He grabbed her up off her feet and bent his head. Found her mouth with his. His hot mouth.
Kissing her; without so much as a “Hi there, Elle.” Burning her up. She wanted to struggle, but he had both her arms pinned to her sides.
And she wanted to stay right where she was forever because the shock was wearing off and she was starting to feel. A lot more than she ever had before.
The lift moved up. But Chase kept on kissing her.
She had to make him stop it. Right now. Who did he think he was, anyway?
Somebody who could send lightning right through her whole body, that’s who he was. Lightning so strong it shook her to her toes.
He had to stop this now. But she couldn’t move any part of her body. Except her lips. And her tongue…
Also available by Genell Dellin
MONTANA BLUE
MONTANA GOLD
GENELL DELLIN
My husband Artie helps me reach
for a piece of the sky every day
and does it with all his heart.
My son David inspires me to give
it all I’ve got every time he makes
another one of his own gold-buckle
dreams come true.
My daughter-in-law Julie and
grandson Gage bring me whole new
worlds full of stars. Thank you all.
CHAPTER ONE
ELLE TOOK THE FIGHT to the bull. She shot the gap between him and the rider he was going after while the announcer yelled, “Chase Lomax! Yes, there’s the score, folks. Eighty-seven points! How’s that for a thirty-eight-year-old bull rider? Come on, let ’im hear from you, rodeo fans!”
She felt the air moving as the mass of the bull created a wind behind her, and then John McGee’s voice and the crowd’s noise faded away. A surge of adrenaline pumped through her blood in a river of power that held her flying feet off the ground and her mind in the zone.
She could do anything. She could make him do anything. This big, snorty beast was all hers.
He stopped, and she turned in that instant to see the huge head wobbling to focus on her, horns shaking, front hoof pawing the dirt, fixing her with an evil eye. Elle wasn’t going to let him think he could decide what came next, even if he did outweigh her a hundred times over. She was the boss. She’d be the one to say how this little rendezvous ended.
She flew to him, in close, and raced past his nose again, just the way she’d done a thousand times, in and out in less than a heartbeat, using the move she thought of as her “hummingbird.” He came after her, so close she could feel his breath and smell it. She ripped off her hat and slapped him in the face with it at the same time as she reversed directions. Her heart lifted, went lighter than the cloud of fine dust she was running through, and the shaking ground behind her roused her blood to a fever’s heat.
She whirled to face him again. The tip of a horn thrust at her and missed but the keen edge of danger touched her mind. She danced away, running backward now, speeding up to angle sideways. She loved this job. Standing in the arena always felt like being in her own house. Despite her heart beating hard as anything, these were the most calming, peaceful, private times she ever had.
The bull rider was safe because she’d gone into the maelstrom of the whirling bull and jerked his rope loose when he had that little hang-up. That was a thrill in itself. She loved helping the cowboys in danger, loved feeling that she might’ve saved somebody’s life. Now this bull was hers.
It was just her and the bull, mano a mano.
Elle felt a huge smile come over her face as she backed up, took a running jump into the air, soared over the bull’s head, and landed on his back. She took a couple of steps before she leaped over his tail and off to the ground again, still running. One of the safety men rode horseback in between them and drove the bull toward the out gate.
That was when she finally heard the roar of the crowd again.
“Miss Farrell Hawthorne, ladies and gentlemen,” John yelled. “How about them apples? Little bitty girl, great big bull. Y’all won’t see a better protector for these brave cowboys, nowhere, no way, and she sure can entertain a crowd, too. Tell her how you feel about her!”
The roar got even louder. It picked her up on a wave of noise and washed the joy she was feeling into an explosion in her veins. She swept off her hat and threw it into the air the way the cowboys did when they made a great ride.
Then she looked for Rocky, the painted clown who’d been acting silly all night, and Junior, who’d been inside the barrel for the bulls to butt around. She beckoned the crowd to acknowledge them, too. John began announcing their names and talking about their years of experience.
They ran to her and Rocky clowned around, gesturing for more applause from the fans. Elle turned to one side of the grandstand and then to the other, bowing and then holding her arms out as if to embrace the fans while they screamed and yelled and stomped even louder. Smoke ’Em had been the last bull of the evening.
Once again, way too soon, the rodeo was over. People were already pouring into the aisles.
“You done good, kid,” Junior said as they began to gather up their equipment.
Rocky agreed. “Mighty fine bullfightin’, girl.”
“Freestyle American,” she said lightly. “I’m just glad we don’t kill the bull like they do in Mexico. I wanna meet up with him again.”
“That’s the challenge,” Rocky said. “We let the rascals live and that’s how they get so smart.”
“And valuable,” Elle said. “Those stock contractors would kill us if we killed a bull.”
They all laughed at that and joked with each other but the fun was draining out of the evening for Elle. A family walking away along the arena fence, mother, father and three little girls proudly wearing their cowgirl hats—one pink, one red, one purple—caught her eye and she watched them until they turned the corner at the end of the bleachers. In only a moment the arena and the area behind the chutes would be as empty as the grandstands. All gone.
All the life, all the noise, all the excitement and the danger and the people. Gone. It was that quiet, lonesome moment that Elle hated every time. Nobody much around the arena, the animals back in their pens, the big lights shining down on vacant seats, dusty dirt and deserted pieces of trash slapping against the fence to glare white and ugly at the night.
The end of the rodeo always gave her a little chill.
Now, instead of electricity and excited voices and the thud of hooves and snorts of challenge, the clatter of the chute gates and the clang of the bull bells, the only thing filling the air was the wind.
CHASE LOMAX WALKED INTO the swirl of music and laughter that was Larry’s Steak House after a rodeo and grinned because somebody yelled out his name the minute he came through the door. Tater Gibbons, a calf roper he’d known for years, waved him over to shake hands.
“Eighty-seven, huh?” Tater said. “Congratulations, Chaser. Reckon you just might make a bull rider in your old age, after all.”
Chase couldn’t stop smiling. Getting into bull riding, going for the All-Around, had put the excitement back in his life.
“You’re my inspiration, Tate,”