Free A Wild Red Rose by Lynn Shurr Page A

bullfighters arrived in time.
    Clint scooped up a handful of dirt and dashed it into the bull’s eye. The other bullfighters got between the animal and the downed rider, driving the beast away with swats of their hats. Clint shouted at Cyclonic, waved his arms, and took off across the wide arena. The bull bore down on him like a locomotive on a pickup truck stalled at an unguarded crossing. Clint reached the boards a second before the bull and was scrambling over the top to safety when Cyclonic gave him a butt in the rear that completed the job. He landed in a heap on the other side of the barrier but jumped up immediately and raised his hands to show the gasping audience he’d survived just fine. He fired a wide grin at the TV camera zooming in on him. That thousand-watt smile flashed on all the upper level screens.
    “Let’s give Clinton O. Beck, the Bull Bomber, a great big hand,” the announcer cried out. The crowd cheered wildly.
    An outrider got a rope on Cyclonic and held him steady as the medics helped Pedro to his feet and partially carried the limping bull rider to the Mobile Sports Medicine Center. The announcer assured the crowd they would be given updates on the rider’s condition.
    Clint took only a second to look for Renee. She’d returned to her seat and stood on her feet, not cheering, one hand held across her heart. She appeared to have spilled half a cold drink down her front. Didn’t hurt her appearance one bit and might have enhanced it, the way her nipples poked out. The dude she’d been seducing certainly appreciated his close up view. He began patting down her front with a wad of paper napkins and doing a very thorough job of it. Jealousy rose up in Clint like a high bucking haunch. Regardless, the next bull entered the chute, and the Bull Bomber had to go back to work.
    The rest of the event went off without a hitch, only a quarter of the riders hanging on for their eight seconds of agony. Pedro Sanchez had been transported to a hospital the announcer informed one and all. No word yet if his knee injury meant the end to a promising season. Clint kept on moving, simply doing his job, but he sank into one of the Jacuzzi baths provided by the medical center before he went back to the trailer. His gluteus maximus was one big bruise despite the padding he’d worn.
    A light shone through the thin curtains of The Tin Can. He wondered if Renee waited or if she had been careless as usual and forgotten to turn off the lamp. Probably on her way to the airport by now. Experiencing a twinge of pain in his backside, Clint made his way up the little pull-down step, opened the door, and tossed his bag of bullfighting gear into a corner. There, Renee Niles Bouchard Hayes sat, cross-legged on the foldout bed in all her naked glory with the fake tiger throw covering only her most private part.
    “I thought you’d be gone by now with that guy you were rubbing up against at the rodeo. What, he wouldn’t part with enough money for your plane fare?”
    She ignored his surly remark and glanced over from reading the rodeo program. “It says here, you went to the University of Texas.”
    “I did—on a gymnastics scholarship. Missed getting on the U.S. Olympic Team by a tenth of a point. My dad was very disappointed in me, all that expensive coaching and driving around to all those meets for nothing. After that, I drifted a while.”
    All true. He’d gone to Harvard to get that MBA in order to please Gunter Beck, substituting his dream for his father’s version of the future. The summer after he’d gotten his degree he’d thrown over the traces and taken up bullfighting.
    “Sometimes, you don’t sound so cowboy—like now, like last night.”
    “Depends on who I’m with. I won’t use an education to talk down to a nineteen-year-old bull rider. People are more comfortable with the cowboy persona.”
    “A persona, is it?”
    “Yes, and if you don’t like it, you can get on outta here. I still earn only