pretty?”

  “What’s with these questions?”

  “Do you think she’s pretty?”

  “Sure. Not as pretty as you, though,” he said with a grin, hoping to change the subject.

  She swatted his arm. “We’re not talking about me.”

  “I like talking about you,” he said.

  Her look assured him she wasn’t going to be dissuaded.

  “Would you want to marry her?” Sam asked.

  “Hold on,” Jack said. “Nobody’s talking about marriage here.”

  “You said you might want to get married someday.”

  “Well, yeah, but—”

  “Didn’t you want to marry her a long time ago?” Sam asked. “Ace said—”

  “I really wish you wouldn’t listen to Ace.” In fact, he didn’t like his daughter having any contact at all with the cowboy, but that would be difficult since rodeo was just one large family.

  “Were you going to marry her?” Sam asked.

  Jack looked again at Chelsea. Her head rested against the back of the seat, her long dark hair like a soft cloud around her peaceful face. Chelsea Jensen wasn’t pretty, she was beautiful. He felt that jolt, like a lightning strike. “Yeah, I was going to marry her.”

  “What happened?” Sam asked.

  He didn’t want to get into this. Especially with Sam. But he owed her some explanation since Chelsea was traveling with them. “We were too young. Her dad and older brother didn’t think we were ready for marriage.” All true. Just not the whole story.

  Fortunately, that seemed to satisfy Sam, at least temporarily.

  “Is that why she came here? To tell you she wasn’t too young anymore?”

  He laughed but found himself studying his daughter. She’d always been bright, way ahead in maturity compared with most kids her age. But sometimes, she blew him away with the questions she asked. He’d had to tell her about the birds and bees when she was six. Six!

  But he’d always tried to be honest with her. He wished he could be right now. “You’d better get some sleep.” He could tell she wanted to fight him on it and ask a lot more questions he didn’t have answers for. “Bed. Now. We can talk about this some other time.”

  Sam gave in. She kissed him on the cheek. “Good night, Daddy.”

  She hadn’t called him Daddy for a while. He’d missed it. He didn’t want her growing up too fast. But just this morning, he’d caught Sam looking in the mirror, assessing herself as if suddenly aware that one day she would be a woman. That scared him.

  “Look, if you don’t like having Chelsea along—”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  Fine? He knew his daughter. Things were either amazingly cool or they were just too awful for words. There was no in between. There was definitely no “fine.” What had happened to his little tomboy cowgirl?

  He thought he knew the answer to that one. Several times today, he’d caught her staring at Chelsea, studying her, head cocked, the way she might inspect a bug she’d found.

  “Good night, sweetheart,” he said.

  Sam trotted back to her bed without an argument or any attempt to trick him into letting her stay up later. This was definitely not his child.

  After Sam left, he glanced over at Chelsea again. For miles, he’d tried hard not to look at her, pretending nothing had changed. Just him and Sam and the motor home, driving to the familiar sound of country-and-western on the radio and the hum of the tires
on the pavement.

  Not that he hadn’t been aware of Chelsea every second. Her every breath. Her every movement. Every sound she made. Trying to ignore her had nearly worn him out.

  When he couldn’t stand it any longer, he’d glanced over at her, only to find her sound asleep. There was a dab of chocolate ice cream at the corner of her mouth, and she appeared to be smiling in her sleep. He smiled in spite of himself and wondered how much more of this he could take.

  * * *

  CHELSEA HAD AWAKENED miles back but kept her eyelids closed, blatantly eavesdropping on Jack and Sam’s conversation. What conversation there was.

  Jack had succeeded in avoiding most of Sam’s questions, questions Chelsea would have loved to have heard the answers to. Was it hard on him, having her this close? She only hoped it was half as hard on him as it was on her. Just being this near to Jack and not being able to get him to open up to her, let alone touch her, was torture.

  As the motor home slowed, she opened her eyes and feigned waking up. It was still dark out. Jack pulled into a rest stop.

  “Your turn to drive,” he said to her. “You have driven a motor home or something comparable, right?”

  “It can’t be any harder than a truck. I have driven those, you might recall.”

  He groaned. “How many years has it been?”

  He had her there. She hadn’t driven a truck since she used to hang around Jack, helping him haul hay. But it was probably a lot like riding a bike.

  She waved off an answer to his question, got out and stretched, then trotted over to the ladies’ room. After using the facilities, she splashed cold water on her face, completely ruining her makeup. She dried her face with the stiff paper towels, telling herself that staying awake was more important than looking good. As if Jack was going to notice anyway.

  She went back out and climbed into the driver’s seat of the motor home.

  Jack was already in the passenger seat, looking disapproving because she’d taken so long. He seemed to study her as she got her latte where she could reach it and her sunflower seeds. The ice would have melted and diluted the coffee, but she could use the caffeine jolt. The combination of seeds and coffee had worked in college, and she figured this wasn’t that much different from studying all night.

  She started the engine, found first gear and eased off the clutch. The engine died.

  She shot him a look and smiled. He just shook his head, dropped his hat over his face and crossed his arms as he leaned back to go to sleep.

  Just like riding a bike, she thought as she tried again. She restarted the motor home and got it moving. Finding the other gears was a little trickier. Several times Jack peeked out from under the hat, his gaze saying a hundred times over how out of her realm she was.

  She drove through the night, careful to make sure she stayed on the highway to Kansas City. Jack woke to help her fill the fuel tanks whenever she stopped, then went right back to sleep.

  She listened to talk radio, sang along with several country-and-western stations and ate sunflower seeds. She thought about the other rustler. She thought about Ray Dale and who would want to kill him. Maybe in Kansas City, she would try to talk to Crocker about the argument she’d seen between him and Ace.

  Even though Dylan had told her to let him handle it, she was here. She’d just make sure there were plenty of people close by when she talked to Crocker.

  The more she dug, the greater the mystery grew, and she’d come no closer to proving Jack’s innocence.

  As day broke, she saw the tall buildings sprouting out of the Kansas horizon and finally admitted just how tired she was. Her shoulders ached from manhandling the motor home and her head throbbed after staring down the white line of the highway for miles and miles of nothing but open country.

  Proving herself to Jack wasn’t going to be easy. Maybe impossible. His life was hard and his days long. She couldn’t imagine what the last ten years had been like for him, doing this all alone. On the road, traveling from rodeo to rodeo, raising a daughter by himself. She was impressed—and at the same time horrified he would choose such a life for himself and Sam.

  As the sun came up, she glanced at him, wondering what it would take to get him and Sam back to the Wishing Tree Ranch.

  * * *

  AS IF ON CUE, Jack woke with the sun. He opened his eyes, looked over at her and then out the windshield at the city. “So you made it.” He sounded vaguely impressed.

  Chelsea was too tired to comment, her eyes sand-filled and dry as Texas dust.

  “Pull over. I’ll drive.”

  She wasn’t about to argue. And yet she felt pretty proud of herself for not only mastering the motor home, but getting them this far. All in a day’s work for Jack.

  Pulling over, she stopped and switched seats. All she wanted to do was curl up and sleep. But Jack, it seemed, had other plans for her. He drove up to an all-night, coin-operated laundry and glanced over at her.

  “This is where you get out,” he announced as he parked the motor home then climbed into the back to retrieve a huge overstuffed canvas bag that she assumed contained dirty clothes.

  “I have to go check in at the rodeo and see what time my ride is,” he told her. His gaze dropped to her chest, and she felt her breasts tightening in response. Until he said, “You might want to throw that shirt in the wash.”

  Glancing down, she saw she’d gotten salad dressing all over the front. How attractive.

  He grinned. “Haven’t eaten in a lot of motor homes?”

  Sam stirred. “I want to stay with Chelsea,” came the murmur from the bunk bed in back.

  Jack seemed surprised. “Then you’d better get up.” Sam quickly pulled on clean clothing, washed her face and brushed her teeth as Jack waited none too patiently.

  Chelsea watched, blurry-eyed, as Sam handed her father a hairbrush, then knelt in front of him at the dinette while he took out her braid and brushed her long, reddish-brown hair. Jack began to braid the little girl’s hair with an expertise that blew Chelsea away and oddly brought a lump to her throat.

  “All done,” he said when he’d finished, bending down to plant a kiss on Sam’s cheek.

  She smiled up at him. “Thanks.” Then, as if on impulse, she threw her arms around his neck.

  It obviously surprised—and pleased—Jack. He shot Chelsea a questioning look over Sam’s shoulder.

  Chelsea shrugged. Sam was a mystery to her. But she had to look away as she felt her eyes water.

  Sam got the laundry soap and a handful of quarters from a cabinet. “Ready?” she asked.

  Chelsea nodded.

  “I’ll be back in a couple of hours,” Jack told her. “You should be able to get some coffee and juice from one of the machines. We’ll grab some breakfast when I get back.”

  “No problem,” Chelsea said as she dragged the heavy bag out the side door of the motor home. She glanced around for a coffee shop. None. Vending-machine coffee. Great.

  She halted on the sidewalk to wait for Sam, who had stopped to get some last-minute instructions from her father.

  When Sam joined her, the two of them watched Jack drive away.

  “Dad said I’ll have to show you how to wash clothes,” Sam said, sounding amazed.

  “I’ve washed clothes before,” Chelsea said a little defensively.

  Sam cocked her head, a gesture Chelsea had seen Jack do dozens of times. “In a laundry where you have to use quarters?”

  Chelsea glanced at the dusty windows and sniffed the scent of fabric softener wafting out the front door on a current of hot air. “No,” she admitted.

  Sam smiled. “Don’t worry, it’s not hard.” She strutted off ahead of Chelsea, her braid swinging. Chelsea followed the girl into the surprisingly busy laundry, feeling as out of her realm as she had felt at the rodeo grounds.

  Once inside, she was instantly grateful for Sam’s help and expertise. The little girl quickly sorted the clothes, filled three machines, popped quarters into the s
lots and shoved them home. Chelsea added the soap.

  Several attendants bustled around the machines, stuffing large amounts of wet wash into dryers and folding huge stacks of clothing. Some patrons milled around, watching the clock, obviously anxious to finish their laundry and get off to their jobs. Others sat reading the dogeared magazines as if they had all day.

  Chelsea got a cup of coffee from the machine and almost gagged at the taste. But caffeine was caffeine. She purchased a juice for Sam and stood leaning against a rocking washer next to the girl.

  “Why don’t we go see if we can find a café?” she suggested. “We could get some real coffee and maybe a cinnamon roll or some fruit for you.”

  Sam shook her head and hopped up onto the washing machine. “Can’t leave the clothes.”

  She looked over at the girl to see if she was serious. “You really don’t believe that someone would steal them?” Chelsea whispered in disbelief as she remembered the work clothes she’d seen Sam put into the washers.

  Sam nodded. “Real cowboy clothes, they will. Betty Jean lost all of her Wranglers.”

  “Who is Betty Jean?” Chelsea asked, and instantly wished she hadn’t.

  “A barrel racer,” Sam said. “One of the ones who liked my dad.” She shot Chelsea a knowing look. “She doesn’t come around anymore.”

  “Let me guess, toads in the boots?” Chelsea asked.

  “And other stuff,” Sam admitted.

  Chelsea had to laugh, then asked seriously, “Haven’t you ever wanted a mother?”

  Sam shrugged and changed the subject.

  “Do you have your own horse?”

  “Yes. Her name’s Scout.”

  Sam seemed surprised. “What’s she like?”

  Chelsea described the bay mare, realizing how important the horse was to her. She missed her rides. She’d always had a horse. She and her first horse, Gertie, had been inseparable.

  “Gertie? You named a horse Gertie?” Sam exclaimed, and made a dopey face.

  “I was only three,” Chelsea said in her defense. “What would you name your horse?”

  Sam didn’t have to think about it. “Sam’s Star,” she confided, swinging her slim legs as the washer under her clanked and groaned and shook. “Dad and I have a star that he named for me. We always look for it wherever we are. He says someday when I’m grown and gone, we can find the star, no matter where we are, and still be together.” She shot Chelsea a challenging look.