How to Kiss a Cowboy

by Joanne Kennedy

  The door opened, and she looked up fast, trying not to smile for Brady and utterly failing. But it was just a nurse, the young one who always wore juvenile scrubs with teddy bears and clowns on them. She seemed to have even more of a crush on Brady than the other girls, and sometimes Suze sensed a whiff of jealousy under her cheerful professionalism.

  “Your dad’s here to pick you up,” the nurse said. “Guess the cowboy’s not coming after all.”

  The professionalism slipped as the little nurse shot Suze a triumphant glare and spun out of the room, leaving her alone with her dad, who shambled in pushing an empty wheelchair.

  “Can you get yourself into this thing?”

  It figured. He hadn’t seen her in a week, not since the wreck, but there was no “Hi, how are you?” no “What can I do for you?” It was all about how much—or better yet, how little work he’d have to do to care for the daughter he could hardly bear to look at.

  She’d always thought it was because she was such a disappointment—a plain daughter who looked nothing like her lovely mother. But after that glimpse in the mirror, she knew different.

  She really did look like her mother. So why wouldn’t her dad look at her? Why wouldn’t he love her, like other dads loved their daughters?

  Fortunately, an orderly turned up and helped her make it from the bed to the chair. He was good at his job, and the transition barely hurt at all. She set her crutches across her lap and off they went.

  They headed out of the hospital to the smiles of the staff, Suze in the chair, the orderly pushing, and her father shuffling alongside. Suze looked down at his feet.

  “Dad, you’re still in your slippers.”

  “They’re comfortable.”

  She told herself not to ask about Brady, but she only managed to wait until they got into the elevator.

  “Where’s Brady?”

  “Don’t know,” her father said.

  She sighed as the elevator began its descent. This had to be some kind of record. Five minutes—less than five minutes—and they were already annoyed with each other.

  “You must have talked to him, Dad. He was the one who told you I was getting out, right?”

  “We don’t need him,” her dad said.

  Oh, great. Her father always liked to play the part of the independent old cuss, even though he rarely did anything for himself. He didn’t even make his own meals unless Suze was away, and making the meals was the limit of his involvement—cleaning up after himself was apparently too much to ask. She always arrived home to find every dish they owned in a filthy pile on the kitchen counter, and the garbage heaping with half-eaten Hungry Man meal trays.

  She kept her mouth shut while he wheeled her across the lobby. When they reached the double exit doors, her dad turned to the orderly.

  “We can take it from here.”

  Suze almost corrected him but swallowed her protest. She could probably get up into the truck with just a little bit of help from her dad.

  “Okay.” The orderly set a stack of paperwork in her lap. “The wheelchair and crutches are yours to keep. They’ll bill your insurance.”

  “I’m sure they will,” her dad muttered. Since he’d retired as a CPA, he’d done freelance work helping seniors deal with insurance companies. He spent a lot of time barking into the phone, haranguing insurance reps. It was the perfect job for a crotchety old man who still had his wits about him—and his temper too.

  His truck was parked in the roundabout reserved for emergency room drop-offs and patient pickup. He wheeled her to the passenger side, opened the door, and stared down at her. Judging from the expression on his face, this was the first time it had occurred to him that things might be a little tricky.

  Chapter 31

  “We probably should have kept that guy around,” Suze said, thinking of the orderly.

  “We don’t need him. Goddamn cowboy,” her father growled.

  She’d been talking about the orderly, but his response made her wonder what he’d said to Brady. Maybe he’d run him off. She felt that little clutch of fear again, but she did her best to ignore it. She’d manage. It would just take her a little longer to get things done.

  “Just give me your hand,” her dad said.

  As she struggled to lever herself out of the wheelchair, she wondered how long it had been since she’d held her father’s hand. His skin was dry and papery, but he was surprisingly strong. That was a good thing, because Suze was surprisingly weak. Spending five days in bed hadn’t done a thing for her muscle tone. She felt like a human gummy bear.

  The other surprising thing was how much it hurt. She noticed joints and muscles she hadn’t known existed, mostly in her lower back. As she tried to stand, it felt like a dozen tiny cattle prods were being thrust between her bones, and it was all she could do to keep from crying out in front of her father.

  By the time she was settled into the seat of the truck, sweat beaded her forehead and she had to clench her teeth to hold back the sobs that had built up at the back of her throat.

  Cowgirls don’t cry. Cowgirls don’t cry.

  She’d heard that refrain over and over, at every rodeo and every practice session. It was her father’s mantra. He claimed he’d gotten it from her mother, but Suze didn’t remember her mother ever saying it. In fact, she remembered her mother holding her while she cried about some slight from a schoolmate. The hurt was long forgotten, but Suze held tight to the memory of her mother’s warmth, the way she’d held her across her lap like a baby, even though Suze had been nine and therefore a “big girl.” Her mother had probably been sick then, but Suze hadn’t known it. If she had, she would have held on a little longer and cried a whole lot more.

  The drive home should have been a treat, despite the rattling of the crutches in the truck bed and the banging of the loose tailgate. Suze hadn’t seen anything but the four walls of her hospital room for over a week, except for occasional forays to luxurious destinations like the X-ray department and the blood lab, so everything looked new to her, even her dad’s dusty, old truck.

  Most people wouldn’t consider Wyoming a desirable destination, but Suze had always felt she’d been born right where she belonged, in a tough land for tough people. Even the wildlife was tough—pronghorn antelope, fast as any racehorse; jackrabbits, with hind legs that scissored like robotic springs; prairie dogs, with their whistled code of warning protecting them from the only predators that managed to eke out a living in the rocky outback: coyotes, mountain lions, and men.

  Lack of water made even the flowers of Wyoming tough, but a series of recent rains had fed the rivers and creeks, and worked their way into the hard-packed Western soil. Drought had plagued the area for the past three years, and it seemed like the earth had been saving up its bounty so it could explode all at once when the rains finally came.

  At the roadside, pale lupine and sunny yellow ragwort vied for space with asters and coneflowers. Stands of penstemon in the coolest shade of blue imaginable softened the harsh edges of a gate, while Indian paintbrush decorated the grass with brilliant streaks of red. The sight lifted Suze’s spirits. A little rain had fallen in her personal world too, but maybe she’d find a positive way to use it, just like the dry, stubborn prairie.

  “So you said you talked to Brady?” she asked her father.

  He grunted. It was a yes grunt. Suze knew this from years of practice interpreting his unwilling communications. She knew she’d end up playing a long and frustrating game of twenty questions if she stuck to queries where he could answer yes or no.

  “What did he say?”

  “Something about your underwear. You need to stay away from that boy.”

  “Dad, he’s not a boy, and I’m a grown woman. You don’t get to decide who I spend my time with anymore.”

  “Well, I told him we don’t need him around.”

  “Then
how are we going to manage?”

  “Same way we always did.”

  “Dad, did you hear the doctor?”

  He grunted, a noncommittal grunt this time, so she repeated the surgeon’s terse instructions.

  “I need to rest with my leg elevated for the next two weeks, at least. After that, if my ankle looks better, I can walk a little, but I’ll still have a cast, and I’ll still be on crutches for another four weeks, at least.”

  Her father didn’t respond, so she continued.

  “The more I try to walk now, the longer it’ll take for my ankle to heal. It’s possible it might never heal enough for me to—enough for me to do the things I’m used to.”

  She couldn’t repeat what the doctor had really said, which was that there was a very good chance she’d never be able to ride again. Her left leg was the problem. Both ankle and knee were destroyed, with torn and sprained ligaments and torn cartilage. The knee had been repaired with surgery, but the ankle needed time to heal. An ankle might seem like a small and inconsequential body part, but it actually bore much of a rider’s weight, and acted as a springy shock absorber. It also worked like a lever, lifting her when she rose in the stirrups, and lowering her when she got down and dirty in the turns. Even at a sedate walk on horseback, the ankle was flexed.

  “I can’t get out to the barn right now, Dad, so I’ll have to count on you for the next two weeks to take care of Bucket. I guess it’s best to leave Speedo with Ridge.” She blinked back tears. “He’ll take good care of him.”

  Her dad’s face was set in a stony frown. “I want that horse back here where he belongs. He’s worth money.”

  “He’s not your horse, Dad, so you don’t get a say.”

  Suze had bought Speedo with her rodeo winnings. Her father hadn’t contributed a dime to any part of her riding endeavors, ever. She’d begged Irene Decker to give her lessons in exchange for helping around the barn when she was little, and up until she turned fourteen, she felt more at home at the Deckers than at home.

  Then the boys came, and everything changed. Her father forbade her to go anywhere near “that riffraff.” Irene loaned her an old but wise gelding, and she started rodeoing to earn money. Then she bought Sherman, and by the time she was sixteen, she was bringing home more money than her father.

  “I know you don’t like Brady, but I don’t know how else we’re going to survive,” she said. “You heard the doctor. I can’t walk. And you can’t take care of everything—not with your arthritis.”

  Her father jerked the truck to the side of the road and slammed on the brakes, skidding to a stop in a spray of gravel. The car behind them veered around them, horn blaring, but her dad turned to face her as if nothing had happened.

  “That boy did this to you.” He stabbed his finger in the air inches from her face. “He was stupid and careless, and he’s responsible for what happened. I don’t want him around, you hear? He’s a menace.”

  “It was an accident, Dad. He didn’t do it on purpose.”

  “He did it though, didn’t he?” Her dad squeezed the steering wheel with white-knuckled hands and stared straight out the windshield. “Don’t know what he’s thinking, coming around like he does. Acting like he’s doing us some kind of favor. Acting like everything’s my fault, when he’s the one that messed you up like this.” He turned to face Suze again, his bony finger pointing at her face. “You keep away from him, you hear me? He’s not allowed in the house.”

  Suze bit her lips almost hard enough to draw blood, trying to keep her anger reined in. But like an angry bull, it burst through her barriers and launched itself at her father.

  “Don’t you get it, Dad? There’s nobody to help us. He’s the only one.” She paused to blink back tears—hot, angry tears of rage, not sorrow. “You think I want him around? There are a million reasons I never want to see Brady Caine again as long as I live. You don’t even know…”

  She stopped herself before she gave away too much.

  “You don’t even know all the reasons I don’t want him around, but he’s the only one who’s willing to help us.”

  She couldn’t hold back the tears any longer. Sobs erupted from some deep well inside her, a place she hadn’t been to since her mother died. Back then she’d felt like she’d lost everything, but she’d been wrong. She’d lost her mother, but she could still ride. Riding was her source of solace. No matter how much she missed her mother, no matter how hard life got, it gave her peace. She belonged in the saddle, and riding let her escape the dry, loveless world where she and her father lived alone and apart, sharing the same house but as distant as if they lived in separate countries.

  Now she’d lost even that. She could no longer escape to the freedom of riding, the thrill of racing.

  “I have to get better, Dad. I have to be able to ride.” She decided she should put it in terms he’d understand—terms that affected him personally. “If I can’t ride, I can’t win. And if I can’t win, I can’t pay the mortgage.”

  He cleared his throat, and she thought she might be getting through to him. He was still staring straight ahead, but his eyes were moist. Suze had never seen him cry about anything, but she’d seen him get this same expression when he looked at photos of her mother.

  Maybe he did love her. Maybe he’d take care of her through this rough patch. Maybe it wasn’t too late to learn to care for each other, even love each other.

  She reached over and put her hand over his.

  “Either you have to do everything, help me with everything, or you have to let Brady do it. The two of you are all I have, so one of you has to step up. And I’m hoping it’ll be you.”

  His hand loosened its hold on the steering wheel and turned over to grasp hers. It was a weak grip, but it was as close as her father had come in a long time to saying he loved her.

  * * *

  As they sped up the drive to the ranch, Suze smiled to see wild sunflowers rioting along the fencerow in a tangle of happy blooms. Brady’s last bouquet had been mostly sunflowers, balanced with a selection of grasses in various textures and colors.

  Her father reached over and patted her leg. She did her best not to wince at his tentative display of affection, but every part of her body hurt, and patting was the absolute wrong thing to do.

  She didn’t care about the pain, though. It was gone in an instant, and in its place was a feeling of warmth she’d been missing for the past ten years.

  Maybe her injury would turn out to be a blessing in disguise. She and her father would be forced to work together, to solve problems and make their lives work in a new way—together.

  Maybe they could even talk about her mother.

  Suze longed to hear stories about her mother, to learn who she was, what she was like. Suze’s dad offered her as a role model for Suze to live up to, but she never succeeded because his version of his late wife was some kind of sexy, beautiful saint who could do no wrong. Suze was never as pretty, as strong, as hardworking, or as successful as her mother.

  The only other time Earl talked about Ellen was when he was making excuses. He couldn’t feed the horses because being in the barn reminded him of Ellen. She’d hoped he’d come to the hospital, but she had no doubt he’d said it reminded him of Ellen.

  He wasn’t giving her much to work with. Truth be told, she was starting to hate hearing her mother’s name.

  If nothing else, they needed to do something about her father’s grief, which had never wavered. Once his wife’s funeral was over, he and Suze had retreated to their separate corners like prizefighters and nursed their wounds. She’d been only ten, but he’d never asked her if she was okay. In fact, she’d worried at one point that he’d forgotten about her.

  She’d never really forgiven him for that. Maybe now they could talk about their loss. Maybe sharing their feelings would somehow help her father. The bruises and broken bones
would all be worth it if she could mend the broken bonds between herself and her dad.

  She watched the crooked fence posts of home flash past, one after another after another. She’d never noticed before how the ranch was hidden from the road. Not consciously, anyway. But today, as they turned down the long dirt driveway, it seemed as if the world opened up just as they rounded the last curve and revealed the center of her universe.

  Most people probably would have thought it was a sorry world to hang your old cowboy hat on, but she loved the few beleaguered buildings that huddled at the end of the drive. Most of the ranch had suffered the insults of Wyoming’s hot, dry summers and brutally cold winters for over a hundred years. The house they lived in was newer. It had been built back in the fifties. But the original homestead, along with the barn and assorted outbuildings, dated from the early nineteen hundreds.

  She and her father did their best to stay on top of necessary repairs, but necessary was the key word. They were too busy and too poor to do more than keep the place from falling down, so if a board got replaced, there was a good chance it wouldn’t match the boards around it. Just a few weeks ago, when they’d decided to replace a window in the barn, they’d scavenged a used one from a stack on the front porch. Earl kept a wide assortment of lumber and other junk there, squirreling away anything he thought might come in handy. It wasn’t unusual for him to ask fellow ranchers embarrassing questions like, “Are you using that old screen door out there?” or “You mind if I take that stack of pallets that’s been setting beside your barn for so long? No point in letting good wood go to waste.”

  So the house and barn had a funky, jerry-rigged look, and there probably wasn’t a truly straight line or square corner on the place. But it was home, and there was nothing like it. After almost a week away, her love for the place hit her like a punch to the solar plexus, taking her breath away and reminding her of her greatest weakness.

  If she’d been able to walk away from the place, she’d be living a very different life now. She could have used her winnings to buy a little house on a few acres, like so many of her fellow competitors had. Her dad had never done much for her. She could have walked away without much more than a faint twinge of guilt.