week’s shipment of steers, when Dr. Autrey had stopped on the road to watch him. He shouldn’t have been bothered by having an audience. He’d performed in front of crowds as large as those drawn by Major League Baseball. Hell, the Professional Bull Riding World Finals in Las Vegas was no small thing.
He’d even had his ass handed to him a time or two by a big bad son of a bitch on national television. So, no. It wasn’t being watched that had gotten to him. It was all about who was doing the watching and the way her watching had sent his itch traveling from his spine to his groin.
He’d let her come because he thought the exposure, the publicity, no matter how limited or obscure, might get his crew the kind of female attention they could use these days, the kind that was about sticking around for the long haul instead of following the boys from show to show, from town to town, which had been all they’d known in the past.
For the most part, Wyatt himself had found the women harmless and a whole lot of fun. They got what they wanted, and gave the cowboys a good time. Problems started when there was no respect for wedding vows on either side, or when the women thought they were signing on for more than a night or two of mutual satisfaction. And the more famous the cowboy, the more often that came to pass.
Life on the road, the injuries and competitions, the iffy income, the mental strain…none of it was conducive to permanency. But eventually the years began to stretch like a long straight road into the horizon, and not everyone—cowboy or otherwise—was cut out for making the trip alone.
Not a one of his men was married. None were in committed relationships. The companionship they did have was occasional and convenient, and, he knew, for some, paid. This article, this profile on the cowboys, if he could get the good doctor to slant it the right way, to hint at what the Triple RC had to offer besides rodeo stock, well, it seemed the least he could do to repay the years of loyalty Buck, Teddy, Skeeter and the others had given him.
As far as his own situation went, he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had been interested in Wyatt Crowe and not the inimitable “Lawman”—the moniker he’d earned for laying down the law to the bulls he rode. High school, maybe? When he’d started competing professionally?
His time on the circuit also had put a big kink in his college plans. He’d eventually made up the lost time and had a degree in land management he wasn’t sure did him a bit of good. He relied on experience—his own and his father’s—as well as the business sense of his ranch manager and the common sense of his crew to keep the place going strong.
All of that kept him too busy to worry much about being thirty-five and alone, though it was funny how that very thing had been weighing on him of late. It shouldn’t have been. His days were busy. He kept them that way so when his nights rolled around he was too tired for anything but sleep.
Still, with his men bunking in their quarters—for all intents and purposes, a frat house—his own two-story place had a lot of empty space and echoes. And his talking to Dr. Autrey, to Tess, had brought all of that home.
He couldn’t get her out of his mind, the way she looked, her voice. How putting the two together and knowing what he did of the way she thought, the success she’d made of herself…how all of that intensified not so much his loneliness, but the fact that he was alone.
Why her? He couldn’t have answered had Buck roped him to Fargo’s belly and slapped the horse down the road. Right place, right time? Chemistry? The fact that she talked to him as if he was a regular Joe, not a legend or a celebrity or a commodity, and it had been way too long since he’d had a woman beneath him in bed?
So what had he done? Why, smart guy that he was, he’d set up Dr. Autrey in the room down the hall from his for the weekend, wanting her to be
He’d even had his ass handed to him a time or two by a big bad son of a bitch on national television. So, no. It wasn’t being watched that had gotten to him. It was all about who was doing the watching and the way her watching had sent his itch traveling from his spine to his groin.
He’d let her come because he thought the exposure, the publicity, no matter how limited or obscure, might get his crew the kind of female attention they could use these days, the kind that was about sticking around for the long haul instead of following the boys from show to show, from town to town, which had been all they’d known in the past.
For the most part, Wyatt himself had found the women harmless and a whole lot of fun. They got what they wanted, and gave the cowboys a good time. Problems started when there was no respect for wedding vows on either side, or when the women thought they were signing on for more than a night or two of mutual satisfaction. And the more famous the cowboy, the more often that came to pass.
Life on the road, the injuries and competitions, the iffy income, the mental strain…none of it was conducive to permanency. But eventually the years began to stretch like a long straight road into the horizon, and not everyone—cowboy or otherwise—was cut out for making the trip alone.
Not a one of his men was married. None were in committed relationships. The companionship they did have was occasional and convenient, and, he knew, for some, paid. This article, this profile on the cowboys, if he could get the good doctor to slant it the right way, to hint at what the Triple RC had to offer besides rodeo stock, well, it seemed the least he could do to repay the years of loyalty Buck, Teddy, Skeeter and the others had given him.
As far as his own situation went, he couldn’t remember the last time a woman had been interested in Wyatt Crowe and not the inimitable “Lawman”—the moniker he’d earned for laying down the law to the bulls he rode. High school, maybe? When he’d started competing professionally?
His time on the circuit also had put a big kink in his college plans. He’d eventually made up the lost time and had a degree in land management he wasn’t sure did him a bit of good. He relied on experience—his own and his father’s—as well as the business sense of his ranch manager and the common sense of his crew to keep the place going strong.
All of that kept him too busy to worry much about being thirty-five and alone, though it was funny how that very thing had been weighing on him of late. It shouldn’t have been. His days were busy. He kept them that way so when his nights rolled around he was too tired for anything but sleep.
Still, with his men bunking in their quarters—for all intents and purposes, a frat house—his own two-story place had a lot of empty space and echoes. And his talking to Dr. Autrey, to Tess, had brought all of that home.
He couldn’t get her out of his mind, the way she looked, her voice. How putting the two together and knowing what he did of the way she thought, the success she’d made of herself…how all of that intensified not so much his loneliness, but the fact that he was alone.
Why her? He couldn’t have answered had Buck roped him to Fargo’s belly and slapped the horse down the road. Right place, right time? Chemistry? The fact that she talked to him as if he was a regular Joe, not a legend or a celebrity or a commodity, and it had been way too long since he’d had a woman beneath him in bed?
So what had he done? Why, smart guy that he was, he’d set up Dr. Autrey in the room down the hall from his for the weekend, wanting her to be
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