Libby’s heart lodged in her windpipe as she waited for Chance to sit on the stocky black horse. The image of his long legs straddling the gate walls, hovering above the bronc, flickered on the big-screen TV in the expansive room anchored by the kitchen, which her father referred to as a den. More like a train station lobby given its size and the scattered arrangement of the overstuffed furniture. There was nothing den-like about it.
Dens should be warm, cozy, wrapping around you. Nothing in the outsized ranch house, finished shortly after her mother died, was cozy or warm. It had been built by a man who hadn’t felt the least bit homey, a man grieving over the death of his wife, and filled by a family missing its core.
She pushed aside the papers her father had left. She’d decided not to think about Brennan Motors today. She still had one more day of freedom.
Cowboy was curled up next to her, his sleek, black-furred body warming her thigh. She squinted at the TV screen, trying to get a better sense of what Chance was feeling. But his head was down, and the brim of his black Stetson shadowed his face.
She’d been crazy to kiss him last night. Crazy for wanting to and crazy for giving in to that desire. It had stirred up a hornet’s nest of feelings. Some of those feelings stung. And some of those feelings were hot and intense. Beyond sexual, right into the realm of…no, she couldn’t go there.
She’d given up all rights to any feelings about Chance when she’d signed those papers that ended their marriage. And last night she’d realized what she should have known—he’d never forgive her for it. And that meant she’d never forgive herself. She’d always carry guilt for destroying the fantasy he’d created around her, around them. Thank God he’d been able to make something of himself. Unfortunately, it required him to risk his life every time he set foot in the arena, which was just about every night. She shuddered and turned her bleak thoughts back to the TV, back to the present, to reality.
“We’re going to see Chance win a bundle,” Libby told the cat. Cowboy didn’t seem interested.
Chance not only had the talent to win and win big but the confidence and determination, which were just as important.
“He’s on.” Libby glanced at Cowboy, whose narrowed eyes meant he was almost asleep. “You need to watch this,” she said, rubbing gently behind her cat’s ears. She couldn’t rub too long or Cowboy would nip at her fingers, his sure signal to stop. “You need to see what real cowboys can do.”
On the TV screen, Chance nodded his head, and the gates opened. He’d marked out, she noted, feeling a swell of pride for him.
Except he didn’t belong to her.
He had once, and that kiss last night proved it. His physical response to their kiss said he desired her body even if he wasn’t interested in the woman inside that body. Unfortunately, touching him, sensing his strength, his masculinity, the testosterone drumming through him, had brought her feelings to the surface in one huge volcanic-sized eruption that still rampaged inside.
Four seconds, five seconds, six seconds. The horse, one of the rankest, was twisting and turning and bucking, but Chance was making a difficult ride look easy. Eight seconds. The crowd was roaring, and Chance was still on the bronc.
And then he wasn’t.
He was down, a heap in the dust.
She jumped off the couch, sending Cowboy skittering out of the way. Her heart pounded in her throat. On the big screen she watched the horse’s hoof come down on Chance’s chest. Another hoof battered his foot.
NO!
She screamed the word—whether it was out loud or in her head, she couldn’t say.
NO. Get up. Get up, damn it.
Her legs suddenly weak, she sank to her knees.
But the heap crowned by a cowboy hat wasn’t moving. A tall man scrambled over to him. The camera zoomed in on Chance’s face, twisted in pain as his hand hugged his stomach. He wasn’t getting up, and they weren’t trying to get him up.
She felt sick.
The sight of him falling, of hooves crushing his body, replayed on the screen again and again. Her stomach roiled, and the retching hollowness of nausea threatened. But she couldn’t look away. And then the camera mercifully switched to the next rider.
Where the hell was her cell phone? Doug was there. He would know. Surely he would know.
She sprinted to the kitchen, where her purse and much of its contents were sprawled across the counter. Grabbing the pink-rimmed object, she speed dialed three. It seemed to ring forever before she heard her brother’s voice.
“Don’t panic,” he said. “They’ve taken him to the hospital. I was behind the chutes when they brought him through. Doc thinks it’s his ribs. Had the wind knocked out of him.”
“Anything else?”
“Don’t know. Could be his leg too. He won though. That’s the first thing he asked.”
“I don’t care if he won!” She practically screamed the words into the phone.
“Well, Chance sure does. That’s a lot of money.”
And there it was. She’d never understand rodeo cowboy mentality—risking your life on what amounted to no more than luck, however skillful you might be. And bad luck just knocked Chance around.
If only he was all right. If only a rib bone hadn’t punctured a lung or something else.