Sweet Talking Cowboy (17 page)

She felt her back stiffen as his face broke into a smile,
followed by his deep chuckle.  Apparently he was finding the conversation very
entertaining.  She closed the door firmly as she stepped down to the ground,
casting her eyes around as she appeared to spot him for the first time.  His
eyes met hers and she smiled.  Turning in that direction, she casually strolled
over to join the threesome.  The girls were two she knew from the shows they all
attended.  She remembered that the two spent more time flirting with the male
contestants than they did working the horses they competed on.

She smiled a greeting at them.  “Hi, how are y’all this
morning?”

The girls returned her greeting and made only a token
attempt at small talk before they excused themselves and headed toward the barn
where their horses were stabled.

When she looked at Slade, there was a speculative look on
the face he turned toward her.  Her smile was still in place, but there wasn’t
a sign of warmth in it.  His dark brows arched.  “Was I doin’ somethin’ I
shouldn’t do?”

“If we’re getting married, you need to know that any extracurricular
activities you get involved in need to be discrete.  I don’t want it rubbed in
my face.”  She turned and stormed back to the trailer and slammed the door
loudly after she entered.  Almost as soon as it shut, it was jerked open again
and Slade stepped into the small living area and pulled it closed behind him.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her around to face him. 
“When, not
if
we get married.  And there won’t be any extracurricular
activities.  Those two girls attended one of the clinics I gave durin’ the
summer and if I’d been interested, believe me; I could have had either one or
both at that time.”  His eyes were smoldering with anger as he glared at her.

She returned his angry look.

“I don’t know any other way to convince you that I mean it
when I say we are goin’ to have a real marriage.”  His hand tightened on her
arm and in spite of her stiffness, he pulled her against him.  Then with one
hand, removed the case his cell phone was in and placed it on the small table
of the compact dining booth next to the refrigerator.  That done, he wrapped
his arms around her and pulled her close.

She pushed her hands against his chest, trying to gain some
distance, but he ignored her struggle.  “Slade, you stop this, now!”  She
hissed.

He said nothing, but continued to embrace her, his eyes
holding her captive as surely as his arms were.  She saw his focus move from
her eyes to her lips and knew what he was thinking, but it was hopeless to
struggle against it.  She couldn’t move to avoid it; she couldn’t even turn her
head to one side as his lips descended.  Her breath caught in her throat.  When
his lips touched hers, she was ready.  She knew she wanted this kiss as much as
he did.  All day long, in the back of every thought she’d had, was the sweet
memory of the kiss they’d shared in the room at the hotel.  She wanted his kiss
even more than she wanted not to want it.  Her hands splayed out over his
chest, they crept up and fastened in his hair, dislodging his cap and causing
it to fall to the floor.  Neither of them seemed to notice.

Briann had banked the embers of passion when she’d fled to
Atlanta and even though she’d dated some after Evan died, no man had caused
that ember to spark to life.  The kiss deepened and her urgency matched his
own, as Slade slipped his hands down to her waist and lifted her up onto the
bed in the nose over the goose neck of the trailer.  Her top half leaned over
the edge, her lips clinging to his as he scrambled up to join her.

Together they rolled over away from the edge, twisting,
pulling, trying to get closer.  Her hands opened the snaps on his shirt,
pushing it back off his shoulders.  He muttered a soft curse as he raised up
long enough to jerk it the rest of the way off.  While he was up, he pulled her
shirt tail up, from where it had been neatly tucked into the waist band of her
jeans, then he was lying over her, his hands leaving trails of fire as he
caressed the soft flesh of her ribs and sides searing her flesh as he explored
beneath her shirt.

She moaned softly, her arms stretched around his shoulders,
her hands slipping across the hard muscles of his back, pulling him closer
against her.

From the table next to the small refrigerator, he heard a
noise.  It took a long minute for his mind to realize that he’d placed his cell
phone there.  Something nagged at him as he tried to ignore the repeating tone,
something that he needed to grasp.  He cursed again and with Briann’s hands
pulling at him, he sat up.

“Don’t answer it,” she whispered her voice heavy with
desire.

He shook his head to clear his mind.  It was hard to focus
on anything except the fire that had ignited between them, but then it
registered in his brain what it was about the ringing phone that was bothering
him.  It was the ring tone that alerted him who the caller was.  He slipped off
the bed and picked up the phone.

Briann sat up, disappointment registered on her face, and
Slade reached up to take one of her hands.  “It’s Poog.”  In almost the same
breath, he opened the phone and spoke.  “Hey.”

The tenor of her voice let him know that something wasn’t
right.  He turned from looking at Briann so he could concentrate on the call.

Briann wondered why Poog was calling him, but lay back on
the bed, her breathing gradually returning to normal.  She wasn’t paying a lot
of attention to the call until she heard him say, “Hang on, I’ll ask her.” 
Then he faced her again.  “Do you know some guy named Pete?”

Puzzled, she nodded.  “He and my husband were…..best
friends.”

“Why would he call Tristin?”  Slade’s voice held an edge of
ice.

Briann sat up and slipped off the bed to drop in front of him
onto the floor.  “I have no idea.  Can I talk to Aunt Poog?”

Silently he handed her the phone.  While she talked, his
attention was diverted from the call by the still warm memory of her soft,
willing body beneath his.  He dropped into the chair and pulled her down onto
his lap.

“Aunt Poog, put Tris on the phone, please.  I want to know
what Pete had to say.”  Briann wrapped one arm around Slade’s shoulders, and
lowered her head to rest against the top of his.  After a minute she spoke into
the phone.  “Hey, sweets.  I hear Uncle Pete called.”  She listened as the
child talked, then she spoke again.  “Did he say when?……Well that’s something
we’d have to talk about, okay?  Yes and I love you too.  When I come home, I
have something important to talk to you about.”  She laughed softly, “You’ll
just have to wait until then.  Okay, let me talk to Aunt Poog again.  Love
you.”  While she waited for Poog to get back on the line, she dropped her head
and kissed Slade.  It was a kiss of promise as much as it was a kiss of
passion.  Then Poog’s voice was in her ear.

“I’m glad you called…..Yes, she said he is planning to come
down to take us to Disney World……No; we aren’t going anywhere with him!…I can’t
imagine why he called……….I guess he got the number from Maggie, or maybe
Shelly……..No!…..Well, he did stop by to see us a few times after the funeral
but I figured it was because we reminded him of Evan.  That’s all we ever
talked about when he came….Sure, when I get home I’ll call him and explain the
situation.  I’m sure he didn’t mean to upset anyone.  Maybe we need to put a
stop to her answering the phone………Okay, tell Tris that I,…..We…love
her……Right.  Bye.”

Slade sat quietly with arched brows, definitely wanting more
information about the call from Pete.

Briann briefed him, explaining that she felt he was just
missing Evan and wanted to touch bases with Evan’s family.  He talked to Tris
because she was the one who answered the phone.  “You’ve got to remember, Pete
and Evan had been very close for many years and although Evan’s family knew
him, they didn’t approve of….”  She paused, remembering that Slade didn’t know Evan
had been gay.

“Didn’t approve of what?” he asked.

Brian took a deep breath.  “My husband was….gay and Pete was
his…partner.”

Slade gently but firmly removed her from his lap and stood
up.  “You married a gay man?”

She shrugged.  “I wasn’t able to train horses for very long
when I was pregnant, and needed some help.  Evan was a city policeman and
worried that his fellow officers wouldn’t take kindly to working with a gay
man.  He needed a ‘family’ so everything would look normal to them.  Evan was
very discreet about his relationship with Pete, but there were a few times that
he attended family functions.”

Slade didn’t appear to have been listening.  He turned and
looked at her, a frown on his face.  “You married a gay man!”

“Evan was good to us, Slade.”  She hadn’t expected such a
negative reaction from him.

“You were carryin’ my child and needed help and turned to
some gay guy for it.  Why the hell didn’t you call me?”  His voice had become
cold and hard, reminding her of their first confrontation at the hotel.

She began tucking her shirt back into her jeans.  “I thought
you were having an affair with Tanya!”  Her voice was sharp.  “Or did you
forget that?”

“You still should have let me know!”  He found his shirt and
began pulling it back on.

“Well, maybe I should have, but it’s not like you were
trying real hard to find me.  I didn’t think it would matter to you, so I did
what I needed to do.  It’s done and there’s nothing I can do to change it!” 
She jerked open the door to the dressing room and stepped down, slamming it
behind her.  She felt near tears and certainly didn’t want him to see them. 
She walked with long strides down to the barn.

She brushed both horses and cleaned the palomino filly’s
eyes and nostrils with a light coat of lanoline based cleaner which left a
slightly oily residue that darkened the hair on the animals face, bringing out
the fine lines of her delicate head.  She led her out to the wash rack, to make
sure in the bright light of day her mane and tail were spotless, combing the
long tail until every hair hung full and separate, then she found her hoof
polish and applied some to each hoof.

Finally she sprayed a fine coat of glossy conditioner all
over the animal’s body and stepped back to admire her handiwork.  Using some of
her own hair spray, she fluffed the flowing white tail and tamed any tiny hairs
that had escaped the row of bands that secured the top of the long snowy mane.  Just
a light touch of glitter on the black hooves and she was done.  Making sure she
had a slightly damp cleaning rag in her back pocket, she led the mare to the
trailer and tied her to the side of it.

When she opened the door, there was no sign of Slade, so she
stepped up inside and dragged her show tack over next to the exit, taking it
out of the bag so all she would have to do was put it on the horse.  Looking at
her watch she knew she still had plenty of time but opened up the clothes bag
Slade had brought in earlier from his truck, slipped into her dress pants,
pinned the cardboard with her competition number onto the back of her top, and
pulled it on.  She was wiping them off, preparing to pull her boots on, when
Slade opened the door.  A piece at a time, he removed the tack from the trailer
and put it on the horse, not once looking at her or speaking.  When she had her
boots on, she took her dress felt hat from its box, sat it on her head and went
outside to find the mare standing ready, except for the bridle which hung from
the horn of the saddle and Slade was nowhere to be seen.

To quell her nerves, she slipped the halter off the mare’s
fine head and put the bridle on, then mounted the horse and rode to a grassy
area behind the barn.  Taking comfort from the familiar, she walked the horse
in circles, backed her in circles, requested and got leg yields from both
sides, and finally, deciding it was close enough to time for the beginning of
the class, directed her mount toward the entrance gate.

At the gate, she chatted easily with some of the other
contestants.  They were probably as nervous as she was.  From the corner of her
eye, she spotted Slade striding toward her and wished the gate would open so
she could ride in and avoid him, but it didn’t.  He said nothing, but from the
back pocket of his snug fitting jeans, pulled a rag he’d sprayed with coat
conditioner and rubbed it over every exposed inch of the mare’s beautiful
golden coat.

When the gate opened, Briann was the third rider inside. 
She found a good spot on the rail and allowed her horse to walk slowly, her
eyes making a quick assessment of each rider and horse.  She knew it would not
be an easy class.  There were twenty-two contestants and Briann recognized some
of them as top notch performers, but she knew the animal beneath her was just
as capable as any of them.  Before the ring steward closed the gate, she reined
the mare off the fence and circled back until she found an opening in the
contestants to make sure the judge had an unobstructed view of her mount as the
class began.

Briann and the mare worked in almost perfect
synchronization, the animal proving that she was superbly trained and
completely in tune with her rider as every horse should be.  It didn’t take
practiced eyes to see that she was a pleasure to ride and since it was a
Western Pleasure Class, it was what the judge was looking for.  The sweet
natured palomino won the class and Briann couldn’t hide the pride in her smile.

As she exited the gate, trophy in hand, Slade stepped up
beside the mare’s head and without any exchange of words, the threesome went
back to the barn.  Before Briann dismounted, Slade took the trophy, so her
hands were free.  Just for a second their eyes met and he spoke softly, his
voice cold to her ears.

“She was almost trottin’ in the back end instead of a true
canter and most of her balance was on her front end.  There was only enough
propulsion from her rear end to keep her goin’.  She needs to learn to be more collected
from your leg cues.”