Czytaj książkę: «The Bull Rider's Homecoming»

Chapter One

Luke Buckton stood on the porch of the Blue Thorn Ranch, his childhood home, disgusted at how he needed to grip the handrail to keep his balance.

Pain came with a life spent trying to stay on top of 1,700 pounds of bucking bull. Every bull rider knew pain went with the territory. Bull riding was dangerous—that’s what made it exciting. And profitable, if done right. Sure, you got hurt—everyone got hurt—but you “cowboyed up” after an injury and got back in there, period. Luke hadn’t come close to winning the Touring Pro Series championship by paying attention to pain. He ignored it.

The numbness he fought now? That was a whole other kind of enemy. It messed with his mind and defied submission. Luke could ride in pain, could win in pain—he had, in fact, on dozens of occasions. Now, he couldn’t always tell where his leg ended and the ground began. He could think “stand” but couldn’t feel it, even when he was standing. That threatened his career worse than the largest, meanest bull on earth.

It made him mad. And the anger and frustration made him mean to just about everyone, including his grandmother who’d just come up behind him.

“How are you feeling?” Gran asked as she approached him with a cup of coffee. He’d left six years ago in such a fury of pride and defiance—and had returned home so full of bitterness and dissatisfaction—that he couldn’t quite understand how Gran found it possible to be nice to him.

Luke took the coffee and gave Gran the answer he gave everyone: “Better.” Most days it wasn’t true. It wasn’t true today.

His hometown of Martins Gap was as gossipy as a small Texas town could get. In the days and weeks since he’d returned, he’d heard the whispers, caught the rumors and ignored the stares. Isn’t that Luke Buckton, home on the Blue Thorn? Did you see he limps now?

Luke had always envisioned his eventual return to Martins Gap as the grandest of victory laps—a homecoming for the local golden boy whose future had always been too big for this place. He’d planned to come home a national champion.

If Dad was still alive, wouldn’t he have had a field day with how those plans turned out?

Gran sipped her tea. “The new therapist is due about now, isn’t she?”

Luke didn’t buy his grandmother’s sugar-sweet tone. He knew full well Gran wanted to take a switch to him for the way he’d treated the last two therapists they’d sent. It was so clear to Luke they weren’t up to the challenge that he’d groused them away in a single session each. He didn’t have time or patience to pussyfoot around with careful exercises or gentle treatments. Luke needed to hit this fast and hard so that he could recover and get back to work. Anyone who wasn’t on board with that strategy was useless.

Which meant he had a pretty good idea of who was about to come up the drive. Had planned for it, in fact.

He shifted his foot, reaching to feel the give of the porch boards underneath his boot. Nothing. It was beyond infuriating. “At ten.”

“So...you think it’ll be her?” Gran asked, as if it were an innocent question.

Two could play at that game. “Who?” he asked in equally innocent tones.

Gran swatted him. Hard. For eighty-five, that woman could still hold her own. “You know who. Don’t think I can’t see exactly what you’re doing. If you wanted Ruby Sheldon to be your therapist—and I certainly can’t imagine why she’d ever agree to such a notion—you should have just asked for her.”

As if it were that simple. Luke didn’t truly know if he wanted Ruby to be his therapist. He’d hoped there was another way. It’d be much simpler with someone else, that was sure. Only the two others his doctor had sent clearly weren’t up to the job, at least not by his estimation. And that left going all the way to Austin to get treatment, or putting up with Ruby.

Putting up with Ruby. As if she was a nagging itch or an uncomfortable chair instead of the biggest regret and saddest chapter of his life. He’d never quite forgiven himself for how he’d broken Ruby’s heart, despite six years of steady effort to keep all thoughts of her firmly out of his head. It stuck in his craw to need her help now, and he wasn’t sure he could choke that down even if she might be the only person in twenty miles who knew him well enough to get him where he needed to go. “I was hoping to avoid this.” He grumbled. “I think I’d rather cut off my leg than give Ruby the chance to order me around.”

Gran’s eyes narrowed. “Don’t you ever talk like that.” He knew Gran loved him, but she’d never minced words about what she thought of his choice to leave home to join the bull riding circuit. It didn’t matter how good he was at it, or how he rose in the rankings, Gran still thought it “dangerous nonsense that took him away from family” and told him so. Of course, that was only when he bothered to call her, which had been woefully rare until the gut-wrenchingly humble call of “can I come home?” three weeks ago. Had there been any other way...

Had there been any other way, he wouldn’t be standing on the Blue Thorn Ranch waiting to see if Ruby Sheldon dared to show up back in his life. Suddenly, he wanted to do this moment on his own terms, not under Gran’s scrutiny. “I’ll be waiting in the guesthouse.” With that, he took his coffee and his cane and made his way across the clearing to the closest thing he had to “his own turf” on Blue Thorn land.

* * *

The Blue Thorn Ranch.

Ruby couldn’t quite believe she was back here, about to see Luke Buckton. Funny and sad how life worked in circles.

The physical buildings and layout of the ranch hadn’t changed. The big house still boasted the front porch swing where she and Luke had plotted his dazzling rodeo career. The horse barn where he’d first kissed her—a stunning surprise of a kiss she hadn’t ever dreamed could really happen—still stood facing west across the pastures. The ranch had come back to life since her high school days dating Luke. Back then it had had a desperate sort of taint, like fabric fraying around the edges. A once-prosperous ranch sliding down in decline despite the desperate efforts of Luke’s father to hold it together.

Now, the ranch gave off the air of new life, of the fresh start Luke’s brother, Gunner, had launched after taking over a few years earlier. The place struck her as both familiar and different.

And soaked in too many memories.

This guy’s meaner than the bulls he used to ride, one note from the therapist at the other agency had said. I’m not going back there. Let someone in Austin have at him.

I can’t handle him, another note complained. I say let this cowboy recover on someone else’s watch.

It had been such a huge blessing when Ruby’s clinical instructor and mentor, Lana Donmeyer, chose to make Ruby a partner in her practice and allow Ruby to open a satellite facility here in Martins Gap. Even if Lana called Ruby “bright and gifted,” to land this type of semi-partnership setup fresh out of school was practically unheard of. Dad’s life insurance money was supposed to be for Mama, not funding a fledgling practice. She’d pay Mama back, even if Mama said her staying close in Martins Gap to help with Grandpa was payment enough.

Luke Buckton could be a landmark patient for her. As a high profile rider, with a high profile injury, getting Luke back on his feet could really launch her career. Even Lana said so. Yes, there was so much history between them. But today was her chance to show that cowboy what she was made of now that six years had gone by.

She’d been full of resolve...until she pulled up to the big house. The sight of the place quickly dissolved into a blur of memories that overthrew her control.

She’d been so happy here.

She’d been so miserable here.

A quick look around as she got out of the car revealed no one but “Granny B” standing on the house’s big porch. Ruby found herself telling her limbs to get out of the car.

“Ruby,” came Adele Buckton’s warm voice as she hobbled down off the porch. “My stars, but it’s Ruby Sheldon.”

“Hi, Granny B.” The words belonged to some eighteen-year-old version of herself, young and squeaky. It wasn’t as if they hadn’t crossed paths over the years, small as Martins Gap was, but neither of them could pretend this was anything but awkward and difficult.

“Look at you.” Her gaze fell to the folder in Ruby’s hand. “You’re here for Luke.” Somehow Granny B made the simple statement sound as complex as it truly was.

“Yes, ma’am.” She wished for something more clever to say, but came up short.

Ruby had always liked Granny B—the Buckton children all called her “Gran” but everyone else in town called her “Miss Adele” or “Granny B.” The old woman had been as much of an anchor as Luke ever had in high school. Luke and his dad locked horns on a near constant basis, and Luke’s mom had passed when he was eleven. Though he had three siblings—including a twin—they’d all pretty much been born with one foot out the door. Granny B had been the one responsible for anything that felt homey and welcoming about this place.

When Luke left town after graduation, Ruby had wanted—expected, actually—for Granny B to show up and make sense of how Luke broke things off. She’d always been so sure either Granny B or Luke’s twin sister, Tess, would appear on her doorstep and explain why the boy she loved both left her and left Martins Gap without a backward glance. It had never happened.

Granny B’s gaze lifted over Ruby’s head to settle on the guesthouse behind them. Ruby turned to see the guesthouse door open up. The figure of Luke Buckton stood in half shadow behind the screen door.

“I’d best leave you to it, then,” Gran was saying behind her.

Ruby’s heart twisted and surged and stung all at the same time. A hollowed-out panic, an empty awareness froze her chest—all feelings that made no sense but surrounded her anyway as she stared at him.

He was just like the ranch—familiar yet different. The eyes were still their spell-binding blue—“Buckton blue,” everybody called it—but now they were framed by tight features. His wild-boy hair still tumbled around that strong jaw, only now the jaw was roughened with a man’s stubble. Luke had filled out into a man’s body, lean and hard-edged, but even his defiant stance didn’t quite conceal the hint of uncertainty that made him favor one leg. How he could be the boy of her memory and a stranger before her at the same time made Ruby’s mind spin.

“Ruby.” His voice, somehow octaves deeper now, held more challenge than welcome. “Why are you here?”

It was an absurd question—they both knew why she was here. His prickly tone held the faintest hint of the dismissive words he’d flung at her the night he told her he was leaving. Not just Martins Gap, but her as well.

The tone snapped something to life in her, resurrecting all the anger against him she’d swallowed down over the years. It was helpful—clearing her head and straightening her spine, giving her the composure to calmly call his bluff. “You need help.”

Need and help weren’t in Luke Buckton’s vocabulary back then, and she doubted he was friendly with the concepts now.

She’d read the file. No one really knew what level of functionality Luke Buckton would get back from his left leg. Such injuries were unpredictable.

“Well, now, that’s a matter of opinion,” Luke replied as he flexed one hand against the doorknob. Rather flippant for someone in his position—but then again, that tactic had been a Luke Buckton specialty.

“No,” she retorted, “I’d say that’s a medical fact.” When she saw the edge in his eyes give just a little, she pressed further. “Whether or not you’re man enough to accept it...well, I expect that is a matter of opinion.”

She’d never have spoken like that to any other patient, but no one could call Luke Buckton “any other patient.” She heard Granny B mutter something that sounded approving and the big house door shut behind her.

Luke looked at her with an almost amused disdain, as if some uppity puppy had taken to yapping at one of the thousand-pound bison that were raised on the ranch. A “don’t you know who you’re dealing with?” warning glare. Frustration made people hard and sour, especially those for whom weakness was an unforgivable sin. She knew that his frustration was why he’d pushed away the other therapists, and it told her he was that frightened he wouldn’t heal. And yet despite their history, he hadn’t tried to hire in a therapist from Austin, even when he knew Ruby was the only option left in town. Which meant that while he’d never admit to it, he’d decided he needed her.

He’d done exactly the same thing in high school when they’d met as she tutored him in algebra. That boy had gone all “I don’t need you” when she was the only thing standing between him and failing out his senior year.

Begrudgingly needing her had turned into respecting her, had turned into liking her, had turned into—she’d thought—loving her. That boy had made her feel pretty and full of possibility...only to turn around months later and declare her not pretty enough and without enough potential to follow him to rodeo stardom.

She suddenly realized it had been half a minute or so, and neither of them had spoken.

Luke shifted his weight again. It dawned on Ruby that while she could wait all day for this standoff to end, he could not. He’d been injured, and badly. He may be in possession of all the bravado, but she was in possession of the solution—if there was one.

“This won’t work,” he said under his breath but still loud enough for her to hear. How many times had she heard those words during Luke’s tirades about algebra and graduation requirements?

The remark revealed just how much he needed this to work. He hadn’t changed: the more he needed it, the less he’d act like he did. She could see it, clear as day, because sensing things about patients was her gift.

She did have a gift. The bravest, strongest version of herself looked Luke straight in the eye. She clutched her file and took a step toward him. “Won’t work, huh? Prove it.”