Rodeo Nights by Patricia McLinn Page A

that seemed bred into his skin. But did the heat all emanate from him?
    She sat down abruptly, determined to keep some distance and under no circumstances to touch.
    It didn’t help. The sight of his large, rough, tanned hands ranging uncertainly over the pale, inanimate keys enthralled her. The endearing hesitation before an index finger pressed the next key, the impatient jerk of his right ring finger as it frequently went to the backspace button to delete a mistake, the confident tap of the thumb on the space bar.
    Still, she might have been okay if it had been simply her physical senses involved. Her imagination did the real damage.
    It produced images real enough to draw a flush, images of those same hands against a different pale surface. Not inanimate, but most definitely animate—and reactive. Her skin. Absorbing the sensations now bestowed on the unworthy keyboard, as well as movements never called for on a computer—sweeping, stroking, gripping, caressing.
    “Kalli? You okay?”
    She pulled her gaze from Walker’s hands to take in his expression of mingled concern and puzzlement.
    ‘‘I, uh...”
    “You look kind of pale. Except right here—” A blunt, roughened fingertip brushed at one cheek, then the other. “You gotta fever or something?”
    A fever
and
something.
    The something being the unnerving realization that these images were not memories of their safely distant past.
    Instead, they were memories of the moments in Lodge’s dressing room. And—worse! —moments from some vague vision of an impossible future.
    The door swung open with a muffled thunk against its wooden surface, a blow sufficient to send it hard against the wall with another clunk. Kalli started at the sound, but welcomed the intrusion by Roberta, carrying a cardboard carton. Both she and it were liberally dotted with smears of dust and cobwebs.
    “Roberta, you found the fliers?”
    “The fliers, the lost continent of Atlantis and Dr. Livingstone,” the older woman grumbled.
    Chuckling, Walker rose to take the carton from her.
    She released it, then gave his arm a slap for laughing at her disheveled state.
    “I’ll tell you, I had times I didn’t think I’d get out of that storeroom alive. I don’t care what that stubborn old man says, this winter I’m going to put that place in order, and Baldwin Jeffries is going to pay me for my time and effort, along with paying for the bulldozer I’ll need.”
    She glared from one to the other of them as if daring a response. Walker put the carton down, turned away from Roberta and gave Kalli a wink, his blue eyes laughing in a way that had her pulse stumbling. As he kept watching her, though, the look changed, slipping toward something more knowing. And more dangerous.
    Kalli should say something, should thank Roberta, should smooth the moment, should say anything to break the hold Walker’s eyes had on her. She couldn’t get a word out.
    “Well, if that’s all, I’m going home to get cleaned up and changed, then go into town for a real dinner at a real restaurant. And I might just take a whole hour for dinner. Of course if you need anything else,” Roberta said with false sweetness, “you just let me know, Kalli.”
    What Kalli needed was time to cool her imagination—a few months out in a blizzard might do the trick. But with a blizzard an unlikely occurrence in late June, even for Wyoming weather, at least she could put some distance between her and Walker Riley.
    She scrambled out of her chair with more enthusiasm than grace.
    “I’ll come with you, Roberta. And dinner’s my treat.”
    * * *
    TO BE A good rodeo hand took timing, lots of practice, some tolerance for pain, an ability to sleep or eat anytime, anywhere and a combination of patience and rock-hard stubbornness.
    The way Walker saw it, other than the eating and sleeping, caring for Kalli required the same things of him.
    There was a saying that there was only one way to make sure hours and weeks and months