the gate, interrupting the announcer’s drone like a shout. All around the dusty arena the spectators seemed to draw and hold their collective breath.
Almost against her will, Lauren moved closer to the steel pole-and-bar fence; in spite of her lifelong love affair with horses—or perhaps because of it—she’d never cared much for rodeos. But as she braced a hand on the crossbar and ducked her head to get a clearer view, her pulse began to pound in almost perfect sync with the thud of the bronc’s hooves on the baked earth. She’d never seen a man ride an exploding bomb before.
As always, it was the horse that drew her attention first—though he was no great beauty, a rusty black with the scruffy jug-headed look of a wild mustang; the mean eyes, laid-back ears and bared teeth of a born outlaw. He didn’t just buck with the rhythmic crow-hopping motion of the average bronc, either. This one was a real high roller, employing the wickedly erratic corkscrew action of a Brahma bull.
No way a man could stay up on such a beast for eight seconds, she thought in the instant it took her to transfer her gaze from horse to rider. Then she, like the crowd around her, caught her breath and forgot to let it go again.
Johnny Bronco. Had she heard the announcer right? Could that really be his name? If so, Lauren thought, no man had ever been more aptly named. Like the horse, he was no great beauty—the same powerfully compact hard-muscled body, the same dark angry look, with hair as long and black and coarse, worn in a ponytail that snapped the air in time with the mustang’s tail, like two flags whipped by the same wind. A man too wild and rough-hewn for beauty. And yet…together man and horse were somehow transformed. Together they were beautiful.
To Lauren time seemed to slow, as around horse and rider the dust rose and caught the sunlight, becoming a swirling golden cloud, a medium more dense, yet more forgiving than air. Within it the two appeared to twist and turn with the effortless grace of dancers, so that the gritty battle of wills between man and animal became more like a form of epic ballet.
A buzzer sounded, shattering the fantasy. Lauren jerked back from the fence as the bronc hurtled past, the rider gripping the bucking strap with both hands now that the required eight seconds had passed. She felt the spatter of coarse sand against her jeans, smelled the sweat of man and animal, tasted the grit of dust, heard the grunts of effort, the slap of leather against horsehide and the announcer’s voice on the loudspeaker:
“Nice ride! Ladies and gentlemen, how ’bout a nice hand for the hometown boy!”
Needing no encouragement, the spectators cheered and stomped the aluminum-and-wood bleachers, while out in the arena the two pickup riders moved in on either side of the still-agitated bronc. While one leaned over to release the bucking cinch from the black mustang’s flanks and grab hold of his halter, the other moved into position to pluck the rider from his back. Once more Lauren stepped up to the fence, in time to watch Johnny Bronco slip deftly onto the back of the pickup horse, then to the ground. She found herself grinning in admiration as she watched him make his way back to the chutes, walking with the cowboy’s loose-legged stride, slapping away dust and tipping his hat to the crowd in a cursory self-conscious way. Not a man accustomed to or comfortable with the limelight, Lauren surmised. It was something she understood.
And then suddenly, when he was almost to the fence, he raised his head and seemed to look straight at her. As if he’d sensed my presence…as if he felt my eyes on him….
As quickly as the thought formed in her mind she squelched it, feeling vaguely furtive and embarrassed, as if she’d been caught indulging in an inappropriate private act in public. The romantic lurking inside her had popped up again, in spite of all her efforts to deny—or at least ignore—it. What? she scoffed at herself. Just because the man was obviously Native American, did she automatically assume him to be possessed of heightened spiritual perceptions? Naive nonsense.
But she felt her smile fade as the cowboy’s jet-black eyes went on staring into hers. And once again she drew a breath and forgot to let it go.
He had broad cheekbones, a chin with a slight but definite cleft, and full lips curved in a natural sneer. But it was the eyes that made him seem exotic and somehow dangerous—black and bright as chips of obsidian, with eyebrows that began low beside an arrogant nose and swept up and out from there like a raven’s wings, giving him the fierce wild look of a warrior chieftain leading his hordes into battle across a windswept plain.
The smallest of movements scattered the exotic pictures in her mind. The cowboy’s head and shoulders had realigned themselves ever so slightly, a subtle acknowledgment of her silent scrutiny.
Her embarrassment warmed to a conflagration. It had only been a second, she knew it had, but she felt guilty about staring, as if she’d invaded his privacy in some obscure way.
Then, when he was almost past her, the sneer softened for an instant into a smile. For that instant it seemed to her as if the smile was inside her and touching all her senses at once: she felt it like a warm breath against her skin, heard its music like the tinkle of wind chimes, smelled its fragrance and tasted its sweetness like aching memories of long summer days in childhood. Just for an instant…
Then he was reaching for the top bar and pulling himself up and over the fence with the fluid grace of a wild animal. It was then, with her perceptions returning to dusty sweaty reality, that Lauren realized the spurs on his boots had no rowels.
The breath she’d forgotten a while back gusted from her along with a little exclamation of surprise. A bareback bronc rider without spurs? What was that? She knew competitors in that event, assuming they managed to avoid being bucked off for the mandatory eight seconds, were judged in part on how vigorously they employed their spurs to the animal’s neck and withers. Which was a big part of why Lauren didn’t care for the rough-stock events. Timed events, like roping—now that was different. She considered a well-trained working quarter horse a wonder and a joy to behold, sheer beauty on four hooves, and never tired of watching horses and riders working together in perfect sync. But as far as she was concerned, the bucking events were just so much macho…well, bull. Grown men trying to show one another how tough they were by tormenting bigger, faster and stronger animals, and risking life and limb in the process. What could be dumber than that? But here was a man who’d just taken one of the most breathtaking rides she’d ever seen, and without once resorting to the barbarity of spurs!
“Ma’am?” A short distance away, the man called Bronco had dropped to the ground beside the fence and paused to regard her with those fierce brows pulled down in a frown and a question.
Lauren had to wait for the crowd’s roar as a new rider burst from the chute, a moment that seemed to take forever, tethered as she was to those terrible eyes. When it had subsided, it was all she could do to hang on to her poise as she made a gesture toward his scuffed dust-caked boots and tried to explain. “I was just noticing you don’t wear spurs. How’d you get that horse to buck like that?”
It seemed another interminable time before he answered her. A time in which his face remained absolutely deadpan, only those obsidian eyes moving as they subjected her to a thorough and frank appraisal. “Horse and I have an understanding,” Johnny Bronco finally drawled.
His voice was a surprise—warm and deep, but with an unexpected roughness to its texture. Like a bearskin rug.
“An understanding…”
Under those forbidding brows, his eyes glittered now with something she’d have sworn was amusement. “He makes me look good, I don’t hurt him. That way we both come out ahead.” He touched a finger briefly to the brim of his white cowboy hat before he turned.
As she watched him walk away, his
