Cowboy Take Me Away

Chapter 3


It took Shannon approximately ten minutes to grab the little horse, walk him back to the shelter, and then return with her truck, an ice pack, a pair of shears, four ibuprofens, and a bottle of water. She told Luke to take the ibuprofens, chopped off the leg of his jeans, wrapped the ice pack around his knee, and opened her passenger door so he could get inside. A few minutes later, they were buzzing down the highway, and Luke was reminded once again of how Shannon handled every task she encountered: with the tenacity of a bulldog going after a bone.

“So what’s with the pint-size horse with the great big teeth?” Luke asked.

“He was abused. I’ll spare you the details. He doesn’t trust anyone now. He’s probably going to be one of our permanent residents.”

“If he keeps on biting like that, yeah. He’s not exactly pet material.”

“I know,” she said on a sigh. “Unfortunately, most of the animals at the shelter are a little hard to love. Except the kittens. Everybody wants kittens. Sweet, fuzzy little kittens with no issues. For better or worse, we always have enough of those to meet the demand.”

At that moment Luke realized they’d just passed by the road leading to downtown Rainbow Valley. “You missed the turnoff.”

“I didn’t miss it. We’re not going to Rainbow Valley.”

“But the doctor—”

“The doctor you need to see is in an emergency room in Austin.”

“Austin?” Luke said incredulously. “That’s an hour away. Just take me to a doctor in Rainbow Valley.”

“Waste of time and money. He’ll just turn around and send you to a specialist in Austin.”

“No. It’s probably just a sprain. So driving all the way there—”

“Sprain?” She glanced down at his knee. “Really, Luke? A sprain?”

“I’m not going to Austin.”

“You are if you want proper treatment.”

“Turn this truck around, Shannon.”

“But—”

“Now.”

She shot him a look of frustration, then pulled to the shoulder of the road. She shoved the gearshift into park, and the engine idled softly.

“Okay,” she said. “What’s the deal?”

“I’m not going to an emergency room.”

“Look at your knee. That’s an injury that won’t wait.”

But he knew how expensive ER visits could be. First came the bill just because he showed up and was seen by a doctor. Then came the outrageously expensive diagnostic tests. And if he had to have surgery…

He didn’t even want to think about that.

“You do have insurance, don’t you?” Shannon said.

“Yeah,” he muttered. “For all the good it does me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Insurance companies don’t like to cover bull riders. Too risky. Which means my deductible is so high it’s almost not worth paying the huge premiums.”

“So it’s good only for catastrophic injuries?”

“If I end up in a coma for six months or paralyzed from the neck down, I might see a few bucks. But for stuff like this, I’m pretty much on my own.”

“So this is about the money,” Shannon said.

Yes, damn it, it’s about the money!

Luke hated that crawly sensation in his stomach, the one he always felt when he was at the mercy of circumstances he couldn’t control. For the past several years, it seemed as if for every step he took forward, he took one step backward. There were the ever-present injuries and the outrageous medical bills that went with them. The travel expenses that chewed up a lot of his prize money. The bad-luck draw of bulls that were either deadheads who earned him no points, or crazy ones that slammed him into fences or tried to gore him before he even hit the ground. But this year…this year everything had finally gone his way.

And now this.

“Let’s just say I’d like to keep my expenses to a minimum,” he said.

“Ever been injured before?” she asked.

“Just minor stuff. Sprains, concussions, dislocations. Broken ribs. Fractured shoulder.”

“Good Lord. If all that’s minor, what’s major?”

“Anything that makes them get a stretcher.”

“Seems like a tough way to make a living.”

“It was that or become a rocket scientist,” Luke said, turning away again. “It was so hard to choose.”

But of course she wouldn’t understand about his limited choices. Not when her parents were loaded with money and had given her every opportunity on the planet.

He hated this. He hated telling Shannon North, of all people, that money was an issue. But even more, he hated that she was right about going to Austin. X-rays were good only for bone breaks and fractures. In his sport, he’d seen knee injuries like this one, and MRI and CT scans were the only way to determine the extent of the tissue damage.

“Luke?” Shannon said, her hand on the gearshift. “What’s it going to be? Back home, or Austin?”

He looked down at his knee, then turned away with a huff of irritation. “Austin.”

She put the truck in gear. “Good decision.”

“I see you never got over your bossiness.”

“I prefer to think of it as providing direction to people who desperately need it. I see you never got over your hardheadedness.”

“I prefer to think of it as a logical reaction to bossy people.”

“Just because I’m bossy doesn’t mean I’m wrong,” Shannon said.

“Why didn’t you just tell me you were heading to Austin?”

“Would you have gotten into this truck if I had?”

“Nope.”

“Well, there you go.”

Now he remembered what a challenge it had been to stay one step ahead of Shannon. Her speech had always been filled with one declarative sentence after another, as if whatever words she spoke instantly became law.

He looked out the passenger window, thinking about his predicament and trying to get a handle on it. Even if he was sidelined for a few months, he’d already won enough prize money that he’d stay in the top ten bull riders, and that was all it took to qualify for the World Championship. Prize money was cumulative, though, right through the finals, so the higher he was in the standings, the more likely he was to win the title. As long as he was in good enough shape to climb aboard a bull the first week of November, he still had a shot.

But if the worst happened and he couldn’t compete even then…

He didn’t want to think about that. He didn’t want to think about starting all over again in January. About following a grueling schedule that put him in a different town every week so he could pile up the prize money and inch up in the standings. About all those younger cowboys coming onto the scene, ones who hadn’t spent the past ten years getting knocked around the way he had. He was hot this year, hotter than he’d ever been, but he couldn’t count on his good fortune lasting forever. If he missed this window of opportunity to win the championship, it might never open up again.

Forty-five minutes later, Luke and Shannon arrived at the hospital emergency room. But it was another hour before a nurse took Luke back to be seen by a doctor, a bearded guy who was probably in his early forties, who stroked his chin a lot as he talked. After a brief exam, after which a different nurse treated the scrapes on Luke’s leg and removed at least a dozen splinters, the doctor ordered an MRI to diagnose the knee injury. Luke had to endure another long wait for that, and yet another before an orthopedist showed up to evaluate the results. Whenever Luke came back to the waiting room, Shannon questioned him about what was going on. But he quickly grew frustrated by the whole experience and clammed up. Eventually she did, too.

They finally called Luke’s name. He left Shannon reading a copy of Business Week and followed the nurse to the back, where she escorted him into an exam room. A few minutes later, the orthopedist came in.

“Looks like you messed your knee up pretty good,” he said. “You have a tear to the anterior cruciate ligament, along with some damage to the meniscus and articular cartilage.”

The doctor showed Luke a drawing of a knee, pointing out the various parts of his anatomy as he explained the extent of the injury. But Luke was interested in only one thing.

“What’s the prognosis?” he asked.

“Excellent. We’ll get you scheduled for arthroscopy. Clean up that tear. And then—”

“Wait a minute. Surgery?”

“Outpatient surgery. No big deal.”

Luke closed his eyes, frustration eating away at him. “What’s that going to cost me?”

“It’s hard to say, exactly.”

“Ballpark.”

The doctor tossed out a figure, and Luke’s stomach practically fell through the floor.

“We’ll schedule you for next week so the swelling will have a chance to go down,” the doctor went on. “After that, with rest and rehab, you’ll be good as new.”

“How long will the recovery take?”

“I’d give it six months.”

Luke felt a rush of disappointment. “Can I do it in three?”

“That’s pushing it.”

“I need to be able to ride again.”

“Horses?”

Luke paused. “Bulls.”

The doctor raised his eyebrows. “You want to get back on a bull? Three months after an injury like this?”

“That’s right.”

“I wouldn’t recommend that. If you sustain a total ACL tear, it could blow that knee for good.”

“I just need to know if it’s doable.”

The doctor thought about it for a long time, finally shrugging weakly. “If you do physical therapy at home, and then come up here a couple of times a week for more intense therapy…maybe. But again, I am not recommending that.”

“I’ll wear a brace while I’m riding.”

“That won’t totally prevent injury.”

Luke leaned in, wearing a no-nonsense look. “Listen to me, doctor. I’m this close to a world bull riding championship. I just need to know that in three months I can walk back into that arena and climb up on a bull. That’s all.”

“What about the odds of you walking out of that arena?”

“I’m willing to risk it.”

“I’m not recommending—”

“You’ve made that clear. Just tell me what I need to do.”

A few minutes later, Luke had his discharge instructions, and he sat down at the ER clerk’s desk to settle the bill. The clerk was an older woman with bifocals resting on her sharp, pointed nose, wearing the kind of sour expression that said she’d worked there for years and hated her job. She slid a piece of paper in front of him, and when he saw the charges, he felt light-headed, as if blood wasn’t getting to his brain. Given his huge deductible, this entire bill was coming out of his pocket, along with most of the cost of his surgery to come.

The clerk apparently sensed his hesitancy. “We do take credit cards.”

“I don’t use credit cards.” He looked back at the bill, and the amount seemed to grow before his eyes.

“Sir, if you’re unable to pay this invoice—”

Luke jerked his head up. “What makes you think I can’t pay it?”

She gave him a smile, but Luke could see what was beneath it. Condescension.

“If you’re having financial problems,” she said, “you may qualify for assistance. If you’d like, I can put you in touch with one of our social workers to advise you.”

Luke could barely contain the rumbling of resentment he felt. Social worker? He’d dealt with enough of those to last him a lifetime. Just hearing the words made his skin crawl.

“I don’t need assistance from anyone,” he said.

“All right. Maybe a payment plan? The interest rate is quite reasonable.”

“No,” he snapped. “I don’t borrow money. I pay my bills. I always pay my bills.”

He reached into his wallet, pulled out his debit card, and tossed it down on the desk, numb with disbelief. Only hours ago, he was heading for the next rodeo in Phoenix, one more lucrative stop on his way to the top. Now he was sitting in this hospital with a damaged knee, essentially broke, with no means of support. Yeah, he had enough to pay his medical bills, but then he’d have nothing left over for living expenses for the next three months, not to mention the physical therapy he needed if this knee was going to heal in time for the World Championship. He could sell his father’s property to get the cash he needed…if only he had the money to get rid of the old gas storage tanks at the front of the property so it could be environmentally certified for sale.

Damn it.

He flipped open his wallet. Sixty bucks. It might as well have been sixty cents.

His pulse pounded in his head, making his mind feel dark and muddled. He just wanted to get the hell out of there. He wanted to go somewhere by himself and think about how to get out of this mess. And he would figure it out, one way or the other.

Unfortunately, his truck was currently in Rainbow Valley, and Shannon was his only means to return there.



When Luke finally came out, Shannon took one look at his tight-lipped expression and knew he wasn’t happy. He had a brace on his knee and was walking on crutches. He brushed past her and hobbled out the sliding glass doors. Once they were in her truck, he seemed no more interested in talking than he had been all afternoon. But since his mood had clearly deteriorated, she could only assume whatever news he’d received was bad.

“Tell me about your knee,” she said as they drove out of Austin. “Is it going to be okay?”

“Eventually. I’m having outpatient surgery next week. Then physical therapy.”

“Oh. Okay.” She paused. “So that’s doable, right?”

“Yeah,” he said in a deadpan voice. “It’s doable.”

“Did you get pain medication?”

“I don’t need it.”

Then why, every time he shifted in his seat, did he grimace as if his knee was killing him?

“Did the doctor clear you to drive?” she asked.

He paused. “Yes.”

She wasn’t sure she believed that. “Are you going to be able to compete anytime soon?”

“I’ll compete,” he said. “Bank on it.”

“Good. That’s good.”

Luke was silent.

“Well,” she said brightly. “Then everything’s going to be fine, right?”

“Yeah,” he said. “Just fine.”

She wondered if he knew how transparent his lies were. Or maybe he didn’t care. Either way, he clearly didn’t want to talk about it. She also wondered how big a hit he’d taken with the emergency room bill, but she knew he wouldn’t want to talk about that, either.

As they headed back to Rainbow Valley, Luke stared out the passenger window. Shannon watched him out of the corner of her eye. Being in a compromised position brought out the defensiveness in him, and she hated it. She wanted him to put aside all the tough-guy crap and just be truthful with her. That was all.

But as the miles passed, she realized that wasn’t all.

Memories were one thing. Having the flesh-and-blood man who starred in those memories sitting beside her was another thing entirely. She had the sudden irrational thought that he’d turn around and she’d see it in his eyes—everything he’d felt for her all those years ago. But just as quickly, she banished the thought. She was no fool. That was never going to happen. But for some reason, the emotional side of her brain wasn’t buying that. One image after another flashed through her mind of that summer, making her nerves tighten and her pulse quicken as if she was living it all over again.

“How much is a night at the Bluebonnet Inn?” Luke asked, breaking the silence.

“Uh…at least a hundred and fifty, I think.”

He turned to her with an astonished expression. “A hundred and fifty dollars? For a dinky motel room in Rainbow Valley?”

“It’s the end of tourist season. The rates are still high.”

He exhaled, and she sensed his frustration. He tapped his fingertips against his thigh, his eyes shifting as if his mind was hard at work.

“Can you stop by an ATM?” he said finally. “I’m a little low on cash.”

“They’ll take credit cards at the motel.”

Luke frowned. “That’s not an option.”

She wondered why. Bad credit? No credit? Card at its limit? “Okay. There’s an ATM at the savings and loan. I’ll swing by it.”

Twenty minutes later, she turned her truck from the highway onto the road leading to Rainbow Valley. She turned onto Rainbow Way, pulled up in front of the savings and loan, and brought her truck to a halt. The ATM was just outside the double glass doors.

Luke got out and grabbed his crutches from the bed of the truck. When he reached the ATM, he pulled out his card, only to stop short and stare at the machine. His shoulders slumped, and he shook his head. After a moment, he smacked the machine with the heel of his hand and spit out a few curse words. Then he returned his card to his wallet and came back out to the truck.

“Problems?” she said.

“It’s temporarily unavailable.”

“Yeah, that happens a lot. So what do you want to do now?”

He tapped his fingertips on his thigh again, his lips tight with frustration. “I’ll stay at my father’s house.”

Shannon winced. She couldn’t bear the thought of anybody having to stay in that house for five minutes, much less all night.

“But I’d be happy to loan you the money,” she said.

“No, thanks.”

“But you said you don’t have enough cash for a room.”

“That’s right.”

“The ATM will probably be fixed by tomorrow, and you can pay me back.”

“I told you I’m staying at my father’s house.”

“Now, why would you want to do that when—”

“Enough, Shannon. I’m through talking about it.”

“But—”

“Will you just shut the hell up?”

He turned away, blowing out an angry breath. For at least thirty seconds, neither one of them spoke. The air between them was thick with tension, and Shannon hated it. All she’d tried to do was help him, and he treated her like this? She had a fleeting thought that he was just like Manny. Corner him, and he came out biting.

“Well, then,” she said finally, yanking the truck into gear, “I guess we’re going to your father’s house.”

She turned back onto Rainbow Way, taking the corner a little sharper than necessary, then hitting the gas.

“I’m sorry,” Luke said.

Shannon was silent.

“I appreciate the offer,” he went on. “But I don’t borrow money. Not just from you. From anyone.”

“Sure, Luke. Whatever you say.”

By the time Shannon turned onto his father’s property and headed down the gravel road, the sun had dipped below the horizon, and daylight was fading fast. She rounded the grove of trees to find that the house looked even worse in the faint twilight. A full moon had risen, shining through the dying oak tree and casting eerie shadows across the withered siding.

Shannon pulled her truck alongside the front porch. As Luke stared at the house, his throat convulsed with a hard swallow, and he gripped the armrest so hard that veins stood out on the back of his hand.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

He whipped around. “Wrong? Nothing’s wrong.”

Shannon wanted to hold on to her anger, but when she saw Luke’s face, it slowly slipped away. Nobody should have to stay in a place like that. For any reason.

“You know,” Shannon said, “I just happened to think. George quit a few weeks ago, I haven’t been able to find anybody to take his place, so the caretaker’s apartment is empty. Why don’t you just stay there tonight?” She forced a smile. “Of course, I can’t guarantee you won’t end up sharing your bed with a really pushy cat.”

“No. This will be just fine.”

Her smile faded. “Luke,” she said, her voice hushed, “look at that place. I mean—” She exhaled. “Surely you don’t want to stay there, do you?”

His eyes narrowed, his expression turning cold and bitter. “Why not? After all, I stayed there for eighteen years, didn’t I?”

He yanked open the door and got out, putting minimal weight on his injured knee. He grabbed the crutches from the bed of her pickup and headed for the house. He made his way up the steps, carefully sidestepping the gaping hole in the porch decking.

He stopped at the door. Reached for the doorknob. Strangely, though, he didn’t go inside. Instead, he pulled his hand back. He dropped it to his side, flexing his fingers. After a moment, he reached for the doorknob again, his hand hovering over it.

And again he pulled it back.

In that moment, Shannon realized the truth. He can’t do it. He can’t even step inside that house.

Luke looked back over his shoulder. In the weak light of dusk, their eyes met, and even with the distance between them, she could feel his hesitancy. His indecision.

His desire to be anywhere else.

Finally he turned away from the door. He hobbled back across the porch and down the steps. But instead of going to her truck, he headed for his. Shannon opened the door of her truck and stepped out.

“Luke! What are you doing?”

“Can’t stay,” he said brusquely. “I forgot I had the utilities turned off. No lights, no air conditioning.” He got into his truck, shoving the crutches into the passenger area beside him.

“But you shouldn’t drive. The doctor said—”

He slammed the driver’s door.

“Money,” Shannon said. “What about money?”

Luke started the engine and pulled away from the house. He hit the gas hard enough that his tires spun on the gravel, then caught traction and propelled the truck up the road to disappear around the bend. Frustration ran wild inside her. Will you stop being a fool? For God’s sake, let me help you!

But that wasn’t going to happen. It had to hurt like hell to drive, but he was doing it anyway. And that meant he was still holding a grudge. A big one.

Fine. If that’s the way you want it, good-bye and good riddance!

But as she watched his taillights disappear into the darkness, she felt the most uncanny sense of loss, as if there was something left undone. Something she should have said and hadn’t. But if he’d been standing in front of her right then, she wouldn’t have had a clue what to say.

She got back into her truck, put it in gear, and started back up the road to the highway. Just before she rounded the thick stand of trees, she glanced in her rearview mirror. At the angle she was at, she could just make out a window on the side of the house. Probably a bathroom window, given how high it was.

And light shone through it.

She told herself he couldn’t bring himself to turn the doorknob, much less stay the night, because his father had died there. Rumor had it that he’d been found face down in the kitchen, still clutching an empty whiskey bottle. She understood how hard it was to face losing a loved one, but there had been no love lost between Luke and his father. And the Luke she knew was grounded enough in reality that a fear of lingering spirits, even in that god-awful house at nightfall, wasn’t even a possibility.

So what had kept him from opening that door?