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So I let him carry me the extra fifteen minutes back to the ranch. Though I felt a little guilty about it.
As soon as we got back to the property, he yelled out, “Mrs. MacCruder!”
No answer.
“Mr. MacCruder?!”
Silence.
He checked the garage. The MacCruders’ old Chevy truck was gone.
“Damn it, they must have gone out,” Ryan muttered.
We passed by the barn. Sure enough, Bessie and Fat Albert were hanging out in the entrance, calm as could be.
“Thanks for nothing,” I said to the horses as Ryan walked past.
He grinned. “Don’t blame them, they were the smartest ones on the trail.”
“I guess I owe you five bucks, huh.”
“For what?”
“The bet. ‘Five’ll get you twenty’?” I reminded him.
“Oh, yeah. I thought you meant for taxi fare.”
“For carrying me down the trail? I think I owe you a lot more than that.”
He grinned again. “We can work something out.”
I wasn’t sure if that was a flirty sexual entendre.
I kind of wanted it to be, but in case I was wrong, I kept quiet.
He got me to the house and opened the front door, then walked me inside, careful not to bang my leg against anything as he took me back to my bedroom. He started to lower me onto the bed –
“I’m all dirty!” I exclaimed. “I’ll mess up the bedspread!”
“Kaitlyn, I really couldn’t give a damn about the bedspread right now.”
I looked at him and smiled. He smiled back, then gingerly laid me down. Once I was comfortably situated, he moved down to my foot. “I’m going to take your boot off, okay?”
I nodded, and winced as he slowly slid it off my calf and ankle. He gently moved the jeans pants leg up and softly peeled off my sock.
“It’s swollen, all right… does this hurt?” he asked as he gently manipulated the area.
“Yeah,” I grunted.
“But you’re not screaming, so that’s good.”
“I guess.”
“Does it feel broken?”
“No, it’s just throbbing, that’s all.”
“Lie here for a minute, I’m going to go fix you an ice pack.”
As I lay there on the bed listening to him in the kitchen, the enormity of what had just happened began to sink in.
I had just gotten thrown off a horse.
Then we had faced down a cougar.
Actually,
Ryan
had faced down a cougar. I’d just lain there on the ground.
He had stood between me and it, and put his life on the line to scare the thing away.
Once that was done, he had carried me almost an hour down a mountain and back to the ranch.
And now he was taking care of me, attending to my wounds.
Tears sprang to my eyes.
Had Derek ever risked his life for me?
Had Derek ever carried me anywhere, when there wasn’t anything in it for him? Like sex in a hotel room?
I had obsessed over
him
all this time, while distancing myself from Ryan.
But it was Ryan who had put himself between me and certain death.
It was Ryan who had carried me down the mountain.
All this time, I had been pining away for the wrong man.
Ryan came back in the room with a plastic bag filled with ice and a small towel. “I think this’ll do for now. We can put some cold on it and see how – hey – hey, what’s wrong? Are you okay?”
I realized that tears were streaming down my face.
I shook my head ‘no.’
