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“Anyway. She’s sweeter than she seems. Just thought you should know that.” Actually, she had no evidence that Rayleen was sweet at all, but she’d needed to say something. Grace’s feet moved backward. “I’d better get back. Thanks.”
She’d controlled the tears, anyway. She hadn’t broken down. She was going to walk away from this the same person she’d been when she’d arrived.
Somehow, the thought didn’t comfort her as much as she’d hoped.
* * *
IT TOOK NEARLY twenty minutes of slow breathing before Cole could walk. Twenty minutes of trying to convince himself to take that first step.
His leg had simply given out when he’d dismounted, folding up with one last blast of pain. He’d caught himself on the pommel, and he was damn grateful for that, since Grace had come around the corner not thirty seconds later.
What did she want from him? Was she just stone-cold crazy? He was in too much pain to puzzle out a woman whose soul must look like a maze. If she had a soul. She probably didn’t.
The tension of dealing with her and her anger hadn’t helped his leg, but after a time, he’d been able to relax enough to stretch his muscles, then rub some of the ache away.
Cole kept his left hand on the pommel when he finally dared to take a few steps. His leg held him this time, despite its stiffness. Or ma
ybe because of it. He stretched his back and led the mare toward the gate of the small corral. He moved slowly until he was sure he could put his weight on the leg. It hurt. But it held.
He tied off the mare to wait until he had the strength to look after her, then walked very carefully toward the big house. When he got to the porch steps, he stopped for a long moment, staring at the three steps before he took them.
“Easy?” he called when he stepped inside.
“Yep.”
Cole followed his voice to the kitchen, where Easy stood at the back door, a cup of coffee cradled in his hand.
“I need to know if you have a plan for this place that doesn’t involve me.”
Easy immediately looked impatient, his face creasing in a frown. “I already told you I wasn’t thinking of selling to anyone else.”
“That’s not what I mean. I mean, have you considered what you’ll do if I can’t ride again?”
Easy’s frown immediately smoothed into shock, his pale eyes going wide for a moment before he remembered to hide his dismay. “Cole, why don’t we leave this discussion until you hear what the doctor has to say? There’s every chance—”
“I rode today.”
“What? Why?” Easy’s eyes fell to the chaps Cole still wore.
“Jeremy was stuck out at the spring pasture with Madeline Beckingham during that storm. We weren’t sure what had happened, and I was the only one around to go find them.”
“You should’ve told me! It’s my ranch and you’re my hand. I could’ve called in—”
“It doesn’t matter, Easy. The point is I rode. And it wasn’t… I don’t think…”
“Cole,” Easy said, his voice rough with emotion.
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to ride again. And I know you’ve been trying to tell me that, but I didn’t want to hear it.”
“Now, listen,” Easy said, “you don’t know anything. And I talked to Farrah after that dinner she made for us a month ago. She couldn’t tell me any details about you, of course, but she said there were other surgeries. If that crack doesn’t heal right, they can put plates in, just like in your leg.”
“They might be able to, yes. But that’d be almost another year of healing, plus rehabilitation. And there’d be no guarantees. And no assurances it wouldn’t put so much strain on the bone it’d cause more problems in the future. I already heard all this. I just wasn’t listening. I wanted it to not be true so badly that I—”
“We don’t need to discuss it now. Jesus, we’ve waited this long. Let’s see what they say.”
“No, I need to know you’ll be all right, whatever the outcome.”
“Me?” Easy practically shouted. His neck turned red, then his ears, but Cole saw the way his eyes glinted. “You’re worried about me? Jesus Christ, boy.”
