A Wild Red Rose Read online

  Table of Contents

  Excerpt

  Praise for Lynn Shurr

  A Wild Red Rose

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  A word about the author...

  Thank you for purchasing this publication of The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  She headed for the cluster of students

  who surrounded the bullfighter, and they gave way before her, though someone groped her in passing. She didn’t care enough to turn around and glare with Clint Beck in her sights. Renee stroked his arm down to the hand holding a pen signing autographs. That got his attention.

  “You want an autograph, honey?” Clint Beck turned his blue eyes on her. They were the shade of deep ocean water, not the sparkling Irish blue eyes that Bodey Landrum always said was his best feature. His hair was a short, crisp, dark blond, dampened with sweat. Not really tall, he had the compact, muscular body of a gymnast and the tan of an outdoorsman.

  Clint grinned, showing a good set of white teeth. No way could she tell he’d lost a few doing what he did, his dentist was that fine. He wondered if she wanted one of those big bazookas signed. Wouldn’t be the first time. While bullfighters didn’t have the cachet of bull riders—or the money—they were coming into their own these days.

  “No, darling. I want to give you something.” Renee took his pad and pen, wrote her name and number, tore off the sheet, and buried it deep in the pocket of his shorts. She tied the tails of Bodey’s shirt around her waist and sauntered off, giving Clint Beck a good backside view of what she had to offer.

  Praise for Lynn Shurr

  “Shurr is a wonderful storyteller.”

  ~The Romance Studio

  ~*~

  “Very easy reads, well written, combined with conflict, believable plots and secondary characters that make the story come alive.”

  ~Jane Lange, Romance, Reads & Reviews

  ~*~

  “Lynn Shurr’s stories have that distinctive flavor...and make you eager for another taste.”

  ~J.L. Salter, author

  A Wild Red Rose

  by

  Lynn Shurr

  The Roses Series, Book Two

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.

  A Wild Red Rose

  COPYRIGHT © 2014 by Lynn Shurr

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author or The Wild Rose Press, Inc. except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Contact Information: [email protected]

  Cover Art by RJ Morris

  The Wild Rose Press, Inc.

  PO Box 708

  Adams Basin, NY 14410-0708

  Visit us at www.thewildrosepress.com

  Publishing History

  First Yellow Rose Edition, 2014

  Print ISBN 978-1-62830-241-7

  Digital ISBN 978-1-62830-242-4

  The Roses Series, Book Two

  Published in the United States of America

  Dedication

  For Lisa Patin Mallet, the first to reply.

  But people like us don’t deserve true love.

  ~Renee Niles to Bodey Landrum,

  Always Yellow Roses by Lynn Shurr

  Chapter One

  Rainbow, Louisiana

  Ten months after Bodey Landrum married

  Eve Burns, not Renee Niles Bouchard Hayes

  Bodey Landrum, retired World Champion Bull Rider and reformed womanizer, quietly opened the door of his bedroom. The screaming had stopped about four a.m. At six, he’d sneaked out to get his Famous Bull Riding Academy of Rainbow, Louisiana rolling for the day. Now, he’d come in to swill some badly needed coffee and check on Eve’s condition.

  Snoring lightly, his bride of ten months lay stretched on the king-sized bed. Her long, white-blonde hair, damp and darkened by a recent shower, spread out across the pillow. One plump, blue-veined breast protruded from a white terry bathrobe, and that little devil, Shea Patrick, pumped away on the rosy nipple. Bodey felt a small surge of envy and a slight tightening in his jeans.

  Damn, two more weeks before he could touch his wife the way he wanted. Shea released the nipple with an audible pop and snuggled into the soft cushion of his mother’s breast. Bodey tiptoed across the room and raised the milk-groggy baby to his shoulder. A few firm pats and his son released a small, but manly, burp. Bodey laid the child on his back in the cradle custom-made of saddle-colored oak to fit the southwest décor of the bedroom and drew a light cotton blanket over the tiny legs. Eve had been right to persuade him into attending the prenatal and parenting classes, or he would have panicked more than once during the past four weeks since the birth.

  Bodey knew Eve would be blaming herself for the rugged night they’d both had. After a pregnancy nurtured by bland and boring foods, she’d succumbed to a large plate of Mama Tyne’s barbecued ribs and spicy cowboy beans. Shea Patrick, proudly named for his granddaddy, kept them up for hours with his gas pains. Bodey took a moment to admire his offspring. The dark curls and little cleft in the chin said he was Bodey’s boy, through and through. Maybe, he’d get Eve’s long legs though. Nothing wrong with being under six feet, but still.

  Bodey turned toward his wife. He ran a finger lightly across the top of her exposed breast, usually encased in ugly nursing bras day and night. Eve moaned in her sleep in a way he cherished. Reluctantly, he covered her with the robe and began a quiet exodus toward the bedroom door.

  Then, some sonofabitch laid on the doorbell. Bodey eased the door shut and ran as fast as he could in cowboy boots down the long hallway and across the great room, dodging the leather chairs and sofas in his way. He sprinted like a downed bull rider making for the barricades and fearing for the worst. He’d left this week’s class of wannabe rodeo clowns in the capable hands of Clinton O. Beck and Snuffy Jones, but things could go wrong. Why else would someone keep pressing the bell like that? They’d have to be a jackass, otherwise.

  Bodey reached the door and flung it open. Make that description “some bitch” and “a piece of ass”. Renee Niles Bouchard Hayes lounged against the frame, her elbow pressing the bell. She wore nothing but a very small bikini top on her over-inflated breasts and, Bodey suspected, a very small bikini bottom under the tropical-print towel wrapped around her provocatively rounded and tight hips. Renee had already oiled up, and one strand of her brilliant red hair lay glued against her cleavage with the lotion. Her emerald green eyes, as fake as her boobs, gave Bodey the once over from his boot tips to his tousled black hair.

  “Must be hard going without sex while the little woman recovers from childbirth,” she said.

  “What do you want, Renee?” He had fallen into her
grasp before, but not since she’d tried to get between him and Eve. Never again.

  “Oh, I’m just so bored. I thought I’d come over for a swim and keep Eve company—even if all she can talk about is babies.”

  “Doesn’t your mother have a pool?”

  “Sure, but then I’d have to talk to my mother. Come on, Bodey, let me in.”

  “Eve and Shea are sleeping. Go on home. Shoo! I need to get back to the bullring.”

  “In the middle of the morning? I’ll bet that bunkhouse you built for your students is entirely empty then.”

  “We have a class going on, yes. I’m headin’ over there right now. Git.”

  “May I come watch? I do love seeing a man on a wild bull.”

  “No, you distract the students. Besides, we have a clown and bullfighter group this week. Not your type of thing at all, Renee.”

  “Pretty please.” Renee tapped the doorbell with her elbow again. Bodey thought he heard the baby let out a small squawk in the back of the house.

  “Okay, come along, but you got to cover up.”

  Renee opened her arms wide showing off that impressive bosom again. “This is all I brought besides my sunglasses.”

  “Oh, hell. Stay here.”

  Bodey trudged to the kitchen and entered the small laundry room. He sorted through a hamper of soiled clothes and came up with a wrinkled, blue chambray shirt that didn’t smell too heavily of cow. He turned, and there was Renee right where he didn’t want her, crowding him in the small space.

  “Since you’re here, put this on.”

  Renee took Bodey’s shirt, gave it a sniff, and finally shrugged into the sleeves. The buttons didn’t close over her chest, but the long tails covered her torso to the knees. She dropped her towel into the hamper.

  “Now am I decent enough to consort with clowns?” she said while rolling the long sleeves up past her elbows.

  “Not hardly, but I have no more time to waste on you.”

  She made Bodey squeeze past her breasts to get out the door and trailed him all the way to the bullring built on the pasture behind the last of the barns. A bunkhouse that could sleep twelve sat farther up the hill away from the scent of the animals. The building had a deep, inviting porch filled with rockers, four private showers and commodes, a long line of sinks and mirrors, and a well-equipped lounge where lectures were held and DVD’s of bull riding shown on a large, high-def wall-hung TV. In the evenings, the students were welcome to use the pool and poker tables and help themselves to snacks and soft drinks from the kitchenette. Bodey had a strict “no liquor” policy, and sometimes, Renee just had to take home men who wanted a stiff drink or were stiff in another way. Bodey never thanked her for her services to his Academy.

  Renee strolled over to the fence of the bullring, put her feet up on the lowest rung, and hung her substantial breasts over the top rail. The shirt rode up and showed her tanned thighs and two rounded buttocks to the class of clowns seated on the bleachers shaded by a metal roof. She noted when all eyes swung from the short man in the center of the ring to her backside.

  Snuffy Jones had been clowning for a good thirty years and knew when he was being upstaged. He’d just dropped his baggy pants to reveal his heart-covered drawers and gotten nary a laugh. Looked like he needed to make Miss Big Boobs part of the act. He pulled up his pants by their red suspenders, thumped his hands over his heart, and crawled on his knees toward the large breasts. Arriving in their shade, he took off his crushed derby hat, plucked a bent plastic daisy from the band, and offered it to the pretty lady with a soulful look on his painted face. When she laughed and accepted the pathetic gift, he jumped up, flashed his underwear again, and made his bowtie spin.

  “And that’s how you bring the audience into your act,” Snuffy announced to a round of applause. “But we all know the real reason I’m out here groveling in the dirt is to distract a bull from a fallen rider. If I was you, lovely lady, I’d get down off those rails and take a seat because here he comes.”

  Renee’s cousin, Rusty Niles, manager of the bull riding academy, opened the gate on cue. The huge black bull, irritated at being confined in the chute, charged into the ring looking for trouble. A man Renee had hardly noticed left his place by the chute and followed Bodey’s stud, Black Tuesday, out into the ring’s center. This guy wore a wide-brimmed, white cowboy hat, a large, loose T-shirt covered in stars, stripes, and advertising, long shorts, kneepads, and a good pair of running shoes. The bull, intent on Snuffy Jones, paid no attention to the man on his heels.

  Snuffy waved his sorry hat and called, “Here bully, bully, bully.”

  Just before the bull arrived in the same space as the clown, Jones dove into a rubber barrel. Black Tuesday savaged the barrel with his stubby, clipped horns. The audience could see the clown holding on to hand grips as the animal rolled the object of his fury around the ring, finally getting his horns under the barrel and tossing it a good five feet. Jones stayed tucked inside.

  Before the bull could gather for another charge, a white cowboy hat slammed across his muzzle. Black Tuesday turned his head and focused on a new victim, the man in running shoes, who stepped deftly away as the animal swept by trying to side hook him with a horn. Meanwhile, Snuffy Jones gathered himself, picked up his barrel and waddled back into the center of the ring.

  “Yer mother’s a cow!” he called out, waving his arms.

  Black Tuesday paused to consider the insult while the man in shorts circled the ring. The bull decided to make another try at the barrel. Snuffy Jones flopped the barrel on its side and hunkered down for another beating. Just as Black Tuesday arrived and lowered his head for another toss, the T-shirted bullfighter leaped on top of the barrel, grasped the bull’s horns and vaulted onto the animal’s wide, black back. He did a handspring off of Black Tuesday’s flanks, landed without losing his hat, and wrung the bull’s tail.

  By the time Black Tuesday pivoted and charged again, the bullfighter was across the ring near the gate. He pulled a large red handkerchief from a pocket and waved it as if it were a huge cape.

  “Come get me, you side of beef, you piece of brisket.”

  The bull came roaring. Clinton O. Beck stepped aside, and Rusty swung the gate open, then closed it behind the irate animal who suddenly found himself in a small holding pen. Game over.

  The students surged to their feet and cheered. Renee Hayes looked as stunned as if she’d been hit with a cattle prod.

  “Who is he, Bodey?”

  “Well, the barrelman is Snuffy Jones, one of the best rodeo clowns ever.”

  “Not him. He smells like chaw. The other guy.”

  “Clinton O. Beck, three times World Champion Bullfighter.”

  “Introduce me.”

  “Now Renee, you know I hate when you mess with the talent.”

  “Most of the time you are the talent and you’re so very taken. Fine, I’ll introduce myself.”

  She headed for the cluster of students who surrounded the bullfighter, and they gave way before her, though someone groped her in passing. She didn’t care enough to turn around and glare with Clint Beck in her sights. Renee stroked his arm down to the hand holding a pen signing autographs. That got his attention.

  “You want an autograph, honey?” Clint Beck turned his blue eyes on her. They were the shade of deep ocean water, not the sparkling Irish blue eyes that Bodey Landrum always said was his best feature. His hair was a short, crisp, dark blond, dampened with sweat. Not really tall, he had the compact, muscular body of a gymnast and the tan of an outdoorsman.

  Clint grinned, showing a good set of white teeth. No way could she tell he’d lost a few doing what he did, his dentist was that fine. He wondered if she wanted one of those big bazookas signed. Wouldn’t be the first time. While bullfighters didn’t have the cachet of bull riders—or the money—they were coming into their own these days.

  “No, darling. I want to give you something.” Renee took his pad and pen, wrote her name and number, tore off t
he sheet, and buried it deep in the pocket of his shorts. She tied the tails of Bodey’s shirt around her waist and sauntered off, giving Clint Beck a good backside view of what she had to offer.

  He did a body check. Nope, hadn’t sprained or broken anything during the demonstration. He could hang out with Bodey and Snuffy tonight, hit a honky-tonk out on the highway, or watch a movie in his motorcoach, but since he wasn’t too bunged up to screw, the bodacious lady had just given him another option.

  The catering service arrived, and slim, yellow-toned Ja’nae Plato from the Rainbow Café put out lunch on the long picnic tables set in the shade. A giant po-boy sliced in sections flanked by potato salad and coleslaw bowls made up the meal. She placed a tray of huge chocolate chip cookies and began filling cups with iced tea. The crowd around Clint and Snuffy thinned and re-formed near the food and Ja’nae, the best looking black woman in Rainbow, and the one least likely to respond to a pass of any kind. Ja’nae was all about building her business, and so Bodey hired her to do the catering, not just because he’d known her as the kid sister of his friend, Leon. Besides, he’d never slept with Ja’nae because Leon wouldn’t allow it, a very good thing for all of them at this point in their lives.

  Bodey slammed Clint on the back. “You always amaze me. Reminded me of the time you jumped the bull to save my hide a few years back.”

  “Warn’t nothing. Say, I got an offer from your lady friend. Mind if I take her up on it?”

  “Not my lady friend anymore, not for some time. Feel free, but be careful. If Renee finds out you’re the heir to the Beck’s Baked Beans fortune, she’ll have one hand down your crotch and the other in your wallet faster than Black Tuesday can throw a rider. That’s a dangerous woman when she’s between husbands.”

  “Why Bodey, my man, you know I thrive on danger.”

  ****

  Clint Beck took Bodey up on his offer to shower in one of his mansion’s guest baths. His luxury motorcoach was parked behind the bunkhouse and hooked up to electricity, water, and sewage since Bodey knew well how a lot of rodeo folk traveled, but he would hardly shower in a cubicle when he could have jets of hot water massaging his sore muscles. He gave himself a close shave and slapped on a tangy aftershave. Once he’d put on clean boxer briefs, khakis, and a button-down shirt with starched cuffs, he looked exactly like any other well-built man on the street, he thought. He slid his feet into soft Italian loafers, put a matching belt through the loops of his pants and went down to the kitchen to cadge a bottle of wine off Bodey.