Desert Heat Read Free Page A

brown hair, trim hips, flat stomach, and he was tall for a bronc rider, around six-foot-one. Most of the best riders were shorter, their center of gravity lower. But Dallas Kingman was also a calf roper, which was generally a bigger man.
    The simple fact was the man was a good enough rider it didn’t matter that he was tall.
    She gave him a frosty smile, the best she could manage, determined to be polite to Charlie’s nephew. “That’s right. Our paths crossed out on the road.”
    He was wearing hand-tooled, black and gold fringed chaps over a pair of worn jeans, and black boots. When he turned, she saw that he had one of those round, muscular behinds that rodeo riders developed over the years. The guy had the carved, rugged features of a Marlboro man and the bluest eyes she had ever seen.
    As much as it galled her to admit it, Dallas Kingman was an incredibly good-looking man. Too bad he had an incredibly big ego to match.
    “You’ll be seeing Patience around quite a bit,” Charlie told the men. “She’s working on an article about the history of women in rodeo. I want you boys to help her any way you can.” She had asked him not to mention the dissertation for her Ph.D. She wanted to fit in and she doubted that someone from the academic world would be readily accepted. Aside from that, after her troubles with Tyler Stanfield, she had simply become a more private person.
    “You a magazine writer?” Dallas asked.
    “No,” she replied with false sweetness, figuring he was looking for more publicity than he got already.
    “She’ll be haulin’ with Shari.” Charlie flicked his nephew a glance, picking up the faint trace of hostility that arched between them. “Like I said, if Patience needs anything, I hope you boys will help.”
    Wes McCauley gave her a smile that actually looked sincere. “You need anything, ma’am, anything at all, you just let me know.”
    “Me, too,” said the lanky, sandy-haired cowboy she had seen with Dallas earlier that day, but she thought the remark was aimed more at Shari than at her. Dallas, she noticed, didn’t bother to offer. They didn’t like each other and both of them knew it.
    “Thank you,” Patience said to the other two men. “I’ll remember what you said.”
    “Hey, Charlie!” One of the cowboys ran toward him down the alley behind the chutes. “We got trouble! You better get over here!”
    Charlie sighed. “Gotta go. See ya after the show.” Charlie took off and Dallas left with him.
    “Poor Charlie.” Shari shook her head, moving the ends of the red bandana tying back her shoulder-length curly red hair. “He’s sure had his share of bad luck lately.”
    “I’m sorry to hear it. He seems like a really nice man.”
    “Charlie’s the best.” She glanced off in the direction the men had disappeared. “You know what they say—trouble always comes in threes. I wonder what it is this time.”
    The trouble turned out to be a blown PA system. As Charlie scrambled to find a substitute, one of the clowns went into the arena to stall for time.
    By the time the problem was corrected, the show was half an hour late getting started and Charlie was out the cost of a new PA system. Still, once the events got underway, the audience got into the spirit.
    Patience felt a hum of excitement as she stood in the staging area where the cowboys got ready to perform. There was movement all around her. One of the clowns adjusted the red suspenders holding up his baggy jeans while a cowboy buckled on his fringed leather chaps. A man walked his dogs, three Australian shepherds, the stars of a contract act slated to perform in the middle of the show. There were a number of press people—the group she had been tossed into—as well as the wives, children, and girlfriends of the contestants, though they were mostly in a small set of bleachers reserved for their use.
    Rodeo was big, bold, flashy entertainment, an extreme sport that offered chills and thrills, excitement and