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Cole shouldered his saddle and headed for the corral. His big mare looked at him warily when he approached, but gave a shiver of satisfaction when he laid the blanket over her back. Cole would’ve shivered, too, for a different reason. But adrenaline was working through his bloodstream, keeping him from thinking too much about what he was doing.
“You ready to ride, girl?” he asked as he went through the familiar motions. Watching his own hands was like watching a movie. He could’ve done this in his sleep, yet it felt as if he’d never seen it before. His pulse was heavy and loud, but strangely slow.
He snugged the front cinch, then finished up quickly before patting her rump. “Be gentle, all right?”
She turned her head toward him and then away. He was slipping his boot into the stirrup when another bolt of lightning blasted the hill. She danced and snorted, and he slid his foot free. Now his pulse sped up. Just a little. Just enough to make him nervous.
“All right,” he murmured. “Nothing we haven’t done before.” Cowboys didn’t turn in every time it rained. On cue, a drop hit his hand. Then another, so heavy it stung almost like hail. He put his boot back into place and mounted his horse. At first, it felt fine. A little stretch in his hip. Nothing more. He felt a stab of relief so sharp that the breath flew out of his lungs like he’d been punched.
They’d been wrong. The doctors and therapists and specialists. They’d tortured him for nothing. They’d been wrong and he’d been right.
But once he moved off the wide, flat dirt around the corral area and started the climb up the trail, he settled into the saddle and felt a deep twinge in his hip.
He shifted and tried to relax into it, but that just made the pain worse.
Cole took a deep breath and tightened his thighs, trying to transfer his weight forward. That helped. A little. But he was barely into the trees and he could feel every shift of the mare beneath him, every terrible thump of her hooves. The pain moved deeper into his pelvis. Then his spine.
He shouldn’t have done this. This would make it worse.
Then again, if he wasn’t healed now, he was never going to be right again. He knew that. He could see it in the faces
of every person who brought it up. How’s your leg, Cole? How’s your hip? That concern he pretended not to see. The sorrow they tried to hide.
Cole grunted and put his head down and told himself it didn’t hurt as much as it did.
As the trail got steeper, he gave up his fight and let his body ease back until he was leaning back farther than he normally would. That wasn’t bad, actually. It put a lot of the weight on his tailbone instead of his hips. In fact, aside from the sharp stretch of unused muscles, it felt almost fine. Until another crack of lightning broke the day and his mare stumbled. She caught herself quickly and settled back into a walk, but the jolt sent fire up his bones.
Cole cursed and gritted his teeth. Fear began to eat his adrenaline and, between that and the pain, sweat broke out and the wind turned it to ice. But it hardly mattered. Another flash of lightning seemed to be the starting gun for the rain, and it fell in a sudden explosion of sound. He was slightly protected by the trees, but not from the branches that slapped into him, dragging over his chaps and trying to knock his hat free.
At one point his mount startled and lurched forward, but she was a damn good horse, and even with his weight balanced so strangely on her, she only raced a few feet before slowing again.
She picked her way confidently over rocks and didn’t hesitate for a second when the trail skirted along an exposed cliff. Cole wasn’t so sure, though. He made himself sit upright, despite the pain. He didn’t want to throw her off in any way, and he needed to be able to see over the edge. Likely Madeline and Jeremy had been caught in the storm and taken shelter. But just in case, he kept his eyes on the ridge of rock fifty feet below.
The trail continued on for more than three miles, but Cole knew where Madeline had been headed and he couldn’t see any reason she’d have wanted to go down the other side of that split in the ridge. Then again, her mind didn’t work like his, and maybe the view wouldn’t be enough for her. Maybe she’d decided she needed to head down into the next valley to see what the view was like from the other side.
No way would Jeremy have the backbone to say no to a woman like Madeline.
For the first time, it occurred to Cole that there could be another reason they were late returning. His eye twitched. He shifted in the saddle again and couldn’t find a position that didn’t make it feel as if hot steel was jammed into his hip.
Madeline Beckingham was a woman of passion and drive, and not just for her work. Even when he’d been twenty-one and she’d been thirty-two, she’d been nearly too much for him, needing sex more often than he had. And on rides like this, she’d sometimes been overwhelmed with the beauty of the place, and the ideas swirling violently through her head, and she’d almost been manic in her need.
“Jesus,” he cursed, hoping like hell that he didn’t round a corner and find her riding Jeremy like some crazed pagan, naked in the rain and wind.
Cole had thought she was a legend. An artist. A force of nature. And the truth was, no matter how much she’d hurt him, she was all those things. He’d been a fool to think she’d settle down with a man like him.
The same fool he was being for Grace. If he wanted a wild woman who couldn’t be tamed, then he’d have to learn to live with being left standing there, scratched and bruised and alone.
At three-quarters of a mile up, his hip felt as though it was going to disintegrate. It felt as if every step were splitting him slowly in two. The wind suddenly died down, and the trail edged around another rock face, the rain falling steady now, slicking the rocks. Cole breathed in the wet air and tried to ignore the pain, but in that moment, staring down at the seventy-foot drop, he knew. It was over. Despite all his brave words, despite his denial, his life on horseback was over.
He’d been in the saddle for half an hour and it took everything in him not to scream with each step. He’d never make it through an eight-hour day, much less the sixteen-hour days during a roundup or a drive.
This was it. He had the money to buy the ranch, but what would be the point? This was the end. All his plans were dead and had been for almost nine months. He just hadn’t realized it until now, even if everyone else had.
He made himself keep his eyes sharp on the view below, but his shoulders slumped. He could find work around here. He knew too many people to find himself without a job. But what would he be working toward? What was he going to do with himself?
Rope tricks at a dude ranch? Cooking brisket at some tourist joint? Maybe he could work at a hole-in-the-wall bar and drink his way through his nights the way his dad had.
His father hadn’t been mean or embarrassing or even particularly drunk. He’d just popped open a beer when he walked in the door at night, and pounded them back until bedtime. He’d been…numb.
