Handful of Sky Read Online Free

cream-colored challis tucked into a pair of jeans sporting a crease that only a laundry could put on denim. Her gaze traveled up to his face, unreadable behind the reflector lenses.
    Shallie wondered why this mystery man was trying so hard to keep his identity a secret. Probably some city dude who wanted to play cowboy for a day. Whatever. As long as he paid his entry fee, he had the right to make as big a fool of himself as he liked.
    Judging by the relaxed set of his broad shoulders, however, the dude didn’t even know enough to be scared. Shallie glanced down to the chute below him and shuddered inwardly. Of all the luck, the poor sucker had drawn her most powerful horse, Zeus. She cringed, thinking of his coming humiliation. He’s going to need all the help he can get, Shallie thought and began edging toward him.
    But as she approached him, something began to bother her. The dude in the aviator sunglasses projected a quiet, sure intelligence unlike the usual braying jackass who thought that with one eight-second ride he could prove he was a man.
    “Would you like me to hold on to your glasses while you ride?” Shallie asked.
    The cowboy turned toward her. All she could see washer own reflection in his lenses. “No, ma’am. Believe I’ll just wear them.” His answer, even muffled by the bandanna, had a calm, masculine strength.
    Shallie knew only too well that rodeo had a way of magnifying the male ego and she’d learned to tread carefully around that volatile area. “Of course, I wouldn’t presume to tell you what to do,” she went on, trying to hide her dismay at the man’s foolishness. “But when you get thrown the glasses could be dangerous. And it wouldn’t be too safe for the other cowboys if you were to leave the arena littered with broken glass.”
    “Who says I’m going to get thrown?” His question had more understated assurance than the kind of blowhard cockiness she usually encountered in onetime rodeoers. Still, she was tempted to abandon him to his fate. But there was the very real chance that he could be seriously hurt, so she tried again.
    “Have you limbered up?” At least, Shallie thought, if his muscles are loose he’ll stand less of a chance of having them jerked out of his shoulder. When he didn’t respond, Shallie demonstrated to him how he should swing his arms in wide arcs like the cowboys.
    “You mean like this?” He imitated Shallie’s propeller motions.
    “Right.” In the dusty area below the catwalk she caught a glimpse of her two hired hands watching her with amused smirks on their faces. “Come on.” Shestopped the arm-flapping demonstration. “I’ll help you get rigged up.”
    The dude stood back, obviously not knowing the first thing about setting a rigging.
    “Here, hold it like this,” Shallie directed him when she had the rigging in place.
    As he bent near her, Shallie experienced an odd claustrophobic feeling as if his smell, his nearness, his gaze, all had a physical weight that was pressing down on her, driving the air from her lungs. It was a strange sensation. To hide her discomfiture, Shallie brusquely grabbed the latigo and cinched the rigging down tight on Zeus’s back. As she recoiled from the hurried motion, however, she was thrown into even closer contact with the stranger. Large, strong hands closed around her shoulders, steadying her.
    “Whoa. There now, are you all right?”
    “Fine, fine. Perfectly fine,” Shallie babbled, completely flustered. She stumbled quickly away, her thoughts scattered about like flushed quail. She forced herself to fix her thoughts on the announcer’s words.
    “In chute number one we have Willie Poteen. Willie’s a local boy and he’s riding a horse called Mercury. As we go down the list today you will notice that a lot of the Double L bucking stock have the names of pagan gods and such like. Walter told me last year that his little niece, Shallie, picks them out.”
    Shallie arched her brow in annoyance.