Free Handful of Sky by Tory Cates Page B

offering a view of the shimmering boulevard that the wide Colorado River cut across the McIver property. Glass-fronted shelves of richly grained rosewood lined one wall, displaying a selection of decanters and crystal ware. Hunt stepped toward it, sliding a door open and pulling out a bottle of Courvoisier brandy and two snifters.
    “Not bad for a rodeo cowboy,” Shallie teased as they sank into the plush sofa.
    “Rodeo paid for all of this in only the most indirectof ways. I’m sure you’re well aware that a man, even when he’s riding well and winning, can still put out more money in entry fees, airplane tickets, and hotel rooms than he actually wins in a year. No, the only real money in bronc riding comes from endorsements, commercials.”
    Shallie studied Hunt’s heavily lashed eyes, his high-planed cheeks, the sensuously brooding mouth, and began to make a hazy connection between those features and the face on countless ads for everything from jeans to light beer. She knew anyone else in rodeo would have recognized him immediately, but it was just a measure of how far removed she was from the sport’s more glamorous side that it had taken her this long to connect Hunt with the cowboy on all those ads. Ordinarily such a realization would have made her feel awkward and inadequate, but the exhilaration from the moment they had just shared in that moonlit arena seemed to wrap them in a charmed circle that warded off Shallie’s insecurities. It also emboldened her enough to state:
    “There’s something I don’t understand.”
    “What’s that?” Hunt prompted her, leaning back into a corner of the sofa as if taking command of the piece of furniture.
    “You said earlier that you’d been having a run of bad luck on the circuit.”
    Hunt’s answer was a tautly spoken understatement. “You might say that.”
    “How can that be? You just put the best ride on a horse I’ve ever seen and you did it in an unlit arena on a bronc you knew nothing about.” Shallie’s enthusiasm carried her away as she mentally relived the ride.
    Hunt chuckled, joining her in the memory. “It was a pretty fair ride.”
    “Fair ride?” Shallie echoed his self-deprecating words. “It was even better than your ride on Zeus, which was the best bronc ride I’d ever seen until you topped it tonight.”
    “Aren’t you starting to see a pattern?” Hunt’s voice tightened with mild sarcasm. “I can ride when there aren’t a few thousand people breathing down my neck. It’s been this way ever since I acquired this.” He held out his hand, back side up, to reveal the angry knot of scar tissue at the base of his middle finger.
    “My memento of the National Finals two years ago. I was there to claim the championship that should have been mine. I’d led in the standings by a wide margin all year long. But I drew a nasty, chute-fighting horse who smashed my hand. Split it open like an overripe melon.” Hunt squeezed out the last two words. He paused to massage the keratinous mass on the back of his hand, gazing at it as if it were the crystal ball that had foretold the seasons of defeat which followed it. Hunt balled the injured hand into a fist and drove it into the palm of his other hand.
    “Like any other cowboy in rodeo I’ve broken abouteverything the human body has to offer. But this—the hand—that was different. My link to the animal was broken. I suppose I tried to start riding again too soon, before the nerves and tendons had had a chance to heal. It was the big show in Albuquerque. I’d never missed that rodeo, always managed to score well.
    “I was still stinging from the humiliation of leaving the National Finals in an ambulance and wanted to come back with a vengeance. I still don’t know what happened, but when I got into the chute again in front of a crowd, my hand just wouldn’t stay locked around the rigging. That failure, the feel of my hand being torn loose, combined with the sound of the crowd roaring in