Montana Gold. Genell Dellin

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СКАЧАТЬ she mustn’t get her hopes up too much. A thrill or two during one dance was a long way from real lovemaking.

      It’s a start, though. It proves it’s possible.

      Oh, yeah, and what an irony. The first man whose hands really touched her had to be a sexist woman-chaser rude enough to tell her she was in the wrong line of work.

      Was it worth the risk to take it further? She knew she could by the way he’d looked at her when they left the dance floor and the way he’d kept saying things to her during dinner. He was intrigued.

      However, sleeping with him could be a risk to her career, if she let his remarks about it invade her head. It might even be a risk to her heart because she couldn’t take sex lightly, and wasn’t her goal to make it mean something as well as to really feel something? Chase Lomax was famous for breaking hearts.

      But the greatest risk of all would be that it would fail and destroy her hope.

      Which is stupid to even think about because approximately half the human race is male and there are millions more men out there.

      Too bad she wasn’t the type to try them all, one after the other. No way could she do that.

      But if she decided she was afraid to go further with Chase, how would she ever know? He might be her best chance for the rest of her life to find out whether she could ever really feel anything with any man or if she would always be damaged goods. Or perhaps sexually-challenged, to be politically correct.

      She felt a wry grin curl her lips. Politically correct she wasn’t.

      But there was something more in Chase that drew her. A shadow of something in his eyes that made her want to know enough about him to name it.

      Which made it even more important to leave him alone. She needed to find out about herself, not him. She was tangled up enough inside without getting involved or falling in love. She wasn’t ready for that. No way could she fight bulls with a distracted heart or a broken one.

      On the other hand, this had to be worth pursuing, because there’d been some tension or something in the air between them last night—right from the minute Chase walked up to that table.

       Yeah, sure. He wanted to tell you about your mistake.

      She could go into this without her heart, though. It’d be for her body only. All she wanted was to find out if she could ever be normal.

      Oh, yeah, for double sure. Remember how you couldn’t look away from that family last night? Three stairsteps, little cowgirls. A mommy and a daddy still in love, holding hands?

      True. She did want that. Someday. But she had to find out about herself first. She could never get married again until she knew. She’d gotten so sick of pretending with Derek and she was not going to spend the rest of her life like that.

      So if you had the guts to leave Derek, and you have the guts to be a bullfighter, why are you scared of giving Chase Lomax a whirl in the name of research? You’ve never been known for a coward, Farrell Hawthorne.

      Right. She couldn’t be a coward when Farrell was her name. Her mother named her, not one of her three brothers, after their legendary great-great-grandpa.

      Farrell St. Clair, legend among the real, old-time cowboys, had made a name that, to this day, still came up in every discussion of Montana’s best bronc riders ever. In spite of being born sickly and with a crippled arm during the winter of the great die-up in 1886, he’d survived and thrived as a man who could ride anything with hair on it.

      Besides that, they said he’d fight a grizzly with a willow switch. He had absolutely no fear, or if he did, no one ever saw it.

      Remembering those stories and knowing she was named for him was what got her through those terrible days when she was twelve. They gave her courage when she was scared to death and helpless, and they gave her courage the first time she walked into the arena as the bullfighter.

      Her mother had unfailingly called her Farrell, but everybody else, from the time the baby girl had tried to say her own name, called her Elle. When she started bullfighting, though, she insisted that the rodeo announcers use her full name because it made her spirit even stronger.

      Elle punched the Forward button on the CD player. Time to quit looking in the rearview mirror.

      And time to quit worrying about whatever lay ahead down the road. Trying to plan for that was a waste of energy.

      Worse, it was a waste of a beautiful spring night with the smell of rain on the wind.

      “Really, Aussie,” she murmured, glancing at the Australian shepherd who’d put his front feet on the console to stand up and look at her, “you’re the only male animal we need around this outfit.”

      Aussie gave her a melting look of agreement. Elle set the coffee back in the cupholder so she could reach over and scratch him a little. He sank back down, closed his eyes and nestled his nose between his paws. She patted his head and grasped the leather wheel again, firmly and with both hands.

      She really ought to travel with Missy Jo more often. But it was hard to do—M.J. had to enter the rodeos and barrel-racings that offered the most prize money and Elle had to work the jobs that offered her contracts, of which more and more were package deals for her and Rocky and Junior. They’d just have to make the best of these rare times when they both worked the same rodeo.

      Which probably was just as well. Missy Jo had romance on the brain now that she had a serious boyfriend, and she wanted to fix Elle up with somebody, too. It was sweet of her but maddening. Last night, Missy Jo had sensed the attraction between Elle and Chase and today that had been her main topic of conversation.

      Something moved at the side of the road. A long way up ahead, at the end of the headlights’ beam, but Elle knew she’d seen it. She started slowing down.

      Probably it was an animal. If it ran across the road in front of them, she might have a wreck trying to miss it. She looked away, then tried to spot it again as she let the speed drop all the way down to fifty.

      The night was black around them. Whatever it was had been white, or she would never have seen it. She kept searching and slowing and then she saw two eyes shining in her lights, looking down the road at her. She’d have to stop, just long enough to check it out.

      When she got close enough, she signaled that she was going to pull over, gradually moved onto the shoulder of the road, and slowed the rig to a stop. As she set the parking brake, Missy Jo sat up.

      “What’s going on? Where are we?”

      “Middle of nowhere,” Elle said. “I just want to check on something.”

      “You think we’ve got a flat?”

      “No. It’ll only take a minute.”

      “Skitter? Is she kicking again?”

      “No, M.J. Nothing’s wrong. Hang on a second.”

      Elle could feel Missy’s eyes on her back as she walked along the side of the highway, following the headlights’ beams to the yellow eyes looking СКАЧАТЬ