Dragon's Eden (26 page)

Without conscious thought, her hand shot up
and pressed against his chest, causing him to wince and swear
again, not so softly.

“No,” she whispered, putting force into the
word instead of volume, her voice trembling.

When he looked down at her, she tilted her
head toward the door and the trip wire of tape. He followed the
gesture, and a heartbeat later the barest flicker of a smile
touched his mouth, the most ironic smile she had ever seen. In that
instant he looked familiar—incredibly familiar.

* * * * * *

Please continue reading for an excerpt from
A
Piece of Heaven

One

Travis Cayou dropped his saddle on the
floor, then dropped his backside into one of the molded plastic
chairs lining the wall of the Laramie, Wyoming, bus station. Damn.
He hurt everywhere, bad in the places he hadn’t broken, and worse
in the places he had.

Rain poured down on the white cinder-block
building, streaking the outside of a picture window that framed a
muddy Second Street and not much else. Looking around, Travis
didn’t think the dusty posters tacked to the other three walls gave
the wet view much of a run for its money, not at first glance. But
he was close to home, and that’s what counted. The only thing that
counted.

Inhaling deeply and moving in slow motion,
he organized himself into the chair. The spurs on his boots jangled
a backdrop to his low groan as he stretched his legs out. He took
it easy on his right knee, not stretching it too much, just enough
to ease a kink or two. The next time some damn bronc decided to
kiss the fence, he was getting off first. He swore he would,
whether he’d lasted the eight seconds needed to score or not.

Worse yet, he hadn’t done any better on his
bull ride. That animal had wanted to eat him. He thought he’d
ridden every kind of bull that had ever been seen. He’d had them
buck and spin so tight, they made their own whirlwind. He’d had
them crash beneath him, or worse, try to climb out of the bucking
chute with him on their back. But he’d never seen anything like Mad
Jack. The next time that particular bovine’s number came up with
his, he was walking away. He swore he was. They could have his
entry fee.

Thinking of which, where in the hell had
that clown got off to just before Mad Jack decided to make an hors
d’oeuvre out of him? Wasn’t that part of what he laid his money
down for? For some bullfighting clown to be out there when he
dropped his bull rope?

“Heroes,” he muttered, wincing at a new
pang. Every time some rodeo got a write-up in some newspaper, there
was always the same damn headline: “Clowns—Heroes of the Rodeo,” or
“Clowns—A Bull Rider’s Best Friend.”

Travis wasn’t buying it today. Oh, he’d
admit most of them were the hottest things on two legs. Most every
time he’d bailed off a bull, one of them had been there to make
sure he got out of the arena with all his parts in place. But this
last clown had taken one look at old Mad Jack and seen a man-eater.
He’d aced Travis in the brains department and kept himself just out
of helping distance.

A hero? he thought. Try the cowboy on the
back of the raging, bucking beast. The man with the resin smoking
on his glove. The man spurring an animal already so fired up he was
spitting flames.

The man with more guts than brains. Wasn’t
that what James had always said?

A wry smile lifted a corner of Travis’s
mouth. He settled back in the chair and pulled his hat low over his
eyes, using his left hand and trying not to jostle his right
arm.

He should have been a roper. That’s what
James had always said. Sure, ropers got hurt sometimes, but more
often than not they didn’t get stomped all over creation.

His left hand dropped back onto his thigh,
making a print in the dust turned to mud on his jeans. Lord, he was
tired. He was getting too old to have his tail end kicked by rough
stock. He was getting too old to be following the rodeo circuit
with only half his heart in it. He made enough to pay expenses and
keep his checkbook from rolling over in a dead faint, and that was
about it.

His wrist hurt like hell. The doctor had
given him some pain pills, real good stuff. But how many times
could a man break the same damn wrist in the same damn place and
expect it not to hurt all the time, mended or not?

Probably not many, Travis decided, digging
in his shirt pocket for another painkiller. At least it was a clean
break this time. He swallowed the pill dry, too tired to get up and
fight the rain for a can of pop from the machine outside.

He was finished. He swore he was. It was
time for him to go home. Hell, it was long past time for him to go
home. He’d done eight years of penance. He was tired of running
from James’s memories and his own guilt.

James was the one who’d married Beth Ann. He
was the one who’d brought her up to their ranch on the Colorado
side of the Colorado-Wyoming border. He was the one who had left
her alone day after day, and sometimes night after night, while he
wheeled and dealed. All Travis had done was try to help her over
the rough spots, and if he’d wanted to do more, well, he hadn’t
done nearly as much as she’d begged him to do.

But the past was over. It was time for him
to go home and lay claim to his half of the Cayou Land and Cattle
Company. Ranching was a way of life, and Travis wanted his life
back, the life he’d been born to live. He missed the scent of sage
on the evening breeze. He missed watching the sun sliding into the
Rockies. He missed the quiet. The same quiet that had driven Beth
Ann to acts of desperation.

She’d hated it all, the wild silence waiting
outside the confines of the ranch buildings, the snowcapped peaks
penning her in. It was a hell of a life for a woman, but his mother
had done it. Hell, lots of women could do it, if their men took
care.

One thing he knew for sure, the Cayou Land
and Cattle Company needed a woman’s touch. He’d stopped by three
years ago when he’d known James would be at the National Western
Stock Show, and the house had looked run-down and worn-out, not at
all like home, not at all the way his mother had kept it. Even Beth
Ann had done better. Shoat, one of the old-timers at the ranch, had
told him then that he ought to come home, that the ranch needed
him.

Well, he was coming home now, busted up,
road weary, and saddle sore.

Hell, he could use a woman’s touch, Travis
thought. He shifted in his chair and grimaced against the pain.
Someone sweet and willing, soft and well-rounded. Someone warm.
Someone with good hands.

He slid farther down, resting his head on
the back of the chair and holding on to his casted right forearm.
Yeah, someone with good hands
.

He smiled as he closed his eyes and
readjusted his hat against the weak gray light coming in through
the window. Woman, hell. What he needed was sleep. Shoat had said
it would take him at least an hour, maybe two, to get to the bus
station from the ranch. Then he’d be heading home to stay.
Providing James didn’t try to kick him back out again.

Travis let out a weary sigh. If James did
try, he was going to find a fight on his hands, and not one of
those knock-down, drag-out, wrestle-in-the-dirt kind of fights
they’d had over Beth Ann eight years ago. He’d backed off then,
because of a guilt he still wasn’t sure was his to bear. He wasn’t
backing off this time, not an inch.

He needed to go home, and he’d do whatever
he had to, whatever it took to get him there and make it stick.
Nobody or nothing was going to stop him.

* * *

Callie Michael fought her way through the
storm into the bus station, slamming the door behind her and
shutting out the wind-whipped rain. She stood on the old beige
carpet, dripping one puddle beneath her boots and another one a few
inches out, where the rain ran down and off the rolled brim of her
hat.

The storm was quickening up, threatening to
turn into one of the year’s best, especially up north and in the
mountain ranges to the west. Luckily, she was heading southwest,
back to Colorado, back to the Cayou Land and Cattle Company, she
and James’s little brother.

She wiped a palm up her cheek and shook the
water off her fingers, her gaze steady on the lone occupant of the
waiting area. He didn’t look all that little.

Six foot plus of cowboy lay sprawled over a
short bank of chairs, one arm flung out like a rag doll’s, the
other cradled close to his chest in a sling and a cast. Long legs,
a hard-sided suitcase, an Association saddle, and a rigging bag
draped with the fanciest chaps Callie had ever seen took up a good
third of the floor space on the customer side of the counter. It
wasn’t Travis Cayou’s white and gold chaps with the silver
lightning bolts that held her gaze, though.

His jeans had been split from ankle to hip
on his right leg, and the first aid tape that was supposed to hold
them together was giving up with the wet and the dirt. As a rule,
cowboys didn’t go around showing off their legs, and Callie figured
Travis Cayou didn’t either. His leg was a color closer to the white
bandage wrapped around his knee than it was to the darkly tanned
skin of his large, square hands.

Strong hands
. The thought crossed her
mind and momentarily caught her attention. His hands were the
essence of strength, rugged and weather-worn, built of sinew and
bone and brought to life by the ridges of veins tracking beneath
his skin. She would have expected no less. Every working cowboy
needed strong hands. Someone who bet his life on the ability of
five fingers to hold him onto half a ton of bucking bronc or a ton
of aggravated bull needed more than a strong hand. He needed an arm
of steel to back it up.

Her gaze slipped up the pearly snaps on his
cream-colored shirt, taking in the streaks of mud and the dirt
ground into the cloth. His head was tilted back against the small
chair, giving him plenty of snoring room. A day’s growth of sandy
beard darkened the chin and jaw jutting out from beneath the black
Stetson that covered his face. She noted the small bandage taped
high on his cheekbone, and the bit of blood showing on the gauze
wrapped around his knee. From the looks of him, he’d taken more
than one spill last night. No wonder Shoat had been worried about
him.

Finally, her gaze settled on his right hand,
half hidden by the cast. He was loosely cupping the big gold and
silver rodeo buckle at his waist, as if he were trying to hold
whatever was left of himself together.

An unconscious sigh lifted her chest. Her
glance drifted to his saddle and his rigging bag and those fancy
chaps, then back to him. He was a wreck, but he looked mostly like
what he was, a saddle tramp, the prodigal son returning home, a
cowboy on the short end of the rodeo circuit. What he did not look
like was James’s brother, let alone James’s little brother.

James wasn’t six foot of anything, and he
sure didn’t have legs like that—long, lanky, and put together in a
way that made her gaze stray back to the mostly naked bandaged one.
Ropes of muscle corded his thigh and his calf, flexing with every
slight movement he made in his sleep. It was a sight to see, and it
made Callie’s mind wander in unaccustomed ways.

She blushed at her sensual musing, then
became irritated with herself. She’d obviously been cooped up with
Shoat and the cows too long if she was ogling the likes of Travis
Cayou. He was no business of hers. She’d only come as a favor to
Shoat, and she hoped to hell James never found out she’d done even
that much. Her boss was darn touchy when it came to his younger
brother.

Quietly clearing her throat, she forced her
gaze to the bus station clerk. The red-haired lady was doing the
same thing she’d been doing, staring at more man than either of
them was used to seeing. It was ridiculous.

“Mr. Cayou? In from Colorado and New
Mexico?” she asked, gesturing with her thumb and drawing the
clerk’s attention.

“Yeah.” The clerk grinned. “He’s been kind
of decorating up the lobby this afternoon. You got here in the nick
of time. I was about to close up. Figured I’d just take him home
with me.” The grin broadened, taking half a dozen years off the
older woman’s face, and leaving no doubts in Callie’s mind about
what the lady had been planning to do with him. From what she’d
heard about Travis Cayou, he drew women like a lodestone—whether
they were married or not.

She gave him another inadvertent glance. At
least now she knew why. He had a look about him, and she hadn’t
even seen his face.

But that wasn’t her problem. Her problem was
getting him home.

She took a step toward him, then hesitated,
feeling a tingle of wariness, or shyness, speed up her pulse.
Chastising herself for more foolishness, she wiped her hand across
her middle and took the last two steps to him, her boots squishing
softly on the carpet.