Colby (BBW Western Bear Shifter Romance) (Rodeo Bears Book 3) Read online

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  Colby

  Rodeo Bears III

  by

  Becca Fanning

  Chapter One

  Gemma Thomas had no intention of going to the rodeo. Just because she lived in the west, just because she lived in Reno, and just because this year Reno was getting more than one rodeo in more than one series didn't mean she had to go anywhere near any of them.

  Gemma's west was civilized. She loved to hike in the foothills but not in the dead of summer. Most of the time she didn't hike long enough or go far enough to need to carry water. She was just as happy strolling by the Truckee River in one of the downtown parks. The city aspect of Reno was nice. Indoors was nice. Mucking around in the dirt and dust wasn't part of her lifestyle.

  Neither were cowboys. She'd grown up around cowboys. She'd grown up outside of Winnemucca, Nevada, not even in the town itself but on her father's ranch. After that, as an adult, she'd become – in her opinion – civilized.

  No cowboys. And rodeos bred cowboys. That was her theory. Most of the men who lived in Reno drove normal cars (not beat up, full size farm trucks), wore normal shoes (not cowboy boots that just might reek), dressed like they understood the century they lived in and the society around them. They worked out in gyms. They bathed regularly.

  Add a rodeo and drop men she was acquainted with into that picture, men she knew from jobs and friendships, otherwise reasonable men who lived in metropolitan areas. They suddenly start chewing tobacco, spitting, drinking beer from a can, wearing cowboy boots and calling the women around them darlin'.

  No way she was going anywhere near all that. Gemma moved from her daddy's ranch outside Winnemucca the minute she turned 18. She wasn't looking to go back. She moved, she lost the horse droppings under her boots and started wearing sandals and heels. She graduated college and got a job at the newspaper, worked her way up to lead freelance writer for a lifestyle magazine, an upstart startup that Marla the editor liked to call it because it was a glossy hard copy in the age of e-magazines and the post-recession collapse of so many magazines.

  Gemma had a college education, a condo in a downtown high-rise (a converted casino, very trendy), a Mitsubishi Spyder convertible, and she freelanced, writing articles for a living.

  No cowboys. No rodeo. No roping of calves. No riding of bulls.

  No thanks.

  So Marla assigned her the stories about the rodeo.

  "This is not happening," Gemma muttered, stepping over horse droppings outside the fairgrounds convention center pavilion and trying to convince herself she wasn't really there and that the sights and smells all around her didn't remind her of home.

  Anyone could like the smell of hay under the late June sun, right?

  When she wrote freelance articles for what was essentially the last business magazine in the state, she did interviews by phone. She wrote for a local foodie magazine and the lifestyle magazine and she usually didn't have to go anywhere – phone interviews worked just fine.

  Phone interviews would have kept the sun off her shoulders and the hay out of her nose. All around here there were mud splattered horse trailers and people in snap-button shirts and huge hats. There were cowboy boots and cowboy voices filling the air and the peculiar and familiar feeling of hot sun giving way to the shadowed heat of barns.

  Marla gave her the assignment to write one of the cover stories, a feature on Wally Wold, buckingest bronco breaker or some title like that. Gemma had called expecting a friendly conversation during which they'd set a day and time when she could call for the interview. She would put her phone on speaker, turn on her trusty cassette recorder, look out the window at the city and interview Mr. Wold.

  Mr. Wold had other thoughts.

  "I'd be happy to talk with ya, darlin'. But my schedule's pretty hit or miss. Never know how a rodeo's going to go. You'd best come down. I'll leave tickets for you at the box office."

  She'd argued. She could call him before hours. After hours. At the tail end of the rodeo.

  He'd countered with morning chores and warmup, evening beers and cooldown, and the fact that the instant the show was over everyone hit the road for the next venue, as well as developing some kind of amnesia about recent events unless they'd won big time.

  He cut the conversation short and told her he would leave tickets. She could pick them up and he'd meet her at five o'clock on Saturday afternoon and if she wasn't there, he'd assume she didn't want the interview. When she started to ask one more question, the line went dead.

  He'd hung up on her.

  Marla had called right after that. Gemma was still staring at the phone. Who did that?

  "Hon, long as you're going to the rodeo, I've got a second feature for you."

  "Who said I'm going to the rodeo? I do most of my interviews by phone."

  Marla barked out a laugh. "Honey, you're interviewing Wally Wold. He's delightful and impossible and infuriating. And he doesn't do interviews by phone. You're going to the rodeo."

  "You know how I feel about this." Gemma heard the whine in her voice.

  "Suck it up, buttercup. It's one story. You'll live."

  "Apparently it's not one story," Gemma said. "Didn't you just say 'as long as you're going to the rodeo, I have a second feature for you?'"

  "OK, OK, it's two stories but one trip if you arrange it right. Owen Hutch."

  Gemma was silent for a minute. Then, "Senator from Utah?"

  She could hear Marla breathing right before she said, "What?"

  "Owen Hutch."

  "That's Orrin Hatch. This is Owen Hutch."

  "Oh." That cleared things up.

  No it didn't. "Who's Owen Hutch?"

  Even the light seemed different. As if the sunlight off the hay tinted the world a funny gold. Growing up outside Winnemucca, Gemma had seen the afternoon light look like this for long, hot summers. A haze hung in the air, made up of tiny flying insects and bits of hay that spun suspended. Dust blew up under her feet.

  She refused to dress for it. Not that anyone had asked her to. Refusing just made her feel better. She wore ballet flats because she wasn't going to ruin heels or trip over things in the murky barns or arena. She wasn't going to wear even her nicest heels because of the horse manure and the hay and the muddy stalls and because even her fanciest boots might be misconstrued as western boots. She seriously wasn't admitting she was doing this.

  So when she went she wore lightweight off white slacks and a light blue shell to combat the heat. Her long brown hair she piled up in a tortoise shell clip and let the stray wisps that always got free frame her face. She carried her cassette recorder, phone, notebook, pens, smart phone, questions and the intention to be there and be gone without ever seeing a single bull ride or a calf roping or a single rodeo clown.

  Unfortunately it was beginning to look like she was also going to leave without seeing Wally Wold or Owen Hutch, neither of whom had been anywhere near where they were supposed to be.

  Or maybe she was the one who wasn't where she was supposed to be. Even growing up in cowboy country Gemma hadn't spent time hanging around cowboys
or their games. She had no idea what the main pavilion in the fair grounds rodeo area was, or how to find it. Her plan had been to either pick up a flier with a map of events when she got her ticket at Will Call, or to ask someone. Only there hadn't been any maps. Attendees were expected to just enter the auditorium and sit down, not wander around.

  So far there'd been no one to ask except a couple very drunk looking cowboys. She could hear the announcer in the arena, calling out whatever was going on there. Clearly the day's events weren't over yet.

  Clearly they were for the guys she'd already seen. The drunk ones. Though she could hear the crowd and the announcer, she couldn't see anything. Somehow she'd gotten herself lost behind the arena. Here a series of fences opened into nowhere places, little pens where horses or bulls or something might be kept but, right now, weren't. The heat was stifling, as was the smell of animal droppings and hay.

  What she wanted to do was snarl "Fuck this" and go home. Couldn't though. She had exactly two magazines she wrote for regularly anymore. The occasional extra assignment for the local foodie mag and the local alternative newspaper weren't enough without the lifestyle mag. Inheritance from her great-grandmother had paid for the condo but there were other expenses. She needed to work. That meant she had to persevere and find where she was supposed to be. She needed to find the poet and the shifter. Then she could go.

  Gemma turned around fast. She'd retrace her steps. Once outside at least she'd be far enough from the convention center to figure out where she'd gone wrong. Other than answering the phone when Marla had called. If she had to, she'd go back to the ticket office. If someone there couldn't give her directions, she'd ask for security to escort her. She was press. That had to still count for something.

  Moving fast, because she wasn't quite late yet, Gemma rounded the corner where a series of stalls blocked her view of any upcoming junctions of stalls. The sound of the crowd grew louder. Good. She'd head that way. Maybe there'd be signs then pointing to the stall where she was supposed to meet Owen Hutch.

  Running, Gemma emerged from between two horse stalls, turned toward the sound of the crowd and the illusion of sunlight.

  Something came flying along the same path and hit her hard. No. She was the one moving. Clearly there was a wall there. Something huge and dark and sudden. Gemma said, "Uff!" loudly and sat down in the dust.

  Her cream colored summer linen pants would be ruined.

  Her instant reaction was to shoot up as fast as humanly possible. As if that would keep the dust off her.

  Her next thought was blinding panic. She couldn't breathe! One hand flew to her mouth. She dropped her phone, her bag, and clawed at her throat with both hands.

  A voice said, "Easy, darlin'."

  The hell with that! There was no air! She was going to die!

  The voice of reason, buried way under the panic in her mind, said she'd had the wind knocked out. Gemma wasn't interested in reason. She was interested in breathing.

  The owner of the voice was scrabbling near her. Gemma raised one hand to bat him away. She already couldn't breathe. She didn't need someone hot touching her and –

  Forcing her down? Gemma panicked, trying to pummel the guy with both fists. Her lungs heaved. Black spots floated in her vision.

  The voice came through slowly. "I'm not going to hurt you. Lay back. It will help you breathe."

  Gemma went instantly limp, letting herself fall back onto the dirt. The little air she'd managed jolted out of her again. Panic set in harder.

  Then a hand gently pushed her left shoulder down while fingers tucked themselves under the waistband of her pants.

  He'd said he wasn't going to hurt her!

  She didn't have enough energy to fight the hand. She went limp, and the voice said, "Good, relax," and the hand on her shoulder stayed there and the one at her waist gently pulled her up, arching her back, pulling her hips up.

  "Breathe, darlin'," the voice said.

  If she could have, she would have screamed at him. What did he think she was trying to do?

  But air started flowing back into her lungs. Her throat ached, like she'd swallowed something too salty or choked on something sharp. But there was air again, and the spasm in her body started to relax.

  Gemma took a long experimental breath. The air went in and out again.

  "OK?" the voice asked.

  She didn't have the air to agree or disagree. She nodded, her hair in the dust.

  "Couple more breaths," he said. "Then I'll let you up.”

  Normally sarcasm would come to her rescue, even if only internally. What if I want to be let go of right now? She did, actually. But the air going in and out was too nice, even air reeking of animal waste and hay and cowboy.

  Three breaths later he lowered her gently, let go of her shoulder, and extended a hand. "That was so not what I meant to do."

  Her mind was clearing. She couldn't make out what he'd said, though. What he had meant to do? She'd run into a wall.

  Gemma blinked. Her eyes watered and cleared and she looked at the guy who was squatting in front of her. When he saw her take him in, he stood easily, brushing his hands down his Wranglers. He extended one enormous hand.

  Gemma put her hand out uncertainly and the giant paw engulfed it. He pulled her up easily, set her on her feet, and looked her over.

  "Could've been worse." He wore a cocky grin and a ten gallon hat. The hair escaping out from under the hat was a reddish brown mass of curls.

  It was easy to see how she'd mistaken him for a wall. He was big and broad as one. Gemma started at the top. Hat, mile wide. Dusty, dirty and dilapidated. Real cowboy hat. Then the curls, amazing color.

  She got as far as the cheekbones – sharp and angular – and the mouth, sensual rounded lips that were quirking up in a grin as he watched her – before she went back to the eyes.

  Deep honey golden.

  Shifter.

  Chapter Two

  He wasn't Owen Hutch. That was clear. After her confusion about senators and cowboys, Marla had suggested she look up the superstar hotshot cowboy. Owen Hutch was built like the bear he was, massive with a broad chest and dark good looks.

  But there was only one family of shifters she knew of who would be in the billionaire Ray Chaudett's rodeo circuit, the one run by father and daughter team of Mary Beth and Ray Chaudett, and that was Owen Hutch himself.

  The Tyrell clan. Still controversial, the idea of shifters in rodeos. Various circuits and a whole lot of riders and other cowboys kept trying to ban it

  Probably because the Tyrell's kept on winning.

  Which was why she was here. To interview the superstar, champion bull rider, as well as Wally Wold, cowboy poet and bronc rider.

  She'd gone too long without speaking. Hell, she'd gone too long staring. He was grinning at her, a big lopsided grin that pretty much summed up, Yeah, I know I'm good looking.

  Gemma cleared her throat. "I'm looking for Owen Hutch."

  He thrust out a lower lip in an exaggerated pout. "Now that's a shame. Could I interest you in his cousin?"

  "Not if she has any sense," said a voice from beyond the wall and Gemma craned her neck to see around her attacker and rescuer.

  Now that, that was Owen Hutch. Even unwilling and uninterested in the whole rodeo thing she'd had to admit that Hutch was beautiful. Broad shouldered, thick chested, dark and smoldering.

  But the Wall wasn't bad either.