One Night Rodeo (5 page)

The teasing smile on his face vanished. “That’s exactly it. I don’t know what she meant. She mentioned some kind of inheritance, my father wanting to see me right away, and then she clammed up. When I demanded the full truth, she got pissy. Then I got pissy.” The phone stopped ringing.

“Don’t you want to know what this is about? Obviously she’s anxious to talk to you.”

His eyes were conflicted. “Maybe. It’s freakin’ me out. That, coupled with your near hysteria from last night’s…” He looked away and his jaw tightened. “Never mind. It ain’t your problem.”

Seeing Kyle morph from mocking to morose so quickly triggered an odd need to soothe him. For once Celia didn’t dissect the feeling. She just gave in to it and sat down next to him on the bed. “So make it my problem. Talk to me.”

“You haven’t exactly been civil to me since you woke up at the crack of two this afternoon.”

“Blame it on the shock at discovering I’d been intimately involved in a civil ceremony last night.”

“You’re not blaming me?” Kyle asked skeptically.

“For us getting hitched? Yes, I’m blaming you.” Celia jabbed at him with her finger. “You were supposed to keep me from doing something stupid.”

He studied her. Pointed at her with his beer bottle. “Well, I don’t think it
was
stupid.”

His calm acceptance caused her to blurt out, “I don’t even know what the hell to say to that.”

The phone rang again.

“We’re in the same boat because I don’t know what the hell to say to her. About my father. Christ.” He chugged the rest of his beer. “Talk about bizarre.”

She patted his thigh. “Kyle. It has to be hard for her too. Talk to her.”

“This oughta be fun.” He answered his phone. “Mom. Yeah, I
am
sorry. No. I don’t understand. Why now?” After a minute or so, Kyle stood and paced, holding the phone with one hand, gesturing wildly with the other. “If you think I’m gonna haul ass all the way to Wyoming so you can have the dramatic edge of dropping his name on me in person, think again. Either give me his name right freakin’ now or I’m hanging up.”

Kyle froze. Every bit of blood drained from his face. Then he aimed his focus on the carpet, listening to whatever his mother was saying without argument.

Celia watched his hand curl into a fist, his knuckles turning white. She had the strangest compulsion to open that tight fist and thread her fingers
through his. To ease his tension. To let him know she was right there if he needed her.

“Yeah. I understand. I’m sure. No. I get it. Probably a few hours. Okay. Love you too. Bye.” Without another word he locked himself in the bathroom.

Great. What was she supposed to do now? Beat on the door and make him talk to her?

Use his distraction to push for an annulment?

Celia’s cell phone vibrated with a text message from Tanna.
Good afternoon, Mrs. Gilchrist! Call me. I just hit the road for TX and wanna know your plans.

Tanna could shed light on what had happened last night. Celia put the security latch in the door to keep it from shutting and snuck into the hallway.

Tanna answered immediately, busted out “Single Ladies,” and then laughed. “But that doesn’t fit you anymore, does it, Mrs. Gilchrist?”

“Ha ha, T.”

“Can I just do my I-told-you-so dance? I knew it was only a matter of the right timing before you and Kyle publicly admitted your feelings for each other.”

The right timing? After way too many tequila shooters?

“Despite the fact you were both pretty hammered, it was romantic how he swept you off the dance floor and yelled, ‘I’m marryin’ this woman right now before any of you bastards try to take her away from me’ and then ran with you to the chapel.”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no. Kyle had yelled that? And they’d been dancing?

Tanna kept blathering on, as she was prone to do. “I couldn’t believe you guys already had the paperwork filled out and the rings chosen by the time I tracked Devin down and we showed up to be your witnesses. The whole thing, from Kyle’s declaration on the dance floor to the official pronunciation of man and wife, took twenty minutes tops. And I’m impressed you still had time to write your own wedding vows.”

She’d written her own wedding vows? She sank to the floor in the hallway, tempted to beat her head into her knees, until she remembered she had stitches in her forehead.

“Although your
love
and
dove
rhyme wasn’t particularly original, nor was Kyle’s use of
ass
and
class
appropriate, the rest was really sweet and heartfelt. Like you’d both been holding your feelings inside for a long time. And that kiss.” Tanna sighed. “It was beautiful, but surprisingly raunchy. I’ve never seen you so happy, Celia. God. You were giddy with joy.”

How was it she couldn’t remember anything? And was it lucky or unlucky that Tanna did?

“Cele? You there?”

“Ah. Yeah.” Celia changed the subject, lest Tanna figure out just how much she didn’t remember from her own damn wedding. “Just wondering what you and Devin did after Kyle and I took off?”

“Drank some. Then two fan-girl chicks horned in and offered to blow him, so the man-whore whisked them to his tour bus. For all I know they might be on their way to Portland with him right now.”

“As you can imagine, I’ve been out of it today. Did you call Lainie and tell her that me and Kyle…?”

“Yes! She’s so excited for you guys. But I made her promise to wait to tell Hank until she got the okay from you two. But I wouldn’t put it past Devin to blab far and wide, so if I were you, I’d start making calls.” She muttered something. “Sorry, C, gotta go. Traffic is a bitch on this road so I need to concentrate on my driving, bein’s I lost my traveling partner to the hottest bull rider on the circuit. Call me later.”

Celia studied the floral-patterned carpet, trying to force any memory at all to the surface. Maybe she was trying too hard. Maybe if she let it…jell, it’d all come back to her.

Her phone buzzed in her hand with a text message. From Lainie.

I can’t believe you and Kyle got married last night! I haven’t said a word to Hank, but this isn’t a secret that’ll keep for long. Be best for your brothers to find out from you. In person, not over the phone. I expect you’ll come home ASAP.

As much as Celia loved Tanna, she’d seriously fucked up this situation by blabbing. Wait a second, Kyle had told his mother too. How many people had she told? How many people had Devin told? In the last thirty minutes Celia had lost any chance of getting a quiet annulment.

What was she supposed to do now? How could she tell Hank and Abe
her marriage to Kyle was a drunken mistake? They already treated her like a flighty kid who couldn’t make up her mind. She rolled to her feet, returning to the room to find Kyle gazing out the window. His tension was obvious in the tight set of his shoulders.

“What did your mom say?”

He didn’t respond for the longest time. Then he said, “She told me my father’s name. I’ve been asking her since I was five years old and she finally told me today.” Another long pause. “Marshall Townsend is my father.”

“The name isn’t familiar to me. Do you know who he is?”

“Yeah. I’ve crossed paths with him a couple of times, but it’s not like I know him. The summer after your folks died, this rancher named Marshall Townsend called Hank out of the blue and hired us to hay for him. We both thought it was weird at the time, since he didn’t know Hank or me, but we figured he must’ve known your parents. Anyway, he wasn’t friendly at all. He was cheap. He paid us the bare minimum but promised us hunting rights for the fall. When we tried to collect on the hunting rights, he said he’d changed his mind and chased us off his land.”

“That’s harsh.”

“What an asshole, right? And come to find out, that asshole is my father.”

Her heart broke for him. Celia went to him without thinking. She rested her cheek on his shoulder, hating to hear happy-go-lucky Kyle so resentful, although he had a right to be. “What can I do?”

He stiffened. “Don’t take a shot at me right now, Cele. I couldn’t handle another fuckin’ thing today.”

It hurt that he assumed she’d kick him while he was down, so she stepped back.

He remained quiet for a few moments. Then he sighed. “It’s easier for us to snipe at each other, isn’t it? Here I’ve been telling you it doesn’t have to be that way between us and what’s the first thing I do? Snap at you.”

Slightly mollified, she said, “This news about your father is a big shock for you, Kyle, so I’ll let it slide…this time.”

“So noted,” he murmured.

It bothered her that he hadn’t turned around to talk to her face-to-face,
almost like he expected her to get fed up and leave. So naturally, she dug her heels in. “So, what else do you know about him besides his assholish tendencies? Where does he live?”

“West of Rawlins. About thirty miles from your place. As far as what I know about him? Nothin’. Except my mom says he wants to see me because he’s dying.” He shook his head. “He’s acknowledging me as his sole heir on his deathbed? That’s TV-movie-of-the-week bullshit.”

“Kinda like us getting drunk and ending up hitched in Vegas, huh?”

Kyle snorted.

“So what will you do? Blow him off like he’s blown you off?”

“What can he possibly say to me that’ll make any difference now?”

Celia warned herself to be patient with him. He was confused and hurting, and she’d snapped at him plenty of times in the hospital yesterday when she’d been in the same scared and frustrated frame of mind. “Don’t you want to find out? Why slap his hand when he’s finally reached out to you?”

A full minute passed before he spoke. “Pains me to admit you’re right. They’ve only given him a couple of weeks to live at best. So I told my mom I’d go. But…” His sigh was long and loud—a sound of pure frustration. “Fuck. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do.” He shrugged tightly. “I’m sure I sound like a whiny prick. Forget I said anything.”

“Don’t slap my hand away either,” she said softly.

“I’m not. It’s just…Christ, Celia, I feel like a five-year-old kid. I’m afraid of facing him. What if I walk into the VA hospital in Cheyenne…” That fist clenched again. “Or worse, what if I can’t even walk into the room?”

Hearing the uncertainty in Kyle’s voice broke her heart. “What if I came with you? Would that help you take that first step?”

Kyle slowly turned around. “Why would you do that?”

Because I’ve never seen you like this, so damn vulnerable. Because I have the urge to be there for you the way you’ve been there for me the last year. Because there is something growing between us, something that gets stronger whenever we’re together, and it scares me half to death but I’m not strong enough to walk away from it.

When she didn’t respond, Kyle said, “After all your insistence on
getting this marriage annulled immediately, why would you put that aside and come with me to Wyoming?”

She tossed off a breezy, “Because…hello. My ride left and I’m running low on options.”

His face shuttered at her flip response and she felt like an ass for skirting the truth.

Before Kyle retreated, Celia reached for him, running her fingers over the dark stubble coating his jaw and pressing her hand in the center of his chest. “Because I owe you.”

“Because we’re married? It’s not real, as you’ve pointed out. Repeatedly.”

“Will you stop being a dickhead and listen to me?”

Kyle’s eyes flashed remorse. “Sorry. Shit. I don’t know what’s wrong with me today.”

Celia didn’t have to tell him he was lashing out because he was scared. Kyle already knew that, even if he wouldn’t give voice to it—to himself or to her. “I owe you because you were the only one who treated me normally after my parents died. Everyone else felt sorry for me. Felt sorry for my brothers getting stuck raising me.”

“Celia. That’s not true.”

“It is true.” She fussed with the buttons on his shirt. “Everyone treated me like a lost waif. Everyone but you. You riled me. Poked at me. When you found me crying in the shelterbelt, rather than coddling me, you scooped up an armful of wet leaves and kept covering me in a layer of nasty slime until I got mad and started fighting back. I chased you into the bull’s pasture. We ran around until my legs gave out and I fell to the ground.”

“Right into a pile of manure, if I remember correctly,” he murmured.

Celia met his gaze. “That was the first time I felt normal after they died. I’ve never forgotten that. I’ve never said thank you.”

“You said thank you every time you pulled some shitty prank on me. That was when I knew you’d be okay.”

“So it’s time for me to pay it forward. Will you let me?”

He seemed to consider it and abruptly changed the subject as he took a step back. “Who were you talkin’ to a little bit ago?”

“Tanna. She’s on her way back to Texas. She was anxious to recap the events leading up to our nuptials.” Celia paused and cocked her head. “Evidently we wrote our own vows?”

Kyle half squinted at her. “We did?”

His surprise surprised her. “You don’t remember?”

“Nope. To be honest…most of the details are sketchy for me too.”

“But you told me…that we…”
Had a smokin’-hot wedding night
.

“I was yanking your chain, Celia.”

Completely floored, she said, “Why?”

“Because that’s what you and I do to each other, remember?”

“We’re beyond that juvenile behavior, remember?” she shot back with saccharine sweetness. “Isn’t that what you keep reminding me?”

“Well, us rolling around naked, sucking face like horny teenagers until we both passed out…without having sex on our freakin’ wedding night is sort of an anticlimactic end to the wild-night-in-Vegas tale, don’tcha think?”

She opened her mouth to tell him to quit being an ass, but he beat her to the punch.

“And there I go again, being a dick to you. But, dammit, you oughta know I’m not the kind of man to take advantage of a drunk and injured woman.”

Of course he had to throw in his chivalrousness. So she threw hers right back at him. “I’m not the type of woman to bail on a friend in need either. I offered to go home with you and the offer stands. Since we didn’t consummate the marriage, we can still get an annulment after we deal with your family thing in Cheyenne. Provided…”