Amarillo By Morning

By Bethany Campbell

Asked to endorse Serena Davis's hand–tooled boots, rodeo star Cal McKinney finds himself drawn to the beautiful designer, but she wants to keep their relationship all business.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers Australia
• Release date: Jul 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781460818855

Bethany Campbell

Bethany Campbell was born and raised in Nebraska, and now lives with her husband, Dan, in Northwest Arkansas. The two met when they were students at Northern Illinois University. They discovered they had a number of mutual interests, especially when it came to movies. Their record so far is seeing 11 in one day at a documentary film festival. They usually agree about movies, and are passionate defenders of Ishtar. We love it, says Bethany. We have the video tape and watch it at least once a year. We have special fezzes we wear for the occasion. The moths ate some holes in my fez, but the tassel is still in good shape. Among their all-time favourite movies are Chinatown, Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Bridge on the River Kwai, The Maltese Falcon, The Man Who Would Be King, Midnight Cowboy, Road Warrior, and Beauty and the Beast. Both are interested in animals. When they married, their combined menagerie consisted of two cats, two dogs, two snapping turtles, a Siamese fighting fish, three newts, an iguana, a guinea pig, and a king snake named Sir Hiss. Presently they are down to one dog and two cats. Do they share tastes in everything? No, says Bethany. We like very different things in music; we can drive each other nuts with our CDs. I've been known to hide his Bjork albums. He thinks my movie scores are soppy. Other differences? He's athletic; I'm a klutz. He's an adventurous eater; I'm picky and get queasy even looking at an oyster. He's outgoing; I'm shy. Dan writes video scripts as part of his business and has published science fiction and humour. He's presently working on a screenplay. Does having two writers in the house create tensions or jealousies? No, says Bethany. It helps, because when you have a technical problem, it s hard to discuss it with somebody outside the writing business. We have some very nuts-and-bolts conversations that would bore most people to tears. She pauses. I am jealous of one thing, though. His fez is much nicer than mine.

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE

SHE WAS NERVOUS. She’d never before made an offer like this to a man. Especially a strange man.

Live dangerously, she thought, and held herself a little straighter as she walked toward the chutes.

The Wolverton Rodeo was glitzy, she brooded as she left the brick pathway. Year-round rodeo still seemed foreign to her. To tell the truth, she wasn’t fond of big rodeos, and Wolverton was big, even for Texas. But it had its uses. She intended to use it.

Serena Davis shrugged imperceptibly and pulled her Stetson down to a more determined angle. She was a tall woman of twenty-seven, with long black hair and gray-green eyes. She wore a pale sage-green shirt of Western cut, and darker green denims that hugged her slim hips and long legs.

Of all her clothing, her boots alone called attention to themselves. High-heeled and hand-tooled, they were cream-colored, with dusty-green prickly pear and yucca plants inlaid into them. They were the best pair she had, the best pair she’d ever made.

They might well be the most expensive pair of boots at the rodeo tonight, which, at Wolverton, was saying something. The upscale auditorium had its own Western-wear store, a gift boutique and even a barbecue restaurant with a live band. Its top tier housed fifty-six glassed SkyBoxes with closed-circuit television, bars and a fortune in Western artworks.

Serena, who remembered the old rodeo in Wolverton before it became so showy and oversized five years ago, still felt uncomfortable with its grandeur. At least, she thought, wrinkling her freckled nose with wry pleasure, it still smelled like a rodeo. They couldn’t take that away.

The rich scents of horse, hay, leather and cattle mingled and grew stronger. The mixture was a pungent one that had bewitched her since childhood. And as usual, the aroma filled her with conflicting impressions. Safety because this had been her grandfather’s world, and as a little girl she had felt secure in it. But even back then despite the illusion of safety, she had sensed danger in the air, as well. It had, after all, been rodeo. In rodeo, anything could happen.

Anything could happen.

Live dangerously.

She rounded a corner in the maze of pens and stalls, and then she stopped, her heart drumming a small stampede in her chest.

There he stood. His profile was to her, and he was engrossed in currying a big, ugly bay gelding with a scar that ran from its foreleg up to its chest. The man didn’t look happy. The handsome face looked stolid, almost angry.

He should look happy, she thought in momentary confusion. She hadn’t watched the rodeo tonight, but he always did well. Last week in Brazos he’d won the top money in calf roping, and he’d done admirably in bareback bronc riding as well, tying for third.

His family was rich, he was good-looking, and he was one of the best calf ropers in the business, once champion of the Cheyenne Frontier Days, twice champion of the Texas circuit and three times contender for world champion. He always acquitted himself admirably. What did he have to be unhappy about?

Another cowboy, much smaller and with one badly squinting eye, lounged against the bars of the stall, talking to him, a twisted smile on his face. But the handsome man, the one she had to talk to, wasn’t smiling. Not at all.

The short cowboy saw her, looked her up and down and then said something out of the side of his mouth. The handsome man turned, gave her a brief glance and still did not smile. He muttered something and turned his attention back to the horse.

Serena kept her eyes fixed on her quarry, the handsome cowboy, and moved toward him purposefully. He was a tall man, at least six foot two, with dark hair and eyebrows. His black Stetson hung on one of the uprights of the stall, and his worn leather chaps were thrown over a railing.

He had extremely regular features that gave him a deceptively boyish look at first glance. But there was nothing boyish in the ranginess of his body or in his expression. His good looks were temporarily marred by a bruise that darkened one cheek and made that side of his jaw swell slightly.

Her heart beat harder. He wasn’t supposed to be like this, sullen and dangerous looking. His reputation was the opposite. His attitude was supposed to be too carefree and what-the-hell for his own good. He was supposed to be full of easy charm, not simmering anger.

He moved to the other side of the big horse, still ignoring Serena. She thought she detected a slight limp in his step. Maybe his back injury was acting up, she speculated. And the closer she got, the harsher the bruise on his face looked.

Well, she thought fatefully, he’s bruised, he’s banged up and he’s in a rotten mood. I picked a wonderful time. He looks like he’d just as soon murder a stranger as talk to one.

Live dangerously, the voice in her head repeated.

Of course. How else could she live? She had no choice.

She stepped to his side, looked up at his frowning profile and tried to smile. She found she couldn’t. Her mouth was suddenly dry.

She refused to allow nervousness to stop her. She thrust out her hand and spoke in a voice so cool and confident it surprised her. Cal McKinney? she asked. I’m Serena Davis. I’d like to take you to supper. Will you go?

His head snapped up. Her eyes met a pair of blazing hazel ones. They were deep-set, long-lashed and so full of life that their intensity startled her. Caught in their gaze, she had the sudden, dizzying sensation of falling through space.

He smiled, and the fall grew faster.

He took her hand in his. At that moment the fall became so headlong that she couldn’t breathe.

Stop it, she told herself in panic. I can’t be attracted to this man. I can’t. I can’t be attracted to anybody. I’m at risk.

It seemed such a simple word: risk. Serena, looking at the tall cowboy, knew it wasn’t simple at all.

CAL MCKINNEY HAD BEEN in a mood blacker than chuck wagon coffee. He was back on the rodeo circuit. That should have been good, but it felt hollow, without its old joy.

He knew his daddy was unhappy with him for rodeoing again. He’d heard what J.T. had supposedly said about him back in Crystal Creek: When he wants to grow up and be a real cowboy, he’ll come home. In the meantime, he’s back in the circus.

The words stung. He’d told his father he’d try to find a different life from rodeo. He had tried many times but there was nothing else he wanted to do.

A few weeks ago Cal had turned thirty. He had done so in Fort Worth and, as if to commemorate the day, a bareback bronc had ignominiously thrown him three seconds out of the chute.

Rodeo made a man superstitious, and Cal had come to believe in omens. The bronc that dusted him was named Fate. Fate had not only sent him crashing into the dirt of the arena so hard it wrenched his back, Fate had also kicked him in the head.

Last week, in Borger, right before Brazos, he’d drawn another rank horse, been thrown at the buzzer and damn near landed under the hooves of the horse of the pickup man. He’d seen a horseshoe grinding in the dirt five inches from his eyes, watched as it barely cleared his head.

Worse, although he made good time roping and tying his calf tonight, the maverick had somehow knocked him in the jaw with a thrashing foreleg. A three-hundred-pound calf had a kick that hit a man harder than a baseball bat. An hour afterward Cal was still seeing stars and spitting blood and testing his teeth.

Tonight Shorty, a bull rider from Tucson, was on Cal’s case. Shorty was a squat, snaggletoothed redhead with a bad eye. The bad eye was compliments of a bull in Cheyenne two years ago.

Shorty had always been a jealous, gibing little coyote, and the eye made him more so. Women hung around good-looking rodeo riders like bees around honey. But none ever buzzed around Shorty, and he resented it like hell.

He resented Cal in particular because Cal usually drew more than his share of women. Cal’d had a bet with Shorty tonight about being in the money in calf roping. Instead he’d been kicked, had ruined his time, and he’d had to pay off the little son of a bitch. It had all put him in a mood meaner than a cut snake.

Tonight Shorty had been jawing him because no women had been coming around for Cal the past two nights. No women were likely to show up, either, Shorty needled. Cal had looked like a fool in Borger, nearly getting himself killed by the pickup man, who was there to save him, for Pete’s sake.

Cal had looked like an even bigger fool tonight, nearly getting his brains kicked out by a trussed-up calf. Didn’t he know by now how to stay out of a calf’s way? Maybe he was in the wrong business.

Besides, Shorty scoffed, no girls were likely to come around Cal now. He walked with a gimp and had a bruise the color of an eggplant ruining that pretty face. No, sirree, Cal wasn’t such a pretty boy right now, and where did that leave him? No gals hanging around lately, were there? Someday that pretty face might get stepped on good, and then where would Cal be? Nope, no girls would want him then.

Then Shorty had stopped briefly and sworn. Look at the boots on that girl, he’d said in awe.

Cal had glanced up and seen Serena. She was a long drink of water, and she had the kind of face that could stop a man’s heart in its tracks.

Look at the girl in those boots, fool, he’d muttered to Shorty, then gone back to grooming his horse.

He didn’t know who the girl had come to see, but it wouldn’t be him. Shorty was right. Cal’s back ached, making him carry himself as stiffly as an old man. His knee hurt, making him limp. His jaw was purple and swollen, and it throbbed like the tick of a cheap watch. Somebody might be getting lucky tonight. He wouldn’t be the one.

But then, like a woman sent from heaven, that long-stemmed beauty had walked right to his side, introduced herself and offered to buy him supper. Right in front of that jabbering troll, Shorty. Hallelujah!

Cal looked at her again, smiling, and this time he paid attention to what he saw. She was tall, at least five foot ten, he estimated, and slender. Dressed in muted shades of dusty-green, she reminded him of one of the long, graceful leaves of a century plant.

He’d always liked tall women, the more willowy the better. This one, he thought with satisfaction, was as willowy as they got. Shorty was right: her boots were mighty fine. But Cal didn’t waste time concentrating on her boots. It was her face that hooked his attention.

When he looked into her gray-green eyes, it jolted him as powerfully as when Fate kicked him in the head. A man could fall into those sea-green eyes and drown with no protest, happy never to resurface.

Her black hair was long and it hung past her shoulders, almost straight with just a hint of a wave. Her jaw was delicately squared, her nose straight and regal, her mouth wide and full, her eyebrows like dark wings. Freckles, a beautiful constellation of them, spilled across her nose and rounded cheekbones.

She was stunning in a way he had never before imagined a woman being stunning. This, he told himself, was no ordinary cowboy groupie. The gods had smiled on him. Belated happy birthday, Cal—have fun. Signed, The Gods.

He grinned at her, even though it hurt his jaw. He glanced out of the corner of his eye at Shorty. He could feel the burn of the smaller man’s jealousy, almost smell it smolder, almost hear it crackle.

You want to take me to supper, sugar? Cal drawled, his voice as teasing as he could make it.

You sure you got the right man? You sure you don’t want Shorty here?

You’re the one I want, she said unsmiling. She’d drawn her hand back quickly. Cal McKinney, right?

The one and only, he said. She had a throaty voice, soft, that vibrated like a purr along his spine.

Numerous thoughts, none of them gallant, swam through his mind. He wished he’d kept his room at the motel neater. He’d taken out part of his bad mood by strewing his clothes and boots and magazines about wildly. He’d left word for the maid to stay out; he hadn’t wanted himself or his stuff disturbed. No. The atmosphere was not romantic.

Maybe she was a local girl, had her own place. He tried to imagine it. An apartment? A house? A water bed? Shorty would nag him for every detail. He wouldn’t give the little rodent one.

She raised her chin, still unsmiling. She acted as if she were unused to what she was doing. When will you be ready to go? The question, even in her quiet cat’s-purr voice, sounded curt, almost reluctant.

He tossed the currycomb to Shorty, who automatically caught it, then suppressed a glare of resentment.

Honey, for you, I’m ready right now. Just let me stop by the boys’ room, wash up.

He reached for his black hat and settled it on his head, adjusting the brim to its jauntiest angle. You want to go in my van, or you got wheels of your own, sweetheart?

She shook her head almost solemnly, and her long hair swung with the motion. I’ll drive.

He grinned. This was getting better and better. A girl with that kind of boots had to have money. He imagined her in a wicked-looking little sports car, a convertible, with her hair flying. A white Corvette, he thought. That was what a girl like her should have. Yes, indeedy.

He clapped his hand on Shorty’s shoulder with false camaraderie. Shorty, buddy, take my chaps back to the motel for me, will you? I’ll pick ’em up later.

Much, much later, he hoped.

But the girl refused to return his smile. She acted as if she were either very serious or scared. Or both. Maybe it was the first time she’d ever picked up a cowboy. He’d do his best to make it an extremely pleasant experience for her.

He took her arm with a courtly air and kept smiling, trying to put her at ease. Selena? he asked.

Serena, she said tonelessly.

Her arm seemed slight, almost fragile against his hard-muscled one. But her hand, he’d noticed, was hardened and marked by small scars. She must be a sportswoman, he thought. A woman with boots like that didn’t work for a living.

She seemed uneasy, uncommunicative as he walked her to the parking lot. This both puzzled him and piqued his interest.

You from around here, darlin’? he asked, looking her up and down again with appreciation.

Yes.

From Wolverton?

Yes.

Been here all your life?

No.

Her one-word answers began to grate on his nerves, threatening his sense of triumph. How long you been here?

She swallowed with apparent nervousness. Ten years.

Well, thought Cal, she’d said two words. That was improvement. He tried again. Where you from? Originally?

She swallowed again. Agatha.

You have much to do with rodeo?

She shook her head. My grandfather, she said, as if that explained everything.

He studied her profile, which was regular and perhaps even patrician. She held her head high, whether in pride or determination he couldn’t say. Her skin was lightly tanned, but in spite of it she seemed unnaturally pale, which made her freckles stand out.

"Your grandfather what?" he asked, half impatient with her aloofness, half intrigued by it. Lord, he thought, she was beautiful, but there was something fascinatingly elusive about her.

Raised stock, she said shortly.

A stock contractor? he asked. Stock contractors supplied rodeos with bucking animals, steers, calves. Most of them had been contestants once themselves.

She nodded.

Honey, this is like pulling teeth, he thought.

He had a sudden bad vibration. Maybe this was one of those rich women who liked to pick up a man, get her kicks on a purely physical level. Snobbery twisted such women; they couldn’t resist the lure of sexual slumming, but they wanted no mental or emotional connection.

The thought threw a cold shadow on his ardor. He liked women—in fact, he loved women—but he didn’t aim to be some rich girl’s toy. Flirtation was half the fun for Cal. He’d tried once to explain it to Ken, the foreman back home: "See, it’s no fun makin’ love if you can’t make like first."

"Make like?" Ken had asked, his brow creasing without comprehension.

"Yeah. She makes you like her, you make her like you, and then it’s all more friendly when you get to bed. More fun."

Boy, Ken had said in his sober way, you’re crazy.

But Cal knew the truth of what he said. Girls had chased him from the time he could walk. He knew he could get almost any of them into bed by merely asking. The only ones who interested him were the playful ones, those who flirted and sported as avidly as he in the elaborate game of wooing.

The girl at his side had come on strong, but now she’d stopped playing. Intellect told him to be suspicious, but instinct whispered that she had might have gone shy on him, nervous at her own boldness. An optimist, he decided to trust instinct.

Besides, he thought, she was pretty enough and different enough for him to expend extra effort. He could imagine those unsmiling lips softening with desire, her mysterious eyes dazed with pleasure and her dark hair spread against the white of a pillow as he bent above her.

He could also imagine her body, which would be long and slender and pale, with a sprinkle of freckles kissing her shoulders. Small breasts, but slim, tight hips, and legs that went on forever. Oh, yes, thought Cal. Oh, yes.

So, he said, determined to play the courting game, "your granddaddy—was he ever in the rodeo?"

An odd look crept into her eyes. Her beautiful, ripe mouth kept its stoic set. Before I was born, she answered. A bronc rider. He gave it up when he—when he got married.

Some do.

Their boots crunched on the gravel at the edge of the parking lot. The lot was almost empty now, and a breeze stirred the night air. It tossed Serena’s dark hair, making her face dance in the shadows. He had a sudden irrational desire to stop her, lace his fingers in that black mane and tilt her face up toward his.

Then he’d say something to make her smile, and when that first smile began to fade on the outside, he’d lower his lips to hers and kiss her until she smiled inside as well, warm and glowing.

Slow down, he told himself. He didn’t usually move that fast. He didn’t know if she could smile. Maybe she was some kind of poor little rich girl or something.

Honey, you’re mighty quiet, he said instead.

Don’t say much.

I prefer action to words, she said, pulling her hat down more firmly against the tug of the breeze.

Now what the hell does that mean? Cal wondered in mixed pleasure and frustration. Was it an invitation? A warning that all she wanted was physical?

Here, she said, stopping. She reached into the pocket of her jeans and pulled out a set of keys. This is it. She unlocked the door of a battered green Chevrolet sedan.

Cal frowned, pushing his hat back on his head. So much for the new Corvette he’d expected. This car was at least ten years old, dented, scratched, one hubcap missing and the paint rusting out. It made no sense. He’d imagined a coach. She was driving a pumpkin, and the pumpkin had seen better days.

She didn’t seem to notice his surprise. Businesslike, without speaking, she got into the car, reached over and unlocked the door on his side.

Darlin’, he thought, I don’t know what you have in mind. But I aim to find out.

He opened the door and got in beside her. He had an odd, unbidden thought. For some unknown reason he remembered a poem from high school. Cal had usually stared out the window, but one poem had snapped him into alertness because it was weird and sexy.

In it, a young knight met a lovely but otherworldly girl in the forest. He took her onto his horse with him, she said she loved him, and they went to an enchanted grove where they made love: And there I shut her wide, sad eyes / With kisses four… Was that how it went? They slept, but when he awoke she was gone, and his soul had gone with her. The knight was doomed to search for her forever.

What a thing to recall after all these years, Cal thought. He had no intention of losing his soul, but he didn’t mind the idea of shutting Serena’s eyes with kisses four. Or more.

She tossed him a brief glance. Where to? she asked crisply.

He grinned his laziest grin. You decide, he said. I’m all yours, sweet thing.

I’M TERRIBLE at this, Serena thought in growing frustration. I’m awful at this. I hate this. This is the worst idea anybody ever had.

No sooner had she asked him out than she’d grown tongue-tied in his presence. He was so outrageously flirtatious that she couldn’t deal with it. She simply couldn’t.

Honey, he’d called her. And darlin’. And sweetheart and sugar and sweet thing. He could get the most innocent smile on his mouth, but at the same time his eyes would burn with the delight of sheer sexuality.

There was, in fact, a languid, mischievous sexiness in every line and motion of his lean body. He might walk with