Chapter 10 #2
“This time shut the damn gate for sure!” Little Bean snapped, and he thought Nate blushed.
Someone wasn’t used to being the one in charge of the gate. Nate was the boss, after all.
Once Minty was back in the loading area, Little Bean came back into the arena, his mare snorting and tossing her head. Little Bean’s face was like a thundercloud, the boy glaring at him.
“Don’t you snap at Nattie, son. He’s the boss here.”
Little Bean shot Coke a quick glance. “I know Gramps, but y’all could’ve been hurt. None of you are—”
Little Bean closed his mouth on the word.
And it didn’t matter much what he was going to say, whole or young or whatever—he was smart enough to stop it.
“Scared me is all. My daddy would have kicked my ass if I’d let one of y’all get hurt.”
“Son, your daddy couldn’t get his foot up to your ass. He’s so short.” Dawson tried to loosen the mood up a little bit by making fun. Cotton was tiny compared to his kids. “Now your mama, she’s a mean one.”
That had Little Bean’s face splitting into a grin. “Yeah, I reckon you’re right there.”
When he glanced up at Seamus, he and Christopher were watching the byplay with twin expressions of fascination on their faces. Dawes reckoned they’d never seen all of them be so serious.
“Crikey, you all are something else. That damn bull was gonna eat you.”
Coke blinked up at Seamus. “Believe it or not, they’re vegetarians. Trust me, if they hadn’t been, by now I would have known.”
Seamus’s cheeks turned red. “Do you know what I mean, though? That was wild. Great job. I don’t imagine I’ll ever do something like that.”
“No, you better not.” Dawson winked at Seamus to take the sting out of the harshness of his words. “Your body is worth way too much money to risk it doing something as silly as throwing yourself in front of a bull.”
One blond eyebrow winged up. “Oh? I take it yours isn’t worth much?”
“Eh, I’m sure there are some people it’s worth more than.” Dawson couldn’t help his smile. “But maybe not you.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” Seamus shook his head. “That was fabulous. I mean it. I learned a lot up to and including knowing I don’t want to do that for a living. You guys are heroes. I’ll stick to playing one in the movies.”
Dawes thought maybe Coke had it right. Maybe Seamus had needed to understand the danger. That was good. It engendered respect.
God knew these critters deserved it.
A two-thousand-pound animal, even if it was a vegetarian, could really fuck a guy’s world up.
Seamus couldn’t stop thinking about Dawson throwing himself in front of that bull and grabbing the horn.
Oh, he had been told how those horns had been blunted and one of them was even turned down so the bull had to hook its head right. The pointy part couldn’t have taken Dawson and a part of his body, but his heart had still been in his throat.
He was working with the bulls in the ring even though they hadn’t had Minty back. Coke and Nate had decided the big boy had taken an instant dislike to Seamus. And maybe he had.
But he had a whole new appreciation and caution for the bulls now, which he guessed was good. Not to mention the fact that Seamus had gotten a lecture from Christopher, because Christopher had been shocked by the whole thing, too.
“You ready to work another bull?” It was two days after that incident, and Dawson was in the ring with him waiting for a bull named Boondoggle to get loaded up.
“I am, yeah. Are we gonna put a rider on him?”
“Yep, just so happens that a friend of Coke and Dillon’s is down visiting, and he’s a way better rider than the last one was.”
“No shit, so I get to see a good ride, eh?”
“I hope so. Boondoggle is smaller and faster, so it’s a totally different kind of bullfight. It’ll do you good to see that too.” Dawson didn’t sound worried, exactly, but he did sound cautious.
Seamus had learned that the man could be protective as all hell. Not because he was a bullfighter and that was his job, but because they were lovers now.
The idea made his cheeks heat up because he wasn’t used to people valuing him that way. They wanted him around because he had money and because he was a movie star, but Dawson really didn’t seem to give a shit about any of that.
The man seemed to think he was hot, funny, and worth spending time with, in and out of bed. Seamus couldn’t even express how cool that was.
He nodded and caught Dawson’s eye. “You know I’ll stay in my spot and do what you tell me.”
“Good man.” Dawson jerked his head at the guys on the back of the fence. “Let’s do this.”
He’d learned a lot about his bullfighter in the last couple of days, and one of the main things he’d learned was that the way Dawson had treated him when he first showed up was no different than the way Dawson treated him in the ring now.
The man was focused when he was working, and he didn’t have time for a lot of niceties.
That didn’t mean he was a bad guy; it meant he was super determined to do his job and keep everybody alive.
The bullrider was a guy who looked like he was maybe in his mid-to-late thirties, lean and brown, and not near as big as the kid they’d had a couple days ago. The guy was probably about the size they kept teasing Little Bean’s daddy was.
The man came right up to him, tipped his hat. “Hi, there, I’m Wyn. Nice to meet you. I’m a big fan.”
Seamus held out a hand to shake. Searching his memory, he remembered a Wyn that had been on tour— Wyn. Wynchester. Wynchester Gruene. “I remember you. I think you rode at a bullriding I was at in Adelaide.”
The guy knew who he was, and Seamus was happy to spread the admiration around. Everyone wanted to feel like they were famous to someone, after all.
Wyn’s face lit up like Christmas. “I always did love to ride down in Australia. It was always one of the most fun trips. Brazil is cool, but Australia’s just so much fun.”
“It is.” Oz was his second home, after all, even though it was harder to be incognito there than in L.A..
In L.A., everyone was famous.
“So, you’re practicing for a movie?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I have a role where I’m playing a bullfighter, and so I came down here to look and learn.”
And have a torrid affair with a cowboy.
There was also that part.
“Well, you’re brave, I give you that. Just don’t hurt anything.”
Everyone was worried about him getting hurt. Jess was getting a phone call every other day from the studio.
“What about you?”
“Oh, I’m retired. Every so often, I just like to get up on one. You know, it’s going to be a limited amount of time that I still can at some point. Somebody’s gonna tell me I have to stop, so I figure I should strike while the iron is hot and all that.”
Coke snorted, “When that iron’s been cold for a long time, you’re just lucky the iron isn’t broken.”
“Hush, Gramps.”
Coke gave him a broad wink when he glanced over, and he bit back a smile.
That was obviously the hint for them all to get back to work, and Seamus backed off as Wyn climbed the fence to load up.
Nate and Dawson took their places, and he took his.
When Wyn slid his knees down over the bull, strapping in his riding hand, and the difference between him and the kid the other day was night and day. This man was a pro.
Dawson shot him a look. “Now listen, Boondoggle is not much of a spinner, but he’s one hell of a kicker. So watch those back hooves. Stay out of the way.”
“I got it. I got it, I swear.” He wasn’t interested in getting whacked in the face or anything like that. “I got to protect my beautiful cheekbones.”
“At his age, you’ve got to protect your beautiful chest. There’s organs in there that are necessary to life, like hearts and lungs.”
“You got my word, man. I’m not playing around. I don’t want to get hurt.”
Wyn nodded, Nate opened the gate, and they spun out.
But Dawson had been right; the bull only spun the once, and then he started kicking as if somebody had pushed a button on his shoulder blades—up-down-up-down-up-down-up-down.
Wyn was hollering and laughing to beat the band, and Seamus caught himself just watching it like it was a rocking horse or something.
There was no sliding down into the inside of the spin, or what Dawson and them called the well. Not for Wyn. The eight-second horn sounded, and Wyn popped off, landing on his feet and running to the fence.
He followed Dawes’s directions, but Boondoggle didn’t even bother to wander around the arena. He walked back through the gate like he knew exactly what his job was, and he was done.
It was time to go and get some food and some water and chill out.
“Wow.” That sort of blew his mind.
Coke grinned at him. “I know, right? Those are the best. The ones who know their jobs, do it, and then just go back home. Outside of the arena, you can pet him. He’ll come up to get a snuggle.”
“‘A snuggle’.” He blinked at Dawes. “Is he serious or is he fucking with me?”
Dawson grinned at him, eyes winkling. “Oh, no, no, he’s serious. You can pet him.”
“And he doesn’t try to kill you?”
Wyn laughed too. “Nah. They wouldn’t do that. Most of them. Okay, some of them would depending on what kind of breeding they’ve got in them and how cantankerous they are, but most of these guys are here to buck. That’s their natural behavior. If they didn’t want to do it, they wouldn’t.”
“That’s just stunning to me.” The words came from Christopher who shook his head, his eyes wide. “Jesus, look what kind of damage they can do.”
“And if your next-door neighbor’s lab puppy weighed two thousand pounds, they could do the same kind of damage. Dawson waggled his eyebrows. “It is all about pressure per square inch.”
“You’re saying a bull in the arena is playing with someone when they try to take him down?” He knew his skepticism was plain in his voice.
Coke shook his head. “No, not all of them. Take a bull like Bodacious. You ever see that documentary about him?”
“Yeah, my dad used to talk about him.” They’d called him a cowboy killer, apparently.