Cowboy Crazy by Joanne Kennedy Read Free Book Online Page A

other, she breathed in the familiar odor of popcorn, beer, and nachos and flashed her companion pass at the sleepy cowboy slouching against the gate.
    “Got yourself a cowboy? Better get in there,” he said. “Buckin’s ’bout to start.”
    She nodded her thanks and walked inside, pausing at the rail that edged the grandstand as rock music blared. The clown jumped off the barrel and crawled inside, his painted face scrunched up in exaggerated terror as a gate across the arena swung open. A bull stormed out, leaping like a cat on a hotplate, hitting the ground so hard with his front hooves that the cowboy on his back almost fell onto his neck. Sarah clutched the top rail with both hands, her lips moving in a silent prayer. Rodeo always stirred her emotions. Much as she wanted to be the bored city girl, she could feel the excitement as the rider struggled for balance with the bull’s every buck.
    Tilting sideways as the bull humped up his forequarters and leapt into a clockwise spin, the rider righted himself with a mighty heave of his muscled arm. He seemed totally in control now, his free hand held high, his outside leg spurring while the bull whirled in a frenzied blur. His hat shaded his face, but the size of him made her pretty sure it was Lane.
    The announcer yammered with excitement and the crowd cheered as the bull stopped dead, snorted once, and spun the other way. The cowboy slid down into the spin, his arm muscles bulging as he strained to haul himself back up on the bull’s back, but it was no use. Centrifugal force pulled him into the well like a leaf sucked into a whirlpool, and he hit the dirt shoulder first.
    His hat flew off as he struck the ground and Sarah saw that it was Lane, scrambling to get his feet under him and run for the fence. Two bullfighters in baggy plaid shorts and red T-shirts rushed the bull, waving their arms in a frantic dance of distraction, but the animal dipped one blunt horn under Lane’s ribs and tossed him into the air with a quick twitch of his head.
    Sarah clapped her hand over her mouth to stifle a scream as his body rose into the air. There was a flurry of activity and when the dust cleared, Lane lay motionless on the ground. His hat lay in the dirt just inches from his outstretched hand, a massive hoof print crushing the crown.
    Sarah stared down at the hat. The image of it lying there in the dust echoed an image from her past and opened her mind like a key sliding into a matching lock. Memories flooded into her mind. Another accident. Another man.
    Another hat lying in the dust.
    ***
    That day, Sarah had been a typical high schooler leading a typical high school life. As usual, she’d rushed through the hallways at school and daydreamed through her classes, anxious to get home.
    Being eager to get home was a new thing for her. Before her mother met and married Roy Price, it had just been her mother, her sister, and herself, three women struggling to survive on the next-to-nothing wages her mother made as a waitress at Suze’s. Actually, it had been three girls, not women. Kelsey was only twelve, and their mother had never acted much like a grown-up. Sarah had played the part of the adult in the family up until Roy swept all three of them out of their trailer-park life and moved them to his small ranch at the edge of town. To some people, it might not have looked like much, but to Sarah it was heaven. Not only did she have a dad now, she had a horse.
    And it was one heck of a horse. Roy had been a horse trader all his life, but Chromium Flash was his biggest, best buy ever, a quarter horse stallion from champion performance stock with explosive speed and gorgeous conformation. Roy wanted to stand him at stud for a steady income, but first he needed to prove the animal could perform. He thought the horse would be good at barrel racing, and he wanted Sarah to ride him.
    Sarah loved the speed of the race, the excitement of taking the tight turns at top speed, the shotgun run