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and heading back out to
finish packing things up. It was amazing and almost frightening how the air in
the room seemed so much easier to breathe when he wasn’t in it.
    We left the ranch around seven a.m. The drive took
just under three hours, but it went by fast. I was in the backseat of the truck
with Mark – who once again was sucking all of my oxygen, but I made conversation
with him to pass the time and try and keep my mind off the vision of him in
that tank top out of my head.
    “So when did you get interested in riding bulls?” I
asked. I was genuinely interested. I really couldn’t imagine what would make
someone want to get on a wild animal’s back and wait to get bucked off.
    “I stared mutton bustin ’
when I was about eight, just for fun with some of the hands on the ranch.”
    “Mutton…?” I think they’re sheep…but how do you bust
one?
    He flashed that toothy grin at me. I wished he
wouldn’t do that. It took me an hour after I went to bed last night to finally
fall asleep with that image fresh in my mind. “Riding sheep,” he said.
    With a picture of that in my head I asked, “You ride
sheep? Really? Aren’t they kind of small for that?”
    He laughed. “I said when I was eight. I think you
missed that part. It’s one of the ‘cute’ events that rodeos and fairs and
community carnivals puts on. It’s also how a lot of bull riders start. I got
pretty good at it. I did it until I was about eleven, entering all the contests
I could find around here. My mom would take me or one of the ranch hands would.
They all got really into it and helped me out a lot.” I saw him glance at the
back or Rob’s head. His eyes looked sad. I wondered why Dad didn’t take him,
but I didn’t ask. That was way too personal at this point. “I won lots of trophies
and some of the bigger rodeos even paid cash for the mutton. I thought I was a
big deal.”
    “So how do you graduate from a sheep to a bull?”
    “It’s the next logical step,” he said with a grin. God,
that grin was a killer. “I did broncos for a while, but it’s just not the same
thrill to me as a bull. The broncs are strong, powerful animals, but there’s
just nothing like being on the back of a two-thousand pound bull.”
    “I would hope,” I said, sarcastically.
    He laughed. “Being a bull rider ain’t something that you could ever explain to someone that hasn’t ever done it. It
swiftly becomes almost an addiction. It’s not just what you do after a while,
it’s who you are. The bulls become your nemesis, and you track them throughout
the year to see what kind of scores they’ve been pulling and when you find one
that ain’t never been rode…well, let’s just say there ain’t nothing that makes a cowboy’s mouth water more.
You develop a mutual respect for them after a while, too.” His eyes lit up when
he talked about it and they got a dreamy, far-away look in them. It was easy to
see that he was in love with the sport, and I was even more anxious to see him
in his element.
    “Mutual respect?” I asked, laughing. “How do you know it’s mutual? Are you the bull whisperer?”
    He looked into my eyes then and when he had me
locked into his he said, “Some things you just know by looking into a pair of
eyes.” I shivered. Damn it!
    We got to Woodlake around noon. We had pulled the
horse trailer up that the guys hooked up this morning with the big black horse
in it. I wasn’t sure why until Mark was saddling his up and I asked him. “What
do you need your horse for?”
    “I help them out in the chutes when it’s not my
turn. We all do.”
    “Oh, that’s nice.”
    “Yeah, it’s more of a team sport than you might
think. That’s not to say I ain’t rooting for the
other guys to pull a bad bull or fall off in seven seconds.”
    “It’s eight seconds that you have to ride, right?”
    “Yep.”
    “Do you usually make it?” He grinned broadly and
with a sexy, confident look he said, “I’m 6 and 0 so far