Chapter 6
Chapter Six
Beau
Idon’t usually mind a post-event press conference.
Talking to the media’s not for everyone, but it’s never really bothered me.
Seems like a good way to get people even more hooked on this sport I love.
But the second Bailey James slipped into the back of the room and stood there watching me, impatience began to buzz in my veins, so loud I couldn’t focus.
I wanted the damn thing to be over, so I could get her alone.
Hear her questions. Her reactions. Her first rodeo felt like something I would have liked to share with her.
Everyone’s first rodeo is a special thing.
You might come into it with an idea of what it’s about, but there’s nothing like the tension you feel when you see someone on the back of a bull for the first time.
The air in the arena seems to thicken with adrenalin and hope. It’s a powerful, unifying experience.
At least, it always has been for me.
But well before we’re through with questions, Bailey sneaks out of the room again, her head bent as though she’s avoiding eye contact with me.
My impatience bursts like the creek beds back home after a heavy rain.
Beneath the media table, I tap my boot to the floor, trying to control an urge to stand up and stride after her.
She’ll be waiting out there somewhere for me, anyways. Bailey James is nothing if not determined, and we both know she needs to talk to me to get this damn feature article written.
Strange then that she didn’t stick around here.
I’m chewing on that so much that I miss a question and have to ask the reporter—Tom Ryan, who covers a heap of these events for a cable sports channel—to repeat himself before answering.
The questions keep coming, some for the other guys, a lot for me, but in the back of my mind I’m thinking about Bailey.
Afterward I scan the corridor for her, with no luck. Impatience shifts into something else. Something even more urgent. I head back to the locker room and grab my stuff, throwing a bag over my shoulder and nudging through the doors.
‘Hey, man, you comin’ downtown?’
We usually go to a bar after an event. Some of the younger guys make a night of it, even though we have to be back here again tomorrow.
I used to do the same. But now I tend to go for one beer, shoot the shit for a bit, then head back to my room.
But tonight the bar holds little appeal, and it’s pretty obvious why not.
‘Nah, I’ll see you tomorrow though.’ I scan the corridors for Bailey as I head out to the parking lot.
A couple of fans are waiting at the gates to the private parking area.
I stop to sign a few photos, have a chat, but my mind is driving me crazy with how much it keeps shifting to a certain journalist.
What the hell is it with this woman?
Is it just that I can’t have her? That she’s probably the first woman in a long time to flat out tell me it ain’t gonna happen? Probably. I mean, that makes sense. But that kind of thing’s never much bothered me before. Some women are into you, some aren’t. You move on, no drama.
Except it’s not that she’s not into me. She is. She as much as said so the night before. Her job’s the problem—the fact she’s here to interview me. The fact she wants to prove something with her career.
What was it she said? My editor would have my head on a tray, and, believe me, I don’t need to give him any more ammunition.
I slip behind the wheel of my truck and stare straight ahead as her statement goes around and around in my mind.
What did she mean by that? Bailey doesn’t seem like someone who makes mistakes.
She doesn’t seem like someone who’d have got on the wrong side of her editor, or anyone for that matter.
She’s straight as a tack, focused and professional.
So why would her editor have ammunition on her?
Curiosity surges past impatience, or at least combines with it, so when I start the truck with a gruff throttle, I feel it deep in my gut. Just where the heck is Bailey James?
I don’t see her that night, and something—masculine pride, I guess—stops me from reaching out.
The next day, I halfway expect her to come knocking at my door, or to call me and suggest we meet for an interview.
But there’s nothing. Nada. Just a hundred questions about her buzzing in my brain.
Even when I head back to the arena, ready for another event, she’s in my mind, making me wonder about her, driving me halfway to crazy.
Bailey
Knowing what to expect the next night doesn’t make it any less full on.
This time though I grab a beer on my way in, and some nachos loaded with jalapenos, then settle in the stands to watch.
The media section gave me a close view of the chutes and that was great, but tonight I want to see everything.
I want to be in the mix of the crowd, feeling what they feel, hearing their reactions, their sharp intakes of breath.
And it doesn’t disappoint.
The event is every bit as nail-biting as the night before.
Tension hums and zips around the arena, but it’s all academic until Beau gets on the back of his bull.
He’s drawn Shrimp—clearly an ironic name because the bull looks to be at least half the size again of the bull he rode the night before.
An older gentleman with a long, white beard sitting a few seats over from me remarks on the bull’s meanness.
‘That’s the one who bucked that rider clear into the sides last year. Remember?’
His friend nods. ‘Rank bastard.’
I shiver.
Just like last night, time seems to slow down.
I dig my fingernails into my palms and sit completely still, eyes trained on him, watching as his ass lifts off the bull then plants back down, legs locked to the beast’s sides.
The journalist in me tries to get my eyes to shift away from Beau for even a second, to look at the arena, to take note of how the crowd is reacting, to see what the other riders are doing, how they’re looking, but the truth is, I can’t. I really can’t. He is mesmerising.
I grew up dancing.
Bailey Ballerina was my nickname because from almost as soon as I could walk, I could plié.
So I don’t use the term ‘poetry in motion’ lightly.
Usually I reserve it for the best of the best, the dancers who glide and leap in the kind of way that makes your soul explode.
But Beau … Beau is the same. The way he is on the bull is a whole new kind of beauty, and I can’t tear my eyes off him.
My heart, though, is in my throat, as the seconds seem to groan upward, bit by bit.
At one point his hand drops and the crowd gasps—the fear that he might let it connect with the bull, even accidentally, is real, but he doesn’t.
He shoots it right back in the air again, his butt lifting off the bull then dropping, almost like he’s teasing it.
And then he’s letting go, jumping off. Eight seconds are over, and the crowd’s erupting. Beau spins around, gazing out at the arena, that huge, beautiful grin on his big, beautiful face, so my heart pounds in my throat for a different reason now.
And even though I know he’s not looking at me, and that even if he was, it doesn’t mean anything, my mouth curves in an answering smile, as if to say ‘well, that was fucking amazing’. Because it really, really was.
Beau
‘Bailey James.’ The corridor’s packed with people moving in and out.
Press, sponsors, managers, physiotherapists, officials from the arena.
But I see her a mile off, her strawberry-blonde hair pulled back into a high ponytail.
I’m just itching to pull it out so I can plonk my hat on her head—she’d look real good in a Stetson.
In my Stetson. The thought—and the image—shoot into my brain before I can do a damn thing about it, so when she turns and our eyes meet, a full, hot charge of need bursts from my gut, all the way through my body.
For a second, her smile has the power of a thousand suns, but it quickly drops and turns into something else. Something businesslike and comparatively cold. Which only makes me ache to push all those thoughts out of her mind and get her to just feel. Not think. She does too damn much of that.
She weaves her way through the crowd toward me, looking like she belongs here as much as the First Lady does at a fast-food joint.
She’s wearing a pair of white pants and a silky pale-pink blouse with a fine gold chain at her neck, and suddenly her hair’s not the only thing I want to mess up.
My fingers are practically tingling with a need to feel the softness of her shirt, before pushing those pearl buttons apart one by one and seeing what’s underneath.
I clamp my lips together tightly, just in case I say something stupid like that out loud.
‘Well, howdy,’ she says with another flick of her lips. Her attempt at a drawl is laughable, but I don’t laugh. I’m too busy trying to get Beau Junior under control.
‘Howdy, yourself.’ Thank heavens for small mercies; I sound relatively relaxed. ‘How’d you like your first rodeo?’
‘Last night was my first,’ she points out.
A group of guys goes to walk past us, but they’re not paying attention and they nudge me and almost nudge Bailey.
I move her out of the way just in time, extending an arm to guide her toward the wall, and using my considerably larger body to block her from the madness of the corridor.
Except it brings us close. Too close. So close I can smell her pretty, girly perfume, and see the way her throat shifts like she’s swallowing too fast.
‘Are you saying you’re not a rodeo virgin anymore, Bailey James?’ I ask, pressing my palm to the wall at the side of her head, even when getting closer to her is a form of madness.
Another quick throat shift from her. ‘Nope. I know what I’m doing now.’