“Maybe she feels she owes you something.”
“Girl didn’t love me. Can’t say I blame her. Too bad she found out after the damage was done. She’s moved on. Time I did too.”
*
Chance heard the car wheels turning on the gravel driveway and shifted up in the bed. Who the hell could be here now? Must be the visiting nurse. He’d told her not to come back after yesterday. Two days of her checking his blood pressure and asking if he needed to bathe was about all he could take.
He was taking charge of his own recovery and his personal hygiene. He already had a message into the guy who’d been his trainer during the off-season. He was getting around just fine on his crutches despite them rubbing his underarms raw and the pulsing pain in his foot and ribs, and he didn’t like strange hands touching his body, at least not unless they were attached to a young blonde.
Or rather, a particular young blonde.
For reasons he didn’t care to examine too closely, Libby had been in his thoughts constantly, especially since he had nothing much to do but think. He should have never returned to Cheyenne.
Her coming to the hospital every day had been both good and bad. The good being he saw her, heard her voice, and the bad being he saw her, heard her voice.
Nothing positive could come from pining after something he couldn’t have and shouldn’t want. Not with all the history between them and her having marriage plans. Too bad that kiss had branded him like a hot iron, awakening feelings he’d long denied. But it didn’t change the essentials of their circumstances. She’d moved on. He hadn’t.
The doorbell sounded. A visiting nurse should know to come around back and through the French doors of his bedroom, as he’d instructed. He wondered if it was worth the effort, and the pain, to get up and unlock the door if it wasn’t one of those nurses. The neighbor kid, Billy, had already come by about Chance’s horses. He boarded them at the neighbor’s ranch while he traveled. He wasn’t expecting anyone else. He was supposed to keep his foot raised except for necessities like getting to the bathroom. Otherwise, it throbbed like a sonavabitch.
He yelled out instructions to come around back. There the visitor would see the unlocked French doors that led to his bedroom. Maybe Billy had come back to drop off some dinner courtesy of Billy’s mom, as he had done the night before.
God, how he hated being banished to the bedroom, lying helpless and bored. Really bored. And these days when he got bored…his thoughts turned to Libby.
Not so much Libby now but Libby back then. He and Libby. Naked. Together. Her legs wrapped around him, her back to the wall while he held her, buried deep inside her, and pumping like a machine. She’d liked it hard and fast, just the way he liked to give it.
His blood was starting to stir. Not what he needed to think about, especially when there could be no relief. He needed to focus on getting ready to ride—a horse, not a woman.
A cold shower might help. And something to drink. Too bad Lonnie had left the beer in the kitchen refrigerator. Apparently beer and Percocet didn’t mix. Not that he’d taken the painkiller today. He hadn’t. He intended to use strictly ibuprofen from here on. Too many cowboys got addicted to painkillers, easy enough to do in a business where living with pain was the accepted norm. Chance had no intention of stumbling down that path. Not given his genetic makeup.
Someone now pounded on the door.
Chance again shouted for the person to come around, whoever it could be. Clearly not the visiting nurse. He waited a minute…no more pounding. Could be the person had heard him or had just given up.
Motion at the French doors said the former. He heard the jiggle of the door handle, saw the curtains flutter, and then…
Libby stepped into Chance’s bedroom and almost had a heart attack as she set down the two pieces of luggage in her hands. The place looked like she’d interrupted a robbery in progress, with clothes strewn across the floor and bed, half opened drawers, newspapers scattered about. But that wasn’t what was making her heart rate pound like the hooves of a spooked horse running for its life. Sitting in the middle of the mess, on a king-sized bed with a massive oak headboard, gloriously bare-chested with only a thin satin sheet covering the rest of his nakedness, was Chance.
He was a beautiful man despite the bruises. The pulse hammering away inside her said her body thought so too. Muscles rippled, flexed, and bulged as he pulled the sheet up. Once she had lain beside all that muscle and flesh, had run her fingers along every blessed inch of him. She’d caressed and stroked, kissed and licked and enjoyed every quiver she’d created. Seeing him practically naked had brought it all back with heat-intensified accuracy.