A Piece of Heaven

A Piece of Heaven

Tara Janzen

To my dear friend, Betty, and for Kelly and the cowboys

First published by Bantam/Loveswept, 1992

Copyright Glenna McReynolds, 1992

E-book Copyright Tara Janzen, 2012

E-book Published by Tara Janzen, 2012

Cover Design by Hot Damn Designs, 2011

E-book Design by A Thirsty Mind, 2012

Smashwords Edition, 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author.

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

Table of Contents

Reader Letter

Titles

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Excerpt: Dateline: Kydd and Rios

Excerpt: The Courting Cowboy

Dear Reader

Welcome to the Tara Janzen line of classic romances! New York Times Bestselling author, Tara Janzen, is the creator of the lightning-fast paced and super sexy CRAZY HOT and CRAZY COOL Steele Street series of romantic suspense novels. But before she fell in love with the hot cars, bad boys, big guns, and wild women of Steele Street, she wrote steamy romances for the Loveswept line under the name Glenna McReynolds. All thirteen of these much-loved classic romances are now available as eBooks.

Writing as both Glenna McReynolds and Tara Janzen, this national bestselling author has won numerous awards for her work, including a RITA from Romance Writers of America, and nine 4 ½ TOP PICKS from Romantic Times magazine. Two of her books are on the Romantic Times ALL-TIME FAVORITES list – RIVER OF EDEN, and SHAMELESS. LOOSE AND EASY, a Steele Street novel, is one of Amazon’s TOP TEN ROMANCES for 2008.

She is also the author of an epic medieval fantasy trilogy, THE CHALICE AND THE BLADE, DREAM STONE, and PRINCE OF TIME.

Titles by Tara Janzen

Classic Romances

Scout’s Honor

Thieves In The Night

Stevie Lee

Dateline: Kydd and Rios

Blue Dalton

Outlaw Carson

Moonlight and Shadows

A Piece of Heaven

Shameless

The Courting Cowboy

Avenging Angel

The Dragon and the Dove

Dragon’s Eden

Medieval Fantasy Trilogy

A stunning epic of romantic fantasy. Affaire de Coeur, five-star review

The Chalice and the Blade

Dream Stone

Prince of Time

River of Eden — "One of THE most breathtaking and phenomenal adventure tales to come along in years!" Jill Smith Romantic Times 4 ½ Gold Review

Steele Street Series Edgy, sexy, and fast.  Leaves you breathless! Jayne Ann Krentz, New York Times bestselling author //// Bad boys are hot, and they don’t come any hotter than the Steele Street gang. Romantic Times

Crazy Hot

Crazy Cool

Crazy Wild

Crazy Kisses

Crazy Love

Crazy Sweet

On the Loose

Cutting Loose

Loose and Easy

Breaking Loose

Loose Ends

SEAL Of My Dreams Anthology

All proceeds from the sale of SEAL Of My Dreams are pledged to Veterans Research Corporation, a non-profit foundation supporting veterans medical research.

Panama Jack, by Tara Janzen

For more information about Tara Janzen, her writing and her books please visit her on her website www.tarajanzen.com; on Facebook http://on.fb.me/mSstpd; and Twitter @tara_janzen http://twitter.com/#!/tara_janzen.

One

Travis Cayou dropped his saddle on the floor, then dropped his backside into one of the molded plastic chairs lining the wall of the Laramie, Wyoming, bus station. Damn. He hurt everywhere, bad in the places he hadn’t broken, and worse in the places he had.

Rain poured down on the white cinder-block building, streaking the outside of a picture window that framed a muddy Second Street and not much else. Looking around, Travis didn’t think the dusty posters tacked to the other three walls gave the wet view much of a run for its money, not at first glance. But he was close to home, and that’s what counted. The only thing that counted.

Inhaling deeply and moving in slow motion, he organized himself into the chair. The spurs on his boots jangled a backdrop to his low groan as he stretched his legs out. He took it easy on his right knee, not stretching it too much, just enough to ease a kink or two. The next time some damn bronc decided to kiss the fence, he was getting off first. He swore he would, whether he’d lasted the eight seconds needed to score or not.

Worse yet, he hadn’t done any better on his bull ride. That animal had wanted to eat him. He thought he’d ridden every kind of bull that had ever been seen. He’d had them buck and spin so tight, they made their own whirlwind. He’d had them crash beneath him, or worse, try to climb out of the bucking chute with him on their back. But he’d never seen anything like Mad Jack. The next time that particular bovine’s number came up with his, he was walking away. He swore he was. They could have his entry fee.

Thinking of which, where in the hell had that clown got off to just before Mad Jack decided to make an hors d’oeuvre out of him? Wasn’t that part of what he laid his money down for? For some bullfighting clown to be out there when he dropped his bull rope?

Heroes, he muttered, wincing at a new pang. Every time some rodeo got a write-up in some newspaper, there was always the same damn headline: Clowns—Heroes of the Rodeo, or Clowns—A Bull Rider’s Best Friend.

Travis wasn’t buying it today. Oh, he’d admit most of them were the hottest things on two legs. Most every time he’d bailed off a bull, one of them had been there to make sure he got out of the arena with all his parts in place. But this last clown had taken one look at old Mad Jack and seen a man-eater. He’d aced Travis in the brains department and kept himself just out of helping distance.

A hero? he thought. Try the cowboy on the back of the raging, bucking beast. The man with the resin smoking on his glove. The man spurring an animal already so fired up he was spitting flames.

The man with more guts than brains. Wasn’t that what James had always said?

A wry smile lifted a corner of Travis’s mouth. He settled back in the chair and pulled his hat low over his eyes, using his left hand and trying not to jostle his right arm.

He should have been a roper. That’s what James had always said. Sure, ropers got hurt sometimes, but more often than not they didn’t get stomped all over creation.

His left hand dropped back onto his thigh, making a print in the dust turned to mud on his jeans. Lord, he was tired. He was getting too old to have his tail end kicked by rough stock. He was getting too old to be following the rodeo circuit with only half his heart in it. He made enough to pay expenses and keep his checkbook from rolling over in a dead faint, and that was about it.

His wrist hurt like hell. The doctor had given him some pain pills, real good stuff. But how many times could a man break the same damn wrist in the same damn place and expect it not to hurt all the time, mended or not?

Probably not many, Travis decided, digging in his shirt pocket for another painkiller. At least it was a clean break this time. He swallowed the pill dry, too tired to get up and fight the rain for a can of pop from the machine outside.

He was finished. He swore he was. It was time for him to go home. Hell, it was long past time for him to go home. He’d done eight years of penance. He was tired of running from James’s memories and his own guilt.

James was the one who’d married Beth Ann. He was the one who’d brought her up to their ranch on the Colorado side of the Colorado-Wyoming border. He was the one who had left her alone day after day, and sometimes night after night, while he wheeled and dealed. All Travis had done was try to help her over the rough spots, and if he’d wanted to do more, well, he hadn’t done nearly as much as she’d begged him to do.

But the past was over. It was time for him to go home and lay claim to his half of the Cayou Land and Cattle Company. Ranching was a way of life, and Travis wanted his life back, the life he’d been born to live. He missed the scent of sage on the evening breeze. He missed watching the sun sliding into the Rockies. He missed the quiet. The same quiet that had driven Beth Ann to acts of desperation.

She’d hated it all, the wild silence waiting outside the confines of the ranch buildings, the snowcapped peaks penning her in. It was a hell of a life for a woman, but his mother had done it. Hell, lots of women could do it, if their men took care.

One thing he knew for sure, the Cayou Land and Cattle Company needed a woman’s touch. He’d stopped by three years ago when he’d known James would be at the National Western Stock Show, and the house had looked run-down and worn-out, not at all like home, not at all the way his mother had kept it. Even Beth Ann had done better. Shoat, one of the old-timers at the ranch, had told him then that he ought to come home, that the ranch needed him.

Well, he was coming home now, busted up, road weary, and saddle sore.

Hell, he could use a woman’s touch, Travis thought. He shifted in his chair and grimaced against the pain. Someone sweet and willing, soft and well-rounded. Someone warm. Someone with good hands.

He slid farther down, resting his head on the back of the chair and holding on to his casted right forearm. Yeah, someone with good hands.

He smiled as he closed his eyes and readjusted his hat against the weak gray light coming in through the window. Woman, hell. What he needed was sleep. Shoat had said it would take him at least an hour, maybe two, to get to the bus station from the ranch. Then he’d be heading home to stay. Providing James didn’t try to kick him back out again.

Travis let out a weary sigh. If James did try, he was going to find a fight on his hands, and not one of those knock-down, drag-out, wrestle-in-the-dirt kind of fights they’d had over Beth Ann eight years ago. He’d backed off then, because of a guilt he still wasn’t sure was his to bear. He wasn’t backing off this time, not an inch.

He needed to go home, and he’d do whatever he had to, whatever it took to get him there and make it stick. Nobody or nothing was going to stop him.

* * *

Callie Michael fought her way through the storm into the bus station, slamming the door behind her and shutting out the wind-whipped rain. She stood on the old beige carpet, dripping one puddle beneath her boots and another one a few inches out, where the rain ran down and off the rolled brim of her hat.

The storm was quickening up, threatening to turn into one of the year’s best, especially up north and in the mountain ranges to the west. Luckily, she was heading southwest, back to Colorado, back to the Cayou Land and Cattle Company, she and James’s little brother.

She wiped a palm up her cheek and shook the water off her fingers, her gaze steady on the lone occupant of the waiting area. He didn’t look all that little.

Six foot plus of cowboy lay sprawled over a short bank of chairs, one arm flung out like a rag doll’s, the other cradled close to his chest in a sling and a cast. Long legs, a hard-sided suitcase, an Association saddle, and a rigging bag draped with the fanciest chaps Callie had ever seen took up a good third of the floor space on the customer side of the counter. It wasn’t Travis Cayou’s white and gold chaps with the silver lightning bolts that held her gaze, though.

His jeans had been split from ankle to hip on his right leg, and the first aid tape that was supposed to hold them together was giving up with the wet and the dirt. As a rule, cowboys didn’t go around showing off their legs, and Callie figured Travis Cayou didn’t either. His leg was a color closer to the white bandage wrapped around his knee than it was to the darkly tanned skin of his large, square hands.

Strong hands. The thought crossed her mind and momentarily caught her attention. His hands were the essence of strength, rugged and weather-worn, built of sinew and bone and brought to life by the ridges of veins tracking beneath his skin. She would have expected no less. Every working cowboy needed strong hands. Someone who bet his life on the ability of five fingers to hold him onto half a ton of bucking bronc or a ton of aggravated bull needed more than a strong hand. He needed an arm of steel to back it up.

Her gaze slipped up the pearly snaps on his cream-colored shirt, taking in the streaks of mud and the dirt ground into the cloth. His head was tilted back against the small chair, giving him plenty of snoring room. A day’s growth of sandy beard darkened the chin and jaw jutting out from beneath the black Stetson that covered his face. She noted the small bandage taped high on his cheekbone, and the bit of blood showing on the gauze wrapped around his knee. From the looks of him, he’d taken more than one spill last night. No wonder Shoat had been worried about him.

Finally, her gaze settled on his right hand, half hidden by the cast. He was loosely cupping the big gold and silver rodeo buckle at his waist, as if he were trying to hold whatever was left of himself together.

An unconscious sigh lifted her chest. Her glance drifted to his saddle and his rigging bag and those fancy chaps, then back to him. He was a wreck, but he looked mostly like what he was, a saddle tramp, the prodigal son returning home, a cowboy on the short end of the rodeo circuit. What he did not look like was James’s brother, let alone James’s little brother.

James wasn’t six foot of anything, and he sure didn’t have legs like that—long, lanky, and put together in a way that made her gaze stray back to the mostly naked bandaged one. Ropes of muscle corded his thigh and his calf, flexing with every slight movement he made in his sleep. It was a sight to see, and it made Callie’s mind wander in unaccustomed ways.

She blushed at her sensual musing, then became irritated with herself. She’d obviously been cooped up with Shoat and the cows too long if she was ogling the likes of Travis Cayou. He was no business of hers. She’d only come as a favor to Shoat, and she hoped to hell James never found out she’d done even that much. Her boss was darn touchy when it came to his younger brother.

Quietly clearing her throat, she forced her gaze to the bus station clerk. The red-haired lady was doing the same thing she’d been doing, staring at more man than either of them was used to seeing. It was ridiculous.

Mr. Cayou? In from Colorado and New Mexico? she asked, gesturing with her thumb and drawing the clerk’s attention.

Yeah. The clerk grinned. He’s been kind of decorating up the lobby this afternoon. You got here in the nick of time. I was about to close up. Figured I’d just take him home with me. The grin broadened, taking half a dozen years off the older woman’s face, and leaving no doubts in Callie’s mind about what the lady had been planning to do with him. From what she’d heard about Travis Cayou, he drew women like a lodestone—whether they were married or not.

She