Corralled Read Free Page B

want her, but I sure as hell do. I ain’t letting her go when she’s like this.”
    Gilly got right in his face— a feat in itself, since the man was six inches shorter. “Don’t think for a second I don’t want Mel as badly as you do. But goin’ after her when she has this stubborn mind- set is a fool’s errand, and you damn well know it. I won’t have you fucking up my chance with her because you’re too damn dense to let her be.”
    “Stop calling her Mel,” Hank snapped. “Her name is Lainie.”
    “Stop bein’ such a dickhead,” Kyle shot back. “And for chrissake, if you’re gonna be such a picky bastard about names, how about if you get mine right? I ain’t been Gilly since I left Muddy Gap, Hank. The name is Kyle.”

    LORELEI JAMES 9
    “Fine, Kyle .”
    The back door to the bar burst open, releasing a blast of steel guitar. Hank glanced in that direction, away from the dust plume as Lainie’s truck barreled off. A woman’s drunken whoop echoed, followed by a man’s laughter, and the door banged shut again.
    Hank scowled. This was how his evening played out? Standing in the parking lot of a honky- tonk? At ten o’clock at night? Completely sober, completely pissed, completely confused on how he and his buddy ended up fucking the same woman?
    Kyle sighed. “Look. I need a damn beer, but the thought of heading back into the bar turns my stomach.”
    “Yeah. Me too. There’s a package store around the corner.”
    Five minutes later, laden with a six- pack, Hank climbed into his truck next to Kyle. He set the brown bag on the center seat, tempted to crack a bottle— to hell with the open- container law. He needed a damn drink now.
    The lights of Lamar zoomed past the truck windows. Hank had half a mind to whip a U- turn and drive out to the rodeo grounds. At least if they were getting drunk with a group of rowdy cowboys, they wouldn’t be commiserating about having the hots for the same sexy- assed sports med tech.
    “You thinking about her?” Kyle asked.
    “Yeah. Are you?”
    “Always.”
    Great. Hank knew Lainie starred in plenty of sexual fantasies of cowboys on the CRA circuit. He’d never expected she’d been part of his friend’s sexual reality.
    “How long have you been seein’ her, Hank?”
    “Roughly six months.” As much as Hank didn’t want to ask, he did. “How about you?”
    “Two months.”

    9 CORRALLED
    Hank couldn’t stop the smug feeling over having been with Lainie longer than Kyle.
    Yeah? If you’re in with her so damn good, then why’d she go looking for another man to knock boots with?
    Damn.
    “What’d she treat you for?” Kyle asked.
    “Pulled my Achilles.”
    It’d pissed him off too, pulling a muscle during a performance.
    Instead of the usual gruff med tech, Lainie stepped up. Hank had scoffed at the little slip of a woman. How was she supposed to fix him if she could barely assist him onto the exam table? But as Hank half listened to her questions, he watched her. Her hair color was odd— somewhere between dark brown and rich red, a shade that reminded him of his quarter horse’s glossy coat. Hank kept that observation to himself; few women found humor or flattery within workhorse comparisons.
    Lainie had stretched him out on the padded exam table and dug her fingers into his sore calf. The strength and skill of her hands surprised him almost as much as the color of her eyes— the hue of burnished copper.
    And so began his obsession with Lainie Capshaw.
    At an event the next week, Hank popped into the medical aid station, only to discover that Lainie worked every other week with the EBS circuit. In the interim, he’d stumbled across information about Lainie’s heritage that’d shocked him. The curly- haired cutie with the sparkling eyes and magical hands was the daughter of worldfamous bull rider Jason Capshaw. An icon, a legend, a man who’d died way too young, way too publicly, gored by a bull in an arena filled with thousands of adoring