Chapter Fifteen
Dana
F ebruary kicked off her new season and she’d chosen the pro circuit rodeo in Grand for Tanoa’s debut. The prize money the Endeavour Ranch offered proved an excellent incentive to attend. So did Ryan O’Connell’s insistence that she review Ford’s offer to purchase her share of Otto’s business with him before he’d allow her to sell.
Crackerjack was another good reason. When Chance Avery heard he was for sale, he’d made an offer she was happy to accept. If anyone could help Crackerjack overcome his fear of crowds, it was Chance. He was kind but firm with his horses, but better than that, he never transmitted anything but calm to his ride. A less kind person might attribute his laidback disposition to a lack of deep thought. It didn’t matter to Dana. While she hated to give up on Crackerjack, once she saw him with Chance, she knew she’d made the right choice.
But Levi was the real reason she’d come to Grand.
She hadn’t seen or heard from him in the four months since he’d lectured her in the hospital. After the first month, it really hit home that he wouldn’t call. By the end of the second, she’d decided it didn’t matter if she never heard from him again. Her ribs and arm had fully healed, and she had Tanoa to train.
The third month had been too lonely. She’d gone to a few parties over Christmas and turned down an offer from an old boyfriend from high school who’d wanted to reconnect. He’d been her first and they’d learned a few things together. They’d split up on good terms when he went off to college, and if she’d wanted nothing more than a warm body, he might have been perfect.
But she missed more than a warm body. Without Levi, her life felt…lopsided. She’d come to Grand to let him know how she felt about him, even though letting him in—giving him that much control over her… It terrified her.
But her biggest fear was that she might be too late. He and Shauna, the lawyer, had looked good together, and Levi liked pleasing women.
She stopped her truck at the Methodist church on the road between Grand and the Endeavour Ranch, where they’d buried Otto in the summer. The frigid wind bit her cheeks as she hopped out of the cab and closed the door. The parking lot had been plowed, but the graveyard overlooking the Tongue River behind the church was buried under at least two feet of snow.
She trudged through the snow, searching for the right headstone among the dark bumps of stone peeking out of the blanket of white. When she thought she’d found the right one, she dug down a few inches to read the name carved into the granite to make sure. Then she made a seat for herself in the snow next to the headstone.
She propped her elbows on her knees and rested her chin on her cupped and mittened hands. This was a beautiful spot. The sky was cloudless and blue, and the sun beamed winter white overhead. Tall trees helped cut the wind, although the dry, frosty air pinched her nostrils when she breathed in.
She reached out and traced the tip of one mitten over the name on the headstone. Tanner Matthew Shannahan. Aged 25.
“What you did to me was wrong,” she began, feeling a little silly for speaking out loud, but it seemed somehow right. “What you did to us . You might have been ready to give up the circuit and settle down, but I wasn’t, and you had no right to make those kinds of decisions for me. I meant it when I said I was leaving you. I wouldn’t have changed my mind. I would never have been able to trust you again, and trust is important to me. But I should have told you I loved you, because at first, I really did. Maybe if you’d believed it, then you could have trusted me, too. Maybe we’d still be together. Maybe we’d have a baby we both wanted, or we’d be planning to have one. It doesn’t matter anymore, because it’s too late for you and me, but I thought you should know that I’ve found someone else. Someone I trust. I’m not sure if he still wants me, but I have to find out. And if he does, I hope that you can be happy for us.”
She waited, rubbing the end of her cold nose with her mitten, but nothing momentous occurred. No flock of birds burst into flight. No murmurs on the wind to indicate she’d been heard. No signs from beyond.
She hadn’t expected any signs. All she’d wanted was to let the anger and bitterness go, and to set her heart free, because it turned out that Levi had been right. She’d been grieving without understanding why or for what. Missed opportunities, perhaps. Things left unsaid—not necessarily things that needed saying, but the ones nice to hear. She’d loved the potential she’d seen in Tanner. For the man he might someday become.
She loved Levi for the man he already was. And she had to tell him so, or she’d spend the rest of her life burdened by the same regrets Otto had suffered and warned her about.
She rose and dusted the snow off the back of the thick canvas overcoat she wore when she worked in cold arenas. Then she hiked through the drifts to her truck, where she set the heater to high. Small puddles of water from the melting snow on her boots formed at her feet while she waited her turn to pull onto the road. Cars and trucks flew by the parking lot, headed for the rodeo arena, no doubt.
It was where she was headed, too.
*
The Endeavour’s indoor arena was enormous, complete with stadium seating. It gave off the vibe of a seventies-style rock concert, complete with strobe lighting and music, and it was full, but not packed to capacity.
She’d taken a seat in the bleachers to watch the men’s barrel racing competition. Chance and Crackerjack’s performance had her on her feet. They placed fourth in the heat, but the noise and the lights and the crowd hadn’t put either of them off stride, and she was so happy to see it.
She searched the crowd, ignoring the whispers and nudges from the people who recognized her, more aware of her growing disappointment at finding no sign of Levi than their interest in her. The women’s races would start soon after the entertainment, and she should be focused on that.
She was no longer the favorite. A teenager, barely seventeen, had made pro in the fall and the crowd loved her. Dana didn’t mind. Barrel racing was her job and she wanted to ride. She wanted the paycheck. She also wanted to win—but she’d never cared for the attention. The teenager could have it.
Someone slid into the empty seat next to her from behind.
It was Tate.
She had baby Tanner with her. He’d grown a head of fuzzy blond hair since she’d last seen him, and he had eyes like overripe blueberries, bursting with the same determination his mother possessed. He took crawling out of her restrictive arms as a personal challenge.
“Hi,” Tate said, juggling her squirming son. He arched his back, exposing his belly between the hem of his red winter coat and the ruffly top of a disposable diaper. “It’s good to see you here.”
“Thank you.” This seemed to be her day for making peace with the past.
Her heart fell back into its normal rhythm. The last time they’d sat side-by-side in an arena their photos had ended up splashed from one end of the internet to another and considering the flashes from cell phones directed at them, it seemed likely to happen again.
“I’m sorry,” Tate said. She pinned the protesting baby to her chest and started to stand. “I’ll sit somewhere else. I just… I wanted to say hello.”
Dana took hold of Tate’s sleeve. “Stay. Please. I was hoping to see you.”
“Really?”
Tate had never been good at hiding her feelings, and regrets about the impulsive gesture that had brought her over to say hello were written all over her face, which was typical for her. She lived in the moment and never thought too hard about the end results.
Dana had always been a little envious of the way Tate approached life. If her brothers hadn’t stepped in, she would have been the bull rider in the family.
“Really.” Dana took a deep breath and ignored the covert stares from people who obviously knew their backstory. “I owe you an apology.”
“For what?”
Where to begin? “For the way I returned Tanner’s Christmas present to you last year. You’d driven all the way to Billings to give it to me and I was so ungrateful. You had no way of knowing that he and I had split up the morning he… that morning.” He’d asked her to come for his last ride, and she’d agreed only because people would talk if she hadn’t. If she’d stayed away, her life might have taken a far different turn.
“I would never have guessed you were arguing. I thought you were worried about him because he’d drawn Crazy Legs,” Tate said.
Dana had been too angry to worry about him, even though the bull had a savage reputation. But she wasn’t going to say so to his sister, who preferred to believe they’d been arguing—which inferred they might also make up.
“Tanner and I argued that morning, too,” Tate said. She kissed the top of her son’s blond, fluffy head. “He wanted to quit, and I wouldn’t let him. Knowing the last words I ever said to him were angry ones… That’s hard.”
“It is.” Letting go of the anger was hard, too. But Dana was working on it.
The baby gave up on hopes of escape and settled into his mother’s arms. He snuggled his cheek against the front of her white puffy jacket. Long lashes brushed soft, baby skin as his eyes fluttered closed and Dana’s heart melted. Someday, when the timing was right and she had a say in the matter, maybe motherhood would give her a second chance.
Tate must have read yearning in the look on her face. “Would you like to hold him?” she asked, then without waiting for an affirmative—because how could anyone resist holding a baby—she handed him over, and Dana found a semi-comatose, cuddly, bundle of joy in her arms.
She didn’t have any personal experience with babies, but she began to see why Tanner might have been so excited by the prospect of one of his own. Baby Tanner was lovely.
The two women watched the last of the men’s barrel racing together.
A quick check of the time told Dana she had to prepare Tanoa for their race.
“Women’s barrel racing is up soon,” she said. “I’ve got to go.”
She returned the sleeping baby to Tate, then left the bleachers and made her way through the crowd to the pens and her horse. She half-expected Levi to be waiting for her, but he wasn’t.
She couldn’t afford to give in to disappointment right now. She had another relationship in which trust was important. She was riding a new horse who required her undivided attention to guide them safely between the barrels. She owed it to Tanoa to go into this race with a clear head, ready to make a fresh start.
She owed Levi that same focused commitment.
She owed it to herself, too.
*
Levi
Levi had taken up position in the arena’s sound booth, which was located partway up the stadium seats on the far side of the arena from the alleyway, so he could watch Dana’s race without being seen.
The past four months had been a nightmare of twisted regrets and resolve. He couldn’t help her come to terms with the past. She’d had to get to this point on her own. More than once he’d feared that she wouldn’t.
He hoped he was right about why she’d come to Grand, and it nearly killed him to stay away, but the last time he’d approached her before a race, things had gone sideways. He could wait to find out.
He doubted he’d ever recover from the terror of watching her go down underneath a horse that had proven too unpredictable for her to handle. If she’d taken a hoof to the head—if a broken rib had pierced a lung or cut the aorta—matters might have been worse. Riders in similar situations had died.
But she’d sold the horse, proving she wasn’t too stubborn to see reason, which also led him to believe she’d given serious consideration to everything that he’d said. On the flip side, she’d agreed to accept Ford’s offer for her share of Otto’s business, so he wasn’t counting his chickens just yet.
Because he’d gone to the sound booth so early, he’d seen Dana and Tate sitting in the bleachers together. He’d seen Tate hand Dana the baby—and he’d seen Dana accept him. His heart went all warm and fuzzy, grateful to Tate on Dana’s behalf, because Tate would have no idea how much the gesture would mean.
Someday, when Dana was ready, they’d talk about children, because he came from a big family, and there would be pressure. If she didn’t want them, then his family would have to respect that, and he’d run interference. But he loved kids and he’d like at least one.
Speaking of children…
A tiny hand tugged at his pantleg. Miles Decker, Tate’s husband, and his daughter Iris occupied the sound booth with him. Iris was two years old and had her famous dad’s brown hair, green eyes, and friendly nature.
“Up,” she said to Levi, because she wanted a better view of the arena.
He obliged, lifting her to sit in the crook of his elbow so she could see. She hugged his neck with one arm, her attention on the action on the ground on the other side of the window, where the men’s barrel racing event was wrapping up.
Miles was standing beside them. A professional bull rider before joining the Endeavour Ranch, his famous face had been gouged by a bull’s horn during a photo shoot that ended his second career as an industry spokesman. His attention was drawn to the same place as Levi’s—in the bleachers, where his wife and son sat with Dana.
“It’s good to see them together,” Miles said, indicating the two women. The damaged side of his face didn’t smile as deeply as its mate anymore but expressed the same level of pleasure all the same.
“They have some issues to work through,” Levi agreed.
“I never met Tanner. From what I’ve heard, I can’t figure out if he was God or the devil.” Miles’s eyes lit with humor and the puckered smile deepened. “I think we know where Tate sits on that.”
“The truth is somewhere in between,” Levi said. “Maybe he leaned a little more toward the devil.”
Miles shrugged. “Most of us do.”
The two men chatted while Levi waited for the women’s event to begin. They’d both already checked out the bulls the stock contractor provided for the evening events and exchanged opinions on their breeding potential. Iris had a normal two-year-old’s attention span, and it wasn’t long before she’d had enough of Levi. She held out her arms to her father, and the transfer was made.
Then, the barrel racing began.
Miles, seeing he’d lost Levi’s attention, patted his shoulder. “Talk to you later. We’re off to find Tate.”
Levi didn’t notice them leave. Dana’s name was announced, and he had a moment of fear. She was riding a horse with little to no arena experience.
When she and Tanoa came out of the gate, however, almost instantly, he relaxed. They looked good. Tanoa paid attention. She didn’t fight to take charge.
Levi didn’t wait to see how their time compared to the record. The Endeavour arena was new and its record time only so-so. That was why the ranch offered large prize money—to attract the top talent.
As soon as the rider and horse came around the last barrel and were headed for home, he ran for the door. He planned on intercepting Dana before she finished cooling Tanoa down and returned her to the stable.
He hadn’t fully decided on what he would say.
But as he plunged through the crowd in the breezeway and charged into the alleyway, he discovered he had lots of time to figure it out, because she’d already been cornered by a blogger from the local news outlet.
He worried for all of two seconds.
Six months ago, Dana had been aloof with the press in a manner the public translated as tragic. Not anymore. He was happy to stand on the sidelines and let her reveal this new and improved version of Lady Dana to the rodeo world. He was curious to see it himself.
“How does Tanoa compare to Lady?” the blogger asked.
“Like apples to oranges,” Dana said, stroking Tanoa’s cheek, which hovered above her shoulder. “You’re asking me to compare a veteran to a rookie. One thing they do have in common is heart. They’re both eager to please.”
“You had a bad fall in October. How does it feel to be riding again, especially on a new horse? How do you feel about selling Crackerjack?”
The spiral curls of her ponytail spilled over her shoulder as she leaned into the microphone and smiled for the camera. “Fantastic on all counts. Crackerjack and I weren’t reading each other’s signals. He connects much better with his new owner and they’re going to do great things together. Tanoa and I are off to a great start with a promising partnership, so it’s all working out for the best. A little tumble was worth it to get us all to this place.”
“This is your first time competing in Tanner Shannahan’s hometown. Will you be attending the bull riding event with his family later this evening?”
Dana finally caught sight of Levi. The warmth in her eyes stole the winter chill from the arena. The heat of her smile sent the temperature of the air around him soaring about a hundred degrees. He really liked this new, confident version of her.
And this was what he’d wanted for them—this warm connection that meant they could communicate without words, whether they were alone or surrounded by thousands of strangers. Her eyes said I love you to him as clearly as if she’d shouted the words over the arena’s loudspeakers.
“Unlikely,” she said to the blogger, her attention on Levi. “I have other plans.”
Levi smiled back. He had plans for her, too.
She tossed Tanoa’s reins to Chance Avery, who’d been standing nearby, likely waiting for her to have a free moment.
“Would you mind walking her for me?” she said to Chance.
She then started toward Levi, who met her halfway. She threw her arms around his neck and kissed him, sending a clear, public message that flashed on video display to hoots of surprise from their rodeo audience around the entire arena.
Lady Dana was done grieving.
“Great ride,” Levi said, his nose touching hers, even though he hadn’t stayed for the finish. He rubbed his hands the length of her back. He’d missed the feel of her against him. The scent of her hair. He buried his nose in her throat and inhaled a deep breath of warm skin.
“It was an okay ride. Tanoa’s not the problem today, though.” Her arms tightened as she whispered into his ear, “I think her rider handles better for men.”
He laughed a little at that. “Any man? Or one in particular?”
“Depends on the man.” Dana kissed him again. Phones were actively flashing around them now, but she wasn’t paying any attention, reminding him that she tended to express herself physically when conveying emotion. “I’m talking about the one who thinks he knows what’s best for me. What I need. Let’s see if he does.”
He felt obliged to remind her that all eyes were on them. “Keep this up and you’re going to earn a far less flattering new nickname, Lady Dana. We might make it to one of the change rooms before we get our clothes off, but once we’re inside, there won’t be any doubts as to what we’ll be doing.”
She let her arms drop, her hands maintaining physical contact as they journeyed the brief distance to his. She laced their fingers together. She didn’t take her eyes off his face. “I’ve always hated that nickname. They can call me Lady Luck from now on and read into it what they will.”
So much for caring about what other people thought.
The video displays had returned to the action inside the arena. The noise level was high enough that they could at least have a conversation without the entire building listening in.
“Making peace with the past has been harder,” she admitted.
“I saw you with Tate. It’s a start,” he replied, because she’d put in the effort and Rome wasn’t built in a day.
“Tate was easy. The stop I made on the way here wasn’t, and while I can’t say I found peace in it, I did manage to let go of a few things—because I really do want to give us a chance.”
He held her close. He’d been so afraid that he’d pushed her too hard. “Thank you for that.”
She touched his cheeks. Her hands were warm, and her eyes promised him things. Good things. Things he’d missed. Desperately.
“I love you,” she said, so intensely he found himself blinking. “I don’t ever want you to think you aren’t first in my heart, or that I’d allow the past to ruin any chance we have for happiness together. What we have—what you mean to me—it’s about us. Nothing else. And I had to tell you this, because I knew if I didn’t, I’d regret it for the rest of my life.”
“I love you, too. So much, in fact, I’ve given you four months, three days, and twenty-one hours to come to your senses.”
She laughed. “You made that number up.”
“Maybe.” The joy her laughter held had set his heart spinning. “But I didn’t expect you to take quite so long. I had to bring in plan B.”
“Plan B?”
“Ryan didn’t believe you’d fall for him having to review that contract between you and Ford before you could sign it. I won a hundred dollars.”
“You bet on me?”
He kissed her again. Fiercely. Uncaring that they weren’t alone. He could fix that easily enough. He had the keys to the arena’s boardroom in his front pocket.
“Always,” he said.